The Fly No.2 ~ a collage
“The purpose of poetry is not to show off
with strokes of genius but to employ its celestial power to the best advantage
of mankind” (C.F.D.Schubart)
In
einem Bächlein helle – (whistle the tune)
kehr’ bei mir ein
(calls Elsa to Ortrud)
How shall
I tell
(the path of objectivity-in-parenthesis)
the true tale of Christoph Friedrich Daniel Schubart (1739-1791, with
an “a”, not with an “e” like the later more famous composer who made deceptively
genial beauty of what became his most famous poem), Enlightenment satirist of religious and political pretensions,
womanizer, poet, toper and musician, who with his prodigal talents angled
for and won plaudits in a good number of places in the despotically ruled
states of Southern Germany before he was thrown out of each in turn for
his irreverence?
thus,
for example, in fishing
trout we use a
hook with feathers
In a bright little brook
a capricious trout sped
past like an arrow.
I stood there on the bank
in a contented dream
watching the gay fish flash about
in the clear stream
es gibt
ein Glück
Having
finally after many escapades, but still young and lusty, landed in the
town of Ulm and resumed the publication of his extremely successful journal
Deutsche Chronik (circulation over 20,000 in the whole of Europe,
almost entirely written by himself and devoted inter alia to lampooning
petty autocrats), he attracted the attention and outraged loathing of
Herzog Carl Eugen of Württemberg, an irascible libertine who particularly
resented the mockery of his military academy and his lower-class mistress
and resolved, as he could not exert his power to discipline his Volk in
the free township of Ulm itself, to lure the enthusiastic author beyond
its boundaries l’histoire du soldat
in
order “to seize Schubart and by secure custody of his person cleanse human
society of this unworthy & contagious member”
that
we make fly like an insect
hovering on the surface
of the water.
A trout
A fisherman with his rod
stood on the other side
coldly observing it
twisting & turning – so what,
as long as the water
stayed clear, I thought,
that trout couldn’t be caught
with a hook & a line
whistle a happy tune
es gibt ein Glück
(then Ortrud inveigles her to the destruction of her hopes:)
wohl,
dass ich dich warne,
zu blind nicht deinem Glück zu trau’n
that
sees this fake fly and
jumps to catch it
‘discovers’
only on being hooked
that
the fly was an illusion.
It is only
after being
For this purpose
the Duke obtained the willing services of the Oberamtmann of the nearby
Monastery of Blaubeuren, who travelled to Ulm by horse-drawn sleigh in
January 1777 and there had converse in a
tavern with Schubart, whom he made believe that his brother-in-law,
a noted professor, was all admiringly agog to meet and celebrate the illustrious
poet and editor of a widely praised journal of enlightenment; this blandishment
dimmed Schubart’s judgement and he made the journey with the high official
across the wintry landscape, only to be met at their destination by three
of the Duke’s officers, who arrested him and carried him off to the fortress
of Hohenasperg, from which it was quite impossible to fly, to be incarcerated
without even a semblance of judicial procedure
But finally the thief
tired of waiting & cunn-
ingly clouded the water
so that hey presto! his
rod twitched, then the poor fish
was flapping on the hook –
my blood began to cook
as I gazed on the cheated one
das ohne Reu’
hooked that the previous experience
of catching a fly is de-
valuated for
the trout into an
“A
shudder ran through my bones when the Asperg was revealed to me emerging
from its blue veil. The Duke himself was present and allocated the dungeon
in which I was to be confined… Now the door shut grindingly and I was
alone — alone in a grey
, gloomy hole in a rock”
Der Hohenasperg
illusion.
We observers,
as living systems, are not
different from the trout in this respect
DOES TIME FLY
®
where
he spent 10 years being reeducated at His Highness’s pleasure, despite
all pleas by his long-neglected wife and others, possibly regretting his
imprudence; after a few years of solitary confinement, with nothing but
the Bible and Night Thoughts to read (he managed like an Abbé Faria
to dictate his memoirs to a fellow-prisoner, who hid them under the floor,
where they lay rotting for years), he was permitted to join in the social
life of the prison (for those inmates not languishing and finally dying
in the deepest cells),
es
gibt ein Glück
writing many poems, including “Die Forelle” as a reflex of his entrapment
and (perforce) odes of JOYous homage ~ Schiller, who also suffered from the Duke’s persecution, managed
to visit him during this time ~ to his captor and other sovereigns such
as Frederick the Great, who finally procured his release, after which
kehr’ bei mir ein
and the word 'hypocrisy' shows
that we use our inability to distinguish
in the experience
between perception and
illusion
for the manipulation of our
interpersonal
relations
his gracious patron the noble Duke of Württemberg arranged
for him, penniless as he was (the Duke had kindly financed his children’s
education and granted his wife a subsistence but later reimbursed himself
with the remaining income from Schubart’s writings), to take up a position
as Theatre Director in Stuttgart (subjected to the Duke’s vigilant observation,
natürlich)
O habe Dank für so viel Güte
where he died four and a half
years later, a broken man
es gibt
ein Glück
whatever
happens to us, happens to us
as an experience
that we live
as coming from
nowhere
oh whistle and I’ll come to you, my boy
sah die Betrog’ne an
das
ohne Reu’
GAZE ON THE CHEATED ONE
(an
illusion?)
—
Sources: “Die Forelle” by C.F.D.Schubart, the Laufenberg NETzine
for the biographical information & the picture, Lohengrin by
Richard Wagner, "Cognition“
by Humberto Maturana (1978).
26-28.1.2002
