If you got the rich text, then delete this one (or both if you don't like
it). This one has no picture, of course.
~
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"
[picture]
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 decades), 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
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