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Schubert, Platen, and the Myth of Narcissus

1996; University of California Press; Volume: 49; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/831770

1547-3848

Kristina Muxfeldt,

Historical Geography and Cartography

When Franz Schubert's friend Franz von Bruchmann returned to Vienna in 1821 from his studies in Erlangen, he brought with him August von Platen's Ghaselen just off the press. Soon after, Schubert set two Platen texts. A reviewer for the Leipzig Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung singled out "Die Liebe hat gelogen" as particularly incomprehensible, in part because he found Schubert's radical harmony to be unmotivated by the text. The daring harmonic language of the second Platen song has struck even recent critics as excessive, yet none have addressed the textual motivation for Schubert's extreme expression. Both poems concern ill-fated homosexual love, "Du liebst mich nicht" most explicitly, if obliquely: the poem is a veiled reflection on the myth of Narcissus, a myth Platen frequently drew on as a symbol for his own homosexuality.