Franz Schubert and His World

by Gibbs, Christopher H. , Solvik, Morten

  Having defined friendship in such highly charged terms, with love as its basis, Spaun then finds it necessary to draw a distinction between (spiritualized) friendship and (sensual) love. But the language Spaun uses to approach the issue immediately undermines the distinction: “For do we not find illustrated in the purest models of manly friendship that same anxious longing, that quietly admiring rapture as the tender, playful, rhapsodizing essence that otherwise tends to characterize feminine love?” Grappling with sentimental and often physical expressions of closeness among male friends, Spaun reaches for the biblical example of David and Jonathan and hesitantly posits the additional quality of “love in the narrower sense” as “the addition of external beauty, and with the help of that, of feelings raised to a certain degree of ecstatic enthusiasm.” That is, the ancient association of the Good and the Beautiful is itself a danger—but only if it leads to the loss of self-control that Spaun’s term for that enthusiasm (Schwärmerei) often connotes. But the cure itself is perilous. Citing the example of Theages, for whom the presence of and physical contact with Socrates was restorative, Spaun considers the prospects for a youth determined to overcome deeply rooted deficiencies while constantly threatened by relapse. For such a youth—and it is difficult not to hear echoes of the friends’ long history of exhortations to Franz von Schober in this context—the only hope is if “he throws himself into the arms of a friend and reveals to him his innermost self.”

  From this climactic moment, the essay recedes first to more abstract reflection on the connection of inner essence to the divine, followed by an exhortation to share this vision of purified relationship, and finally an assurance that, Montaigne to the contrary, such intense relationships can indeed exist among a group of individuals and not only a pair. By the end, there is no doubt that Spaun is determined to maintain virtue by transcending the physical and emotional, but it is equally clear that to do so brings about a struggle not only with literary sources grounded in very different norms but also with the individuals engaged in the process.

  There is no doubt that people would be better if more true friendship existed among them. But it is just as certain that we would encounter more friendship among them if they were better.

  The ancient states, whose preeminent focus was to use the combined strength of individuals and upbringing to strive for an improved, more perfect state of affairs, regarded friendship as one of the most effective motivators of virtue, as is shown by the laws they issued about it as well as the many images of the most exalted friendship that shine forth from that distant place, both to our shame and our encouragement. It was friendship that animated those sons of the gods who first freed the earth from monsters and crude violence, friendship that taught youths civic virtue and inspired them to victory or death. Friendship was always the terror of tyrants. The bond of closest friendship was to bind together those who, Pythagoras wished, would enliven declining states with fresh spirit; love of friends was the essence of Socratic wisdom. Without denying that their friendship, too, was not completely pure and unblemished but encompassed many aberrations, let us trust the truth at the root of both those splendid pronouncements and their sad aberrations, and reflect on what true friendship consists of, and how we can attain virtue through friendship or friendship through virtue.

  Every person in whom the human element is even somewhat active bears something higher within himself that he aspires to reach, something he loves and marvels at; and even the villain bears in his breast the image of a more consistent, happier villain.

  Accordingly, it is not ourselves whom we love in our beloved, as many claim, but that which we demand of ourselves and which we love and venerate with that demand. It lies in our nature to want to find this ideal embodied outside us, because captive longing, feeling endlessly repressed within, rages through the breast with tormenting flames—or, breaking out somewhere, often drags us into errors and vices. The joy or illusion of finding this higher ideal, envisioned always only within, realized as well outside of us, is the feeling of friendship. Friendship in the strictest sense, however, occurs only when two such beings have recognized, penetrated, and spiritually joined one another in truth.

  But who among us can in this sense say that he has found a friend, or is someone’s friend? As little as we despair in our struggle for virtue when we fail to achieve it in its pure and perfect form, so little must we disdain friendship when we fail to carry it to such heights.

  It violates the basic laws of eternal justice to demand of others that which we lack. We should therefore certainly not take the realization of our ideal as the basic condition of our friendship, but rather only a faithful respect for and pursuit of that ideal. But selfishness, and the delusion that things we can behold only vaguely in our most far-reaching thoughts, when elevated by the wings of our imagination, are vitally present within us, that we are one with ourselves—in friendship these things make us measure with standards we ourselves cannot meet.

  If a higher being were to hear humans’ quiet laments, how so many complain at once that they cannot find their ideal, that their love is not requited, that friendship here on earth is a dream that only they dream—and saw therewith their distracted, idle, and loveless activity; how, mutually desiring and misunderstanding, they pass by one another so coldly and antagonistically—he would have compassion on us and, were he not compelled to scorn us, would surely want to help us, opening our eyes and arms. Thus when we choose a friend let us not close our heart against anyone who struggles with a shortcoming of which our ideal is free—but rather ask ourselves modestly and probingly whether one who, like us, has this or that weakness; who was highly strict toward others yet indulgent toward himself, letting himself be carried away by passions and habitual behaviors; whether someone who in his life and his dealings was completely like us could be embraced as a friend? He who does not deserve a friend will never win one—and that is why complaints and vain wishes are so abundant, but friends so rare.

  Aristotle already said* that living together and closer association among people is always a dangerous precipice for friendship; most such friendships break up, largely on account of accumulated annoyance over provocations that are insignificant but recur constantly.

  Who does not remember from childhood years how busy we were at filling out as beautifully as possible the image of that boy or youth we had yet to meet; with what impatient longing, what joyful expectation we looked forward to those moments when we imagined we would find everything our heart desired, while we neglected those whom habit and daily interaction had brought nearer as nothing more than empty, hollowed-out shells of our hopes; both with equal injustice. The reason is that we envisioned one as the inner essence, free of all that is trivial and coincidental and thus all the greater and more splendid, whereas with the other, confused by the many external circumstances and often most insignificant weaknesses and habits, we failed to perceive the spirit that works within—just as at the foot of a small hill we fail to see the mountain behind it that rises into the clouds.

  Let us therefore never lose sight of the essential on account of the inessential, and take care always to conduct all outer affairs so that no one can misjudge our ever creative, thinking spirit; and let us practice what is right with steadfast attention, even in the smaller, inconspicuous relations of life. The most difficult thing, said Plutarch, is to affirm one’s dignity in familiar, daily interaction—but with true virtue the most visible also seems to us the most beautiful, and with the truly great, strangers find nothing more remarkable than the way they conduct themselves daily with their acquaintances.

  The question is often posed whether love and friendship differ. But if we wanted to try to separate true friendship from love, we would soon find that both are in essence one, but as they express themselves differently, have been given different names. To make this distinction nonetheless along the lines of gender would be quite incorrect; for do we not find illustrated in the purest models of manly friendshi
p that same anxious longing, that quietly admiring rapture as the tender, playful, rhapsodizing essence that otherwise tends to characterize feminine love? And did not David once say of his friend Jonathan, “His love was more to me than the love of women”?*9

  I believe, then, that the difference between friendship and that which is called love in the narrower sense consists only in the addition of external beauty, and with the help of that, of feelings raised to a certain degree of ecstatic enthusiasm [Schwärmerei].

  Indeed, it lies deep within our nature to think of the highest ideal of the Good as also beautiful. Yet how often this drive, which flows through the thinking spirit with premonitions of delight, has disappointed and misled the hearts of mortals in the partial, broken, confused relations of earthly life! Let us never forget, then, how much more substantial is the signified than the sign, that the beauty of virtuous souls is as superior to the beauty of external forms as the eternal immutable is above the corruptible blooming of the body—and neither immoderately crave nor selfishly and stubbornly forgo the beauty of forms. So many people always remain only on the outermost surface of things, and it is not unusual that the most unworthy objects—showing barely the faintest reflection of deeper meaning of the last, highest sensation—exhaust all the feelings of their deluded hearts. There are people who praise, with all the enthusiasm available to their vapid nature, the beauty of a foot. If only they knew how far they stand below those savages we disdain because they trade gold and diamonds for glass beads and baubles!

  Socrates, too, used to say that the sight of lovely youths gripped him with gentle emotions, unnameable feelings that drove him restlessly to do everything within his powers to make them virtuous and happy. Yet he showed through his speech as well as his actions how little external beauty without real virtue mattered to him.

  If then love, as one ancient wise man**10 taught, is the drive to ascribe goodness to what the eye sees as beautiful, so let us call friendship that higher union of two souls that does not require the medium of sensual beauty, of agreeable forms, to be mutually recognized, respected, and enjoyed. In this sense the following applies:

  Stellest du Kypris auf in des Herzens Tempel, sie herrschet

  Einsam, Tyrannen gleich, über der Freyheit Gebieth;

  Aber zum Pantheon weihet das Herz die edlere Freundschaft,

  Jedem Göttlichen flammt reiner ihr Bundesaltar.

  If you raise up Kypris11 in the temple of your heart, she will reign

  Alone, like a tyrant, over the realm of freedom;

  But if the heart consecrates more noble friendship to the Pantheon,

  Its united altar will burn more purely for everything divine.

  I know some who are my age or somewhat older, said the young Theages* to his father, who before they had interaction with this man (Socrates) were good for nothing; but within a very short time after they came into his company they had become much better than all those who were otherwise better than they. And Aristides, who felt powerfully the decline of his intellectual and moral power with his separation from Socrates, said to Socrates: “As you yourself know, I have never really learned anything from you, but I grew whenever I was with you, even when I only lived in the same house with you, even when not in the same room of the house; and it seemed to me that I benefited even more when I beheld you in the same room of the house, when you spoke, much more than when I looked somewhere else. I grew most of all, though, and to the highest degree, whenever I myself sat next to you, and we touched one another closely. Now, however, all that power and skill is gone from me.”12

  It will be difficult for many who have never experienced something similar to convince themselves of the truth of this feeling, this wonderful healing power of higher friendship. But happy are they who have been kept in the Good by it, or led back to the right path, and blessed are those who led them.

  We cannot always do everything by ourselves, under our own powers. Even with the clearest knowledge of the Good and the Beautiful, and all love for them, we must often grapple with deficiencies whose deep roots have been established in us by example and habit, and that we cannot uproot completely even with the most painful exertion. If for years we have been weak or bad, or have gone in the wrong direction through the corrupting influence of others, it is not within us to stop in an instant—to be strong where previously we were sensual and self-serving; even if earlier it might have been within our power not to make a habit of this or that faulty inclination.

  How unhappy, then, is the person who recognizes with equal vividness his faults and the impotence of his resistance; who, as often as he grasps the intention of bettering himself, again and again relapses; who is now no longer free, no longer stands at the crossroad where the path to the Good, like that to Evil, stretches before him. Let no one pronounce a damning judgment on such weakness, more or less in greater or lesser matters. Are not most people in this situation?

  How can such a person be improved or saved? Only if, incapable of governing himself and fulfilling the commands of his better knowledge, he throws himself into the arms of a friend and reveals to him his innermost self.

  He will then no longer feel himself abandoned in battle, he will feel himself supported where he threatened to fall; the friend will pull him forcefully from the abyss toward which his momentary craving pressed him—and the pure, beautiful joys of love and goodwill, like a refreshing balm, will soothe the pains of struggle and inner reproof.

  And now, when we begin to increase in goodness, to achieve ever greater proficiency in it with the assistance of a friend who comes to the aid of our goodwill—and then we are suddenly torn away from our support—could not what Aristides described about himself and his teacher indeed befall us?

  Beyond this, a person can come to true knowledge of himself only through friendship; without it, his life will fade away in ignoble dullness, like a dream.

  If an eye wanted to see itself, it would have to look into a mirror or something similar.*13 Now, when someone looks into the eye of another, his own image is represented in the eye that faces him, as in a mirror, and indeed in its principal part, the power of which it sees—the real seat of the power of sight, which makes an eye an eye. Just so must the soul that wants to see and recognize itself look into the soul of a friend, and indeed into that part of the soul that is the seat of its most excellent powers. Now, there is surely no more divine portion of the soul than that through which it thinks and deals in accordance with reason; therefore this part is also the one similar to the divine, and whoever sees into it will best recognize both all that is divine, namely divinity and wisdom, as well as himself. Therefore let us be open in friendship, and full of trust, so that the Good may speak and through its pure fire purge our entire being ever more of all corruption.

  But virtue, too, leads to friendship, for that is the nature of the Good, that the more we are occupied with its contemplation the more it instills in us love to the point of ecstasy [Begeisterung]. Now, where can we more clearly recognize, behold, and effectively love all good and beauty than in humans? And when we perceive virtue, love, innocence, and power in noble, childlike spirits—should we not then love, share, reach out our hands, and rise up together to the lofty goal of our destiny [Bestimmung], in feelings of immortality, above the dark earth ruled by death and decay?

  Can friendship exist with many? We are delighted by the quiet shade of the grove and by the rock-strewn canyon and the mountain stream that rushes through it; by the cheerful meadow and the calm, clear mirror of the lake; by the splendor of the rising sun and the milder clarity of the moon—and with this ability to sense the beauty of nature in its most varied guises, should the soul be found wanting when it comes to recognizing the divinity of humanity in different forms?

  The essence of friendship is not monotony, but rather harmonic consonance.* Therefore the statement that friendship can never exist among several as it can between two, since it is impossible to know several people so intimately, seems
less correct to me than the words of that master of the art of loving: “Just as it is impossible for the Evil to be friends, so is it impossible for the Good not to be friends.”14

  Raphael

  (vol. 2, 298–309)

  The final selection from the Beyträge translated here differs from Anton von Spaun’s reflection on friendship in both origin and tone, although it deals with many of the same themes. “Raphael,” from the second volume, is cast as a dialogue between one “Willibald” and “Friedrich.” This selection has long been described as an excerpt because of the reference in the opening title footnote to Das Leben Raphaels, a short book published the year before in Munich. The initial “M.” that concludes the piece has been taken as an indication that the book was excerpted by Johann Mayrhofer.15 But an examination of the cited life of the painter, which offered a translation of an anonymous sixteenth-century biography, makes clear that Das Leben Raphaels was only a source of information and, to some extent, a perspective on the painter’s life.16 Mayrhofer, then, should be considered the dialogue’s author.

  On the face of it, “Raphael” is a somewhat heavy-handed set piece that imagines the example of an older friend commenting on an exemplary life and what could be learned from it to an eagerly receptive, affectionate young friend. In that way, it again illustrates the activities integral both to self-cultivation and to transmitting that practice among friends. Beyond that, however, and despite the stilted dialogue, “Raphael” considers issues of art in relation to the friends’ ideals in a way that gives the piece unusual interest. But there is more here, if we acknowledge our unavoidable hindsight as later readers. From its discussion of a precociously talented youth to the contrast it draws between crude and well-rounded musicians, and beyond that to its conclusion with the tragically early death of an artist, Schubert seems to hover uncannily around this text written not about him, but by one of his closest acquaintances during the early years of their friendship.