Kenner’s testimony needs to be taken with a grain of salt; nevertheless, he helps us understand Schober’s attractions and the direction of his influence.18 Membership in the circle required at least a qualified endorsement of Schober’s philosophy, but as we will see, the circle’s appropriation of it did not always wear the unattractive face portrayed by Kenner.
The most revealing character sketch of Schober from within the circle is the 1825 Sylvesternacht (New Year’s Eve) satire written by Eduard von Bauernfeld (SDB, 489–94). In this farcical drama Schober is Pantalon von Przelavtsch. After giving a thorough critique of Columbine’s (Anna Hönig’s) smallness of bust and shortness of thigh, Pantalon shares the distilled wisdom of his wide experience and study by holding forth at great and flowery length on the virtues of rest and sex (Scene 8). According to Pantalon, the essence of life is rest, embodied superlatively by the plant. The plant does not strive, nor gather; it only lets itself be viewed. But it is not therefore without movement and inner life. It lavishes clouds of scent; that is its movement. And it even allows itself an act, but only one, since there is only one essential act: permitting its manly seed to mix with the female, and so to propagate its noble, godly race. This is the highest vocation, and Pantalon is willing to show the way altruistically, sacrificing class, employment, and profession (Stand, Beschäftigung, Gewerbe). Two and a half years later Bauernfeld was still expressing satisfaction at the aptness of this characterization of Schober.19
Josef von Spaun (his nickname was “Pepi”) played a kind of elder-brother role in the circle. He had been encouraging Schubert’s musical talents ever since Schubert first came to the Stadtkonvikt in 1808, where Spaun was running the student orchestra and playing the violin while he pursued his law studies. In those early years Spaun kept Schubert supplied with music paper, gave him his first experiences of opera, and introduced him to an extensive circle of potentially useful social contacts. Spaun got to know Schober through the Linzer Bildungskreis, with which both he and Schober engaged in extensive discussions and correspondence about aesthetic and moral issues, and of which his brother Anton von Spaun (b. 1790) was a central member; when Schober moved to Vienna in 1815 to study law it was likely Spaun who first introduced him to Schubert (SDB, 49).
Over the years Spaun continued to be interested and supportive, but receded further into the background when he moved to Linz in the fall of 1821 to become a tax assessor, and then to Lemberg in distant Polish Galicia, where he received his next bureaucratic post. He did not return to live in Vienna until the spring of 1826, and in the meantime participated in the circle chiefly through his letters.20
In the years prior to their most intensive time together, the winter of 1822–23, the core members who gathered around Schubert and Schober tended to be young men they knew from preexisting circles. The circle around the poet Johann Chrysostomus Senn (b. 1795), who had been a fellow student of Schubert’s in the Stadtkonvikt, contributed at least two important members to the Schobert circle.21 The student of philosophy Franz von Bruchmann and Schubert had both been part of the Senn circle when it came to an abrupt and traumatic end after the police raided one of its gatherings in March 1820 on the suspicion that it was a nationalist student fraternity in the German mold.22 The subsequent investigation led to Senn’s arrest and internal exile to Tyrol in March 1821; Schubert never saw him again. Schubert first got to know Bruchmann well through Senn, and although Bruchmann had a falling out with Schober shortly after Senn’s arrest, he rejoined the group around Schubert and Schober in the summer of 1822.23 For a short time he became one of the circle’s most important members, but by the fall of 1823 he had “lost his halo” (discussed below), and a year later (in the fall of 1824) he precipitated a crisis of loyalty and irrevocably parted ways with his erstwhile friends.
The poet Johann Mayrhofer participated in the Bildungskreis as well as in the Senn circle, although he was not present during the raid that led to Senn’s arrest.24 Schubert had known him since 1814 when he first set one of Mayrhofer’s poems (Am See, D124) and Spaun then introduced them, but during the years of the Senn circle Mayrhofer was one of Schubert’s most constant companions since they also lived together. After the dispersal of the Senn circle Mayrhofer, like Bruchmann, transferred his loyalties to the Schobert circle, but for Mayrhofer his living arrangements with Schubert and his participation in the new circle both ended before the year 1820 was out.
The job Mayrhofer had in the imperial bureaucracy as “dritter Bücherrevisor” (a post in the extensive censorship bureaucracy) conflicted with the ideals of the Senn circle, with those of the Schobert circle, as well as with his own, and even if the other members excused his job as an existential necessity, his attendance would have furnished a constant reminder of the disharmony in which he was living.25 As Anton Holzapfel later remembered (1858): “Certainly the cleavage between Mayrhofer’s inclination and his position in life, for he was compelled to act as a respectable Imperial book censor whereas he was an enthusiastic admirer of intellectual freedom, gave rise to the malady in his extremely sensitive soul and to the difficulty of [Schubert’s] living with such a character.”26 Schubert moved out of their apartment toward the end of 1820, perhaps because he and Mayrhofer became estranged, or perhaps because they just found it difficult to live together (SDB, 163). He continued to set Mayrhofer’s poems to music, and in June 1823 he dedicated his settings of three Mayrhofer poems, Op. 21, to the poet. In all Schubert set nearly fifty of Mayrhofer’s poems, second only to the number of poems he set by Goethe.27 On the other hand, Schubert set no Mayrhofer poems after 1824 (SDB, 332).28 In addition, after 1820 there are only two documented occasions when Mayrhofer participated in an activity at which either Schober or Schubert were present: the 11 November 1823 Schubertiade at Bruchmann’s, and the 15 December 1826 Schubertiade at Spaun’s.29 Mayrhofer’s distance from the circle after 1820 and from Schubert after 1824 were probably due less to any clash over principles than to Mayrhofer’s pessimistic intellectual outlook, at odds with the youthful optimism and idealism of the other members who were about ten years younger, coupled with Mayrhofer’s increasingly melancholy, hypochondriac, and misanthropic disposition. Schubert’s death was a further blow that nearly put a stop to Mayrhofer’s writing.30 He made an unsuccessful attempt at suicide in 1831, and succeeded in 1836.
Even before Mayrhofer had faded from the picture, the circle gained a new and vital member. During the summer of 1820, the second year Schubert participated in the Atzenbrugg festivals, a new “triumvirate” emerged, consisting of Schubert, Schober, and the painter Leopold Kupelwieser.31 Schubert probably first met Kupelwieser in 1816 at Professor Heinrich Watteroth’s house, where Spaun was then living, but his main point of contact with Kupelwieser may well have been the Unsinnsgesellschaft.32 Though other members of the circle had some facility at sketching scenes and faces—Schober, for example, who had facility at everything—with Kupelwieser the circle had gained its first serious painter. It soon gained another.
In 1822 Moritz von Schwind began to spend more and more time with the circle, and by the fall of 1823 had become one of its most important members, the younger-brother counterpart to Spaun’s elder-brother role in the circle. A later member of the inner circle, Eduard von Bauernfeld, who had known Schwind since school days, wrote the most vivid depiction of him during these years. Bauernfeld’s retrospective essay (1869) gives us a glimpse of Schwind’s moody temperament, his aesthetic predilections, and his hero worship of Schubert:
Schwind, an artist through and through, was scarcely less cut out for music than he was for painting. The Romantic element that was in him was now awakened for the first time by the musical creations of his older friend [Schubert]—this was the music for which his soul longed! And so, with all the fervor and tenderness of his youth, he drew close to the master; he was utterly devoted to him and in the same way Schubert, who jokingly called him his beloved, took him completely to heart…. “The way he composes is the way I sho
uld like to paint!” was the cry in his heart….
Although the young artist’s nature harbored much that was tender, soft, almost feminine, he often brooded and imagined the worst, was perpetually restless, and suffered self-inflicted doubts about his doings and leavings…. He was easily excited, and among friends, when he had hardly sipped wine or punch, he would suddenly cross from darkest brooding to the most frolicsome merriment.33
By late 1823 the circle’s glory years were over, at least for Schubert. He himself was sick, and Schober and Kupelwieser had embarked on extensive travels abroad, to Breslau (Wrocław) in Silesia, where Schober had gone to escape unwelcome attention while he tried his hand at the socially unacceptable profession of actor, and to Rome, where Kupelwieser had accompanied the Russian nobleman Alexis Beresin as an artistic chronicler.34 The letters they sent to each other during the course of the following year provide us the best insight as to the nature of the bonds among the friends, and as to how they themselves viewed the significance of the circle.
Schubert to Schober (in Breslau), 30 November 1823:
Our circle, as indeed I had expected, has lost its central focus without you. Bruchmann, who has returned from his trip, is no longer the same. He seems to conform to the conventions of the world, and already thereby loses his halo, which in my opinion was due only to his determined disregard of all worldly affairs…. True, as a substitute for you and Kupelwieser we received four individuals, namely: the Hungarian Mayer, Hönig, Smetana and Steiger, but the majority of such individuals make the circle only more insignificant instead of better. What is the good of a lot of quite ordinary students and officials to us? If Bruchmann is not there, or even ill, we go on for hours under the supreme direction of Mohn hearing nothing but eternal talk about riding, fencing, horses, and hounds. If it continues like this, I don’t suppose I’ll stand it for long among them…. For the rest, I hope to regain my health, and this recovered treasure will let me forget many a sorrow; only you, dear Schober, I shall never forget, for unfortunately, what you meant to me no one else can mean. (SDB, 300)
Schwind to Schober (in Breslau), 20 January 1824:
The greatest things known to me on earth are love, beauty, and wisdom. You have yourself ranked me with you and Schubert, and I could not bear the delight of it. Pain has cleansed me, so that to be third among you means everything to me. (SDB, 324)
Schubert to Kupelwieser (in Rome), 31 March 1824:
At last I can once again wholly pour out my soul to someone. For you are so good and worthy, you will be sure to forgive many things that others would hold very much against me.— In a word, I feel myself to be the most unhappy and wretched creature in the world…. Thus, joyless and friendless, would I pass my days, if Schwind didn’t visit me sometimes and turn on me a ray from those sweet days of yore.— Our circle (reading circle), as you probably know already, has done itself to death owing to a reinforcement of that rough chorus of beer-drinkers and sausage-eaters, and its dissolution is due in a couple of days—though I have hardly visited it myself since your departure. (SDB, 338–39)
Schwind to Kupelwieser (in Rome), 9 June 1824:
[When I think about] how I long sought you, Schubert, Bruchmann, and was almost ashamed of this seeking, and trembled at the thought of finding you, how I came among you and found myself loved, while I dared wish for nothing more than to see you—how then could I have been different than I was? Now that all are gone, love sinks into the ground, and as vital fellowship has vanished, I am holding fast to appreciation and the essence of things, which is eternal and unshakable. (SDB, 351)
Schubert (from Zseliz) to Schwind, August 1824:
I am still in good health, thank God, and would feel quite comfortable here if only I had you, Schober, and Kupelwieser with me. (SDB, 370)
Schober (in Breslau) to Schubert, 2 December 1824:
You, my good, ever faithful friend, you continue to value my love, you have loved me for my own sake, as my Schwind and Kupelwieser also will remain faithful. And are we not precisely those who found our life in art, while the others merely entertained themselves with it, are we not those who solely and certainly understood our inmost natures, as only a German can? (SDB, 385)
In these letters and others the special relationship between Schubert, Schober, Kupelwieser, and Schwind is touched on again and again. Even before the open break with Schober, Bruchmann had “lost his halo” (Schubert’s letter of 30 November 1823), and the only letter we have that places him within the charmed circle is Schwind’s of 9 June 1824, where he names Bruchmann instead of Schober. With that single exception, no other names are poured into the crucible of passionate friendship, although Senn’s name continues to be invoked as a distant inspiration.35
Whatever else may have comprised what Kenner called Schober’s “philosophical system” and his “hazy aesthetic oracle,” these letters reveal a commitment to the importance of art as the defining characteristic of the circle. What united them was a vocational commitment to art, of a sort that Schober (born in Sweden) considered possible only for “a German” (letter of 2 December 1824). The friends inspired, shaped, and criticized each other’s work (Schubert’s letter of 21 September 1824, quoted above). Schober made a distinction between the four friends who “found our life in art” and the others, who found only entertainment, while Schubert emphasized a fellowship of artistic creativity; those unable to produce “children” of their own had no place in it. This is consistent with other evidence: the friends sometimes called themselves the “Canewas” circle, because when a person was under consideration for possible membership, Schubert would invariably ask “Kann er was?” (Can he produce something?).36 Bruchmann, too, confirmed the supremacy of art and the artist in the circle, although by 1827 when he wrote his lines, he was looking back with a jaundiced eye rather than with nostalgia. As he later recounted, he entered the winter of 1822–23, a winter whose “sparkling life, elevated with music and poetry, stupefied me,” with the following credo:
Only art has value, everything else is worthless. The productive artist is = creator = God. All others are but shades, are empty frumpery, useful only as means serving the ends of the artist. Human liberty is a delusion, an iron fate governs all, and even the gods are not excepted. Life after death is a phantom without proof, and only heroes and artists are immortal, because their fame lives on in the memory of humanity.37
If the overriding importance of art and of the creative artist was the creed of the Schobert circle, the Schubertiade was their holy communion at the altar of art. They did not object to fun; the Schubertiade was a party and it was a house concert, but it was also serious. The rapt absorption with which the Schubertians observed their rituals is captured by Schwind’s commemoration of the Schubertiade, and Schubert’s familiar setting of Schober’s poem, An die Musik (D547), a hymn to the redemptive power of music, expresses well the religious fervor of their shared commitment.38
The intensity and passion of the circle’s years from 1819 to 1823 would never return, but for several months in the spring of 1825 an important new friendship compensated partly for the loss of the earlier close-knit circle. Eduard von Bauernfeld drank Schmollis with Schubert in February 1825; he, Schubert, and Schwind were soon inseparable.39 Bauernfeld was a talented author of Lustspiele (theatrical comedies); he had a lively mind, a caustic wit, and diligent work habits. The new friendship was soon interrupted, however, for in May Schubert left on a six-month tour of upper Austria with the singer Johann Michael Vogl (b. 1768).
In the summer of 1825 the old friends began to trickle back to Vienna. Schober returned in July, and Kupelwieser in early August (SDB, 428, 450); after nearly two years’ separation there was at long last a great reunion among the friends when Schubert rejoined them in October (SDB, 469). And finally, in late April of 1826, Josef von Spaun returned to Vienna (SDB, 522). The old friends, without Bruchmann but joined by Bauernfeld, were all back together again, the circle reconstituted. At least superficially a gra
dual efflorescence of all its former activities began: it still functioned as a forum for a lively exchange of ideas and opinions; Schubertiades began again in early 1825;40 the friends resumed their custom of meeting every second day or so at a Stammlokal by November 1826 at the latest;41 and in early 1828 weekly readings of new literary and dramatic works, suspended since 1824, began afresh (SDB, 706).
Franz Schubert and His World Page 11