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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 May 2024
Strange things, the neighbours say, have happen’d here:
Wild shrieks have issued from the hollow tombs;
Dead men have come again, and walk’d about;
And the great bell has toll’d, unrung, untouch’d!
—Robert Blair, ‘The Grave’ (1743)The grave is at once silent and sonorous in Schubert's songs. Early manifestations extend back to the dance of the spirits in his settings of Friedrich von Matthisson's ‘Der Geistertanz’, discussed in the Introduction: ‘Quickly we airy spirits / Strike up a whirling dance / Around graves / And rotting bones’ (‘Rasch tanzen um Gräber / Und morsches Gebein / Wir luftigen Schweber / Den sausenden Reih’n’). Here, the grave gives rise to supernatural presences, not yet fully formed, whirling around in the spirit of danse macabre (a theme taken up in chapter 4). Death, seemingly unburdened by morbid thoughts, is tinged with a cheerful ‘farewell’: ‘You have buried our grief / Deep in the gloomy Chamber; / Happy we, who whisper you / A cheerful farewell!’ (‘Tief bargst du im düstern / Gemach unser Weh; / Wir Glücklichen flüstern / Dir fröhlich Ade!’). The ghostliness of the night spirit is juxtaposed with critical distancing from the grave as a site of the supernatural through imagery all too real (rotten bones, whimpering dogs). Such tensions play out in varied ways across Schubert's graveyard settings – sometimes affirming supernatural presences, while other times questioning or shifting away from such phenomena entirely.
Later songs revolving around graveyard diggers, such as his setting of his friend Franz von Schober's ‘Schatzgräbers Begehr’, D 761 (1822), weigh down the airiness of the night spirits with the weariness of lived experience: ‘So leave me in peace with my endeavour. / Surely a grave is gladly given to every man; / Will you then not grant me one, friends?’ (‘Drum lasset Ruhe mir in meinem Streben! / Ein Grab mag man wohl jedem gerne geben, / Wollt ihr es denn nicht mir, ihr Lieben, gönnen?’). Here the grave offers a desirable escape from life, as apostrophized in the penultimate stanza: ‘If I am digging my own grave with this hope, / Yet I will gladly climb down, / for then my longing will be stilled’ (‘Sollt’ ich mein Grab mit dieser Hoffnung graben: / Ich steige gern hinab, / gestillt ist dann mein Sehnen’).
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