The (Viennese) Weltschmerz and the Search for him-Self
摘要
With this verse Wilhelm Müller opens his cycle of poems Die Winterreise, henceforth set into music by Schubert in 1827 as D 911. The particularly broad topic here addressed, includes an utterance of alienation and “desolation” of a primarily political nature that is characteristic of Müller’s poems. In addition to Müller, this sentiment might extend to how Schubert and his friends may possibly have perceived the Metternich censorship regime, which prevailed in Vienna during the Restoration time, namely as an “epochal ice age”.