SOURCE: "The Texts of Winterreise," in Retracing a Winter's Journey: Schubert's Winterreise, Cornell University Press, 1991, pp. 50-72.

In the following excerpt, Youens interprets Die Winterreise in terms of the quest for self-knowledge, the denial of a comforting transcendant reality or illusion, and the tenacity of life in spite of intense grief and depression over the loss of a loved one.

Marie von Pratobevera, later the sister-in-law of Schubert's first biographer, Heinrich Kreißle von Hellborn, wrote in a letter shortly after the publication of Winterreise, Part I, that the cycle consisted of "laments over a sweetheart's unfaithfulness … a companion-piece to the 'Maid of the Mill' songs, by the same poet and nearly identical in content."¹ Part II had not yet appeared, and she could not have known what would follow after the twelfth song, but later writers who knew the entire work either saw little more than dated...