ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the four poems Abendlied fur die Entfernte; Thekla, Um Mitternacht and An die Musik. This is the last of the four sets devoted to the imagination. In Opus. 60, the previous one, were given a specimen of what old men might dream about when they can no longer cope with reality. In a stanza omitted by Franz Schubert, he then goes on to discuss the conflict between reality and dreams. But his main point is that life is made bearable by what can be imagined, that life would be the poorer if reality and dreams could not be interwoven. Friedrich von Schiller's poem looks at the topic from another angle. Thekla is the daughter of Wallenstein, the commander-in-chief of the Catholic forces during the Thirty Years War, whose downfall is plotted by Schiller in his dramatic trilogy Wallenstein.
