Schubert’s Subverse

The Dwarf (Der Zwerg) is one of Franz Schubert’s most powerful and disruptive ballads, even in its German to English translation:

Into the gloomy light, the mountains are already disappearing
On flat sea waves floats a boat:
on board are the queen and her dwarf.

She gazes up into the high-arched vault,
into the blue, light-woven distance
that with the milk of the sky is streaked blue.

“Never, never have you lied to me yet, you stars.”
So she cries, “and soon I will vanish,
you tell me; but in truth, I will die gladly.”

Then the dwarf steps up to the queen
to bind a red silk cord around her neck,
and he weeps as if he wanted to blind himself with grief.

He speaks: “You yourself are to blame for this suffering
because you have forsaken me for the king.
Now only your death will awaken joy in me.”

“It is true I will hate myself forever
for having bestowed death on you with my own hand;
but now, pale, you must go to your early grave.”

She lays her hand on her heart full of youthful life,
and heavy tears run from her eyes
that she would lift imploringly to the heavens.

“May you suffer no pain through my death!”
she says; the dwarf kisses her pale cheeks
and in that moment her senses leave her.

The dwarf gazes at the lady, overcome with death,
and with his own hands sinks her deep into the sea.
His heart burns with desire for her;
upon no coast will he ever land again.

The ballad captivates the imagination for its many layers of subversion of a presumed social order: The queen has a relationship with her servant; the servant believes in his rights over the queen; the queen feels guilty about choosing for the king and willingly accepts her death believing it was written in the stars. But perhaps all of this is especially upsetting because the murder is committed by a small person allowing us to embrace and express a number of deeply rooted prejudices against the small. And that’s heightism.