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Coda

There is a curious mirroring of this final image, conceptually reversed, in another 19th century work of dread and doubt – Henry James’ Gothic Revival novella The Turn of the Screw (1898). In this late Romantic work, an unreliable narrator – an aging, virginal governess – is sent to care for two wealthy children. She becomes convinced they are menaced by the ghosts of a servant couple, now deceased, whom she believes corrupted their innocence in life and crave their souls in death. A subtext of possible sexual abuse sailed over the heads of the book’s initial fin-de-siècle audience but was seized on by modern readers in the age of Freud. In various stage and film adaptations these themes rise to the surface. The best include composer Benjamin Britten’s 1954 chamber opera of the same name and director Jack Clayton’s 1961 film, The Innocents.

“The Innocents” (1961, film still, Jack Clayton: director / Freddie Francis: cinematographer)

In the book’s terminal scene, the oppressive paranoia of the unstable governess achieves deadly apotheosis. Alone with the boy Miles and convinced a vile spirit is at the window waiting to “take” him, she shields the terrified child with her body until the manifestations cease, only to find him dead in her arms: “We were alone with the quiet day, and his little heart, dispossessed, had stopped.”

In both “Der Erlkönig” and The Turn of the Screw a boy is menaced by an unseen fiend. These adversaries could be imaginary: in Schubert’s song he may be the boy’s fever dream; in James’ book a neurosis of the sexually repressed governess. Parental figures try to “save” both boys – the father in “Erlkönig,” a maternal surrogate in Screw. Each fails and may in fact cause the boy’s demise – the father through neglect (by not taking his son’s fears seriously), the “mother” through abuse (by projecting her own terror on the boy until she frightens him to death).

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Note: Fischer-Dieskau performed “Der Erlkönig” countless times over a 46-year career. To watch his dynamic reading from a 1959 BBC broadcast, with accompanist Moore, is to be struck both by its musical excellence and the singer’s compelling but subtle theatricality. Beefier in youth than middle or old age, his broad face emotes in nuanced tandem with his voice, shifting characters on a dime. It’s a shame that such potentially accessible art has been consigned to the esoteric margins in today’s pop world.

Versions and variations of “Der Erlkönig” abound in classical music, but the song has made few inroads to other styles. Folksinger Steve Gillette opened his eponymous 1967 debut LP with a comparatively soothing adaptation of Goethe’s poem, set to his own tune. He adds a final verse wherein the father “cries aloud” and is forever haunted by his son’s death. Ex-Carolina Chocolate Drop Dom Flemons channels Clarence Ashley and Dock Boggs in a doomy, banjo-and-vocal variant (“Earl King”) on his 2007 solo debut Dance Tunes Ballads & Blues. (He discusses the song in a previous MBM post here.) On the modal flip-side, the song’s dark theme and repetitive rhythms have inspired multiple interpretations by Norse- and Teuton-centric metal bands.

Steve Gillette: “The Erlking” (1967)

Dom Flemons: “Earl King” (2007)