It is not surprising to hear of Schubert's haggard look in the "Winterreise" period; but not depression, rather a kind of sacred exhilaration... we see him practically gasping with fearful joy over his tragic "Winterreise" – at his luck in the subject, at the beauty of the chance which brought him his collaborator back, at the countless fresh images provoked by his poetry of fire and snow, of torrent and ice, of scalding and frozen tears.