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The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 06
It is in pieces like these that we find Heine most successfully making of himself the interpreter of objects in the outside world. The number of such objects is greater than is everywhere believed—though naturally his success is surest in the case of objects congenial to him, and the variety of these is not great. Indeed, the outside world, even when he appears to treat it most objectively, proves upon closer examination to be in the vast majority of cases only a treasure-trove of symbols for the expression of his inner self. Thus, Poor Peter is the narrative of a humble youth unfortunate in love, but poor Peter's story is Heine's; otherwise, we may be sure, Heine would not have thought it worth the telling. Nothing could seem to be less the property of Heine than The Lorelei; nevertheless, he has given to this borrowed subject so personal a turn that instead of the siren we see a human maiden, serenely indifferent to the effect of her charms, which so take the luckless lover that, like the boatman, he, Heine, is probably doomed ere long to death in the waves.
Toward the outside world, then, Heine's habitual attitude is not that of an interpreter; it is that of an artist who seeks the means of expression where they may be found. He does not, like Goethe and Mörike, read out of the phenomena of nature and of life what these phenomena in themselves contain; he reads into them what he wishes them to say. The Book of Songs is a human document, but it is no document of the life of humanity; it is a collection of kaleidoscopic views of one life, a life not fortified by wholesome coöperation with men nor nourished with the strength of nature, but vivifying nature with its own emotions. Heine has treated many a situation with overwhelming pathos, but none from which he was himself so completely absent as Mörike from the kitchen of The Forsaken Maiden. Goethe's "Hush'd on the hill" is an apostrophe to himself; but peace which the world cannot give and cannot take away is the atmosphere of that poem; whereas Heine's "The shades of the summer evening lie" gets its principal effectiveness from fantastic contributions of the poet's own imagination.
The length to which Heine goes in attributing human emotions to nature is hardly to be paralleled before or since. His aim not being the reproduction of reality, nor yet the objectivation of ideas, his poetry is essentially a poetry of tropes-that is, the conception and presentation of things not as they are but as they may be conceived to be. A simple illustration of this method may be seen in The Herd-Boy. Uhland wrote a poem on a very similar subject, The Boy's Mountain Song. But the contrast between Uhland's hardy, active, public-spirited youth and Heine's sleepy, amorous individualist is no more striking than the difference between Uhland's rhetorical and Heine's tropical method. Heine's poem is an elaboration of the single metaphor with which it begins: "Kingly is the herd-boy's calling." The poem Pine and Palm, in which Heine expresses his hopeless separation from the maiden of whom he dreams—incidentally attributing to Amalie a feeling of sadness and solitude to which she was a stranger—is a bolder example of romantic self-projection into nature. But not the boldest that Heine offers us. He transports us to India, and there—
The violets titter, caressing, Peeping up as the planets appear, And the roses, their warm love confessing, Whisper words, soft perfumed, to each ear.Nor does he allow us to question the occurrence of these marvels; how do we know what takes place on the banks of the Ganges, whither we are borne on the wings of song? This, indeed, would be Heine's answer to any criticism based upon Ruskin's notion as to the "pathetic fallacy." If the setting is such as to induce in us the proper mood, we readily enter the non-rational realm, and with credulous delight contemplate wonders such as we too have seen in our dreams; just as we find the romantic syntheses of sound and odor, or of sound and color, legitimate attempts to express the inexpressible. The atmosphere of prose, to be sure, is less favorable to Heine's habitual indulgence in romantic tropes.
Somewhat blunted by over-employment is another romantic instrument, eminently characteristic of Heine, namely, irony. Nothing could be more trenchant than his bland assumption of the point of view of the Jew-baiter, the hypocrite, or the slave-trader. It is as perfect as his adoption of childlike faith in The Pilgrimage to Kevlaar. Many a time he attains an effect of ironical contrast by the juxtaposition of incongruous poems, as when a deification of his beloved is followed by a cynical utterance of a different kind of love. But often the incongruity is within the poem itself, and the poet, destroying the illusion of his created image, gets a melancholy satisfaction from derision of his own grief. This procedure perfectly symbolizes a distracted mind; it undoubtedly suggests a superior point of view, from which the tribulations of an insignificant individual are seen to be insignificant; but in a larger sense it symbolizes the very instability and waywardness of Heine himself. His emotions were unquestionably deep and recurrent, but they were not constant. His devotion to ideals did not preclude indulgence in very unideal pleasures; and his love of Amalie and Therese, hopeless from the beginning, could not, except in especially fortunate moments, avoid erring in the direction either of sentimentality or of bitterness. But Heine was too keenly intellectual to be indulgent of sentimentality, and too caustic to restrain bitterness. Hence the bitter-sweet of many of his pieces, so agreeably stimulating and so suggestive of an elastic temperament.
There is, however, a still more pervasive incongruity between this temperament and the forms in which it expressed itself. Heine's love poems—two-thirds of the Book of Songs—are written in the very simplest of verses, mostly quatrains of easy and seemingly inevitable structure. Heine learned the art of making them from the Magic Horn, from Uhland, and from Eichendorff, and he carried the art to the highest pitch of virtuosity. They are the forms of the German Folk-song, a fit vehicle for homely sentiments and those elemental passions which come and go like the tide in a humble heart, because the humble heart is single and yields unresistingly to their flow. But Heine's heart was not single, his passion was complex, and the greatest of his ironies was his use of the most unsophisticated of forms for his most sophisticated substances. This, indeed, was what made his love poetry so novel and so piquant to his contemporaries; this is one of the qualities that keep it alive today; but it is a highly individual device which succeeded only with this individual; and that it was a device adopted from no lack of capacity in other measures appears from the perfection of Heine's sonnets and the incomparable free rhythmic verses of the North Sea cycles.
Taken all in all, The Book of Songs was a unique collection, making much of little, and making it with an amazing economy of means.
IIIHeine's first period, to 1831, when he was primarily a literary artist, nearly coincides with the epoch of the Restoration (1815-1830). Politically, this time was unproductive in Germany, and the very considerable activity in science, philosophy, poetry, painting, and other fine arts stood in no immediate relation to national exigencies. There was indeed plenty of agitation in the circles of the Burschenschaft, and there were sporadic efforts to obtain from reluctant princes the constitutions promised as a reward for the rising against Napoleon; but as a whole the people of the various states seemed passive, and whatever was accomplished was the work of individuals, with or without royal patronage, and, in the main, in continuation of romantic tendencies. But with the Revolution of July, 1830, the political situation in Germany became somewhat more acute, demands for emancipation took more tangible form, and the so-called "Young Germans "—Wienbarg, Gutzkow, Laube, Mundt, Börne, and others-endeavored in essays, novels, plays, and pamphlets to stir up public interest in questions of political, social, and religious reform.
Many passages in Heine's Pictures of Travel breathe the spirit of the Young German propaganda—the celebrated confession of faith, for example, in the Journey to the Hartz, in which he declares himself a knight of the holy spirit of iconoclastic democracy. In Paris he actively enlisted in the cause, and for about fifteen years continued, as a journalist, the kind of expository and polemic writing that he had developed in the later volumes of the Pictures of Travel. Regarding himself, like many an expatriate, as a mediator between the country of his birth and the country of his adoption, he wrote for German papers accounts of events in the political and artistic world of France, and for French periodicals more ambitious essays on the history of religion, philosophy, and recent literature in Germany. Most of the works of this time were published in both French and German, and Heine arranged also for the appearance of the Pictures of Travel and the Book of Songs in French translations. To all intents and purposes he became a Frenchman; from 1836 or 1837 until 1848 he was the recipient of an annual pension of 4,800 francs from the French government; he has even been suspected of having become a French citizen. But he in no sense curbed his tongue when speaking of French affairs, nor was he free from longing to be once more in his native land.
In Germany, however, he was commonly regarded as a traitor; and at the same time the Young Germans, with the more influential of whom he soon quarreled, looked upon him as a renegade; so that there was a peculiar inappropriateness in the notorious decree of the Bundesrat at Frankfurt, voted December 10, 1835, and impotently forbidding the circulation in Germany of the writings of the Young Germans: Heine, Gutzkow, Laube, Wienbarg, and Mundt—in that order. But the occupants of insecure thrones have a fine scent for the odor of sedition, and Heine was an untiring sapper and miner in the modern army moving against the strongholds of aristocrats and priests. A keen observer in Hamburg who was resolved, though not in the manner of the Young Germans, to do his part in furthering social reform, Friedrich Hebbel, wrote to a friend in March, 1836: "Our time is one in which action destined to be decisive for a thousand years is being prepared. What artillery did not accomplish at Leipzig must now be done by pens in Paris."
During the first years of his sojourn in Paris Heine entered gleefully into all the enjoyment and stimulation that the gay capital had to offer. "I feel like a fish in water" is a common expression of contentment with one's surroundings; but when one fish inquires after the health of another, he now says, Heine told a friend, "I feel like Heine in Paris." The well-accredited German poet quickly secured admission to the circle of artists, journalists, politicians, and reformers, and became a familiar figure on the boulevards. In October, 1834, be made the acquaintance of a young Frenchwoman, Crescence Eugenie Mirat, or Mathilde, as he called her, and fell violently in love with her. She was a woman of great personal attractiveness, but entirely without education, frivolous, and passionate. They were soon united; not for long, Heine thought, and he made efforts to escape from her seductive charms, but ineffectually; and like Tannhäuser, he was drawn back to his Frau Venus with an attachment passing all understanding. From December, 1835, Heine regarded her as his wife, and in 1841 they were married. But Mathilde was no good housekeeper; Heine was frequently in financial straits; he quarreled with his relatives, as well as with literary adversaries in Germany and France; and only after considerable negotiation was peace declared, and the continuation of a regular allowance arranged with Uncle Salomon.
Moreover, Heine's health was undermined. In the latter thirties he suffered often from headaches and afflictions of the eyes; in the middle of the forties paralysis of the spinal cord began to manifest itself; and for the last ten years of his life he was a hopelessly stricken invalid, finally doomed for five years to that "mattress grave" which his fortitude no less than his woeful humor has pathetically glorified. His wife cared for him dutifully, he was visited by many distinguished men of letters, and in 1855 a ministering angel came to him in the person of Elise von Krinitz ("Camille Selden") whom he called "Die Mouche" and for whom he wrote his last poem, The Passion Flower, a kind of apology for his life.
Meantime contentions, tribulations, and a wasting frame seemed only to sharpen the wits of the indomitable warrior. New Songs (1844) contains, along with negligible cynical pieces, a number of love songs no whit inferior to those of the Book of Songs, romances, and scorching political satires. The Romanzero (1851) is not unfairly represented by such a masterpiece as The Battlefield of Hastings. And from this last period we have two quasi-epic poems: Atta Troll (1847; written in 1842) and Germany (1844), the fruit of the first of Heine's two trips across the Rhine.
Historically and poetically, Atta Troll is one of the most remarkable of Heine's works. He calls it Das letzte freie Waldlied der Romantik ("The last free forest-song of romanticism.") Having for its principal scene the most romantic spot in Europe, the valley of Roncesvaux, and for its principal character a dancing bear, the impersonation of those good characters and talentless men who, in the early forties, endeavored to translate the prose of Young Germany into poetry, the poem flies to the merriest, maddest height of romanticism in order by the aid of magic to kill the bear and therewith the vogue of poetry degraded to practical purposes. Heine knew whereof he spoke; for he had himself been a mad romanticist, a Young German, and a political poet; and he was a true prophet; for, though he did not himself enter the promised land, he lived to see, in the more refined romanticism of the Munich School and the poetic realism of Hebbel and Ludwig, the dawn of a new day in the history of German literature.
Heine did not enter the promised land. Neither can we truthfully say that he saw it as it was destined to be. His eye was on the present, and in the present he more clearly discerned what ought not to be than what gave promise of a better future. In the war for the liberation of humanity he professed to be, and he was, a brave soldier; but he lacked the soldier's prime requisite, discipline. He never took a city, because he could not rule his spirit. Democracy was inscribed upon his banner, sympathy for the disenfranchised bound him to it, but not that charity which seeketh not her own, nor the loyalty that abides the day when imperfection shall become perfection. Sarcasm was his weapon, ridicule his plan of campaign, and destruction his only accomplishment.
We shall not say that the things destroyed by Heine deserved a better fate. We shall not think of him either as a leader or as a follower in a great national movement. He was not the one man of his generation through whom the national consciousness, even national discontent, found expression; he was the man whose self-expressions aroused the widest interest and touched the tenderest chords. To be called perhaps an alien, and certainly no monumental German character, Heine nevertheless made use, with consummate artistry, of the fulness of German culture at a time when many of the after-born staggered under the weight of a heritage greater than they could bear.
HEINRICH HEINE
DEDICATION1 (1822)
I have had dreams of wild love wildly nursed, Of myrtles, mignonette, and silken tresses, Of lips, whose blames belie the kiss that blesses, Of dirge-like songs to dirge-like airs rehearsed. My dreams have paled and faded long ago, Faded the very form they most adored, Nothing is left me but what once I poured Into pathetic verse with feverish glow. Thou, orphaned song, art left. Do thou, too, fade! Go, seek that visioned form long lost in night, And say from me—if you upon it light— With airy breath I greet that airy shade!* * * * *SONGS (1822)
12 Oh, fair cradle of my sorrow, Oh, fair tomb of peace for me, Oh, fair town, my last good-morrow, Last farewell I say to thee! Fare thee well, thou threshold holy, Where my lady's footsteps stir, And that spot, still worshipped lowly, Where mine eyes first looked on her! Had I but beheld thee never, Thee, my bosom's beauteous queen, Wretched now, and wretched ever, Oh, I should not thus have been! Touch thy heart?—I would not dare that: Ne'er did I thy love implore; Might I only breathe the air that Thou didst breathe, I asked no more. Yet I could not brook thy spurning, Nor thy cruel words of scorn; Madness in my brain is burning, And my heart is sick and torn. So I go, downcast and dreary, With my pilgrim staff to stray, Till I lay my head aweary In some cool grave far away.23 Cliff and castle quiver grayly From the mirror of the Rhine Where my little boat swims gaily; Round her prow the ripples shine. Heart at ease I watch them thronging— Waves of gold with crisping crest, Till awakes a half-lulled longing Cherished deep within my breast. Temptingly the ripples greet me Luring toward the gulf beneath, Yet I know that should they meet me They would drag me to my death. Lovely visage, treacherous bosom, Guile beneath and smile above, Stream, thy dimpling wavelet's blossom Laughs as falsely as my love.34 I despaired at first—believing I should never bear it. Now I have borne it—I have borne it. Only never ask me How.* * * * *A LYRICAL INTERMEZZO (1822-23)
15 'Twas in the glorious month of May, When all the buds were blowing, I felt—ah me, how sweet it was!— Love in my heart a-growing. 'Twas in the glorious month of May, When all the birds were quiring, In burning words I told her all My yearning, my aspiring.26 Where'er my bitter tear-drops fall, The fairest flowers arise; And into choirs of nightingales Are turned my bosom's sighs. And wilt thou love me, thine shall be The fairest flowers that spring, And at thy window evermore The nightingales shall sing.37 The rose and the lily, the moon and the dove, Once loved I them all with a perfect love. I love them no longer, I love alone The Lovely, the Graceful, the Pure, the One Who twines in one wreath all their beauty and love, And rose is, and lily, and moon and dove.48 Dear, when I look into thine eyes, My deepest sorrow straightway flies; But when I kiss thy mouth, ah, then No thought remains of bygone pain! And when I lean upon thy breast, No dream of heaven could be more blest; But, when thou say'st thou lovest me, I fall to weeping bitterly.59 Thy face, that fair, sweet face I know, I dreamed of it awhile ago; It is an angel's face, so mild— And yet, so sadly pale, poor child! Only the lips are rosy bright, But soon cold Death will kiss them white, And quench the light of Paradise That shines from out those earnest eyes.610 Lean close thy cheek against my cheek, That our tears together may blend, love, And press thy heart upon my heart, That from both one flame may ascend, love! And while in that flame so doubly bright Our tears are falling and burning, And while in my arms I clasp thee tight I will die with love and yearning.711 I'll breathe my soul and its secret In the lily's chalice white; The lily shall thrill and reëcho A song of my heart's delight. The song shall quiver and tremble, Even as did the kiss That her rosy lips once gave me In a moment of wondrous bliss.812 The stars have stood unmoving Upon the heavenly plains For ages, gazing each on each, With all a lover's pains. They speak a noble language, Copious and rich and strong; Yet none of your greatest schoolmen Can understand that tongue. But I have learnt it, and never Can forget it for my part— For I used as my only grammar The face of the joy of my heart.913 On the wings of song far sweeping, Heart's dearest, with me thou'lt go Away where the Ganges is creeping; Its loveliest garden I know— A garden where roses are burning In the moonlight all silent there; Where the lotus-flowers are yearning For their sister belovèd and fair. The violets titter, caressing, Peeping up as the planets appear, And the roses, their warm love confessing, Whisper words, soft-perfumed, to each ear. And, gracefully lurking or leaping, The gentle gazelles come round: While afar, deep rushing and sweeping, The waves of the Ganges sound. We'll lie there in slumber sinking Neath the palm-trees by the stream, Rapture and rest deep drinking, Dreaming the happiest dream.1014 The lotos flower is troubled By the sun's too garish gleam, She droops, and with folded petals Awaiteth the night in a dream. 'Tis the moon has won her favor, His light her spirit doth wake, Her virgin bloom she unveileth All gladly for his dear sake. Unfolding and glowing and shining She yearns toward his cloudy height; She trembles to tears and to perfume With pain of her love's delight.1115 The Rhine's bright wave serenely Reflects as it passes by Cologne that lifts her queenly Cathedral towers on high. A picture hangs in the dome there, On leather with gold bedight, Whose beauty oft when I roam there Sheds hope on my troubled night. For cherubs and flowers are wreathing Our Lady with tender grace; Her eyes, cheeks, and lips half-breathing Resemble my loved one's face.1216 I am not wroth, my own lost love, although My heart is breaking—wroth I am not, no! For all thou dost in diamonds blaze, no ray Of light into thy heart's night finds its way. I saw thee in a dream. Oh, piteous sight! I saw thy heart all empty, all in night; I saw the serpent gnawing at thy heart; I saw how wretched, O my love, thou art!1317 When thou shalt lie, my darling, low In the dark grave, where they hide thee, Then down to thee I will surely go, And nestle in beside thee. Wildly I'll kiss and clasp thee there, Pale, cold, and silent lying; Shout, shudder, weep in dumb despair, Beside my dead love dying. The midnight calls, up rise the dead, And dance in airy swarms there; We twain quit not our earthly bed, I lie wrapt in your arms there. Up rise the dead; the Judgment-day To bliss or anguish calls them; We twain lie on as before we lay, And heed not what befalls them.1418 A young man loved a maiden, But she for another has sigh'd; That other, he loves another, And makes her at length his bride. The maiden marries, in anger, The first adventurous wight That chance may fling before her; The youth is in piteous plight. The story is old as ages, Yet happens again and again; The last to whom it happen'd, His heart is rent in twain.1519 A lonely pine is standing On the crest of a northern height; He sleeps, and a snow-wrought mantle Enshrouds him through the night. He's dreaming of a palm-tree Afar in a tropic land, That grieves alone in silence 'Mid quivering leagues of sand.1620 My love, we were sitting together In a skiff, thou and I alone; 'Twas night, very still was the weather, Still the great sea we floated on. Fair isles in the moonlight were lying, Like spirits, asleep in a trance; Their strains of sweet music were sighing, And the mists heaved in an eery dance. And ever, more sweet, the strains rose there, The mists flitted lightly and free; But we floated on with our woes there, Forlorn on that wide, wide sea.1721 I see thee nightly in dreams, my sweet, Thine eyes the old welcome making, And I fling me down at thy dear feet With the cry of a heart that is breaking. Thou lookest at me in woful wise With a smile so sad and holy, And pearly tear-drops from thine eyes Steal silently and slowly. Whispering a word, thou lay'st on my hair A wreath with sad cypress shotten; awake, the wreath is no longer there, And the word I have forgotten.* * * * *SONNETS (1822)
