The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 06

THE ASRA47 (1855)

  Every evening in the twilight,  To and fro beside the fountain  Where the waters whitely murmured,  Walked the Sultan's lovely daughter.  And a youth, a slave, was standing  Every evening by the fountain  Where the waters whitely murmured;  And his cheek grew pale and paler.  Till one eve the lovely princess  Paused and asked him on a sudden:  "I would know thy name and country;  I would know thy home and kindred."  And the slave replied, "Mohammed  Is my name; my home is Yemen;  And my people are the Asras;  When they love, they love and die."* * * * *

THE PASSION FLOWER48 (1856)

  I dreamt that once upon a summer night    Beneath the pallid moonlight's eerie glimmer  I saw where, wrought in marble dimly bright,    A ruin of the Renaissance did shimmer.  Yet here and there, in simple Doric form,    A pillar like some solitary giant  Rose from the mass, and, fearless of the storm,    Reared toward the firmament its head defiant.  O'er all that place a heap of wreckage lay,    Triglyphs and pediments and carven portals,  With centaur, sphinx, chimera, satyrs gay—    Figures of fabled monsters and of mortals.  A marble-wrought sarcophagus reposed    Unharmed 'mid fragments of these fabled creatures;  Its lidless depth a dead man's form inclosed,    The pain-wrung face now calm with softened features.  A group of straining caryatides    With steadfast neck the casket's weight supported,  Along both sides whereof there ran a frieze    Of chiseled figures, wondrous ill-assorted.  First one might see where, decked in bright array,    A train of lewd Olympians proudly glided,  Then Adam and Dame Eve, not far away,    With fig-leaf aprons modestly provided.  Next came the people of the Trojan war—    Paris, Achilles, Helen, aged Nestor;  Moses and Aaron, too, with many more—    As Judith, Holofernes, Haman, Esther.  Such forms as Cupid's one could likewise see,    Phoebus Apollo, Vulcan, Lady Venus,  Pluto and Proserpine and Mercury,    God Bacchus and Priapus and Silenus.  Among the rest of these stood Balaam's ass—    A speaking likeness (if you will, a braying)—  And Abraham's sacrifice, and there, alas!    Lot's daughters, too, their drunken sire betraying.  Near by them danced the wanton Salome,    To whom John's head was carried in a charger;  Then followed Satan, writhing horribly,    And Peter with his keys—none e'er seemed larger  Changing once more, the sculptor's cunning skill    Showed lustful Jove misusing his high power,  When as a swan he won fair Leda's will,    And conquered Danaë in a golden shower.  Here was Diana, leading to the chase    Her kilted nymphs, her hounds with eyeballs burning;  And here was Hercules in woman's dress,    His warlike hand the peaceful distaff turning.  Not far from them frowned Sinai, bleak and wild,    Along whose slope lay Israel's nomad nation;  Next, one might see our Savior as a child    Amid the elders holding disputation.  Thus were these opposites absurdly blent—    The Grecian joy of living with the godly  Judean cast of thought!—while round them bent    The ivy's tendrils, intertwining oddly.  But—wonderful to say!—while dreamily    I gazed thereon with glance returning often,  Sudden methought that I myself was he,    The dead man in the splendid marble coffin.  Above the coffin by my head there grew    A flower for a symbol sweet and tragic,  Violet and sulphur-yellow was its hue,    It seemed to throb with love's mysterious magic.  Tradition says, when Christ was crucified    On Calvary, that in that very hour  These petals with the Savior's blood were dyed,    And therefore is it named the passion-flower.  The hue of blood, they say, its blossom wears,    And all the instruments of human malice  Used at the crucifixion still it bears    In miniature within its tiny chalice.  Whatever to the Passion's rite belongs,    Each tool of torture here is represented  The crown of thorns, cup, nails and hammer, thongs,    The cross on which our Master was tormented.  'Twas such a flower at my tomb did stand,    Above my lifeless form in sorrow bending,  And, like a mourning woman, kissed my hand,     My brow and eyes, with silent grief contending.  And then—O witchery of dreams most strange!—    By some occult and sudden transformation  This flower to a woman's shape did change—    'Twas she I loved with soul-deep adoration!  'Twas thou in truth, my dearest, only thou;    I knew thee by thy kisses warm and tender.  No flower-lips thus softly touched my brow,    Such burning tears no flower's cup might render!  Mine eyes were shut, and yet my soul could see    Thy steadfast countenance divinely beaming,  As, calm with rapture, thou didst gaze on me,    Thy features in the spectral moonlight gleaming.  We did not speak, and yet my heart could tell    The hidden thoughts that thrilled within thy bosom.  No chaste reserve in spoken words may dwell—    With silence Love puts forth its purest blossom.  A voiceless dialogue! one scarce might deem,    While mute we thus communed in tender fashion,  How time slipped by like some seraphic dream    Of night, all woven of joy and fear-sweet passion.  Ah, never ask of us what then we said;    Ask what the glow-worm glimmers to the grasses,  Or what the wavelet murmurs in its bed,    Or what the west wind whispers as it passes.  Ask what rich lights from carbuncles outstream,    What perfumed thoughts o'er rose and violet hover—  But never ask what, in the moonlight's beam,    The sacred flower breathed to her dead lover.  I cannot tell how long a time I lay,    Dreaming the ecstasy of joys Elysian,  Within my marble shrine. It fled away—    The rapture of that calm untroubled vision.  Death, with thy grave-deep stillness, thou art best,    Delight's full cup thy hand alone can proffer;  The war of passions, pleasure without rest—    Such boons are all that vulgar life can offer.  Alas! a sudden clamor put to flight    My bliss, and all my comfort rudely banished;  'Twas such a screaming, ramping, raging fight    That mid the uproar straight my flower vanished.  Then on all sides began a savage war    Of argument, with scolding and with jangling.  Some voices surely I had heard before—    Why, 'twas my bas-reliefs had fall'n a-wrangling!  Do old delusions haunt these marbles here,    And urge them on to frantic disputations?  The terror-striking shout of Pan rings clear,    While Moses hurls his stern denunciations.  Alack! the wordy strife will have no end,    Beauty and Truth will ever be at variance,  A schism still the ranks of man will rend    Into two camps, the Hellenes and Barbarians.  Both parties thus reviled and cursed away,    And none who heard could tell the why or whether,  Till Balaam's ass at last began to bray    And soon outbawled both gods and saints together.  With strident-sobbing hee-haw, hee-haw there—    His unremitting discords without number—  That beast so nearly brought me to despair    That I cried out—and wakened from my slumber.* * * * *

Prose

THE JOURNEY TO THE HARZ49 (1824)

BY HEINRICH HEINETRANSLATED BY CHARLES GODFREY LELAND

"Nothing is permanent but change, nothing constant but death. Every pulsation of the heart inflicts a wound, and life would be an endless bleeding were it not for Poetry. She secures to us what Nature would deny—a golden age without rust, a spring which never fades, cloudless prosperity and eternal youth."—BÖRNE.

  Black dress coats and silken stockings,    Snowy ruffles frilled with art,  Gentle speeches and embraces—    Oh, if they but held a heart!  Held a heart within their bosom,    Warmed by love which truly glows;  Ah! I'm wearied with their chanting    Of imagined lovers' woes!  I will climb upon the mountains,    Where the quiet cabin stands,  Where the wind blows freely o'er us,    Where the heart at ease expands.  I will climb upon the mountains,    Where the sombre fir-trees grow;  Brooks are rustling, birds are singing,    And the wild clouds headlong go.  Then farewell, ye polished ladies,    Polished men and polished hall!  I will climb upon the mountains,    Smiling down upon you all.

The town of Göttingen, celebrated for its sausages and its University, belongs to the King of Hanover, and contains nine hundred and ninety-nine dwellings, divers churches, a lying-in hospital, an observatory, a prison for students, a library, and a "Ratskeller," where the beer is excellent. The stream which flows by the town is called the Leine, and is used in summer for bathing, its waters being very cold, and in more than one place it is so broad that Lüder was obliged to take quite a run ere he could leap across. The town itself is beautiful, and pleases most when one's back is turned to it. It must be very ancient, for I well remember that five years ago, when I matriculated there (and shortly after received notice to quit), it had already the same gray, prim look, and was fully furnished with catch-polls, beadles, dissertations, thés dansants, washerwomen, compendiums, roasted pigeons, Guelphic orders, graduation coaches, pipe-heads, court-councilors, law-councilors, expelling councilors, professors ordinary and extraordinary. Many even assert that, at the time of the Great Migrations, every German tribe left behind in the town a loosely bound copy of itself in the person of one of its members, and that from these descended all the Vandals, Frisians, Suabians, Teutons, Saxons, Thuringians,50 and others, who at the present day still abound in Göttingen, where, separately distinguished by the color of their caps and pipe-tassels, they may be seen straying singly or in hordes along the Weender Street. They still fight their battles on the bloody arena of the Rasenmill, Ritschenkrug, and Bovden, still preserve the mode of life peculiar to their savage ancestors, and still, as at the time of the migrations, are governed partly by their Duces, whom they call "chief cocks," and partly by their primevally ancient law-book, known as the Comment, which fully deserves a place among the leges barbarorum.

The inhabitants of Göttingen are generally divided into Students, Professors, Philistines, and Cattle, the points of difference between these castes being by no means strictly defined. The "Cattle" class is the most important. I might be accused of prolixity should I here enumerate the names of all the students and of all the regular and irregular professors; besides, I do not just at present distinctly remember the appellations of all the former gentlemen; while among the professors are many who as yet have no name at all. The number of the Göttingen "Philistines" must be as numerous as the sands (or, more correctly speaking, as the mud) of the seashore; indeed, when I beheld them of a morning, with their dirty faces and clean bills, planted before the gate of the collegiate court of justice, I wondered greatly that such an innumerable pack of rascals should ever have been created by the Almighty.

* * * * *

It was as yet very early in the morning when I left Göttingen, and the learned –, beyond doubt, still lay in bed, dreaming as usual that he wandered in a fair garden, amid the beds of which grew innumerable white papers written over with citations. On these the sun shone cheerily, and he plucked up several here and there and laboriously planted them in new beds, while the sweetest songs of the nightingales rejoiced his old heart.

Before the Weender Gate I met two small native schoolboys, one of whom was saying to the other, "I don't intend to keep company any more with Theodore; he is a low blackguard, for yesterday he didn't even know the genitive of Mensa." Insignificant as these words may appear, I still regard them as entitled to be recorded—nay, I would even write them as town-motto on the gate of Göttingen, for the young birds pipe as the old ones sing, and the expression accurately indicates the narrow, petty academic pride so characteristic of the "highly learned" Georgia Augusta.51 The fresh morning air blew over the highroad, the birds sang cheerily, and, little by little, with the breeze and the birds, my mind also became fresh and cheerful. Such refreshment was sorely needed by one who had long been confined in the Pandect stable. Roman casuists had covered my soul with gray cobwebs; my heart was as though jammed between the iron paragraphs of selfish systems of jurisprudence; there was an endless ringing in my ears of such sounds as "Tribonian, Justinian, Hermogenian, and Blockheadian," and a sentimental brace of lovers seated under a tree appeared to me like an edition of the Corpus Juris with closed clasps. The road began to take on a more lively appearance. Milkmaids occasionally passed, as did also donkey-drivers with their gray pupils. Beyond Weende I met the "Shepherd" and "Doris." This is not the idyllic pair sung by Gessner, but the duly and comfortably appointed university beadles, whose duty it is to keep watch and ward so that no students fight duels in Bovden, and, above all, that no new ideas (such as are generally obliged to remain in quarantine for several decades outside of Göttingen) are smuggled in by speculative private lecturers. Shepherd greeted me as one does a colleague, for he, too, is an author, who has frequently mentioned my name in his semi-annual writings. In addition to this, I may mention that when, as was frequently the case, he came to cite me before the university court and found me "not at home," he was always kind enough to write the citation with chalk upon my chamber door. Occasionally a one-horse vehicle rolled along, well packed with students, who were leaving for the vacation or forever.

In such a university town there is an endless coming and going. Every three years beholds a new student-generation, forming an incessant human tide, where one semester-wave succeeds another, and only the old professors stand fast in the midst of this perpetual-motion flood, immovable as the pyramids of Egypt. Only in these university pyramids no treasures of wisdom are buried.

From out the myrtle bushes, by Rauschenwasser, I saw two hopeful youths appear … singing charmingly the Rossinian lay of "Drink beer, pretty, pretty 'Liza!" These sounds I continued to hear when far in the distance, and after I had long lost sight of the amiable vocalists, as their horses, which appeared to be gifted with characters of extreme German deliberation, were spurred and lashed in a most excruciating style. In no place is the skinning alive of horses carried to such an extent as in Göttingen; and often, when I beheld some lame and sweating hack, which, to earn the scraps of fodder which maintained his wretched life, was obliged to endure the torment of some roaring blade, or draw a whole wagon-load of students, I reflected: "Unfortunate beast! Most certainly thy first ancestors, in some horse-paradise, did eat of forbidden oats."

* * * * *

Beyond Nörten the sun flashed high in heaven. His intentions toward me were evidently good, and he warmed my brain until all the unripe thoughts which it contained came to full growth. The pleasant Sun Tavern in Nörten is not to be despised, either; I stopped there and found dinner ready. All the dishes were excellent and suited me far better than the wearisome, academical courses of saltless, leathery dried fish and cabbage réchauffé, which were served to me in Göttingen. After I had somewhat appeased my appetite, I remarked in the same room of the tavern a gentle man and two ladies, who were about to depart. The cavalier was clad entirely in green; he even had on a pair of green spectacles which cast a verdigris tinge upon his copper-red nose. The gentleman's general appearance was like what we may presume King Nebuchadnezzar's to have been in his later years, when, according to tradition, he ate nothing but salad, like a beast of the forest. The Green One requested me to recommend him to a hotel in Göttingen, and I advised him, when there, to inquire of the first convenient student for the Hotel de Brübach. One lady was evidently his wife—an altogether extensively constructed dame, gifted with a rubicund square mile of countenance, with dimples in her cheeks which looked like spittoons for cupids. A copious double chin appeared below, like an imperfect continuation of the face, while her high-piled bosom, which was defended by stiff points of lace and a many-cornered collar, as if by turrets and bastions, reminded one of a fortress. Still, it is by no means certain that this fortress would have resisted an ass laden with gold, any more than did that of which Philip of Macedon spoke. The other lady, her sister, seemed her extreme antitype. If the one were descended from Pharaoh's fat kine, the other was as certainly derived from the lean. Her face was but a mouth between two ears; her breast was as inconsolably comfortless and dreary as the Lüneburger heath; while her absolutely dried-up figure reminded one of a charity table for poor theological students. Both ladies asked me, in a breath, if respectable people lodged in the Hotel de Brübach. I assented to this question with a clear conscience, and as the charming trio drove away I waved my hand to them many times from the window. The landlord of The Sun laughed, however, in his sleeve, being probably aware that the Hotel de Brübach was a name bestowed by the students of Göttingen upon their university prison.

Beyond Nordheim mountain ridges begin to appear, and the traveler occasionally meets with a picturesque eminence. The wayfarers whom I encountered were principally peddlers, traveling to the Brunswick fair, and among them there was a group of women, every one of whom bore on her back an incredibly large cage nearly as high as a house, covered over with white linen. In this cage were every variety of singing birds, which continually chirped and sung, while their bearers merrily hopped along and chattered together. It seemed droll thus to behold one bird carrying others to market.

The night was as dark as pitch when I entered Osterode. I had no appetite for supper, and at once went to bed. I was as tired as a dog and slept like a god. In my dreams I returned to Göttingen and found myself in the library. I stood in a corner of the Hall of Jurisprudence, turning over old dissertations, lost myself in reading, and, when I finally looked up, remarked to my astonishment that it was night and that the hall was illuminated by innumerable over-hanging crystal chandeliers. The bell of the neighboring church struck twelve, the hall doors slowly opened, and there entered a superb colossal female form, reverentially accompanied by the members and hangers-on of the legal faculty. The giantess, though advanced in years, retained in her countenance traces of severe beauty, and her every glance indicated the sublime Titaness, the mighty Themis. The sword and balance were carelessly grasped in her right hand, while with the left she held a roll of parchment. Two young Doctores Juris bore the train of her faded gray robe; by her right side the lean Court Councilor Rusticus, the Lycurgus of Hanover, fluttered here and there like a zephyr, declaiming extracts from his last hand-book of law, while on her left her cavalier servente, the privy-councilor of Justice Cujacius, hobbled gaily and gallantly along, constantly cracking legal jokes, himself laughing so heartily at his own wit that even the serious goddess often smiled and bent over him, exclaiming, as she tapped him on the shoulder with the great parchment roll, "You little scamp, who begin to trim the trees from the top!" All of the gentlemen who formed her escort now drew nigh in turn, each having something to remark or jest over, either a freshly worked-up miniature system, or a miserable little hypothesis, or some similar abortion of their own insignificant brains. Through the open door of the hall many strange gentlemen now entered, who announced themselves as the remaining magnates of the illustrious Order—mostly angular suspicious-looking fellows, who with extreme complacency blazed away with their definitions and hair-splittings, disputing over every scrap of a title to the title of a pandect. And other forms continually flocked in, the forms of those who were learned in law in the olden time—men in antiquated costume, with long councilors' wigs and forgotten faces, who expressed themselves greatly astonished that they, the widely famed of the previous century, should not meet with special consideration; and these, after their manner, joined in the general chattering and screaming, which, like ocean breakers, became louder and madder around the mighty goddess, until she, bursting with impatience, suddenly cried, in a tone of the most agonized Titanic pain, "Silence! Silence! I hear the voice of the beloved Prometheus. Mocking cunning and brute force are chaining the Innocent One to the rock of martyrdom, and all your prattling and quarreling will not allay his wounds or break his fetters!" So cried the goddess, and rivulets of tears sprang from her eyes; the entire assembly howled as if in the agonies of death, the ceiling of the hall burst asunder, the books tumbled madly from their shelves. In vain did Münchhausen step out of his frame to call them to order; it only crashed and raged all the more wildly. I sought refuge from this Bedlam broken loose in the Hall of History, near that gracious spot where the holy images of the Apollo Belvedere and the Venus de Medici stand near each other, and I knelt at the feet of the Goddess of Beauty. In her glance I forgot all the wild excitement from which I had escaped, my eyes drank in with intoxication the symmetry and immortal loveliness of her infinitely blessed form; Hellenic calm swept through my soul, while above my head Phoebus Apollo poured forth, like heavenly blessings, the sweetest tones of his lyre.

Awaking, I continued to hear a pleasant, musical sound. The flocks were on their way to pasture, and their bells were tinkling. The blessed golden sunlight shone through the window, illuminating the pictures on the walls of my room. They were sketches from the War of Independence, which faithfully portrayed what heroes we all were; further, there were scenes representing executions on the guillotine, from the time of the revolution under Louis XIV., and other similar decapitations which no one could behold without thanking God that he lay quietly in bed drinking excellent coffee, and with his head comfortably adjusted upon neck and shoulders.

After I had drunk my coffee, dressed myself, read the inscriptions upon the window-panes, and settled my bill at the inn, I left Osterode.

This town contains a certain quantity of houses and a given number of inhabitants, among whom are divers and sundry souls, as may be ascertained in detail from Gottschalk's "Pocket Guide-Book for Harz Travelers." Ere I struck into the highway, I ascended the ruins of the very ancient Osteroder Burg. They consisted merely of the half of a great, thick-walled tower, which appeared to be fairly honeycombed by time. The road to Clausthal led me again uphill, and from one of the first eminences I looked back once more into the dale where Osterode with its red roofs peeps out from among the green fir-woods, like a moss-rose from amid its leaves. The sun cast a pleasant, tender light over the whole scene. From this spot the imposing rear of the remaining portion of the tower may be seen to advantage.

There are many other ruined castles in this vicinity. That of Hardenberg, near Nörten, is the most beautiful. Even when one has, as he should, his heart on the left—that is, the liberal side—he cannot banish all melancholy feeling on beholding the rocky nests of those privileged birds of prey, who left to their effete descendants only their fierce appetites. So it happened to me this morning. My heart thawed gradually as I departed from Göttingen; I again became romantic, and as I went on I made up this poem:

  Rise again, ye dreams forgotten;    Heart-gate, open to the sun!  Joys of song and tears of sorrow    Sweetly strange from thee shall run.  I will rove the fir-tree forest,    Where the merry fountain springs,  Where the free, proud stags are wandering,    Where the thrush, my darling, sings.  I will climb upon the mountains,    On the steep and rocky height,  Where the gray old castle ruins    Stand in rosy morning light.  I will sit awhile reflecting    On the times long passed away,  Races which of old were famous,    Glories sunk in deep decay.  Grows the grass upon the tilt-yard,    Where the all-victorious knight  Overcame the strongest champions,    Won the guerdon of the fight.  O'er the balcony twines ivy,    Where the fairest gave the prize,  Him who all the rest had vanquished    Overcoming with her eyes.  Both the victors, knight and lady,    Fell long since by Death's cold hand;  So the gray and withered scytheman    Lays the mightiest in the sand.

After proceeding a little distance, I met with a traveling journeyman who came from Brunswick, and who related to me that it was generally believed in that city that their young Duke had been taken prisoner by the Turks during his tour in the Holy Land, and could be ransomed only by an enormous sum. The extensive travels of the Duke probably originated this tale. The people at large still preserve that traditional fable-loving train of ideas which is so pleasantly shown in their "Duke Ernest." The narrator of this news was a tailor, a neat little youth, but so thin that the stars might have shone through him as through Ossian's misty ghosts. Altogether, he was made up of that eccentric mixture of humor and melancholy peculiar to the German people. This was especially expressed in the droll and affecting manner in which he sang that extraordinary popular ballad, "A beetle sat upon the hedge, summ, summ!" There is one fine thing about us Germans—no one is so crazy but that he may find a crazier comrade who will understand him. Only a German can appreciate that song, and in the same breath laugh and cry himself to death over it. On this occasion I also remarked the depth to which the words of Goethe have penetrated the national life. My lean comrade trilled occasionally as he went along—"Joyful and sorrowful, thoughts are free!" Such a corruption of text is usual among the multitude. He also sang a song in which "Lottie by the grave of Werther" wept. The tailor ran over with sentimentalism in the words—