Read Ebook: The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Volume 06 Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English. in Twenty Volumes by Beethoven Ludwig Van Contributor Grillparzer Franz Contributor Heine Heinrich Contributor Francke Kuno Editor

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Grillparzer's Room in the House of the Sisters Fr?hlich

Franz Grillparzer in His Sixtieth Year

The Grillparzer Monument at Vienna

Medea. From the Grillparzer Monument at Vienna

THE LIFE OF HEINRICH HEINE

BY WILLIAM GUILD HOWARD, A.M. Assistant Professor of German, Harvard University

The history of German literature makes mention of few men more self-centered and at the same time more unreserved than Heinrich Heine. It may be said that everything which Heine wrote gives us, and was intended to give us, first of all some new impression of the writer; so that after a perusal of his works we know him in all his strength and weakness, as we can know only an amiable and communicative egotist; moreover, besides losing no opportunity for self-expression, both in and out of season, Heine published a good deal of frankly autobiographical matter, and wrote memoirs, only fragments of which have come down to us, but of which more than has yet appeared will perhaps ultimately be made accessible. Heine's life, then, is to us for the most part an open book. Nevertheless, there are many obscure passages in it, and there remain many questions not to be answered with certainty, the first of which is as to the date of his birth. His own statements on this subject are contradictory, and the original records are lost. But it seems probable that he was born on the thirteenth of December, 1797, the eldest child of Jewish parents recently domiciled at D?sseldorf on the Rhine.

The parentage, the place, and the time were almost equally significant aspects of the constellation under which young Harry Heine--for so he was first named--began his earthly career. He was born a Jew in a German city which, with a brief interruption, was for the first sixteen years of his life administered by the French. The citizens of D?sseldorf in general had little reason, except for high taxes and the hardships incident to conscription in the French armies, to complain of the foreign dominion. Their trade flourished, they were given better laws, and the machinery of justice was made much less cumbersome than it had been before. But especially the Jews hailed the French as deliverers; for now for the first time they were relieved of political disabilities and were placed upon a footing of equality with the gentile population. To Jew and gentile alike the military achievements of the French were a source of satisfaction and admiration; and when the Emperor of the French himself came to town, as Heine saw him do in 1810, we can easily understand how the enthusiasm of the boy surrounded the person of Napoleon, and the idea that he was supposed to represent, with a glamor that never lost its fascination for the man. To Heine, Napoleon was the incarnation of the French Revolution, the glorious new-comer who took by storm the intrenched strongholds of hereditary privilege, the dauntless leader in whose army every common soldier carried a field marshal's baton in his knapsack. If later we find Heine mercilessly assailing the repressive and reactionary aristocracy of Germany, we shall not lightly accuse him of lack of patriotism. He could not be expected to hold dear institutions of which he felt only the burden, without a share in the sentiment which gives stability even to institutions that have outlived their usefulness. Nor shall we call him a traitor for loving the French, a people to whom his people owed so much, and to whom he was spiritually akin.

French influences, almost as early as Hebrew or German, were among the formative forces brought to bear upon the quick-witted but not precocious boy. Heine's parents were orthodox, but by no means bigoted Jews. We read with amazement that one of the plans of the mother, ambitious for her firstborn, was to make of him a Roman Catholic priest. The boy's father, Samson Heine, was a rather unsuccessful member of a family which in other representatives--particularly Samson's brother Salomon in Hamburg--attained to wealth and prominence in the world of finance.

It having been decided, perhaps because the downfall of Napoleon shut the door of all other opportunity, that Heine should embark upon a mercantile career, he was given a brief apprenticeship, in 1815 at Frankfurt, in the following years at Hamburg, under the immediate patronage of his uncle Salomon who, in 1818, even established the young poet in a dry goods business of his own. The only result of these experiments was the demonstration of Heine's total inaptitude for commercial pursuits. But the uncle was magnanimous and offered his nephew the means necessary for a university course in law, with a view to subsequent practice in Hamburg. Accordingly, after some brushing up of Latin at home, Heine in the fall of 1819 was matriculated as a student at the University of Bonn.

The first period in Heine's life closes with the year 1831. The Parisian revolution of July, 1830, had turned the eyes of all Europe toward the land in which political experiments are made for the benefit of mankind. Many a German was attracted thither, and not without reason Heine hoped to find there a more promising field for the employment of his talents than with all his wanderings he had discovered in Germany. Toward the end of May, 1831, he arrived in Paris, and Paris was thenceforth his home until his death on the seventeenth of February, 1856.

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.

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 Tannh?user, 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.

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

DEDICATION

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

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.

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.

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

'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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I'll breathe my soul and its secret In the lily's chalice white; The lily shall thrill and re?cho 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.

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.

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