Part 12

At the university Heine attended the lectures of the first scholars of the day--Hegel, to whom he was ardently devoted; Bopp, the great authority on Sanscrit; Wolf, the classical philologist; and Eduard Gans, the great lawyer. He entered with youthful zeal into the schemes of a circle of men whose object it was to bring about a reform of Judaism, and who were attempting to initiate the Jews into the ideas of European culture. With an equal amount of youthful bitterness, he attacked in _Almansor_, in foreign garb, the renegade Jews who deserted the common cause; and also, though indirectly, Christianity, which he regarded as a hostile power. _Almansor_ was published, along with Heine's other youthful work, _William Ratcliff_, in 1823; it was acted, but had no success, because of the race hatred felt for its author.[1]

The life Heine led in Berlin was not compatible with any proper progress in his studies. It was but a continuation of the dissipated life to which he had accustomed himself in Hamburg. In 1823 he determined to turn over a new leaf, and consequently left Berlin, went first to his parents at Lüneburg, thence to Hamburg, and from Hamburg returned to Göttingen, where in 1825 he took his degree of Doctor of Law. Immediately after this he was baptized. He did not change his religion from conviction of the truth of Christianity; on the contrary, his antipathy to it was strong, and he was thoroughly ashamed of the step which he took simply with the aim of extricating himself from the humiliating and galling position of dependence on his uncle; income, office, or profession being attainable on no other condition. His frame of mind at this time is depicted in that overrated fragment, _Der Rabbi von Bacharach_, which, in spite of some spirited and artistic passages, really proves that Heine was incapable of writing a historical novel. At the end of this work, the author, in the disguise of a fictitious character, confesses the shame he felt at going over to a religion which to him was the enemy's camp.

In the correspondence between Varnhagen and Rahel, we find occasional allusions to Heine, which give us a good idea of him as he was in those days. Curiously enough, the first time Varnhagen mentions "our little Heine," he quotes an exhortation of Rahel's to the young man, which is very remarkable, because it shows with what acute perception she had at once discovered the very author with whom he had, indeed, something in common, but whom it would have been fatal to him, both personally and in a literary sense, to resemble. The exhortation is: "You must not become a Brentano. I cannot stand that!" At another time she writes jestingly: "Heine must and shall be real, even if he has to be thrashed into it.

'Be real, O man!'"

And Varnhagen, too, understood him well. How acute is the following remark in a letter to Rahel, written six years later: "And now, in addition to all the other wise and clever people who entertain you, you have Heine with you, the original, the far-travelled, the fresh Heine! Fresh in this case does not necessarily mean fresh from the sea; for salt herring, too, and that because they _are_ salted, may be called fresh." The same idea recurs in an observation he makes on Heine at the age of thirty: "I hope you will see him often, and that he will try to benefit by his intercourse with you. He requires to be preserved in a good spiritual atmosphere, for there is something about him that spoils easily."[2]

Rahel and Varnhagen were the first to proclaim Heine's talent. The earliest laudatory notice of his poems was written by his fashionable diplomatic patron. Yet it is plain that they detected and deplored the weaknesses in his character, which might become dangerous, even fatal, to his great poetic gifts.

[1] G. Karpeles: _Biographie Heinrich Heine's_, 1885.

[2] _Briefwechsel zwischen Varnhagen und Rahel_, vi. 48, 56, 316, 344. Other interesting utterances of Rand's on the subject of Heine are as follows: "I hardly see Heine; he is entirely taken up with himself, says he must work hard, is almost surprised that such a real thing as his father's death, his mother's grief, should affect him.... He looks healthier, hardly complains now at all; but slight grimaces that used to be only occasional with him, have grown to be habitual, and are not becoming; for instance a twitching of the mouth in speaking, which I used to think rather fascinating, though it was no good sign." "I was intending to write about Heine. The conclusion I have come to is, that his talent is very great, but that unless it matures, it will lose all substance, will degenerate into hollow mannerism." Varnhagen answers: "The one hope for Heine is that he should gain the foothold of truth; once firmly established on that, he may let his talent sally forth to seek prey and disport itself where it will" (vi. 347, 356, 365).

XIII

HEINE

The most popular of Heine's books in our day, that with which his name is most inseparably connected, the _Buch der Lieder_ of 1827, consists of groups of poems belonging to different years and periods.

The first group, _Junge Leiden_ (1817-1821), is, as such, the weakest. It is divided into four parts: Dream Pictures, Songs, Romances, Sonnets. The subjects treated are: early recollections of Düsseldorf and of a happy childhood there, his love to his mother, Napoleon worship, much Catholic Rhineland romance, churchyard dances of death with rattle of bones, and all sorts of visions. We have the jesting tone--jocose complaints of the embarrassments resulting from the all too speedy disappearance of the ducats; and the bitter tone, produced by the poet's resentment of the humiliations to which he, as an unsuccessful and defaulting young merchant, was subjected by the wealthy citizens of Hamburg. We have outbursts of affection for college friends, and of admiration for A. W. Schlegel, a man as distinguished in the literary world as at the university; and also patriotic outbursts in the "Burschen" style, which Heine quickly tired of. We have passionate expression of the self-consciousness of genius, and we have love-griefs and plaints of various sorts--first love's aspirations (blended in E. T. W. Hoffmann's manner with churchyard horrors), and then exceedingly sentimental laments over unreturned love, and outbursts of wild, despairing accusation of the false one, who has given him his deathblow, and who drinks his blood and eats his heart at her wedding feast. In one single poem, _Die Fensterschau_, the mood suddenly changes into a sort of coarse jollity.

Of these youthful poems, which for the most part are old-fashioned in form, the best are the famous epigrammatic quatrain beginning: "Anfangs wollt' ich fast verzagen" (I at first was near despairing), the earliest example of the condensation of Heine's style; a few of the sonnets, which are much more passionate than the great majority of German sonnets; and lastly, among the romances, _Belsazer_, probably inspired by Byron's _Hebrew Melodies_, and the inimitable ballad of the _Two Grenadiers_, already referred to.

The second group, which owes its odd title, _Lyric Intermezzo_, to the fact that it first appeared as a lyric interlude between the two bad tragedies, _Almansor_ and _Ratcliff_, published in 1823, treats of the same subjects as the first, but in more uncommon forms and with freer artistic manipulation. Two critics, Ernst Elster and Wilhelm Bölsche (the former in the introduction to his edition of the original text of the _Buch der Lieder_, the latter in an independent work on Heine), have pointed out with much critical acumen that in this division we seldom have a direct expression of the poet's love troubles, but rather a sort of extract of them, which he gives us from memory. His imagination runs riot among the old sufferings, now and again actually playing with them; hence we have an occasional unlucky expression; the reader at times doubts the reality of the feeling, and becomes suspicious of the constant assurances of a killing grief, in despite of which life goes on and art is not neglected.

But it was only natural that Heine should fall back upon this one passion, even though it had received no new nourishment in the interval. He had felt none since which could compare with it in strength or in influence upon his inner life. It was, and it remained, the most important incident in his life. It seems as if any happiness it brought him had been most transient; hence the first time he sang of his love he dwelt exclusively on its woes, on the absence of all return, on his forsakenness, on the treachery and cold cruelty of the beloved. Now that he was so far disenthralled, he related the whole real or imaginary history of the passion, from the day when it first awoke to life to the hour when he was as dead for her; and imparted greater piquancy and fulness to its life story by giving each of its separate moments some background drawn from nature in one or other of her many moods. In the _Dream Pictures_ night reigned supreme. Now we have the budding of the leaf, the singing of the birds, and the starlight of May.

That the love supposed to be at first felt by the beloved one for the poet is only a fiction, and does not really agree with the facts of the case, Heine involuntarily discloses when he paints tender scenes between them. For in these the lover never feels himself to be the possessor; even when he holds the object of his desire in his arms his only feeling is longing:

"Lehn deine Wang' an meine Wang', Dann fliessen die Thränen zusammen! Und an mein Herz drück fest dein Herz, Dann schlagen zusammen die Flammen!

Und wenn in die grosse Flamme fliesst Der Strom von unseren Thränen, Und wenn dich mein Arm gewaltig umschliesst-- _Sterb' ich vor Liebessehnen._"[1]

[1]

Thy cheek incline, dear love to mine, Then our tears in one stream will meet, love! Let thy heart be pressed till on mine it rest, Then the flames together will beat, love!

And when the stream of our tears shall light On that flame so fiercely burning, And within my arms I clasp thee tight-- I shall die with love's wild yearning. (Translated by SIR THEODORE MARTIN.)

This favoured lover, who, when the flames meet, dies of longing, betrays himself to be in reality a thoroughly unsatisfied lover.

Hence the best of the purely erotic poems are those which express love's longing and those which depict its sad decay. Conspicuous amongst the poems of tender longing is the charming Oriental song, _Auf Flügeln des Gesanges, Herzliebchen, trag' ich dich fort_, which fascinates by its exotic Indian landscape and by its delicate fervency of feeling. Heine longed for India as Goethe longed for Italy; his spiritual home was on the banks of the Ganges, as Goethe's was on the banks of the Tiber. It is probable that Bopp's lectures first turned his thoughts in the direction of that Oriental dream-land; but in picturing it he employs the purely imaginative, Romantic style, which he inherited, remodelled for himself, and used in painting the far-off and alluring.

How simply beautiful is such a verse as:

"Dort wollen wir niedersinken Unter dem Palmenbaum, Und Lieb' und Ruhe trinken Und träumen seligen Traum."[2]

[2]

We'll lie there, in slumber sinking, 'Neath the palm tree by the stream, Raptures and rest deep drinking, Dreaming the happiest dream. (C. G. LELAND.)

But a verse like:

"Dort liegt ein rothblühender Garten Im stillen Mondenschein, Die Lotosblumen erwarten Ihr trautes Schwesterlein."[3]

[3]

There a red-blooming garden is lying In the moonlight silent and clear; The lotus flowers are sighing For their sister so gentle and dear. (E. A. BOWRING.)

beautiful as it is, caressing as it sounds, has something of the unnaturalness which often strikes the reader in Heine's painting of nature. The colouring is vivid, but not real; local colours obtrude themselves to the detriment of the general tone. "Rothblühender," (red-blooming) is hardly the word that it would naturally occur to one to use in describing a garden seen by moonlight. In the lines: "Gegenüber am Fenster sassen _Rosengesichter_ dämmernd und _mond_beglänzt." (At the opposite window glimmered rose-faces, bright in the moonlight glow), from the later poem _Abenddämmerung_ ("Twilight"), we have the same sort of effect, produced at the same expense of naturalness. The declaration that the lotus flowers are expecting their dear sister sounds like an old-fashioned compliment in the midst of this gorgeous Ganges imagery. We have much the same expression in the stanza:

"Es flüstern und sprechen die Blumen Und schau'n mitleidig mich an: Sei unsrer Schwester nicht böse, Du trauriger, blasser Mann!"[4]

[4]

The flowers are whispering and talking; With pity my features they scan: O, pray do not chide our sister, Thou sorrowful, pale-faced man! (C. G. LELAND.)

This is a madrigal style which Heine leaves behind in his later work.

Another of the verses in this wonderfully emotional song of the Ganges has characteristics which point to Heine's derivation from the Romantic school, with its arbitrary interpretation of nature:--

"Die Veilchen kichern und kosen Und schau'n nach den Sternen empor."[5]

[5]

The violets titter, caressing, Peeping up as the planets appear. (C. G. LELAND.)

It is quite audacious enough to represent violets as caressing each other; we are reminded of Hans Andersen's enchanted gardens; to make them titter is certainly too much of a good thing. Émile Zola affects this same style in his description of the Paradou garden.

The next song, which is conceived in the same spirit, the song of the lotus flower that fears the splendour of the sun, is a charming poem, despite its flower-innocence, marvellously, meltingly sensuous. Sensual-spiritual desire is here intensified till it reaches the verge of hysteria; for the poet, not content with making the lotus flower blossom and glow and shine and exhale fragrance and tremble, when her lover, the moon, awakes her with his rays, actually makes her weep.[6]

[6] _Cf_ W. Kirchbach: _Heine's Dichterwerkstatt_, in _Magazin für die Litteratur_, Jahrgang 57, Nr. 18, 19, 20.

Next in real feeling to the poems of desire come those that express the relinquishment, the cessation of the passion. The finest example is poem No. 59 in the _Intermezzo_, which in its first verse describes the falling of a star, the star of love, from heaven; in its second, the falling of the apple-blossoms from the tree; in its third, the sinking of a swan to its watery grave; then sums all up in the concluding verse:

"Es ist so still und dunkel! Verweht ist Blatt und Blüth', Der Stern ist knisternd zerstoben, Verklungen das Schwanenlied."[7]

[7]

The silence and the night fall, The blossoms all have fled, In sparks the star has vanished, The swan and his song are dead. (H. F.)

It is very characteristic of Heine that, as the poem stands, it does not produce the impression that he has really witnessed any one of the three natural scenes depicted; they are simply symbols, arbitrarily selected and combined.

Amongst this passionate verse he has interspersed poems of a totally different description, treating of far more trivial amours. Some of the most exceptionable of these he did not include in the _Buch der Lieder_, not even, for example, the very harmless:--

"Du sollst mich liebend umschliessen, Geliebtes, schönes Weib! Umschling mich mit Armen und Füssen Und mit dem geschmeidigen Leib!"[8]

[8]

Come, twine in wild rapture round me, Fair woman, beloved and warm, Till thy feet and hands have bound me, And I'm wreathed with thy supple form! (LELAND.)

But we have, among others, _Die Welt ist dumm, die Welt ist blind_ ("The world is stupid, the world is blind"), with its description of burning kisses. There are also other epigrammatic verses of a serious, passionate character, such as the well-known _Ich hab' dich geliebet und liebe dich noch_ ("I have loved thee long, and I love thee now"); and, finally, in the very famous _Ein Jüngling liebt ein Mädchen, die hat einen Andern erwählt_ ("A young man loves a maiden, who another to him prefers"), with intentional triviality of diction, and with an impersonality which is unusual with him, Heine generalises the human fate which has made of him an erotic poet.

To the collection of poems which form the second part of the _Lyric Intermezzo_, the title _Heimkehr_ ("The Home-Coming") is given. They were written in 1823-1824 in Hamburg and Cuxhaven, and the "home-coming" is the poet's return to Hamburg, the scene of his love romance, where the sight of all the familiar surroundings causes his heart's wounds to bleed afresh. With this main theme is associated another, new in German poetry--the sea, which Heine now saw for the first time.

Mingled with the lamentations over his lost love, which the sight of the environments of the old tragedy calls forth, are records of new impressions. There is first a wild outbreak of the old passion; he broods once more over all its agonies; he is miserable in the streets, where he feels as if the houses were falling on him, and still more miserable in the rooms where she plighted her faith to him. What is new in these songs of unhappy love is the hatred, always alike passionate and wild, that flames up over the grave of buried happiness.

But on his travels the poet has met the family of his beloved, and her younger sister resembles her, especially when she laughs; she has the same eyes, the eyes that have made him so unhappy. In a letter dated August 23rd, 1823, he tells his best friend that "a new folly has been engrafted on the old." Ernst Elster's careful study of letters and poems has enabled him to show that about this time Heine's first and very unfortunate passionate attachment to Amalie Heine was superseded by a passion for Therese Heine, who was her sister's junior by eight years. Eveline and Ottilie are the poetic names bestowed on Therese. The new passion was a violent one, but in all probability met with as little return as the first. Hence the well-known lines:

"Wer zum ersten Male liebt, Sei's auch glücklos, ist ein Gott; Aber wer zum zweiten Male Glücklos liebt, der ist ein Narr.

Ich, ein solcher Narr, ich liebe Wieder ohne Gegenliebe; Sonne, Mond und Sterne lachen, Und ich lache mit--und sterbe."[9]

[9]

He who for the first time loves, Though unloved, is still a god; But the man who loves a second And in vain, must be a fool.

Such a fool am I, now loving Once again, without return; Sun and moon and stars are smiling, And I smile with them--and perish. (LELAND.)

In the year 1828 Therese Heine was engaged and married to a Dr. Adolf Halle. Among Heine's posthumous poems are bitterly satirical verses on the bridegroom and the wedding. He had the unchivalrous poet's habit of revenging himself by satire when he met with a rebuff. But the poems in _Heimkehr_ which refer to Therese are not inspired with the bitterness and hatred which Heine frequently displays in writing of her elder sister. He praises Therese's beauty, her lovely eyes, her purity; she is like a flower; he prays to her as others pray to Paul and Peter and the Madonna; and he struggles against his feelings, dreads this new passion. Both pride and shyness forbid him to declare it; it would be better for her if she did not love him; at times he has himself tried to prevent the awakening of love in her soul; but, having been only too successful in the attempt, the desire for her love once more asserts itself. He is too proud to speak of his passion and of his suffering, mockery and jests are on his lips, while inwardly he is bleeding to death; but she does not understand him, does not see that his heart is trembling, is breaking. Hence these lines:

"O, dieser Mund ist viel zu stolz Und kann nur küssen und scherzen; Er spräche vielleicht ein höhnisches Wort, Während ich sterbe vor Schmerzen."[10]

[10]

Alas, this mouth is far too proud, 'Twas made but for kissing and sighing; Perchance it may speak a scornful word, While I with sorrow am dying. (BOWRING.)

But this time the threat of dying is not intended to be taken literally. For in another poem we find the sincere assurance:--

"Glaub' nicht, dass ich mich erschiesse, Wie schlimm auch die Sachen steh'n! Das Alles, meine Süsse, Ist mir schon einmal gescheh'n."[11]

[11]

Fear not that I shall languish, Or shoot myself: oh, no! I've gone through all this anguish Already, long ago. (LELAND.)

Undoubtedly, however, he felt deeply and suffered greatly this time also. Strange as it sounds, cousin-love, which is, as a rule, merely the initiation into the life of passion, its first preliminary stage,[12] (Note 20) was the only serious, and not perfectly transient passion known to young Heine. And no feeling experienced later, in his mature manhood, approached in intensity to this youthful twin-passion for two sisters, the second of whom reminded him of the first.

[12]

Aux prés de l'enfance on cueille Les petites amourettes Qu'on jette au vent feuille à feuille, Ainsi que des pâquerettes; On cueille dans ces prairies Les voisines, les cousines, Les amourettes fleuries Et qui n'ont pas de racines. (RICHEPIN.)

Among the emotional poems which refer to this episode in his psychic history, Heine introduced (exactly as he did in the _Intermezzo_) verses relating to less serious love affairs, to college adventures, and even to quite low, venal, erotic pleasures. He omitted from the _Buch der Lieder_ some of the most objectionable of these, which originally formed part of the _Heimkehr_, amongst others the amusing, though impudent:

"Blamier mich nicht, mein schönes Kind, Und grüss mich nicht unter den Linden; Wenn wir nachher zu Hause sind, Wird sich schon Alles finden."[13]

[13]

Don't compromise me, my pretty one, Don't bow to me in "Rotten Row"; At home together afterwards I'll make up for it, that you know.

--and even such a merry wanton rhyme as:--

"Himmlisch war's, wenn ich bezwang Meine sündige Begier; Aber wenn's mir nicht gelang, Hatt' ich doch ein gross Plaisir."[14]

[14]

'Twas heavenly joy to overcome Each sinful wish and thought; But when I couldn't, truth to tell, That, too, much pleasure brought.

What we are most struck by in the poems of this division is the author's double gift of song and painting. Along with the capacity for producing those outbursts of mixed passion, which sound like the unaffected heart-cry of modern humanity, he here reveals a special talent for painting, for producing figures by means of light and shade and colour, without outline.

There is the scene in the lonely parsonage, with the disunited, despairing family (_Der bleiche, herbstliche Halbmond_). The son is determined to be a highway robber, the daughter has made up her mind to sell herself to the Count. With all its vividness, however, this scene is not one of the best. There is too much old-fashioned Romanticism in the idea of the dead father in his black robes standing outside, knocking at the window. The next poem, _Das ist ein schlechtes Wetter_, is a most masterly production. We see the little old woman hobbling across the street with her lantern late on the dark and stormy evening, to make purchases for her tall, beautiful daughter, who is lying in the arm-chair at home, blinking sleepily at the light, her golden locks falling over her sweet face--it is like an old Dutch painting.