Chapter 8

[12]GladnessAnd sadnessAnd pensiveness blending;YearningAnd burningIn torment ne'er ending;Sad unto death,Proudly soaring above,Happy aloneIs the soul that doth love.(BOWRING)

For this is the living delineation of a woman's heart, this is the very inner life of love, its pulsation, its oscillation between bliss and woe. The epigrammatic quality of Heine's style alone would make such an unfolding of the emotional life impossible. And there is the same concentration when he narrates an event. It is a condensation without parallel in poetry; he produces his effect by making the briefest possible statement or suggestion. As an example of this take the lines:

"Es war ein alter König,Sein Herz war schwer, sein Haupt war grau;Der arme, alte KönigEr nahm eine junge Frau.Es war ein schöner Page,Blond war sein Haupt, leicht war sein Sinn,Er trug die seid'ne SchleppeDer jungen Königin."[13]

[13]There was an aged monarch,His heart was sad, his head was grey;This foolish, fond old monarchA young wife took one day.There was a handsome page, too,Fair was his hair and light his mien;The silken train he carriedOf the beautiful young queen.

Observe the telling effect of the inversion: "Blond war sein Haupt;" it is as if the verse began to rejoice and dance. Then comes the end:

"Kennst du das alte Liedchen?Es klingt so süss, es klingt so trüb;Sie mussten beide sterben,Sie hatten sich viel zu lieb."[14]

[14]Dost know the ancient ballad?It sounds so sweet, it sounds so sad:Both of them had to perishToo much love to each other they had.

This is admirable. But we are not told the story; we only suspect it as we suspect the story of the slave and the sultan's daughter. And here again love is coupled with death.

A certain emptiness in Heine's conception of love strikes us here again. This love has no real substance, no spiritual significance. It was not till shortly before he lay down upon his death-bed that Heine began to describe a love that has real inward substance. The love of theBuch der Liederis for the most part wrath excited by coldness or faithlessness, an unfruitful thing, that awakens no sympathy. The later of the love-poems are frequently sensual or frivolous, and the more exaggerated the expression, the less are we affected by the value of the feeling:

"Mein Herz ist wie die Sonne,So flammend anzuseh'n.Und in ein Meer von LiebeVersinkt es gross und schön."[15]

[15]My heart is like the sun, dear,Yon kindled flame above;And sinks in large-orbed beautyWithin a sea of love.(E. LAZARUS.)

There is too much self-observation and too much boastfulness in this youthful rodomontade. And it is the same with:

"Ich hab' dich geliebet und liebe dich noch,Und fiele die Welt zusammen,Aus ihren Trummern stiegen dochHervor meiner Liebe Flammen."[16]

[16]I have loved thee long, and I love thee now,And, though the world should perish,O'er its dying embers still would glowThe flames of the love I cherish.(LELAND)

Admitting that this is probably so expressed for the sake of artistic effect, we must also admit that the style is a good, perfectly modern style. We can see it all with the mind's eye. The heart sinks like the sun into a sea. From the ruins of the world rise the flames of love. And still more powerful and much more picturesque is the scene in which the name of Agnes is written on the vault of heaven. What is wanting is substance in the feeling. Think, for the sake of comparison, of those profoundly human lines of Goethe's:

"Kanntest jeden Zug in meinem Wesen,Spähtest, wo die reinste Nerve klingt,Konntest mich mit einem Blicke lesen,Den so schwer ein sterblich Aug' durchdringt."[17]

[17]Thou knewest every impulse of my nature, thine eye detected where the nerve thrilled keenest, thou couldst read me at a glance, me, so impenetrable to mortal eye.

—or of the following, which complete the impression:

"Tropftest Mässigung dem heissen Blute,Richtetest den wilden, wirren Lauf,Und in deinen Engelsarmen ruhteDie zerstörte Brust sich wieder auf."[18]

[18]The hot blood by thee was tempered, the wild, aimless course by thee directed; and in thine angel arms the torn breast found rest and healing.

This is the expression of the healthiest, fullest, mutual sympathy, of love's gratitude, of perfect understanding. For such feeling Heine did not find expression until, with the shadow of death upon him, he lovedla Mouche, the guardian angel of his death-bed. Until then it is never the healthy, tranquillising, happy element in love that he concerns himself with. It is in another domain that he is master. The modern poet, he reproduces passionate desire with a Correggio-like blending of colours and tones that is more effective than Goethe's antique limpidity. With Goethe desire is Greek or Italian. Think, for instance, of the poem of the orange:

"Ich trete zu dem BaumeUnd sage: Pomeranze!Du reife Pomeranze;Du süsse Pomeranze!Ich schüttle, fühl', ich schüttle,O fall in meinen Schoos!"[19]

[19]I take my stand beneath the tree,And cry: O orange!O orange ripe!O orange sweet!Feel, feel how I shake thy tree!O fall into my lap

Then compare the feeling, the glow, the fragrance, the exuberance of such a poem of desire as Heine's wonderful:Die Lotosblume ängstigt sich vor der Sonne Pracht("The lotus-flower is fearful of the sun's resplendent beam").

It is very characteristic of the two poets that (as has already been noted), whenever the representation of love-longing glides into a delineation of foreign lands, Goethe prefers to paint Italy, Heine Hindostan. In Mignon's song of longing, without a superlative or a diminutive, with a power like that of a God, Goethe summons before our eyes the picture of the classic land where the citrons bloom. There is a power in it all, a force in each distinguishing trait, that Heine does not attain to. But compare this with the bewitching sweetness of Heine'sAuf Flügeln des Gesanges("Oh, I would bear thee, my love, my bride, afar on the wings of song"), the dreamy longing, the charm and the mystery of the perspective that opens out to us:

"Es hüpfen herbei und lauschenDie frommen, klugen Gazelln,Und in der Ferne rauschenDes heiligen Stromes Welln."[20]

[20]Gazelles come bounding from the brake,And pause, and look shyly round;And the waves of the sacred river makeA far-off slumb'rous sound.(Sir THEODORE MARTIN)

This is an immortal stanza. Goethe, even when he gives the reins to longing, is always, like his own goldsmith of Ephesus, the great, wise heathen, who makes images of the gods; in Heine's visionary brain there was that particle of divine frenzy without which it had been impossible for the Düsseldorf merchant's son to understand and reproduce the fatalistic, self-effacing dreaminess of ancient India.

Heine's peculiarities of style stand out even more sharply against the background of Goethe's, when we compare the way in which the two give expression to what is not exactly desire, but the pure longing of love.

Think of the following lines, which Goethe puts into Mignon's mouth:

"Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt, weiss was ich leide,Allein und abgetrennt von aller Freude,Seh' ich an's Firmament nach jener Seite.Ach, der mich liebt und kennt, ist in der Weite.—Es schwindelt mir, es brennt mein Eingeweide.Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt, weiss was ich leide."[21]

[21]My grief no mortals know, except the yearning!Alone, a prey to woe, all pleasure spurning,Up towards the sky I throw a gaze discerning.He who my love doth know seems ne'er returning;With strange and fiery glowmy heart is burning[*]My grief no mortals know, except the yearning.(BOWRING)[*]In the original,my bowels are burning.

[*]In the original,my bowels are burning.

This is the master in the fulness of his power. Much art has been expended in the representation of the wearing monotony of longing—the five doubly rhyming lines, the languishing metre—interrupted by the audacious, realistic expression: "Es schwindelt mir, es brennt mein Eingeweide." Now compare with this, one of Heine's most perfect expressions of pure love-longing, and we shall see what the plastic fancy and the perfected laconicism of style which we traced in course of development have succeeded in producing for time and eternity:

"Ein Fichtenbaum steht einsamIm Norden auf kahler Höh'.Ihn schläfert: mit weisser DeckeUmhüllen ihn Eis und Schnee.Er träumt von einer Palme,Die fern im MorgenlandEinsam und schweigend trauertAuf brennender Felsenwand."[22]

[22]A pine-tree stands alone onA bare bleak northern height;The ice and snow they swathe itAs it sleeps there, all in white.'Tis dreaming of a palm-tree,In a far-off Eastern land,That mourns, alone and silent,On a ledge of burning sand.(Sir THEODORE MARTIN.)

This is hardly rhymed. The only real rhyme is the very commonplaceLandandWand. The pine dreams in the snow, the palm grieves dumbly in the burning heat—that is all. It is not seen, it is fancied or invented, hence it cannot be painted (though I did once see a painting of it in a German exhibition, an idiotically absurd, double picture); but it is, nevertheless, an unforgettable, an immortal poem. And the reason is that the symbol is so marvellously effective in its simplicity—these two clear outlines instinct with feeling, which express the impossibility of overcoming the obstacle which prevents the union of two who really belong to each other.

If Goethe's strength lies in the expression of healthy feelings, comparatively simple and uncomplicated, Heine's lies in the expression of complex modern feeling, of feelings whose unsound state is the result of painful experiences. Goethe could never have written the following lines, with their jarring contrasts and enigmatical meaning:

"Wenn ich in deine Augen seh'So schwindet all mein Leid und Weh:. . . . . . . . . . .Doch wenn du sprichst: ich liebe dich!So muss ich weinen bitterlich."[23]

[23]Whene'er I look into thine eyes,Then every fear that haunts me flies:. . . . . . . . . . .But when thou sayest: "I love thee;"Then must I weep, and bitterly.(Sir THEODORE MARTIN)

Why must he weep? I have heard the naïve answer: Because she is lying. Alas! it is not such a simple matter as that. He has heard these words from other lips, lips which have now ceased to utter words of love; he knows how long such a passion as a rule lasts, and the sound of her voice startles him out of his forgetfulness—he doubts the durability of her feeling or the durability of his own. It is very interesting to note the way in which Heine had wrestled with these words. Originally the last line was: "Dann wein' ich still und bitterlich." Then the word "bitterlich" was altered to "freudiglich," which changed the original tenor of the poem, and finally the line received its present form.[24]

[24]H. Hüffer:Aus dem Leben Heinrich Heines,p. 153.

Heine was not happy enough and not great enough to attain to reconciliation with existence. It was not possible, apart from all else, that the man who was so long an exile, so long sick to death, should look upon life with the same eyes as the man who was thoroughly sound and healthy, in affluent circumstances, honoured by the great majority, the friend of his sovereign. Hence the expressions of revolt, of bitterness, and of cynicism so frequently to be found in Heine are exceedingly rare in Goethe. Goethe, as a rule, puts them into the mouth of his Mephistopheles. Heine, who was destitute of the dramatic faculty, is himself responsible for every outburst, because he always speaks in his own name. Goethe's bitterest utterances, moreover, are not contained in his works. It is only in the Paralipomena toFaust, for instance, that we find this passage:

"Nach kurzem Lärm legt Fama sich zur Ruh,Vergessen wird der Held so wie der Lotterbube,Der grösste König schliesst die Augen zu,Und jeder Hund bepisst gleich seine Grube."[25]

[25]Fame's short-liv'd turmoil o'er, she sleeps,Hero and waif, oblivion's their doom;The greatest king, life o'er, his eyes doth close,And straightway every dog defiles his tomb.

Heine dwells upon the ideas which Goethe only calls up to banish again. Goethe, too, can be blasphemous. He wrote that poem which is so frequently quoted, so seldom understood:Wer nie sein Brod mit Thränen ass("He that with tears did never eat his bread"). It is a bitter, passionate appeal against the ordering of the world. But its bitterness is a bitterness that is choked with tears, not the wild and desperate bitterness of Heine's splendidFragen("Questions") or the poemLass die heiligen Parabeln("Holy parable discarding"), in which occur the lines:

"Warum schleppt sich blutend, elend,Unter Kreuzlast der Gerechte,Während glücklich als ein SiegerTrabt auf hohem Ross der Schlechte?Also fragen wir beständig,Bis man uns mit einer HandvollErde endlich stopft die Mäuler,Aber ist das eine Antwort?"[26]

[26]Wherefore bends the Just One, bleeding'Neath the cross's weight laborious,While upon his steed the WickedRides all-proudly and victorious?Thus are we for ever asking,Till at length our mouths securelyWith a clod of earth are fastened—That is not an answer, surely?(BOWRING)

The expression is here, as usual with Heine, on a lower plane, more terrestrial, more boldly outspoken, yet by no means unworthy of the subject.

Outbursts of satiety and weariness of life are not infrequent with him. We do not need to search long among his poems to find expressions of the mood of having done for good and all with principle, with endeavour. Nothing of this kind is to be found in Goethe. HisVanitas vanitatum, the songIch hab' meine Sache auf Nichts gestellt("My trust in nothing now is placed") has, very significantly, become a convivial drinking song. In other words, there is no real, bitter earnest about Goethe's desperation; therefore it soon changes into jovial recklessness. Goethe has not Heine's overpowering feeling of the misery of life, and in so far he is really less Christian.

If it is instructive to compare the two poets' lyric expression of fatalistic indifference, it is equally so to compare their expression of the feeling of aspiration, of manly resolve. In this case we may take the songFeiger Gedanken("Cowardly Thoughts") fromClaudine von Villa Bella, as characteristic of Goethe; it might serve as a motto for his conduct throughout life. One can hardly imagine a more vigorous expression of manly determination than that of the lines: "Allen Gewalten zum Trutz sich erhalten," &c. (A bold front shown, to powers of earth and heaven).

Compare with this Heine's poem,An die Jungen("To the Young"). The impetuous rush of the rhythm and the picturesque quadruple rhyme would alone suffice to make this a splendid, fascinating composition. The first verse, with its allusion to the golden apples which Hippomenes dropped in front of Atalanta, is a whole poem in itself:

"Lass dich nicht kirren, lass dich nicht wirrenDurch goldne Aepfel in deinem Lauf.Die Schwerter klirren, die Pfeile schwirren,Doch halten sie nicht den Helden auf."[27]

[27]Heed not the confusion, resist the illusionOf golden apples that lie in thy way!The swords are clashing, the arrows are flashing,But they cannot long the hero delay.(BOWRING.)

From the picture and example of the hero, who will not be stopped in his career, we pass to that of Alexander. What is wanted is determination and boldness:

"Ein kühnes Beginnen ist halbes Gewinnen,Ein Alexander erbeutet die Welt,Kein langes Besinnen! Die KöniginnenErwarten schon kniend den Sieger im Zelt.Wir wagen und werben! besteigen als ErbenDes alten Darius' Bett und Thron.O süsses Verderben! o blühender Sterben!Berauschter Triumphtod zu Babylon!"[28]

[28]A daring beginning is half way to winning,An Alexander once conquered the earth!Restrain each soft feeling! the queens are all kneelingIn the tent, to reward thy victorious worth.Surmounting each burden, we win as our guerdonThe bed of Darius of old, and his crown;O deadly seduction! O blissful destruction!To die drunk with triumph in Babylon town.(BOWRING.)

Upon victory follows the homage of the queens, then sweet perdition, seductive ruin, death in the intoxication of triumph—what Sardanapalian sentiment in this appeal to youth, this exhortation to relentless determination! The fight here is for honour, and for women as the spoil of battle, not that struggle for the combatant's own individual freedom, of which Goethe writes so simply:

"Nimmer sich beugen,Kräftig sich zeigen,Rufet die ArmeDer Götter herbei."[29]

[29]Nevermore yield thee!Show life has steeled thee!Thus call the arms ofThe Gods to thine aid.

Goethe's feeling is purer and fuller, the music of his language is simpler; with Heine the melody is, as it were, gorgeously orchestrated. In Goethe's case there is nothing for the eye, not a single picture. It is characteristic that his idea is the grander, Heine's the more modern, more complex, just as Heine's metrical expression is more sensuously insinuating, produced by an art which devotes more attention to detail.

Now take a picturesque, descriptive subject—the Three Kings of the East, as they are called to mind at the Feast of the Epiphany. It is treated in a broad, lively, popular, genuinely naïve manner in Goethe'sEpiphanias:"Die heil'gen drei König' mit ihrem Stern" (The Three Kings of the East with their Star). The three kings, the white, the brown, and the black, are described as they appeared when they went about, dressed up, from house to house in the country; and the poem ends:

"Die heil'gen drei König' sind wohlgesinnt,Sie suchen die Mutter und das Kind,Der Joseph fromm sitzt auch dabei,Der Ochs und Esel liegen auf Streu."[30]

[30]The Three Kings of the East with reverence lowlySeek out the babe and mother holy,Good Joseph's there too, and close byThe ox and ass on the litter lie.

Heine does not view the legend in a more religious light than Goethe, but he settles his features into a more serious expression, speaks more concisely, draws with a sharper outline, obtains a totally different effect. Goethe rouses and cheers his readers by his broad and merry artlessness; Heine's words bore their way into men's minds and leave their sting there. He seems to aim at producing the same effect as that of an old Florentine painting:

"Die heil'gen drei König' aus Morgenland,Sie frugen in jedem Städtchen:Wo geht der Weg nach Bethlehem,Ihr lieben Buben und Mädchen?Die Jungen und Alten, sie wussten es nicht,Die Könige zogen weiter,Sie folgten einem goldenen Stern,Der leuchtete lieblich und heiter.Der Stern blieb steh'n über Josephs Haus,Da sind sie hineingegangen,Das Oechslein brüllte, das Kindlein schrie,Die heil'gen drei Könige sangen."[31]

[31]The three holy kings from the Eastern landInquired in every city:Where is the road to Bethlehem,Ye boys and maidens pretty?The young and the old, they could not tell,The kings went onward discreetly;They followed the track of a golden star,That sparkled brightly and sweetly.The star stood still over Joseph's houseAnd they entered the dwelling lowly,The oxen bellowed, the infant cried,While sang the three kings holy.(BOWRING.)

There is a certain amount of waggery in this. What a concert! But also, what painting! The fewest words possible—not a stroke, not a touch too much, and the most telling, prompt effect.

Let us now, in conclusion, think of one of those abstract figures which occur in all lyric poetry—more or less carefully wrought-out personifications of an idea such as peace, happiness, unhappiness—and in this domain also compare Heine with Goethe. Here again it will be observed that Goethe has the fuller note, Heine the firmer outline.

Goethe wrote these lines to peace:

"Der du von dem Himmel bist,Alles Leid und Schmerzen stillest,Den, der doppelt elend ist,Doppelt mit Erquickung füllest,Ach, ich bin des Treibens müde!Was soll all der Schmerz, die Lust?Süsser Friede!Komm, ach komm in meine Brust!"[32]

[32]Child of heaven, that soothing calmOn every pain and sorrow pourest,And a doubly healing balmFind'st for him whose need is sorest,Oh, I am of life aweary!What availeth its unrest—Pain that findeth no release,Joy that at the best is dreary?Gentle peace,Come, oh come unto my breast!(Sir THEODORE MARTIN.)

There is no picture here, no real personification. There is a crescendo movement through the first six lines, which culminates in the outburst: "Süsser Friede!"—though we could not feel quite certain that this outburst was coming.

Now take Heine's personifications of fortune and misfortune, as contained in the following verses:

"Das Glück ist eine leichte DirneUnd weilt nicht gern am selben Ort,Sie streicht das Haar dir von der StirneUnd küsst dich rasch und flattert fort.Frau Unglück hat im GegentheileDich liebefest an's Herz gedrückt,Sie sagt, sie habe keine Eile,Setzt sich zu dir an's Bett und strickt."[33]

[33]Oh, Joy, she is a lichtsome hizzy,She winna bide wi' ye ava';She strokes your broo an' maks ye dizzyWi' ae fond kiss, then flits awa'.Dame Sorrow is a canty kimmer,A fond embrace ye'll hae frae her;She vows she's naewise thrang, the limmer,Knits by your bed an' winna stir.(W. A.)

Seldom have two ideas been transformed into two living forms with so few strokes; and there is nothing much finer in all modern myth-creation than the last two lines, between which are to be read the record of profound and terrible experience.

Heine, as we have seen, makes his earliest appearance in the Romantic school, and learns his trade from A. W. Schlegel, who imparts to him his own correct taste. In the earliest period of his development he is addicted to Romantic ghost stories and Romantic archaisms. Then, in the matter of metre, he begins to study and imitate Wilhelm Müller; in his most famous poem he borrows from Clemens Brentano. He soon forms his own style, the distinguishing feature of which is extreme condensation of thought, feeling, and imagery. Heine makes everything present and living, introduces even into tranquil themes a nervous, at times dæmonic, passion, not infrequently exaggerates until he becomes grotesque, occasionally exchanges the light of day for the glaring brightness of electric light—a kind of un-naturalness which is nevertheless to be found in nature. His most effective poetic quality is pregnant brevity.

By reason of the blend of wit and imagination in his nature, he is inclined to produce his effects by contrasts, to seek for striking disharmonies and incongruities; he has a special fancy for the effect produced by letting a commonplace, vulgar reality imperceptibly make way for a poetic vision, or allowing such a vision to fade and evaporate and give place to all too familiar reality.

His style is essentially modern—everything graphic, everything perspicuous. What is it that constitutes a great writer? The possession of the power to call forth mental visions or moods, visions by means of moods or moods by means of visions. It was especially the latter faculty that Heine cultivated in himself; he never fails in the matter of clear outline and picturesque effect.

At his zenith he can no longer be compared with his teachers and contemporaries. To gauge the power and versatility of his style it was necessary to compare it with the greatest style of the age—with Goethe's. In the process he often, as we have seen, comes far short, but it not so very seldom happens that he establishes his right to almost equal admiration. It is, however, enough for him that it is possible, and now and again necessary, to compare him with Goethe.

A style is the expression of a personality and a weapon in the warfare of literature. Goethe's style, with all its greatness, is not sufficiently complex to grapple with modern ideas. But Heine's, that weapon which in its best days was as finely tempered as those old Spanish blades which could be bent like osiers, but which no armour could snap, was better suited than any other to cope with modern life in its hardness and ugliness, its charm, its restlessness, and its wealth of glaring contrasts. It also possessed in the highest degree the power of working upon the nerves of modern readers, who have more inclination for spiced dishes and heating beverages than for plain food and pure wine.

There can be little doubt that nothing has been more injurious to Heine's general reputation than his indiscreet loquacity on sexual subjects. Whole groups of his poems are in ill repute on this account; those, for instance, which compose the collectionVerschiedene(Various), most of which have been unjustly condemned, although there are certainly some which are anything but sublime in their theme or refined in their treatment of it. InDer Gott und die Bajadere("The God and the Bayadere") Goethe had shown how even a very equivocal subject can be ennobled by sublimity of style. And even when, as in the Venetian epigrams, he treats of Bayaderes who are certainly not purified by love, and dwells upon the poet's relations with them, the antique metre in itself produces the effect of distance, and we are not offended by any objectionable word. These few epigrams, too, lie almost buried in the mass of Goethe's writings. Moreover, in reading them, we feel that he is the man whom nature created in order that she might learn from him what she is like in her entirety.

With Heine, communicativeness on the subject of his relations with the other sex occupies too important a place, and is not always in good taste. It gains him ten readers for one whom it alienates, but it sometimes happens that the one thus lost was worth more than the ten gained.

And yet this frankness is, in a manner, his strength. It need not have been so personal, but it is quite indispensable in one who desires to compass not only the tragic, but also the comic hemisphere. And in this quality, and in his many shameless personal attacks, he resembles the greatest comic poet of all times.

Towards the end of hisWinter's Tale, immediately after the wanton passage in which he smells out the future of Germany by putting his head down the opening of Charlemagne's night-throne, he declares that the noblest of the Graces have tuned the strings of his lyre, and that this lyre is the same which was sounded in days gone by, by his father, "the late Aristophanes, the favourite of the Muses," He adds that in his last chapter he has attempted to imitateThe Birds, "the best of father's dramas."

He thus, we observe, prided himself on artistic descent from the greatest comic poet of ancient Greece.

For a moment we are taken aback. Other German poets, such as Platen and Prutz, have imitated the form of the Aristophanic comedy, its trimeters, choruses, parabases, the whole of that irregular and yet regular form of art built up by the Greek comic school; but Heine never even made an attempt to master this poetical form, or any other. It is characteristic of him that, persevering and conscientious as he was in ensuring the telling precision of the single metrical or prose expression (I never saw a manuscript with so many corrections as that of hisAtta Troll, in the Royal Library of Berlin), it was impossible for him to submit to the artistic restriction of any of the great poetic forms. It tallies with this, that in his longer works the plan of the whole is quite vague, but every single line has been gone through again and again.

There is probably no exaggeration in saying that he never, in his capacity as an artist, set himself a task and carried it out.

Once only he attempted to write a long, connected prose work, a romance or novel. Whether, as some maintain, the greater part of the manuscript was destroyed by a fire, or whether, as I for one believe, the work was never completed, the fact remains that all we have of it is a fragment. And even this fragment,Der Rabbi von Bacharach,is, when carefully examined, nothing but a very much antedated transcription of Heine's own private experiences.

Nor did he ever attempt a severely connected metrical composition. His only long poems,Atta TrollandDeutschland, ein Wintermärchen("Germany, a Winter's Tale"), are irregular, whimsical fantasies, soap-bubbles rocked upon cobweb tissue of the brain, only connected by a uniformity of tone and design.

The idea of translating or adapting Aristophanes would never have occurred to Heine. He was not like Goethe, who, in spite of his enormous original productivity, condescended to translate and adapt for his countrymen (Diderot, Benvenuto Cellini, Voltaire). When Goethe made acquaintance with Aristophanes, he was enchanted with him, and it is Goethe, not Heine, who undertakes to transplantThe Birdson to German soil; but it is characteristic that in his hands the play undergoes a metamorphosis, is transformed from a political into a literary satire. In Goethe's play the two discontented politicians have become literary adventurers; in the owl (as proved by a letter from Jacobi to Heine) he satirises Klopstock, in the parrot, young Cramer. It was in the epilogue to this adaptation that Goethe bestowed on Aristophanes the immortal appellation, "der ungezogene Liebling der Grazien" (the froward favourite of the Graces), which suits Heine so well.

Heine was too lazy ever to have studied, translated, adapted, or imitated an ancient classic poet, but, supposing him to have done so, he would never, like Goethe or Platen, have made pure literary comedies of the Aristophanic plays; it was the grand political satire that attracted him.

It is probable that Heine is the wittiest man that ever lived, or at least the wittiest man of modern times. Voltaire is, undoubtedly, looked upon as a sort of personification of wit; but his wit is sensible and dry, not poetic and imaginative like Heine's.

Platen, the proud and stiff, acted unwisely when he wrote the work in which he satirises Heine,Der romantische Oedipus, in the outward form and style of the Aristophanic comedy, for he had nothing in common with Aristophanes but fine versification and coarse language. Heine, on the contrary, had all the chief qualities of Aristophanes combined—wit, wanton wildness, imagination, lyric sweetness, shamelessness, and grace. Without grace and wit, shamelessness is undoubtedly a base and repellent quality. But in this combination with noble qualities it is uncommon. The Aristophanic poet must not, cannot have the pride which shrinks from amusing the coarse minded, who only understand a man when they meet him in the mire. He dares not shrink from debasing himself to a certain point, in order to gain a wider field of vantage.

It is useless for an author to attempt, as Platen did, to impress his readers before all else with the idea of his high-mindedness, and to inspire them with respect for his person; it is useless for him to proclaim that he intends "to crush his antagonists with genuine wit." It is not possible to appear at one and the same time in the character of a refined gentleman and an Aristophanic poet. A man is a failure in the latter rôle if he sets more value on the esteem of others than on the triumph of art. The compensation in the case of the true Aristophanic poet is, that his poetry has a compass unattainable by the dignified poets (a Schiller or a Hugo); it reflects the whole of human life, from its highest functions to its lowest.

Though there are so few formal points of contact between Heine's lyric-satiric poems and the great fantastic comedies of Aristophanes, it is nevertheless probable that since the days of ancient Greece there has been no wit so nearly akin to the wit of Aristophanes as Heinrich Heine's.

This assertion is not based upon any misconception of the extraordinary dissimilarity in the character of their life-work. The Aristophanic comedy with its grand and exact technical structure is the expression of the artistic culture of a whole nation, a monument that commemorates the religious festivals of which it was the outcome. Aristophanes built upon a foundation laid, a substructure prepared, by a whole line of distinguished predecessors, whose style was similar, whose talent was akin to his, and to whose labours he succeeded, in much the same manner as Shakespeare did to the work of his predecessors; hence the Aristophanic comedy as a form of art is to a much greater extent a collective production than Heine's stanza is. Quite apart from our knowledge of the fact that Eupolis and Kratinos accused Aristophanes of making inadmissible use of the ideas of his predecessors, we can see for ourselves, from one of his own comedies,The Knights, that plays with titles like the Birds, the Wasps, the Frogs had already been produced by the comic poet Magnes; the chorus disguised as reptiles, insects, birds, was thus not a thing invented by Aristophanes, it was an inheritance. It is only because we are not acquainted with the Greek poet's predecessors that his life's work appears to us to be a purely individual production, the type of grand fantastic comedy, in comparison with whose exuberance of life almost all modern comedy seems spiritless and weak.

His world is the topsy-turvy world. When, in thePeace, Trygaios saddles a stinking carrion-beetle and on it, as his Pegasus, mounts through the clouds to the dwellings of the Gods, or when he drags Peace up by a fathom-long rope from the deep well into which she has been thrown by War, these proceedings are represented as if there were nothing in the least unusual or impossible about them; no explanation is offered; and we are compelled to believe in them. When, inThe Birds, we hear two silly fellows, who are posing as philosophers, disclose their crazy plans for building a city in the clouds, it all sounds very mad, and when we see the Birds receive these men with reverence, we do not conceive any higher opinion of their intelligence, we are only struck by the comicality of the birds being so stupid as to put their trust in them. But when we hear that the city is actually built, that fortune has attended the enterprise and that it has been crowned with success, we feel that the world set before us here is not our own everyday world, but one with whose laws things are compatible which are contrary to the laws of ours.

This new world is purely fantastic, in so far as it is antagonistic to the laws of probability and of nature. It is a world in which madness triumphs, and the poet pretends that this is as it should be. Not till the spectator begins to wonderwherethis topsy-turvy world can be,wheresuch things happen,wherepolitical effrontery on such a gigantic scale, far from being confounded and put to shame, wins confidence and is rewarded—not till then is he led back to reality, to the recognition in this world of his own world, his own home, Athens.

Three of the Aristophanic comedies in our possession,The Birds, The Frogs, andPeace, do not pass, or pass only in part, on earth; they are meteoric or underground dramas. And it is in these only that Gods are represented, and then merely that they may be rated, ridiculed, or beaten. In the world of reality they do not reveal themselves; for it is only in the world of fancy that they are believed in.

Heine, the modern poet, dares not ask his readers to follow him into the same sort of supernatural world; and yet he cannot dispense with the supernatural; hence that constantly recurring use and abuse of dreams, for which hardly any parallel is to be found among other modern poets. Within the frame-work, as it were, of the dream, he dares to be extraordinary, to be Aristophanic.

As has been already remarked, he resembles Aristophanes in the depth of his shamelessness and in the height of his lyric flight.

Allusions to difficulties of digestion and the like, play a less important part in Heine's writings than in those of Aristophanes, who, however, we must remember, himself declared that he despised this kind of comicality. According to him its only recommendation was that it provoked the laughter of the least cultured part of the public. But such things are frequently referred to by Heine too, at times in the plainest of terms (notably in his attack on Platen), and with him, almost as often as with Aristophanes, we have to be on our guard against certain noisome insects.

Heine of course cannot allow himself the same freedom of speech in sexual matters as the old Greek did, but to make up for this, he never hesitates to make an allusion that will atone for any want of outspokenness. And now and then there is almost no circumlocution; what as a general rule is indicated by a smile or a grimace is shouted to all and sundry with a loud guffaw, as, for instance, at the conclusion ofDeutschland, and in such poems asDer Ungläubige("The Unbeliever").

And yet again, as with Aristophanes, so with Heine; from this constant insistence upon that in man which reminds us of his dwelling-place during the earliest stages of his development, he rises to the purest, most delicate lyric utterance. He, who so thoroughly comprehends the material origin of all living things, in one of his poems derives them all from the song of the nightingale:

"Im Anfang war die NachtigallUnd sang ihr Lied: Zükükt! Zukükt!"[1]

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