Chapter 9

[1]In the beginning was the nightingale,Who sang her song: Zükükt! Zükükt!(CARY)

We cannot but be reminded of the beautiful lines inThe Birds:

"Gentlest and dearest, thou dost singConsorting still with mine thy lay,Lov'd partner of my wild-wood way,Thou'rt come, thou'rt come; all hail! all hail!I see thee now, sweet nightingale."(CARY)

Heine, like Aristophanes, makes merry at the expense of the Gods. His satire is naturally more cautious than the old Greek's; the modern world does not stand jesting on this subject as well as the ancient world did. In the works of Heine, who wrote under the censorship of the police and of modern society, we have no counterpart to the scene inThe Frogs, where Dionysus, the god of comedy, who has shown himself both boastful and cowardly, gets one thrashing after another, and at last appeals to his own priest, who occupied a place of honour among the spectators, to help him in his extremity. And yet there is not very much, from playful banter to broad jocularity and the most biting sarcasm, that Heine does not allow himself. Hyacinth's valuation of the various religions (in theReisebilder) is well known. He will have nothing to say to Catholicism, which, with its pealing of bells, its incense fumes, and its "Melancholik," is no religion for a citizen of Hamburg; he tests Protestantism by buying lottery tickets with the numbers which he finds on the hymn-board in a Lutheran church; and he disposes of Judaism in the well-known words: "It is not a religion at all, but a misfortune." In the amusing and audacious verses entitledDisputation, a rabbi and a Capucin monk defend their respective dogmas; each, in offensive terms, boasts of the happiness conferred by his doctrine; the royal bride who is to decide the dispute declares herself incapable of doing so, as the only thing she has noted is that they both stink. In a passage in his book on Börne, Heine's mockery of religion becomes almost dramatic. He tells how, when he was living on the island of Heligoland, he was often drawn into arguments with a Prussian Councillor of Justice on the subject of the Trinity. During one of these discussions, the thinness of the flooring permitted them to hear distinctly what was being said in the room below, where a phlegmatic Dutchman was instructing their hostess how to distinguish between cod, haberdine, and stock-fish—which are in reality one and the same fish, but with three names, denoting three different degrees of saltness.

As far as earthly potentates are concerned, Heine's comic assaults are not less audacious, not less fantastic than those of Aristophanes. Aristophanes showed courage in his attacks on Kleon and Theramenes; he occasionally chanced to defend the good cause; but as a rule it was the bad cause he upheld, for he made himself the spokesman of an indefensible conservatism, and of unjust personal animosities. Heine was less frequently unjust or mean, and he was never conservative. But he recalls Aristophanes to us by his aristocratic propensities, by the grim character of his personal attacks (those on Meyerbeer, for instance), and also by the form of these attacks, for example the amusing way in which he turns to account well-known, pathetic passages from other poets.

He made witty attacks on Frederick William IV., inDeutschland, where Hammonia warns Heine himself against "the king of Thule," and in the poemDer neue Alexander; and he wrote a whole series of satirical poems on King Ludwig of Bavaria and his doings. This latter king, whom Heine in past days had extolled, was flattered as a Mæcenas by a whole band of contemporary artists and poets. In theLobgesänge auf König Lüdewig, Heine falls foul of all his weaknesses, his gallery of beauty in the Munich palace, his bad verses, his annoyance when several of the famous men of science and artists whom he patronised allowed themselves to be persuaded to leave Bavaria and settle in Prussia. On the subject of the gallery of beauty we have:

"Er liebt die Kunst, und die schönsten Frau'n,Die lässt er porträtiren,Er geht in diesem gemalten SerailAls Kunst-Eunuch spazieren."[2]

[2]In love with art, he collects fair damesIn counterfeit presentment,And in this painted harem finds,Art-eunuch-like, contentment.

When writing of the migration to Prussia of the various men of note, Heine seizes the opportunity to give a side-hit at his old scape-goat, Massmann:

"Der Schelling und der Cornelius,Sie mögen von dannen wandern.Dem einen erlosch im Kopf die Vernunft,Die Phantasie dem Andern.Doch dass man aus meiner Krone stahlDie beste Perle, dass manMir meinen Turnkunstmeister geraubt,Das Menschenjuwel, den Massmann,Das hat mich gebeugt, das hat mich geknickt,Das hat mir die Seele zerschmettert,Mir fehlt jetzt der Mann, der in seiner KunstDen höchsten Pfahl erklettert...."[3]

[3]That Schelling should go, and Cornelius too,Without a tear I can see—The one has lost his reasoning power,The other all his fancy.But to steal from my crown its brightest gem,Its pearl of price, was cruel;My master-gymnast they've filched away,Massmann, mankind's chief jewel.This crime has bent and broken me,'Tis soul-destroying, cynical—I have lost the man who had clambered upTo his art's supremest pinnacle.

Of King Ludwig's essays in poetry he writes:

"Herr Ludwig ist ein grosser Poet,Und singt er, so stürzt ApolloVor ihm auf die Knie und bittet und fleht:Halt ein! ich werde sonst toll, o!"[4]

[4]King Ludwig is a poet great;When he sings, the mighty ApolloFalls on his knees and begs and prays:O stop! or my death will follow!

Still wittier is the parody of King Ludwig's poetical style, in the inscription above the resting-place of Atta Troll in the BavarianWalhalla:

"Atta Troll, Tendenzbär, sittlich—Religiös; als Gatte brünstig;Durch Verfuhrtsein von dem ZeitgeistWaldursprünglich Sansculotte;Sehr schlecht tanzend, doch GesinnungTragend in der zott'gen HochbrustManchmal auch gestunken habend;Kein Talent, doch ein Charakter!"[5]

[5]Atta Troll, a bear of impulse;Devotee; a loving husband;Full of sans-culottic notions,Thanks to the prevailing fashion.Wretched dancer; strong opinionsBearing in his shaggy bosom;Often stinking very badly;Talentless, a character!(BOWRING)

The harshness and the strained participial construction both remind us of the style of the royal effusions which any visitor to Munich may study for himself below the frescoes on the walls of the arcades.

This is merely personal satire of crowned heads; but Heine's satire, like that of Aristophanes, is frequently directed against existing political, social, and literary conditions, and it is then that he is obliged to call the dream to his aid. With its help he descends into the depth of the earth, or mounts to a fantastic world above the clouds.

This, as already mentioned, happens more especially inDeutschland. Observe with what care and skill Heine prepares for the fantastic description of Barbarossa's subterranean dwelling-place in the Kyffhäuser. First he introduces the refrain of an old legendary ballad: "Sonne, du klagende Flamme!" (Sun, thou accusing flame!) with a sketch of the legend which tells how the sun acted as the accuser of the murderer of a young maiden; then he describes the good old nurse who sang this ballad and told many an entrancing tale—the tale of the princess disguised as a goose-herd, the tale of the emperor who lived deep down in the earth below the mountain; this second he relates at length—and presently all else is forgotten; we see Barbarossa with his mail-clad followers, we hear him call them to horse, to arms, to battle, to avenge the wrong which the murderers have done to the golden-haired Germania. Then we return to the mood of the nursery ballad, and to its refrain: "Sonne! du klagende Flamme!" now chanted with enthusiasm and rejoicing. There is an Aristophanicvervein this poetic description of the old arsenal, the empty suits of armour, the faded flags, the sleeping soldiers, and then the sudden revulsion, the appeal to awakening power, the supplication that the Middle Ages may return again, as being infinitely preferable to the sanctimonious Prussia of the day, with her mixture of Gothic folly and modern falsehood. The two following cantos, which contain a further description of the interior of the mountain, and conversations with Barbarossa, take the form of an account of a dream which the poet had while travelling at night in the stage-coach.

The anti-Prussian rhapsody in the inn at Minden is prepared for in the same manner. Heine wants to summon forth the Prussian eagle, and to pluck him and shoot him. If Aristophanes had had the same designs, he would have introduced the eagle without more ado. Heine goes to work in his roundabout way. In the act of falling asleep he dreams that the red bed-curtain tassel above his head turns into an eagle with feathers and claws, which threatens to tear the liver out of his breast, and which he taunts with bitter hatred.

In a few single instances Heine's artistic procedure is bolder, more like that of the great Greek. One of these is the splendid harangue to the wolves at night in the Teutoburgerwald. At midnight the traveller hears them howling round his carriage, which has lost a wheel. He comes out and makes a speech to the savage brutes:

"Mitwölfe, ich bin glücklich, heut'In eurer Mitte zu weilen,Wo so viel' edle Gemüther mirMit Liebe entgegen heulen."[6]

[6]Brother wolves! it gives me great pleasure to-dayTo tarry awhile midst your growling,Where so many noble spirits have met,Around me lovingly howling.(BOWRING)

And the speech is a humorous imitation of those which great men are in the habit of making on such occasions: This is an hour which to him will be ever memorable. They lie who say that he has joined the dogs; the idea of becoming court-councillor to the lambs has never even occurred to him. From time to time he has dressed himself in a sheepskin, but only for the sake of the warmth; he is and always will be a wolf.

In the scene between the poet and the strapping woman with the mural crown who represents Hamburg, we have, as Heine himself informs us, a direct imitation of the wedding of Peithetaerus and Basileia inThe Birds. It is wanton and boyishly frolicsome; its licentiousness is really more offensive than that of similar passages in Aristophanes, who never appears in his own plays except in defence of himself as a poet. Heine does not go the same length as Aristophanes, but he is more personal.

InAtta Trollthe parallel between the two poets is still more obvious. Here Heine's imagination has freer play, because the hero is not a man, but a bear. There is fine fancy in the passage where the bear, after his flight, is described dancing for his cubs in the moonlight. There is inimitable humour in his declamation against the rights of man, and in his boast of the more ancient rights of bears, which recalls the charming parabasis inThe Birds, in which it is established that the bird world is the oldest: Everything proceeds from the original egg, the egg of Night, Love first of all, and the birds are children of Love. Atta Troll's pride in the animal world is most amusing, especially so because Heine manages to insinuate into the bear's utterances sarcastic hits at persons whom he himself wishes to depreciate—Freiligrath, for instance, whose popular but foolish poem,Löwenritt, and infelicitousMohrenkönighad roused his mirthful derision:

"Giebt es nicht gelehrte Hunde?Und auch Pferde, welche rechnen?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Schreiben Esel nicht Kritiken?Spielen Affen nicht Komödie?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Singen nicht die Nachtigallen?Ist der Freiligrath kein Dichter?Wer besäng' den Löwen besser?Als sein Landsmann, das Kamel?"[7]

[7]Are there not such things as learnedDogs, and horses too, who reckon?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Write not asses criticisms?Are not apes all good comedians?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Are not nightingales good singers?And is Freiligrath no poet?Who can sing of lions betterThan their countryman, the camel?*(BOWRING)*In German slang "camel" is equivalent to "blockhead."

*In German slang "camel" is equivalent to "blockhead."

A good deal of what the bear says, sounds like satire on foolish communistic democracy. He holds forth volubly against property—bears are born without pockets, but men have pockets and stuff them; and discourses eagerly on equality:

"Strenge Gleichheit! Jeder EselSei befugt zum höchsten Staatsamt,Und der Löwe soll dagegenMit dem Sack zur Mühle traben."[8]

[8]Strict equality! Each donkeyBe entitled to high office;On the other hand, the lionCarry to the mill the sack.(BOWRING)

But on the whole it is harmless, stingless satire, fantastical banter alike of the clerical party and communists, misanthropes and revolutionists, cosmopolitans and patriots—for the bear speaks like them all in turn. A very wonderful passage is Atta Troll's sermon against atheism and its development from his deism, the passage beginning:

"Hüte dich vor Menschendenkart,Sie verdirbt dir Leib und Seele;Unter allen Menschen giebt esKeinen ordentlichen Menschen."[9]

[9]Guard against man's ways of thinking,They destroy both soul and body;'Mongst all men there's no such thing asAny good and decent man.(BOWRING)

There is a gay profundity in the warning against Feuerbach and Bauer, and there is wit, as brilliant as Voltaire's, but richer, and warmer, in the description of the creative deity:

"Droben in dem Sternenzelte,Auf dem gold'nen Herrscherstuhle,Weltregierend, majestätisch,Sitzt ein kolossaler Eisbär " &c.[10]

[10]In yon starry bright pavilion,On the golden seat of power,World-directing and majestic,Sits a mighty polar-bear.(BOWRING)

What humour there is in the description of the bear-saints who dance before his throne!

The bear gives us something of the phraseology of all the different parties in turn, but it is the bigoted Teuton that he chiefly favours; it is he who is most severely satirised. The sleek bear-damsels remind us of a German pastor's daughters; the youngest cub turns somersaults exactly like Massmann, and is, like him, the product of home education, has never been able to learn Greek or Latin, or any language but his mother-tongue.

By strange, fantastic detours Heine invariably brings his reader back to the realities of his native land.

Aristophanic, in this respect, is the passage in which, when it rains, the cry is heard: "Six-and-thirty kings for an umbrella!" and again, when shelter is reached: "Six-and-thirty kings for a warm dressing-gown!"

And absolutely Aristophanic is the suppressed passage, in which the bird Hut-Hut tells how Solomon and Balkis ask each other riddles in the realm of shades, riddles like:

"Wer ist wohl der grösste LumpUnter allen deutschen Lumpen;Die in allen sechs und dreissigDeutschen Bundesstaaten leben?"[11]

[11]Who, think you, is the paltriest wightAmongst the crowd of worthless fellowsIn all the different States of Germany,Which are in number six-and-thirty?

Balkis, to whom the question is put, sends secret messengers to make inquiry in every country and state in Germany, but each time she informs Solomon of the discovery of a specially contemptible wretch, he answers:

"Kind! es giebt noch einen grösser'n!"(Child! there is a worse one still!)

And it is explained to us as a peculiarity of Germany, that as often as we imagine we have discovered her most despicable character, one still more despicable makes his appearance. There is no progress so certain as the progress in general contemptibility. It was only yesterday that X. appeared to be the sorriest knave, to-day he is not to be named in comparison with N. N. Heine must have felt that he had plentiful stores of invention to draw upon, else he would hardly, in his final revision of the poem, have rejected this means of satirising his opponents, one by one, in the most amusing manner.

In purely literary satire, too, Heine's methods have a distinct resemblance to those of Aristophanes. An example of this is the hit inAtta Trollat the Swabian school of poets—the cat in the witch's cottage, which is a bewitched Swabian poet, who will turn into a man again when a pure maiden can read Gustav Pfizer's poems on New Year's eve without falling asleep. Another example is the satire in the same poem on the following rather ridiculous lines of Freiligrath'sDer Mohrenfürst(The Moorish Prince) with their far-fetched simile:

"Aus dem schimmernd weissen Zelte hervorTritt der schlachtgerüstete fürstliche Mohr;So tritt aus schimmernder Wolken ThorDer Mond, der verfinsterte, dunkle, hervor."[12]

[12]From the glistening white tent the royal Moor issues forth, armed for the fray; even as the moon, gloomy and dark, issues from the glistening gate-way of the clouds.

It is a poem about a negro king, who is taken prisoner, brought to Europe, and made to play the drum outside a circus; while doing so he thinks of his former greatness, and beats his drum to pieces. The idea of the black man at the opening of the tent resembling the moon appearing through the clouds is undoubtedly comical.

InAtta Trollthe red tongue hangs out of the bear's black jaws as the moon shows herself through white clouds. And towards the end of the poem Heine tells us how, in the Jardin des Plantes, he makes acquaintance with a negro caretaker, who confides to him that he is Freiligrath's negro king, that he has married a white Alsatian cook, whose feet remind him of the feet of the elephants in his native land, and whose French sounds to him like the negro tongue. She feeds him so well that he has developed a little round black stomach, which shows itself through the opening of his shirt like a black moon, appearing from behind white clouds.

And there is something especially Aristophanic in the recklessly brutal satire upon Platen in the second part of theReisebilder. Certain amusing artifices in their literary warfare are common to the Greek and the German comic poet. InThe Frogs, in the contest between Æschylus and Euripides (a poet whom Aristophanes hates), Æschylus tacks a refrain, equivalent to "spoiled his verse," to everything that Euripides recites. In theReisebilderHeine revenges himself by making Hyacinth alternately tack the wordsvon vorn(from the front) andvon hinten(from behind) to the end of Platen's lines, thereby maliciously perverting their meaning.

The Aristophanic comedy resembles the majestic frescoes that cover the interior of some great dome; to compare Heine's comic writings with those of Aristophanes, is to compare pictures carefully painted on the easel with such frescoes. In the Greek comedies there is the light and space of the Sistine Chapel; in them, as in the frescoes of Michael Angelo, everything is large, sweeping, strong; the creation of a mind that sets recognised rules at defiance by the vehemence of its lyric emotion, the audacity of its fore-shortening, and the force of its allegory. Only that Michael Angelo's world is solemnly, wildly tragic, whereas the world of Aristophanes is dithyrambic, a world of caricatures set in a framework of Greek social conditions.

Compared with Aristophanes, Heine is a private, stay-at-home citizen. Aristophanes holds forth to an audience of thousands in the broad daylight of the theatre; Heine communes with his public sitting alone in his room. But the scenes that depict themselves simply on the retina of his eye, are aglow with more ardent, passionate life than those which Aristophanes embodied on the stage. And his aims are not the purely local aims of the Greek poet. When he is at his best, he appeals to millions who are not of his nationality, appeals, indeed, to the elect among all who can read. His lyric poetry is more personal, more intense, more nervous than that of any Greek; his satire is dedicated to the cause of general ideas, which did not exist for Aristophanes. He is not less witty than his Greek forerunner, and he always fought for political progress and personal liberty, whereas the enemy of Euripides and Socrates most frequently fought for a past that was gone beyond recall, a past to which he himself most certainly did not belong.

Heine's prose is not on the same level with his verse. In his most famous prose book, theReisebilder, he shows himself to be a pupil of Sterne; in later works, where he has attained to greater independence, he is always witty and lively, but seldom properly qualified to treat the subjects of his choice. Whether he is writing on German philosophy for French readers, or on French art for Germans, he does it in equally dilettante fashion. Judged as journalism, his writing was always excellent, but he is too strong, too great a man to be classified as a journalist.

Too much has been made of Heine's superficiality by the pedants among his detractors. He was not a hard worker, but he was by no means idle, and he possessed a fund of solid and varied knowledge. Still, it is only as a poet that he is great; most of his prose writings treat of the passing topics of the day; and his fame has been actually injured by the publication of his letters, which, as a rule, present him to us in an unfavourable light, namely entirely taken up with his own interests. Pecuniary difficulties are a tiresome subject, even when they happen to be the pecuniary difficulties of a genius.

Heine, as every one knows, did not live to be an old man. He was carried off in the prime of his mental powers by a terrible disease.

He had always been delicate and suffering; in his youth he was plagued by severe headaches, and was obliged to be so moderate in the matter of drink that his friends used laughingly to declare that he contented himself withsmellinga bottle of Rhenish wine which he kept in his room. His nervous system was undermined while he was still a young man, but it is certain that this was to a much less extent the result of excesses than is generally believed, for Heine is a realfanfaron des vices, given to perpetual boasting of his own depravity. He was attacked by the disease which is so frequently the fate of those who have lived lives of unbroken mental productivity. An affection of the spine, with paralysis first of the eyelids and in course of time of almost the whole body, consigned him to that "mattress-grave" in Paris, where he lay for nearly eight years.

His life, which can neither be called a great nor a happy one, falls of itself into two distinctly defined parts—the life in Germany till the Revolution of July, and the life in Paris from 1831 till his death in 1856. It was a life led without calculation, but not without instinctive perception of the direction in which possibilities of development for his talent lay; it is hardly probable that Heine would have attained to his great cosmopolitan fame, or even that he would have become so eminent a satiric poet, if he had lived in his native country all his life.

His youthful years in Germany are passed under the oppression of the reaction—hisReisebilderwon popularity as an expression of the general political dissatisfaction—but he soon makes up his mind that it is useless to meddle with politics. The Revolution of July puts new life into everything; Heine goes off to Paris, settles there, and is kept there by the embargo placed upon his works in all the states of the German Confederation. The Guizot Government secretly give him the small pension which enables him to live in comparative comfort. His acceptance of this laid him open to accusations, which, though they were not altogether groundless, were in many points quite unjustifiable. It must be borne in mind that Heine did not understand the art of making money; and even if he had, it would have been of little use to him. Many thousands of pounds must have been made by the sale of his books, but he himself made over the most profitable of them all, theBuch der Lieder, to Campe in payment of an old debt of 50 Louis d'ors, and was all his life long dependent on the unwilling assistance of his rich uncle. If he, and if the little Parisian grisette whom he married, had had more idea of economy, it might have been unnecessary for him to accept Government support. The fact of his accepting it no doubt occasionally prevented him from criticising the French ministry freely in German newspapers, but it had no other bad result, and least of all did it induce him to write anything he did not mean.

From French soil he waged uninterrupted, unremitting intellectual warfare with the European reaction. In this respect he may be called Byron's great successor. Only a few years after the sword of sarcasm, wielded in the cause of liberty, had slipped from the hands of the dying Byron, it was seized by Heine, who wielded it for a whole generation with equal skill and power. Yet for the eight last years it was a mortally wounded man who fought.

At no time did he write truer, more incisive, more brilliant verse than when he lay nailed to the low, broad bed of torture in Paris. And never, so far as we know, has a great productive mind borne superhuman sufferings with more undaunted courage and endurance. The power of the soul over the body has seldom displayed itself so unmistakably. To bear such agonies as his in close-lipped silence would have been admirable; but to create, to bubble over with sparkling, whimsical jest and mockery, to let his spirit wander the world round in charming and profound reverie, while he himself lay crippled, almost lifeless, on his couch—this was great.

He lay there shrunk to a skeleton, with his eyes closed, his hands almost powerless, his noble features painfully emaciated; the white, perfectly formed hands were nearly transparent; at times, when he spoke, a Mephistophelian smile passed over the suffering, martyr-like face. At last, as in the case of Tithonus of old, all that really remained of the man was his voice; but it was a voice of many notes, of many whimsies, many jests.

He continued to be mentally active. It was as if the driving-wheel went on turning without steam, as if the lamp went on burning without oil.

It is not true that he reverted to a connection with any church; but the suffering man clung to a kind of piety and faith in God which was a legacy from the days of his youth. At this faith he himself sometimes smiled. We have such a smile in the words with which on the last day of his life he tried to pacify an excited acquaintance:Dieu me pardonnera—c'est son métier.

It is a touching proof of his strength of mind and of his filial affection that during his whole long illness he took the greatest care that all knowledge of his sufferings should be kept from his old mother in Hamburg; to the last he wrote her cheerful, amusing letters, and he caused any passages that might have awakened her suspicions to be taken out of the copies of his works that were sent to her.

Another pleasant impression of his spiritual condition is conveyed by the circumstance that he, the most wanton-tongued of men and poets on the subject of love, changed during his illness into the tenderest and most spiritual exponent of that passion. The last year of his life was, as is well known, sweetened by the admiration and devotion of the young and beautiful woman who, though German born, made her appearance as a French authoress under the pseudonym of Camille Selden.[1]

[1]Meissner:Erinnerungen an Heinrich Heine. Camille Selden:Les derniers jours de Henri Heine, 1884.

She was then about twenty-eight, blue-eyed, fair-haired, and so charming, gentle, and attractive, that she won Heine's heart the first time she visited him. Soon he could not live without her; he was miserable if a few days passed without his seeing her, though he was often in such pain that he was obliged to request her to delay her visit.

It is in the poems and letters to her, published after Heine's death, that we find that fervency, depth, and fulness of passion which we feel to be wanting in the rest of his love poetry.

He calls her his spiritually affianced bride, whose life is bound up with his by the will of fate. United, they would have known what happiness is; separated, they are doomed to misery:

"Ich weiss es jetzt. Bei Gott! du bist es,Die ich geliebt. Wie bitter ist es,Wenn im Momente des ErkennensDie Stunde schlägt des ew'gen Trennens!Der Willkomm ist zu gleicher ZeitEin Lebewohl!"[2]

[2]I know it now. By heaven! 'tis thouWhom I have loved. How bitter now,The moment we are joined for ever,To find the hour when we must sever!The welcome must at once give wayTo sad farewell!(BOWRING)

Half laughing, half weeping, he bemoans the compulsory platonic affection of two lovers, to whom an embrace is an impossibility:

"Worte! Worte! keine Thaten!Niemals Fleisch, geliebte Puppe,Immer Geist und keinen Braten,Keine Knödel in der Suppe!"[3]

[3]Words, empty words, and never deeds!No roast for us, my puppet sweet,Not even dumplings in the soup;A feast of mind, but not of meat!

When, at a rare time, she keeps him waiting, he is frantic with impatience:

"Lass mich mit glüh'nden Zangen kneipen,Lass grausam schinden mein Gesicht,Lass mich mit Ruthen peitschen, stäupen—Nur warten, warten lass mich nicht!"[4]

[4]With red-hot irons scar my flesh,Pinch me with pincers glowing hot,Or have me heat with many stripes—But oh! to wait compel me not!

But the great mystic poem which celebrates the nuptials of the dead poet with the passion-flower that blossoms on his grave, is a poem of resignation, resignation in the presence of Death:

"Du warst die Blume, du geliebtes Kind,An deinen Küssen musst' ich dich erkennen.So zärtlich keine Blumenlippen sind,So feurig keine Blumenthränen brennen.Geschlossen war mein Aug', doch angeblicktHat meine Seel' beständig dein Gesichte,Du sahst mich an, beseeligt und verzücktUnd geisterhaft beglänzt vom Mondenlichte."[5]

[5]Thou wast that flower, beloved! I knew thee by thy kisses; no flower lips kiss so tenderly, no flower tears burn so scorchingly. My eyes were fast closed, but my soul gazed steadfastly upon thy face; and in the moonlight's ghostly sheen, blissful and trembling, thou did'st return my gaze.

These images, these feelings, belong to an insubstantial world, a world like the blind man's, where there are kisses, but not from visible lips, and tears which fall from unseen eyes, a world fragrant with the perfume of flowers that cannot be touched, and illuminated by magic, spirit-like moonshine instead of the light of the sun. There is no substantiality and there is no sound:

"Wir sprachen nicht, jedoch mein Herz vernahmWas du verschwiegen dachtest im Gemüthe—Das ausgesprochene Wort ist ohne Scham,Das Schweigen ist der Liebe keusche Blüthe."[6]

[6]We said not a word, but my heart felt all thy unspoken thoughts—the spoken word is a shameless thing, silence is love's chaste blossom.

They held noiseless converse, but what they talked of we are forbidden to ask:

"Frag, was er strahlet, den Karfunkelstein,Frag, was sie duften, Nachtviol' und Rosen—Doch frage nie, wovon im MondenscheinDie Marterblume und ihr Todter kosen!"[7]

[7]Ask the ruby to explain its fiery glow, ask violet and rose to analyse their perfume, but never seek to know of what the passion-flower and her dead lover talk so caressingly in the pale moonlight.

Heine rises here to a level with Shelley, the sublimest of modern lyric poets. This is Shelley's note—the violin strain of an Ariel, clear and spirit-like and full, and entirely modern in its trembling, thrilling, almost morbid tenderness.

Börne and many later critics have maintained that Heine was never in earnest about anything, and have condemned him accordingly. Setting aside slighter and unimportant causes, Börne's resentment was really aroused by what appeared to him to be Heine's determination not to espouse the cause of any party. He himself, as far as it was possible in those unparliamentary days, was an extreme partyman in literature.

It is now a generally accepted, trite axiom, that art is its own aim and end, but then people were accustomed to look upon it as the handmaid of the great general aims of the day; and in all German literary productions of that period, important and unimportant, we feel exactly what it was that induced the writer to take up his pen. Even an author as strongly actuated by a purpose as Heine was, did not satisfy those who, like Börne, lived for their convictions. They applied to him the expression "talented but characterless" ("wohl ein Talent, aber kein Charakter"), which he ridicules so unmercifully inAtta Troll. Even in the introduction he alludes jestingly to the consolation for the great majority which is contained in the doctrine that respectable people are as a rule bad musicians, while, to make up for this, good musicians are anything but respectable people—and every one knows that respectability and not music is the important thing in this world.

Elsewhere Heine maintains that it is, as a rule, a sign of a man's narrowmindedness when he is straightway discerned and held in high esteem by the narrow-minded majority as a man of character; the chief reason for such distinction being that a narrow, superficial, but always consistent philosophy of life is what the multitude most easily understands.

Stoic firmness was assuredly not one of the qualities of Heine's nature. Allowing that in certain given circumstances he showed want of character, we proceed to what is really the vital question: Ought the poet to be a party-man?

At the time when Heine was jeering inAtta Trollat those who in their philanthropic and political ardour imagined strength of character to be a sufficient substitute for talent, a serious literary war was being waged in Germany over the question whether the poet ought to be a party-man or to take up a position superior to all parties.Atta Troll, which pours such ridicule on Freiligrath's youthful poems, appeared in the autumn of 1841; in November of the same year Freiligrath, who till then had been best known by oriental poems in Victor Hugo's style, and who had a short time previously accepted a pension from the King of Prussia, wrote, in a poem entitledAño Spanien(on Diego Leon, the Spanish general shot in 1841) the following lines on the poet as such:

"Er beugt sein Knie dem Helden Bonaparte,Und hört mit Zürnen d'Enghien's Todesschrei:Der Dichter steht auf einer höhern WarteAls auf den Zinnen der Partei."[1]

This sentiment was condemned by Georg Herwegh in the poemDie Partei (an Ferdinand Freiligrath), the most striking lines of which are:

"Partei! Partei! wer sollte sie nicht nehmen,Die noch die Mutter aller Siege war!Wie mag ein Dichter solch ein Wort verfehmen,Ein Wort, das alles Herrliche gebar!Nur offen wie ein Mann: Für oder wider?Und die Parole: Sklave oder frei?Selbst Götter stiegen vom Olymp herniederUnd kämpften auf den Zinnen der Partei."[2]

A year later, in his poemDuett der Pensionirten, Herwegh taunted Freiligrath with accepting a pension from the King of Prussia, whereupon Freiligrath, as is well known, threw up his pension, joined the ranks of the political poets, and developed so rapidly into a Radical and revolutionary, that at the time of the outbreak in 1848, he was looked upon as the representative revolutionary poet in Germany. It is plain, then, that Freiligrath considered Herwegh to be in the right. Still this does not prove him to have been so.

The question whether and to what extent the poet ought to be a party-man is a very complex one. It is so in the first instance because of the ambiguity of the word party, a word which Heine and Börne, Freiligrath and Herwegh employed with a different meaning at different times.

The poet, even if he is a small-minded man, can only lose by pinning his faith to any narrow, political, party programme, to any social or religious theory. How is it possible that his ideals should exactly correspond with the limited, definite aims of any party! Thomas Moore was a Whig poet, Walter Scott a Tory poet, because, with all their great talent, they were not great minds. Byron went more to the root of things than either of them, or than either of the political parties—yet every one instinctively feels that it is absurd to say that Byron, as a poet, did not take a side in politics or religion. He did so even more markedly than Schiller, who also could not be said to belong to any political party, for one reason because there were none in the Germany of his day.

There are certain branches of literature which plainly have nothing to do with party. The poet of love, as such, belongs to no political or religious party; though it is not impossible that he may belong to an art party, for as soon as there is any question of style in art, we at once encounter party again. But the moment he begins to treat a theme in which there is any trace of theory, of thought, of fundamental principle, he is obliged to choose his side, to rank himself among the disciples of this or that philosophy of life.

When, however, as in Freiligrath's case, we have simply an assertion of the poet's right to admire Napoleon and yet to be incensed by the death of d'Enghien, party does not come into question at all; for all that is meant is, that the poet has not dispossessed himself of his right to judge the past with equity and to see the vices as well as the virtues of his heroes. The question of party, strictly so called, is not a question of the judging of the past, but of the shaping of the future; and no man can proceed in two directions at the same time.

Another difficulty presents itself to us in the word party. It means, generally speaking, part of the population of one's own country. And the poet ought to belong to his country and his people, not only to part of them. Looked upon in this light, party is the narrower, country the wider conception, and if by party an actual political party, corresponding more or less perfectly to its name or its programme, is meant, then as a matter of course country is superior to party.

But if we take the word party in the sense in which we use it when we speak of Schiller and of Byron as party-men, then party is a wider, a grander conception than country. For by country we understand a definitely bounded tract of land, definitely limited interests, a definitely circumscribed history; but by party in this sense we understand a system of ideas which, from their very nature, are not confined to any place—world-wide thoughts, the great general interests of humanity. And even if the party sided with represents only the great moving ideas of one age, an age is a wider, greater native land than a country; and the poet does his people a service by extending their horizon beyond their country's bounds.

Börne and Heine were, in my opinion, both strong party-men, but none the less both zealous patriots, their patriotism quite uninjured by their partisanship.

The official press of the day proclaimed Börne to be not only a mad Radical, but a libeller of his country. He had the dangerous habit of expressing all his opinions in such violent terms that they offended, wounded, or incited to action. There was an outcry of indignation when he wrote that any nation had a right to depose its king even if it were only because it had taken a dislike to the shape of his nose. And whole volumes of invective were called forth by his observations on the servility (Bedientennatur) of the Germans. He had gone so far as to call them "a nation of flunkeys."

He himself writes: "What can I do with people who really seriously believe that I have advised the nations of Europe to depose their kings as soon as they take a dislike to their noses.... If I were to say: Gentlemen! I did not mean you to take me so literally, they would perhaps believe me—but that would avail me nothing. They would say: You ought to have remembered that you do not write for educated readers only, but that a large proportion of your readers are uneducated men. To this I would answer nothing but: Take me to prison! Then when I was brought into court I would say: Gentlemen! The German is a crocodile! (Cries of indignation. Crocodile! Order!) Gentlemen! The German is a crocodile! (Order! Judge: You are abusing your right of self-defence.) Gentlemen! The German is a crocodile—I beg of you to allow me to continue. When I use the word crocodile I am not hinting at savage instincts or crocodile tears. The German is tame and good-natured, and weeps tears that are as sincere as the tears of a whipped child. If I have applied the name of crocodile to the German, it is only on account of his skin, which does resemble that of the crocodile. It consists of hard scales, and is like a slated roof. Anything solid that falls upon it rebounds, anything liquid runs off. Suppose, now, gentlemen, that you wished to mesmerise such a crocodile, with the final intention of curing his weak nerves, but in the first instance of making him so clear sighted that he could see inside himself, discover his own disease, and find out the proper remedy for it. How would you set about it? Would you gently stroke the crocodile coat-of-mail with your warm hand? No, you would not be so foolish; you know that would make no impression on it. You would stamp on it, drive nails into it, and if that were not enough, you would fire a hundred bullets at it, calculating that ninety-nine of them would take no effect, and that the hundredth would bring about just the mild, modest results your mesmerism was intended to produce. This is what I have done."[3]

One sees that Börne's strong language on the subject of German servility and indolence is simply the negative expression of his patriotism. It is a patriotism which as a rule finds only indirect expression, but we feel it as distinctly in his melancholy derision as in the enthusiastic demonstrations of others.

As regards Heine, Börne's charges were, no doubt, to a certain extent well founded. The versatile poet's temperament made the monotonous struggle for a political conviction hard for him, and he was, as we have already shown, drawn two ways and rendered vague in his utterances by feeling himself to be at one and the same time a popular revolutionist and an enthusiastic aristocrat. But his objection to connecting himself with any of the existing political or religious parties was more a proof of his high intellectual standard than of anything else. His raillery inAtta Trollat the canting preachers of the Opposition is delightful and perfectly justifiable; it only shows that he abhorred dogmatism in all its forms.

Börne is wrong in assuming that Heine, the man, was false to his party, taking that word in its greater, wider, signification, namely, the ideas for which he contended. For to these he was faithful, even throughout the eight long years when he lay on his deathbed, with difficulty opening his paralysed eyelids to look for God in that heaven whose emptiness he himself had so sadly and defiantly described.

And Heine was as true a patriot as Börne. Every reader of his works must remember the beautiful passage at the conclusion of theReisebilder, in which he tells how the Emperor Maximilian sate in sore straits in the Tyrol, encompassed by his enemies, forgotten by his knights and courtiers. Suddenly the door of his prison cell was opened, and there entered a man in disguise, whom the Emperor recognised as Kunz von der Rosen, his faithful court jester.

I feel it to be not only beautiful but true when Heine says: "O German fatherland! beloved German people! I am thy Kunz von der Rosen. The man whose only business it was to amuse thee, to cater for thy mirth in times of prosperity, makes his way into thy prison in time of need. Here, under my cloak, I bring thee thy strong sceptre and thy beautiful crown—dost thou not recognise me, my Emperor? ... Thou liest in fetters now, but in the end thy rightful cause will prevail; the day of deliverance is at hand, a new time is beginning, my Emperor, the night is over; look out and see the ruddy dawn."

If we beware of attaching too much importance to single expressions, to the wanton or arrogant outbursts scattered here and there throughout his works, we shall perceive that the feeling which finds classic expression in the words just quoted was very strong in Heine's breast. Neither his party standpoint, nor the admiration of things foreign which it entailed, affected a very sincere, deep love of his native land, which made exile in many ways a punishment to him. But he had not the kind of patriotism which he somewhere ascribes to the average German, the kind that narrows the heart, makes it shrink like leather in the cold. His was the patriotism that warms the heart and widens it until it is able to embrace the whole realm of civilization.[4]How could he help loving Germany! As he himself has said, and as we all must say each of his own country: "The truth is—Germany is ourselves." His whole nature and character were determined by his German birth and upbringing. The second half of his life being spent in an exile that was partly voluntary, partly compulsory—in so far a homeless man, that his works were prohibited throughout the German Confederation—the German language became to him a true, a grander, a real fatherland. He himself called the German tongue the most sacred of all possessions, the unsilenceable call to liberty, a new fatherland for him whom stupidity or malice has banished from the land of his birth.

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