Part 12

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.

Still finer is the group of eight poems which was the result of his stay at Cuxhaven. _Wir sassen am Fischerhause_ is a little marvel of artistic ability--that talk with the girls, sitting outside the fisherman's hut, in which far-off India and Ultima Thule are described in a few words: "By the Ganges all is brightness and fragrance, giant trees blossom, and beautiful, tranquil men and women kneel to the lotus flowers. In Lapland the people are dirty and small; their heads are flat and their mouths are wide; they cower round the fire, roast fish, and screech and scream."

Then there are merry poems, treating of light characters like the girl whom he searches for through the whole town and finds in a fashionable hotel, and the girl in whose heart the blue hussars are quartered.

And lastly, there are single epigrammatic verses, which every one now knows by heart, but which, at the time they appeared, gave great offence and made enemies for their author. Especially noteworthy is the famous:

"Selten habt ihr mich verstanden, Selten auch verstand ich euch, Nur wenn wir im Koth uns fanden, So verstanden wir uns gleich."[15]

[15]

Little by thee comprehended, Little knew I thee, good brother; When we in the mud descended Soon we understood each other. (LELAND.)

It is incomprehensible that this verse should ever have been regarded as a confession of unclean instincts. It only applies to those who find their way straight to any exceptionable or indecent passage in a book, as the sow finds her way to the mire, and stops there. That it never occurred to Heine that he was making any admission of having desired to appeal to his reader's sensual instincts or cynic tendencies is best proved by the poem which immediately follows on the lines in question, the one beginning:

"Doch die Kastraten klagten, Als ich meine Stimm' erhob; Sie klagten und sie sagten: Ich sänge viel zu grob."[16]

[16]

How the eunuchs were complaining At the roughness of my song! Complaining and explaining That my voice was much too strong. (LELAND.)

He could not have declared more unmistakably that, where he is straightforward, plain-spoken, or cynical, it is only the result of his modern tendency to realistic truthfulness, of his antipathy to romantic embellishment, and of his instinctive inclination to face the bitter truth of life.

And there is quite as little justification for the general complaint of what Julian Schmidt has called the low-mindedness of Heine's sudden leaps from the sublime to the sordid. We have a typical instance of these sudden changes of style and mood in the poem _Frieden_ ("Peace"), one of the group of North Sea poems, in which Heine, during a calm at sea, beholds the giant form of Jesus, the Prince of Peace, striding over sea and land. He is clothed in white; his head touches the clouds; the heart in his breast is the sun, the red, flaming sun, and this sun-heart sheds its illuminating, warming rays over land and sea. Then there is a sudden revulsion of mood. Heine calls to mind a miserable, canting fellow in Berlin, weak in mind and body, strong in faith--what would not _he_ give to be able to hit upon such pious imagery, by means of which he might ingratiate himself with those in power and perhaps attain to the position of court-councillor in the pious town on the Spree--what dreams he would have of a hundred thalers rise in salary!

Heine most undoubtedly spoiled the effect of his beautiful vision. He broke up his poem, shattered its melody with grotesque discords; but yet it is easy to understand that in the case of a poet with his experience of modern life, the second vision was a perfectly natural sequel to the first; and in any case it is unjustifiable to speak of this connection of ideas, this "idea-leap," as a symptom of low-mindedness. In this connection Wilhelm Bölsche makes the true and pertinent observation that no one has accused Goethe of low-mindedness because he allows the gibes of Mephistopheles to follow directly upon Faust's confession of faith to Gretchen (_Heinrich Heine_, p. 106). And yet the only difference is that in _Faust_ the pathos and the ribaldry are put into the mouths of two people, whereas in the lyric poem the poet makes himself directly responsible for both.

Almost at the end of this collection (_Heimkehr_), we come upon a couple of poems which are distinguished by depth of feeling and perfection of form. The particular arrangement of their rhymes would distinguish them from the majority of the small poems, if nothing else did, as it is one we seldom meet with in Heine. The first, _Dämmernd liegt der Sommerabend_ ("Summer eve with day is striving"), which describes the beautiful elf-maiden bathing in the river by moonlight, has the diaphanous haze of a Corot landscape. The rhythmic treatment of the second gives it a unique place in the collection. It is the pathetic, fantastic:

"Der Tod, das ist die kühle Nacht, Das Leben ist der schwüle Tag. Es dunkelt schon, mich schläfert, Der Tag hat mich müd gemacht.

Über mein Bett erhebt sich ein Baum, Drin singt die junge Nachtigall; Sie singt von lauter Liebe, Ich hör' es sogar im Traum."[17]

[17]

Death is a cool and pleasant night, Life is a sultry day. 'Tis growing dark-I'm weary, For day has tired me with his light.

Over my bed a fair tree gleams, And in it sits a nightingale: She sings of naught save love, I hear it even in dreams. (LELAND.)

The next division of the _Buch der Lieder, Aus der Harzreise_ (1824), contains the delightful mountain-rhymes conceived in the course of a walking tour which Heine took by way of refreshment after his law studies in Göttingen. Here we have charming pictures of mountain scenery and peasant life, and a tone of witty, bold self-laudation, kept up with irresistible audacity. The beautiful and witty poem about the knight of the Holy Spirit was doubtless suggested by the catechising scene in _Faust_, but has an originality of its own which has made it popular all the world over.