1831), we feel that Börne's faith in his system is seriously shaken.
When the Russians are getting the upper hand, he, as usual, makes
free use of his favourite words--God, the devil, &c. He comes to the
conclusion that "not even the wisdom of God, nothing but the stupidity
of the devil can save Poland now." And then he interrupts himself with
a question: "But is there a God at all? My heart does not doubt it yet,
but one's brain feels bewildered enough at times. And even if he does
exist, of what use is an eternal God to mortal man? Were he mortal like
us ... he would take account of time and life, would not delay justice
so long, would not wait to pay to future generations that which was
their forefathers' due. Liberty can and will triumph, sooner or later;
but why not now? It may triumph the very day after the fall of Poland;
and that would be enough to break one's heart.... Can there be a
God? Is this justice? We loathe cannibals, stupid savages, who only
eat the flesh of their enemies. But we are reconciled to a far worse
cannibalism--to the torturing, slaughtering, hewing asunder of the
present, body and soul, with its joys and its happiness, its wishes and
its hopes, to satisfy the appetite of the future."[4]
A few days later, however, he returns to his accustomed faith in God
and to that optimism over which no disappointments can prevail.
Here and there in these letters we come upon sheer political twaddle,
such as the fantasies on the consequences of the revolt in Hanover,
and here and there on proofs of a positively foolish credulity, as,
for example, when Börne allows himself to be persuaded that it is
Metternich who has instigated the disturbances in South Germany in
order that he may take possession of Bavaria while the troops are
occupied; and again, that it is Louis Philippe's secret intention to
reinstate the dynasty of Charles X. on the throne.[5]
But frequently too we come upon utterances that show real political
sagacity, a natural capacity for grasping a situation, and an unusual
gift of prevision.
On the 9th of November 1830, only four months after the Revolution,
Börne already perceives that all that has happened amounts to no more
than this, that the industrial magnates, those who understand nothing
but "fear and money," have come into power. And he is quite certain
that, since this Revolution has not attained its object, those in
power refusing to see anything in it but a change of dynasty, a new
revolution is unavoidable, "and may be expected without fail." A week
later, with correct appreciation of the facts, and logical deduction,
he explains how events will follow on one another: As these merchants
and manufacturers, who for fifteen years have been declaiming against
aristocracy, have hardly got into power before they endeavour to form
a new aristocracy, of monied men, of adventurers, not based like the
old on a principle, but upon privileges conferred by the possession of
property; the French people, with their passion for equality, will,
the next time they make a revolution, attack that which is now the
foundation of privilege, namely, property; and this process will be
accompanied by such horrors as no previous revolution has witnessed.
Börne, we observe, has a prevision of socialism as a power; he
prophesies the Commune. A year later (1st December 1831) he feels so
certain how things will go that he writes: "I so plainly foresee the
great war between the poor and the rich that I feel as if we were in
the middle of it now;" and at this period, in spite of his strong moral
bias, he has come to the conclusion that the first thing to be aimed
at is the support of right by might. If this is not practicable, then
all that can be done is to touch men's hearts, to gain them for the
good cause by working upon their feelings, and to pursue tyranny with
ridicule, hate, and contempt. It is of no use whatever to be simply
honest, to have the right on one's side. No; "their honesty is their
bane. They imagine that the main thing is to be, and to prove that they
are, right. They talk of liberty as a barrister would talk of some
piece of property. As if it were reasons that were wanted here!" (1st
February 1831.)
The man who shows himself to us in these letters, is, after all, a
political enthusiast, a lover of liberty, rather than a statesman.
He not only loves the common people but, like Rousseau, he has a
true admiration for those who have not been "spoiled" by wealth or
education; and this admiration goes hand in hand with a steadily
increasing hatred of all the legitimate sovereigns and princes of
Europe, which, when Börne casts all moderation from him along with his
illusions, turns into veritable nihilism. "To think that ten yards
of hempen cord would suffice to give the world peace, happiness, and
quiet."[6] The peoples--the sovereigns,--the peoples--the sovereigns;
it was between these poles that the pendulum of Börne's political
thought incessantly swung; they were the poles of the political
thought of the time. And it was natural enough that he should stop
short at this antithesis, because he was essentially a democrat, such
a confirmed democrat that, as he himself plainly tells us, he took no
interest whatever in the study of the individual human being. It was
as much of a nuisance to him to have to inquire into the peculiarities
distinguishing one human being from another, as it was to have to
decipher extremely minute handwriting. He preferred to occupy himself
with humanity in the mass and with books. (3rd November 1830.) It is no
wonder that we miss in him the delicate psychological insight which we
look for in a great writer. To compensate for this deficiency we have
the sympathy with whole nations, with whole classes, with a wide circle
of readers, which enables an author to electrify a public, and ensures
popularity during his lifetime even to a peculiarly audacious writer
occupying a peculiarly precarious position.
Not that Börne is unjust or prejudiced in his judgment of individuals.
On the contrary, he shows the calm benevolence of superior
intelligence; though he also undoubtedly at times evinces a real
middle-class antipathy to what is over-aristocratic, and corresponding
indulgence towards what is commonplace. When De Musset appears, he
is at once struck by a kinship with Heine which surprises him in a
Frenchman. He promptly recognises, even over-estimates Berlioz's
genius, and every one knows how neglected and misunderstood Berlioz
was. Prince Pückler he criticises appreciatively, without any warmth,
but with a proper discernment of his merits; only he cannot understand
how it was possible for any one to believe that Pückler's bright, but
essentially unpoetical letters, could have been written by Heine. As
regards Heine himself, it is for long only his worship of Napoleon that
is distinctly antipathetic to Börne, who appreciates, nay admires him
in every other respect.
There is something suggestive in Börne's sincere admiration for Paul
de Kock, in the warm appreciation with which he mentions him, and the
zest with which he perseveringly reads eight volumes of his novels on
end. It is their naïve and faithful representation of the life of the
Parisian _petit bourgeois_ that seems to Börne so admirable. He goes
the length, though half in jest, of praising De Kock's philosophy of
life, and on this hardly suitable occasion mounts his old hobby, and
writes: "Though he does not, like Goethe in _Wilhelm Meister_, serve
up didactic letters with truffles, he gives us good strong philosophy
dressed in bourgeois fashion." (3rd March 1831.) Paul de Kock exalted
at the expense of Goethe!
This sort of criticism says little for Börne's æsthetic sense. Of his
political sagacity convincing proof is given by his pronouncements on
Talleyrand. In 1830 he at once feels quite confident that Talleyrand
will serve France well in London, and does not allow his confidence
to be shaken by the Parisians' hatred of that diplomatist. He sees
the absurdity of the loud complaint of the Liberal newspapers that
Talleyrand, as one of the framers of the Peace of Vienna, is certain
to support the Holy Alliance. He comprehends that neither the Holy
Alliance nor anything else is holy to Talleyrand. And long afterwards
he again refers to the unreasonableness of the accusation brought
against that sagacious diplomatist of having served and betrayed
every government in turn, acutely remarking that he did not betray
governments, he only deserted them, and that not until they were dead.
What Börne reads in Talleyrand's hard face is necessity, cast as it
were in bronze.
But the chief cause of the leniency of Börne's judgments is to be
sought, not in his intellect, but in his heart, in the tenderness of
his nature, in the strong bias towards kindly interpretation, which
is not contradicted by his many violent, inconsiderate utterances;
for these themselves, closely examined, prove to be but expressions
of his love to his kind. He was a loving-hearted man, and in so far
a Christian by nature, by instinct. This is the explanation of his
conversion to Christianity. The reproach of hypocrisy in his case is a
foolish one; his conception of Christianity may not have been profound,
but he acted from honest, independent conviction. He became a Christian
because he was a democrat and a humanitarian. To him Christianity was
not simply a continuation and supplement of Judaism, it was rather the
religion of humanity, and more especially "the religion of all poor
devils." Every man who loved his kind was in Börne's eyes a Christian.
Christianity was moreover to him the religion of liberty, especially
in its Catholic form; for it was as Catholicism that it had destroyed
the world-empire of the Romans. In the ardent love of liberty of
these Poles with whom he has so much sympathy, he sees a proof of the
liberalising power of Catholicism.[7]
Börne does not personally believe in the dogmas of Christianity, or
consider that faith is its essence; yet any attack on these dogmas
is most repugnant to him. He sneers at Saint-Simonism because of its
antagonism to the Christian religion, and he considers Strauss's
_Life of Jesus_ to be not only a useless, but a mischievous book. All
this makes it easy to understand how it was possible for him, in the
last years of his life, to be completely carried away by a democratic
Catholic like Lamennais, whose _Paroles d'un Croyant_, an attempt to
blend Liberalism with religion, he translated and overrated. Religious
Radicalism, as here expressed, was the magic formula to which the free
and the locked-up powers of his own soul responded.
In the course of the first volumes of the _Letters from Paris_,
Börne, following the general trend of Oppositionist feeling in
Germany, progressed from enthusiasm for constitutionalism to hope of
revolution. In April 1832, not six months after their publication, one
of the leaders of the Opposition, Dr Siebenpfeiffer, issued a general
invitation to all the different German nationalities to attend a great
national festival, to be held at the castle of Hambach, near Neustadt
on the Haardt, on the 27th of May, the anniversary of the concession
of the Bavarian constitution. It was to be a festival of brotherhood
for all whose desire and aim was the regeneration of Germany. This
festival, however, seemed so suspicious to the government of Rhenish
Bavaria, that it was forbidden; strangers were prohibited from
visiting Neustadt or its environs from the 26th to the 28th of May,
and any assemblage of more than five persons in the streets or other
public places was forbidden. These prohibitions excited such general
discontent that the authorities were obliged to withdraw them.
People streamed to the festival from every point of the compass. Almost
every German country sent representatives--the majority, of course,
being inhabitants of the Palatinate itself. Even Frenchmen were there
in large numbers, and Poles naturally were not lacking. The assembly
numbered about thirty thousand in all.
Börne, who came from Paris, was the most fêted guest. His journey to
Neustadt was a sort of triumphal procession. He was cheered everywhere.
Torchlight processions and serenades were the order of the day.
He writes from Freiburg; "You have no idea what an impression my
_Letters from Paris_ have made in Germany. I never expected anything
like it myself. Meyer, Wurm, and others had given out, had printed,
that I could never again show myself in Germany, because I should
be turned out of all respectable society. Nice prophets they are! I
have done nothing but receive homage ever since I arrived. My room is
never empty. I often have not chairs enough for my visitors. At the
Hambach festival all present desired to make my acquaintance. It was
so fatiguing that it has made me ill. When I made my appearance on the
street in Neustadt, shouts were heard from the restaurants and from the
passing carriages of: 'Hurrah for Börne! hurrah for the author of the
_Letters from Paris!'_ The Heidelberg students serenaded me. All the
patriots, Wirth and the rest, declared that the credit of the patriotic
movement in Germany was due to me; I was first; the others all came
after. Many, moved to tears, arid unable to speak for emotion, embraced
me warmly. It has been the same thing here in Freiburg. The students
came to my house in the evening, serenaded me, and shouted: 'Hurrah for
the champion of German liberty!'... What will my critics say to this,
those critics who called me a bad patriot? Public opinion does not
allow itself to be misled." Absurdly enough, with all this enthusiasm,
his watch was stolen at the Hambach festival.
On the morning of the 27th of May, the enormous procession made its
way from Neustadt to the ruins of the castle of Hambach. Every one
wore black, red, and gold colours, and black, red, and gold flags were
carried in front of the procession, the ranks of which were swelled
by a great number of women, wearing black, red, and gold belts.
Siebenpfeiffer and the Bavarian Liberal journalist, Wirth, were the
principal speakers. They proclaimed the sovereignty of the people to
be the foundation on which every state must rest, and declared that
Germany would ere long be a republic. All the speeches made were
violent, and all described the degradation of Germany as the work of
her sovereigns, in combination with the aristocrats. Wirth proposed
the toast (for which he had afterwards to do penance by a long
imprisonment) of "The united free states of Germany," and "federated
republican Europe," and shouted as he waved the sword of honour that
had been presented to him: "Accursed, three times accursed be the
rulers of Germany!" These words were re-echoed by part of the assembly;
there were shouts of: "Down with kings and princes! To arms! To arms!"
The participators in the Hambach festival had, however, no immediate,
practical aim in view. Supposing the moment to have been favourable--a
tolerably doubtful supposition--they allowed it to pass without taking
advantage of it.
Heine writes humorously and bitterly: "I dare hardly tell the story, it
seems so incredible, yet I have it from a reliable source, from a man
who is an honest and truthful republican, and was himself a member of
the committee at Hambach which deliberated on the impending revolution.
This man told me in confidence that, when it came to the question of
competence, to a dispute as to whether the patriots then assembled at
Hambach were really competent to begin a revolution in the name of the
whole of Germany, those who advised immediate action were outvoted, and
the conclusion arrived at was that they were incompetent." Heine calls
this the best story he has ever heard, good enough to make him forget
all the troubles of this vale of tears, and even to cheer him after
death in the dusky tedium of the realm of shades. Then he speaks words
of comfort to kings and princes, tells them how it is quite unnecessary
that they should imprison any more worthy citizens; they may sleep in
peace; they are in no danger; the German revolution is still far off;
the question of competence is not yet decided.[8]
For many years after he made Heine's literary and personal
acquaintance, Börne's feeling towards that author was a friendly one;
he spoke of him with affection, gave him his full due as a poet, and
more especially appreciated him as a great power in the service of
universal emancipation. But their natures were too unlike to permit
of his judgment being quite unprejudiced. From 1831 onwards we come
upon spiteful references to Heine in the Letters. Although Börne was
devoid of petty vanity, the frequent comparisons made between Heine
and himself rankled in his mind, especially as, in the matter of
ability and gifts, they were often to his disadvantage. And Heine's
_Französische Zustände_ ("The Situation in France") offended and
wounded him; its perusal roused in him a feeling of ill-humour to
which he gave vent (in the last volume of the _Letters from Paris_)
in cutting satire, which struck Heine as it were from above, and, in
the eyes of many readers, stamped him with the brand of political
untrustworthiness.
It was in reality the deep-seated antagonism between the natures of
the two fellow-combatants that found vent on this occasion. Börne
did not understand the real nature of the difference between himself
and Heine. To him it seemed to be the difference between manly
earnestness and boyish frivolity, or, taken in its highest aspect,
between devotion to truth and devotion to form, to art. With accurate
perception he detected and exposed some of the small puerilities and
snobberies of which Heine, when dazzled by the tinsel of life, could
at a time be guilty, and also some of his unjust mockeries of ideal
endeavour clothed in clumsy or naïvely popular form. Börne detested
the Rothschilds, by whom Heine was impressed and fascinated. Börne,
who felt out of his element in drawing-rooms, was quite at home among
democratic artisans, and in gatherings of German emigrants, no matter
how wild the schemes they planned, or how unpractical the undertakings
for which they collected money; Heine, on the contrary, was annoyed
by the constant solicitations to support this or that democratic
undertaking, was quite unsuited to be a member of the democratic
fraternity, preferred, in spite of his revolutionary leanings, to keep
himself to himself, and had no intention whatever of being on terms of
hail fellow well met with any chance band of emigrant fellow-countrymen.
In a letter dated the 25th of February 1833, Börne jeers at Heine
for various things, amongst others for writing of the inhuman policy
pursued by Austria for the last three hundred years as "sublime
perseverance"; for calling King Louis of Bavaria, whom he afterwards
so unmercifully satirised, "one of the noblest and most intellectual
monarchs that ever sat upon a throne"; and for declaring it to be
"courageous and admirable" of the Messrs. Rothschild to remain in Paris
during the cholera, while he, at the same time, casts ridicule on the
unpaid exertions of the German patriots. On these points, and others,
Börne is right, but nevertheless he shows no delicate discernment or
profound comprehension of Heine's real character.
In the case of Heine, as in the case of Goethe, he stood face to face
with a genius he was unable to judge impartially, though he by no means
wronged his restless contemporary to the same extent or in the same
manner as he did his great predecessor.
[1] Stock expressions: "O, es ist zum Rasendwerden! (it is maddening!)
O, ich habe eine Wuth! (I am in a transport of rage!)." On the subject
of the encyclopædia: "Eine starke halbe Stunde musste ich das Schreiben
unterbrechen, und meine Wuth war grenzenlos." (I had to stop writing
for a good half hour, and was infuriated beyond all bounds.)
[2] "Was, wo, worauf, womit soll ich schreiben? Der Boden zittert, es
zittert der Tisch, das Pult, Hand und Herz zittern, und die Geschichte,
vom Sturme bewegt, zittert selbst.... Prophet wollte ich sein zwölf
Bände durch."--What, where, upon what, with what am I to write? The
ground, the table, the desk, hand and heart tremble, shaken by the
hurricane, history itself trembles.... A prophet I would be, throughout
twelve volumes.
[3] _Börne_, iii. 75, 86, 172; 43, 99, 267.
[4] _Börne_, iii. 159, 160.
[5] _Börne_, 98, 39, 270.
[6] "Und mit Zehn Ellen Hanf wäre der Welt Friede, Glück, und Ruhe zu
geben."
[7] "Das einzige Volk im Norden, das seit dreihundert Jahren nie
aufgehört sich für die Freiheit zu erheben, ist das polnische, und es
blieb katholisch."
The one nation of the North that for three hundred years has not ceased
to make a stand for liberty, is Poland, and Poland remained Catholic.
[8] Heine: _Sämmtliche Werke_, xii. 153.
XI
HEINE
For Heinrich Heine also, as already observed, the present moment in
the development of the new German Empire is an unfavourable one.
He is reproached with so much, that it is difficult to summarise.
First there is his infatuation for France, and his supposed or real
frivolity; then his un-German extraction and wit, his sentimentality,
his foppery, his wantonness; and lastly, the defiant manner in
which he parades his irreligion. New Germany is indifferent in
religious matters, but tacitly so, and in the matter of morals it is
thoroughly disciplined. In the Germany of to-day the highest virtues,
truthfulness, independence, high spirit, and sensitiveness, are of much
less account than dutifulness, correctness, social discipline, military
smartness--_Schneidigkeit_, as it is called. In Heine's time the
opposite was the case. No value was put on discipline. Piety counted
for more than religion, humanity for more than patriotism. The best
men of those days did not regard patriotism as an unqualified virtue;
nor did they consider that justice ceased to be a virtue when shown to
another nation.
To an abstract Radical bent of mind there was added in Heine's case the
hatred of Prussia, whose future he did not foresee, whose strength he
did not realize--that strength of which Carlyle gives us the best idea
in his delineation of the father of Frederick the Great, a strength
which lay in the ability, by means of sober severity, to conquer chaos,
crush all foolish opposition, and rule. Heine's was no undefined
dislike, it was the Rhinelander's mortal enmity to Prussia. Read his
lines to the Prussian eagle:
"Du hässlicher Vogel! wirst du einst,
Mir in die Hände fallen,
So rupfe ich dir die Federn aus
Und haue dir ab die Krallen.
Du sollst mir dann in luft'ger Höh'
Auf einer Stange sitzen
Und ich rufe zum lustigen Schiessen herbei
Die _rheinischen_ Bogenschützen."[1]
At the Congress of Vienna, after repeatedly refusing, Prussia at last
consented to take over the Rhine Provinces. Instead of the rounding
off of her frontier in the east for which she had hoped, she thus
acquired territory at a distance, and came to rule over a race of
Germans totally unlike the Old-Prussians. This Rhine Province was the
region where, in days gone by, the line of separation between Kelts
and Germans lay. Most of it had been included in the Roman military
province. At a later period the land came under priestly rule,
which accounts for the fact that it was in no way influenced in the
eighteenth century by the spirit of Frederick the Great. Old, decaying
clericalism came here into direct contact with the French Revolution,
and the propagators of the revolutionary ideas were joyfully welcomed.
The Old-Prussian's feeling towards the Rhinelanders was the distrust
of antipathy, a feeling the Rhinelanders returned with interest. At
the Rhine the Prussians were, and continued to be strangers, unwelcome
strangers. When he spoke of a son serving in the army, the Rhinelander
said: "He is with the Prussians." The government official transferred
from Berlin to Cologne or Düsseldorf put on airs, and disparaged
everything, and the Rhinelander long regarded a transfer to one of the
old Prussian provinces as a sort of exile to Siberia. Complaints were
heard everywhere of Prussia's inability to gain the affections of the
peoples she had conquered.[2]
[Illustration: HEINRICH HEINE]