Müllers--more passion, and much greater condensation of style.
In his favourite short iambic metre, Heine is influenced by Wilhelm
Müller, in his trochees he resembles another Romantic, far more
Romantic poet, Clemens Brentano. In Heine's _Romancero_ there are some
curious correspondences with Brentano's _Romanzen vom Rosenkranze_
("Romances of the Rosary"). These latter were written before
_Romancero_, but as they were not published till 1853, Heine cannot
possibly have been influenced by them.
In the second of the _Rosary Romances_ we read of the hero, Cosmo,
that:
"Aus dem Wasserspiegel mahnt
Ihn des Alters ernste Bote:
Du wirst bald die Schuld bezahlen,
Spricht des Hauptes Silberlocke."[4]
[4] The solemn messengers of age, the white locks of the man who gazes
at him from the water-mirror, cry: Soon thou must pay thy debt.
In Heine's posthumous poem _Bimini_, one of the divisions begins:
"Einsam auf dem Strand von Cuba,
Vor dem stillen Wasserspiegel,
Steht ein Mensch und er betrachtet
In der Flut sein Konterfei.
Eben nicht mit sonderlichem
Wohlgefallen scheint der Greis
In dem Wasser zu betrachten
Sein bekümmert Spiegelbildniss."[5]
[5]
On the shore of Cuba's island
Stands an old man solitary,
Gazing at his own reflection
In the tranquil water-mirror.
Not with any special pleasure
Does the sad and aged man
See beneath him in the water
His own image, sorrowful.
Metre, situation, idea are identical in the two passages.
There is also a certain resemblance between the tale of a mystery-book
in the Ninth Romance of the Rosary and the story of the beautiful
casket in Heine's poem of _Jehuda ben Halevy_.[6] Only that Brentano's
story of the passing of the mystery-book from hand to hand, through
many ages, merely opens up to us a Romantic wonder-world, whereas
Heine's tale of the wanderings of the casket is at the same time a jest
at the vicissitudes of life: the pearls first belong to Smerdis, who
gives them to Atossa, then to the great Alexander, who gives them to
Thais, then in course of time to Cleopatra, to a Moorish sultan, to
the regalia of Castille, and to the Baroness Solomon Rothschild, in a
compliment to whom the life-history of the casket terminates.
[6] _Cf_. Eduard Grisebach; _Die deutsche Litteratur_, p. 254, &c.;
where, however, a definite influence is insisted on, regardless of
Heine's priority.
It is quite certain that Heine is indebted to Clemens Brentano for the
subject of what in Germany is the best known and most sung of all his
songs, the song of _Lorelei_, "Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten."
As far back as 1802 Brentano had published, in his _Godwi,_ a ballad
entitled "Lorelei." It is not the story of a siren, but of a young girl
of Bacharach on the Rhine, who was so beautiful that all men fell in
love with her. She was accused of witchcraft. But the bishop, who ought
to have condemned her to be burned, fell in love with her himself. She
desires to die, for the one man she loves will have nothing to say
to her and has gone away; so, on her way to the convent to which the
bishop is sending her, she climbs a high cliff, Lurelei (Ley means
slate-rock), and in despairing longing for her beloved, throws herself
into the Rhine.
This ballad suggested to a writer called Nikolaus Vogt the fabrication
of a Rhine legend, which he published in 1811, passing it off as an
old one. In it Lorelei, on her way to the convent, sees the man of her
heart sail past her on the Rhine, and throws herself from the cliff in
grief at having failed to win him. Three of her adorers follow her to a
watery grave. Hence a rock in that neighbourhood is known by the name
of the Dreiritterstein (Rock of the Three Knights). The last incident
was perhaps suggested by the ending of Brentano's poem:
"Wer hat dies' Lied gesungen?
Ein Schiffer auf dem Rhein.
Und immer hat geklungen
Vom hohen Felsenstein:
Lore Lay!
Lore Lay!
Lore Lay!
Als wären es unser Drei."[7]
[7] Who was it sang this song? A boatman on the Rhine. And still we
heard the cry, from the high cliff overhead: "Lore Lay! Lore Lay! Lore
Lay!" Me-seemed that we were three.
From this fabricated legend a certain Count Loeben, in 1821, took the
theme for a poem, _Lorelei_,[8] in which the young girl who drowns
herself is transformed into a mermaid, whose singing lures into the
depths those who are sailing past:
"Da wo der Mondschein blitzet
Um's hohe Felsgestein,
Das Zauberfräulein sitzet
Und schauet auf den Rhein.
Es schauet herüber, hinüber,
Es schauet hinab, hinauf,
Die Schifflein ziehen vorüber,
Lieb' Knabe, sieh nicht auf!
Sie singt dir hold am Ohre,
Sie blickt dich thöricht an,
Sie ist die schöne Lore,
Sie hat dir's angethan," &c.[9]
[8] A. Strodtmann: H. Heine's _Leben und Werke_, 2nd edition, i. 696.
[9] Where the moonlight glitters on the lofty cliff, there the
magic-maiden sits, and gazes on the Rhine. She looks across the stream,
looks up the stream and down; softly the boats glide past-look not
on her, O youth! She sings so sweetly in your ear, she looks at you
bewitchingly; she is the lovely Lore, and in her spells you're caught.
Now take Heine's world-famed poem, first a students' song, then a
popular song, melting and thrilling with the tender harmony of melody
and words. The direct imitation is unmistakable. The theme is the
same, the metre is the same, even some of the rhymes are the same:
"blitzet--sitzet;" instead of "an--gethan, Kahn--gethan." But what a
difference! Feeling has been added. First the personal starting-point,
the inexplicable melancholy of the narrator and his inability to banish
the old legend from his thoughts, then the instantaneous, clear,
definite picture of the landscape:
"Die Luft ist kühl, und es dunkelt,
Und ruhig fliesst der Rhein,
Der Gipfel des Berges funkelt
Im Abendsonnenschein.
Die schönste Jungfrau sitzet
Dort oben wunderbar,
Ihr gold'nes Geschmeide blitzet,
Sie kämmt ihr goldenes Haar."[10]
[10]
The cool air darkens, and listen,
How softly flows the Rhine!
The mountain peaks still glisten
Where the evening sunbeams shine.
The fairest maid sits dreaming
In radiant beauty there.
Her gold and her jewels are gleaming,
She combeth her golden hair.
(E. LAZARUS.)
And something more has been added--that element of dæmonic passion
which the earlier manipulators of the theme were unable to communicate
to it. Heine here represents an elemental luring power, akin to that
delineated with simpler means and more powerful effect by Goethe in
_Der Fischer_. But Goethe, in conformity with his nature, describes a
tranquil, enchanting ensnarement; Heine, in conformity with his, an
instantaneous, irresistible, maddening bewitchment.
A still more profound insight into Heine's art, in the making, and into
the manner in which his fancy deals with a theme, is perhaps to be
gained by observing how he makes use of a subject which offers itself
to him in prose.
In Henri Beyle's book, _De l'amour_, he evidently found the three
following anecdotes, translated from the Arabic. 1. Sahid ben Agba one
day asked an Arab: "Of what tribe art thou?" "Of that tribe," answered
the Arabian, "in which men die when they love." "Then thou art of the
tribe of Asra?" "Yea, verily, by the Lord of Kaaba!" "Whence comes
it that ye love thus?" "Our women are beautiful, and our young men
chaste." 2. A man once asked Arua ben Hezam of the tribe of Asra: "Is
it true that ye love with a tenderness surpassing that of all other
men?" "It is true," answered Arua. "Thirty young men of my tribe have
I seen carried off by death, whose only sickness was that of love." 3.
An Arab of the tribe Beni-Fazarat said one day to an Arab of the tribe
Beni-Asra: "Ye think that to die of love is a sweet and noble death;
whereas it is nought but weakness and foolishness." "Thou would'st
not speak so," answered the other, "had'st thou seen the great dark,
long-lashed eyes of our veiled women, seen their teeth gleam between
their brown lips when they smile."
Here we have the origin of Heine's famous _Der Asra_: "Täglich ging die
wunderschöne." He first paints the place for us--the garden with the
fountain whose white waters flash; then he shows us the slave, standing
there every day when the sultan's daughter comes to walk, paler every
day; then he tells how the princess one evening closely questions the
slave: "I would know thy name, thy race, thy family...":
"Und der Sklave sprach: 'ich heisse
Mohamet, ich bin aus Yemen
Und mein Stamm sind jene Asra,
Welche sterben, wenn sie lieben.'"[11]
[11]
Spake the youthful slave, "My name is
Mahomet, I come from Yemen;
And by birth I am an Asra,
One who dieth when he loves."
(E. LAZARUS.)
Heine, as we see, has disdained all explanations. We enjoy the
marvellous conciseness of these monumental words, this power as it were
of hewing out the speech in stone. But what, on closer investigation,
is the spiritual substance of the poem? Not much more than a laconic
combination of the words love and death. It is the same combination
that is to be found in all Heine's youthful poems, in the shape of love
and suffering, love and poison, love and suicide--in Alfred de Musset,
too, there is the same stereotyped coupling of _l'amour_ and _la mort_.
Here, as in general with Heine, the expression is epigrammatic,
therefore quite simple.
We have now sufficient material before us to give us a certain insight
into the formation of Heine's poetic style. It will be interesting to
study it finished and fully developed.
We may start from the last-mentioned poem with its epigrammatic point.
It is characteristic of Heine that neither here nor elsewhere does he
deeply concern himself with the true inwardness of a feeling; he only,
as a rule, points and sharpens the expression of it. This is the case
even with the feeling of love, which he has treated more frequently
than any other. And it is characteristic of his want of the power to
put himself in another's place, that it has only been possible for him
to give expression to masculine love; he has never put a passionate
utterance of feeling into the mouth of a woman.
Nothing would have been more impossible for Heine than to write such a
poem as Goethe's famous:
"Freudvoll und leidvoll,
Gedankenvoll sein,
Langen und bangen
In schwebender Pein,
Himmelhoch jauchzend,
Zum Tode betrübt,
Glücklich allein
Ist die Seele die liebt."[12]
[12]
Gladness
And sadness
And pensiveness blending;
Yearning
And burning
In torment ne'er ending;
Sad unto death,
Proudly soaring above,
Happy alone
Is the soul that doth love.
(BOWRING)
For this is the living delineation of a woman's heart, this is the very
inner life of love, its pulsation, its oscillation between bliss and
woe. The epigrammatic quality of Heine's style alone would make such
an unfolding of the emotional life impossible. And there is the same
concentration when he narrates an event. It is a condensation without
parallel in poetry; he produces his effect by making the briefest
possible statement or suggestion. As an example of this take the lines:
"Es war ein alter König,
Sein Herz war schwer, sein Haupt war grau;
Der arme, alte König
Er nahm eine junge Frau.
Es war ein schöner Page,
Blond war sein Haupt, leicht war sein Sinn,
Er trug die seid'ne Schleppe
Der jungen Königin."[13]
[13]
There was an aged monarch,
His heart was sad, his head was grey;
This foolish, fond old monarch
A young wife took one day.
There was a handsome page, too,
Fair was his hair and light his mien;
The silken train he carried
Of the beautiful young queen.
Observe the telling effect of the inversion: "Blond war sein Haupt;" it
is as if the verse began to rejoice and dance. Then comes the end:
"Kennst du das alte Liedchen?
Es klingt so süss, es klingt so trüb;
Sie mussten beide sterben,
Sie hatten sich viel zu lieb."[14]
[14]
Dost know the ancient ballad?
It sounds so sweet, it sounds so sad:
Both of them had to perish
Too much love to each other they had.
This is admirable. But we are not told the story; we only suspect it as
we suspect the story of the slave and the sultan's daughter. And here
again love is coupled with death.
A certain emptiness in Heine's conception of love strikes us here
again. This love has no real substance, no spiritual significance. It
was not till shortly before he lay down upon his death-bed that Heine
began to describe a love that has real inward substance. The love of
the _Buch der Lieder_ is for the most part wrath excited by coldness or
faithlessness, an unfruitful thing, that awakens no sympathy. The later
of the love-poems are frequently sensual or frivolous, and the more
exaggerated the expression, the less are we affected by the value of
the feeling:
"Mein Herz ist wie die Sonne,
So flammend anzuseh'n.
Und in ein Meer von Liebe
Versinkt es gross und schön."[15]
15:
My heart is like the sun, dear,
Yon kindled flame above;
And sinks in large-orbed beauty
Within a sea of love.
(E. LAZARUS.)
There is too much self-observation and too much boastfulness in this
youthful rodomontade. And it is the same with:
"Ich hab' dich geliebet und liebe dich noch,
Und fiele die Welt zusammen,
Aus ihren Trummern stiegen doch
Hervor meiner Liebe Flammen."[16]
16:
I have loved thee long, and I love thee now,
And, though the world should perish,
O'er its dying embers still would glow
The flames of the love I cherish.
(LELAND)
Admitting that this is probably so expressed for the sake of artistic
effect, we must also admit that the style is a good, perfectly modern
style. We can see it all with the mind's eye. The heart sinks like the
sun into a sea. From the ruins of the world rise the flames of love.
And still more powerful and much more picturesque is the scene in which
the name of Agnes is written on the vault of heaven. What is wanting is
substance in the feeling. Think, for the sake of comparison, of those
profoundly human lines of Goethe's:
"Kanntest jeden Zug in meinem Wesen,
Spähtest, wo die reinste Nerve klingt,
Konntest mich mit einem Blicke lesen,
Den so schwer ein sterblich Aug' durchdringt."[17]
[17] Thou knewest every impulse of my nature, thine eye detected where
the nerve thrilled keenest, thou couldst read me at a glance, me, so
impenetrable to mortal eye.
--or of the following, which complete the impression:
"Tropftest Mässigung dem heissen Blute,
Richtetest den wilden, wirren Lauf,
Und in deinen Engelsarmen ruhte
Die zerstörte Brust sich wieder auf."[18]
[18] The hot blood by thee was tempered, the wild, aimless course by
thee directed; and in thine angel arms the torn breast found rest and
healing.
This is the expression of the healthiest, fullest, mutual sympathy,
of love's gratitude, of perfect understanding. For such feeling Heine
did not find expression until, with the shadow of death upon him, he
loved _la Mouche_, the guardian angel of his death-bed. Until then it
is never the healthy, tranquillising, happy element in love that he
concerns himself with. It is in another domain that he is master. The
modern poet, he reproduces passionate desire with a Correggio-like
blending of colours and tones that is more effective than Goethe's
antique limpidity. With Goethe desire is Greek or Italian. Think, for
instance, of the poem of the orange:
"Ich trete zu dem Baume
Und sage: Pomeranze!
Du reife Pomeranze;
Du süsse Pomeranze!
Ich schüttle, fühl', ich schüttle,
O fall in meinen Schoos!"[19]
[19]
I take my stand beneath the tree,
And cry: O orange!
O orange ripe!
O orange sweet!
Feel, feel how I shake thy tree!
O fall into my lap
Then compare the feeling, the glow, the fragrance, the exuberance of
such a poem of desire as Heine's wonderful: _Die Lotosblume ängstigt
sich vor der Sonne Pracht_ ("The lotus-flower is fearful of the sun's
resplendent beam").
It is very characteristic of the two poets that (as has already been
noted), whenever the representation of love-longing glides into a
delineation of foreign lands, Goethe prefers to paint Italy, Heine
Hindostan. In Mignon's song of longing, without a superlative or a
diminutive, with a power like that of a God, Goethe summons before our
eyes the picture of the classic land where the citrons bloom. There is
a power in it all, a force in each distinguishing trait, that Heine
does not attain to. But compare this with the bewitching sweetness of
Heine's _Auf Flügeln des Gesanges_ ("Oh, I would bear thee, my love, my
bride, afar on the wings of song"), the dreamy longing, the charm and
the mystery of the perspective that opens out to us:
"Es hüpfen herbei und lauschen
Die frommen, klugen Gazelln,
Und in der Ferne rauschen
Des heiligen Stromes Welln."[20]
[20]
Gazelles come bounding from the brake,
And pause, and look shyly round;
And the waves of the sacred river make
A far-off slumb'rous sound.
(Sir THEODORE MARTIN)
This is an immortal stanza. Goethe, even when he gives the reins to
longing, is always, like his own goldsmith of Ephesus, the great, wise
heathen, who makes images of the gods; in Heine's visionary brain there
was that particle of divine frenzy without which it had been impossible
for the Düsseldorf merchant's son to understand and reproduce the
fatalistic, self-effacing dreaminess of ancient India.
Heine's peculiarities of style stand out even more sharply against the
background of Goethe's, when we compare the way in which the two give
expression to what is not exactly desire, but the pure longing of love.
Think of the following lines, which Goethe puts into Mignon's mouth:
"Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt, weiss was ich leide,
Allein und abgetrennt von aller Freude,
Seh' ich an's Firmament nach jener Seite.
Ach, der mich liebt und kennt, ist in der Weite.--
Es schwindelt mir, es brennt mein Eingeweide.
Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt, weiss was ich leide."[21]
21:
My grief no mortals know, except the yearning!
Alone, a prey to woe, all pleasure spurning,
Up towards the sky I throw a gaze discerning.
He who my love doth know seems ne'er returning;
With strange and fiery glow _my heart is burning_[*]
My grief no mortals know, except the yearning.
(BOWRING)
[*]In the original, _my bowels are burning_.
This is the master in the fulness of his power. Much art has been
expended in the representation of the wearing monotony of longing--the
five doubly rhyming lines, the languishing metre--interrupted by
the audacious, realistic expression: "Es schwindelt mir, es brennt
mein Eingeweide." Now compare with this, one of Heine's most perfect
expressions of pure love-longing, and we shall see what the plastic
fancy and the perfected laconicism of style which we traced in course
of development have succeeded in producing for time and eternity:
"Ein Fichtenbaum steht einsam
Im Norden auf kahler Höh'.
Ihn schläfert: mit weisser Decke
Umhüllen ihn Eis und Schnee.
Er träumt von einer Palme,
Die fern im Morgenland
Einsam und schweigend trauert
Auf brennender Felsenwand."[22]
[22]
A pine-tree stands alone on
A bare bleak northern height;
The ice and snow they swathe it
As it sleeps there, all in white.
'Tis dreaming of a palm-tree,
In a far-off Eastern land,
That mourns, alone and silent,
On a ledge of burning sand.
(Sir THEODORE MARTIN.)
This is hardly rhymed. The only real rhyme is the very commonplace
_Land_ and _Wand_. The pine dreams in the snow, the palm grieves
dumbly in the burning heat--that is all. It is not seen, it is fancied
or invented, hence it cannot be painted (though I did once see a
painting of it in a German exhibition, an idiotically absurd, double
picture); but it is, nevertheless, an unforgettable, an immortal poem.
And the reason is that the symbol is so marvellously effective in its
simplicity--these two clear outlines instinct with feeling, which
express the impossibility of overcoming the obstacle which prevents
the union of two who really belong to each other.
If Goethe's strength lies in the expression of healthy feelings,
comparatively simple and uncomplicated, Heine's lies in the expression
of complex modern feeling, of feelings whose unsound state is the
result of painful experiences. Goethe could never have written the
following lines, with their jarring contrasts and enigmatical meaning:
"Wenn ich in deine Augen seh'
So schwindet all mein Leid und Weh:
. . . . . . . . . . .
Doch wenn du sprichst: ich liebe dich!
So muss ich weinen bitterlich."[23]
[23]
Whene'er I look into thine eyes,
Then every fear that haunts me flies:
. . . . . . . . . . .
But when thou sayest: "I love thee;"
Then must I weep, and bitterly.
(Sir THEODORE MARTIN)
Why must he weep? I have heard the naïve answer: Because she is lying.
Alas! it is not such a simple matter as that. He has heard these words
from other lips, lips which have now ceased to utter words of love; he
knows how long such a passion as a rule lasts, and the sound of her
voice startles him out of his forgetfulness--he doubts the durability
of her feeling or the durability of his own. It is very interesting to
note the way in which Heine had wrestled with these words. Originally
the last line was: "Dann wein' ich still und bitterlich." Then the
word "bitterlich" was altered to "freudiglich," which changed the
original tenor of the poem, and finally the line received its present
form.[24]
[24] H. Hüffer: _Aus dem Leben Heinrich Heines,_ p. 153.
Heine was not happy enough and not great enough to attain
to reconciliation with existence. It was not possible, apart from all
else, that the man who was so long an exile, so long sick to death,
should look upon life with the same eyes as the man who was thoroughly
sound and healthy, in affluent circumstances, honoured by the great
majority, the friend of his sovereign. Hence the expressions of revolt,
of bitterness, and of cynicism so frequently to be found in Heine are
exceedingly rare in Goethe. Goethe, as a rule, puts them into the
mouth of his Mephistopheles. Heine, who was destitute of the dramatic
faculty, is himself responsible for every outburst, because he always
speaks in his own name. Goethe's bitterest utterances, moreover, are
not contained in his works. It is only in the Paralipomena to _Faust_,
for instance, that we find this passage:
"Nach kurzem Lärm legt Fama sich zur Ruh,
Vergessen wird der Held so wie der Lotterbube,
Der grösste König schliesst die Augen zu,
Und jeder Hund bepisst gleich seine Grube."[25]
[25]
Fame's short-liv'd turmoil o'er, she sleeps,
Hero and waif, oblivion's their doom;
The greatest king, life o'er, his eyes doth close,
And straightway every dog defiles his tomb.
Heine dwells upon the ideas which Goethe only calls up to banish
again. Goethe, too, can be blasphemous. He wrote that poem which is so
frequently quoted, so seldom understood: _Wer nie sein Brod mit Thränen
ass_ ("He that with tears did never eat his bread"). It is a bitter,
passionate appeal against the ordering of the world. But its bitterness
is a bitterness that is choked with tears, not the wild and desperate
bitterness of Heine's splendid _Fragen_ ("Questions") or the poem _Lass
die heiligen Parabeln_ ("Holy parable discarding"), in which occur the
lines:
"Warum schleppt sich blutend, elend,
Unter Kreuzlast der Gerechte,
Während glücklich als ein Sieger
Trabt auf hohem Ross der Schlechte?
Also fragen wir beständig,
Bis man uns mit einer Handvoll
Erde endlich stopft die Mäuler,
Aber ist das eine Antwort?"[26]
[26]
Wherefore bends the Just One, bleeding
'Neath the cross's weight laborious,
While upon his steed the Wicked
Rides all-proudly and victorious?
Thus are we for ever asking,
Till at length our mouths securely
With a clod of earth are fastened--
That is not an answer, surely?
(BOWRING)
The expression is here, as usual with Heine, on a lower plane, more
terrestrial, more boldly outspoken, yet by no means unworthy of the
subject.