him. We do not need to search long among his poems to find expressions
of the mood of having done for good and all with principle, with
endeavour. Nothing of this kind is to be found in Goethe. His _Vanitas
vanitatum_, the song _Ich hab' meine Sache auf Nichts gestellt_ ("My
trust in nothing now is placed") has, very significantly, become a
convivial drinking song. In other words, there is no real, bitter
earnest about Goethe's desperation; therefore it soon changes into
jovial recklessness. Goethe has not Heine's overpowering feeling of the
misery of life, and in so far he is really less Christian.
If it is instructive to compare the two poets' lyric expression of
fatalistic indifference, it is equally so to compare their expression
of the feeling of aspiration, of manly resolve. In this case we may
take the song _Feiger Gedanken_ ("Cowardly Thoughts") from _Claudine
von Villa Bella_, as characteristic of Goethe; it might serve as a
motto for his conduct throughout life. One can hardly imagine a more
vigorous expression of manly determination than that of the lines:
"Allen Gewalten zum Trutz sich erhalten," &c. (A bold front shown, to
powers of earth and heaven).
Compare with this Heine's poem, _An die Jungen_ ("To the Young"). The
impetuous rush of the rhythm and the picturesque quadruple rhyme would
alone suffice to make this a splendid, fascinating composition. The
first verse, with its allusion to the golden apples which Hippomenes
dropped in front of Atalanta, is a whole poem in itself:
"Lass dich nicht kirren, lass dich nicht wirren
Durch goldne Aepfel in deinem Lauf.
Die Schwerter klirren, die Pfeile schwirren,
Doch halten sie nicht den Helden auf."[27]
[27] Heed not the confusion, resist the illusion Of golden apples that
lie in thy way! The swords are clashing, the arrows are flashing, But
they cannot long the hero delay. (BOWRING.)
From the picture and example of the hero, who will not be stopped
in his career, we pass to that of Alexander. What is wanted is
determination and boldness:
"Ein kühnes Beginnen ist halbes Gewinnen,
Ein Alexander erbeutet die Welt,
Kein langes Besinnen! Die Königinnen
Erwarten schon kniend den Sieger im Zelt.
Wir wagen und werben! besteigen als Erben
Des alten Darius' Bett und Thron.
O süsses Verderben! o blühender Sterben!
Berauschter Triumphtod zu Babylon!"[28]
28:
A daring beginning is half way to winning,
An Alexander once conquered the earth!
Restrain each soft feeling! the queens are all kneeling
In the tent, to reward thy victorious worth.
Surmounting each burden, we win as our guerdon
The bed of Darius of old, and his crown;
O deadly seduction! O blissful destruction!
To die drunk with triumph in Babylon town.
(BOWRING.)
Upon victory follows the homage of the queens, then sweet perdition,
seductive ruin, death in the intoxication of triumph--what
Sardanapalian sentiment in this appeal to youth, this exhortation to
relentless determination! The fight here is for honour, and for women
as the spoil of battle, not that struggle for the combatant's own
individual freedom, of which Goethe writes so simply:
"Nimmer sich beugen,
Kräftig sich zeigen,
Rufet die Arme
Der Götter herbei."[29]
29:
Nevermore yield thee!
Show life has steeled thee!
Thus call the arms of
The Gods to thine aid.
Goethe's feeling is purer and fuller, the music of his language is
simpler; with Heine the melody is, as it were, gorgeously orchestrated.
In Goethe's case there is nothing for the eye, not a single picture.
It is characteristic that his idea is the grander, Heine's the more
modern, more complex, just as Heine's metrical expression is more
sensuously insinuating, produced by an art which devotes more attention
to detail.
Now take a picturesque, descriptive subject--the Three Kings of the
East, as they are called to mind at the Feast of the Epiphany. It is
treated in a broad, lively, popular, genuinely naïve manner in Goethe's
_Epiphanias:_ "Die heil'gen drei König' mit ihrem Stern" (The Three
Kings of the East with their Star). The three kings, the white, the
brown, and the black, are described as they appeared when they went
about, dressed up, from house to house in the country; and the poem
ends:
"Die heil'gen drei König' sind wohlgesinnt,
Sie suchen die Mutter und das Kind,
Der Joseph fromm sitzt auch dabei,
Der Ochs und Esel liegen auf Streu."[30]
[30]
The Three Kings of the East with reverence lowly
Seek out the babe and mother holy,
Good Joseph's there too, and close by
The ox and ass on the litter lie.
Heine does not view the legend in a more religious light than Goethe,
but he settles his features into a more serious expression, speaks more
concisely, draws with a sharper outline, obtains a totally different
effect. Goethe rouses and cheers his readers by his broad and merry
artlessness; Heine's words bore their way into men's minds and leave
their sting there. He seems to aim at producing the same effect as that
of an old Florentine painting:
"Die heil'gen drei König' aus Morgenland,
Sie frugen in jedem Städtchen:
Wo geht der Weg nach Bethlehem,
Ihr lieben Buben und Mädchen?
Die Jungen und Alten, sie wussten es nicht,
Die Könige zogen weiter,
Sie folgten einem goldenen Stern,
Der leuchtete lieblich und heiter.
Der Stern blieb steh'n über Josephs Haus,
Da sind sie hineingegangen,
Das Oechslein brüllte, das Kindlein schrie,
Die heil'gen drei Könige sangen."[31]
[31]
The three holy kings from the Eastern land
Inquired in every city:
Where is the road to Bethlehem,
Ye boys and maidens pretty?
The young and the old, they could not tell,
The kings went onward discreetly;
They followed the track of a golden star,
That sparkled brightly and sweetly.
The star stood still over Joseph's house
And they entered the dwelling lowly,
The oxen bellowed, the infant cried,
While sang the three kings holy.
(BOWRING.)
There is a certain amount of waggery in this. What a concert! But also,
what painting! The fewest words possible--not a stroke, not a touch too
much, and the most telling, prompt effect.
Let us now, in conclusion, think of one of those abstract figures
which occur in all lyric poetry--more or less carefully wrought-out
personifications of an idea such as peace, happiness, unhappiness--and
in this domain also compare Heine with Goethe. Here again it will be
observed that Goethe has the fuller note, Heine the firmer outline.
Goethe wrote these lines to peace:
"Der du von dem Himmel bist,
Alles Leid und Schmerzen stillest,
Den, der doppelt elend ist,
Doppelt mit Erquickung füllest,
Ach, ich bin des Treibens müde!
Was soll all der Schmerz, die Lust?
Süsser Friede!
Komm, ach komm in meine Brust!"[32]
32:
Child of heaven, that soothing calm
On every pain and sorrow pourest,
And a doubly healing balm
Find'st for him whose need is sorest,
Oh, I am of life aweary!
What availeth its unrest--
Pain that findeth no release,
Joy that at the best is dreary?
Gentle peace,
Come, oh come unto my breast!
(Sir THEODORE MARTIN.)
There is no picture here, no real personification. There is a crescendo
movement through the first six lines, which culminates in the outburst:
"Süsser Friede!"--though we could not feel quite certain that this
outburst was coming.
Now take Heine's personifications of fortune and misfortune, as
contained in the following verses:
"Das Glück ist eine leichte Dirne
Und weilt nicht gern am selben Ort,
Sie streicht das Haar dir von der Stirne
Und küsst dich rasch und flattert fort.
Frau Unglück hat im Gegentheile
Dich liebefest an's Herz gedrückt,
Sie sagt, sie habe keine Eile,
Setzt sich zu dir an's Bett und strickt."[33]
[33]
Oh, Joy, she is a lichtsome hizzy,
She winna bide wi' ye ava';
She strokes your broo an' maks ye dizzy
Wi' ae fond kiss, then flits awa'.
Dame Sorrow is a canty kimmer,
A fond embrace ye'll hae frae her;
She vows she's naewise thrang, the limmer,
Knits by your bed an' winna stir.
(W. A.)
Seldom have two ideas been transformed into two living forms with
so few strokes; and there is nothing much finer in all modern
myth-creation than the last two lines, between which are to be read the
record of profound and terrible experience.
Heine, as we have seen, makes his earliest appearance in the Romantic
school, and learns his trade from A. W. Schlegel, who imparts to him
his own correct taste. In the earliest period of his development he is
addicted to Romantic ghost stories and Romantic archaisms. Then, in
the matter of metre, he begins to study and imitate Wilhelm Müller;
in his most famous poem he borrows from Clemens Brentano. He soon
forms his own style, the distinguishing feature of which is extreme
condensation of thought, feeling, and imagery. Heine makes everything
present and living, introduces even into tranquil themes a nervous,
at times dæmonic, passion, not infrequently exaggerates until he
becomes grotesque, occasionally exchanges the light of day for the
glaring brightness of electric light--a kind of un-naturalness which is
nevertheless to be found in nature. His most effective poetic quality
is pregnant brevity.
By reason of the blend of wit and imagination in his nature, he is
inclined to produce his effects by contrasts, to seek for striking
disharmonies and incongruities; he has a special fancy for the effect
produced by letting a commonplace, vulgar reality imperceptibly
make way for a poetic vision, or allowing such a vision to fade and
evaporate and give place to all too familiar reality.
His style is essentially modern--everything graphic, everything
perspicuous. What is it that constitutes a great writer? The possession
of the power to call forth mental visions or moods, visions by means
of moods or moods by means of visions. It was especially the latter
faculty that Heine cultivated in himself; he never fails in the matter
of clear outline and picturesque effect.
At his zenith he can no longer be compared with his teachers and
contemporaries. To gauge the power and versatility of his style it
was necessary to compare it with the greatest style of the age--with
Goethe's. In the process he often, as we have seen, comes far short,
but it not so very seldom happens that he establishes his right to
almost equal admiration. It is, however, enough for him that it is
possible, and now and again necessary, to compare him with Goethe.
A style is the expression of a personality and a weapon in the
warfare of literature. Goethe's style, with all its greatness, is not
sufficiently complex to grapple with modern ideas. But Heine's, that
weapon which in its best days was as finely tempered as those old
Spanish blades which could be bent like osiers, but which no armour
could snap, was better suited than any other to cope with modern life
in its hardness and ugliness, its charm, its restlessness, and its
wealth of glaring contrasts. It also possessed in the highest degree
the power of working upon the nerves of modern readers, who have more
inclination for spiced dishes and heating beverages than for plain food
and pure wine.
XVI
HEINE
There can be little doubt that nothing has been more injurious to
Heine's general reputation than his indiscreet loquacity on sexual
subjects. Whole groups of his poems are in ill repute on this account;
those, for instance, which compose the collection _Verschiedene_
(Various), most of which have been unjustly condemned, although there
are certainly some which are anything but sublime in their theme or
refined in their treatment of it. In _Der Gott und die Bajadere_ ("The
God and the Bayadere") Goethe had shown how even a very equivocal
subject can be ennobled by sublimity of style. And even when, as in
the Venetian epigrams, he treats of Bayaderes who are certainly not
purified by love, and dwells upon the poet's relations with them, the
antique metre in itself produces the effect of distance, and we are not
offended by any objectionable word. These few epigrams, too, lie almost
buried in the mass of Goethe's writings. Moreover, in reading them, we
feel that he is the man whom nature created in order that she might
learn from him what she is like in her entirety.
With Heine, communicativeness on the subject of his relations with
the other sex occupies too important a place, and is not always in
good taste. It gains him ten readers for one whom it alienates, but it
sometimes happens that the one thus lost was worth more than the ten
gained.
And yet this frankness is, in a manner, his strength. It need not have
been so personal, but it is quite indispensable in one who desires to
compass not only the tragic, but also the comic hemisphere. And in this
quality, and in his many shameless personal attacks, he resembles the
greatest comic poet of all times.
Towards the end of his _Winter's Tale_, immediately after the wanton
passage in which he smells out the future of Germany by putting his
head down the opening of Charlemagne's night-throne, he declares that
the noblest of the Graces have tuned the strings of his lyre, and that
this lyre is the same which was sounded in days gone by, by his father,
"the late Aristophanes, the favourite of the Muses," He adds that in
his last chapter he has attempted to imitate _The Birds_, "the best of
father's dramas."
He thus, we observe, prided himself on artistic descent from the
greatest comic poet of ancient Greece.
For a moment we are taken aback. Other German poets, such as Platen
and Prutz, have imitated the form of the Aristophanic comedy, its
trimeters, choruses, parabases, the whole of that irregular and yet
regular form of art built up by the Greek comic school; but Heine
never even made an attempt to master this poetical form, or any other.
It is characteristic of him that, persevering and conscientious as
he was in ensuring the telling precision of the single metrical or
prose expression (I never saw a manuscript with so many corrections
as that of his _Atta Troll_, in the Royal Library of Berlin), it was
impossible for him to submit to the artistic restriction of any of the
great poetic forms. It tallies with this, that in his longer works the
plan of the whole is quite vague, but every single line has been gone
through again and again.
There is probably no exaggeration in saying that he never, in his
capacity as an artist, set himself a task and carried it out.
Once only he attempted to write a long, connected prose work, a romance
or novel. Whether, as some maintain, the greater part of the manuscript
was destroyed by a fire, or whether, as I for one believe, the work was
never completed, the fact remains that all we have of it is a fragment.
And even this fragment, _Der Rabbi von Bacharach,_ is, when carefully
examined, nothing but a very much antedated transcription of Heine's
own private experiences.
Nor did he ever attempt a severely connected metrical composition. His
only long poems, _Atta Troll_ and _Deutschland, ein Wintermärchen_
("Germany, a Winter's Tale"), are irregular, whimsical fantasies,
soap-bubbles rocked upon cobweb tissue of the brain, only connected by
a uniformity of tone and design.
The idea of translating or adapting Aristophanes would never have
occurred to Heine. He was not like Goethe, who, in spite of his
enormous original productivity, condescended to translate and adapt
for his countrymen (Diderot, Benvenuto Cellini, Voltaire). When Goethe
made acquaintance with Aristophanes, he was enchanted with him, and
it is Goethe, not Heine, who undertakes to transplant _The Birds_ on
to German soil; but it is characteristic that in his hands the play
undergoes a metamorphosis, is transformed from a political into a
literary satire. In Goethe's play the two discontented politicians
have become literary adventurers; in the owl (as proved by a letter
from Jacobi to Heine) he satirises Klopstock, in the parrot, young
Cramer. It was in the epilogue to this adaptation that Goethe bestowed
on Aristophanes the immortal appellation, "der ungezogene Liebling der
Grazien" (the froward favourite of the Graces), which suits Heine so
well.
Heine was too lazy ever to have studied, translated, adapted, or
imitated an ancient classic poet, but, supposing him to have done so,
he would never, like Goethe or Platen, have made pure literary comedies
of the Aristophanic plays; it was the grand political satire that
attracted him.
It is probable that Heine is the wittiest man that ever lived, or at
least the wittiest man of modern times. Voltaire is, undoubtedly,
looked upon as a sort of personification of wit; but his wit is
sensible and dry, not poetic and imaginative like Heine's.
Platen, the proud and stiff, acted unwisely when he wrote the work in
which he satirises Heine, _Der romantische Oedipus_, in the outward
form and style of the Aristophanic comedy, for he had nothing in
common with Aristophanes but fine versification and coarse language.
Heine, on the contrary, had all the chief qualities of Aristophanes
combined--wit, wanton wildness, imagination, lyric sweetness,
shamelessness, and grace. Without grace and wit, shamelessness is
undoubtedly a base and repellent quality. But in this combination with
noble qualities it is uncommon. The Aristophanic poet must not, cannot
have the pride which shrinks from amusing the coarse minded, who only
understand a man when they meet him in the mire. He dares not shrink
from debasing himself to a certain point, in order to gain a wider
field of vantage.
It is useless for an author to attempt, as Platen did, to impress his
readers before all else with the idea of his high-mindedness, and to
inspire them with respect for his person; it is useless for him to
proclaim that he intends "to crush his antagonists with genuine wit."
It is not possible to appear at one and the same time in the character
of a refined gentleman and an Aristophanic poet. A man is a failure
in the latter rôle if he sets more value on the esteem of others
than on the triumph of art. The compensation in the case of the true
Aristophanic poet is, that his poetry has a compass unattainable by the
dignified poets (a Schiller or a Hugo); it reflects the whole of human
life, from its highest functions to its lowest.
Though there are so few formal points of contact between Heine's
lyric-satiric poems and the great fantastic comedies of Aristophanes,
it is nevertheless probable that since the days of ancient Greece there
has been no wit so nearly akin to the wit of Aristophanes as Heinrich
Heine's.
This assertion is not based upon any misconception of the extraordinary
dissimilarity in the character of their life-work. The Aristophanic
comedy with its grand and exact technical structure is the expression
of the artistic culture of a whole nation, a monument that commemorates
the religious festivals of which it was the outcome. Aristophanes
built upon a foundation laid, a substructure prepared, by a whole line
of distinguished predecessors, whose style was similar, whose talent
was akin to his, and to whose labours he succeeded, in much the same
manner as Shakespeare did to the work of his predecessors; hence the
Aristophanic comedy as a form of art is to a much greater extent a
collective production than Heine's stanza is. Quite apart from our
knowledge of the fact that Eupolis and Kratinos accused Aristophanes
of making inadmissible use of the ideas of his predecessors, we can
see for ourselves, from one of his own comedies, _The Knights_, that
plays with titles like the Birds, the Wasps, the Frogs had already been
produced by the comic poet Magnes; the chorus disguised as reptiles,
insects, birds, was thus not a thing invented by Aristophanes, it was
an inheritance. It is only because we are not acquainted with the
Greek poet's predecessors that his life's work appears to us to be a
purely individual production, the type of grand fantastic comedy, in
comparison with whose exuberance of life almost all modern comedy seems
spiritless and weak.
His world is the topsy-turvy world. When, in the _Peace_, Trygaios
saddles a stinking carrion-beetle and on it, as his Pegasus, mounts
through the clouds to the dwellings of the Gods, or when he drags
Peace up by a fathom-long rope from the deep well into which she has
been thrown by War, these proceedings are represented as if there were
nothing in the least unusual or impossible about them; no explanation
is offered; and we are compelled to believe in them. When, in _The
Birds_, we hear two silly fellows, who are posing as philosophers,
disclose their crazy plans for building a city in the clouds, it all
sounds very mad, and when we see the Birds receive these men with
reverence, we do not conceive any higher opinion of their intelligence,
we are only struck by the comicality of the birds being so stupid as
to put their trust in them. But when we hear that the city is actually
built, that fortune has attended the enterprise and that it has been
crowned with success, we feel that the world set before us here is not
our own everyday world, but one with whose laws things are compatible
which are contrary to the laws of ours.
This new world is purely fantastic, in so far as it is antagonistic to
the laws of probability and of nature. It is a world in which madness
triumphs, and the poet pretends that this is as it should be. Not till
the spectator begins to wonder _where_ this topsy-turvy world can
be, _where_ such things happen, _where_ political effrontery on such
a gigantic scale, far from being confounded and put to shame, wins
confidence and is rewarded--not till then is he led back to reality, to
the recognition in this world of his own world, his own home, Athens.
Three of the Aristophanic comedies in our possession, _The Birds, The
Frogs_, and _Peace_, do not pass, or pass only in part, on earth; they
are meteoric or underground dramas. And it is in these only that Gods
are represented, and then merely that they may be rated, ridiculed, or
beaten. In the world of reality they do not reveal themselves; for it
is only in the world of fancy that they are believed in.
Heine, the modern poet, dares not ask his readers to follow him into
the same sort of supernatural world; and yet he cannot dispense with
the supernatural; hence that constantly recurring use and abuse of
dreams, for which hardly any parallel is to be found among other modern
poets. Within the frame-work, as it were, of the dream, he dares to be
extraordinary, to be Aristophanic.
As has been already remarked, he resembles Aristophanes in the depth of
his shamelessness and in the height of his lyric flight.
Allusions to difficulties of digestion and the like, play a less
important part in Heine's writings than in those of Aristophanes, who,
however, we must remember, himself declared that he despised this
kind of comicality. According to him its only recommendation was that
it provoked the laughter of the least cultured part of the public.
But such things are frequently referred to by Heine too, at times in
the plainest of terms (notably in his attack on Platen), and with
him, almost as often as with Aristophanes, we have to be on our guard
against certain noisome insects.
Heine of course cannot allow himself the same freedom of speech in
sexual matters as the old Greek did, but to make up for this, he
never hesitates to make an allusion that will atone for any want of
outspokenness. And now and then there is almost no circumlocution; what
as a general rule is indicated by a smile or a grimace is shouted to
all and sundry with a loud guffaw, as, for instance, at the conclusion
of _Deutschland_, and in such poems as _Der Ungläubige_ ("The
Unbeliever").
And yet again, as with Aristophanes, so with Heine; from this constant
insistence upon that in man which reminds us of his dwelling-place
during the earliest stages of his development, he rises to the purest,
most delicate lyric utterance. He, who so thoroughly comprehends the
material origin of all living things, in one of his poems derives them
all from the song of the nightingale:
"Im Anfang war die Nachtigall
Und sang ihr Lied: Zükükt! Zukükt!"[1]
[1]
In the beginning was the nightingale,
Who sang her song: Zükükt! Zükükt!
(CARY)
We cannot but be reminded of the beautiful lines in _The Birds_:
"Gentlest and dearest, thou dost sing
Consorting 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)