_Heinrich Heine_
More than a hundred years have passed since the birth, and fifty
years since the death, of this remarkable man, but the history of
literature has not yet finally settled accounts with him. Even the
Germans, perhaps the Germans above all, find it impossible to agree
upon the valuation of his gift. Some consider him a genius, others a
man devoid of talent and insipid. Moreover, his enemies still bring as
much passion to their attacks upon him as they did before, as though
they were waging war upon a live opponent in place of a dead one. They
hate him for the same things which made his contemporaries hate him.
We know that it was principally for his insincerity that they did not
forgive him. No one could tell when he was speaking seriously and when
in jest, what he loved and what he hated, and finally it was quite
impossible to determine whether or not he believed in God. It must be
confessed that the Germans were right in many of their accusations. I
value Heine extremely highly; in my opinion he is one of the greatest
German poets; and yet I cannot undertake to say with certainty what
he loved, what he believed, and often I cannot tell how serious he is
in uttering one or another of his opinions. Nevertheless I find it
impossible to detect any insincerity in his works. On the contrary,
those peculiarities of his, which so irritated the Germans, are in my
eyes so many proofs of his wonderful and unique sincerity. I think that
if the Germans were mistaken and misunderstood Heine, hypertrophied
self-love and the power of prejudice is the cause. Heine's usual method
is to begin to speak with perfect seriousness, and to end with biting
raillery and sarcasm. Critics and readers, who generally do not guess
at the outset what awaits them in the event, have taken the unexpected
laughter to their own account, and have been deeply offended. Wounded
self-love never forgives; and the Germans could not forgive Heine
for his jests. And yet Heine but rarely attacked others: most of his
mockery is directed against himself, and above all in the work of his
last creative period, of the years when he lived in the _Matrazengrab._
With us in Russia many were offended with Gogol, believing that he
was jeering at them. Later, he confessed that he had been describing
himself. Nor does the inconstancy of Heine's opinions in any way
prove him insincere. His intention was by no means always to fling at
the Philistines. Indeed, he did not know what to believe; he changed
his tastes and attachments, and did not even always know for certain
what he preferred at the moment. Of course, had he wished, he might
have pretended to be consequent and consistent. Or, had he been less
eagle-eyed, he might with the vast majority of men have adopted a
ceremonial dress once for all, he might have professed and invariably
preached ideas which had no relation to his real emotions and moods.
Many people think that one ought to act thus, that (particularly in
literature) one must speak only officially and exhibit lofty ideas
that have been proclaimed by wise men since time immemorial, without
their having made the least inquiry whether they correspond to their
own natures or not. Often cruel, vindictive, spiteful, selfish, mean
people sincerely praise goodness, forgiveness, love to one's enemy,
generosity and magnanimity in their books, while of their tastes
and passions they speak not a single word. They are confident that
passions exist only to be suppressed, and that convictions only are to
be exhibited or displayed. A man rarely succeeds in suppressing his
passions, but it is extremely easy to hide them, especially in books.
And such dissimulation is not only not condemned, but recognised and
even encouraged. The common and familiar programme is accepted: in life
'passions' judge 'convictions,' in books 'convictions,' or 'ideals,'
as they are called, pass sentence upon 'passions.' I would emphasise
the fact that most writers are convinced that their business is not to
tell of themselves, but to praise ideals. Heine's sincerity was really
of a different order. He told everything, or nearly everything, of
himself. And this was thought so shocking that the sworn custodians of
convention and good morals considered themselves wounded in their best
and loftiest feelings. It seemed to them that it would be disastrous if
Heine were to succeed in acquiring a great literary influence, and in
getting a hold upon the minds of his contemporaries. Then would crumble
the foundations, constructed through centuries of arduous labour by the
united efforts of the most distinguished representatives of the nation.
This is perhaps true: the lofty magnificence of life can be preserved
only upon the indispensable condition of hypocrisy. In order that it
should be beautiful, much must be hidden and thrust away as far and
deep as possible. The sick and the mad must be herded into hospitals;
poverty into cellars; disobedient passions into the depths of the
soul. Truth and freedom are only allowed to obtrude upon the attention
as far as is compatible with the interests of a life well arranged
within and without. The Protestant Church understood this as well as
the Catholic, perhaps better. Strict puritanism elevated spiritual
discipline to the highest moral law, which ruled life with unrelenting
and inexorable despotism. Marriage and the family, not love, must be
the aim of man; and poor Gretchen, who gave herself to Faust without
observing the established ceremonial, was forced to consider herself
eternally damned. The inward discipline still more than the outward
guarded the foundations and gave strength and force to the State as
well as to the people. Men and women were not spared; they were not
even taken into account. Hundreds and thousands of Gretchens, men and
women, were sacrificed, and are being sacrificed still, without pity to
'the highest spiritual interests.'
Acknowledgment and respect for the prescribed order had become so
deeply rooted in the German soul--I speak of Germany, because no
other nation upon earth is so highly disciplined--that even the most
independent characters yielded to it. The most dreadful sin is not the
breaking of the law--a violation which like Gretchen's can be explained
by weakness and weakness alone, though it was not forgiven, was less
severely condemned--but rebellion against the law, the open and daring
refusal to obey, even though it be expressed in the most insignificant
act. Therefore every one tends to show his loyalty from that side
first of all. In a greater or less degree all have transgressed the
law, but the more one has violated it in act, the more imperative he
considers its glorification in words. And this order of things aroused
neither suspicion nor discontent. Therein could be seen acknowledged
the superiority of spirit over body, of mind over passion. Nobody ever
asked the question: 'Is it really true that the spirit must have the
mastery over the body, and the mind over the passions?' And when Heine
allowed himself to put the question and to answer it in his own way,
the whole force of German indignation burst upon him. First of all
they suspected his sincerity and truthfulness. 'It is impossible,'
said the pious, 'that he really should not acknowledge the law. He is
only pretending.' Such a supposition was the more natural because the
ring of conviction was not always to be heard in Heine's tone: one of
his poems ends with the following words: 'I seek the body, the body,
the young and tender body. The soul you may bury deep in the ground--I
myself have soul enough.' The poem is daring and provocative in the
extreme, but in it, as in all Heine's daring and provocative poems, may
be heard a sharp and nervous laugh, which must be understood as the
expression of the divided soul, as a mockery of himself. It is he who
tells of his meeting with two women, mother and daughter. Both please
him: the mother by her much knowledge, the daughter by her innocence.
And the poet stands between them, in his own words, like Buridan's
ass between two bundles of hay. Again, daring, again, the laugh; and
again the well-balanced German is irritated. He would prefer that no
one should ever speak of such emotions, and if they are to be spoken
of, then it must be at least in a penitent tone, with self-accusation.
But Heine's misplaced laughter is indecent and quite uselessly
disconcerting. I repeat that Heine himself was not always sure that
his 'sincerity' was lawful. While he was still a youth he told how
there suddenly ran through his soul, as through the whole earth, a
rent which split asunder the unity of his former emotions. King David
when he praised God and good did not remember his dark deeds--of
which there were not a few--or, if he did remember them, it was only
to repent. His soul was also divided, but he was able to preserve a
sequence. When he wept, he could not and did not want to rejoice;
when he repented, he was already far from sin; when he prayed, he did
not scoff; when he believed, he did not doubt. The Germans, brought
up on the great king's psalms, had come to think that these things
were impossible and ought never to be possible. They admitted the
succession of different, and even contradictory spiritual conditions,
but their simultaneous existence appeared to them unintelligible and
disgusting, in contradiction with divine commandments and the laws of
logic. It seemed to them that everything which formerly existed as
separate, had become confused, that the place of stringent harmony had
been usurped by absurdity and chaos. They thought that such a state of
things threatened innumerable miseries. They did not admit the idea
that Heine himself might not understand it; in his creation they saw
the manifestation of a false and evil will, and they invoked divine and
human judgment upon it. The Philistine irritation reached the extreme
when it became clear that Heine had not humbled himself even before the
face of death. Stricken by paralysis, he lay in his _Matrazengrab,_
unable to stir a limb; he suffered the most intense bodily pains,
with no hope of cure, or even of relief, yet he still continued to
blaspheme as before. Worse still, his sarcasms every day became more
ruthless, more poisonous, more refined. It might have been thought that
it was left to him, crushed and destroyed, only to acknowledge his
defeat and to commit himself utterly to the magnanimity of the victor.
But in the weak flesh a strong spirit lived. All his thoughts were
turned to God, the power of whose right hand, like every dying man,
he could not but feel upon him. But his thoughts of God, his attitude
to God, were so original that the serious people of the outer world
could only shrug their shoulders. No one ever spoke thus to God, either
aloud or to himself. The thought of death usually inspires mortals
with fear or admiration; therefore they either kneel before him and
implore forgiveness or sing his praises. Heine has neither prayer nor
praise. His poems are permeated with a charming and gracious cynicism,
peculiar and proper to himself alone. He does not want to confess his
sins, and even now on the threshold of another life he remains as he
was in youth. He desires neither paradise, nor bliss, nor heaven; he
asks God to give him back his health, and to put his money affairs in
order. 'I know there is much evil and many vices on earth. But I have
grown used to all that now, and besides I seldom leave my room. O God,
leave me here, but heal my infirmities, and spare me from want,' he
writes in one of his last poems. He derides the legends of the blissful
life of sinless souls in paradise. 'Sitting on the clouds and singing
psalms is a pastime quite unsuited to me.' He remembers the beautiful
Venus of the Louvre and praises her as in the days of youth. His poem,
_Das Hohelied,_ is a mixture of extreme cynicism, nobility, despair,
and incredible sarcasm. I do not know whether dying men have had such
thoughts as those which are expressed in this poem, but I am confident
that no one has expressed anything like them in literature. In Goethe's
_Prometheus_ there is nothing of the provocative, unshakable, calm
pride and the consciousness of his rights which inspired the author
of _Das Hohelied._ God, who created heaven and earth and man upon the
earth, is free to torment my body and soul to his fill, but I myself
know what I need and desire, I myself decide what is good and what is
bad. That is the meaning of this poem, and of all that Heine wrote in
the last years of his life. He knew as well as any one that according
to the doctrines of philosophy, ethics, and religion, repentance and
humility are the condition of the soul's salvation, the readiness even
with the last breath of life to renounce sinful desires. Nevertheless,
with his last breath he does not want to own the power over himself
of the age-old authorities of the world. He laughs at morality, at
philosophy, and at existing religions. The wise men think so, the wise
men want to live in their own way; let them think, let them live. But
who gave them the right to demand obedience from me? Can they have
the power to compel me to obedience? Listening to the words of the
dying man, shall we not repeat his question? Shall we not take one step
further? Heine is crushed, and if we may believe, as we have every
reason to believe what he tells us in his 'Song of Songs,' his painful
and terrible illness was the direct effect and consequence of his
manner of life. Does it mean that in the future, too (if future there
is), new persecutions await him, until the day when of his own accord
he will subscribe to the proclaimed and established morality? Have we
the right to suppose that there are powers somewhere in the universe
preoccupied with the business of cutting out all men, even down to
the last, after the same pattern? Perhaps Heine's contumacy points to
quite a different intention of the arbiters of destiny. Perhaps the
illness and torture prepared for those who fight against collars and
blinkers--experience demonstrates with sufficient certainty that any
declination from the high road and the norm inevitably brings suffering
and ruin in its train--are only the trial of the human spirit. Who
will endure them, who will stand up for himself, afraid neither of
God nor of the devil and his ministers, he will enter victoriously
into another world. Sometimes I even think, in opposition to existing
opinion, that _there_ the stubborn and inflexible are valued above
all others, and that the secret is hidden from mortals lest the
weak and compliant should take it into their heads to pretend to be
stubborn, in order to deserve the favour of the gods. But he who
will not endure, but will deny himself, may expect the fate of which
philosophers and metaphysicians generally dream. He will be united
with the _primum mobile,_ he will be dissolved in the essence of being
together with the mass of individuals like himself. I am tempted to
think that the metaphysical theories which preach self-renunciation
for the sake of love, and love for the sake of self-renunciation,
are by no means empty and idle, as the positivists affirm. In them
lies a deep, mysterious, and mystical meaning: in them is hidden a
great truth. Their only mistake is that they pretend to be absolute.
For some reason or other men have decided that empirical truths are
many, but that metaphysical truth is one. Metaphysical truths are
also many, but that does not in the least prevent them from living in
harmony one with another. Empirical truths like all earthly beings are
continually quarrelling, and cannot get on without superior authority.
But metaphysical truths are differently arranged and know nothing
whatsoever of our rivalry. There is no doubt that people who feel the
burden of their individuality and thirst for self-renunciation are
absolutely right. Every probability points to their at last attaining
their purpose and being united to that to which they should be united,
whether neighbour or remote, or perhaps, as the pantheists desire, even
to inanimate nature. But it is just as probable that those who value
their individuality and do not consent to renounce it either for the
sake of their neighbours or of a lofty idea, will preserve themselves
and will remain themselves, if not for ever and ever, at least for a
sufficiently long while, until they are weary. Therefore the Germans
must not be cross with Heine, at least those Germans who have judged
him not from the utilitarian point of view--from this point of view I
too utterly condemn him, and find for him no justification at all--but
from the lofty, religious or metaphysical point of view, as it is
called nowadays. He cannot possibly disturb them in any way. They will
be united, down to the last they probably will be united in the Idea,
the thing in itself, in Substance, or any other alluring unity; and not
Heine with his sarcasms will keep them from their lofty aspirations.
While if he and those like him continue to live in their own way in a
place apart and even laugh at ideas--can that really be the occasion of
serious annoyance?