occasion, when the young people of the house made some enthusiastic remark about Jean Paul, Heine drawled out, "What of Jean Paul? he never saw the ocean." Fanny, with ready wit, retorted, "Certainly not, he had no uncle Solomon to pay his expenses." Rather a hit, indeed; for Heine had already had more than one quarrel with his rich uncle Solomon, the banker, about the expenses of several little trips when Heinrich had "seen the sea." In one of his most passionate prose pieces, in which he seeks to justify the hold which political questions had on his mind, modifying the development of the genius of the poet, we have the following : Till far in the night I stood by the sea and wept. I was not ashamed of those tears. Achilles also wept by the sea, and the silver-footed mother was obliged to rise out of the waves to comfort him. I also heard a voice in the water, but it was not comforting, though more stirring, commanding, and world wise. For the sea knows all! the stars in the night trust to it the most hidden secrets of the heavens; in its depths lie, with fabulous sunken riches, the ancient sayings of the earth; on all coasts it listens with a thousand curious wave-ears, and the rivers that flow down to it bring all the news that they have gathered far inland, and the prattle of the little brooks and mountain springs. When the sea has revealed to one its secrets, and whispered to one's heart the great worldredemption word, then farewell rest! farewell still dreams! farewell novels and comedies which I began so eagerly, but now must continue with difficulty! Since then the golden angel-tints have dried upon my palette, and there remains only a loud liquid red that looks like blood, and with which red lions are painted. Yes; on my next book there will be a red lion, which the esteemed public, after the above confessions, will please excuse. It is perhaps hardly needful to refer to Heine's love-disappointment as furnishing the chief material of his passionate love-songs. The editors of his recently published letters to Herr Kolb in the Deutsches Montags-Blatt say: "His love-disappointment was his poetry; his adventures became famous as travel-pictures, and in his collected works he gave us not only his creations, but himself." To illustrate this point fully, we should have to reprint one-half of his songs which are the imaginative utterance of his early blighted love. It is the one note in such pieces as— and or in In meiner Brust, da sitzt ein Weh, Aus meinen grossen Schmerzen, Mach' ich die kleinen Lieder; Ein Jüngling liebt ein Mädchen, with its wonderful and oft-quoted closing stanza, It is the old, old story, That still is ever new, And aye when one goes through it, It breaks the heart in two.1 There is another piece, so characteristic and expressive in this light, that we must give a translation of it, UND WÜSSTEN'S DIE BLUMEN, DIE KLEINEN. Oh, did the flowers but know How deep is the wound in my heart, To heal my sorrowful smart. If the nightingales but knew And if my sore, sore woe The golden stars could see, They would come down from their high place Ah! these can know it not, But one my grief may know'Tis she who broke my heart, And brought me all this woe.2 It is still the same in the exquisite or in Mein Herz, mein Herz ist traurig, Wir träumte wieder der alte Traum, Es ist ein' alte Geschichte Und wem sie just passieret, Dem bricht das Herz entzwei. 2 Und wüssten's die Blumen, die kleinen, Sie würden mit mir weinen Zu heilen meinen Schmerz. Und wüssten's die Nachtigallen, Und wüssten sie mein Wehe, Und sprächen Trost mir ein. Die alle können's nicht wissen, Nur eine kennt meinen Schmerz: Sie hat ja selbst zerrissen, Zerrissen mir das Herz. and, indeed, in scores of others; but we cannot pass from this point without quoting one further morsel, which for grace and subtle suggestiveness is perhaps not surpassed in any literature: Say, where is the lovely maiden, All the flames are now extinguished, The ashes of my love doth hold.' There is another element which has a bearing on this more direct than might appear at first sight-his confession of solitude, which is very characteristic. In spite of his raillery, his wild fun, his reactionary need for society, he was solitary; notwithstanding his perverse way of joking, he acknowledges the awfulness of this solitude in many ways. It often recurs, but this is perhaps one of the most striking expressions of it : I will cite you a passage from the "Chronicle of Limburg." This chronicle is very interesting for those who desire information about the manners and customs of the middle ages in Germany. It describes, like a Journal des Modes, the costumes both of men and women as they came out at the time. It gives also notices of the songs that were piped and sung each year, and the first lines of many a love ditty of the day are there preserved. Thus, in speaking of A.D. 1480, it mentions that in that year, through the whole of Germany, songs were piped and sung sweeter and more lovely than all the measures hitherto known in German lands, and that old and young-especially the ladies-went into such raptures over them, that they were heard to sing them from morning to night. Now, these songs (the Chronicle goes on to say) were written by a young clerk who was affected with leprosy, and who dwelt in a secret hermitage apart from all the world. You know, dear reader, what a frightful malady this leprosy was in the middle ages; and how the poor creatures who fell under this incurable evil were driven forth from all society, and allowed to come near no human creature. Dead-alive they wandered forth, wrapt up from head to foot, the hood drawn over the face, and carrying in the hand a kind of rattle, called the Lazarusclapper, announcing their presence by it, so that every one might get out of their 'Sag, wo ist dein schönes Liebchen, Jene Flammen sind erloschen, Mit der Asche meiner Liebe. way in time. This poor clerk, of whose fame as poet and songster this "Chronicle of Limburg" has spoken, was just such a leper, and he sat desolate in the solitude of his sorrow, while all Germany, joyful and exultant, sang and piped his songs. Many a time in the mournful visions of my nights I see before me the poor clerk of "The Chronicle of Limburg," my brother in Apollo, and his sad suffering eyes stare strangely at me from under his hood; but at the same moment he seems to vanish, and clanging through the distance, like the echo of a dream, I hear the sharp rattle of the Lazarus-clapper. Another idea that often occurs in Heine is the palm as a symbol of the ideal, which alone can meet the unsatisfied aspirations of the soul. His love for the palm, indeed, may be regarded as indicative of his race. He is in this thoroughly Jew-like-Oriental. He is as one who hath dreamed sweet dreams under the palm at noonday, and the impression of delight never fades from the imagination. "Under the palm" is for him reconciliation-repose; distance is annihilated; the Orient, with its rich colour and glow, is no longer unattainable, since it is easily reached through the doorway of dreams. "Ein Fichtenbaum steht einsam" is perhaps the most effective utterance of this aspiration: There sleeps a lonely fir tree 'Mid the cold of a northern height, Of a palm it still is dreaming That on a burning hill-side Doth lone and silent stand.' That is all. The two points-the cold reality and the warm sunny ideal-are brought into association, and the imagination confesses that it is sufficient. At the close of that exquisite lyric titled "Auf Flügeln des Gesanges," in which he summons his love to the land of the sunwhere the lotus waits the coming of its sisterling, and the timid 1 Ein Fichtenbaum steht einsam Er träumt von einer Palme, Auf brennender Felsenwand, gazelle, light of foot, bounds through the trees-for the full fruition of the love-dream we have this stanza : There will we, softly sinking Beneath the palm-tree's shade, Dream dreams that will not fade.' And in that pathetic posthumous piece, which doubtless was written near the close, and not published till thirteen years after Heine's death, we have the same suggestion of the palm which had haunted him in his earlier days :- Where will end my weary journey— Shall I lie in some far desert, Laid to rest by stranger hand? Shall I sleep upon a barren Sea-shore, underneath the sand? What care I? since God's fair heaven Will be o'er me there as here; And the stars, like death-lamps swaying, Through the night will shine as clear.2 And this is but a versified edition of what he had already given with such touching grace in prose, in the fourth book of "Das Buch le Grand " :— The great pulse of nature finds a response in my breast, and when I shout for joy, I am answered by a thousandfold echo. I hear a thousand nightingales; spring hath sent them to waken the earth from her morning slumber, and the earth trembles for joy; her flowers are the hymns with which, in her inspiration, she greets the sun. The sun moves all too slowly, and I yearn to whip her fire-horses to a wilder career. But when he sinks hissing into the sea, and night arises with her longing eye, oh, then voluptuous joy quivers through me; the evening breezes play about my beating heart like fondling maidens, and the stars beckon me, and I arise and soar forth over the little earth and the little thoughts of man. But a day will come when the fire in my veins will be burnt out; then winter will dwell in my breast; her white flakes will cluster sparsely round my forehead, 'Dort wollen wir niedersinken Unter dem Palmenbaum, Und Lieb' und Ruhe trinken, Und träumen seligen Traum. In this case I have availed myself of the admirable version of my friend Mr. J. Snodgrass, jun. It appears in his "Wit, Wisdom, and Pathos from the Writings of Heinrich Heine." |