Heinrich Heine

“ What vexes me most is the reflection that Arthur Wellington will be as immortal as Napoleon Bonaparte. It is true that in like manner the name of Pontius Pilate is as little likely to be forgotten as that of Christ. Wellington and Napoleon! It is a wonderful phenomenon that the human mind can at the same time think of both these names. There can be no greater contrast than these two, even in their external appearance. Wellington, the dull ghost, with an ashy grey soul in a buckram body, a wooden smile on his freezing face—and by the side one thinks of the figure of Napoleon, every inch a god! ”

“ Dear bride, wherefore stand’st thou so pale and so dumb?
The parson to join us together has come;
Full dear, dear as blood, is the fee I must pay,
And yet to possess thee is merely child’s play.
Kneel down, my sweet bride, by my side prythee kneel
She kneels and she sinks,—O what rapture I feel!—
She sinks on my heart, on my fast-heaving breast;
With shuddering pleasure I hold her close press’d.
Like billows her golden locks circle the pair,
’Gainst my heart beats the heart of the maiden so fair
They beat with a union of sorrow and love,
And soar to the regions of heaven above.{33} ”

“ It is horrible when the bodies which we have created ask of us a soul. But it is still more horrible, more terrible, more uncanny, to create a soul, which craves a body and pursues us with that demand. The idea which we have thought is such a soul, and it allows us no peace until we have given it a body, until we have brought it into actual being. The thought seems to become deed; the word, flesh. And, strange! man, like the God of the Bible, needs but to speak his thought, and the world shapes itself accordingly: light dawns, or darkness descends ”

“ How blooming, rose-like, pure ringing, is her every thought and saying, how glowing with joy her every word, how beautiful all the figures of her phrases, which are mostly from the mythology. And how dismal, sharp, pinching, and ugly are, on the contrary, the thoughts and utterances of Shylock, who employs only similes from the Old Testament. His wit is cramped and corroding, he seeks his metaphors amid the most repulsive subjects, and even his words are discords squeezed together, shrill, hissing, and whirring. As the people, so their homes. ”

“ German women!
What a charm the words convey!
German women! German women!
Flourish on for many a day!
All our daughters like Louisa,
All our sons like Frederick be!
Hear me in the grave, Louisa!
Ever flourish Germany!
DREAM. 1816.
Son of folly, dream thou ever,
When thy thoughts within thee burn;
But in life thy visions never
To reality will turn.
Once in happier days chance bore me
To a high mount on the Rhine;
Smiling lay the land before me,
Gloriously the sun did shine.
Far below, the waves were singing
Wild and magic melodies ”

“ From the gods, and bestowed it upon man.
And tortured by eagles chained to the rock,
Olympus-high he flung defiance, flung defiance and groaned,
Till we heard it in the depths of the sea,
And came to him with the song of consolation.
Oh fool, thou fool, thou boasting fool!
Thou, however, art more impotent still.
'Twere more seemly that thou shouldst honor the gods,
And patiently bear the burden of misery,
And patiently bear it, long, so long,
Till Atlas himself would lose patience,
And cast from his shoulders the ponderous world
Into eternal night. ”

“ Our poetry, said the Schlegels, is superannuated; our muse is an old and wrinkled hag; our Cupid is no fair youth, but a shrunken, grey-haired dwarf. Our emotions are withered; our imagination is dried up: we must re-invigorate ourselves. We must seek again the choked-up springs of the naïve, simple poetry of the middle ages, where bubbles the elixir of youth. When the parched, thirsty multitude heard this, they did not long delay. ”

“ It is lucky for us that Shakespeare came just at the right time, that he was a contemporary of Elizabeth and James, while Protestanism, it is true, expressed itself in the unbridled freedom of thought which prevailed, but which had not yet entered into life or feeling, and the kingdom lighted by the last rays of setting chivalry still bloomed and gleamed in all the glory of poetry. True, the popular faith of the Middle Ages, or Catholicism, was gone as regarded doctrine, but it existed as yet with all its magic in men's hearts, and held its own in manners, customs, and views. ”

“ He makes the mighty Ganges
Down from the heavens descend.
But I, my loved one, am vainly
Tormented and stricken with woe;
From out of thine heavenly eyelids
No drops of pity e’er flow.
2.
Four-and-twenty hours I still must
Wait, to see my bliss complete,
As her sidelong glances tell me,
Glances, O how dazzling sweet!
Language is but inexpressive,
Words are awkward and in vain;
Soon as they are said, the pretty
Butterfly flies off again.
But a look may last for ever,
And with joy may fill thy breast,
Making it like some wide heaven,
Full of starry rapture blest. ”

“ The most harrowing forms of human madness Aristophanes exhibits only in the laughing mirror of wit; Goethe only presumes to set forth the fearful pain of thought comprehending its own nothingness in the doggerel of a puppet show; and Shakespeare puts the most deadly lamentation over the misery of the world into the mouth of a fool, who rattles his cap and bells in agony.
They have all learned from the great First Poet, who, in his World Tragedy in thousands of acts, knows how to carry humour to the highest point, as we see every day. ”

“ Drummer Jack!—drum, drum. Danger! danger! Drummer Jack!"
From without resounded the deep beery voice of Drummer Jack, "Tausend donner sacrament! The devil take the Jews. That's the third time to-day that you've woke me out of a sound sleep, Nose Star! Don't make me mad! For when I am mad I'm the howling old devil himself; and then as sure as I'm a Christian I'll up with my gun and shoot slap through the grated window of your tower—and then it'll be, old fellow, everybody look out for his nose!" ”

“ They ne’er were disfigured by fever’s attack,
They die with a joyous demeanour,
And gladly are welcomed at her sad court
By Proserpine, hell’s Czarina.
O how I envy a fate like theirs!
Seven years I daily languish
For death, as on the ground I writhe
In bitter and speechless anguish.
O God! my agony shorten, that I
May be buried,—my sole ambition.
Thou knowest that I no talent possess
For filling a martyr’s position.
I feel astonished, gracious Lord,
At a course so unconsequential;
Thou madest a joyous poet, without
That joy that is so essential. ”

“ So truly and so deeply had they comprehended equality. Even at the present day in Franconia and in Suabia we see traces of this doctrine of equality, and a shuddering reverence of the Holy Spirit creeps over the wanderer when he sees in the moonshine the dark ruins of the days of the Peasant's War. It is well for him, who, in sober, waking mood, sees naught besides; but if one is a "Sunday child"—and every one familiar with history is that—he will also see the high hunt in which the German nobility, the rudest and sternest in the world, pursued their victims. ”

“ Fortunately the interval was not long, else my musical fur-dealer had certainly involved me in a tiresome talk on art. Paganini set his violin leisurely to his chin, and with the first touch of his bow, there began again the wondrous transfiguration of tones. But now they were neither so startling in colour or so marked in form. They came forth calmly, majestically, waving and rising like those of an organ choral in a cathedral; and all the surroundings seemed to have expanded to a colossal space, such as no bodily vision but only the eye of the spirit can grasp. ”

“ Yet man is with vexation
Oft fill’d by truth. If nightingale and rose
The feeling only feign’d, the fabrication
Would still be useful, we may well suppose.
21.
Because I love thee, be not scornful,
If, flying, I avoid thy face;
How ill accords my visage mournful
With thine, so fair and full of grace!
Because I love thee, every feature
Grows pale and thinner day by day;
Thou’lt find me but a hideous creature,—
I’ll shun thee,—be not scornful, pray.
22.
I wander ’mid the flowers,
And blossom with them too;
I wander as in vision,
And at each step totter anew. ”

“ The chain of the sword rattled under the Spaniard's cloak, his cheeks became deadly white, his upper lip twitched as with scorn in which there was pain, and angry death grinned in his eyes as in an utterly changed, ice-cold, keen voice he said:—
"Senor Rabbi, you know me. Well, then, you know also who I am. And if the fox knows that I belong to the blood of the lion, let him beware and not bring his fox-beard into danger of death, nor provoke my anger. Only he who feels like the lion can understand his weakness." ”

“ It is not my fault that German philosophy is just the reverse of that which until now we have called piety and fear of God, and that our latest philosophers have proclaimed absolute atheism to be the last word of German philosophy. Relentlessly and with bacchantic recklessness they tore aside the blue curtain from the German heavens, and cried, "Behold! all the gods have flown, and there above sits only an old spinster with leaden hands and sorrowful heart—Necessity." ”

“ In ocean’s depths is sitting,
Beside his lovely water-fay;
The years are over him flitting.
By water-sprite’s magical arts chain’d down,
He is neither living nor dead now,
And while in this state of baneful bliss
Two hundred years have sped now.
The head of the king is laid on the lap
Of the beautiful woman, and ever
He yearningly gazes up tow’rd her eyes,
And looks away from her never.
His golden hair is silver grey,
His cheekbones (of time’s march a token)
Project like a ghost’s from his yellow face,
His body is wither’d and broken. ”

“ Paris is not only the chief city of France, but of the whole civilised world, and is the rendezvous of its intellectual celebrities. All is here assembled which is great by love or hate, by feeling or thought, by knowledge or ability, by fortune or adversity, by the future or the past. When we consider the assembly of famous or distinguished men who meet here, Paris may be regarded as a Pantheon of the living. A new art, a new religion, a new life is here created, and the creators of a new world are here in joyous action together. ”

“ The Christian life during the middle ages is for the poet a rich, inexhaustible store-house of precious materials. Only through Christianity could, in this world, such varied phases arise—contrasts so striking, sorrows so diverse, beauties so strange, that one is inclined to believe that they never did exist in reality, and that all was but a colossal fever-dream, a delirious fantasy of an insane God. ”

“ But how it happen’d, I ne’er could discover;
Yet since that beauteous garland they stole,
My spirit has seem’d deprived of its soul.
The ghosts of the world, with looks dimly staring,
Gaze on me, and heaven seems barren and glaring,
A churchyard blue, its deities gone;
I roam in the forest, depress’d and alone.
From the forest have vanish’d the elves with their graces
Horns hear I, and yelping of dogs in their places;
While hid in the thicket, the trembling roe
Is licking her wounds with tearful woe.
And where are the mandrakes? ”

“ Now Napoleon is dead and lies well closed in his leaden coffin under the sands of Longwood on the island of Saint Helena. All round him spreads the sea. Therefore you have nothing to fear. Nor need you fear the last three gods who yet remain in heaven, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; for you are on good terms with their holy following. Nothing have you to fear, for you are powerful and wise. You have gold and muskets, and all that is for sale you can buy, and what is mortal you can kill. Your wisdom is equally irresistible. ”

“ Than mid the infinite host of long-vanished mortals be ruler."
Yes, when Major Duvent challenged the great Israel Lyon to fight with pistols and said to him, "If you do not meet me, Mr. Lyon, you are a dog;" the latter replied, "I would rather be a live dog than a dead lion!" and he was right. I have fought often enough, Madame, to dare to say this—God be praised! I live! Red life pulses in my veins, earth yields beneath my feet, in the glow of love I embrace trees and statues, and they live in my embrace. Every woman is to me the gift of a world. ”

“ Thou’rt my loved one’s image, stream
Blissful is her smile’s seduction,
Kind and gentle can she seem.
8.
First methought in my affliction,
I can never stand the blow.—
Yet I did—strange contradiction!
How I did, ne’er seek to know.
9.
With rose and cypress and tinsel gay,
I fain would adorn in a charming way
This book, as though a coffin it were,
And in it my olden songs inter.
O, could I but bury love also there!
On love’s grave grows rest’s floweret fair;
’Tis there ’tis pluck’d in its sweetest bloom,—
For me ’twill not blossom till in my tomb. ”

“ Yes, when one was in society with him, and he like a public executioner broke the poor French words on the wheel, and without sign or trembling dealt out a tremendous coq à l'âne, one felt as if the very world must split as with a thunder-crack. A deathly stillness then spread over the entire hall, for death himself seemed to be painting terror on every face with chalk and cinnabar; ladies knew not whether they should faint or fly; men looked in sudden amazement at their breeches to realise that they really wore such things ”

“ At times a feeling steals o'er the reader as if he lay comfortably stretched upon a Persian carpet, smoking a long Turkish pipe, filled with the yellow tobacco of Turkestan, while a negress slave gently waves over him a variegated fan of peacock feathers, and a handsome boy serves a cup of Mocha coffee—the sweetest and most blissful sense of life and its pleasures has Goethe expressed in these verses—in verses so dainty, so felicitous, so airy, so ethereal, that one is lost in astonishment that such things are possible in the German language. ”

“ Of noxious creatures, of bugs in short,
Who treat us as though their comrades were we,
Because in the selfsame mud we be.
Of this complain’d old Virgil’s scholar,
The poet of exile and hell, with choler.
I think with grief of the happier time,
When I in my glory’s well-winged prime
In my native ether was playing,
On sunny flowers was straying.
From rosy calixes food I drew,
Was thought of importance, and wheeling flew
With butterflies all of elegance rare,
And with the cricket, the artist fair.
But since my poor wings I happen’d to burn,
To my fatherland now I ne’er can return ”

“ The delightful and apt excuses of a Frenchman who, on the day of my arrival, had by accident run against me in the street, sounded to me like the melodies of Rossini. I was almost frightened at such sweet politeness, I who was accustomed to German boorish knocks in the ribs without a word of apology. During my first week in Paris I sought intentionally to be run against by people, that I might enjoy this apologetic music. But it is not merely from politeness, but owing to their language itself, the French people have a peculiar coating of eminent refinement. ”

“ I call’d the devil, and he came,
And with wonder his form did I closely scan;
He is not ugly, and is not lame,
But really a handsome and charming man.
A man in the prime of life is the devil,
Obliging, a man of the world, and civil;
A diplomatist too, well skill’d in debate,
He talks right glibly of church and state.
He’s rather pale, but it’s really not strange,
For his studies through Sanskrit and Hegel range.
Fouqué is still his favourite poet;
But criticism he’ll touch no more,
But has handed that subject entirely o’er
To his grandmother Hecate, that she may know it. ”

“ With the exception of Romeo and Juliet and Othello, no play by Shakespeare has inspired any composer of any note to any great creation. The value of those sweetly sounding flowers which sprung from the exulting nightingale heart of Zingarelli I need not praise, any more than those sweetest sounds with which the swan of Pesaro sung the bleeding tenderness of Desdemona, and the black flames of her lover! Painting, and especially the arts of design, have still more scantily sustained the fame of our poet. ”

“ In phosphorescent blue vapour all veil’d,
While the billows are joyously whirling.
Not a sail on the slave-ship is fluttering now,
As though without tackle she’s lying;
But lanthorns are glimmering high on the decks
Where the dance with the music is vying.
The cook of the vessel is playing the flute,
The steersman’s playing the fiddle,
The trumpet is blown by the Doctor himself,
And a lad beats the drum in the middle.
A hundred niggers, both women and men,
Are yelling and whirling and leaping,
As though they were mad; and at every spring
Their irons the tune are keeping. ”

“ A part in life and its circle fair,
That I belong to death’s kingdom dreary,
Yes, I, a corpse unburied and weary.
How happy was I when erst I saw
The dance of rats at the Opera!
But now I hear the odious scuffling
Of churchyard rats and grave-moles shuffling.
The scent of the flowers recalls again
A perfect ballet, a joyous train
Of recollections perfumed and glowing,
From the hidden depths of the past o’erflowing,
To sound of cornet and castanet,
In spangled dresses (full short, I regret) ,—
Yet all their toying, each laugh, each titter,
Can only render my thoughts more bitter. ”

“ But in the features of the man I recognised Paganini, ideally beautified, celestially refined, atoned for divinely, and smiling. This body was fresh and fair in vigorous manliness; a light-blue garment was about his now far nobler limbs, the black hair flowed in shining locks on his shoulders, and as he stood there, firm and confidently, like the sublime statue of a god, and played the violin, it seemed as if all creation obeyed his tones. He was the man-planet round whom the universe moved, ringing with measured joy and in happy rhythm. ”

“ On our much-loved German land.
All our faith and virtue soiling,
All our heavenly yearnings fled,
All we deemed of worth, despoiling,—
Giving sin and pain instead.
German shame to gild refusing,
Dark the German sun soon grew,
And a mournful voice accusing
Pierced the German oak trees through.
Now the sun once more is glancing,
And the oak trees roar with joy;
The avengers are advancing,
Shame and sorrow to destroy.
And deceit’s proud altars hateful
Totter, fall with hideous sound;
Every German heart is grateful,
Free is German holy ground.
See’st the glare yon mount illuming? ”

“ I’ll tell you all the history
Of the other wonders that came to pass
In that long night of mystery.
The olden hypocritical race,
Thank heaven, is rapidly dying;
To the grave it is sinking, and owes its death
To its ceaseless habit of lying.
Another race is rising up fast,
By rouge and by sin untarnish’d,
Of genial humour and thoughts,—to it
I’ll tell my story unvarnish’d.{378}
The youth which the poet’s goodness and pride
Appreciates, puts forth its blossom,
And warms itself at his radiant soul,
And against his feeling bosom. ”

“ While I lay on hard mattresses, sleepless all night,
In my exile far over the billows!
One sleeps so well, and one dreams so well
In our featherbeds delicious;
The German spirit here feels itself free
From all earth’s fetters pernicious.
It feels itself free, and upward soars
To the highest regions Elysian;
O German Spirit, how proud is the flight
Thou takest in nightly vision!
The gods turn pale, when thou drawest nigh;
When soaring tow’rds heaven’s dominions,
Thou hast snuff’d out the light of many a star,
With the strokes of thine eager pinions. ”

“ But when on the rocky summit at last,
Thou’lt hear the eagle scream proudly.
An eagle thyself thou’lt seem to be,
New life the change will bestow thee;
Thou’lt feel thou hast lost, when thus set free,
Not much in the world below thee.
5. WINTER.
The cold may burn us sadly
Like fire, and mortals hurry
Amidst the snowdrift madly,
With still-increasing flurry.
O winter stern and chilly,
When frozen are our noses,
And piano-strumming silly
Our ears so discomposes!
I like the summer only
When in the wood I’m roving
With my own griefs all-lonely,
And scanning verses loving. ”

“ Thou ne’er must discourse of Germany, dearest,—
It spoils my digestion,—there’s plenty of reason.
With Germany leave me in peace, I implore thee,
Thou must not torment me with question on question
Of home and relations and manner of living,—
There’s plenty of reason,—it spoils my digestion.
The oaks there are green, and blue are the dear eyes
Of German women; they sigh as they please on
The blisses of love and of hope and religion,—
It spoils my digestion,—there’s plenty of reason. ”

“ From giants’ caverns and nymphs’ embraces,
Follow’d him down to Cimmerian night,
And in tempest and shipwreck,
And with him endured unspeakable torments.
Sighing spake I: “Thou wicked Poseidon,
“Thine anger is fearful;
“I myself am anxious
“As to my own return.”
Scarce breath’d I these words,
When the sea foam’d on high,
And out of the snowy billows arose
The sedge-becrowned head of the seagod,
And scornfully cried he:
“Fear not, little poet! ”

“ But if thou hast nothing, friend,
Go and hang thyself this minute;
Only they who’ve aught on earth
Have a claim for living in it.
2. RETROSPECT.
I’ve snuff’d at every smell that has birth
In this delightful kitchen of earth;
Each thing that the world contains that’s delicious
Have I enjoy’d like a hero ambitious;
I’ve drunk my coffee, and eaten with zest,
And many a charming doll caress’d,
Worn silken waistcoats and handsome coats,
And had my pockets well lined with notes;
The high horse, like Gellert the poet, I rode,
Had house and castle all à-la-mode. ”

“ Lute’s soft strains and pigmy music
From the mountain’s clefts would burst,
And a flowering wood shoot from them
As in joyous spring-time erst.
Flowers, all-hardy magic flowers,
Leaves of size so fabulous,
Fragrant, varied, hasty-quiv’ring,
As though passion stirr’d them thus.
Roses, wild as flames all-glowing,
Dart from out the mass like gems;
Lilies, like to crystal arrows,
Upward shoot tow’rd heaven their stems.
And the stars, like suns in greatness
Downward gaze with yearning glow;
In the lily’s giant-calix
They their gushing radiance throw. ”

“ A rosy bodice her bosom conceal’d.
She gave me soon a rich golden store,
To a golden cottage the prize I bore;
Strange goings-on in the cottage I found,—
Small elves are dancing in graceful round.
Twelve dancers are dancing, and taking no rest,
And closely their hands together are press’d;
And soon as a dance has come to a close,
Another begins, and each merrily goes.
And the music they dance to thus sounds in my ear:
“The happiest of hours will ne’er reappear,
“The whole of thy life was only a dream,
“And this hour of pleasure a dream within dream.” ”

“ The nightingale sings.
I seek for a heart that like my heart is tender,
And like it springs.
The nightingale sings; his sweet song, void of gladness,
Comes home to my breast;
We’re both so oppress’d and heavy with sadness,
So sad and oppress’d.
5.
Sweet May hath come to love us,
Flowers, trees, their blossoms don;
And through the blue heavens above us
The rosy clouds move on.
The nightingales are singing
On leafy perch aloft;
The snowy lambs are springing
In clover green and soft.
I cannot be singing and springing,
Ill in the grass I lie ”

“ The angels, all well-drunken and singing;
The glowing sun high up in the heavens
Is nought but the red and drunken nose
Which the World-Spirit sticks out,
And round the World-Spirit’s red nose
Whirleth the whole of the drunken world.
12. EPILOGUE.
As on the plain shoot up the wheatstalks
So do the thoughts in the spirit of man
Grow up and waver;
But the gentle thoughts of the poet
Are as the red and blue-colour’d flowers
Merrily blooming between them.
Red and blue-colour’d flowers! ”