Wunderhorn: "Dieses Buch kann ich nicht genug rühmen; es enthält die holdseligsten Blüthen des deutschen Geistes, und wer das deutsche Volk von einer liebenswürdigen Seite kennen lernen will, der lese diese Volkslieder." And again he says: "In diesen Liedern fühlt man den Herzschlag des deutschen Volkes." 1

HEINE'S RELATIONS TO THE ROMANTICISTS

The Romanticists of the Heidelberg school resuscitated the Volkslied and based their own poetry upon it. Here they were the forerunners of Heine. At the same time they sought the springs of poetry in a vague mediaevalism, which in the long run was bound to prove unsatisfactory to a poet with a message of his own. But, to begin with, Heine's attitude to

the Romantic School is one of unbounded admiration. Even the morbidity of Hoffmann attracted him, but very soon he shook himself free from his influence. In a letter of November

"2

27, 1823, he writes: "Hoffmanns Nachlaßfratzen hab' ich gelesen und bin fast seekrank davon geworden." In this there is a tone of healthy revolt. To Bürger, a forerunner of the Romanticists, he owed not a little in the form of the Traumbilder and the poetical idea which has been immortalized in "Lenore." "8 Uhland's ballads, too, were favourite readings of his youth, as he himself tells us in the Romantische Schule:

"Vor zwanzig Jahren, ich war ein Knabe, ja damals, mit welcher überströmender Begeisterung hatte ich den vortrefflichen Uhland zu feiern vermocht ! Damals empfand ich seine Vortrefflichkeit vielleicht besser als jetzt; er stand mir näher an Empfindung und Denkvermögen. Aber so vieles hat sich seitdem ereignet ! Was mir so herrlich dünkte, jenes chevalreske und katholische Wesen, jene Ritter, die im adligen Turnei sich hauen und stechen, jene sanften Knappen und sittigen Edelfrauen, jene Nordlandshelden und Minnesänger, jene Mönche und Nonnen, jene Vätergrüfte mit Ahnungsschauern, jene blassen Entsagungsgefühle mit Glockengeläute und das ewige Wehmuthsgewimmer, wie bitter ward es mir seitdem verleidet!" 4

With admirable clearness Heine here describes his attitude in 1835 to the Romantic world in which Uhland revelled. He admired particularly Uhland's "Der Schäfer," and the heroes

1 Die Romantische Schule (Werke, v. pp. 310, 311).

2 Briefe, p. 406.

3 See Tr. ii. (note) and Heim. xxii. 4 Die Romantische Schule (Werke, v. p. 344).

J

of his own early Romanzen are of this passive, sentimental type As poets of love and nature, however, the two have little in common.1 Novalis was admired by Heine and they touch each other in their despondency, but there were elements in Novalis, his mysticism and religious yearning, which were beyond Heine's reach. He found a more congenial spirit in Tieck, from whom much of the " Naturbeseelung" of the Intermezzo and the Heimkehr may well have been derived. From Wilhelm Müller, whom he names along with Uhland,2 Heine derived especially suggestions of form. He thought Müller even more successful than Uhland in catching the naturalness of the Volkston:

"Er erkannte tiefer den Geist der alten Liedesformen und brauchte sie daher nicht äußerlich nachzuahmen; wir finden daher bei ihm ein freieres Handhaben der Übergänge und ein verständiges Vermeiden aller veralteten Wendungen und Ausdrücke." "3

From about 1821 onwards this was distinctly the attitude which Heine adopted towards the characteristic forms of the Volkslied.

Clemens Brentano was one of the few Romanticists whom Heine continued to admire in later years. From Brentano's Godwi he may first have become acquainted with the legend of the Lorelei. He was indebted to Brentano, as also to Arnim, particularly in connexion with Des Knaben Wunderhorn. But in another respect, that of ironical destruction of the poetical illusion, Brentano's example was undoubtedly of great influence. Much light was thrown upon this subject by A. Kerr, who has traced the peculiarity in question back through Jean Paul to Laurence Sterne.5 In both, he says, the reader is suddenly plunged out of the hot bath of sentiment into the cold bath of frosty satire) Richter confesses his indebtedness to Sterne in the twenty-third chapter of his Siebenkäs. From Brentano Kerr quotes the situation of Godwi at the castle Eichenwehen; he falls into melancholy Ochsenbein (Die Auf

1 See notes to Tr. i. and Lyr. Inter. iv., lviii. nahme Lord Byrons in Deutschland, Bern, 1905, p. 142) finds Uhland's influence also in "Die Weihe" and "Die weiße Blume."

2 Die Romantische Schule (Werke, v. p. 350).

3 Ibid. pp. 350 f.

4 E. Thorn has written a thesis on the subject, Heinrich Heines Beziehungen zu Clemens Brentano, Berlin, 1913, but it reveals comparatively little that is new.

5 Alfred Kerr, Godwi: ein Kapitel deutscher Romantik, Berlin, 1908. See further S. Vacano, Heine and Sterne, 1907.

fantasies, but the warder recalls him to reality: "Now, now, Baron, where in the world are you?"—words which recall the ending of Heine's famous Seebild, "Doktor, sind Sie des Teufels?" Other examples of a similar kind are quoted by Otto zur Linde in his excellent study of Heine's relation to the Romantic School.1 And this investigator shows that not only in Brentano, but in Chamisso also, Heine may have found a model for the abrupt change of sentiment.2

Concerning Eichendorff Heine has little to say. From the Romantische Schule, however, it is clear that he knew and appreciated the lyrics which appeared in 1815 in the novel Ahnung und Gegenwart. The bulk of Eichendorff's poetry was not published till 1837 and could, in consequence, not have influenced the Buch der Lieder.3 From Eichendorff's earliest poems Heine certainly derived suggestions. Moreover, as Romanticists and imitators of the Volkslied they have a

4

He

great deal in common in imagery, idea ideas and technique. And it is extremely probable that Eichendorff in his later poems owed not a little to the Buch der Lieder. Heine was on friendly relations with Fouqué in his Berlin years. certainly knew his work and has admitted that he borrowed ideas for some of his poems. But as early as 1823 he began to turn with impatience from what he called Fouqué's "Dunstthum." His friendship with Karl Immermann was established on a firmer basis, for he was indebted to Immermann for encouragement and friendly criticism, while Immermann owed not a little to Heine both on personal and literary grounds.5 In the matter of prosody, especially, we find Heine offering Immermann some very sound advice. This touches a very different field, the extent to which Heine's poetry by its popularity contributed to the transmission of Romantic ideas to later poets of the nineteenth century. His influence on Storm, Heyse, Geibel and Keller would here 1 Otto zur Linde, H. Heine und die Romantische Schule, Freiburg, 1901. 2 See note to Heimkehr, xxv.

3 A fact overlooked by S. Heller in his pamphlets Eichendorffs Einfluß auf Heine, Lemberg, 1898-99. The conclusions arrived at are consequently

very often wrong. See notes to Heimkehr ii. and xvii., and F. Faßbinder's excellent thesis, Eichendorffs Lyrik, 1911.

4 See note to "Donna Clara" and the letter to Fouqué (June 10, 1823; Briefe, p. 375).

5 See Grace M. Bacon's thesis, The Personal and Literary Relations of H. Heine to K. Immermann, 1910.

"See B. Pompecki, Heine and Geibel, Paderborn, 1901. Somewhat diffuse, but containing interesting comparisons.

1

7

come under review. In another way his influence has been even greater in the development of that type of humorous and satirical verse which is usually associated with the comic papers.

Returning, however, to our original theme, the extent to which Heine himself was indebted to the Romanticists, we may, with Otto zur Linde, draw the conclusion that in almost every part of his early work, language, metre, construction, imagery and sentiment, Heine built upon traditional foundations. But a strong reservation, which a thesis like that of zur Linde is apt to make one forget, must here be made. Heine was not only the child of the Romantic School, he was to a large degree its opponent and destroyer. This is particularly evident in his relations to his teacher, Aug. W. von Schlegel. As he put it somewhat vulgarly himself, he gave the schoolmaster a beating after he had run away from the school. In his early youth, and to a certain extent to his dying day, the imaginative world of the Romanticists appealed to him strongly. But he came into literature near the close of the movement. He had the great advantage of being able to compare its lyrical harvest with the mature work of Goethe and of Byron. Some of its tendencies he positively hated, its conservatism in political and social questions and its glorification of a reactionary mediaeval religion. Apart from this there are other causes which explain his revolt. The Romantic tendency to vagueness, the disinclination to look at or to consider the world of reality as it was, were not compatible with Heine's aggressive temperament Moreover, he was too virile a personality for his song to remain a mere echo of traditional sentiment. As George Eliot has said, he is not an echo, but a living voice. The facts of his birth, his character, his experiences and inclinations all drove him into opposition. And it is exactly in this clash between the Romantic inheritance which thrilled his imagination and the craving of his intellect to find a practical expression for his personal feelings that the characteristic essence of Heine's poetry reveals itself. The soul thus unfolded is frequently writhing in dissonance. It is not always so, for in some of his greatest achievements, "Die Grenadiere," "Die Wallfahrt nach Kevlaar," "Die Nordsee," he attained to a remarkable harmony. But the glorious harmony of personality and life so diligently sought and acquired by Goethe was not within his reach. In its 1 George Eliot, Essays and Leaves from a Note-Book, London, 1884. See Appendix III.

ironical tendencies Heine's lyric poetry is the antithesis of Goethe's. That, however, is no reason for immediately passing an adverse verdict. Modern German critics, Dilthey, Witkop, etc., are far too prone to judge all lyrical poetry by the standards of Goethe, whereas, in point of fact, the manifoldness of the German lyric is one of its abiding charms and claims to greatness. And even the disharmony of Heine's ironical outbursts acted as a healthy leaven. As practised by Novalis, Brentano, Uhland, and even Eichendorff, the lyric was in great danger of withering away through sheer anaemia. Heine brought it back to the world of real things and started it anew on the basis of passionate, subjective experience. He was not far from the truth when, in comparing his own school of poetry with the Swabian, to which he is somewhat unjust, he said:

"Sie bewirkte eine heilsame Reaktion gegen den einseitigen Idealismus im deutschen Liede, sie führte den Geist zurück zur starken Realität und entwurzelte jenen sentimentalen Petrarchismus, der uns immer als eine lyrische Donquichotterie erschienen ist.” 1

HEINE AND Goethe

Heine knew Goethe's ballads at an early period, for there are clear reminiscences of "Der Totentanz" and "Hochzeitlied" in the Traumbilder.2 In Berlin, particularly in the salon of Rahel von Varnhagen, he was drawn into a circle of ardent admirers of Goethe. In a letter to Ludwig Robert (November 27, 1823) he remarks: "Sie können kaum glauben, wie artig ich mich jetzt gegen Frau von Varnhagen betrage,―ich habe jetzt, bis auf eine Kleinigkeit, den ganzen Goethe gelesen!!!" 3 He sent Goethe copies of his Gedichte and his Tragödien when they appeared, and took the opportunity of visiting him in the autumn of 1824. The reception does not appear to have been altogether satisfactory, as we see from a letter (July 1, 1825) in which he charges Goethe with egoism, and mentions that on his visit he said "viel Freundliches und Herablassendes to him.1 But his appreciation of Goethe's greatness never wavered. There is a fine passage in Der Salon about Goethe's song:

"Das ist so zart ätherisch, so duftig beflügelt. Ihr Franzosen könnt euch keinen Begriff davon machen, wenn ihr die Sprache nicht kennt. Diese Goetheschen Lieder haben einen neckischen

1 Einleitung zum Don Quichotte (Werke, vii. p. 316).
2 See notes to viii.
3 Briefe, p. 406.

Ibid. p. 456.