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INTRODUCTION

Heine's Buch der Lieder was published in October 1827. The idea of forming a selection of the best of his youthful poetry is first mooted in a letter to Varnhagen von Ense of October 24, 1826:

"Meine ersten Flegeljahre, das 'Intermezzo,' die 'Heimkehr' und zwei Abtheilungen von Seebildern werden einen schönen Band ausmachen, der Anfang und Ende meines lyrischen Jugendlebens enthält."

He begs Varnhagen to say nothing in the meantime about his intention, in view of possible difficulties with Maurer and Dümmler, the publishers respectively of the Gedichte and the Tragödien nebst einem lyrischen Intermezzo. He expects to have many changes to make: "Versteht sich, viele Gedichte werden fortgelassen, viele verändert und viele hinzugefügt."1 In the following month he reveals the project to his friend Friedrich Merckel of Hamburg:

"Einige Freunde dringen darauf, daß ich eine auserlesene Gedichte-Sammlung, chronologisch geordnet und streng gewählt, herausgeben soll, und glauben, daß sie ebenso populär wie die Bürgersche, Goethische, Uhlandsche u.s.w. werden wird." 2

He now anticipates no opposition from Maurer, as he had not received any honorarium for the Gedichte, nor from Dümmler; and any scruples that Campe might have, in view of the recent appearance of the Reisebilder, are to be overcome by conceding the question of a honorarium. He hoped that a cheap edition of the poems would add to his popularity.

1 Briefe, in Heinrich's Heine's Gesammelte Werke, ed. by G. Karpeles, viii., Berlin, 1893, p. 508.

2 Ibid. p. 510.

3 The honorarium amounted to forty-five copies. 4 He subsequently received for the Buch der Lieder one payment of fifty louis d'or, about £37.

"Dieses Buch," he adds, "würde mein Hauptbuch sein und ein psychologisches Bild von mir geben-die trüb-ernsten Jugendgedichte, das' Intermezzo' mit der 'Heimkehr' verbunden, reine blühende Gedichte, z. B. die aus der "Harzreise," und einige neue, und zum Schluß die sämmtlichen kolossalen Epigramme."

In a parenthesis he shows a touch of characteristic pride: "Es wär' keine gewöhnliche Gedichtesammlung." In the following year, after the Buch der Lieder had appeared, he speaks of it with less enthusiasm. Just as formerly when praising the tragedies he spoke of his earliest poems as being "keinen Schuß Pulver werth" (April 10, 1823),2 so now his interests were turning in a different direction. With the two volumes of the Reisebilder he had tasted for the first time the joys of popularity, if not notoriety, and from the example of Byron he had learned that to shock an audience is sometimes the most effective way to obtain its attention. In the descriptive, witty, polemical prose of the Reisebilder, he had found an extremely congenial expression for his genius, an outlet for his enthusiasms, a scourge for his enemies, and he was sailing forth on a new voyage of feuilletonistic adventure which was to carry him at times far from the quiet of the Muses. It was an important turning-point in his life, and the Buch der Lieder is the legacy, as it is the fitting close, of the lyrical activity of his youth and early manhood. It is simply, he says in a letter (Oct. 19, 1827), "eine tugendhafte Ausgabe meiner Gedichte." cherishes no great expectations regarding its future: "Es wird wie ein harmloses Kauffahrteischiff, unter dem Schutze des zweiten Reisebilderbandes, ruhig in's Meer der Vergessenheit hinabsegeln." But this prophecy, if seriously made, and it may well have been in the circumstances, was not fulfilled. The success of the book was remarkable from the first. The Gedichte of Lenau appeared in 1832, those of Eichendorff in 1837 and those of Mörike in 1838, yet none of these collections attracted anything like the same amount of attention. In some respects, both Lenau and Mörike reached lyrical heights unattained by Heine, but neither upon the public nor upon the later lyric have they exercised the same influence as the Buch der Lieder. The latter was more daring and sensational: it charmed while it annoyed. It showed an extraordinary mixture of romantic fancy, tender pathos, reckless wit and biting irony. The boldness of the imagery, the petulant 1 Briefe, p. 511. 2 Ibid. p. 365. 3 Ibid. pp. 526, 528.

He

changes of mood, the earnestness and the frivolity, the wonderful mastery of word and line aroused curiosity, if not admiration. It was not merely the "cunning art," to use the phrase which George Meredith applied to the book. The cunning art was there undoubtedly, but behind it there was, above all, an intense vitality. It was, as it still is, the personality behind the art, that highly-gifted, passionate, petulant, sensual mind in its frank self-revelation, that gripped the heart and held in thrall the understanding, even when taste and feeling bade the reader withhold his sympathy. The first edition was one of five thousand copies. Large new editions were issued in 1837, 1839, 1841 and 1844, each of them revised by the poet. Eight other uncorrected editions appeared during his lifetime, and it has been estimated by a German writer that before 1870 more than two hundred thousand copies of the book had been sold.2 Over the poets of Germany, in particular, Heine has exercised a potent influence. Men so essentially different as Karl Immermann, Ferdinand Freiligrath, Emanuel Geibel, Gottfried Keller, Paul Heyse, Theodor Fontane and Viktor von Scheffel have experienced his influence and paid homage at his shrine, and two of the most effective of modern lyrists, Detlev von Liliencron and Richard Dehmel, reveal developments foreshadowed by Heine in some of the most striking elements of their art.

I

THE FORMATIVE INFLUENCES OF HEINE'S BOYHOOD

The key to Heine's character lies in the story of his life. For his boyhood the fragment of the Memoiren is invaluable, while his correspondence supplies a commentary to the lyrics of much greater importance than has generally been realized. After all, it is only when we study the history of a man, the history of his education and his life, that we are able to grasp some of the principal traits of his character. But it is no mere list of outward events, still less a chronique scandaleuse that is needed. Heine himself points the way when he draws the distinction between an author's life (or what his enemies make of it) and his mental history: "Wie wenig ist oft das

1 Fortnightly Review, 1868, in a review of Lord Lytton's Poems.
2 F. Sintenis, H. Heine. Ein Vortrag, Dorpat, 1877.

äußere Gerüst unserer Geschichte mit unserer wirklichen, inneren Geschichte zusammenpassend! Bei mir wenigstens

paßte sie nie." What we have to seek for, therefore, are the decisive factors in the growth of his mentality. Some of these can be best discussed later, but a few of them lie in his early boyhood, before he began to write poetry at all. Such a potent force was undoubtedly the Napoleonic Empire in the Rhineland, from 1806 to 1814, that is, roughly, from Heine's ninth to his sixteenth year. In a short biographical note written in 1835 he said: "Dans mon enfance j'ai respiré l'air de la France," 2 and during the latter half of his life, as is well known, he found a sympathetic audience and a home in France. With these facts before them some of his critics have asserted that Heine is not a German, that he shows an esprit, a wit, a style which are French. F. Sintenis, for example, used the words, "Heine was not a German, and had no real German education. He had only the German language.' >>3 The education here mentioned, or at least the greater part of it, was received in the Lyceum of Düsseldorf, but it is not at all clear that it was affected very much by French culture. In the Memoiren and the Buch Le Grand1 he describes in a vein of banter his experiences as a schoolboy. He mentions Latin and Greek (there was not much Greek), Hebrew, Science and Geography, Mythology and French. We know further from his brother Maximilian that he acquired in his youth a reading knowledge of English. In his own opinion he succeeded best in French, thanks to the zeal of his teacher, the Abbé d'Aulnoi But when called upon to write verses in French, he obstinately refused. "Ich hätte für Frankreich sterben können," he said, "aber französische Verse machen-nimmermehr!"5 The teacher's prosaic definition of poetry, "l'art de peindre par les images," combined with exercises in translating Klopstock into French alexandrines, very nearly made him hate not only French poetry, but poetry altogether. From his own account it is apparent that Heine was not conscious of having received at school any of the determinating influences of his life, except in one direction. The Lyceum was a Catholic school, while Heine himself was a Jew. And in this Catholic school the first seeds of scepticism were sown in his mind.

1 June 10, 1823. Briefe, p. 378.

2 Heinrich Heine's sämtliche Werke, ed. E. Elster, Leipzig, 1890, vii. 4 Werke, vii. pp. 461 ff., iii. pp. 149 ff.

p. 297.

3 L.c.

5 Ibid. iii. p. 159.

"Es ist gewiß bedeutsam," he says in the Memoiren, "daß mir bereits in meinem dreizehnten Lebensjahr alle Systeme der freien Denker vorgetragen wurden und zwar durch einen ehrwürdigen Geistlichen, der seine sacerdotalen Amtspflichten nicht im geringsten vernachlässigte, so daß ich hier frühe sah, wie ohne Heuchelei Religion und Zweifel ruhig nebeneinander gingen, woraus nicht bloß in mir der Unglauben, sondern auch die toleranteste Gleichgültigkeit entstand."1

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Outside the school the impressions derived from the French occupation were more vivid. The splendour of the Empire, the overthrowing of conventions, constitutions, kingdoms, the genius and power of Napoleon-"diese Lippen brauchten nur zu pfeifen, et la Prusse n'existait plus"-filled the boy with ardent hero-worship. But he had more solid grounds for that admiration of Napoleon which he has expressed so finely in "Die Grenadiere" and in many passages of his prose. To quote a German authority, Ernst Elster, "There is no doubt," he says, "that the democratic French government was in many respects a blessing for the country." He mentions among other things the abolition of serfdom, the conferring of fiefs upon the holders, the removal of the marriage-barrier between nobles and commoners, the simplification of law by the introduction of the Code napoléon and, above all, the abolition of the disabilities of the Jews. Heine was old enough in 1815 to understand what the restoration of the reactionary system of Prussia meant to him and his Jewish friends. As we see from the Buch Le Grand (pp. 157 ff.), his imagination was stirred by the stories and the drumming of Monsieur Le Grand, as he taught him the French language and the great events of recent happening on his drum. But all this, and much of it is not very far below the surface, does not justify us in saying that Heine was more French than German. As we shall see, all the springs of his early poetry up to the publication of the Buch der Lieder are to be sought in Germany. Even his prose, as the Reisebilder show, was fully developed before he left Germany permanently for France. Moreover, we have his own definite assurance in the Memoiren that French literature had little influence upon him.

"Die Franzosen," he says, "die ich kennen lernte, machten mich, ich muß es gestehen, mit Büchern bekannt, die sehr unsauber und mir ein Vorurtheil gegen die ganze französische Litteratur 1 Werke, vii. p. 461. 2 Ibid. iii. p. 159.

3 Biographical introduction to his edition, p. 6.

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