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HEINRICH HEINE'S
MEMOIRS

THE WORKS OF HEINRICH HEINE

Translated (Vols. I. to VIII.) by Charles Godfrey
Leland; (Vol. IX.) by T. Brooksbank ; (Vols. X.
to XII.) by Margaret Armour. Uniformly bound
in twelve volumes. Crown 8vo, Price 6e. each.
Vol. I. Florentine Nights, The Memoirs of

SCHNABELEWOPSKI, THE RABBI OF BACHARACH ;

and Shakespeare's Maidens and Women. —
II. Pictures of Travel, Vol. I. 1823-26. — III.
Pictures of Travel, Vol. II. 1828. — IV. The
Salon, or Letters on Art, Music, Popular
Life and Politics. — V.Germany, Vol. I. — VI.
Germany, Vol. II. — VII. French Affairs,
Letters from Paris, Vol. I. — VIII. French
Affairs, Letters from Paris, Vol. II. Lutetia.
— IX. The Book of Songs. — X. New Poems. —

XI. Germany, Romancero, Books I and II —

XII. Bomancero, Book III. and Last Poems.

THE FAMILY LIFE OF HEINRICH HEINE
Illustrated by 122 hitherto unpublished letters.
Edited by Baron Ludwig von Emdbn and Trans-
lated by Charles Godfrey Leland. In One
Vol. Demy 8vo, with Portraits, Price 6s.

London
WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 BEDFORD ST.,W.C.

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eisze.

HEINRICH HEINE'S
MEMOIRS

FROM HIS WORKS, LETTERS,
AND CONVERSATIONS

EDITED BY GUSTAV KARPELES

ENGLISH TRANSLATION BY

GILBERT CANNAN

IN TWO VOLUMES

VOL. I

WITH PORTRAIT

LONDON
WILLIAM HEINEMANN

1910

v l

op 2

Printed bt

BALLANTYNE & COMPANY LTD.

Tavistock Street Covent Garden

London

PUBLISHERS PREFACE

For many years after Heine's death the rumour was
current that he had left complete memoirs of his
life, and considerable disappointment was felt when only
a small fragment of these was published in 1884 by Dr.
Edward Engel, more especially as this fragment was a
very exquisite piece of intimate self-revelation. Since
then many letters of his have come to light, showing vital
indications of his extraordinary personality and inter-
esting episodes have been related in the writings of
others, notably in Camille Selden's charming recollections
of Heine's last years. There thus exists a mass of
material of a personal kind concerning Heine's life, than
which probably no more intimately pathetic record of
any man of letters could be found in the range of modern
literature; for was there ever a human being so full of
laughter and tears as Heinrich Heine? — from the days
of exuberant youth, filled with love and song, down to
the wretched end in Montmartre.

Some twenty years ago the editor of the present volume
collected a large amount of this material and formed it
into a consecutive, though still imperfect, narrative. In
the intervening years still more isolated facts have come
to light, further correspondence has been published, so

PUBLISHER'S PREFACE

that now, when little, if anything, more can be expected,
a really complete life of the poet appears in these self-
revelations, which, though they were not written as a
consecutive record, form nevertheless memoirs as complete
as if they had been put together by Heine himself.

It is curious that the earlier version, which ran through
several editions, should never have attracted a translator
in England, though one of the early fragmentary editions
was translated in America. This could however anyhow
not suffice to-day in view of the recent publication of the
complete work, and the publishers of these volumes are
persuaded that English and American readers will find this
picture of a great soul in joy and in suffering as irresis-
tible as it appears to Germans.

CONTENTS

BOOK I
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH

(1799-1819)

CHAP. PAGE

Introduction 3

I. Childhood 5
II. At School 1 1

III. My Mother ig

IV. Kith and Kin 22

V. JoSEPHA THE PaLE 47

VI. My First Reading 58

VII. At Frankfort on the Main 63

VIII. Hamburg 65

BOOK II
STUDENT YEARS

(1819-1820)
1. Bonn 77

II. Little Veronica 80
i I) vii

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

III. GoTTINGEN 89

IV. At Berlin 97
V. The Tragedies and the Lyrical Intermezzo 121

VI. At Luneburg 129

VII. The Return Home 133

VIII. Conclusion of the Student Years 142

BOOK III

WANDER YEARS

(1825-1831)

I. The Sea 159

II. The Pictures of Travel 1 67

III. Norderney 179

IV. New Struggles 185
V. London 192

VI. The Book of Songs 200

VII. Autumn Travels 206

VIII. The Political Annals 213

IX. The Italian Journey 221

X. A Summer at Potsdam 230

XI. Count Platen 234

XII. Like in Hamburg 241

XIII. The July Revolution 247
viii

CONTENTS

BOOK IV
IN EXILE

(1831-1848)

CHAPT- ^ T PAOK

I. hmsT Impressions in Paris 261

II. Cholera 272

III. French Affairs 276

IV. Saint-Simonianism 285
V. The Salon 289

VI. The French Translation of the "Travel

Pictures " 296

BOOK I
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH

(1799-1819)

INTRODUCTION

Indeed, dear lady, I have endeavoured to set down as
truthfully and faithfully as may be the memorabilia of
my time in so far as 1 myself in my own person have been
concerned with them as an onlooker or as a victim.

I have however been compelled, partly from tiresome
family considerations, and partly from religious scruples,
almost by one half to destroy these notes to which I have
complacently given the title of " Memoirs."

I have been at some pains meagrely to fill up the gaps
which have appeared, though I am afraid, being constrained
thereto by posthumous obligations or disgust and self-
torment, of delivering up my Memoirs before my demise
to a new auto-da-ft and that what is then spared by the
flames will perhaps never see the light of publicity. . . .

Upon such a confession as this, dear lady, you will
perceive that I cannot, as you would have me, grant you
the privilege of reading my Memoirs and writings.

And yet, being, as I have ever been, a humble courtier of
your gentleness, I cannot altogether deny you anything
that you may ask, and in testimony of my goodwill I am
disposed in another fashion to pacify that passive curiosity
which comes from your tender interest in my lot.

To this intent I have written the following pages, and
you will find those biographical notes which have an
interest for yourself set down quite royally in their fulness.
Everything that is pregnant and characteristic is here

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

faithfully communicated, and the interplay of outward
circumstance and inward happenings of the soul reveals to
you the sign manual of my being. The veil falls from
my soul and you may see it in its lovely nakedness. There
are no stains, only wounds. Ah ! only wounds dealt by
the hands of my friends, not of my enemies !

The night is still. Outside is only the spattering of the
rain on the roofs and the melancholy moaning of the
autumn wind.

My poor sick room is at this moment almost home-like
in its pleasantness, and free from pain I sit in my great
chair.

Enter a fair vision without stirring the latch of the
door, and thou takest thy place on the cushion at my feet.
Lay thy fair head on my knees and listen, but look not up
at me.

I will tell thee the fairy-tale of my life.

If great drops of water fall on thy tresses, give no heed
to them ; it is not the rain oozing through the ceiling.
Weep not, only in silence press my hand.

CHAPTER I
CHILDHOOD

The last moonbeams of the eighteenth and the first
red dawn of the nineteenth century played about my
cradle.

My mother tells how, during her pregnancy, she saw an
apple hanging in some one else's garden but forebore to
take it that her child might not be a thief. Wherefore all
my life long I have had a secret longing for fine apples,
together with a respect for the property of another and a
horror of thieving.

For the date of my birth I set down that, according to
my certificate of baptism, I was born on December 13, 1799,
and at Diisseldorf on the Rhine.

As all our family papers were destroyed by fire at
Hamburg, and as, for reasons that I decline to state, the
date of my birth as it stands in the archives of Diisseldorf
cannot be accurate, the above is alone authentic, and in
any case more authentic than my mother's recollections,
for her decaying memory cannot supply the place of those
lost papers.

Place and time are things of great moment. I was born
at the end of the sceptical eighteenth century, and in a
town where not only the French, but also the genius of
the French, ruled during my childhood : at Diisseldorf on
the Rhine.

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

Yes, dear lady, there was I born, and I make this
observation expressly with an eye on the contingency
that after my death seven towns — Schilda, Krahwinkel,
Polhwitz, Bockum, Dulken, Gottingen, and Schoppenstedt,
may wrangle for the honour of being my native city.
Diisseldorf is a town on the Rhine : 16,000 men and
women live there, and many hundreds of thousands of
men and women besides lie buried there. And among
them are many of whom my mother says that it were
better were they still alive ; for instance, my grandfather
and my uncle, old Hen* de Geldern and young Hen* de
Geldern, who were both such celebrated doctors, and saved
so many men from death, and yet had to die themselves.
And the pious Ursula, who bore me in her arms as a child,
she lies buried there also, and a rose-tree grows on her
grave — she loved the scent of roses in her life, and her
heart was all scent of roses and kindness.

The wise old prebendary, he lies buried there too. Dear
Lord, how wretched he looked when last I saw him. He
was all mind and plasters, and day and night he studied
as though he were anxious lest the worms should find some
ideas too few in his head. Little William lies there too,
and for that I am sorry. We were schoolfellows at the
Franciscans, and played on that side of the monastery
where the Diissel flows between stone walls, and I said :
" William, save the kitten that has fallen into the
water," and bravely he went down to the planks that
lay across the stream, snatched the kitten from the water,
but fell in himself, and when they fished him out he
was drowned dead. The kitten, however, lived for a long
time.

CHILDHOOD

The pearl for the first, for the second the cover

0 William Wisetzki, your life was soon over —
But the kitten, the kitten was saved.

He climbed the plank, but it split asunder,
And drowned he lay in the water under —
But the kitten, the kitten was saved.

We followed his bier ! the boy of our love ;
They laid him where May flowers bloomed above —
But the kitten, the kitten was saved.

Ah, wise were you who a shelter won
Ere the storms of life were well begun —
But the kitten, the kitten was saved.

Ah yes, you were wise to escape so quick ;
You were cured of your ill before you fell sick —
But the kitten, the kitten was saved.

As my years have mounted, more and more

1 have thought of you sadly, and envied you sore —

But the kitten, the kitten was saved.

The town of Dusseldorf is very fine, and when one has
been born there and thinks of it from far away, there is a
power of thought in his head. I was born there, and I
feel now that I must forthwith go home. And when I say
" so home," I mean the Bolkerstrasse and the house where
I was born. This house was, once upon a time, very
remarkable, and I have told the old lady who owns it
that she must not sell it on pain of her life. For the
whole house she would not get so much as the tip that
the green-veiled, gentle Englishwomen give to the maid
when she shows them the room where I first saw the light
of the world, and the hen-coop in which my father used to
confine me when I had stolen grapes, and the brown door

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

on which my mother taught me to write the letters of the
alphabet with chalk. Heavens, dear lady, if I have
become a famous writer, it cost my poor mother trouble
enough !

But my fame sleeps still in the marble quarries of
Carrara. The waste-paper laurels with which my brows
are decked have not yet scattered their scent over all the
world, and, at this time, when the green-veiled English-
women come to Dusseldorf, they leave the famous house
unvisited and go straight to the market-place to see the
colossal black equestrian statue which stands in the middle
of it. This is supposed to represent the Elector John
William. He wears black armour and a heavy hanging
periwig.

He is said to have been a brave man, a great lover of
art, and, even to have been very clever. . . .

In those days Princes were not the harassed fellows they
are now, and their crowns were set firmly on their heads,
growing there, and at night they drew night-caps over
them and slept peacefully ; and peacefully at their feet
slept their people, who, when they awoke in the morning,
said : " Good morning, father! " and the Princes answered :
" Good morning, dear children ! "

But suddenly all that was changed. When we awoke
one morning at Dusseldorf and were about to say " Good
morning, father ! " our father had gone away and in all
the town was nothing but stunned disquiet. Everywhere
was a sort of funeral mood, and the people slunk in silence
to the market-place, and read the long bill on the door of
the council house. It was wild weather and yet the thin
tailor, Kilian, stood in his nankeen jacket, which it was his
habit to wear in the house, and his cotton stockings hung
down so that his bare legs peeped out uneasily, and his thin
8

CHILDHOOD

lips trembled while he muttered to himself the contents of
the placard. An old Palatine pensioner read a little
louder, and at certain words a bright tear trickled down
into his venerable white moustache. I stood by him and
wept with him and asked him why we wept. To this he
answered : " The Elector gives thanks,"1'1 and then he read
further and at the words, " for the approved loyalty of his
subjects," "absolves you from your obligations," he wept the
more. It is a wonderful sight to see so old a man in faded
uniform and with seared soldier's face suddenly brought to
such bitter tears. As we read, the electoral flag was taken
down from the council-house, and everything seemed then
so utterly dreary and it was as though we were awaiting
an eclipse of the sun : the Councillors went about so
downcast and so slowly, and the almighty beadle looked
as though his authority were at an end, and he stood there
calm and indifferent, although Alovsius the Fool strutted
and with crazy grimaces chattered forth the names of the
French generals, while Gumpertz the drunken crook-
back danced about in the gutter and sang : " Ca ira !
Ca ira ! "

I went home and wept, and cried aloud : " The Elector
gives thanks ! " My dear mother was distressed, but I
knew what I knew ; nothing was to be got from me, and I
went weeping to my bed, and in the night I dreamed that
the world was come to an end — the fair flower-gardens and
the green meadows were taken from the ground like carpets
and rolled up ; the beadle climbed a tall ladder and took
the sun down from the heavens ; Kilian the tailor stood by
and said to himself: "I must go home and dress myself
up, for I am dead and am to be buried to-day" — and
darkness grew ; a few stars glimmered wanly, and even
they fell down like yellow autumn leaves. Gradually men

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

and women disappeared, and I, poor child, wandered in
torment until at last I stood before the willow-hedge of a
barren farm, and there I saw a man digging up the earth
with a spade, and by his side an ugly, spiteful woman,
who had something like a human head in her lap ; and it
was the moon, and she laid it with sorrowful care in the
open trench. And behind me stood the Palatine Pen-
sioner sobbing and stuttering : " The Elector gives
thanks.1'

CHAPTER II
AT SCHOOL

The next day the world was restored to order and just
as before there was school, and just as before the lesson
was learned by heart — the Roman kings, the dates, the
nouns in im, the irregular verbs, Greek, Hebrew, Geogra-
phy, German, mental arithmetic — my head whirled with
it — everything had to be learned by heart. And much of
it stood me in good stead in later days. For if I had
never known the Roman kings by heart, it would not have
mattered a straw to me whether Niebuhr had or had not
proved that they never existed. And had I not known those
dates how could I ever have found my way in later days in
Great Berlin where one house is as like another as a drop of
water is to another, or a grenadier to his fellows, and where
it is impossible to find acquaintances unless one has the
number of their house in his head. . . . As I have said,
dates are absolutely essential ; I know men who had no
more than a couple of dates in their head and were able
therefore to find the right houses in Berlin, and are now
professors in ordinary. But for my part I had trouble
with figures ! And with arithmetic my case was even
worse. At my best I was able to grasp subtraction, and
there is a very practical rule for that : " 4 from 3 won't
go, borrow 1 " — but I advise anybody in such a case to

borrow a few pennies more, for you never can tell

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

As for Latin, dear lady, I have not the least idea how
that became so complicated. The Romans would not have
had much time left for the conquering of the world if they
had first had to learn Latin. These fortunate people knew
from their cradles what nouns have the accusative in im.
I, on the contrary, had to learn them by heart in the sweat
of my brow ; but it is just as well that I do know them.
To take an example : If, on July 20, 1825, when I gave a
public disputation in Latin in the Hall at Gottingen —
dear lady, it were well worth your while to have been pre-
sent— I had said sinapem instead of sinapim, the freshers
there might have noticed it, and it would have been my
lasting shame. Vis, hurts, sitis, tussis, cucumis, amussis,
cannabis, sinapis — these words which have made so great a
stir in the world, accomplished the feat of belonging to a
definite class and yet remaining an exception : wherefore I
was wary of them, and that I have them at my finger-tips,
in case of a sudden need of them, is a thought that gives
me inward calm and comfort in many a troubled hour of
life. But, dear lady, the irregular verbs — they are dis-
tinguished from the regular verbs in that they are more
productive of thrashings — they are indeed horribly diffi-
cult. In the dim cloisters of the Franciscan monastery,
not far from the schoolroom there hung at that time a
great crucified Christ of grey wood, a dreary form, that
even now at times strides through my dreams of a night,
and gazes mournfully at me with blank and bloody eyes —
before this I used often to stand and pray : " Thou poor,
thou ever-tormented God, if everything is possible for
Thee, then do thou look to it that I keep the irregular
verbs in my head.,,

Of Greek it is not my intention to speak : for my irrita-
tion would wax too great. The monks of the Middle Ages
12

AT SCHOOL

were not altogether so far short of the truth in maintaining
that Greek was an invention of the Devil. God knows the
suffering which I endured because of it. I was on better
terms with Hebrew, for I had ever a great predisposition
for the Jews, though to this very hour they have not ceased
to crucify my good name ; but I was not so successful with
Hebrew as my watch which had much intimate intercourse
with pawnbrokers, and therefore adopted many Jewish
customs — for instance, it did not go on Saturdays — and
learned the blessed tongue, and even the grammar of it ;
as I often heard to my amazement on sleepless nights,
when it ticked away to itself : katal, katalta, katalti —
kittcl, kittalta, kittalti — pokat, pokadeti — pikt — pik —

Meanwhile I had a firmer grasp of the German tongue.
And that is no child's play. For we poor Germans,
plagued with having soldiers quartered on us, with military
duties, with poll-taxes, and a thousand and one imposts,
have taken upon our shoulders in addition the burden of
the aristocracy, and we torture ourselves with the accusa-
tive and dative. I learned much of the German tongue
from the old rector, Schallmeyer, a fine old clergyman, who
was devoted to me from my childhood on. But I learned
something also from Professor Schramm, who wrote a
book on Eternal Peace, and in his class was for the
most part bothered with my schoolfellows . . .

Writing away in pursuit of a train of thought, and
thinking of all kinds of things by the way, I have un-
wittingly chattered my way into tales of my schooldays,
and I seize the opportunity of showing you. dear lady, how
it was not my fault if I learned so little of geography that
in later life I could not find my way about the world. At
that time, you must know, the French had broken all

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

frontiers, and every day new light was thrown upon the
countries of the map ; what had once been blue had now
suddenly become green ; many were blood red : the souls
of the prescribed school-books were so changed about and
mixed up that never a devil could tell one from another ;
and also the products of the countries were altered —
chicory and beetroot growing where formerly only hares
and young squires a-hunting were to be seen ; even the
characters of the nations were transformed ; the Germans
became pliant, the French ceased to pay compliments, and
the English no more threw their money out of window,
and the Venetians were not clever enough . . .

In short, in such times it is impossible to go very far in
geography.

Things are a little better in natural history, for there
cannot come to pass so many changes in that, and there
are absolutely definite engravings of apes, kangaroos,
zebras, rhinoceroses, &c. With such pictures lingering in
my memory, it very often happened to me in later days
that many human beings seemed at first sight to resemble
my old acquaintances.

Things went well in mythology also. I took very great
pleasure in the rabble of gods ruling the world in their
jolly nakedness. I do not believe that any schoolboy in
ancient Rome ever learned better by heart than I the
chief articles of the old catechism, as, for instance, the
loves of Venus. . . . But best of all for me was the French
class of the Abbe d'Aulnoi, a French Smigri, who had
written a number of grammar books, and wore a red wig
and hopped about gaily as he held forth on his Art
Pottique and his H'istoire Allemande. In all the school he
was the only one to teach German history.

It can easily be imagined that there must come open
14

AT SCHOOL

hostility between myself and the old periwig. He denied
in me all sense of poetry, and called me a barbarian of the
forest of Teutoburg. It is still a horror to me that I was
set to translate the speech of Caiaphas to the Sanhedrin
from the hexameters of Klopstock's Messiad into French
Alexandrines, taking the extract from the Professor's
Anthology ! It was a refinement of cruelty, surpassing
even the agony of the Passion of the Messiah, and even
He would not have borne it in peace. God forgive me ; I
cursed the world and the foreign oppressors, and I came
near to being an eater of Frenchmen. I might have been
able to die for France, but to make French verses — never !

The quarrel was pacified by the Rector and my mother.
My mother was not at all pleased that I should learn to
make verses, even if they were only French. She was in
the greatest fear that I might become a poet — that was
the worst, she used to say, that could happen to me. The
notions bound up with the name of poet in those days
were not particularly honourable, and a poet was a poor
devil out-at-elbows, who supplied occasional verse for a few
shillings, and in the end died in the hospital. . . .

The French tongue also has its difficulties, and to the
learning of it are needed much quartering of soldiers, the
rattle of many drums, much apprendre par camr, and
above all the scholar must by no means be a Bete alle-
mande. There was many a bitter word — I remember as well
as though it were only yesterday that I had many an
unpleasant experience through la religion. Quite six
times was the question put to me : " Henry, what is der
Glaube in French ? " And six times did I answer : " It is le
cre'dti." And at the seventh time the examiner, raging

7 Do

and cherry-brown in face, cried : " It is, la religion "

and blows rained and all my class-mates laughed. Dear

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

lady ! from that moment I have been unable to breathe
the word Religion without my back growing blue with
fear and my cheeks red with shame, and I do honestly
confess that le credit has stood me in better stead in my
life than la i-elig-ioii.

It is necessary to learn the spirit of a language, and this is
best come by through the sound of drums. Parbleu ! What
do I not owe to the French drummer who was quartered
on us, and looked like a devil, but was in truth as good-
hearted as an angel, and drummed quite excellently. He
had a little mobile face with a fearsome black moustache,
under which his red lips curled defiantly, while his piercing
eyes darted hither and hither. I, tiny boy that I was,
stuck to him like a burr and helped him to polish his
buttons till they shone like a mirror, and to whiten his
waistcoat with chalk — for Monsieur Le Grand set out to
please — and I followed him even upon guard, to the roll-
call, and on parade — nothing but the glitter of arms and
merriment — les jours de fete sont passds ! Monsieur Le
Grand had only a little broken German, no more than
the necessary expressions — bread, kiss, honour — but he
could very cleverly make himself understood on his
drum ; for instance, when I did not know what the word
liberie" meant then he would drum the march of the
Marseillaise, and I understood him. . . .

In the same way he taught me recent history. I did
not understand the words that he spoke, but as he drummed
in illustration of what he was saying, I knew what it was
that he wished to express. Really that is the best method
of teaching. The history of the storming of the Bastille,
the Tuileries and the rest is only understood rightly when
one knows how they drummed on those occasions. . . .

My damned heedless feet ! They played me a trick
16

AT SCHOOL

once when I was attending the lectures of Professor Saal-
feld at Gottingen, and he with his stiff' movements was
jumping about in his chair and lashing himself up to a
good set blackguarding of* the Emperor Napoleon — no,
poor feet, I cannot think ill of you for drumming then :
nay, I never would for one moment have thought ill of
you, if in your stupid simplicity you had stamped out
even more clearly what you had to say. How could I,
the pupil of Le Grand, hear the Emperor slandered ? The
Emperor ! The Emperor ! The Great Emperor ! When
I think of the Great Emperor then all is summer green
and golden in my thoughts ; a long avenue of limes blooms
forth into my vision, and in the bowers of their branches
sit singing nightingales : a waterfall roars, flowers stand in
round beds and dreamily nod their lovely heads — and I
was in wonderful nearness to it all. The painted tulips
greeted me with beggarly pride and condescension ; the
nerve-sick lilies nodded tender and woe-begone ; the
drunken red roses greeted me laughing from afar, the
night-violets sighed — I was not yet acquainted with the
myrtles and laurels, for they lured not with glowing blos-
soms, but I was on particularly good terms with the
mignonette, with whom I now stand so ill — I am speaking
of the palace garden at Dusseldorf, where often I lay on
the turf and listened eagerly while Monsieur Le Grand
told me of the warlike deeds of the great Emperor and,
as he told, beat out the marches that had been drummed
during the doing of those deeds, so that I saw and heard
everything vividly. Monsieur Le Grand drummed so that
he well-nigh broke the drum of my ear. . . .

But what it was to me when I saw him, I myself, with
thrice blessed eyes, his very self. Hosannah ! The
Emperor.

i b 17

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

It was in the avenue of the Palace garden at Diisseldorf.

As I thrust my way through the throng, I thought of the

deeds and the battles which Monsieur Le Grand had

drummed to me, and my heart beat the march of the General

— and yet at the same time I thought of the police order

prohibiting riding through the avenue, penalty five shillings

— and the Emperor with his suite rode down the middle of

the avenue, and the scared trees bowed as he passed, and

the sunbeams trembled in fear and curiosity through the

green leaves, and in the blue heavens there swam visibly a

golden stai\ The Emperor was wearing his modest green

uniform and his little cocked hat known the world over.

He was riding a little white horse that paced so calmly, so

proudly, so securely, and with such an air . . . Listlessly sat

the Emperor, almost loosely, and one hand held high the

rein, and the other tapped gently on the neck of the little

^ —horse. . . . The Emperor rode calmly down the middle of

the avenue. No agent of the police opposed him ; behind him

proudly rode his followers on foaming steeds, and they were

laden with gold and adornments ; the drums rattled, the

trumpets blared ; near me Aloysius the Fool threaded his

way and babbled the names of the Generals ; not far off

sottish Gumpertz bellowed, and with a thousand thousand

voices the people cried : " Long live the Emperor ! "

CHAPTER III
MY MOTHER

My mother had in her mind great, ambitious projects
for me, and her whole plan of education was directed
to that end. She played the chief part in the history
of my education, she mapped out the programme of
my studies, and even before my birth she had begun
her plans. I followed her express wishes obediently,
but I confess that she was to blame for the unfruit-
fulness of most of my endeavours and strivings in citizenly
employment, for it was never in accord with my nature
which, far more than material circumstances, decided
my fate.

The stars of our fortune are in ourselves. At first it was
the splendour of the Empire that dazzled my mother, and
when the daughter of a hardware manufacturer of our
neighbourhood, a friend of my mother's, became a duchess
and told her that her husband had won many battles and
would shortly be promoted to kingship — ah, then my
mother dreamed for me of the most golden of epaulettes
or the most elaborately embroidered office at the Emperor's
Court, to whose service she designed to devote me. There-
fore I had to pursue a course of such studies as would
promote such a career, and although quite enough attention
was paid to mathematical science at the hjcee and I was
properly crammed by dear old Professor Brewer with

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

geometry, statics, hydrostatics, and so forth, and though
I swam in a sea of logarithms and algebra, yet I had to
take private tuition in such mental exercises as would set
me on the way to becoming a great strategist, even, if need
be, an administrator of conquered provinces.

However, with the fall of the Empire my mother was
compelled to renounce the glorious career which she had
dreamed for me. . . .

She never exercised any control over my own way of
thinking and was always compassionate and loving towards
me.

Her religion was a strict deism which was altogether
adapted to her prevailing good sense. She was a pupil of
Rousseau, had read his "EmUe,"" suckled her children
herself, and education was her hobby. She herself had
enjoyed a learned education and had been the companion
in his studies of one of her brothers who became a dis-
tinguished physician, but died young. When she was
quite a little girl she used to read Latin dissertations
and other learned works to her father, and often she
astounded the old man with her questions.

Her reason and her sensibility were sanity itself, and it
was not from her that I inherited my disposition for the
fantastic and romantic. She lived, as I have mentioned,
in dread of poetry, snatched from me every romance that
she found in my hands, never allowed me to go to the play,
forbade me to take part in popular sports, kept an eye on
the company I kept, scolded the maids if they told ghost-
stories in my presence, and in short did everything possible
to keep me from superstition and poetry.

She was frugal, but only in her own concerns ; she could
be extravagant to give pleasure to others, and, as she did
not care for money, though she appreciated it, she gave
20

MY MOTHER

with a free hand and often astonished me by her bene-
volence and generosity.

What sacrifices she made for her son when in hard times
she gave him not only the programme of his studies but
also the means for it ! When I went to the university my
father's affairs were in a very poor way, and my mother
sold her jewels, her valuable necklace and ear-rings, in
order to ensure for me a revenue for my first four years.

I was not the first of my family to eat up jewels and
gobble down pearls at the university. My mother's father,
she told me once, accomplished the same feat. The jewels
which adorned his dead mother's prayer book had to wrestle
with the expenses of his maintenance at the university, for
his father, old Lazarus de Geldern, had been brought to
great poverty by a lawsuit concerning some succession or
other with a married sister, and he had inherited from his
father a property of the greatness of which one of my
great aunts has told me so many marvels.

Her words rang in my boyish ears like a tale of the
thousand and one nights when she told me of the great
palaces and the Russian carpets and the massive gold and
silver plate which the good man, who had enjoyed so many
honours at the court of the Elector and the Electress, lost
so unhappily. This town-house was the great hotel in the
Rheinstrasse : and what is now the hospital in the new
town was his, and so was the castle at Gravenberg, and in
the end he had hardly a place whereon to lay his head.

CHAPTER IV
KITH AND KIN

Next to my mother her brother, my uncle, Simon de
Geldern, was most busied with my development. He was
a queer fish, of unprepossessing and even foolish appear-
ance. A little stoutish figure he had and a pallid stern
face, with a nose that was Grecianly straight, but by one-
third longer than the Greeks were accustomed to wear their
noses.

In his youth it was said that his nose was of ordinary
length and had only been so elongated by his bad habit of
pulling it incessantly. If we children asked my uncle if it
were true, he would hotly rebuke us for such disrespectful
words and then pull his nose again.

He wore clothes of an old French fashion ; short breeches,
white silk stockings, buckled shoes, and, after the old mode,
a longish pigtail which, when the little man tripped through
the streets, used to hop from one shoulder to another,
cutting all sorts of capers and seeming to make a mock of
its own master.

Often when my uncle was sitting lost in thought or
reading the newspapers a naughty longing would creep
over me by stealth to seize hold of his pigtail and tug at
it like a bell-pull, whereupon my uncle would grow very
angry and wring his hands over the younger generation
which was lost to all respect, and was to be held in check
22

KITH AND KIN

neither by human nor divine authority, and would end by
profaning the Holy of Holies.

However, if the man's exterior was not of a sort to
inspire respect, the inner man, the heart of him, was the
more worthy of regard, and he was the honestest and most
generous fellow that I have ever met upon this earth.
There was an honesty of purpose in the man which called
to mind the stern sense of honour of the old Spanish
drama, and for loyalty he was like unto the Heroes them-
selves. He never had occasion to be the " physician of his
honour,11 yet he was a " resolute Prince "" in knightly great-
ness, although he did not declaim in four- feet trochees, and
did not languish for the palm of death, and instead of a
gleaming knightly cloak wore a dull coat with the tail of
a water-wagtail.

He was by no means an ascetic enemy of the senses ;
he doted on fairs and the bar-parlour of Rasia the inn-
keeper, where he loved to eat fieldfares and juniper-
berries — but he would sacrifice proudly and firmly all
the fieldfares of this world and all the pleasures of
life if it were a question of an idea which he knew
to be good and true. And he would make his sacrifice
so unpretentiously, and so almost bashfully, that it was
never remarked what a martyr lay concealed under the
cover of his chatter.

From the material standpoint his life was a failure.
Simon de Geldern had pursued the so-called humanist
studies — hnmaniora — at the college of the Jesuits, but
when the death of his parents gave him free and full choice
of a career he made none, renounced every practical study-
in foreign universities, and preferred to remain at home
at Diisscldorf in the " Noah's Ark,11 as the little house
was called, that his father left him, and had over its

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

door a Noah's Ark quite charmingly carved and gaily
coloured.

A man of untiring industry, he gave himself up to all
his learned hobbies and cranks, to his bibliomania and,
especially, to his passion for writing, which had its chief
outlet in political news-sheets and obscure periodicals. It
should be mentioned that not only writing but also thinking
was the greatest effort for him.

Perhaps this passion for writing arose from the impulse
to be of general use. He took part in all the questions of
the day, and the reading of journals and brochures became
quite a mania with him, not for his own scholarship indeed,
but because his father and his brother had been doctors of
medicine. And the old wives could not be dissuaded from
believing that the son of the old doctor, who had so often
cured them, must have inherited his father's skill in healing,
and when they fell ill came bustling to him, weeping and
wailing, with their phials of urine for his inspection, so that
he might tell them what ailed them. When my uncle was
thus disturbed in his studies, he would quite likely be angry
and wish the old trolls with their phials of urine at the
devil and drive them away.

This uncle had a great influence on my mental develop-
ment, and for that I can never cease to thank him.
However different our points of view, and however
laborious his literary efforts may have been, yet perhaps
it was they that roused in me the desire to attempt
to write.

My uncle wrote in a stiff, formal style, such as is taught
in the Jesuit schools, where Latin is the chief subject, and
could not bring himself to look with a friendly eye upon
my mode of expression, which seemed to him too light, too
frivolous, and too irreverent. But the zeal with which he
24

KITH AND KIN

pointed out for me the means of intellectual development
was of the greatest use to me.

When I was quite a boy he presented me with the finest
and most costly works, he placed his library at my disposal
— it was very rich in classical books and weighty tracts for
the times — and he even allowed me to burrow in the chests
in the attic of the Noah's Ark, which contained the old
books and manuscripts of my grandfather.

What sweet glee leaped in my boyish heart as I passed
whole days in that attic, a real garret of a place.

It was not a charming haunt, and its only inhabitant, a
fat Angora cat, was not scrupulously clean, and only
occasionally did she sweep a little of the dust and cobwebs
from the lumber that was piled up there.

But mv heart was so blooming, so young, and the sun
shone so brightly through the little dormer window that
everything seemed to be flooded in the light of phantasy
and the old cat herself was to me an enchanted princess
who, freed from her brutish shape, must show herself in
her old fairness and splendour, while the attic would change
into a gorgeous palace, as always happens in all the tales
of magic. But the good old times of the fairy tales are
gone. Cats remain cats, and the attic of the Noah's Ark
remained a dirty lumber-room, a hospital for incurable
household goods, an almshouse for old pieces of furniture
which have reached the last extremity of decrepitude, but
cannot be put out of doors for some sentimental attach-
ment and consideration for the pious memories which are
bound up in them.

Among the antiquities of the attic were globes, the most
wonderful pictures of the planets, and soldering irons and
retorts, calling to mind astrological and alchemistic
studies.

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

In the chests among my grandfather's books were also
many writings relating to such secret sciences. Most of the
volumes were trashy old medical books. There was no lack
of philosophical tomes, but along with the arch-reasonable
Cartesius were the Phantasies of Paracelsus, Helmont and
Agrippa von Nettesheim, whose Philosopha Occulta I came
upon for the first time.

The greatest and most precious find that I made in the
dusty chests was a note- book written by a brother of my
grandfather, who was known as the Chevalier or the
Oriental, and of whom my old aunts used to sing and tell
many things. This great-uncle, whose name was Simon de
Geldern, must have been a strange fellow. He was nick-
named "the Oriental ,1 because he had travelled much in
the East and when he returned always wore Oriental
clothes. He seems to have sojourned most in the coast-
towns of North Africa, in Moroccan territory, and there he
learned the armourer's craft from a Portuguese and throve
upon it. He made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where he
took part in the ecstasy of the prayer on the mountain of
Moria. What did he see ? He never disclosed that. An
independent tribe of Bedouins, who were not allied to
Islam, but to a sort of Mosaicism, and had their house of
call in one of the unknown oases of the North African
desert, chose him to be their leader or Sheikh. These
warlike people lived at feud with all the neighbouring
tribes and were the terror of caravans. To speak plain
European, my great-uncle, the pious visionary of the holy
mountain of Moria, was a robber chief. It was in this
gentle company that he came by that knowledge of horse-
breeding and the art of riding with which he created so
much astonishment when he returned to the West.

At the various Courts at which he stayed for a long time
26

KITH AND KIN

together, he was distinguished as much by his personal
beauty and dignity as by the splendour of his oriental
dress, which casts its spell particularly over the ladies.
He made his most striking impression by his pretended
secrets, and so no one dared disparage the mighty necro-
mancer to his exalted patrons. The spirit of intrigue
feared the spirits of the Black Art. Only his own arrogance
could bring him to ruin, and my old aunts used to wag
their grey heads as they muttered of the "Oriental's"
gallant relations with a very exalted lady, the discovery of
which compelled him speedily to quit the court and the
country. Only by flight and the desertion of all his
belongings could he escape death, and he owed his
deliverance to his skill in riding.

After this adventure he appears to have found in England
a refuge more secure though more sorrowful : so much I
imagine from a pamphlet of my great uncle's printed in
London, which I came upon by good luck when I clambered
to the highest shelf in the Dlisseldorf library. It was an
exhortation in French verse entitled : " Moses on Horeb,"
and was perhaps concerned with the aforesaid vision. But
the preface was written in English and dated from London ;
the verses, like all French verses, were lukewarm water in
rhyme, but in the English prose of the preface there was
betrayed the dejection of a proud man who finds himself
in straitened circumstances.

A puzzling phenomenon, difficult to grasp, was this
great-uncle. He led one of those wonderful lives which
have only been possible at the beginning or in the middle
of the eighteenth century : he was half fanatic, making
propaganda for cosmopolitan Utopias to bring blessing
upon the world, half knight errant, who in the consciousness
of his own strength breaks through or overleaps the rotten

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

confines of a rotten society. In any case he was altogether
a man.

His quackery, which we do not cloak, was of no common
order. He was no ordinary charlatan to draw the teeth of
the peasants in the market-place, but he thrust his way
into the palaces of the great and plucked out their very
back teeth for them, as once upon a time Sir Huon of
Bordeaux did for the Sultan of Babylon. Puff is part of
the trade, says the proverb, and life is a trade like any
other.

And what man of any consequence is not a bit of a
charlatan? The quacks of modesty are the worst of all
with their conceit of their humble doing ! If any man
wishes to work upon the mob he must have quack in-
gredients. The end sanctifies the means. . . .

However that may be, my great-uncle busied his young
relative's imagination to an extraordinary degree. Every-
thing that was told of him made an ineradicable impression
on my young intelligence, and I was so steeped in his
wanderings and fortunes, that often in the clear light of
the sun I was seized by an uncanny feeling, and it seemed
to me that I myself might be my deceased great-uncle,
and was living only a continuation of a life long since laid
down.

In the night the same idea was reflected in my dreams.
My life at that time was like a great journal of which the
upper half contained the present, each day with its news and
debates, while in the lower half in a succession of dreams
the poetic past was recorded fantastically like a series of
feutlletons. In these dreams I identified myself completely
with my great-uncle, and it was a horror for me to feel
that I was some one else and belonged to a different time.
There were in that region relationships which I had never
28

KITH AND KIN

before suspected, and yet I wandered there sure of foot
and mien.

There I met men strangely garbed in bright-hot colours,
men with wild adventurous faces, whom I took by the hand
like old acquaintances ; I understood their barbarous, un-
familiar language, and answered them to my own astonish-
ment in the same, while I gesticulated with a vehemence
not my own and said things violently opposed to my
habitual mode of thought.

This wonderful state of things lasted for about a year*
and though I altogether recovered my singleness of being,
vet there remained secret traces of it in my soul. Many
idiosyncrasies, many extremely annoying sympathies and
antipathies not at all in accordance with my nature, and
manv practices contrary to my habit of mind I explain to
myself as after-effects of that time of dreams when I was
my own great-uncle.

When I make mistakes, the origin of which seems inex-
plicable to me, I lay them to the account of my oriental
double. When I mooted such an hypothesis to my father
by way of extenuation of some small misdeed he observed
waggishly that he hoped my great-uncle had not put his
name to a bill of exchange which might be presented to me
for payment.

No such oriental bill of exchange has been presented to
me and I have a long enough account with my own
occidental obligations. . . .

Into that I don't intend to open up an inquiry, but in
pursuit of my personal confessions I prefer to make use of
this opportunity to show by example, how at times the
most harmless actions have been used by my enemies to
further their malicious insinuations. They pretend to
have made the discovery that in my biographical writings

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

I have said a great deal of my mother's family and nothing
at all of my father's, and they set that down for wilful
emphasis and elision, and accuse me of the same vain sort
of arriere pensie as was laid at the door of my late lamented
colleague Wolfgang Goethe.

It is true that in his memories he took a peculiar
pleasure in speaking of his paternal grandfather, who pre-
sided as a stern chief magistrate in the Romer at Frankfort,
while his maternal grandfather, a reputable jobbing tailor,
who squatted on his work-table in the Bockenheimer Strasse,
mending the old breeches of the republic, was never so much
as mentioned.

It is not my affair to defend this blinking of facts of
Goethe's, but it is my concern to rectify those malicious
interpretations and insinuations which have been so often
spread of me, that I am to blame for never having men-
tioned my paternal grandfather in my writings. The
reason is quite simple. I have never known very much to
tell of him. My late father came as a stranger to Diissel-
dorf, my birthplace, and had no relations there ; none of
those old aunts and cousins who are the old wives1 chroni-
clers, chanting day in day out old family legends with epic
monotony for the younger generation, supplying the place
of the bag-pipes obbligato of the Scottish bards with the
snuffling of their noses. My youthful mind could only
receive impressions of the champions of my mother's clan
from this source and I listened devoutly to the tales of
these old Tibbies and Tabbies.

My father was a very monosyllabic person, spoke little,
and once when I was a little boy at the time when I spent
the working days at the prim school of the Franciscans
and the Sabbath at home, I seized an opportunity to ask
my father who my grandfather was. He answered my
30

KITH AND KIN

question half laughing, half cross ; " Your grandfather was
a little Jew and he had a long beard.11

Next day, as I entered the class-room where I found my
schoolmates gathered together, I made haste to tell them
the great news that my grandfather was a little Jew and
had a long beard.

Scarcely had I made the communication than it flew
from lip to lip, and was repeated in every different tone
of voice to an accompaniment of mimic animal cries. The
boys jumped over tables and forms, tore down from the
walls the calculating tables, which toppled down to the
floor among the ink-pots, and they laughed, bleated,
growled, roared, croaked — pandemonium, in which the
refrain was my grandfather, who had been a little Jew
and had a long beard.

The master of the class heard the noise, and came into
the room blazing with anger and asked who was the
creator of the uproar. As always happens in such a case,
every one attempted feebly to exculpate himself, and at
the end of the inquiry, it came about that luckless I was
pitched upon as having caused the whole bother by my
communication concerning my grandfather, and I paid for
my offence with a considerable thrashing.

They were the first blows I had ever come by on this
earth, and upon this occasion I made the philosophic
observation that the good God who created blows also
looked to it in his dear wisdom that he who deals them
should grow weary in the end, else in the end they would
be insupportable.

The stick with which I was thrashed was a yellow cane,
but the weals that it left on my back were dark blue. I
have not forgotten them.

Nor did I forget the name of the master who beat me so

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

unmercifully : his name was Father Dickerscheit ; he was
soon after dismissed from the school for reasons which I
remember, but will not tell.

Liberalism has often cast unjust aspersions upon the
priesthood, and it is as well to show it some charity
when an unworthy member commits crimes, which, after
all, can only be ascribed to natural or rather unnatural
man.

Together with the name of the man who gave me my
first beating there remained in my memory also the cause
of it, my unlucky genealogical communication, and the
influence of those early youthful impressions is so pro-
found, that whenever I heard tell of little Jews with long
beards, an uncanny recollection of it all crept over my
back. " A scalded cat fears the boiling kettle,'1 says the
proverb, and it should be easy to understand that I have,
since that time, had no great inclination to receive more
particular information concerning my doubtful grand-
father and his pedigree, or to make to the great public
as to the small, any communication so fraught with
consequence.

I will not however pass unmentioned my paternal
grandmother, of whom also I have little to say. She was
an extraordinarily beautiful woman and the only daughter
of a banker at Hamburg, celebrated far and wide for his
wealth. The circumstances lead me to suspect that the
little Jew, who led the beauty from the house of her
opulent parents to his own dwelling-place, Hanover, had
no very great possessions besides his long beard, and must
have been very respectable.

He died early, leaving a young widow with six children,
all boys, of a most tender age. She returned to Hamburg,
and died there at no very great age either.
32

KITH AND KIN

I once saw my grandmother's portrait in the bedroom of
my uncle, Solomon Heine, at Hamburg.

The artist, who aimed at effects of light and shade in
the manner of Rembrandt, had given the picture a black
nunnish head-dress, a dark gown, almost as severe, and an
inky background, so that the round-cheeked face with its
double chin shone like a full moon from out the clouds of
night.

Her features bore still the traces of great beauty : they
were at once gentle and serious, and in particular the
morbidezza of the complexion gave to the whole face
an expression of distinction of quite an individual
character : if the artist had given the lady a great cross
of diamonds upon her breast the portrait might have
stood for that of a noble abbess of some great protestant
foundation.

Only two of my grandmother's children, so far as I
know, inherited her remarkable beauty, my father and my
uncle Solomon Heine, the late head of the Hamburg bank-
ing house of that name.

In my father's beauty there was a weak, characterless,
almost effeminate quality. His brother's was rather of a
masculine order, and he was indeed a man the strength of
whose character was shown in his nobly proportioned and
regular features, imposing, and at times even startling.

All his children without exception blossomed into the
most entrancing beauty, but death took them in their
flower, and of all this lovely nosegay of men and women
only two are now living, the present head of the banking
house and his sister.

I was fond of all these children, and I loved their mother
much, she who was so beautiful and died so young, and all
of them have cost me many tears. Indeed, at this very

i c 33

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

moment, I am constrained to shake my jester's cap in
order to drown my tearful thoughts in the ring o1 bells.

I have already said that my father's beauty was some-
what effeminate. But I do not mean to say that he was
less than a man ; that he often proved to the contrary in
his youth, and indeed I am a living witness to it. Let it
be understood that the expression casts no slur ; I had in
my mind only his physical appearance, which was not
rigid and stiff but rather soft and tender. The contour
of his features lacked definiteness, and was mistily vague.
He was stout in his later years, but even in youth he seems
never to have been thin.

In this conjecture I am confirmed by a portrait which
was lost in a fire in my mother's house, representing my
father as a young man of eighteen or nineteen, in a red
uniform with a powdered bag-wig on his head. The type
of beauty expressed in his features called to mind neither
the severe and chaste ideality of Greek art, nor the spiritual
and visionary style, impregnated for all that withPagan joy,
of the Renaissance : no, the aforesaid portrait bore rather
the character of an age that had no character and loved
beauty less than prettiness, daintiness, and coquetry; an
age that brought insipidity even into its poetry, the sweet
age of the rococo with all its flourishes, which is called the
age of the bag-wig, and wore for token not on its brow
but on the back of its head a bag-wig. Had the aforesaid
picture of my father been painted on a smaller scale it
might have been ascribed to the excellent Watteau painted
to make a show, scrolled about with fantastic arabesques
of bright jewels and leaf of gold, on a fan of Madame de
Pompadour.

It is, perhaps, worthy of remark that even in his later
years my father remained faithful to the old French mode
34

KITH AND KIN

of powder, although he had the finest hair conceivable.
His hair was fair, almost golden, and of a softness such as
I have only found in Chinese floss-silk.

He would gladly have kept to the bag-wig, but advanc-
ing time was inexorable. In his dilemma my father found
a means of pacifying his conscience. He sacrificed only
the block and kept the little black bag (sachet) ; he wore
his own long hair as a broad-plaited chignon fastened to
his head with little combs. From the softness of his hair,
and with the powder these plaits were hardly noticeable,
and so my father was not really a renegade from the old
bag-wig, and like so many crypto-orthodox people, he had
only outwardly appeased the dreadful Genesis of Time.

The red uniform in which the counterfeit of my father
appears in the aforesaid portrait betokens his official
capacity in Hanover. My father was in the train of Prince
Ernest of Cumberland at the beginning of the French
Revolution and accompanied him on the campaign in
Flanders and Brabant in the capacity of a store-master or
commissary, or, as the French call it, an officier de bouche :
the Prussians call it a " meal-worm.1'1

The young man's real office, however, was that of favourite
of the Prince, a Brummel au petit pied and without a
striped cravat, and to the end he fulfilled the destiny of
such a toy of princely favour. My father, to the end of his
life, remained firmly convinced that the Prince, who later
became King of Hanover, had never forgotten him, but he
could never explain why the Prince had never sent for him,
or made inquiries for him, since he had no means of
knowing that his former favourite was not living in a
condition in which he might have need of his help.

In that campaign were begotten many of my father's
tastes from which my mother was able only gradually to

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

wean him. For instance, he was easily induced to play
high, and he used to patronise dramatic art, or, rather, its
votaries, and he had a passion for dogs and horses. When
he arrived in Diisseldorf, where out of love for my mother
he set up as a merchant, he brought with him a dozen most
beautiful horses. But he exchanged them on the express
wish of his young bride, who brought to his notice that
such four-footed capital devoured too much fodder and
brought in nothing at all.

It was more difficult for my mother to dismiss the stable-
man, a strapping fellow, who used to lie with some stray
rascal or other in the stable playing cards. He went
finally of his own accord together with a gold repeater of
my father's and a few other valuable trinkets.

When my mother was rid of the rogue she gave my
father's hunting dogs their liberty, with one single excep-
tion, a dog called Joli, though he was hideously ugly. He
found favour in her eyes because he had nothing of the
sporting dog in him and was capable of being a faithful,
respectable, and virtuous house-dog. He lived in the empty
stable in my father s old caleche, and when my father met
him they used to exchange meaning glances. " Yes, Joli,11
my father would say, and Joli would mournfully wag his
tail.

In my father's camp days was also begotten his boundless
love for the soldiery, or rather for playing at soldiers, and
his delight in that gay, idle life, in which spangles and
scarlet caps conceal the emptiness inside and tickled vanity
can strut as courage.

What happiness then for my father when the citizen
army was raised at Diisseldorf and, as an officer, he could
don his fine dark-blue uniform, with sky-blue satin slashings,
and march past our house at the head of his column. With
36

KITH AND KIN

the finest of bows he saluted my mother as she stood
blushing at the window, the plume on his three-cornered
hat waved so bravely, and brightly shone his epaulettes in
the light of the sun.

My father was even more happy when it came to his
turn as commanding officer to mount guard and look to
the safety of the town. At such times pure Riidesheimer
and Assmann.shaitser of the best vintages flowed in the
guardroom, all at the expense of the commanding officer?
whose generosity could not be sufficiently lauded by his
citizen guards, his Cherethites and Pelethites.

My father enjoyed among them a popularity as great as
the enthusiasm with which the old guard exulted round
the Emperor Napoleon.

Unbounded love of life was a predominant characteristic
of my father; he was a seeker after pleasure, gay and
sanguine. In his mind was constant festival and if the
dance music was not very noisy the violins were always in
tune. There was always blue sky for him and brightness,
lightheadedness and tantara ! Careless he was and never
gave a thought to the day that was gone or the day that
was to come.

His disposition was a most wonderful contrast with the
gravity of his stern calm countenance, which was displayed
in his beauty and in his every movement. Any one who
did not know him, seeing for the first time this serious
powdered figure, might well have taken him for one of the
seven wise men of Greece. In truth his gravity was not
borrowed, but it did call to mind those old bas-reliefs in
which a merry child is holding a great tragic mask before
his face.

Indeed he was a great child with a child-like naivete,
which dull psychologists might easily take for simplicity,

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

but it often betrayed in some subtle expression a most
remarkable perception.

He would divine with his mental feelers what it took
wise men much time and pondering to grasp. He thought
less with his head than with his heart and he had the
dearest heart conceivable. His smile which often played
about his lips, contrasting with the fullest grace with the
aforesaid gravity, was the sweet reflection of his good-
heartedness.

And his voice, though comely and resonant, had a child-
like quality, almost I might say a quality calling to mind
the sounds of the woods, or the call of the redbreast, and
when he spoke his voice went straight to the heart as though
it had no need to find its way through the ears.

He spoke the dialect of Hanover, where, and in the
country to the south of the town, the best German is
spoken. It was a great advantage to me to have my ears
accustomed in early childhood to a good pronunciation of
German through my father.

Of all men he was the most beloved on this earth. He
has been dead now for more than twenty-five years. I
never thought that I must one day lose him and even
now I can scarcely believe that he is indeed lost to me.
It is so hard to convince ourselves of the death of those
creatures whom we have loved much. But indeed they
are not dead but live on in us and have their dwelling in
our souls.

There has never been a night when my father has not
been in my thoughts and when I awake in the morning I
often seem to hear the ringing sound of his voice like the
echo of a dream. And then the idea comes to me that I
must quickly dress and hurry down to him in his room as I
used to do when I was a bov.
38

KITH AND KIN

My father used to rise very early and apply himself to
his business, winter and summer, and I used to find him
usually at his writing-table and without looking up he
used to hold out his hand for me to kiss.

Sometimes there was more than the kiss of the hand and
my father would take me between his knees and kiss me on
the forehead. One morning he embraced me with extra-
ordinary tenderness and said : " I dreamed fine things of
you last night and am well pleased with you, my dear
Harry.'1 As he said these naive words a smile played
about his lips which seemed to say : however naughtily
Harry may behave in reality, I will always dream fine
things of him so that I may love him undisturbedly.

Harry is the familiar name of the English for those who
are called Henry and corresponds exactly to my German
baptismal name — " Heinrich."

And out of compliment to one of his best friends in
England my name was anglicised by my father. Mr. Harry
was my father's agent in Liverpool : he knew the best
factories there where velveteen was made, an article of
commerce that lay very near to my father's heart more
from ambition than from self-interest, for although he
maintained that he made much money by it, it always
remained very problematical, and my father would perhaps
have invested even more money in it, if it came to a
question of selling velveteen in better quality and greater
quantity than his competitors. My father had really no
head for business or accounts, although he was always
making them, and trade was to him rather a game, just as
children play at soldiers or cooking.

His occupation was indeed only unceasing business.
Velveteen was his particular pet, and he was happy when
the great waggons were unloaded and the hall was thronged

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

with all the trading Jews of the neighbourhood, as soon as
they began to unpack, for the Jews were his best customers,
and among them his velveteen found not only its best sale
but also recognition of its virtues.

As, dear reader, you do not know perhaps what velveteen
is, then permit me to explain that it is an English word
meaning something like satin, and indicates a sort of satin
made of cotton, from which very fine breeches, waistcoats,
and even jackets are made. This clothing is also called
" Manchester " after the manufacturing town where it was
first made.

Because my fathers friend who was a very skilled buyer
of velveteen, bore the name of Harry, I received this name
and I was called Harry in my family and by intimate
friends and neighbours.

Even now it gives me great pleasure to be called by that
name, although I owe to it much mortification and perhaps
the most grievous of my childhood.

Only now that I no longer live among the living and all
social vanity is blotted out from my soul am I able to
speak of it controlledly.

Here in France immediately on my arrival in Paris my
German name " Heinrich " was translated into " Henri,"
and I had to adapt myself to it and had even so to style
myself here in this country, for the word Heinrich is not
pleasing to Frenchmen and the French do make everything
in the world pleasant for themselves. Even the name
" Henri Heine " they were unable to pronounce, and most
of them called me M. Enri Enn : many contracted this to
Enrienne and some called me M. Un Rien.

I suffer by it in many of my literary relations, but I do
gain certain advantages. For instance among my noble
fellow countrymen who come to Paris there are many who
40

KITH AND KIN

would gladly slander me, but as they always pronounce my
name in German it does not occur to the French that the
villain,, the poisoner of the wells of innocence, who is so
roundly abused, is no other than their friend, M. Enrienne,
and these noble souls in vain give rein to their virtuous
zeal : the French do not know that they are speaking of
me, and transrhenish virtue has in vain shot the bolts of
its calumny.

But there is, as I have said, a sort of embarrassment in
hearing one's name mispronounced. There are men who
are extremely touchy when it occurs.

For myself, I have never felt anything of the sort.
Heinrich, Harry, Henri — all these names sound well
when they come tripping from pretty lips. Best of all
sounds Signor Enrico. So was I called in those clear blue
summer nights, spangled with great silver stars, of that
noble and unhappy land which is the home of beauty, and
brought forth Raphael Sanzio of Urbino, Joachim Rossini
and Princess Christiana Belgiojoso.

As my physical condition robs me of all hope of ever
again living in society, and as society in truth no longer
exists for me, I have stripped myself of the fetters of that
personal vanity which imprisons every man who has to go
among men, into the world, as it is called.

I can therefore speak unreservedly of the mishap which
was bound up with my name of Harry, and embittered
and empoisoned the fairest years of the springtime of
mv life. The facts of the case are these. In my native
town there lived a man who was called the Scavenger
because every morning he drove through the streets of the
town with a cart to which a donkey was harnessed, and
stopped before every house to take up the refuse which
the servants gathered together in orderly heaps, and carried

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

it out to the dumping-ground. The man looked like his
trade, and the donkey, who resembled his master, stood
still in front of the houses or moved on according to the
tone of voice in which the scavenger cried the word Haariih.

Was that his real name or only a catchword ? I know
not, but this much is certain that I had to endure an extra-
ordinary amount of suffering at the hands of my school-
mates, and the children of our neighbours because of the
resemblance of the word to my name Harry. To tease me
they pronounced it exactly as the scavenger called to his
donkey, and when I grew angry the rascals would take on
an expression of innocence and asked me to teach them, in
order to avoid confusion, how my name and the donkey's
should be pronounced ; but they were deliberately dense
and would have it that the scavenger usually drew out the
first syllable and cut short the second, while sometimes on
the contrary his call sounded exactly like my name, and
while the brats practised the most nonsensical variations,
mixing up the donkey and myself, there were mad cogs
a Fane, at which everybody else laughed, while I was
brought to tears.

When I complained to my mother, she said that I must
try to learn much and to be discreet, and nobody would
take me for an ass.

But my homonymity with the despised long ears re-
mained my bugbear. The big boys used to pass me,
greeting me with Haariih, and the small boys did the
same, though from a di-stance. In school the same theme
was turned to account with subtle cruelty ; whenever a
donkey cropped up they squinted at me and I always
blushed, and it is incredible how skilful schoolboys are
in discovering or bringing personalities into prominence
upon the least occasion.
4f>

KITH AND KIN

For example, one would ask another: "What is the
difference between the zebra and the ass of Balaam, son of
Boaz ? " Came the answer : " One speaks the zebraic, the
other the Hebraic tongue.-"1 Then came the question :
" What is the difference between the scavenger's donkey
and his namesake ? " and the impertinent answer was :
" We do not know the difference between them.11 Then
I wished to make an onslaught on them, but I was
restrained, and my friend Dietrich, who drew very beau-
tiful holy pictures, and has since become a celebrated
painter, used, on such occasions, to try and comfort me
by promising me a picture. He painted a Saint Michael
for me — but the rascal wickedly made game of me. The
archangel had the features of the scavenger, his steed
looked like his donkey, and instead of a dragon his lance
pierced the carcase of a dead cat.

And fair-haired, gentle, girlish Franz, whom I loved so
dearly, betrayed me also. He took me in his arms, and
laid his cheek tenderly against mine and we remained for
a long time sentimentally breast to breast — suddenly
he whispered a mocking Haariih ! — and as he ran away
shouted the contemptuous word so that it rang through
the cloisters of the monastery.

I came in for even more scurvy treatment at the hands
of some of the children of our neighbourhood, guttersnipes
of the lowest class, who are known as Haluten in Dussel-
dorf, a word which would certainly lead etymologists
away from the helots of Sparta.

Such a Halut was little Jupp, whose name was Joseph,
and I will also give his patronymic, Hader, so that he may
not be confused with Jupp Rorsch, who was quite a jolly
infant, and, as I am glad to learn, is still living as post-
master at Bonn. Jupp Hader alwavs carried a long fishing-

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

rod with which he struck at me when we met. He took a
delight in throwing horse dung at my head, picking it up
in the street piping hot just as it came from nature's oven.
But he never ceased to call in every possible tone of voice
the fatal Haarilh !

Zippel was the name of a person of no very great age —
her real name was Sibyl — who was my first nurse and
stayed on with us. She was in the room, by chance, on
the morning when old mother Hader, Jupp's mother,
bestowed such praises upon, and expressed wonder at, my
beauty. When Zippel heard these words, there awoke in
her the old superstition that it is harmful for children to
be so praised, since they are brought by it to sickness or
some evil chance, and in order to avert the evil with which
she believed me to be threatened, she resorted to the
method recommended as infallible by popular belief,
which consists in spitting three times at the child who
has been praised. She came bouncing towards me, and
hurriedly spat three times on my head.

The spitting was only a provisional precaution, for those
who are wise in these matters maintain that when the
perilous words of praise have been pronounced by a witch
the baleful spell can only be broken by a person who is
also a witch, and Zippel resolved the very same day to go
to a woman whom she knew to be a witch. This woman,
as I learned later, had been of great service to Zippel
through her secret and forbidden art. The witch cut off
a few hairs from the crown of my head and then stroked
the place with her thumbs which she had moistened with
spittle : in the same way she stroked other places while she
murmured all kinds of mystical abracadabra nonsense,
and that was how at such a tender age I was ordained
priest of the devil.
44

KITH AND KIN

This woman, with whom I continued my acquaintance,
instructed me in the secret art later on, when I was
grown up.

I did not myself become a wizard, but I know the tricks
of the trade, and I do know witchcraft when I see it.

This woman was known as the Woman of Goch,
because she was born at Goch, where her late husband
lived and plied the infamous trade of executioner, and was
called in from near and far to exercise his office. It was
known that he left his widow many arcana nostra, and she
knew well how to spread her reputation.

Our Zippel was on terms of intimacy with the Mistress,
and though she no longer bought love-potions of her she
often consulted the arts of the Woman of Goch when she
wished to avenge herself upon some fortunate rival who
had wedded an old flame of hers. . . .

Here's the refrain of the good old song,

My nurse was for ever singing ;
" Sun, art a flame of mourning,'11 the words

Like hunter's horn were ringing.

The thought of the song doth bring back to me
The thought of that dear old creature ;

I see once more her brown wrinkled old face,
With lines about every feature.

She was a native of Mi'msterland,

And had a store most splendid
Of stories of ghosts most horrible —

Her tales and songs ne'er ended.

My heart used to leap as the ancient dame
Told tales of the old king's daughter ;

Who sat alone on the barren heath,

And her golden hair streamed about her.
* ' * * * *

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

And oh ! there would come a catch in my breath,

As I heard her solemnly, slowly
Unfold the tale of old Red beard,

The hidden Emperor holy.

She told me for truth that he was not dead,

Spite of learned men and others ;
But lay concealed in a mountain, he

And his old-time warrior brothers.

How jolly they are the old wives1 tales,
How sweet the young mind's dawning —

My simple heart that believes them all,
Cries " Sun, art a flame of mourning."

CHAPTER V
JOSEPHA THE PALE

But, indeed, it was not witchcraft that took me to the
house of the Woman of Goch. I continued my acquaint-
ance with her, and I was about sixteen years old when I
took to going more frequently than before to her house,
attracted by a spell more potent than all her bombastic
Latin Philtraria. She had a niece who was barely sixteen,
but having suddenly shot up and grown very tall, seemed
to be much older, and because of her sudden growth she
was very thin. She had that slimness of figure which is to
be found in the quadroons of the West Indies, and as she
wore no corsets and very few under- garments her close-
fitting gown was like the wet cloth of a statue. No marble
statue could vie with her in beauty, for she revealed life
itself, and every movement showed forth the rhythm of her
body and, I fain would say, the music of her soul. Not
one of the daughters of Niobe had a face more nobly
moulded : its colour, like that of all her skin, was of a
changing white. Her great, deep, dark eyes looked as
though they had asked a riddle and were waiting tran-
quilly for the answer to it ; while her mouth, with its thin,
arching lips and chalk-white teeth, rather long, seemed to
say : " You are stupid and will guess in vain.""

Her hair was red, red as blood, and hung in long tresses
below her shoulders, so that she could bind them together

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

under her chin. When she did that she looked as if her
throat had been cut and the red blood were bubbling forth
in red streams.

Josepha's voice — the pretty niece of the Woman of Goch
was called Red Sefchen — was not particularly sweet of
sound, and sometimes her organs of speech were so muffled
as to make her voice almost toneless ; but suddenly, when
passion came into it, there would break forth the most
ringing sound, which particularly enraptured me, because
Josepha's voice so much resembled my own.

When she spoke I was sometimes afraid and thought
that I heard myself speaking, and when she sang I was
reminded of dreams in which I had heard myself sing after
the same fashion.

She knew many old folk-songs and perhaps she called
into being my taste for such songs, as she certainly had
the greatest influence on the poet waking in me, so that
my first poems of the " Dream Pictures," written soon after
this time, have a grim and gloomy tinge like the relation-
ship which at that time cast its bloody shadow on my
young mind and life.

Among the songs which Josepha sang was a folk-song
which she had learned from Zippel, who had often sung it
to me in my childhood; so that I recollect two verses
which I am all the more ready to set down as I have not
found the poem in any existing collection of folk-songs.
This is how they run — first, wicked Trajig speaks:

Ottilia mine, Ottilia dear,
You will not be the last I fear —
Say will you hang from yon high tree ?
Or will you swim the ocean blue ?
Or will you kiss the naked sword
That is given by the Lord ?
48

JOSEPHA THE PALE

Whereupon Ottilia answers :

I will not hang from yon high tree,
I will not swim the ocean blue,
But I will kiss the naked sword
That is given by the Lord.

Once when red Sefchen was singing the song and came
to the end of this verse, and I saw the emotion that was
in her, I was so moved that I suddenly burst into tears,
and we fell into each other's arms sobbing, while the tears
ran from our eyes and we saw each other through a veil of
tears.

I asked her to write the verses down for me and she did
so, but she did not write them in ink but in her blood. I
lost the red autograph, but the verses remained indelibly
imprinted on my memory.

The husband of the Woman of Goch was the brother of
Sefchens father, and was also an executioner, and as he
died young the Woman of Goch adopted the child. But
when her husband died soon afterwards she gave the child
to her grandfather, who was also an executioner and lived
in Westphalia.

Here in the Free House, as they used to call the execu-
tioner's house, Sefchen stayed until she was fourteen and
then her grandfather died, and the Woman of Goch once
more gave a home to the orphan. From the dishonour of
her birth Sefchen had to lead a lonely life from childhood
until she became a girl, and in her grandfather's house she
was cut off from all company. Hence came her shyness,
her sensitive drawing away from contact with strangers, her
mysterious day-dreams, together with the most obstinate
truculence, the most insolent stubbornness and wildness.

Strange that even in her dreams, as she once confessed
i d 49

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

to me, she lived not with human beings but always dreamed
of animals.

In the loneliness of the executioner's house she could
only find occupation in her grandfather's old books. He
taught her to read and write but he was extremely poor of
words.

Often he would be away for several days with his
assistants, and the child remained alone then in the house,
which was in a very solitary situation near the gallows of
a forest country. There remained only three old women
with grey heads, palsied, who whirred their spinning wheels,
coughed, shivered and shook, and drank a great deal of
brandy.

It was grim for poor Sefchen in the lonely house,
particularly on winter nights when the wind outside shook
the old oaks and howled violently in the wide flaring
chimney, for then she feared the coming of thieves, not the
living but the dead, those who had been hanged and had
wrenched free of the gallows and came knocking at the
window panes of the house asking admittance to warm
themselves a little. They made such pitiful frozen grimaces.
But you can frighten them away by fetching a sword from
the iron room and threatening them with it, and then they
whisk away like a whirlwind.

Only on the days when her grandfather was preparing
for a great execution did his colleagues come to see him,
and then they brewed and baked meats, and feasted and
drank, spoke little and sang not at all. They drank out
of silver cups, while on ordinary occasions only a tankard
with a wooden lid was fetched for the despised executioner
or his assistants from the inns which they frequented, and
the other guests were given to drink out of tankardu with
pewter lids.
50

JOSEPHA THE PALE

When Sefchen was eight years old, she told me, an extra-
ordinary number of visitors came over to her grandfather's
house, although there was no execution or customary un-
pleasant official duty to be set in train. There were more
than a dozen of them, almost all of them very old men
with iron-grey or bald heads, and they wore their swords
under their long red cloaks, and their clothes cut in old
French fashion. They came, as they said, to hold council,
and the best of kitchen and cellar was laid before them for
their mid-day meal.

They were the oldest executioners from the most distant
regions, and they had not seen each other for a long time
and they kept on shaking hands. They spoke very little
and often cracked jokes in a secret code of speech, and
they moulaient tristement, as Froissart said of the English
who gave a banquet after the battle of Poitiers. At
nightfall the master of the house sent his assistants away,
bade the old housekeeper bring from the cellar three dozen
of his best Rhine wine and put it on the stone table in
front of the great oaks that stood in a semi-circle by the
house : he bade her also hang up the lanterns for the
pine-oil lamps, and finally he made some excuse to send
the old woman together with the two other old crones
out of the house. He even stopped up with a horse-cloth
an opening in the planks of the watch-dog's kennel : the
dog was carefully chained up.

Sefchen's grandfather let her stay in the house, but told
her to rinse out the great silver goblet carven with the
sea-gods and their dolphins and conches, and to place
that also on the stone-table — but when that was done he
gave her strict orders to go to her little room and to
bed.

Sefchen rinsed out the Neptune goblet obediently, and

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

put it on the table with the bottles of wine, but she did
not go to bed, and, impelled by curiosity, she hid behind
a bush near the oaks, from which she could hear little, but
could see everything that happened.

The strange men came solemnly two by two with her
grandfather at their head, and sat in a semicircle round
the table on high blocks of wood, and the lights were lit
and showed in grisly fashion their grim faces, hard as stone.
They sat for long in silence, or rather each muttering to
himself, perhaps praying. Then her grandfather filled
the goblet with wine, and each drank from it and passed
it, refilled at each turn, to his neighbour, and as each man
drank they shook hands solemnly.

Finally her grandfather made a speech of which she
could hear little, and understood nothing at all, but
apparently some very melancholy business was toward, for
large tears dropped from the old man's eyes, and the other
old men began to weep bitterly, and this was a dreadful
sight, for these men looked as hard and withered as the
stone figures on the porch of a church and now tears
oozed from their blank stony eyes, and they sobbed like
children.

And the moon peeped so sadly from her veil of clouds
in the starless sky that the heart of the eavesdropper was
like to break for pity. Especially was she touched by the
sorrow of one little man who wept more convulsively than
the rest, and cried out so loudly that she could hear every
word that he said. He kept on saying, " O God ! O God !
misery endureth so, that it is more than human heart can
bear. O God, thou art unjust, unjust.11 His companions
seemed to be able to soothe him only with great difficulty.
Finally, the meeting rose, the old men threw off their
red cloaks, and each holding his sword under his arm they
52

JOSEPHA THE PALE

marched two and two behind a tree where there stood
ready an iron spade, and with this in a few moments
one of them dug a deep trench. Sefchen,s grandfather
stepped forward — he had not like the others thrown
off his red cloak — and produced from under it a white
parcel, which was very narrow, but about a Flemish
ell in length, and wrapped round with a sheet ; he
laid it carefully in the open trench, which [he quickly
filled up again.

Poor Sefchen in her hiding-place could endure it no
longer ; at the sight of the secret burial her hair stood on
end, and in her anguish the poor child hurried away to
her room, hid herself under the bedclothes, and went to
sleep.

Next morning it all seemed a dream to Sefchen, but
when she saw the freshly turned-up soil behind the tree
she knew that it must all be true. She puzzled long over
what might be buried there : a child ? a beast ? a treasure ?
— but she never told any one of the doings of that night,
and with the passing of the years it slipped further and
further back in her memory.

It was not until five years later, when her grandfather
died, and the Woman of Goch came to fetch the girl to
Dusseldorf, that she dared reveal the secret to her aunt, who,
however, was neither shocked nor amazed by the strange
story, but was hugely delighted by it. She said that
neither child, nor cat, nor treasure was buried in the trench,
but it must be her grandfather's executioner's sword with
which he had struck off the heads of a hundred poor sinners.
She said that it was the usage and custom among execu-
tioners not to keep or use any more a sword which has
been used a hundred times in the exercise of their penal
office ; such a sword is not like other swords, for in the

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

course of time it has come by an inner consciousness, and
in the end has need of the peace of the grave like a
human being.

And the Woman of Goch declared that the most
wondrous feats of magic can be performed with such a
sword, with its hundred-fold slaughter, and the very same
night she made haste to disinter the buried sword,
and she kept it ever after among her other charms in
her den.

Once when she was not at home I asked Sefchen to
show me this curiosity. I had not long to ask and
she went to the room and came back with a monstrous
sword which she swung mightily in spite of the weakness
of her arms, whilst she sang, half in menace and
half in roguery :

Wilt thou kiss the naked sword
That is given by the Lord ?

And in the same tone of voice I replied : " I will not kiss
the bright, bright sword, I will kiss red Sefchen ! " and as
she could not withstand me from fear of hurting me with
the fatal steel, she had to let me kiss her, and very warmly
I laid hands on her slender hips and kissed her defiant lips.
Yes, in spite of the executioner's sword with which a
hundred poor rascals had been beheaded, and in spite of
the infamy which comes upon those who come in contact
with any of the contemned race, I kissed the lovely
daughter of the executioner.

I kissed her not only because of my own tender feeling
for her, but in scorn of society and all its dark prejudices,
and in that moment there flared up in me one of the first
flames of those two passions to which my later life has been
devoted ; the love of fair women, and the love of the
54

JOSEPH A THE PALE

French Revolution, the furor francese, with which I also
was seized in the struggle with the feudal landlords.

I do not intend to pursue more closely my love for
Josepha. But this much I will confess, that it was the
prelude to the great tragedies of my riper period. So is
Romeo in calfish love for Rosalind before he sees his
Juliet.

And now let me return to my father, to whom some
mild old gossip had denounced my frequent visits to the
house of the Woman of Goch and my disposition towards
Sefchen. These denunciations however had no other
result than to give my father an occasion for displaying
his own dear courtesy. For Sefchen told me that when
she was out walking she had met a distinguished gentle-
man with powdered hair who, when his companion whispered
in his ear, had looked at her in a friendly way, and as he
passed had doffed his hat to her.

When she gave me a more minute description I recog-
nised in the man who had saluted her my dear kind
father.

He did not show the same consideration for me when
certain irreligious jests which I had let slip were reported
to him. I was accused of blasphemy, and my father
delivered the longest homily that he ever made. It
sounded something like this : " My dear son ! Your
mother makes you study philosophy with Rector Schall-
meyer. That is her affair. For my part I have no liking
for philosophy, for it is sheer superstition, and I am a
merchant and need my brains for my business. You can
be as much a philosopher as you please, but I ask you not
to say in public what you think, for it would injure me in
my business if my customers were to hear that I have a
son who does not believe in God : the Jews especially

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

would buy no velveteen of me, and they are honourable
people and pay promptly, and do quite rightly cling to
their religion. I am your father and therefore older than
you, and therefore more experienced : you must believe
me when I tell you that atheism is a great sin."

For my part I have always had a preference for
Catholicism, a preference that has its origin in my youth
and was inspired in me by the amiable qualities of the
catholic priests. One of them was a friend of my father
and master of philosophy at my school. . . . And because
in this way I have been accustomed to see open-mindedness
and Catholicism so united, the catholic ritual has always been
to me a beautiful thing and a lovely memory of my youth,
and has never seemed to be a thing inimical to the idea
of the evolution of man. . . . And another early recollec-
tion is bound up with it. When my parents left the little
house in which we had first lived my father bought one
of the most imposing houses in Diisseldorf, which was
charged with the erection of an altar at the times of the
processions, and he made it a point of honour to deck out
the altar as beautifully and magnificently as possible.
The days when the altar was furnished forth for the
procession were holidays for me. However, this only
lasted until the Prussians came to Diisseldorf, and then
they took the right away from us. . . .

I honour Herr Schallmeyer, worthy man, though he is
dead now — in life he was a Catholic priest and Rector of
the school at Diisseldorf — as the first to train my mind
and heart. I had the benefit of his especial teaching from
the time when I joined his school and made my way in
turn through all his classes, and I only left that asylum
of knowledge when the top class of the school was
deserted by all its members at the outbreak of the
56

JOSEPHA THE PALE

second war against the French. The greater part
of the pupils (and myself among them) offered their
services to the Fatherland, which made little use of
our offers, for very soon afterwards the Peace of Paris
was concluded.

CHAPTER VI
MY FIRST READING

Strange ! " The Life and Adventures of the Ingenious
Gentleman Don Quixote de la Mancha, set down by
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra," was the first book that I
read when I came to an age of youthful understanding and
was in some measure acquainted with the alphabet. I
have a very clear recollection of that time when, a very
small boy, I stole from the house in the early morning
and hurried away to the Palace gardens, there to read
Don Quixote in peace. It was a fine May day : Spring in
bloom lay listening in the still morning light and had her
praises sung by the nightingale, her sweet flatterer, who
sang her song of praise with such soft caress, such melting
sounds, that the most timid birds sprang up, and the
amorous grass and the scented sunbeams made haste to
kiss, and trees and flowers shivered in sheer delight. But
I sat upon a mossy old bench of stone in the Avenue of
Sighs, as they call it, not far from the waterfall and
charmed my little heart with the brave adventures of the
bold knight. In my childish heart I took it all in earnest
and however laughably the poor hero might be the sport
of Fate, I thought that it must be so, that it must be
the way of heroes to bear ridicule as well as the wounds of
the body, and I was brought to suffering by it, I shared
it in my soul. I was a child and knew not the irony
85

MY FIRST READING

which God has begotten in his world, and the great poet
in his little world of print imitates — and I was able to
shed the most bitter tears when the noble knight for all
his magnanimity only came by ingratitude and blows ;
and, as I pronounced every word aloud, being still unprac-
tised in reading, birds and trees, stream and flowers were
able to hear everything, and as such innocent creatures,
like children, know nothing of the irony of the world, they
too, even as I, took everything in earnest and wept with
me for the sorrows of the unhappy knight, and an old
veteran oak sobbed, and the waterfall wagged his white
beard the more and seemed to cry out upon the wickedness
of the world. We felt that the heroic temper of the
knight deserved no less admiration because the lion having
no desire to fight, turned his back on him, and that his
deeds are all the more worthy of praise for the weakness
and emaciation of his body, the rottenness of the armour
that protected him, and the sorriness of the nag that bore
him. We despised the base mob that treated the poor
hero so roughly, but even more that mob of nobles decked
in gay silken cloaks, who with their fine powers of speech
and great titles, made mock of a man so vastly their
superior in intellect and nobility of temper. Dulcinea's
knight rose higher and higher in my esteem and won ever
more my love the longer I read the wonderful book, and
this I did every day in the garden, so that by the autumn
I had come to an end of the history — and never shall I
forget the day when I read of the sorrowful encounter in
which the knight was so shamefully laid low !

It was a sad day. Ugly clouds scudded across the grey
sky, the yellow leaves fell down drearily from the trees,
heavy tear drops hung upon the last flowers, mournful
and faded, drooping their dving heads ; the song of the

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

nightingales had died away ; on all sides I was forced to
see the signs of mortality, and my heart was like to break,
when I read how the noble knight, crushed and confounded
lay upon the ground, and without raising his visor, as
though he spoke from the grave in a sick weak voice said
to the victor, " Dulcinea is the most beautiful lady in
the world and I am the most unfortunate knight upon the
earth, but it is not seemly that my weakness should blas-
pheme this truth — therefore, knight, make an end with
thy lance ! 11

Alas ! This famous Knight of the Silver Moon, who
overcame the bravest and noblest man in the world, was a
barber in disguise !

That is a long time ago ... so much has happened
since then ! How bitterly I have been put out of conceit
with all that was so splendid to me then — the chivalrous
and catholic existence of those knights, those gentle pages,
and those modest ladies of high degree, those northern
heroes and minnesingers, those monks and nuns, those
ancestral sepulchres with the warning tremors, those pale
sentiments of renunciation to the sound of bells and the
eternal mourning of woe.

Many a Spring has blossomed forth, but always they
lacked their mightiest charm, for I, alas, believe no more
in the sweet lies of the nightingale, Spring's flatterer. I
know how quickly her splendour slips away, 'and when I see
the young rosebuds I have a vision of them blooming red
with sorrow, then growing pale and being blown away by
the wind. Everywhere I see winter in disguise.

But in my breast there blows yet that flaming love, that
rises in longing over all the earth, boldly rushes through
the wide, gaping spaces of the sky, there to be hurled back
by the cold stars, and to sink once more upon the little
60

MY FIRST READING

earth, where, amid sighing and glad shouts, it must tell that
in all creation there is nothing better or more lovely than
the heart of man. This love u> the spirit which acts ever in
god-like fashion, whether in wise or foolish affairs. And
so the little boy by no means shed his tears in vain over
the sorrows of the foolish knight, any more than the youth
who, on many a night in later days, wept in his little room
over the death of the most blessed heroes of freedom —
King Vegis of Sparta, Caius and Tiberius Gracchus of
Rome, Jesus of Jerusalem, and Robespierre and St. Just of
Paris.

CHAPTER VII
AT FRANKFORT ON THE MAIN

Now my mother began to dream of a brilliant future for
me in another direction.

The house of Rothschild, to the head of which my
father was related, had already at that time entered upon
its fabulous prosperity ; and other princes of banking and
industry had arisen in our neighbourhood, and my mother
declared that the hour had come when a man of brains
could attain an incredible height in business, and could
raise himself to the loftiest pinnacle of temporal power.
She resolved, therefore, that I should become a power in
finance, and I was set to study foreign languages, especially
English, geography, book-keeping ; in short, all the sciences
relating to commerce by land and sea, and to trade.

In 1815 my father left me in Frankfort on the Main for
an indefinite period. In order to learn something of
exchange and colonial goods, I had to go to the counting-
house of one of my father's bankers and the warehouse of
a great wholesale grocer. I did the first for three weeks,
the latter for four, but I learned how to draw a bill of
exchange, and what nutmeg looks like.

A celebrated merchant with whom I was to become
un apprenti millionaire was of the opinion that I had no
talent for business, and I laughingly confessed that he was
very probably right.
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AT FRANKFORT ON THE MAIN

I lived for two months in Frankfort, and, as I have said
I spent onlv three weeks in the banker's office. That may
have given rise to the mistake which I once read in a German
newspaper, that I had spent two years in the service of a
banker at Frankfort. God knows I would gladly have
been a banker; it was at one time my dearest wish, but I
could not encompass it. I perceived very early that the
lordship of the world would one day fall into the hands of
the bankers . . .

It was in the year 1815 after the birth of Christ, that
I first heard the name of Borne. I was with my father in
the market in Frankfort, whither he had taken me with
him, in order that I might look about me and see what
was to be seen : to improve my mind, as he said.

One day my father took me to the reading-room of one
of the A lodges or □ lodges where he often used to sup
and drink coffee, and play cards, and perform other such
duties of freemasonry. While he was deep in reading his
newspaper, a young man sitting near me whispered :

" That is Dr. Borne who writes against the play-
actors."

Looking up, I saw a man who passed up and down the
room several times seeking a newspaper, and soon went
out again. Little time though he stayed, yet the whole
being of the man lingered in my memory, and even now I
could imitate him accurately enough.

He was neither short nor tall in stature ; neither thin
nor fat ; his face was neither red nor pale, but of a reddish
paleness or palish redness, and its predominant expression
was one of exclusiveness and distinction, of disdain such as
one finds in men who feel themselves to be superior to
their station, but have doubts of public acknowledgment
of it. It was not that inner majesty which one sees in

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

the countenance of a king or a genius hiding under an
incognito in the throng, but rather that revolutionary and
more or less titanic discontent which one finds in the faces
of pretenders of all sorts. Are there extraordinary men
surrounded by the rays of their spirit ? Do our minds
tell us of such glory as we cannot see with our eyes ? The
moral storm in such an extraordinary man has, perhaps,
an electric effect on young unformed minds coming into
contact with him, much as a material storm has an effect
on cats. A flash from the eyes of this man touched me, I
know not how, but I never forgot it, and I never forgot
Doctor Borne who wrote against play-actors.

Yes, he was at that time a dramatic critic and tilted
against the heroes of the world behind the footlights. Just
as my university friend, Dreffenbach, when we were students
at Bonn, used to cut off the tails of dogs and cats when he
caught them, for the sheer pleasure of cutting, wherefore
we contemned, but were glad later to forgive him when
this lust for cutting made him the greatest surgeon in
Germany, so Borne sharpened his claws on the play-actors,
and many a youthful piece of arrogance which he displayed
at the expense of the Heigels, Weidner, Ursprungs, and
such-like harmless brutes, must be condoned in him for the
sake of the greater services which he was able to render
afterwards as a great political surgeon with his whetted
criticism.

CHAPTER VIII
HAMBURG

I'm drawn to the North by a golden star,
Farewell my brother ! Think of me from afar !
Be true, be true to poetry !
Ne'er let thy sweet bride lonely be !
And keep in thy heart as a treasure trove,
The German tongue that we two love !
And when thou comest to this northern land
Then listen on this northern strand :
And listen until there's a distant bell
That rings its note o'er the blithe waves' swell ;
Then comes to thee as it well may be
The song of the singer thou knowest in me.
Then do thou take thy stringed lute,
And give me song and tidings to boot ;
And tell me how my singer doth fare,
And how they fare my dear ones there,
And how doth fare the pretty maid
Who hath fluttered the heart of so many a blade !
And send the tidings aglow and fine,
The flowering rose on the flowering Rhine !
And give me news of the Fatherland.
If still it be sweet true Love's land,
If the old God still in Germany dwell
And no man serves the evil — tell.
And as thy sweet song ringing free
Brings merry tales across to me,
Across the waves to the distant strand
Then glad am I in the Northern land.
i e 65

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

The city of Hamburg is a good city, full of solid houses.
Shameful Macbeth is not ruler here, but Banquo. The
ghost of Banquo rules everywhere in this little free state,
whose visible chief is a wise and noble Senate. Indeed it
is a free state and the greatest political freedom exists
in it. The citizens can do as they will, and the noble
and wise Senate can do as it will ; every man is here the
free lord of his affairs. It is a republic. If Lafayette
had not had the fortune to find Louis Philippe, he would
certainly have recommended to the notice of his Frenchmen
the Senators and Aldermen of Hamburg. Hamburg is the
best republic. Its customs are English and its food is from
Heaven. In truth there are dishes between the table and
the dung-heap of which our philosophers know nothing.
The people of Hamburg are good fellows and they eat
well. Their opinions in religion, politics and science are
very various, but there is the most beautiful concord in the
matter of eating . . . Hamburg was built by Charles the
Great and is inhabited by 80,000 little people, not one of
whom would change places with Charles the Great, who
lies buried at Aix. Perhaps the population of Hamburg
approaches 100,000. I do not know exactly, although I
spent a whole day in parading the streets in order to
observe the men and women in them. And I have most
certainly overlooked many a man, for the ladies called for
so much of my particular attention. The ladies I found
not thin but for the most part plump, but for all that
charmingly pretty and, taking one with another, they had
a certain comfortable sensuality which not at all displeased
me. If they do not seem to be altogether extravagant in
romantic love, and to give little hint of the greatest passion
of the heart, that is not their fault, but the little god Cupid
is to blame, who often sets the sharpest of love's darts to
66

HAMBURG

his bow but from naughtiness or clumsiness shoots too low
and hits the women of Hamburg not in the heart but in
the stomach. As for the men, I saw for the most part
stunted figures, clever cold eyes, low foreheads, pendulous
red cheeks, jaws particularly well developed, hats that
seemed to be nailed on to their heads, and their hands in
their breeches pocket, as who should say : " What have I
to pay?"

All in the wondrous month of May,

When every bud was blowing,
Then deep within my bosom

The tender love was growing.

All in the wondrous month of May,
When birds sang late and early,

I told my love and longing
To her I love so dearly.

The rose and the lily, the dove and the sun,
With a passionate love I once loved every one.
I love them no more — but I love the completest,
The neatest and meetest, discreetest and sweetest.
She herself is love's well-spring, and other there's none.
For she's rose and she's lily, she's dove and she's sun.

When as I gaze into thine eyes,
Then every pain and sorrow flies;
But when my lips are pressed to thine,
Then perfect health and joy are mine.

And when upon thy heart I rest,
Heaven's ecstasy o'erfloods my breast ;
But when thou sayest — I love but thee,
Then I do weep most bitterly.

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

I will bathe my spirit rejoicing

Deep in the lily's bell ;
The lily shall thence be voicing

A song to my bonnibel.

The song shall leap and quiver,

As on her mouth the kiss,
Which she gave me once and for ever

In a moment of wondrous bliss.

On wings of song I'd bear thee
Away whom I loved so well ;

Away to the Ganges' prairie ;
I know where 'tis fair to dwell.

There in the still noon is sleeping
A gorgeous-flowered grove ;

The lotus-flowers are keeping
Watch for the sister they love.

The violets prattle and flutter,
And gaze at the stars above ;

In secret the roses utter

Their fragrant stories of love.

Lithe, gentle gazelle, come bounding
Nearer to list to the rose ;

Afar you may hear resounding,
The Sacred Stream as it flows.

There will we slumber, sinking
Beneath the palm to rest ;

Love and repose in-drinking,

And dreaming dreams thrice-blest.

HAMBURG

Thou lov'st me not — thou lov'st not me,

That's unimportant, very !
To gaze upon thee is to be

More than a monarch merry.

Thou hatest, hatest me indeed —

Thy rosy lips declare it ;
But lend them me to kiss at need,

And, child, I well may bear it.

Like the ocean-foam-born goddess
Shines my love with beauty decked,

For of some unheard-of stranger
She's the little bride-elect.

Oh my heart, thou patient sufferer,
Bear no grudge that she's untrue ;

Bear, bear with her and forgive her,
All the pretty fool may do.

I know no grudge though my own heart should break,
Oh ! my lost Love, no grudge for thy sweet sake
Beam as thou wilt in all thy diamonds bright,
No beam can shine to cheer thy bosom's night.

I've known it long. I saw thee in my sleep,
And o'er thy heart night brooded dark and deep.
I saw the serpent gnawing at thy breast,
And knew thee of all women wretchedest.

Heigho ! what music entrancing !

Flutes, fiddles, and trumpets, and all !
And see where my love is dancing

A dance at her wedding ball.

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

Heigho ! what a clamour and droning !

How the trumpets bray thro' the hall !
But hark to the sobbing and groaning

Of the good angels all.

If they knew, the tiny flowers,
How bleeds my wounded heart,

Their tears would mingle in showers
With mine, to heal the smart.

And if the nightingales knew it,
How sad and sick is my soul,

They would burst into song to renew it,
And make my spirit whole.

To the golden stars were it given
To know of my sorrow and pain,

They would quit their lofty Heaven
To bid me take heart again.

How should these know it, I wonder !

One only knows my smart ;
It is she who herself rent asunder,

Rent asunder my heart.

They have borne you tales of your lover,

Of slanders what a host !
But never could they discover

What wrung my soul the most.

They made a pother uncivil,

With doleful shake of the head ;

They whispered I was the devil,
And you believed all they said.

HAMBURG

But none of them knew wholly
What far surpassed the rest —

The greatest evil and folly
Lay hid in my own breast.

The nightingale sang, the lime was in flower,
The sun was laughing with hearty glee ;

Your arms were about me, you kissed me that hour.
On your heaving bosom you cradled me.

The raven croaked, and the lime-leaves fell,

The sun's salute was a peevish light ;
We bade to each other a frosty " Farewell,"

And you curtsied politely a curtsy polite.

There stands a lonelv fir-tree
Far north on a naked height ;

He slumbers — the ice and snowdrifts
Enfold him in mantle white.

He is dreaming of a palm-tree
That far in the Eastern land

Grieves lonely and uncomplaining
On a waste of scorching sand.

I have loved thee, still love thee, and evermore

Amid a world's undoing,
The flames of my love for thee shall soar

From out the shattered ruin.

My brethren have angered me sorely,

Tortured me early and late ;
Some of them with their loving,

Some of them with their hate.

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

Into my cup dropped poison,
They poisoned the bread I ate ;

Some of them with their loving,
Some of them with their hate.

But she who has tortured and crushed me,
And grieved me all others above —

She never gave me her hatred,
She never gave me her love.

When comes the hour of parting,
Then tears stream from the eyes ;

Then hands grasp one another
With endless sobs and sighs.

We two wept not at parting ;

We made no sigh, no moan !
Our sighs and tears, my darling,

They came when all was done.

Beauteous cradle of my sorrow,

Beauteous grave where peace I knew,

Beauteous town, I go to-morrow ;
To thee all I cry Adieu !

Fare thee well, thou garden holy,
Where my pensive love doth pace !

Fare thee well, thou threshold lowly,
Where I first beheld her face.

Hadst thou never looked upon me,
Oh ! my spirit's beauteous Queen,

Woe had never fallen on me,
Wretched I had never been.

JHAMBURG

Never did I seek to woo thee,
Never love from thee entreat ;

Only peaceful days near to thee,
In the air thou breathest, sweet.

But sharp words in anger spoken
By thy lips compel me hence ;

And my heart is sick and broken,
Frenzy stirs my every sense.

Fare thee well ; a pilgrim dreary
I will go my mournful way,

Till bowed head and limbs so weary
In a distant grave I lay.

My songs, so old and bitter,
My dreams, so vile and drear,

Come, bury them for ever,
What ho ! a coffin here !

Much will I lay within it
Which yet I may not tell.

The size of Heidelberg's famed tun
That coffin must excel.

See that a bier be furnished
Of stout and seasoned pine ;

Let it be longer than the bridge
At Mainz that spans the Rhine.

And summon me twelve giants,
Men of a mightier mould

Than Christopher the Sainted,
In Koln's cathedral old.

Let these bear forth the coffin
And drown it in the sea ;

For to so huge a coffin

The grave as huge must be.

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

Wouldst know wherefore the coffin
Must be so strong and vast ?

There all my love and anguish
I'll lay to rest at last.

I dreamed that I was once more young and merry

And in the country, high upon a hill,

And down I ran, adown the path, and very

Light-hearted were we, tiny Jack and Jill.

How fine she was, how fairly made, my cousin

With sea-green eyes that lured like nixey's eyes

She stood so firm upon her feet ; and thus in

Her were grace and strength allied in wondrous wise,

The sweet sound of her voice is true and tender,

One seems to see into her inmost heart,

And all she says is wisdom thought doth lend her.

Her mouth is like a rose-bud passing art ;

My reason's mine, I love her not and in me

Is nothing that I cannot understand ;

And yet she doth disturb and wholly win me,

And with a secret thrill I kiss her hand.

And in the end I think I plucked a flower

And gave it her and said, " Do marry me

Dear coz, my dearest, so that from this hour,

Like you I may both good and happy be."

And what her answer was is lost for ever,

For slowly I awoke — and found myself,

A sick man, sick past all endeavour

A cripple laid long since upon the shelf

BOOK II
STUDENT YEARS

(1819-1825)

CHAPTER I
BONN

A great commercial crisis arose and, like many of our
friends, my father lost his fortune, and the mercantile
bubble burst more suddenly and more lamentably even
than the Imperial bubble, so that my mother had to dream
of another career for me.

She came to the idea that I must study jurisprudence,
for she had remarked how for generations in England, in
France and in constitutional Germany, the lawyers had
been all-powerful, and how the advocates especially, being
accustomed to public speaking, play the lead with their
chatter and rise to the highest offices of state. My mother's
observation was altogether accurate. The new university
of Bonn had just been founded, and the faculty of jurispru-
dence was in the hands of professors of great renown. My
mother sent me to Bonn forthwith and there I sat at the
feet of Macheldey and Welcker and ate of the manna of
their knowledge.

In the year 1819 in one and the same term I heard four
courses of lectures dealing, for the most part, with German
antiquities from the most distant times. (1) History of
the German language, under Schlegel, who for almost
three months developed the quaintest hypotheses con-
cerning the race-origin of the Germans ; (2) the Germania
of Tacitus under Arndt who sought in the old German

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

forests those virtues which he could not find in the salons
of our own time : (3) German constitutional law under
Hiillmann whose historical ideas are not in the least vague ;
and (4) the primeval history of Germany under Radloff
who at the end of the term had got no further than the
time of the sesestris.

A German poet was in old days a man who wore a thread-
bare ragged coat, supplied verses for a few dollars upon the
occasion of a christening or a marriage, and enjoyed good
liquor instead of good society, being turned from its doors ;
and indeed he often lay drunk in the gutter, tenderly
kissed by Luna's compassionate beams. In old age such
men sank even lower in their wretchedness, and it was
indeed a state of misery without a care, or rather its only
care was to know where most Schnapps could be had for
the least money.

Such had always been my conception of a German poet.
How pleasant was my surprise then in 1819, when I went
to the University of Bonn as a very young man, and had
the honour of meeting face to face the poet A. W. Schlegel,
a man of genius. With the exception of Napoleon, he
was the first great man I had seen, and I shall never forget
that sublime moment. Even now I can feel the blessed
tremor that passed through my soul when I stood before
his desk and heard him speak.

I was wearing a white Petersham coat, a red cap, long
fair hair and no gloves. But Herr A. W. Schlegel was
wearing kid gloves, and was dressed in the latest Paris
fashion ; he wore the perfume of good society and eau de
millefleurs : he was neatness and elegance in person and
when he spoke of the Lord Chancellor of England, he added,
" my friend," and near him stood his servant in the baronial
livery of the House of Schlegel, and snuffed the wax candles
78

BONN

which burned in silver candlesticks that stood next to a glass
of sugar and water on the desk in front of the great man.
A liveried servant ! Wax candles ! Silver candlesticks ! my
friend, the Lord Chancellor of England ! Kid gloves! Sugar
and water ! What unheard of things at the lectures of a
German professor. This magnificence dazzled us young men
not a little and myself especially, and I addressed three
odes to Herr Schlegel.

We went at night, beneath the walls was blazing
A great bonfire and where the students cowered
With merry jest, there came a voice upraising
The song of Germany and foes o'erpowered.

We drank our country's health our glasses raising
And saw the ghost who from the donjon lowered
And knightly shades the hill about us scoured,
And ghostly ladies whom we fell to praising.

And from the towers came great sighs so hollow
And clang and rattle, and the owls hoot " Follow "
And through it all the North wind roars and rages —

You see, my friend, I kept that long night's vigil
On tall old Drachenfels, the privilege ill
Begat in me, a cold that naught assuages.

CHAPTER II
LITTLE VERONICA

Whether it be because of the rhythmic beat of the oars,
or the swaying of the boat, or the fragrance of the hills of
the river bank, where joy doth grow, it always comes to
pass that the most troubled spirit finds peace in floating
lightly in a little boat on the bosom of the dear, clear river
Rhine. In truth kind old Father Rhine cannot endure his
children weeping ; to stay their tears he takes them in his
trusty arms and rocks them and tells them his most
lovely tales and promises them his most golden treasures,
perhaps even the hoard of the Niblungs sunk there in the
dim distant past. . . .

O ! it is a fair country full of loveliness and sunshine.
The hills of the river bank are mirrored in the blue stream
with their ruined castles and woods and ancient towns.
There on their thresholds sit the townsfolk in the summer
evenings and drink out of great mugs, and gossip, how the
vines flourish, thank God, and how trials must be held in
public, and how Marie Antoinette had been guillotined
without more ado, and how the tobacco monopoly had
raised the price of tobacco, and how all men are equal, and
what a capital fellow Gorres is.

For my part I never bothered about such conversations,
but much preferred to sit with the girls in the arched
window and laugh as they laughed, and have flowers
80

LITTLE VERONICA

thrown in my face and pretend to be angry, until they told
me their secrets or some other vastly important story. The
fair Gertrude could scarcely contain her delight when I sat
with her ; she was like a flaming rose, and when she fell
upon my neck I used to think she would burst into flame
and go off in smoke in my arms. The fair Catherine used
to melt away in tender melody, when she talked to me,
and her eyes were of a blue pure and sweet such as I have
never found in human beings or beasts and only very rarely
in flowers ; it was lovely to look into them, and so many
sweet thoughts would come into my head as I gazed. But
the fair Hedwig loved me ; for when I came to her she
bowed her head so that her black tresses fell over her
blushing face, and her bright eyes shone like stars in the
dark sky. Never a word came from her modest lips, and
I, too, had nothing to say to her. I coughed, and she
trembled. Often she would beg me through her sisters
not to climb the rocks so fast, and not to bathe in the
Rhine when I was hot with running or had been drinking.
I used to listen sometimes when she prayed devoutly before
the little picture of the Virgin Mary, which, spangled with
gold, and lit up by a little flickering lamp, stood in a niche
of the hall of the house. I heard clearly how she prayed
the Mother of God to forbid Him to climb and drink and
bathe. I might have loved her if she had been indifferent
to me : and I was indifferent to her because I knew that
she loved me.

The fair Johanna was a cousin of the three sisters ; I
liked much to be with her. She knew the most beautiful
stories, and when she reached out of the window with her
white hand towards the hills, where all the happenings of
the story had been, a spell was cast over me and I could
see the old knights coming out of the ruined castles and

i " k 81

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

acking away at each other's armour, and the Lorelei
stood once more on the hill-top and sang her sweet, seduc-
tive song, and the Rhine lapped so peacefully, so wisely,
and yet with such dreadful mocking — and the fair
Johanna looked at me strangely, as warily, and as
mysteriously brooding as though she herself belonged to
the fairy world of which she told. She was a slim, pale
girl ; she was consumptive and had long, long thoughts ;
her eyes were clear as truth ; her lips pious and arched ;
in her features was a great story, but a sacred story —
perhaps a legend of love ? I know not, and I never had
the courage to ask her. When I gazed for long upon her
I became peaceful and glad, and it was as though there
were Sunday in my breast, and the angels were holding
divine service in it.

At such times I used to tell her stories of my childhood,
and she always listened gravely, and, strange, when I could
not remember the names, she used to call them to mind
for me. When I asked her in my astonishment how she
knew the names, she used to smile and tell me by way of
answer that the birds had told her who had made their
nest in the eaves of her window ; and she would have me
believe that they were the very same birds which, as a boy,
I had once bought from the cruel peasant children with
my pocket-money to let them fly away. But I believe that
she knew everything, because she was so pale and died so
young. She knew also when she was to die, and wished
me to leave Andenach the day before. When I left her,
she gave me both her hands — they were clear, white hands
and pure as the Host— and said : " You are very kind,
and when you are angry think of little Veronica, who is no
more."

Did the chattering birds betray that name to her also ?

LITTLE VERONICA

I had so often racked my brains when I was ransacking
my memory, and had not been able to remember the dear
name.

Now that I have it again, the earliest days of my child-
hood blossom forth in my recollection, and I am once more
a child playing with other children in the Castle Square at
Dusseldorf on the Rhine.

It was a clear, frosty, autumn day when a young man of
studious aspect wandered slowly through the avenue of the
Palace gardens at Dusseldorf, kicking up, as though from
childish pleasure, the withering leaves that covered the
ground, and looking sorrowfully up at the bare trees on
which were hanging only a few yellow leaves. As he
looked up he thought, in the words of Glaucus :

" Just as the leaves of the forest in truth are man's genera-
tions :

Leaves are blown down to the earth and others are born,
and

Once more the woods are in bud when newly alive is the
Springtime,

So with man's generations : one blooms, another doth
perish."

In early days the young man had looked up at the same
trees with other thoughts in his head, and he was then a
boy looking for birds' nests or cockchafers, which gave him
great delight as they buzzed merrily away, glad of the
lovely world, and content with a sappy green leaf, a drop
of dew, a warm sunbeam, and the sweet scent of the plants-
Then did the heart of the boy find pleasure in the little
winged creatures. But now his heart had grown older,
the little rays of the sun were put out in it, and all its
flowers were dead, and the fair dream of love had lost its

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

radiance. And in the unhappy heart was nothing but
rage and sorrow, and, most bitter of all to say, it was my
heart.

I had returned that day to my native city, but only to
spend the night there ; and I longed for Godesberg and to
sit at the feet of my friend and tell her about little Veronica.
I had visited the graves of my dear ones. Of all my living
friends and relations I had found only an uncle and aunt.
And when I found familiar figures in the streets none
recognised me, and in the town I was looked upon with
strange eyes. Many of the houses had been newly painted,
and unknown faces peeped out at the windows ; decrepit
sparrows fluttered about the old chimneys, and everything
looked as dead and yet as fresh as lettuce growing in a
cemetery. . . . Only the old Elector recognised me. He
stood still in the old square, but he seemed to have grown
thinner. Because he stood in the middle of the market-
place he had seen all the misery of the time, and such
sights do not make for fatness. I walked as in a dream,
and I thought of the tales of enchanted cities ; and I
hurried out by the gate that I might not wake too soon.

The old games of my childhood, and the old fairy tales
came back to me ! But through it all rang a new false
game and a new horrible tale, the story of two poor souls
who had been unfaithful to each other, and had gone so
far in their faithlessness that they had even broken faith
with God. It is a pitiful story, and if you have nothing-
better to do, you can weep for it. O God ! The world
was once so fair, and the birds sang Thy everlasting praise,
and little Veronica looked at me with her dear eyes and
said no word, aud we sat in front of the marble statue on
the castle square — but on one side lies the old deserted
castle, where ghosts walk, and at night a lady in black silk
84

LITTLE VERONICA

wanders with long, rustling train, and she has no head : on
the other side is a high white building, in the upper
chambers of which the bright pictures with their golden
frames gleam wondrously, and on the ground floor are
thousands and thousands of great books which little
Veronica and I often looked at curiously when pious
Ursula lifted us up to the great windows — later, when I
was a big boy I used to climb to the highest rungs of the
ladder and take down the topmost books and read them
for so long that I was afraid of nothing, and least of all of
headless ladies, and I became so clever that I forgot the
old games and tales and pictures and little Veronica, and
even her name . . .

As we walked, the child played with a flower that she
held in her hand : it was a sprig of mignonette. Suddenly
she put it to her lips, and then gave it me. When I came
back for my holidays the year after, little Veronica was
dead. And since that day in spite of all the vagaries of
mv heart her memory has always remained vivid. Why ?
How ? Is it not strange and mysterious ? Sometimes
when I think of this story, I feel a great sorrow as at the
memory of some great misfortune

Dear lady, I will begin a new chapter and tell you how
I came to Godesberg. . . .

When I came to Godesberg I sat once more at the feet
of my friend — and her brown dachshund laid himself by
my side — and we both looked up into her eyes.

The brown dachshund and I lay quietly at the fair lady's
feet, and looked and listened. She was sitting with
an old iron-grey soldier, a knightly figure with criss-cross
scars upon his furrowed brow. They were talking of the
seven hills lit by the lovely red of the evening sky, and of
the blue Rhine, flowing, calm and full, hard by. What

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

are the seven hills, and the red of the evening sky, and the
blue Rhine, and the white sailed boats that float thereon,
and the music that came from it, and the mutton-head of
a student who sang so tender-loverly to us — the brown
dachs and I gazed into the eyes of our friend, and we
scanned her face which shone rose-pale from out the dark
plaits and tresses like the moon from out black clouds.
She had classic Greek features, boldly curving lips, where-
on played weariness and happiness and child-like caprice,
and when she spoke she breathed her words deep and
almost with a sigh, and yet they came out quickly and
impatiently — and when she spoke and her words came
tumbling down like a warm bright shower of flowers from
her — O ! then the red of the evening sky touched my soul,
and merrily ringing memories of childhood came to me,
but above all, like a little bell, little Veronica's voice
sounded in my ears, and I took the fair hand of my
friend, and pressed it to my eyes, until the injury in my
soul was gone, and then I leaped to my feet and laughed,
and the dachs barked, and the old general's brow was
more deeply furrowed, and I sat down again, and again I
took the fair hand and kissed it, and told about little
Veroniea . . .

Dear lady, you can easily imagine how pretty little
Veronica was, when lying in her little coffin. The
lighted candles that stood about it threw their glimmer
on the pale, smiling face and on the soft red roses, and the
rustling leaves of gold with which her head and her white
shroud were adorned — pious Ursula took me into the silent
room in the evening, and when I saw the little dead body
laid out among the lights and flowers on the table, I
thought at first that it must be a pretty little wax statue
of a saint : but soon I recognised the dear face and I
86

LITTLE VERONICA

asked laughing, why little Veronica lay so still, and Ursula
said : " Death lies still."

And when she said: "Death lies still" — but I will not
tell this story now, it would be too long ; I must first tell
about lame Elster, who hobbled about in the Castle Square
and was three hundred years old, and it would make me
melancholy. — But I have a sudden desire to tell another
story, a merry one, which is fitting for the occasion as it is
indeed the very story which I set out to tell in this book.

In the bosom of the Knight was nothing but darkness
and sorrow. The dagger of calumny had struck home to
him, and as he went across the Piazza of St. Mark, his
heart was like to break and bleed to death. His feet
stumbled with weariness — throughout the day there had
been hunting of the noble deer and it was a hot summer's
day — the sweat lay upon his brow, and as he stepped into
the gondola, he heaved a sigh. He sat heedlessly in the
black cabin of his gondola, and heedlessly was he rocked
by the soft waves that bore him on the familiar way to
Brenta — and when he stepped out at the famous Palace,
he was told that Signora Laura was in her garden.

She stood, leaning against the statue of Laokoon, near
the red rose-tree at the end of the terrace hard by the
weeping-willow that droops in sadness to the flowing
stream. There she stood smiling, a tender vision of love,
all in the scent of the roses. And he awoke as from an
evil dream, and was transformed on the instant into soft-
ness and longing. " Signora Laura ! " said he. " I am
wretched and oppressed by hate and sore need and lies," —
and then he stuttered and stammered :— " but I love you,*
— and then a glad tear came to his eyes, and with stream-
ing eyes and burning lips he cried : — " Be mine, my love,

and love me."

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

There is a veil of mystery drawn over that hour, and no
man knows what Signora Laura replied, and when her good
angel in Heaven is asked about it, he prevaricates and
sighs and is silent.

Alone and for long stood the Knight by the statue of
Laokoon, his face was drawn and white ; unconsciously he
plucked to pieces all the roses of the rose-tree, and even
nipped off the young buds — the tree has never bloomed
since then — far off a foolish nightingale made plaint ; the
weeping willow rustled anxiously ; dully murmured the
cool springs of the Brenta, and night clambered up with
her moon and her stars — a lovely star, the most beautiful
of all, fell from the Heavens.

CHAPTER III
GOTTINGEN

The summer of 1820 is always in my memory. The fair
valleys round Hagen, the friendly road at Unna, the
pleasant days at Hanover, and lordly Fritz von Bergheim,
the Mayor, a wonderful man ; the antiquities at Soest, even
the heath at Padeborn, I can see them all vividly. I can
still hear the old oak woods rustling around me and every
leaf whispering to me. Here dwelt the old Saxons who last
of all paid the price of their faith and of being Germans.
I can still hear the primeval stone calling to me : " Stay,
wanderer, here Armin slew Varus !" You must go on foot
and, as I did, wander through Westphalia by Austrian
military day's marches if you wish to become acquainted
with the strength and sternness, the honesty and probity,
the unassuming solidity of its inhabitants.

The town of Gottingen, famous for its sausages and its
University, belongs to the King of Hanover and contains
999 fireplaces, several churches, a lying-in hospital, an
observatory, a library, a town-cellar where the beer is very
good . . . The town itself is very beautiful and is most
pleasing when you turn your back on it. It must have
been standing for a very long time, for I remember when
I matriculated there five years ago, and very soon after-
wards was rusticated, it had the same grey, aged, wise
appearance and was fully equipped with rattles, bulldogs,

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

dissertations, thes dansant, washerwomen, compendia, roast
pigeons, Guelphish orders, coaches, pipe-bowls, councillors
of the Senate, councillors for justice and councillors for
expulsion, professors and other fools. Some will have it
that the town was built at the time of the emigration of
nations and that every German stock left behind there a
sample of its offspring and that from these come the
Vandals, Frisians, Suabians, Teutons, Saxons, Thuringians,
&c, who pass through the Weender Strasse in Gottingen in
hordes and are distinguished by the colour of their caps
and the tassels of their pipes, and are for ever fighting with
each other on the bloody battlefields of the Rosenmiihle,
the Ritchsenkrug and Booden, and in manners and customs
still live in the times of the emigration of nations, and are
ruled partly by the duces, who are called Cocks, partly by
their aboriginal book of statutes, which is called the Com-
mentary, and deserves a place in the legibus barbarorum.

You may read more concerning the town of Gottingen
easily enough in the Topography of K. F. H. Marx.
Although I cherish the most sacred of obligations to the
author, who was my doctor and showed much affection for
me, I cannot unreservedly recommend his work, and I
must lodge this complaint that he has not contradicted
flatly enough the false idea that the feet of the women of
Gottingen are too large. Indeed I have for a year and a
day been busy with a serious contravention of this idea,
and I have heard comparative anatomy on the subject ; I
have made extracts from most rare books in the library,
and I have for hours together made a studv of the feet of
the ladies who passed along the Weender Strasse, and in
the erudite dissertation which is to receive the results
of these studies I shall write (1) of feet generally, (2) of
feet among the ancients, (3) of the feet of elephants, (4) of
90

GOTTINGEN

the feet of the women of Gottingen, (5) I shall summarise
what has already been said of these feet in Ullrich's
gardens, (6) I shall consider these feet in relation to each
other, and finally (7) if I can write so long a thesis I shall
append copper-plates of the feet of the ladies of
Gottingen.

A man has to live here like a solitary, for he can do
nothing but cram. That was what induced me to go to
the place. Often, as I loafed in the avenue of weeping willows
of my paradise at Beul in the gloaming I saw hovering
before me in apotheosis the shining genius of cram, in
nightgown and trousers, holding out Macheldey's " Institu-
tions " in one hand and with the other pointing away to
the towers of Georgia Augusta. Then the clear waves of
the Rhine murmured to me :

" Cram thou German youngster, study,
Chase thy tail, and chase alway ;
Else thou'lt rue it and be sorry
For thy frittered, dawdling day.11

Has not that a tragic sound? . . . How I existed until
the day of my departure, and what things I said and sang
at Beul, and how in the end I strayed to Bonn, you will
already have told Rousseau, my dear Steinmann. I have
come within a few lines of finishing the third act of my
tragedy. It is the longest and most difficult act. I hope
to finish the other two this winter. Even if the piece does
not please it will make a stir. I have put myself into it,
with my paradoxes, my wisdom, my love, my hate, and my
madness. As soon as I have finished it I shall hand it over
to the printers. It will be produced in the theatre in due
course — it does not matter when — it has already cost me
trouble enough. And honestly, I am beginning to think

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

that it is much more difficult to write a good tragedy than
to be a good swordsman. . . .

To Friedrich Steinmann.

Gottingen, Oct. 29, 1820.

So far I have had no very great pleasure in this learned
hole. If I did not know the distance I should have gone
straight back to Bonn, dandies, fops, editions de luxe of prose
writers, boring plastic faces — there you have the students
of the place. But the Professors are even more dead and
alive than at Bonn. Only Sartorius who lectures on
German history and with whom I am on very friendly
terms has come near to pleasing me. I have spent whole
evenings with him.

I attend Bencke's lectures on the old German language
with great satisfaction. Only nine students are attend-
ing this course : think of it ! out of 1300 students of
whom certainly a thousand are Germans, there are only
nine who take an interest in the language, the inner life,
and the intellectual remains of their forefathers. . . .

I think gratefully of all the kindness and generosity
you have showed me at Hamm : I shall make it good.
My dear Fritz, you are one of those rare men through
whose friendship there is no great stir in one's mind nor
any inciting to a wild dance of the emotions, but there is
in it a calm revivifying quality, that heals the old wounds
and, I might almost say, exalts. And my crazy, dis-
tracted and unruly mind, what great need it has of such
soothing, healing and exalting !

GOTTINGEN

To F. A. Brockhaus.

Gottincjen, Nov. 7, 1820.

Enclosed you will find a manuscript entitled "Dream
and Song,11 which I offer you for publication. I know
very well that at present poetry does not appeal to a large
public and therefore is not looked upon very favourably
as a publishable commodity. Therefore I have turned to
you, Herr Brockhaus, knowing as I could not help know-
ing, that you not only publish but also write a little
poetry yourself, and that you endeavour to promote the
interest of what is good and ambitious in our literature,
having the art to rend the wide spreading veil and to
humble yourself for the joy of all the world.

I can therefore follow the example of several of my
friends and leave to such a man as yourself to fix the
price and to say that far less should be put down to my
credit than to the excellent printing and paper with
which it is your habit so liberally to advertise your publi-
cations.

I am very anxious that yourself should read my manu-
script, and I am convinced, knowing your keen sense of
poetry, that you will not fail to find originality at least
in the first half of these poems. Even the toughest critics
have had to grant me originality, which is of some worth
*n these days, especially my Master, A. W. von Schlegel,
who (at Bonn last winter and summer) several times pulled
my poems to pieces, excised several excrescences, propped up
many of their beauties and, thank God, praised them as a
whole. As I am compelled by unhappy circumstances to
suppress every poem which might have a political inter-

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

pretation, and for the most part to gather up only erotic
pieces in the collection, they are rather a meagre crop.
But with the exception of six poems which were printed
in a Hamburg journal, Der Wachter, all the poems in the
manuscript are unpublished, and they may serve as illus-
trations to my observations on the newer poetry, which
are bound up with the enclosed verses.

To Friedrich Steinmann.

Gottingen, Feb. 4, 1821.

Wonder of wonders ! I have received the Consilium
abeundi! For the last month I have been living in great
uneasiness through all sorts of dissensions and have been
pursued by all sorts of misfortunes, and finally last week I
was rusticated for six months

for infringing the laws against duelling.

I have been allowed to stay here for a few days under
pretext of being too ill to leave my room. Imagine my
vexation : eagerly expecting supplies from home, setting
my papers in order, compelled to keep to my room. I sit
the whole morning through and write like anybody in my
album :

" In his love's arms, sorrow free
Dreaming, happy as can be :
Suddenly, his awful fate,
Comes command to Rusticate,
And far away from his dear love
Must the student then remove."

But whither shall I remove ? In no event can I go to
Bonn because of my relatives there. I expect they will
94

GOTTINGEN

decide at home what university I am to go to. Probably
it will be Berlin. . . .

I have worked with all my power (at Alniansor) and
have spared neither my heart's blood nor the sweat of my
brow, and have finished it all but half an act, and I find
to my horror that the astounding and divine master-
piece is not only not a good tragedy, but is not even
worthy of the name of tragedy. Yes ; there are charm-
ing and fine moments and scenes in it, originality is
shown in every word of it, and surprisingly poetic images
and thoughts sparkle all through it, so that it shines
and glitters as though it were covered with a film of
diamonds. Thus speaks the vain author, the poetic
enthusiast. But the stern critic, the inexorable drama-
turgist wears quite a different pair of spectacles altogether,
shakes his head, and pronounces it to be — a pretty puppet-
show. " A tragedy must be drastic," he murmurs, and that
is the death sentence of mine. Have I no dramatic talent ?
That is easily possible. Or have the French tragedies,
which I used to admire much, unconsciously been exercis-
ing their old influence ? That is a little more probable.
For think, all three unities are most conscientiously
observed in my tragedy. Only four characters are heard
to speak, and the dialogue is almost as scrupulously
polished and rounded, as in " Phedre M or " Zaire." — You
are surprised ? The riddle is easily solved : I have
attempted to unite in the drama the romantic spirit and
stern plastic form. Therefore, my tragedy will share the
fate of SchlegeVs Jon. That failed of course because it
was written as a polemic . . .

But now I must take a bite of my sour apple, and tell
you how my poems fare. You do me wrong if you think
that I am to blame for the delay in publication. I

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

received them back from Brockhaus with the most charm-
ing and courteous reply to my letter, saying that he was
overloaded for the present with works for publication. I
will see now if I cannot foist them upon some one else.
It happened to the great Goethe himself with his first
efforts. But I will have my tragedy printed in spite of
their failure. Farewell !

I shall probably leave here the day after to-morrow.

CHAPTER IV
AT BERLIN

Berlin is in truth not a town. Berlin is merely a place

whither a crowd of men — and many of them men of

intellect — foregather, to whom the place is a matter of

indifference : these men make the spiritual Berlin. The

stranger, passing through, sees only the terraces of houses,

one like unto another, and the long wide sti'eets which are

built in regular order, and for the most part to suit the

caprice of one man, and give no sort of indication of the

disposition of the masses. Only a Sunday's child gazing

at the long rows of houses can guess the private feelings

of the inhabitants, and the houses try to keep each other

at a distance, glaring at each other in mutual distrust.

Only once on a moon-light night, as I was returning late

from Luther and Wegner, did I see that hard temper

resolve itself into gentleness and tender melancholy, and

the houses standing opposite each other so inimically, look

at each other in true Christian fashion, touched by their

dilapidation, and try to throw themselves into each other's

arms in reconciliation : so that I, poor man, walked in

the middle of the street, fearing to be squashed. There

are many who will laugh at this fear of mine, and indeed I

laughed at it myself when I walked through the same

street the next morning and saw it in the cold light of

day, and the houses gaping at each other again so stupidly.

i g 97

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

Indeed you need several bottles of poetry to make you
see anything in Berlin but dead houses and dead Berliners.
It is very difficult to see ghosts in Berlin. The town
contains so little of old days, and it is so new ; and yet
its newness is already old, so decayed and withered. For,
as I have said, it has arisen not from the consciousness of
the masses but from that of individuals. Frederic the
Great is the best of them : he found only solid founda-
tions, and the town received from him its individual
character, and even if nothing had been built after his
death it would remain an historical monument of the
spirit of that strange dull hero who typified in himself
with true German valour, the extraordinary Philistinism
and the freedom of understanding, the shallowness and the
uprightness of his age. Take Potsdam for instance : that
is such a monument ; we wander through its deserted streets
as through the posthumous works of the philosopher of Sa?is
souci : it belongs to his venores posthumes and although it
is now only a waste of stone and is amusing enough, yet
we look at it with grave interest, and suppress the desire
to laugh, which crops up here and there, as if we were afraid
of being struck by the Spanish cane of old Fritz. . . .

But when I loitered in foreign climes,
And I dreamed there regardless of seasons and times,
My darling found that the time went slow,
And she stitched and contrived for herself a trousseau,
And as husband in tender arms she wound
The dullest young dullard for miles around.
My love is so gentle and fair to see,
That her gracious image still haunteth me ;
The violet eves and the cheek's rose-hue
Will bloom and will blossom the whole year through ;
To let slip by so charming a wife
Was the dullest of all the dull acts of my life.
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Old Mother Earth was close-fisted so long

When May came on with "depense reman (liable

And the world is joy, and laughter, and song ;
But for laughter — " Je n'en suis plus capable.11

The bells are chiming, the flowers they grow,

The birds they chatter, " com me dans une fable "

But in all their chatter no pleasure I know,
For all is to me " une affaire miserable.11

Still all mankind seems sad and shady,
Even my friend, " autrefois passable,11

Because they now style and intitle " My Lady "
My sweetest love, " si douce et aimable.11

Ah, Lily, I love thee so madly

As thou standest in dreams mid the grass,
And look'st in the stream so sadly,

And murmurest " Ah11 and " Alas.11

Away with thy love and thy coaxing.

I know how deceitful thou art !
Thy tenderest words are but hoaxing,

For my cousin, the Rose, has thy heart.

I saw myself all in a dream by night
In glossy evening coat and satin vest,
Ruffles on wrist, as for some gala dressed,

And by me stood my mistress sweet and bright.

k'So voifre betrothed,11 I murmured with a slight
Inclining. " Pray, fair lady, take mv best
Good wishes.11 But my throat was tight compressed

By the unfeeling, long drawled tones polite.

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

And floods of bitter tears streamed forth unbidden
From my beloved's eyes, and in their breaking,

The vision fair was almost from me hidden.

Oh ye sweet eyes, love-stars so seeming true,

Though ye have lied to me in dreams and waking

Often, how gladly still I trust in you !

What makes my mad blood rave and rush ?
What makes my heart to flame and flush ?
My blood doth boil and flame and dart,
And scorching flame devours my heart.

My blood is pulsing wild and mad
Because of that vile dream I had.
The son of Night approached me dim,
And led me gasping forth with him.

He led me to a palace bright
With blazing torch and taper-light.
'Mid sounding harps, 'mid stir and din,
I reached the hall — I entered in.

There was a wedding revelrie ;
The guests sat round the board in glee.
And when the bridal pair I spied,
Ah, woe ! my darling was the bride.

It was my winsome Love in sooth,
And for the groom, a stranger youth.
I crept behind her chair of state,
And hardly breathing, there I wait.

The music swelled ; I stood amazed,
The loud delights my spirits dazed :
The bride's glance was supremely blest,
And both her hands the bridegroom pressed.

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The bridegroom brims his beaker high,
And drinks and gives it lovingly
To her, who thanks with sweet low laugh.
Ah woe ! my red blood did she quaff!

The bride took up an apple fair
And gave it to the bridegroom there ;
He took his knife and cut it free.
Ah woe ! it was the heart of me !

Their glances met a long sweet space ;
He clasps the bride in keen embrace ;
Her cheeks so rosy red kissed he.
Ah woe ! chill Death was kissing me !

The tongue within my mouth was lead,
No single word could I have said.
Loud music sounded thro1 the hall,
The dainty bride-pair led the ball !

I stood there silent as the dead,
The nimble dancers round me sped.
One low-toned word he whispers next ;
She blushes, but she is not vext !

In eighteen hundred and seventeen, dear,
I saw a maiden wondrous fair ;

Her manner and her form were yours, dear.
And just like you she wore her hair.

I was about to start for college,

And pleaded with her, " Wait for me,

Twill soon be time for my returning.1''
She said, " My joy is all in thee."

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HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

At Gottingen the law I studied ;

Three years had passed since I began ;
Then came the news, my faithful sweetheart

Was married to another man.

Spring smiled in every field and valley :
It was the first of May, and glad

The birds were singing in the sunshine,
Not even the meanest worm was sad.

But, as for me, my strength forsook me ;

Ailing I grew, and sick and white ;
And only God knows what I suffered

Through the long watches of the night.

I lived for three and a half years in Berlin, where I was on
the most friendly footing with the most distinguished men
of learning and came by a sword thrust in my thigh, dealt
me by one Schaller of Dantzig, whose name I have never
forgotten because he is the only man who has known how
really to wound me.

I have written ever since I was sixteen. My first poems
were printed in Berlin in 1821. . . . Professor Gubitz
bemused the firm of Mauer into publishing my poems, and,
excluding forty free copies, ... I received not a penny.

To Goethe.

Berlin, 29 Dec, 1821.

I might have a hundred reasons for sending Your
Excellency my poems, I will only give one : I love you. I
believe that is a comprehensive reason. My efforts in
poetry are, I know, of little worth ; only it may be
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that here and there there are passages to show of what
I may in time be capable of putting forth. For a long
time my mind was divided as to what is poetry.
I was told : " Ask Schlegel." He said to me : " Read
Goethe." That I have done in all reverence. And if in
the course of time there shall come from me the Real
Thing, then I shall know to whom I am indebted for it.
I kiss your blessed hand which has shown me and the
whole German people the way to Heaven.

To Adolf Mullner.

If I have become a poet, then it is the fault of your
excellent " SchuW It was my favourite little book, and
I was so fond of it that I paid it the honour of giving it
as a present to my beloved. " Do you write something
like that ? " said my fair in mocking tones ; and, of course,
I assured her loftily and affectionately that I would write
something better.

Rut you, sir, can take my word for it that I have not
yet succeeded in fulfilling my promise. Meanwhile I have
not the least doubt that in a few years I shall dislodge the
autocrat of the drama from his stage throne. " Art thou

not terrified by the bloody heads of and set up

for a warning in the critical columns ? And by the ruin
of many thousands who found their shame in similar
venture ? " No. I am not afraid.

When a great building is toward, then splinters fall ;
and such are the poems which I am now taking the liberty
of sending you. I am not doing this because I esteem you
so highly ; I take good care not to give that impression.
Nor do I send my poems in gratitude for the charming

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HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

evenings which I owe to you ; for, in the first place, I am
naturally ungrateful, being a man ; and in the second, I
am habitually ungrateful to poets, being German ; and,
in the third place, there can be no question of gratitude
between us, because I believe that I myself am now a poet.

I am sending you, sir, the enclosed volume of poems
simply because I wish to see a review of it in the literary
journals.

I gain much if the review turns out well, that is to say
if it is not too bitter. For I have wagered at a literary
club, that Councillor Wiillner will review me impartially,
even when I say that I am one of his antagonists.

I am very irritable, morose, cross, and fretful to-day ;
ill-humour has put the break on my phantasy, and all my
quips are in mourning. Do not imagine that the faithless-
ness of some woman is the cause of it. I am for ever in
love with women ; when I was cut off from female society
at Gottingen I put up with a cat ; but the faithlessness
of a woman could only affect my risible muscles. Do not
imagine that my vanity has been injured ; the days are
gone when I used to plait my hair in curl papers in the
evening, and carry a mirror in my pocket and busy myself
for twenty-five hours a day with tying my neck-cloth. Do
not imagine either that my sensitive mind is disturbed by
religious scruples. I believe now only in the Pythagorean
doctrine and in the royal code of Prussia. No ! My un-
happiness is caused by a far more serious matter : my dear
friend, the most amiable of men, Eugene von Bre/a, went
away the day before yesterday. He was the only man
whose company did not bore me, the only man whose
original jokes could excite me to merriment, and in his
noble features I could see clearly, what my own soul was
like once upon a time when I lived a lovely and a pure life
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like a flower, and was not spotted with hatred and
lies ! . . .

For some months past I have been wandering about in
Prussian Poland. I did not go far in the Russian or the
Austrian part of it. I have made the acquaintance of
many men from all parts of Poland. They were for the
most part nobles and most aristocratic. But while in the
flesh I moved only in the circles of the higher society and
in the confines of the castles of the Polish nobility, my
spirit often strayed to the huts of the lower orders. When
I saw Delaroche's picture (the two Princes in the Tower,
who were put to death by Richard III.) I was reminded of
the day when in a fine castle in dear Poland I stood in
front of the picture of my friend and talked of him with
his gentle sister and to myself compared her eyes with
those of my friend. We talked also of the painter of the
portrait, who had died only a short while before, and we
remarked how men die off", one after another. Alas ! my
dear friend also is dead now . . . The soft light of his
lovely sister is also put out : their castle has been burned
down and I am lonely and sad when I think that not only
do our lives so soon disappear from the world, but also, no
trace is left of the places where we lived them out, as
though they had never existed and everything were only a
dream. . . .

How emphatic I was once when . . . my best friend
tried to prove to me, as we walked up and down the terrace
of a castle, the superiority in blood of the nobility. While
we were disputing one of the servants made some mistake
and the noble gentleman struck the lowly-born fellow in
the face, so that his ignoble blood burst forth, and hurled
him down from the terrace. I was ten years younger then,
and I hurled the noble Count also down from the terrace —

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HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

he was my best friend — and he broke his leg. When I saw
him again after his recovery — he limped a little — he was
not a bit cured of his pride of birth and maintained boldly
that the nobleman was appointed to be an intermediary
between people and king, just as God has created between
himself and men the angels, who stand next his throne like
an aristocracy of Heaven. " Gracious angel,'1 I answered,
" take a few steps up and down " — he did so — and the
comparison limped.

* * * * #

I made the acquaintance of Grabbe in Berlin, where we
were both students. He was a strange mixture of humility
and impossible poetic bumptiousness. He thought me
very rich because at that time — I know not by what chance
— I possessed a beautiful cloak, and he declared that, being
warm and comfortable because of this cloak, I could make
glowing songs of the South, while he, in his threadbare,
decrepit old coat, exposed to the shameless wind of Berlin,
had to seek his dramatic stuffs in the far North. . . .

I have read in poor Dietrich Grabbed " Biography ,1 that
the seeds of his addiction to drink, to which he surrendered
absolutely, had been implanted in him by his own mother,
who had given him as a child brandy to drink. This
accusation, which the editor of the Biography had from
the lips of a hostile relative, seems to be absolutely false
when I remember how poor Grabbe used to speak of his
mother, who used often to give him a strict warning against
taking nips.

She was a coarse woman, the wife of a prison warder,
and when she caressed her young Wolf Dietrich it is quite
likely that she scratched him with her she-wolfs paws. But
she had a true motherly heart, and showed it when her son
went to Berlin as a student.
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When he left, so Grabbe told me, she pressed into his
hand a packet, in which, wrapped in soft cotton, were half
a dozen silver spoons and six ditto little coffee spoons, and
a big ditto soup ladle, a domestic treasure with which the
women of the people don't dispense without a pang, for
such spoons are like decorations by which they believe
themselves to be distinguished from the common mob who
have only pewter. When I met Grabbe, he had already
pawned the soup-ladle, Goliath, as he called it. When I
asked him how things went with him, he would answer
gloomily and laconically : " I am at my third spoon," or
" I am at my fourth spoon.11 Once he said with a sigh that
the big ones were going, and that there would be very
short commons when it came to the little coffee-spoons >
and that when they were gone there would be no commons
at all.

Alas he was right, and the less he had to eat the more
he turned to drink and he became a drunkard. At first
wretchedness and domestic trouble made the unhappy
fellow seek happiness or forgetfulness in his cups
and in the end I suppose he took to the bottle,
as others to the pistol, to make an end of sorrow.
" Believe me,11 said a simple Westphalian fellow country-
man of Grabbed, " he could bear much and he would not
have died, because he drank ; but he drank because he
wished to die, he died because he was drunk with himself.11
The foregoing obituary is addressed more to my German
than to my French readers, and for the latter I will only
observe that the aforesaid Dietrich Grabbe was one of the
greatest of German poets, and of all our dramatic poets he
should be named as the one who came nearest in spirit to
Shakespeare. He had fewer strings to his lyre than
others, perhaps, and they perhaps rise above him in that,

107

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

but such strings as he had have a tone which is only found
in the great Englishman. He had the same suddennesses,
the same sounds as of Nature, which terrify, and shock and
delight us in Shakespeare.

But all his qualities are clouded by a want of taste, a
cynicism and a lack of restraint which surpass the maddest
and most horrible fancies that ever a mind has given to
the light of day. It was not disease or fever or imbecility
that produced these things, but a spiritual intoxication of
genius. Just as Plato neatly called Diogenes a crazy
Socrates, so alas, our Grabbe might even more aptly be
called a drunken Shakespeare.

In his published dramas these monstrosities are very
much toned down but they occur glaringly horrible in the
manuscript of his Gothland, a tragedy which he gave me
once, or rather hurled at my feet, before I came to know
him, with the words : " I wanted to know what is in me,
and therefore I took the manuscript to Professor Gubitz
who shook his head over it, and to be rid of me referred
me to you, saying that you had as mad whimsies in your
head as I and would therefore understand me much better
— here is my Bulk ! "

With these words and without waiting for an answer
the mad wag rolled away, and as I was on my way to Frau
von Varnhagen's, I took the manuscript with me so as to
give her the first tidings of a poet, for in the few passages
that I had read I had already recognised that here was a
poet.

We know the poetic quarry by their scent. But in this
case the scent was too strong for feminine nerves and late,
about midnight, Frau von Varnhagen sent for me and
implored me for the love of God to takeaway the horrible
manuscript because she could not sleep as long as it was in
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the house. Such an impression did the productions of

my friend Grabbe make in their original shape.
*****

(Ludwig Marcus) came to Berlin in 1820 to study medi-
cine, but he soon deserted this branch of science. I saw
him first at Berlin, and at Hegel's lectures where he often
used to sit near me and industriously write down the words
of the master. He was then two and twenty, but his
appearance was nothing less than youthful. He had a
small slight body like that of a boy of eight years old, and
in his face there was a sort of senility which usually goes
with a hunched back. But he had no such deformity,
and that he did not have it was surprising. Those who
had known personally the late Moses Mendelssohn were
astonished by the resemblance which the features of
Marcus bore to those of the renowned philosopher, who,
curiously enough, was also a native of Dessau. . . .

But Marcus was very closely allied in spirit to that
great reformer of the German Jews, and in his soul there
dwelt the same unselfishness, the patient tranquillity, the
modesty and sense of justice, the smiling contempt for
the wicked, and indomitable iron love for his oppressed
comrades of the faith. Their fate was for Marcus, as for
Mendelssohn, the glowing hub of all his thoughts, the
heart of his life.

I made him happy once when I asked him to compile for
me everything in the Arabic and Talmudic Scriptures
relating to the Queen of Sheba.

I owe it to this work, which is perhaps still among my
papers, that I know to this day why the Kings of Abyssinia
boast of being of the seed of David : they trace their
descent to the visit which their ancestress, the aforesaid
Queen of Sheba, paid to Solomon the Wise at Jerusalem.

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HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

The little man's outward appearance, which not infre-
quently excited laughter, did not prevent his being one of
the most honoured members of that society which published
the above-mentioned periodicals, and under the name of
the " Jewish Union of Culture and Science," pursued great
ambitions, but impracticable ideas. Intellectual and great-
hearted men endeavoured in this wav to procure the
salvation of a lost cause, and at best they succeeded in
discovering the bodies of the old combatants on the battle-
fields of the past. The whole output of the societv consists
of a few historical works and research, and among them
the treatises of Dr. Zunz on the Spanish Jews in the
Middle Ages must be counted one of the marvels of the
higher criticism.

How can I speak of that Union without mentioning the
admirable Zunz, who showed unshakable steadfastness
in a time of transition, and in spite of his own acuteness,
and scepticism, and erudition, remained faithful to every-
thing that he had said and to the generous impulses of his
soul ; a man of words and of action, he created and wrought
while others were dreaming and succumbing to despair.

I cannot pass by without mentioning my dear Bendavid,
in whom great spirit and strength of character were united
with large-minded and urbane refinement, and although he
was very old shared all the youthful wild ideas of the
Union. He was a philosopher of the old stvle, steeped in
the sunlight of Greek serenity, a pattern of the purest
virtue, and by discipline as hard as the marble of the
categorical Imperative of his master, Immanuel Kant.
All his life Bendavid was the most zealous disciple of the
Kantian philosophy, and in his youth he suffered the
utmost persecution for it, and yet he would never sever
himself from the old community of the Mosaic creed, and
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he would never change the cockade of his beliefs. Even
the semblance of such a renunciation filled him with anger
and disgust. Lazarus Bendavid, as I have said, was a
thoroughgoing Kantian, and in saying that I have indicated
his intellectual limitations. When we spoke of Hegelian
philosophy he used to shake his bald head and say that it
was superstition. He wrote well, but spoke better.

The most active member of the Union, the life and soul
of it, was M. Moser, who died a few years ago. Even as
quite a young man he was not only profoundly learned,
but also fired with a great pity for mankind, and the desire
to put his knowledge into practice for the healing of their
woes. He was untiring in his philanthropic endeavours.
He was very practical and toiled unostentatiously at his
labours of love. The great public knew nothing of his
activity. He fought and bled incognito. His name is
unknown, and is not written on the roll of self-sacrifice.
Our generation is not so poor as we think : it has produced
an extraordinary number of such nameless martyrs.

Writing the obituary of Marcus led me naturally to
writing the obituary of the Union of which he was one of
the most honoured members. Eduard Gans, who died the
other day, was its worthy president. This gifted man
cannot be accounted great for his unassuming self-sacrifice
or his nameless martyrdom. Indeed, though his soul
might be fired with the resolve to procure the salvation of
mankind, yet even in moments of exaltation he never lost
sight of his personal interest. A witty lady, at whose
house Gans used often to take tea of an evening, once
observed aptly, that even in the fiercest discussion and in
spite of his great distraction of mind, when he reached out
his hand to the plate of sandwiches he always took those that
were made of fresh salmon and not those made of cheese.

Ill

HEINRICH HEINE^ MEMOIRS

Gans' services to German science'are common knowledge.
He was one of the most active apostles of the Hegelian
philosophy, and in jurisprudence he waged war upon the
lackeys of the old Roman Law, who, without any concern
for the spirit which once lived in the old legislation, are
only concerned with dusting the wardrobe that it has left
behind, and with cleaning it of moth, or botching it up for
modern use. Gans chastised such servility even in its most
elegant livery. How the wretched soul of Herr von
Savigny whimpered under his kicks ! But Gans furthered
the development of the idea of liberty in Germany more
by the spoken than by the written word. He set free the
most closely bound ideas, and tore the mask from lies. His
was a nimble spirit of fire, the sparks of which blazed
bravely, or at least glowed finely. I have to say, though
I say it with sorrow, that Gans fell very far short of
uprightness in his dealings with the "Jewish Union of
Culture and Science,11 and exposed himself to an accusation
of the most unpardonable felony. His downfall was all
the more calamitous inasmuch as he had played the role of
an agitator and had undertaken presidential duties. There
is a traditional obligation on the captain of a ship to be
the last to leave it when it sinks. But Gans saved himself
first. Little Marcus was morally superior to the great
Gans, and he could justly complain that Gans was not
more equal to his task.

We have shown the part that Marcus took in the
Jewish Union of Culture and Science as a matter that
seemed to us more important and more memorable than all
his stupendous knowledge and all his learned works put
together. It is possible that the time when he was devoting
himself to the efforts and illusion of that Union seemed
to himself to be the most sunny hours of his unhappy
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life. Therefore I had to make particular mention of
the Union.

I could easily prophesy what songs would one day be
whistled and warbled in Germany, for I saw the hatching
of the birds, who in later days gave voice to the new
melodies. I saw Hegel, with his almost comically grave
face, sitting like a broody hen on her eggs, and I heard
his clucking. I say it with all respect, but I rarely under-
stood him, and it was only by much thought since that I
have come to any comprehension of his words. It is my
belief that he did not wish to be understood and that was
why he evolved his clausular style, and had such a pre-
ference for people who, he knew, did not understand him,
and gave them all the more readily for that the honour of
association with him. Everybody in Berlin, for instance,
was continually surprised by the intimacy of the profound
Hegel with Heinrich Beer, a brother of the world-famous
Meyerbeer, who was applauded by the most brilliant
journalists. Heinrich Beer was a silly fellow, who was
afterwards declared insane by his family and placed under
guardianship, because, instead of making a great name in
art or science with his great fortune, he preferred to
squander his wealth on silly kickshaws ; and, for instance,
spent six thousand thalers in one day on walking-sticks.
This wretched man, who had no wish to be a great tragic-
poet, or a great astronomer, or a musical genius, laurel-
crowned, a rival of Mozart and Rossini, preferred to
spend his money on walking-sticks — this Beer, this
degenerate Beer, enjoyed the closest intercourse with
Hegel, was the intimate of the philosopher, his Pylades,
and accompanied him everywhere like a shadow. Felix
Mendelssohn, as witty as he was talented, once tried to
explain this phenomenon, saying that Hegel did not

i h 113

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

understand Heinrich Beer. But it is my belief that
the real reason of this intimacy was that Hegel was
convinced that Heinrich Beer could not understand
a word of what he heard him say, and that he could
therefore in his presence unrestrainedly give himself
up to all the ebullitions of his mind. Hegel's conversation
was always a sort of monologue, breathed out by fits and
starts in a dull voice ; the oddity of his expressions often
struck me, and many of them have lingered in my memory.
One starlight night we were standing close together at a
window, and I, a young man of two and twenty, I had
dined well and drunk much coffee, and I spoke enthusiasti-
cally of the stars and called them the abode of the blessed.
The master muttered ; " The stars, hum ! hum ! the stars
are only a gleaming rash on the sky." — " Dear God," I
cried, " is there, then, no happy land up yonder to be the
reward of virtue after death ? " But, looking blankly at
me with his pale eyes, he said, cuttingly : " You wish to
receive a tip for having looked after your sick mother, and
for not having poisoned your brother ? " As he said these
words he looked anxiously about, and he seemed to be
relieved when he saw that it was only Heinrich Beer, who
had come to invite him to the whist party. . . .

I have been upbraided in many quarters for having torn
the curtain from the German Heaven and revealed the fact
that all the gods of the old faith are gone from it, and that
only an old spinster, with heavy hands and sorrowful
heart, sits there ; Necessity. Ah ! I have only given a
fore-warning of what every man must learn for himself,
and what sounded so strange then is now cried out from
the housetops on the other side of the Rhine. And in
what fanatical tones these anti-religious sermons are
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delivered ! We have monks of atheism, who would fain
burn M. de Voltaire alive, because he is a deist in disguise.
I must confess that I take no pleasure in such music, but
then, again, I am not against it, for I have stood behind
the maestro, as he was composing it — in very obscure and
twisted signs, so that not everybody can decipher them —
and I used often to see how he looked anxiously about from
fear anybody should understand him. He was very fond of
me, for he was certain that I did not betray him. I thought
him servile. Once, when I was impatient with his saying :
" All that is, is rational,1" he smiled strangely and said, " It
might also be said : All that is rational must Be." Then
he looked quickly about, but was speedily reassured, for
only Heinrich Beer had heard the words. It was only
later that I understood why, in his " History of Philo-
sophy " he declared : that Christianity is an advance
because it teaches a God who died, while the heathen gods
knew nothing of death. . . .

To Earl Immkrmann.

Berlin, Jan. 14, 1823.

I hope that Councillor Varnhagen von Ense will be use-
ful to you in your publication difficulties. . . . He is a
man, whose position, character, critical faculty and loyalty
deserve the greatest confidence : whose good disposition I
have won through my poetry, the fair intermediary, and
he is the only man in this rotten hole on whom I can rely,
and his princely interest in your labours is the best that
you can come by through my intervention. I have just
shown him your letter to me, and to make you happy I am
sending you the note which Varnhagen's wife wrote me

115

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

about it the day before yesterday. . . . She is the cleverest
woman I have ever met. ... I have read delightedly your
last words about my poems ; your candour proves that you
think well of me. ... I rejoice like a child in the appear-
ance of my own book : and because so much riff-raff is hostile
to. ... I have desired to take up the attitude of ignoring
everything that is and will be written in attack upon me.
I know that a society has been formed to provoke me
systematically by spreading offensive reports and slinging
mud in public. . . . Farewell ! Think well of me : If from
certain expressions and grievances you take me for a
pedant, then I am quite ready to confess that I am that.
Perhaps it comes from my state of health, but perhaps
because I am still half a child. It is strange that I cling to
my childhood as long as possible, but it is because every-
thing is reflected in the child : manhood, old age, Godhead,
even wickedness and convenience. . . .

You ought to have had a letter from me long ago. When
I read the dear conciliatory words which you wrote last
summer in the Anzeige about my '; Poems," I resolved
to write to you. ... I confess that you are the only man
who has divined the source and origin of my dark sorrows.
But I hope soon to be known to you : perhaps I have suc-
ceeded in my new poems in laying down the Passe-partout
of the lazaret of my soul. I shall soon hand this little
book over to the printers, and it will be one of my
greatest joys to send it to you: for truly there are very
few for whom one writes especially, when, as I have
done, he has drawn into himself. This book is to con-
tain my little malicious-sentimental poems, a southern
romantic drama, and a little grey northern tragedy. The
fools think I have ventured to enter into rivalry with you
because of our point of contact in Westphalia (you have
116

AT BERLIN

been taken for a Westphalian up to now), and they do not
know that the lovely clean shining diamond cannot be com-
pared to the blood-stone which is only wonderful in
form, and from which the hammer of time strikes wild,
evil sparks. But what are the fools to us. . . . War
against ancient wrong, domineering folly and wickedness !
If you will be my brother-in-arms in this holy war, then
gladly do I hold out my hand to you. Poetry is after all
only a secondary consideration.

To Ferdinand Dummler.

Berlin, Jan. 5, 1823.

Our mutual friends have praised your activity and loyalty.
Because, being sharpened by experience, I do most loyally
esteem these qualities in a bookseller, more than any other
interest, I now make you a proposal to publish one of my
books. It contains (1) a little tragedy (some three and
a half printer's sheets long), the main idea of which is to
be a substitute for the usual Fate, and will certainly cause
a stir in the reading world ; (2) a longer dramatic poem,
called " AlmansoiV the matter of which is religious and
polemical ; it is concerned with topics of the day, and will
cover perhaps a little more than six sheets, and (3) a cycle
of humorous poems in folk-song metre that will take up
three to three and a half sheets ; some of them have
appeared in the journals, and by their originality have
excited much interest, some praise and bitter censure. As
to the little tragedy which I have designed for the stage,
where it is certain to be produced, I will give you its
title and contents as soon as I find that you are not averse
to my proposal. I do not want it to be known here before

117

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

it has begun to be printed, and only two people, Professor
Gubitz and Councillor Varnhagen von Ense have seen it.

I cannot myself pass any judgment upon my own
worth as a poet. I will only say that my poems have
excited extraordinary attention throughout Germany, and
that the very violence of the hostility with which they have
been assailed here and there is itself no bad sign . . .

I do not think I am much known here in Berlin ; but I
am better known in my own country on the Rhine and in
Westphalia, where, as I hear from all sides, there is great
anticipation of the appearance of my long expected book
of poems, and its greatest sale will certainly be there.

To Immanuel Wohlwill.

Berlin, April 1, 1823.

Do not imagine, my good fellow, that the long delay in
answering your letter has been caused by any cooling off'
of friendship on my part. No, indeed, although many a
friendship has been frozen in this hard winter, the dear fat
image of you has not been able to issue from the narrow
portals of my heart and the name of . . . Wohlwill
lingers warm and alive in my memory. Only yesterday
we were talking of you for one and a half hours — by We,
you must understand myself and Moser.

I am glad that you are beginning to be happy in the
arms of the amiable Hammonia : I don't like the charmer,
the gold-broidered coat deceives me not : I know that she
wears a dirty chemise next her yellow body and that with
melting sighs of love : " Beef ! Banko ! " she sinks on the
bosom of him who offers most . . . But perhaps I am
doing an injustice to the good city of Hamburg; the
118

AT BERLIN

humour that I was in when I lived there for a little time
was not of a sort to make me an unprejudieed judge ; my
inner life was given over to brooding and sinking into
the darkness, only lit by fantastic lights, of the pit of the
world of dreams, and my outer life was mad, dreary,
cynical and forbidding ; in a word, I made it a sharp
contrast to my inner life, so that it might not weigh down
the balance to my destruction. Yes, amice, it was very
fortunate for me that I had just come from the philoso-
phical lecture room, when I stepped into the circus of
the world, and could construct my life philosophically and
see it objectively — even if I did lack that higher calm
and self-possession which are necessary if one is to envisage
a great scene of life. I do not know if you have under-
stood me ; but if some day you read my memoirs and find
a description of a crowd of Hamburgers of whom I love
some, hate many, and despise the majority, you will
understand me better ; for the present what I have
.said will serve only to answer certain expressions in
your letters, and to explain to you why I cannot fulfil
your desire and come to Hamburg this spring — although
I shall be only a few miles away from it. Four weeks
from now I am going to Liineburg, where my family lives,
and shall stay there six weeks, and then go to the Rhine,
and, if possible, to Paris. My uncle has given me two
more years as a student and I have no need to seek a
professor in Sarmatia, as I originally intended. I think
that there will be many changes soon, and that I shall
have no difficulty in settling on the Rhine . . . The
chief thing is the restoration of my health, without which
all plans are foolish. If God will only give me health, I
will look after the rest.

119

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

To Rahel Varnhagen von Ense.

Berlin, April 12, 1823.

I am going away soon and I beg you not altogether to
throw away my image into the lumber room of oblivion.
I could make no reprisals, and though I were to say to
myself a hundred times a day, " You will forget Frau von
Varnhagen ! " it could not be. Forget me not ! You
cannot excuse yourself on the score of bad memory, your
spirit has made a contract with time, and if after some
hundreds of years I have the pleasure of seeing you as the
fairest and most beautiful of all the flowers in the fairest
and most beautiful of all the valleys of heaven, then you
will have the kindness to greet me as a holly tree (or shall
I be something worse ?), as an old acquaintance with your
friendly glance and your soft breathing sweetness. It is
sure that you will do so. You have done so in the years
1822 and 1823 when you treated me, a sick, bitter,
morose, poetic, and insufferable human being, with a
kindliness and goodness which I have certainly not de-
served in this life, and must owe alone to tender
recollections of an earlier acquaintance . . .

120

CHAPTER V

THE TRAGEDIES AND THE LYRICAL

INTERMEZZO

To Immanuel Wohlwill.

Berlin, April 7, 1823.

I am sending you to-day my " Tragedies." I have
dedicated them to my uncle Solomon Heine. Have you
seen him ? He is one of the men whom I most esteem ; he
is noble, and he has innate strength. You know, the last
is the greater thing for me.

To Friedrich Steinmann.

Berlin, April 10, 1823.

Troublous storms, the loss of my nearest and dearest,
sickness and distemper and such like jolly things have for
two years been the outstanding features of the life of your

friend My " Tragedies " have just been published.

I know that they will be torn in pieces. But I will tell you
this in confidence : they are very good, better than my
collection of poems, which is not worth powder and shot.

121

HEINRICH HEINES MEMOIRS

To Karl Immermann.

Yes. I promise you that the frivolous desire to seem
frivolous shall never again take me when I make confessions
to you. There is such a confession of myself in " RatclifF ''
and it is my whim to believe that you will be one of the
few who will understand it. I am convinced of the worth
of the poem ; for it is true, or I myself am a lie ; everything
else that I have written or may write, may and will vanish
away. But will the new-born bantling give me joy ? It
will be hard for such joy to be as great as the sorrow that
already I see before me. The coteries of toads and vermin
of this place have already presented me with the dirty
marks of their attention ; they have already got hold of
my book before it is actually published, and, from what I
hear, they are going to foist a " tendency" upon "Almansor "
and bring it into contempt in a way which rouses my whole
being and fills me with sovereign disgust. . . . The cursed
language of imagery in which I had to make " Almansor "
and his oriental consorts speak, led me into drawing it out
rather fine. I am afraid that the Pious of the Land will
have many other charges to lay at the door of the piece.

To Maximilian Schottky.

Berlin, May 4, 1823.

I hope the tragedies will please you, and that you will
be satisfied with my new treatment of the folk-song, as
shown in the lyrical Intermezzo. When I was writing the
122

THE TRAGEDIES

little songs I often had in my mind your short Austrian
dance-rhymes with their epigrammatic conclusion.

To WlLHKLM MtJLLER.

Hamburg, June 7, 18253.

I am great enough to confess openly to you that the
little metre of my "Intermezzo,11 does not only seem a
chance resemblance to your usual metre, but probably owes
its most inward rhythm to your song for at the time when
I was writing my "Intermezzo,11 I had just begun to know
Midler's dear songs. I came very early under the influence
of the German folk-song, and later when I was a student at
Bonn, August Schlegel revealed many metrical secrets to
me, but I think that it was first in your songs that I found
the pure sound and the true simplicity for which I was
for ever striving. How pure and how clear are your songs,
and they are essentially folk-songs. But in my poems only
the form is in some degree that of the folk-song, and the
substance of them is that of conventionalised society. Yes.
I am great enough to repeat — and you will find it expressed
publicly — that I only saw clearly through reading your
seventy-seven poems, how out of the old existing folk-song
forms new forms can be fashioned, which are actually of the
people, without it being necessary to imitate the old rough-
ness and clumsiness of speech. In the second part of your
poems I find the form even more pure and more transparently
clear — but, however much I may say of form, it is more
important for me to say that, with the exception of Goethe,
there is no writer of songs whom I love so much as

you. . . .

123

HEINRICH HEINE\S MEMOIRS

To Moses Moser.

Luneburg, May 1823.

With regard to the reception of my " Tragedies * I have
found my fears confirmed here. Success must wipe out
the bad impression. As for their reception in my family,
my mother has read my tragedies and songs, but she did
not like them particularly : my sister just puts up with
them, my brothers do not understand them, and my father
has not read them.

To Baron de la Motte Fouque.

Luneburg, June 10, 1823.

My " Almansor,"

I had rejected the poem, and only upon the per-
suasion of my friends did I bring myself to having it
printed, and now it meets with much approval, much
more than " Ratcliff"", I have not begun to judge it
more favourably. I know not how it is, but this dear,
gentle poem gives me no pleasure, while I think of the
grim, hard " Ratcliff," with satisfaction. I remember :
the romances of Donna Clara and Don Gafarios in the
Magic Ring, which often I have been inclined to think
written by myself. This lovely romance was often in my
mind when I was writing " Almansor."

124

THE TRAGEDIES

To Friedrich Wilhelm Gubitz.

Luneburg, Oct. 21, 1823.

I cannot repeat often enough that all that you have
done to circulate my tragedies will be rewarded in heaven.
On the Rhine my uncatholic " Almansor M would probably
be completely ignored : at Brunswick where Klingemann, a
true poet, produced it in the theatre after he had worked
on it, it was hissed : at Brunswick also lives my bosom
friend Kochy.

To Moses Moser.

Luneberg, Sept. 30, 1823.

Not long ago I saw the Elegante Welt, and I saw in it
that Kochy is now living in Brunswick, for as I read the
article on the Brunswick Theatre, I recognised his hand.
I am convinced that this fellow either induced, or at least,
caused the hissing of my " Almansor " at Brunswick. I know
how such things are done, and I know the meanness of
men, and now you will see the importance of the measures
which I had to take on the production of " Almansor." I
hear that the piece has been crushed out of existence :
have you heard no details ? The Brunswick Jews have
spread the news throughout Israel, and I have been con-
doled with in Hamburg. The story is very unpleasant ;
it has a very injurious influence upon my condition, and I
do not know how I am to repair it. The world and its
fools are not a matter of such indifference to me as you
think.

125

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

To Josef Lehmann.

Luneburg, June 26, 1823

I have not given up hopes of seeing " Ratcli fT' produced,
although I have not cajoled any actor, or paid court to
any actress, and certainly know not the art of shuffling my
play on to the boards. I imagine that writing and talking
of the piece will bring it on to the stage.

The Lyrical Intermezzo
(To Solomon Heine).

All my suffering and sorrow
Is written here with nought concealing ;
Thou ope'st the book upon the morrow
And find'st what's writ my heart revealing.

Almansor.

Think not it is so thoroughly fantastic
The lovely song I sing in friendly fashion,
Give ear ; it is half epic and half drastic
And lyric flowers bloom in tender passion ;
Romantic is the stuff, the form is plastic
But all is from the heart, for, though I lash on,
The North against the South and Christ to muzzle
Mahomet, yet Love comes to end the tussle.

Ratcliff.

From out the spirit world's great gates strong-handed
I shot my rusty bolts and turning,
The seven secret seals that love has branded
Upon his scarlet book I tore, and learning
126

THE TRAGEDIES

The truth that from the words I then commanded
I bring it thee to pacify thy yearning
Housed in this song ; my name and I may perish,
Vet while man lives this song of mine he'll cherish.

In seeking sweet Love I have never found,
More than black hate hatred feeding,

And, sighing, I've cursed with curses round,
And from thousands of wounds I am bleeding.

My life has been lived by day and by night,
With Tom, Dick and Harry and living

Amid all their studies and chatter light,
With my " Ratcliff" I ever was striving.

" William Ratcliff" was little known ; indeed the name of
its publisher was Diimmler. I give a place in my collected
poems to this tragedy, or rather to these dramatised
ballads, with good reason, because they are a significant
document in the cycle of my life as a poet. It forms a
risumi of my poetic Storm and Stress period which is ex-
pressed very incompletely and mistily in the u Youthful
Sorrows" of my "Book of Songs." The young author
who in those songs lisped in dreamy sounds of nature
with a clumsy tongue, speaks a waking, grown-up speech
in " Ratcliff," and says his last word without concealment.
This last word was a magic word, at the sound of which
the pale faces of misery flamed purple, and the ruddy sons
of happiness turned pale as chalk. On honest Tom's
hearth in "Ratcliff" bubbles the great soup of questions,
wherein a thousand damned cooks stir about, and now
every day it froths up and boils over. The poet is a
wondrous Sunday's child, he sees the oak woods that
slumber still in the acorn, and he converses with genera-

197

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

tions as yet unborn. They whisper their secrets to him,
and he chatters of them in open market. But his voice
is lost in the babble of the passions of the moment ;
few hear him, and none understands. Friedrich Schlegel
called the historian a prophet who looks back into the
past : it might be more aptly said of the poet that he is a
historian whose eyes look out into the future.

I wrote " William Ratclifr'" under the limes at Berlin in
the last three days of January 1821, when the sun was
shining with a certain lukewarm kindliness upon the snow-
covered roofs, and the sad leafless trees. I wrote it straight
off and without pickling. While I was writing it was as
though I heard above my head a rustling like the beating
of the wings of a bird. When I told my friends the young
poets of Berlin about it they looked at each other strangely,
and one and all assured me that it had never happened to
them when they were writing.

128

CHAPTER VI
AT LUNEBURG

To Moses Moser.

Luneburg, May 1823.

I reached Lubthern on Tuesday evening after driving
and jolting through Monday night and the whole of the
following day, and growing cross with the stupid chatter
of my fellow travellers, and giving audience to my fancies
and feeling much and thinking of you. . . . My sister is
to be married on June 22. The wedding will probably
take place somewhere near Hamburg. I shall stay and be
bored here for several months.

To Karl Immermann.

Luneburg, June 10, 1823.

For some weeks past I have been living here at Lune-
burg in the bosom of my family, where I shall stay until
my poor head is well again. It looks as if it were going
to take a long time, and may the Gods have pity on my
poor plans of travel. I foresee, my dear Immermann, that
it will be a long time before I come to the town of

i [ 129

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

Knipperdolling and shake hands with the poet with whom
I hope to grow old. You yourself made use of a similar
expression, and you will hardly believe how much the
words touched me to my inmost soul, coming as they did
naturally from sheer generous feeling. God eternal knows
that I knew you what you are from that first hour when I
read your tragedies ; and I am all the more sure in my
judgment of myself. That certainty does not spring from
vain self-deception, bnt rather from the clear consciousness
and the exact knowledge of the Poetic, and its natural
counterpart, the Commonplace.

To Varnhagen von Ense.

Luneburg, June 17, 1823.

Favourable circumstances have lately surrounded my
parents and my sisters with so much gladness and comfort,
that I should look forward to a bright future for myself
were it not that I know that Fate rarely fails to play her
evil tricks at the expense of German poets. I cannot tell
you, my dear Varnhagen, anything definite concerning my
mode of living in the immediate future, for I have no
opportunity of speaking to my uncle upon whom much
depends, until next week, after my sister's marriage. If
that does not lead to anything definite, I shall find some-
thing in Hamburg, whither I intend to go immediately
after the wedding, although the most painful sensations
are excited in me at the sight of that city. . . .

130

AT LUNEBURG

To Moses Mober.

Luneburg, June 28, 1823.

I am living here in complete isolation. I come in
contact with no single human being because my parents
have withdrawn from all society. I have, therefore, only
made the acquaintance of trees, and they are appearing
now in their old green splendour and remind me of old
days, and bring back old forgotten songs to my memory
with their rustling, and incite woe in me. So much of
pain wells up in me and overwhelms me, and it is perhaps
this that makes my headaches worse or rather protracts
them, but they are not as bad as they were in Berlin, but
they last longer. ... I am not yet on such a footing with
my uncle as I wished to be, so as to be able to project a
definite plan for my life in the future. I shall not be able
to tell you anything definite about that until I return
from Hamburg. . . . Hamburg will call up memories, but
it will be most useful for me to go thither. ... A pack of
dogs hostile to me surrounds my uncle. I shall, perhaps,
make a few acquaintances in Hamburg who will be able to
counterbalance that. Only I am afraid that with my
frigid politeness and irony and honesty, I shall make
more enemies than friends. ... I shall have much to
write to you about when I return from Hamburg !
Remember me to Gans and Zunz, and to Zunz's wife.
Tell them that they are much in my thoughts, which is
quite natural since I am living quite alone here, so that
my last impressions of Berlin cannot be displaced. I see
you, my dear Moser, everywhere, and it is, perhaps, more
than the softness of a sick man that makes me be most

181

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

pitifully overwhelmed by the desire to live with you again.
May the gods grant that this desire be fulfilled ! Ham-
burg ? Could I find there as many friends as I have
suffered agonies ? That is impossible. . . .

132

CHAPTER VII
THE RETURN HOME

To Moses Moser.

Luneburg, June 24, 1823.

On the 22nd I stayed with my family, on the occasion of
the marriage of my sister. It was a fine day of feasting
and concord. The food was good, the beds were bad, and
my uncle Solomon was very pleased. I think I shall stand
well with him in future : outwardly we are on the best of
terms and he makes up to me in public.

I am in the greatest discomfort. My time is sparingly
doled out to me and I have no commission for you to-day,
and yet I am writing to you. Outwardly nothing has
happened to me — ye gods ! but there is all the more
inwardly. My old passion breaks out again violently. I
ought not to have gone to Hamburg, but at least I must
arrange to leave it as soon as possible. I am under a new
delusion, and am beginning to believe that I am spiritually
fashioned otherwise and have more depth than other men-
A dreary anger lies like a burning cover of iron upon my
soul. I long for eternal night.

I have been very well received by my family. My uncle
Solomon Heine, has procured me all sorts of fine things,

183

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

but unfortunately he left here about 6 o'clock in the

morning, partly on business, and partly for pleasure . . .

I was at Hamburg at a bad time. My pains made me

depressed and by the sudden death of a cousin and the

consequent upset in my family I did not find much to

revive me in others. At the same time the magic of the

place had a grateful effect upon my soul, and an entirely

new principle came to light in it : this principle of my soul

will guide me for some years and will order all that I do

and leave undone. If I were a German — and I am no

German, see Ruhs, Tries and others — I should write you

long letters, long spiritual confessions on this subject ; but

yet I long to draw the curtain of my heart and to reveal to

you in an hour of confidence hoio this new folly is built upon

the old. . . .

*****

When I met one day on a journey
My sweetheart's relations by chance,

Small sister, and father and mother,
They recognised me at a glance.

They asked if my health was stronger,
And at once began to exclaim

That, except for being paler,
I looked exactly the same.

I asked after aunts and cousins,
And many a family bore ;

And after the little puppy

Whose bark was so gentle of yore.

And after my married darling

I asked, by-the-bye ; and they said,
>Vith an evident wish to be friendly,
That she was just brought to bed.
134

THE RETURN HOME

I offered congratulations,

Lisping stock phrases inane,
I desired my kindest remembrance

To her, again and again.

Small sister meanwhile was shrilling :
" The puppy so gentle and small

Grew big and awfully savage,

And was drowned in the Rhine after all.

The little one's like my darling ;

And when she laughs I see
Those self-same eyes whose sweetness

Has brought such woe on me.

Away on the far horizon

The city with spire and tower

Appears like a vision in cloudland,
Veiled by the twilight hour.

A wet sea-breeze is crisping

Our grey path over the sea,
And the pulsing oars chime sadly

As the boatman roweth me.

Once more the sun resplendent,
Mounts from the ocean-floor,

And shows me the spot where my dearest
Was lost for evermore.

All hail to thee, thou city,

Mysterious, awful, great,
Within whose ample circuit

My darling dwelt of late !

V35

HEINRICH HEINFS MEMOIRS

Tell me, ye gates and turrets,

Hold you my darling still ?
I gave her to your keeping,

You must the pledge fulfil.

The turrets, I hold, are guiltless ;

They are fixed, and could not give chase,
When she with boxes and parcels,

Hastily left the place.

But the wicked gates, they saw her,
And, when she passed, stood still —

The way is always open

Then the wayward work their will.

Calm is the night, the streets are lonely ;

My love dwelt here in this house of yore ;
'Tis long since she left the city — only

The house still stands where it stood before.

There too stands a man staring up at the casement,
And he wrings his hands with the anguish he feels

I look at his face with a shuddering amazement,
It is myself that the moon reveals !

Thou ghastly fellow, thou wrath, thou double !

How darest thou mimic the agony
Which on this spot racked my soul with trouble

Night after night in the time gone by ?

When I told you with tears of my sorrow that day,
You all of you yawned, and had nothing to say.
When I made them the theme of my versification,
You vouchsafed me your liveliest approbation.
136

THE RETURN HOME

Say, where's now your pretty sweetheart

You extolled in lyric fashion,
When your youthful being kindled

With the magic glow of passion ?

Ah, my heart is sad and frozen,

And the flame no longer flashes,
And this little book's an urn which

Sepulchres my love's cold ashes.

To Moses Moser.

Luneburg, Sept. 27, 1823.

I am once more in Luneburg, the home of boredom. My
health is the same : nerves stronger, but the headaches
lasting longer. This brings me to despair, for I am
working again at my law. I am irritated and made sick,
and am at present very bitter against those dull fellows
who gain their good livelihood from a thing for which I
have made the greatest sacrifices and all my life long must
bleed in spirit. I must be made bitter, I ! just at a time
when I was reconciled to letting the waves of Anti-Semitism
break upon me. On all sides I feel the workings of that
hatred, which yet is scarcely out of the germ. Friends
with whom I have passed the greater part of my life now
turn from me. Admirers become traitors, those whom I
most love do hate me most, and all seek to injure me.
You ask so often in your letters if Rousseau has written.
I find this question very unnecessary. Other friends have
renounced me and denounced me. I will say nothing of
the vast numbers of those who never knew me personally.

Meanwhile my family affairs and my financial condition
are in the worst possible case. You say that I was lacking

137

HEINRICH HEINFS MEMOIRS

in prudence in my behaviour towards my uncle. You do
me wrong. I know not why I should not maintain towards
my uncle that dignity which I show towards all other men.
You know that I am a delicate, sensitive youth, who
blushes when he has to borrow money and stammers when
he asks help of his best friend. Indeed, I do not need to
avow that to you, for it is your own experience that I have
a very strong feeling in such matters ; but I am also
singular in this, that I will not extort by the intercession
of my friends or patrons any money from my uncle, who
possesses some two millions but does not willingly part
with a single groschen. And I have been rewarded for my
independence by my uncle treating me with respect and
marked attention and favour when I was at Hamburg,
where I passed several days at his country house. Indeed
I am so constructed that I cannot do otherwise and am not
to be moved by any monetary consideration to part with
one jot of my own self-respect. . . .

It has made me angry to read between the lines of your
letter that ill has been spoken and written of me at
Hamburg ... I expect you to write everything quite
candidly for me. It is infinitely important for me to know
what people say about me at Hamburg. In truth I have
not behaved like an egoist in Hamburg ! In spite of all
that depended on it I have not been able to bring myself
to pay homage to peevish infirmity and cry out upon
strength. . . .

138

THE RETURN HOME

To Ludwig Robert.

Luneburo, Nov. Ti, 1823.

There is nothing new to tell you, my dear Robert,
except that I am still alive and still love you. The last
will endure as long as the first, for the duration of my life
is very uncertain. Beyond life I promise nothing. With
the last breath all is done : joy, love, sorrow, macaroni,
the normal theatre, lime-trees, raspberry drops, the power
of human relations, gossip, the barking of dogs, champagne*
It is in truth a dreary humour in which I have been
brooding these two months. I see nothing but yawning
graves and fools and business scenes. Rarely does a ray of
sunshine light upon my heart, such a ray of sunshine as the
friendly greeting of the fair Swabian, or the news that
Ludwig Robert has not forgotten me . . . Perhaps you
will live to read my confessions and to see how I regarded
my contemporaries, and how all my life of sorrow and
oppression was most unselfishly directed towards the Idea.
I am much, very much dependent on the recognition of the
masses, and yet there is no one who so much despises the
approval of the people as I or so much conceals his
personality from the expression of it ... I am saying too
much. But I am like your sister, Frau von Varnhagen,
who, as she told me once, has to write long letters when-
ever she wishes to say anything. Remember me to the
dear, kind, little lady with the great soul. Tell her that
the moments are rare when I do not think of her. I would
gladly write to Frau von Varnhagen, but it would pain me
too much. I could not forbear to mention Heir von
Varnhagen without being guilty of deceit. . . .

139

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

To Moses Mosek.

Luneberg, Nov. 28, 1823.

Ludwig Robert is very dear to me. He has not shown
himself small-minded towards me, and that is much in
this petty world of egoism. I love his sister much, and
Varnhagen is still dear to me ; but a moment of hostility
has parted us for ever. When I met him at Hamburg he
insulted me and you know how irritable I was there. Frau
Varnhagen is beautiful, is she not ? Did I say too much
to you ? — In her are united Jocasta and Julia, the most
ancient and the most modern. Nothing is altered in my
plans for the future. Gottingen is decided upon.

It has made me very angry that you have commented
upon my desire to have short letters from you in a manner
that is almost ill-mannered, in a morose spirit of pique.
Good Heavens ! Can a man who reads and understands
Hegel and Valmiki in the original, fail to understand one
of the most ordinary abbreviations of my genius ? Good
Heavens ! How much must I be misunderstood by other
men when Moser, a pupil of Friedlander and a contem-
porary of Gans, Moser, Moses Moser, my friend of friends
the philosophic part of myself, the proper Edition de luxe
of a real human being, Thomme de la liberte" et de la vertu,
the secretaire perpetuel of the Union, the epilogue to
" Nathan the Wise," the normal-humanist — where shall I
stop ? — I will only say how black is the outlook for me if
Moser misunderstands me.

You tell me very little of the Union. Do you think
that the cause of our brothers is not so near my heart as
it was ? There vou are making a great mistake. If my
140

THE RETURN HOME

headaches had not laid me low I should not have given up
the work. " May my right hand wither, if I forget thee,
Jerusalem ! " These are more or less the words of the
Psalmist, and they are mine also, always. I wish I could
talk with vou for a single hour about what I have thought,
largely through my own condition, concerning Israel and
vou will see how — the race of asses prospers on the stony
wav and how Heine will and must be Heine. . . .

141

CHAPTER VIII
THE CONCLUSION OF THE STUDENT

YEARS

To Moses Moser.

Hanover, Jan. 21, 1824.

The day after to-morrow I go to Gottingen and shall
once more greet the venerable lock-up, the silly lions at
the Weender gate, and the rose-tree on the grave of the
fair Cecilia. Perhaps I shall find not one of my earlier
acquaintances at Gottingen, and that is an uncomfortable
thought. And I fancy that I shall live very unpleasantly
at first, and then I shall become accustomed to my con-
dition, and become reconciled pete a pen to the inevitable,
and finally be quite fond of the place, and quite sorry to
leave it. It has always been like that with me, half and
half, even at Liineburg.

Dear Moser ! I have been here nine days, that is I am
already consumed by boredom, but it is my own wish, and it
is well, and I must say nothing about it ! I will complain
no more. Yesterday evening I read Rousseau's letters,
and saw how tedious it becomes when a man goes on and
on complaining, but I do complain of my health and — you
must testify to this — the scoundrels who try to poison my
142

CONCLUSION OF THE STUDENT YEARS

life through their machinations have taken away from me
my old sorrow. I feel myself large enough for it. I am
altogether taken up with my jurisprudence, and if you
think that I am not a good lawyer you are much mistaken.
You are quite at liberty to despise me as an advocate, but
you must not express your opinion to other people or I
shall die of hunger. I shall eat my mid-day meal from
the scales of Themis and no more from the scanty dishes
of my uncle. The events of last summer have made a
dreadful, daimonic impression on me, I am not large
enough to bear humiliation. Perhaps indeed there is
more bad than good in me, but both bad and good are
colossal. Yet I love the good, and therefore, my good
Moser, I love you. All is quiet here and quite different
in its tendency from what it is with you. In Berlin more
interest is taken in the living, here in Gtittingen we are
more busied with the dead. There you are preoccupied
with politics, here we are concerned with political litera-
ture. . . .

I am living very quietly. The Corpus juris is my pillow.
But I have several other occupations, such as the reading
of records and drinking beer. The library and the Town-
Cellar are ruining me. I am also tormented by love. It
is no longer the one-sided love for one single person of my
younger days. I am no longer a monotheist in love, but
just as I am inclined to a double draught of beer, so I am
inclined to a double draught of love. I am in love with
the Medici Venus who stands in the library, and I am in
love with Councillor Bauer's pretty cook. Alas ! I am
unfortunate in both my loves ! . . .

The life here makes me horribly melancholy: a jolting
journey is good for my headaches, which give me long
spells of pain, and then — I would love to make you believe

143

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

that it is you who attract me most strongly to Berlin, but
this morning I asked myself as I lay in bed whether I
would journey to Gottingen if you were here and I were
in Berlin ? Do not ask any poetical expression of me as
you do in your letter : whether there is an end of my
poetry or not, and whatever the aesthetic folk in Berlin
may say of me — what is that to us ? I do not know if
they are right in regarding me as a light that is ex-
tinguished, but I know that I will write nothing as long
as the nerves in my head give me pain. I feel more than
ever the God in me, and more than ever my contempt for
the masses ; but sooner or later the flame of a man's genius
must die down : of more lasting stuff — perhaps ever-
lasting— is that flame of love (and friendship is a spark of
it) which rushes through this sick body of mine. Ay
Moser, if that flame were to die down, then indeed you
might be anxious. But there is no danger : I feel its
heat. . . . Farewell, love me much, and be content with
what I am and shall be, and do not bother yourself with
what I might be !

I am living here in the old groove : that is, I have my
headaches for eight days in the week. I get up at about
half-past five in the morning, and consider what I shall
begin with ; and then nine o'clock comes slowly creeping,
and then I have to go with my portfolio to my reverend
master — indeed, I am quite content with my master, and
with his and God's help shall master the Pandects. In
addition, I am making a study of many records, and in
particular of historia judaica. I am doing the latter for
my " Rabbi," and perhaps also for my own needs. I am
moved by strange feelings as I read through those sad
annals so full of instruction and sorrow. The spirit of
Jewish history is revealed to me more and more, and this
144

CONCLUSION OF THE STUDENT YEARS

spiritual equipment will some day stand me in good
stead.

I have written about a third of my " Rabbi,'" but my
headaches have broken in upon it terribly, and God knows
if I shall ever finish it. In this I have learned that I have
no talent for narrative. Perhaps I am wrong, and it is
only the barrenness of the matter. . . . My poetic output
will be small this year. I have written hardly any poems ;
my time is taken up with my headaches and my studies.
And God knows if I shall be rid of them this year ! And
God help me if I am not ! Byron's death has moved me
much. He was the only man to whom I felt myself akin,
and we were alike in many things. You may laugh at
that as much as you like. I have read him little in the
last few years. We choose rather the company of those
men who are different in character from ourselves. But I
have always been glad of Byron's company as that of a
thorough comrade in arms and an equal. But I am not
happy in Shakespeare's company : I feel only too well that
I am not his equal. He is the omnipotent minister, and I
am a mere councillor ; and it is as though he could depose
me at any moment.

I am much taken up with student concerns ; at most of
the duels I am a second or a witness or a neutral, or at
least a spectator. It amuses me because I have nothing
better to do. And it is essentially better than the shallow
gossip of the lecturers, old and young, of our Georgia
Augusta. I avoid people everywhere.

Blaek dress-coats and trim silk stockings,

Oily words, effusive greeting,
Courtly ruffles, shirt-fronts snowy,

Oh, if in them hearts were beating !
i k ldto

HEINRICH HEINES MEMOIRS

Had they hearts within their bosom,
In their hearts were love prevailing !

Ah ! I perish with the sing-song
Of fictitious lovers'1- wailing !

I will climb the mighty mountains,
Climb the simple huts among,

Where the breast expands in freedom,
Where the airs are free and strong.

I will climb the mighty mountains,
Where the swarthy fir-trees rise,

Where sing bird and brook, and cloudlets
Dance in glee across the skies.

Farewell to the gay assemblies,

Smirking men and dames beguiling !

I will climb the mighty mountains,
And look down upon you smiling !

To Goethe.

Weimar, October 1, 1824.

Your Excellency, — I ask you to grant me the happiness
of being in your presence for a few minutes. I will not
trouble you much. I will only kiss your hand and depart.
My name is H. Heine ; I am a Rhinelander, and am lately
come into residence at Gottingen, and I lived for several
years in Berlin, where I enjoyed the society of many of
your old acquaintances and admirers (such as Wolf,
Varnhagen, &c), and learned every day to love you more.
I, too, am a poet, and three years ago I took the liberty
of sending you my " Poems,11 and a year and a half ago
my " Tragedies,11 together with a Lyrical Intermezzo
146

CONCLUSION OF THE STUDENT YEARS

(" Rate-lift"11 and " Almansor "). I am ill, and thus weeks
ago I journeyed to the Harz Mountains for my health ;
and as I stood on the Brocken I was seized by a desire to
make a pilgrimage to Weimar to pay my respects to
Goethe. In the proper sense of the word I have made my
pilgrimage hither, that is, on foot and in ragged clothes;
and now I await the granting of my prayer. . . .

Indeed, I found in Goethe most perfectly that accord of
personality and genius which one expects in extraordinary
men. His outward appearance was as significant as
the phrases that live in his writings ; his face was har-
monious, clear, joyous, nobly proportioned, and one might
study Greek art in him as in an antique. His dignified
body was never cramped by the crawling humility of
Christianity : his features were never distorted by Christian
paroxysms of grief ; there was not in his eyes the fearful-
ness of the Christian sinner, nor did they look gleaming in
devotion heavenwards ; no, his eyes were as serene as those
of a god. Goethe's eyes remained as god-like in old age as
they were in youth. Time had covered his head with snow
but it could not bow it. He bore it high and proudly*
and when he held out his hand, it was as though he could
prescribe for the stars in the heavens the way that they
should follow. Round his lips there was to be remarked
a line of egoism ; but this line is peculiar to the gods
eternal, to the father of the gods, great Jupiter, with whom
I have already compared Goethe. Indeed, when I visited
him at Weimar, and stood face to face with him, I looked
involuntarily aside to see whether I could not find the
eagle with the lightnings in his beak. I was very near
addressing him in Greek ; but then I observed that he
understood German, so I told him in German that the

147

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

plums on the road between Jena and Weimar tasted very
good. I had thought out on so many winter nights what
sublime and profound things I should say to Goethe if ever
I were to see him. And when at length I did see him I
told him that the plums of Saxony tasted very good. And
Goethe smiled. He smiled with those lips with which he
had kissed fair Leda, and Europa, and the Danae, and
Semele, and so many other princesses or nymphs.

To Moseb Moser.

Gottingen, Oct. 25, 1824.

I have wandered on foot, and for the most part alone,
through all the Harz Mountains. I passed over lovely
hills and through lovely woods and valleys, and once more
for a time I breathed freely. I came back through
Eisleben, Halle, Jena, Weimar, Erfurt, Gotha, Eisenach,
and Cassel, always on foot. I had many splendid and
tender adventures, and if the spectre of jurisprudence had
not wandered with me I should have found the world very
fair to see. My cares crept after me. . . .

It was very early when I left Gottingen and the learned

was still lying abed and dreaming as usual that he

was sauntering in a beautiful garden in the beds of which
grew bits of paper, pure white and written over with
quotations, gleaming prettily in the sunlight, and that he
plucked some of them here and there and carefully planted
them in a new bed, while the nightingales gladdened his
old heart with their sweetest notes. Outside the Weender
Gate I met two little schoolboys of the place, and one said
to the other ; " I shall not go with Theodore any more ,
148

CONCLUSION OF THE STUDENT YEARS

he is a rascal, for yesterday he did not know the genitive
of mensa.™ However insignificant these words may sound
I must repeat them, nay, I would fain have them written
on the gate as a motto for the town ; for the young dance
to the piping of the old, and these words show the dry,
narrow pedantry of the learned Georgia Augusta.

To Moses Moser.

Gottingen, 25 Oct., 1824.

I should have had much to tell you of my journey in the
Harz Mountains ; but I have already begun to write it
down, and shall probably send it this winter for Gubitz.
There will be verses in it to please you, fine, noble senti-
ments, and similar sweepings of the mind. What is to be
done ? In truth, to take up a position against rigid con-
vention is a thankless task ! I was at Weimar ; there are
good roast geese there also. I was at Halle, Jena, Erfurt,
Gotha, Eisenach, and Cassel. A great tour, always on
foot, and with nothing but my poor, shabby, brown over-
coat. The beer at Weimar is really good. More of that
by word of mouth.

The "Journey in the Harz Mountains11 is and remains
a fragment, and the bright threads which are so charmingly
woven with it so as to be entwined harmoniously with the
whole, have been suddenlv cut off as though by the shears
of the inexorable Fates. Perhaps I shall apply myself to
further weaving of them in future songs, and what is
meagrely passed by in silence will then be said in full.
Reallv it makes no matter if a thing is once expressed,
where and when it was expressed. Single works can quite

149

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

well remain fragments if taken together they form a whole.
By being brought together in this way what is lacking can
be supplied, what is awkward can be made smooth, and
what is harsh softened. This would, perhaps, be the case
with the front pages of the " Journey in the Harz," and
they would certainly produce a less unpleasant impression,
if it were made clear in another quarter, that the ill-
humour which I nourish against Gottingen in general,
although it is greater than I have said, is by a long way
not so great as the respect which I have for certain indi-
viduals in it. And why should I not say that I am think-
ing especially of that worthy man who was so friendly
towards me in early days, who then bred in me a great love
for the study of history, fortified me in my zeal for it, and
in this way led my mind into more peaceful ways, pointed
out more wholesome directions for the issue of my vitality,
and above all, prepared for me those consolations in history
without which I never could bear the torment of the dawn
of a new day. I mean George Sartorius, the poet his-
torian, and a great man, whose eyes are bright stars in our
age of darkness ; his hospitable heart stands open for all the
joys and sorrows of others, to the cares of the beggar and of
the king, and to the last sighs of perishing peoples and
their gods. . . .

On my travels and here I have observed that my little
poems are circulated in a strange secret fashion. " How-
ever," said the great Sartorius, "you will not be loved."

To Moses Moser.

I have written very little this summer. Two sheets of
the memoirs ; no verses at all. Very little of the " Rabbi "
150

CONCLUSION OF THE STUDENT YEARS

so that hardly a third of it is done. But it will be very

long, quite a fat volume and with love unspeakable I

carry it in my bosom. But am I writing- it altogether for

love, and not from vainglory ? On the other hand, if I

were to give ear to the voice of prudence I should not

write it at all. I foresee how much I shall shock people

and how much hostility I shall evoke with it. But just

because it is the product of love it will be an immortal

book, an eternal lamp in God's Cathedral, not a flickering

light in the theatre ... I will send you the verses which

I made yesterday evening as I took a walk in the Weender

Strasse in spite of rain and weather and thought of you

and my joy when I shall be able to send you the " Rabbi,"

and I composed the verses which I would write on the

white wrapper of the volume by way of preface — and as I

have no secrets from you, I will send you the verses here

and now.

Break out in loud bemoaning,
My bitter martyr song ;
That with never sigh nor groaning,
My heart has borne so long.

Go touch my hearers, wake them
To all that I have borne ;
Go tell their hearts and make them
Mourn as so long I mourn.

They weep both the great and little,
The cold lords weep as well ;
And women and flowers are weeping,
And tean, in the stars do dwell.

151

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

And all these tears are going,
Together towards the South ;
They go in one great flowing,
They feed the Jordan's drouth.

Perhaps 1 will send you to-day a poem from the "Rabbi,""
in which I have unfortunately been interrupted again.
I charge you not to show the poem to anybody, just as you
say nothing of what I tell you about my private affairs.
A young Spanish Jew who has had himself baptized
from wantonness and arrogance, corresponds with young
Jehuda Abarbanel and sends him the poem, translated
from the Moorish. Perhaps he is afraid of writing a
plain statement of a not very noble act for his friend, but
he sends him this poem. Give no after-thought to it.

I know not what to say. Cohen assures me that Gans
is preaching Christianity and is trying to convert the
children of Israel. If he is doing this from conviction,
then he is a fool ; if from hypocrisy, then he is a rascal.
I shall not cease to love Gans ; but I confess that I would
much rather have heard, instead of the above news, that
Gans had stolen a silver spoon.

I cannot believe, dear Moser, that you are of Gans' way
of thinking, although Cohen tells me that it is so, and I
wish to hear it from yourself. I should be very sorry if
my own baptism could be viewed by you in a favourable
light. I assure you that if the law had demanded the
stealing of silver spoons, I would not have had myself
baptized. More of this when I see you.

My material position is not much altered ; I have been
working all the winter at jurisprudence. I have had many
days of good health, and if it were not that I am suffering
at this moment from a bad relapse in my sufferings, I
152

CONCLUSION OF THE STUDENT YEARS

should put. myself down for a degree in jurisprudence. Mr
uncle in Hamburg has given me an extra half-year, but
everything that he does is done in an unpleasant way.

To Professob Gustav Hugo.

Gottingen, April 16, 1825.

Although during the six years that I have pursued my
studies, I held to the juridical faculty it was never my
intention to choose jurisprudence as my only means of
living ; rather I sought to cultivate my mind and heart for
the humane studies. None the less I have no very favour-
able consequences upon which to congratulate myself in
this regard, since I have neglected many useful studies for
them, and preferred to study philosophy — the literature of
the East, the German literature of the middle ages and
the belles left res of modern times — but at Gottingen I
applied myself exclusively to jurisprudence. An obstinate
headache, which has plagued me for the last two years, has
been a great hindrance to me and is to blame for my
knowledge not corresponding to my industry and zeal.

To Moses Moser.

Gottingen, July 22, 1825.

I should have answered your letter of the fifth of this
month before had it not been for taking my degree
which — shilly-shallying from day to day — only took
place the day before yesterday. But I have discussed
the fourth and fifth themes — on the oath and on the

153

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

Konfarreantig — like a coachhorse. It went very well and
the Dean (Hugo) gave me the highest eulogy at this
impressive scene, while he expressed his astonishment that
a great poet should also be a great jurist. Even if his last
words had not made me suspicious of his pi*aise, I should
not have set much store by the long Latin speech from the
Chair in which I was compared with Goethe, and it was
said that by universal opinion my verses were to be set by
the side of Goethe's, and the great Hugo said that from
the fulness of his heart, and in private he said many fine
things on the same day, as we took a walk together and
he gave me a dinner.

It was at Gottingen that I received the degree of
Doctor of Laws after an examination in private and a
disputation in public, upon which occasion the celebrated
Hugo, then Dean of the Faculty of Jurisprudence, omitted
not the smallest scholastic formality. Although this last
circumstance may seem to you very paltrv, yet I charge
you to make a note of it, because in a book written
against me it has been maintained that I only bought
my academic diploma. And of all the lies concerning my
private life which have been printed, this is the only one
which I care to contradict. There you see the pride of
the scholar ! They may say of me that I am a bastard, a
hangman's son, a street robber, an atheist, a bad poet — I
laugh ; but it breaks my heart to see my dignity as a
Doctor of Laws contravened ! Between ourselves, although
I am a Doctor of Laws, jurisprudence is of all branches of
knowledge that which I understand the least. . . .

I cannot refrain from telling an anecdote about myself
which is going the rounds in Gottingen and happens to be
true. When I entered my name with Hugo in order to
become Doctor juris under his deaconate, I handed him at
154

CONCLUSION OF THE STUDENT YEARS

the same time the twenty-one louis-d'or degree fee. Old
Hugo did not wish to accept the money, and said to me :
" We must first put you to the test."'1 I answered him :
" Put everything to the test, but keep the best.11 I must
confess that the old man was extremely friendly with me,
and on the occasion of my public disputation celebrated
not only my juridical knowledge, but my talent for
versification in a very fine diaconal speech in Latin.

To Mosks Moskr.

Gottingen, July 1, 1825.

If I have written nothing to you about Goethe, and
how I spoke to him at Weimar, and how he was very
friendly and condescending in conversation with me, you
have lost nothing. He is only the building in which
there once flourished a very splendid thing, and it was
only that that interested me in him. He made me feel
melancholy, and he has become dearer to me since I have
been able to commiserate him. Goethe and I are funda-
mentally of such a nature that from our very heterogeneity
we must repel each other. He is essentially an easy-living
man for whom the joy of life is the highest, one who feels
life for and in the idea of it, has a sort of foreshadowing
of it and expresses it in poems, but has never laid a firm
hand on it and still less has lived it. I, on the other
hand, am essentially an enthusiast ; that is, one who is
inspired with an idea even to the point of sacrifice, and I
am always forced to lose myself in it ; but, on the other
hand, I have seized firmly the joy of life and the delight
of it, and now there is in me the great struggle between

155

HEINRICH HEINKS MEMOIRS

my clear reason, which sanctions the joy of living, and
denies all sacrifice in inspiration or folly, and my enthu-
siastic tendency which often leaps up in me, inundates and
takes possession of me, and perhaps drags me dozen again
to its ancient realm, though it is, perhaps, better to say
draws up ; for it is still a great question whether the
enthusiast, who gives even his life for his idea, does not
live more and more happily than Herr von Goethe in all
his six and seventy years of egoism and comfort,

But more of this another time : to-day my head is
quite addled with unspeakable fatigue. You will find this
theme enlarged upon in my " Rabbi.11

156

BOOK III
WANDER YEARS

(1825-1831)

CHAPTER I
THE SEA

To Ferdinand Oesterley.

Norderney, Aug. 14, 1825.

I hurried away in order to be in time for the sea-bath-
ing. At the end of September I shall be at Llineburg. I
shall stay here four weeks, and during my sojourn, or
after it, I shall make an excursion into Holland. I have
already had a foretaste of Dutch life at Emden. I was like
to die of laughing when I kissed the first pretty Dutch
girl, and she stood still phlegmatic-ally and said nothing
but a long-drawn myn heer !

The gods above know whether I shall carry out my
plans, and return to Gottingen to make use of the library. I
shall think of nothing here, free from care I shall plunge my
head in the morning into the foaming waves of the North
Sea. I have already bathed ten times, and I am well.
Farewell, and love me always.

I often go for a walk on the beach and ponder the mar-
vellous tales of the seamen. The most entrancing of all is
the story of the " Flying Dutchman," whom sailors see in
a storm driving past with full sails : and then he launches

159

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

a little boat to send to the passing ship all sorts of letters
with which nothing can be done, because they are addressed
to people long since dead. Often I think of the dear old
story of the fisher- boy who listened on the beach to the
nightly dances of the sea nixies, and after went through all
the world with his fiddle, and delighted and enchanted all
men by playing for them the melody of the nixey waltz.
A dear friend of mine told me the story once at Berlin
when we heard the playing of just such a wonder-
working boy, Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy.

There is a peculiar charm in a cruise round the islands.
But the weather must be fine and the clouds must take
strange shapes, and you must lie on your back on the
deck and look up into the heavens, and especially you
must have a bit of Heaven in your heart. The waves
murmur all sorts of wonderful things, all sorts of words to
stir up dear remembrance, all sorts of names which find
their echo like a sweet foretelling in the soul — " Evelina ! "
Then ships come sailing by, and you hail them as though
you saw them every day. Only by night is there some-
thing uncanny in meeting a strange ship at sea : then you
imagine that your best friends, whom you have not seen
for years, are sailing by and are lost for ever.

I love the sea as I love my own soul.

Often it is as though the sea were indeed my soul : and
just as there are hidden weeds in the sea, which only float
to the surface at the moment when they come to flower,
so at times wondrous flowers float up from the depths of
my soul, and breathe their scent and glow, and disappear
once more — " Evelina."

It is said that, not far from this island where now there
is nothing but water, there stood once villages and towns,
which the sea suddenly overwhelmed, and that in clear
Kiu

THE SEA

weather sailors still see the gleaming spires of the sunken
church towers, and that many a one has heard the sound
of bells on a Sunday morning. It is a true story, for the
sea is my soul —

" For a lovely world is buried yonder,
And its ruins stand there far below ;
And like golden gleams of Heaven's wonder
In the mirror of my dreams they show.-11

W. MiiLLER.

Waking, I hear the ringing sound of bells and the song
of holy voices — " Evelina ! "

If you take a walk on the beach, the passing ships are
fine to see. If their dazzling white sails are set, then they
look like great swans floating by. The sight is especially
beautiful when the sun sets behind a ship sailing by, and
rings it about with a gigantic gleaming halo.

There is a great delight in shooting on the beach. For
my part I set no great store by it. A feeling for the
noble, the beautiful, and good can often be begotten in
the heart of man by education, but a feeling for sport is in
the blood. If a man's forebears have from time imme-
morial shot roebuck, he also will find pleasure in this
legitimate occupation. But my forebears were never
hunters, but rather were among the hunted, and if I
were to let fly at the descendants of their old colleagues
blood would cry out against it. xVy, I know from experi-
ence that it would be far easier for me, on a marked out
duelling-ground, to fire at a sportsman who wishes the
times back when men also were counted among the higher
quarry. Thank God, those times are past ! If such
sportsmen desire nowadays to hunt a man, they have to

i l 161

HEINKICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

pay him for it — as, for example, the runner whom I saw
two years ago at Gottingen. The poor man had already
almost run himself out in the great heat of that Sunday,
when some young Hanoverian students in Arts, offered
him a few dollars to run back again on the way he had
come : and he ran, and he was deathly pale, and was wear-
ing a red jacket, and close behind him in the whirling dust
galloped the noble well-fed youths on great horses whose
hoofs trod close on the heels of the fellow, hot and sweat-
ing ; and he was a man.

To make the experiment, for my blood must be accus-
tomed to it, I went shooting yesterday. I shot at a few
gulls, which were skimming about far too securely, and
yet they could not know for certain that I was a bad shot.
I did not wish to hit them, but only to warn them to
beware another time of people with guns : but I missed
my aim, and I had the misfortune to kill a young gull.
It is just as well that it was not an old one : for what
would have become of the poor little gulls, which lay,
still unfeathered in the nest in the sand of the great
dunes, and without their mother would have had to die
of hunger. I had a premonition that some mischance
would befall me on the expedition : a hare had crossed
my path.

It is most wonderful when 1 walk alone in the twilight on
the beach — flat dunes behind me, the tossing immeasur-
able sea before me, the heavens like a great crystal dome
above me — and I seem to myself small as an ant, and yet
there is such breadth in my soul — miles wide. The great
simplicity of nature all around me, curbs and exalts me
at once, and the influence is more powerful than it has
ever been in any other sublime environment. A cathedral
162

THE SEA

has never been large enough for me ; my soul with its old
Titanic prayer strove to soar higher than the Gothic
pillars, and wished always to burst out through the roof.
On the summit of Rosstrappe the colossal rocks in their
bold grouping made an impression on me at the first
moment ; but not for long, for my soul was only surprised,
not overwhelmed, and those monstrous heaps of stone grew
gradually smaller in my eyes, and in the end they appeared
to be no more than the paltry ruins of the razed palace of
a giant, in which my soul would not have been comfort-
able. . . .

On the yellow shore of ocean

Burthened with thought, I was sitting and lonely.

The sun sank lower and lower, and threw

Crimsoning paths athwart the waters ;

And the white and unending waves,

Urged by the driving tide,

Foamed and resounded nearer and nearer.

A marvellous noise as of whisper and whistle,

Of laughter and murmurs, sighing and sobbing,

And through it all pierced a sound as of song,

A gentle homely song, sung by a cradle.

Methought that I heard distant echoes

Of lovely old-world stories,

Which, in days of childhood,

From neighbour's children I learnt ;

Which in the summer evenings

We huddled together to tell,

On the stone steps of the houses,

With tiny hearts aglow to listen,

Eyes that were keen with wonder —

And meanwhile at the windows

Opposite to us were sitting,

Behind the scented flower-pots,

163

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

The grown-up girls of the village,

Faces like roses,

Smiling bright in the moonlight.

But I lay on the side of the vessel,

And was gazing — with half-dreaming eyeballs —

Down into the mirror-like water ;

And kept gazing deeper and deeper —

Till far in the depths of the Ocean,

At first like a darkening fog-mist,

But slowly, with colours distincter,

Domes of churches and towers took substance,

And at last, sunny-bright, a whole city

An old-world, Netherlands city,

Crowded with people —

Sober-eyed men, clothed i» black mantles,

With starched white ruffs, and with chains of office,

With their long swords, and with their long faces,

Are striding through the great square and its bustle,

To the courthouse up the high staircase,

Where great stone statues of Kaisers

Keep watch with their sceptres and swords.

Near by — before long rows of houses,

With windows shining like mirrors,

And lime-trees cropped into cone-shapes,

Walk young maidens in rustling silk dresses —

Slender girls with their fresh, rosy faces

Modestly framed in quiet, black mobcaps,

Their golden hair bursting from under ;

While gay cavaliers, attired Spanish-fashion,

Are strutting before them, and bowing.

Dames of advanced age,
In dark dresses long out of fashion,
With prayer-book and rosary in hand,
Are hastening with tripping steps
Towards the mighty Cathedral,
164

THE SEA

Urged on by the chime of the bells

And the pealing tone of the organ.

Myself, I am seized with great horror,

Sprung from that distant clang :

And endless longing, profoundest pity
Streams into my heart —

My heart which is vet scarce healed —

I feel as though all its wounds

Had been kissed by mv dear one's lips.

And so set bleeding again —

Bleeding hot, red, blood-drops —

And that these long and slowly trickle

On an old house there below

In the city down in the Ocean —

On an old high -gabled house,

Which lies desolate, void of all dwellers,

Except that at one lower window

There sits a maiden,

With her head bent down on her arm,

Like a poor and forgotten child —

" Ah ! well I know thee, poor, forgotten child !

In such depths, as deep as Ocean,
Thou hid'st thyself from me,
Only in childish temper,
But could'st no more emerge :

And there thou safst a stranger 'mid strange people,
Whole centuries it seemed.
While I, with my soul full of pain,
Was seeking thee, the wide world over,
And always seeking but thee,
Thou ever-beloved —
Long lost,

But found in the end.

Yes, I have found thee ; again can 1 gaze on
Thy fair, sweet face,
Thy wise, true eyes,
Thy dearly-loved smile —

165

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

And ne'er will I lose thee again.
I will come down in the deep to thee,
And with arms far-extended
I will rush to thy heart."
But just in the nick of time
The captain caught me by the leg,
And dragged me away from the gunwale,
And cried with an angry laugh,
" Why, Doctor, the devil is in you ! "

166

CHAPTER II
THE PICTURES OF TRAVEL

To Moses Moser.

Luneburg, October ', 1825.

As soon as I settle down at Hamburg or Berlin, I shall
continue the " Rabbi." I shall describe my last journey.
My poems increase, and by Easter I shall be able to
publish another little volume . . . My mind is filled with
anxieties, and already I see myself before the fools of
Hamburg. . . .

To Friederike Robert.

Luneburg, October 12, 1825.

I am glad to hear, dear lady, that you have met my
uncle, Solomon Heine. How did he please you ? Tell
me : Tell me ! He is a considerable man, one who has
the most excellent qualities allied with great defects of
character. We are continually at differences, but I have
an extiaordinary love for him ; I love him almost more
than myself. We are very similar too in character: we
have the same obstinate boldness, unfathomable softness,

167

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

and unreliable crankiness — truly. Fortune has made him
a millionaire and myself a poet, and has therefore fashioned
us altogether differently in ways of living and thought. I
beg you to tell me how you liked him ? I shall be seeing
my uncle again next week, for I am going to Hamburg to
set up as an advocate there.

To Christian Sethe.

Luneburg, November 19, 1825.

I will write to you from Hamburg as usual. Perhaps I
shall be able to tell you by way of news, that I am settled
down there as an advocate, am married, writing much, etc.

To Moses Moser.

Hamburg the Damned, Dec. 19, 1825.

You are doing me much wrong ! I do not ask for long
letters, only a few lines will satisfy me ! I do not have
even that, and never have I been in such need of them as
now when civil war has once more broken out in my bosom,
and all my feelings are stirred up in revolt — for me, against
me, against all the world . . . how I sit in A B C street,
weary of aimless running about, and feeling and thinking,
with ihe night outside and fog and hellish sights, and
great and small run to the shops for their Christmas
presents — and you, my dear Moser, have no reason to
complain of my niggardliness, and as I am not in funds,
and do not wish to buy you an ordinary toy, I will send you
something quite unusual for Christmas — a promise that I
168

THE PICTURES OF TRAVEL

will not shoot myself out of hand. If you knew what is
going on inside me at present, you would see that the
promise is indeed a great present, and you would not laugh
as you do now, but you would look as serious as I do at
this present moment.

A short while ago I read " Werther.11 That was real
happiness for me. . . .

For my material life, it is not worth the trouble of
talking about. You are seeing Cohen, these days, and he
will tell you how I came to Hamburg to become an
advocate and failed. Probably Cohen will not be able to
give you the reason for it; but I cannot either. I have
other things in my head, or rather, my heart, and I shall
not bother about finding the reasons for the way my affairs
have gone. I shall stay here until the Spring, and be
occupied with myself, and, I think, with preparations for
the lectures which I shall deliver at the University of
Berlin.

Of the seven years which I spent in German Universities,
I wasted three beautiful blooming years of my life in the
study of Roman casuistry, jurisprudence, the most illiberal
of the sciences. ... I carried those cursed studies through
to the end, but I never could bring myself to make use of
the knowledge so acquired, and perhaps because I felt that
others could surpass me in advocacy and pettifogging
I hung my doctor's hat up on the peg. My mother
looked more grave than usual. But I had become a
grown man, and was of an age when it is necessary
to dispense with maternal care. The good lady had
grown older and, while she gave up the conduct of my
life after so many fiascoes, she lamented that she had not
made me take orders.

169

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

They loved one another, yet neither

Would tell the other so ;
With love they were almost heartbroken,

Yet each looked on each as a foe.

They parted at last — and sometimes,
Though only in dreams, they met ;

They had long been dead, those lovers,
But themselves scarce knew it yet.

Ah me, ill-fated Atlas ! who must bear
A world, a world of sorrow on my shoulders.
Bear the unbearable the while my heart
Is perishing within me.

O haughty heart, yet thou hast chosen so.
Demanding happiness, yes, bliss unending,
Or else unending sorrow. Haughty heart,
And now thy fate is sorrow.

To Moses Moser.

I wish to have printed next Easter, under the title of
" The Travel-book : First Part,1'' the following pieces :

(1) A new " Intermezzo,"" some eighty little poems, for
the most part pictures of travel, of which you already
know thirty-three.

(2) The " Journey to the Harz Mountains,,, which you
will see to-day in the Gesellschafte, though not in full.

(3) The " Memoirs of Poland,"" which you already know,
thoroughly revised and with a preface.

(4) The " Sea-pictures,"" of which you will receive a part
herewith . . . Tieck and Robert, if they did not create,
have at least made known the form of these poems : but
170

THE PICTURES OF TRAVEL

their contents are the most individual that I have yet
written. You see, every summer I emerge from my chrysalis,
and a new butterfly flutters forth. I am not limited to
my lyrical-malicious two-strophe manner. The second
and third of the " Travel Hooks " will, please God, be made
up of a new sort of Pictures of Travel, letters about
Hamburg and the " Rabbi," which, alas, is now held up
again.

To Karl Simrock.

Hamburg, Dec. 30, 1825.

The good reception of my first productions has not —
as unfortunately is usually the case — rocked me into
the sweet belief that I am now a genius, once and for all,
and need to do nothing but to let the dear clear stream
of poetry flow peacefully from me to the admiration of
all the world. No man knows more than I, how difficult
it is to put forth in literature anything that does not
already exist, and how unsatisfying it must be for every
profound spirit to write merely for the pleasure of the
idle herd. . . . We are both past the effusions of the
years of the fledgling and the fledgling's love, and if upon
occasion we still put forth lyrics, they are impregnated
with a more spiritual element, with irony, which still
plays jolly tricks with you a la Goethe, but with me leads
me into grimness and bitterness.

171

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

To Moses Moser.

Hamburg, Jan. 9, 1826.

I am living altogether alone. I am reading Livy,
revising my old ideas, digging up a few new ideas, and
writing poor stuff which makes no matter. As to my
outward circumstances I can and will say little to-day :
but this much I will confide in you : things go better with
me, than I know myself. I am my own greatest torment. —
But I am in such a state of inward commotion that I can
think of nothing outside myself. . . . The only society
that I have is at my sister's house, and my uncle's, and
that of the Syndic Sieveking, and the Candidate Wohlwill.
My uncle is very well disposed towards me indeed, . . .
which is all the more praiseworthy of him as he is
surrounded by people who are hostile to me. I am now
detested by Christian and Jew alike. I am very sorry
that I had myself baptized : I do not see that things have
gone any the better with me since : on the contrary, I
have had nothing but misfortune — Is it not foolish ?
Scarcely am I baptized than I am decried as a Jew. But I
tell you there have been nothing but contradictions since
then — But not a word : you are too wise to do more than
smile at it.

I see that you have deposed Marquis Posa, and now
want to present Antonio. Believe me I am neither Tasso
nor — mad. ... I care nothing what people think of me,
and they can say of me what they will : but it is a different
matter if they ascribe to me, myself, what they think and
say. That touches my honour.

I fought twice at the University, once because they
172

THE PICTURES OF TRAVEL

looked askance at me, and once shot at me, and once
because an improper word was used to me. These are
attacks on my personal honour, without the integrity of
which I could not exist. I believe that Cohen has said in
my uncle's house that I am a gambler, and live an idle
life, that I must have fallen into ill hands, and that I
have no character, in short, and more of the same tenor,
either to make himself important, or from coarseness
which thinks to make itself useful in that way — Yes, I am
furious — my honour is most deeply injured : but what
hurts me more than anything is the knowledge that it is
my own fault for giving myself away so frankly and
childishly to my friends or the friends of my friends. . . .

It was a good time when Diimmler produced " Ratcliff 11
and " Almansor,'1 and you my dear Moser, admired
the fine passages in them and muffled yourself in your
cloak and spoke pathetically, like Marquis Posa. It was
winter — And yet it is as though it were warmer than
that to-day, April 23, to-day when the Hamburgers are
bustling about with the feeling of spring, and wearing
nosegays of violets, &c. &c. It was much warmer then. —
I remember the Psalm. "We sat by the river of Babel "
was then your faith, and you recited it so beautifully, so
splendidly, so touchingly, that even now I am on the
verge of weeping, but not only for the psalm. At that
time you had good ideas about the Jews, the meanness of
the Christian proselytisers, the meanness of the Jews, who
in having themselves baptized do not only aim at evading
difficulties, but also seek to gain something by haggling,
and you had excellent ideas about these things which some
day you ought to write down. You are independent
enough to dare to write it in spite of Gans : and as for me,

173

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

you must not hesitate on my account. As Solon said : no
man can be called happy before his death, so also it may
be said that no man can be called an honest man before
he is dead. . . . Forgive my ill humour : it is directed
most against myself. Often I get up at night and stand
before my mirror and abuse myself. Perhaps I am looking
into the soul of my friend as into a mirror ; but it seems
to me that it is not so clear as it used to be.

To Varnhagen vox Ense.

Hamburg, May 14, 1826.

And now, after I have put it off for so long, I must
write to you suddenly and in haste. But this is not a
letter, merely a request that you will give the enclosed
book to our dear, kind, noble Friederike in my name, and
say charming things to her from me. The actual letter
which I have to write to you shall follow, and I will tell
you roughly how things go with me, how I am living, and
what I am and am not writing. Only this much at
present : my health is better and better, and the air here
does me much good.

My material condition is still the same : I have not yet
succeeded in building me a nest anywhere, and I am
altogether lacking in that talent which insects, and a few
of the Doctor es juris here, possess. I have had to abandon
my idea of being an advocate here — but do not imagine
that I am going away immediately; I am quite happy
here ; this is the classic ground of my love ; everything
looks at me as though I were bewitched ; much sleeping
life is waking in my bosom ; the spring is come again in
my heart ; and if the old headaches leave me, you may
174

THE PICTURES OF TRAVEL

expect many books from me. — And if my material con-
dition is pitiful, my fame protects me from being touched.
Alas, and I confess it to myself, my fame will not be served
much by the publication of the first volume of my " Travel
Pictures." But what am I to do ? I had to publish
something, and I thought that even if the book is not
of general interest and is not a great work, yet nothing
in it can be called bad. ... I have broken with
many useful friends, partly through my own fault, and
partly not, and in doing so I have gained many adver-
saries ... I am in this respect anxious, not so much on
account of the miserable economy of our literature in
which one is so easily surpassed by the unimportant in
the judgment of the public, but because in the second
volume of the " Travel Pictures " I am going to speak
regardless of discretion of such a wretched state of affairs ;
I am going to ply the scourge and shall ruin the book for
ever with the leaders of public opinion. Something of
the sort is necessary : few have the courage to say every-
thing ; I have no more expressions of hostility to fear, for
none have been withheld from me, and you shall see your
dear miracle. . . .

Another and a greater trouble was the terrible thought
that the book is really too poor to be dedicated to the
wittiest lady in the universe. But I found comfort in the
thought that Frau von Varnhagen will not turn from me,
whatever I may write, good or bad. With you, Varnhagen,
it is a little different ; it is not enough for you that I
should show how many strings I have to my lyre, but. you
want all the notes of it to be linked up into a great
concerto — and that is to be the " Faust " which I am to
write for you. For who should have more right to my
poetical offspring than he who has arranged all my

175

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

strivings and attempts in poetry, and led them to the
highest !

To Karl Simrock.

You will receive with this my latest little book, fresh
from the press. From its contents you will see that it is
not calculated to rouse curiosity and it will not excite
more than the interest of a day. My idea is to work out
in prose in the following volumes of the " Travel Pictures "
what you endeavour to work out with your Xenien in
hexameters. I am now a lonely fellow and have to make
the attempt alone. . . .

In my next volume of " Travel Pictures " you shall see
the Rhine flowing. It is doubtful if the public will find
the " North Sea Pictures " to their taste. The unusual
irregular meter may possibly make ordinary sugar-and-
water readers sea-sick. Nothing follows the old honest
level road, the old track, the old highway. You can
imagine then, my dear Simrock, how much I love the sea ;
I shall go to the Mater again soon, and then it will be
some time before I go again to Berlin.

To Josef Lehmann.

Hamburg, May 26, 1826.

You ask me how I am living here ? O, my dear
Lehmann, call it what you will but not — living. In isola-
tion and retirement I am occupied only with science and
the restoration of my health. It is improving gradually,
and if I get away, you may expect much to delight you
from me both in life and in literature. . . .
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THE PICTURES OF TRAVEL

It is very jolly : in spite of many fatalities that oppress me,
I can still count absolutely on my friends, and you, among
them, have always given me the fairest proofs of friend-
ship. And strange ! It seems to me at this moment
that it could never be otherwise, and that those who have
learned to know me fully cannot take away from me their
love and friendship. . . . There has been misunderstanding
between myself and Moser for some time past, and I write
no more to him about my intentions, still less about what I
am doing, and least of all about my poetry. That seems
to bore him, and, who knows ? — he may be right-

To Adolf Muller.

Hamburg, June 1, 1826.

I want you to have a good opinion of me, and I am
therefore taking the liberty of sending you the first
volume of my " Travel Pictures." It contains a part of
the journey on foot which took me through your Weis-
senfels and gave me an opportunity of seeing you. You
and Herr von Goethe are the only people whom I visited
throughout the journey — and it was a splendid journey
through Saxony, Thuringia, Hesse, etc. If it interests you,
you will be able to read more about it in the third volume
of the " Travel Pictures." I hope the first part will win
your approval, and that I shall in that way be indemnified
for the great hardship I shall endure on account of the
book. You, my dear Councillor, know best at what a
cost one is frank in Germany. However, this great cost
shall not frighten me.

i m 177

HEINRICH HEINF/S MEMOIRS

To WlLHELM MtJLLER.

Hamburg, June 7, 1826.

The " North Sea " is one of my last poems, and you will
see what new notes I have struck, and in what new ways I
have developed. . . . Prose has taken me up in her wide
arms and in the ensuing volumes of the " Travel Pictures "
you will read in prose much that is mad, harsh, distracting
and provocative, and particularly much that is polemical.
The times are too bad, and if a man has force and freedom,
it becomes his duty to enter seriously into the fight against
the evil, that is so blatantly abroad, and against the
commonplace that stretches so wide, so intolerably far
and wide. I beg you to incline always towards me, and
do not mistake me, and let us grow old together in com-
mon striving. I am vain enough to believe that some
day my name will be spoken together with yours, when
we are both no more — therefore while we live let us be
united in love.

178

CHAFrER III
NORDERNEY

To Moses Moser.

NORDERNEY, July 8, 1826.

Now I am afloat once more on the North Sea. I love
salt water, and I am well and happy when my boat is
tossed hither and thither by the waves, and there is comfort
for me in the idea of drowning, the only comfort which
the horrible priest of Heliopolis has left me — he has not
planked over the sea.

How deeply rooted is the myth of the " Wandering
Jew ! " In the still forests of the valley the mother tells
her children the terrible story, and the little ones fearfully
close round the hearth. Outside is the night — the post-
horn sounds — haggling Jews are journeying to Leipzig
for the Fair. We who are the heroes of the story, we
do not know it. No barber can shave the white beard
the ends of which Time is for ever blackening with new
youth.

From here I shall make a little excursion to Holland,
but I shall be in Luneburg again at the beginning of
September, and, if you write to me, please address your
letters there. Tell my brother where I am in the world,

179

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

for he does not know. Remember me to Lehmann : he
has well deserved that I should think fondly of him.

At Cuxhaven, where I spent nine days on my way here,
owing to a contrary wind, I passed many pleasant hours in
the society of Jeannette Jacobson, whose married name is
Gold schmidt. No, I will not deceive vou ; it was not the
westerly wind but the westerly lady who kept me for nine
days at Cuxhaven. O, she is beautiful and lovely.

To Friedrich Merckel.

Norderney, July 25, 1826.

The night before last, about one o'clock, I left Cuxhaven.
It was a wild night and my humour was not of the gentlest.
The ship lay high in the roadstead and the jolly-boat in
which I set out to reach it was three times driven back
into harbour by the stupid waves. The little boat bounded
like a horse, and it was a near thing that a number of
unwritten sea pictures were not lost for ever together with
their creator. And yet — may the Lord of Atoms forgive
my sin — I was quite happy at that moment. I had nothing
to lose !

The sea was so wild that often I thought we should be
engulfed. But this affinitive element of mine does me no
harm. It knows quite well that I can be madder than
itself. And besides, am I not Court Poet to the North
Sea? The North Sea knows that I have yet to write a
second part.

Things are very lively here. The beautiful lady is here,
and Princess Solens, with whom I passed several very
pleasant days last year. I have played, and with better
luck than at Cuxhaven, where I lost five Louis-d'or.
180

NORDERNEY

To Varnhagex vox Exse.

Norderxey, July 29, 1826.

My health is better and better. To be completely
restored I need the sea-bathing of this place, and to sail
on the waves of the North Sea, which is well disposed
towards me now because she knows that I sing her. The
sea is a fine element. If I am long away from it I feel a
curious nostalgia. My " North Sea Pictures " were written
con amore and I am glad that you like them. I am
glad, indeed, that my "Travel Pictures11 have had a good
reception. Frau von Varnhagen's letter has delighted,
really delighted, and almost intoxicated me. Indeed I
have never mistaken her. I know her a little. And I
confess that no one has so profound an understanding or
knowledge of myself as Frau von Varnhagen. As I
read her letter it seemed as though I had got up dreaming
in my sleep, and stood in front of my minor and talked to
myself and bragged a little. The best of it is that I do not
need to write long letters to Frau von Varnhagen. If
she only knows that I am alive then she knows also my
feelings and my thoughts. She has divined the reasons
for my dedication better, I think, than I. It seemed to me
that I wished to express in it that I belong to somebody.
I run about the world so wild that sometimes there come
people who want to make me their property, but they have
always been people who did not particularly please me.
And so long as that is the case there shall always oe written
on my collar : j"1 apparti&tis a Madame Varnhagen.

181

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

To Feiedrich Merckel

NoRDERNEY, 4 AllgUSt, 1826.

I am not so happy here as I was last year, but it is the
fault of my own temper rather than of the other people in
the place. I am often unjust to them. There are
moments when I fancy that the beautiful lady from
Celle is not so beautiful as she was in 1825. And the sea
does not seem to be so romantic as it used to be — and yet
I have had on its shores the sweetest and loveliest mystical
adventure that ever came to inspire a poet. The moon
seemed to wish to show me that there were still splendours
in the world for me. We said never a word — only one
long, deep look, what time the moon made music — and as
she passed I took her hand. And I felt her press mine
steathily — my soul trembled and took fire — I wept
afterwards.

What is the use ? If I am bold enough to snatch happi-
ness, I cannot keep it long. I am afraid that suddenly
the day might come — only the dark gives me courage.
Lovely eyes ; they will live long in my heart, and then
they will fade away and so dissolve into nothing — even
as I.

The moon is used to silence ; the sea chatters for ever,
but one can rarely understand its words, but you, the
third who know now my secret, will hold your peace, and
so it will remain hidden in its own night.

I am at odds with the lady from Celle. She tries deliber-
ately to vex me at every turn. That I owe to malicious
gossip. But I am still enchanted by her. I am torn
between anger and delight when I hear her voice. A
182

NORDERNEY

devilish state of feeling. I am much with Prince Kossa-
lowski, a very witty man. Farewell.

Hail to the Ska !

Thalatta ! Thalatta !
Oh, let me hail thee, eternal sea !
Oh, let me hail thee ten thousand times
From spirit exulting,
As once thou wast hailed by
Ten thousand hearts of Hellas

Struggling with misery, yearning for home delights,
World-renowned hearts of Hellas.

The billows were heaving,
Were heaving and roaring ;
And freely the sun poured upon them
Its radiance of rose and of opal ;
Startled, the flocks of sea swallows
Fluttered afar, loud-screaming;

The war steeds were stamping, the bucklers were clanging,
And a cry like the shouting of conquerors arose :
Thalatta ! Thalatta !

Oh, let me hail thee, eternal sea !

The speech of my country I hear in thy waters ;

Like dreams of my childhood once more I see sparkling

The surging realm of thy waves ;

And memory tells me once more the old story

Of all the exquisite toys thou dost cherish,

Of all the bright dazzling eyes of Christmas,

Of all the scarlet branches of coral,

Gold-fishes, pearls, and many-hued shells,

Which thou secretly hoardest

In thy deep, transparent crystal house.

Ah, in strange lands how I languished in desolation !

Like a poor faded flower

Enclosed in the zinc of a botanist's vasculum,

188

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

My heart lay dead in my breast.

I feel like one who thi'ough long months of winter

Has waited hopeless in the dark sick-chamber,

And who against hope once more issues forth.

For, dazzling there shines forth to meet me

Spring, decked with emeralds, roused by the sunbeams,

Whilst snow-white the blossoming fruit-trees whisper,

And newly born flowers gaze on me

With eyes of colour and perfume,

And all things are scent and music, soft breath and

laughter,
And the birds sing aloud in the blue of the heavens,
Thalatta ! Thalatta !

O heart retreating, yet undaunted !

How oft, how oft, to thy cost

Did barbarian maids of the North Land press on thee !

From large and victorious eyes

They shot forth flame-bearing arrows ;

With harsh words, curved like scimitars,

They threatened to tear my breast asunder ;

They beat on my poor bemused brain

With dainty small cuneiform notes.

In vain I upheld my shield against them ;

The darts came hissing, the blows crashed cleaving,

And the barbarian maids of the North Land

Pressed me slow to the sea,

The well-loved, rescuing sea,

Thalatta ! Thalatta !

.184

CHAPTER IV
NEW STRUGGLES

To Friedrich Merckel.

Luneburg, Oct. 6, 1826.

You will have learned from Campe how I have fared
since I arrived here. A malignant fever put me off going
to Friesland and Holland, but the journey is not aban-
doned. I shall go sometime from Hamburg direct to
Amsterdam by steamer. But I shall describe my last
journey. Really it does not much matter what I write
about ; everything in God's world is worthy of considera-
tion ; and what I cannot get by looking out of things I
get by looking into them. I am unhappily still plagued
by my headaches, although bathing has made me surpris-
ingly healthy. I have already written eight long Sea
Pictures, very original, perhaps of no very great value, but
all the same remarkable ; and I vow that they will be
noticed. If only there is some further improvement in my
health, the second part of my " Travel Pictures " will be
the most wonderful and interesting book to appear in
these times. I am not hurrying over it ; Luneburg was
not built in a day. And Luneburg is by no means Rome.
Have you heard whether the black fellow who ought to be

185

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

hanged has been spreading any more lies about me ? I
should very much like to know for certain whether he has
threatened to thrash me. It is very important for me
to know that. Think of it. N.B. — I rarely underline.
I am in poor health, and everything goes slowly. I am in
poor health and full of poetry. Christiani heard a traveller
who was making a pilgrimage through Germany, talking,
as he was talking everywhere, about my " Travel Pictures "
God ! I must make the second part infinitely better, and
it shall be done. I am much with Christiani here, as
usual ; he is the most charming of my friends

Can I sing too much his praises,
Or too oft that cup replenish ?
For he treats me oft to oysters,
Fine liqueurs and best of Rhenish.

Coat and breeches perfect fitting,
And the best of ties he's wearing.
Everyday he calls politely
Just to ask how I am faring.

He expresses admiration

Of my room, my wit, my verve ; me

Serving he avers he only

Wants to help me and to serve me.

And my Godlike poems learning
He recites them, face aglowing,
For the ladies most politely
His enthusiasm showing.

Oh ! how perfectly delightful
Finding such an one ; so badly
Are they needed nowadays, for
We good men diminish sadly.
186

NEW STRUGGLES

To Moses Moser.

Luneberg, Oct. 14, 1826.

I have suffered much lately, and am only just beginning
to feel capable of thinking and working quietly. I shall
be at Hamburg again in January for a short time, and
shall have the second part of the " Travel Pictures"
printed there at Easter. That part is to be an extra-
ordinary book and should make a great stir. I must put
forth something powerful. The second part of the " North
Sea" with which the second volume will open is much
more original and bolder than the first part and you are
certain to like it. I have broken new ground in it, at the
risk of my life. I have attempted pure humour in an
autobiographical fragment. So far I have shown only wit,
irony, caprice, but never pure jolly humour. The second
volume will contain also a cycle of letters from the
" North Sea" in which I speak, " of all things and a few
besides." Won't you present me with a few new ideas for
it ? I can use everything.

You will have heard that the black fellow, who ouo-ht to
be hanged, is going about Hamburg saving that he has
thrashed me. The swine merely attacked me in the street ;
a man to whom I have never spoken in my life. The
fellow has already denied the attack (he took me by the
lapel of my coat and was swept away by the crowd on the
Burstah), when I brought him before the police. That
was all I wanted. He said that I attacked him in
my writings, and later in the street, because of a
grudge dating from 1815 (when I was not in Hamburg)

187

HEINRICH HEINF/S MEMOIRS

The story has been made use of extensively by infamous
rascals. But why should I write to you about such dirty
matters ? Bnt do not worry, if you hear it said that I am
to be drawn and quartered. I am sorry that I have never
boasted to you of the risks which I run in my life. I am
the object of much anxiety.

To Karl Immermann.

What no man knoweth, and what I am telling only to
you — and what you must never repeat to anybody — is
my plan, my fixed determination to leave Germany for
ever, after my stay this winter at Hamburg, when I
shall have the second part of the " Travel Pictures "
printed. I shall go thence by sea to Amsterdam and
thence to Paris. 0, how I love the sea ! I am so
thoroughly in sympathy with this wild element, and I
love it when it blusters. If you will give me something
for the second volume of my " Travel Pictures," the best
place is open to you, and I will pay you two louis-d'or
by way of honorarium, for Campe gives me that per page.
It would be very jolly. The "Travel Pictures " serve me
as a medium for putting before the public just what I
like. They have had an enormous sale, and will soon
reach a second edition. I think, however, that the
second and third volumes will do even better.

To Varnhagen von Ense.

LiiNEBURG, Oct. 24, 1826.

I have been here four weeks with my parents, and shall
stay another two months, and then I shall go to Hamburg,
188

NEW STRUGGLES

and then have the second part of my " Travel Pictures *
printed. Then I shall stay there until the spring, and
I shall go by sea to Amsterdam, see Holland, and go then
to Paris. I have not decided whether I shall visit the
Rhine again. But no one is to know of my plans ; at
least no one who stands in any sort of close relation with
me, such as my family at Hamburg or my friends at
Berlin, to whom I am always saying that I am coming to
Berlin to read : it will be enough for these people to know
when I really have set out on my grand tour. Without
these precautions they would make all sorts of misunder-
standings with their chatter. At Paris I shall make use
of the library, see men and the world, and gather materials
for a book which is to be European.

The second part of the " Travel Pictures 11 is to contain

(1) the second and third parts of the "North Sea,'" the
last in prose, the first in splendid epigrams, even more
original and magnificent than the earlier ones ; then

(2) a fragment of my life written in a broadly humorous
vein which will please you ; and (3) the Memoirs of
Poland that you know. Perhaps, if there is space for it
in the book, I will give to the public (4) " Letters from
Berlin, written in the year 1822.1" But do not mistake
me ; this is only a fiction in order to say more easily just
what I like, and in fact, I am writing the letters now, and
am using for them part of the outer structure of the
letters which I did in fact publish in the Westfdlischer
Anzeiger in the year 1822. The third part of the
" North Sea" consists of letters in which I say just what
I like.

And I am writing all this to you, with the idea of
letting you see how easy it is for me to weave anything
or everything into the second part of the " Travel

189

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

Pictures." If, therefore, you have any particular desire, if
you wish to see any matter expressed, or if you wish to see
any of our friends pilloried then tell me of it ; or, better
still, do yourself write in my style the patches which I am
to sew on to my book, and you can rely absolutely on my
discretion. I can write anything nowadays, and it matters
little whether I have a dozen enemies more or less.

To Friedrich Merckel.

Luneburg, Nov. 16, 1826.

I had a letter yesterday from von Varnhagen. I will
send you the lady's letter, charging you upon your life to
show it to nobody, and to send it back to me immediately.
It is concerned chiefly with my letter, and especially with
my plan of going to Paris, there to write a European
book. No one is to know anything of this plan.
I think I shall achieve something better than Lady
Morgan ; my task is only to touch on matters which
are of general European interest.

To Joseph Lehmann.

Luneburg, Dec. 16, 1826.

With regard to the second volume of the " Travel
Pictures " you may cherish the most daring expectations ;
that is to say, you may expect many daring things ;
good as well ? That is another matter altogether. In
any case you will see that I speak openly and nobly,
and scourge Evil, however honoured and powerful it
may be.
190

NEW STRUGGLES

To Friedrich Merckel.

Luneburg, Jan. 10, 1827.

I have been working here at a fearful rate. The infernal
business of copying is the worst of it. I will send you a
copy of the most splendid part of my book. You will see :
le petit ban homme vit encore. The book will make a stir,
not through private scandal, but through the great matters
of universal interest upon which it touches. Napoleon and
the French Revolution are in it as large as life — not a
word to any one about it. I dare scarcely let Campe
know what the book is about a moment too soon. It
must be sent away before anybody there knows a syllable
of it.

191

CHAPTER V
LONDON

What strange creatures men are ! In our own country we
growl, and every stupidity, every perverseness, makes us
angry ; and, like boys, we wish every day to run away from
it into the wide, wide world, but when we do go into the
wide, wide world, it is too wide for us, and we long secretly
for the narrow stupidities and perverseness of home, and
want to be sitting once more in the old familiar room and
to build us a house behind the stove and cower there
jn the warmth, and read the Allgemeine Anzeiger der
Deutschen. So it was with me on my journey to England.
Hardly had I lost sight of the German coast than there
sprang to life in me a curious after-love for those Teutonic
night-caps and periwigs which I had just left so ill-
humouredly, and when the Fatherland was gone from my
sight I found it again in my heart. . . .

I have seen the most remarkable phenomenon that the
world has to show to the amazed mind of man. I have
seen it and am still amazed. In my memory their remains
the stone forest of houses and in between the surging
stream of vivid human faces, with all their gay passions,
with all their horrible flurry of love and hunger and hate —
I mean London.

Send a philosopher to London : but, on pain of your life,
not a poet ! Send a philosopher thither and set him at the
192

LONDON

corner of Cheapside, and he will learn more there than
from all the books of the last Leipzig fair ; and as the
waves of ;human beings roar about him there will arise
before him a sea of new thoughts, the eternal spirit which
hovers over the place will waft him up and suddenly reveal
to him the most hidden secrets of the social order, and he
will hear with his ears and see with his eyes the beating
pulse of the world — for, if London is the right hand of
the world, the active, strong right hand, then that street
which leads from the Exchange to Downing Street must
be regarded as the pulse of the world.

But do not send a poet to London ! The mere serious-
ness of everything, the colossal uniformity, the machine-like
movement, the shrillness even of joy — this over-driven
London oppresses fancy and rends the heart. And if you
send a German poet thither, a dreamer who stands before
everything that he sees, ragged beggar woman or gleaming
goldsmith's shop — oh ! then, he will be in a bad way and he
will be jostled on all sides and trampled under foot with a
mild " God damn ! "

I had resolved not to be astonished at the magnificence
of London, of which I had heard so much. But I was like
the poor schoolboy who had made up his mind not to feel
the thrashing that he was about to receive. He failed
because he had expected the usual blows with the usual
stick as usual upon his back, and instead of that he
received an unusual number of strokes on an unusual place
with a thin cane. I expected great palaces and saw
nothing but little houses. But the very monotony of
them, and the infinite number of them, make a powerful
impression. . . .

n 193

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

To Friedrich Merckel.

London, April 23.

It is snowing outside and there is no fire in my chimney,
therefore this is a cold letter. I am very peevish and ill
to boot. I have seen and heard much, but have not had a
clear view of anything. London has surpassed all my
expectations as to its magnificence, but I have lost myself.
I have paid only a few visits — I have not yet seen your
friends — and the theatre has been my chief resource
so far. I shall stay at most until the middle of June in
London, then I shall go for three months to my English
watering-place. I am in sore need of my sea-bathing.
Living is terribly dear here. So far I have spent more
than a guinea a day. I had to pay thirty shillings in
landing fee and tips on the steamer, and I had to pay
almost a pound in duty on my few books, and so forth,
— nothing but fog, coal-smoke, poets and Canning — I
wonder how things will go with me in this world ! I shall
' never again, in spite of my better intelligence, be able to
let it play stupid tricks . . . that is, I shall never be able
to speak absent-mindedly any more. It is so fearfully
damp and uncomfortable here, and no one understands
me, and no one understands German.

To Varnhagen von Ense.

London, June 1, 1827.

You will have received my book, bound in red, for
Frau von Varnhagen, and you will have given it to dear
194

LONDON

Friedrieke in my name. And you will also have forwarded
Moser's parcel to him. I had to leave it to some one
else to look after the books, because I left Hamburg in
such a hurry. I could not enclose a line with them on that
account. It was not anxiety that took me away, but the
law of prudence, which counsels every man not to run any
risk where there is nothing to be gained. If there hud
been any prospect of my gaining an appointment at Berlin
I should have gone straight there without bothering in
the least about the contents of my book. I think that as
our Ministry has fallen there is more prospect than ever of
my being appointed and probably I shall return to you
and to Berlin. I left Hamburg on the very day that the
book was published — a great effort — and I have heard not
a word of its fate. I know it in advance. I know my
Germans. They will be frightened, reflect, and do nothing.
I doubt even if the book will be prohibited. But it was
necessary to write it. In these cowardly days of servility
something must be done. I have done my best and am
ashamed of those hard-hearted friennds of mine who were
once going to do so much and are now silent. When they
are together, and standing in a row, the rawest recruits
are rilled with courage ; but true courage is only shown by
the man who stands alone. I foresee, also, that the good
men of the country will gradually tear my book in pieces,
and I cannot think ill of my friends if they are silent
about the dangerous book.

I am on good terms with my family. I am the only
member of it with whom I stand ill. I have borne much
self-torment lately. My headaches will not leave me, and
old wounds are suppurating. At present deafness has, as
it were, shut me up in a leaden coffin. I am afraid that
very soon I shall be seriously ill. . . .

195

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

To Friederich Merckel.

London, June 1, 1827.

As you love me say nothing of Cotta's proposals to
Campe ; you have no right to say anything. I certainly
do not want to send Campe away with a flea in his ear.
It would be no use, and I am too fond of him to hurt him
unnecessarily. He does a great deal for my children, and
I am grateful. But I shall not rely any more on his
generosity. He stopped a good deal of annoyance by the
forty Louis which he gave me in advance. But he has
never had any real confidence in me ; when I spoke to him
of some of the sacrifices that I made for my last book, he
put me off with fine words : and the same when I told him
that Cotta had offered to pay me handsomely for my
essays for the Morgenblatt — in short, he has no con-
fidence in me. He must learn to know me in my way of
doing things — Ah ! I am very cross to-day. I am ill and
cannot work properly. And yet I have to pay for all
the ideas which I am collecting here with their weight in
gold.

To Moses Moser.

London, June 9, 1827.

Before I left Hamburg I saw to it that my book was
sent to you. You will have found in it all that I have
thought and felt and suffered during the last year. I
think my " Le Grand w will have pleased you ; everything
else in the book, except the poems, is food for the mob,
196

LONDON

and it will devour it with gusto. I have won a monstrous
following and popularity in Germany with this book :
when I am well I can do much ; I have a far-sounding
voice nowadays. You shall often hear it thundering
against the beadles of thought and oppressors of the most
sacred rights. — I shall attain an extraordinary professor-
ship in the university of great minds.

You can easily imagine my life here knowing myself
and England. I am seeing and learning much. In a few
davs I shall go to an English watering-place. The chief
object of my journey was to get away from Hamburg. I
hope to be strong enough never to return to it. But I
am drawn towards Berlin. A shallow life, witty egoism,
witty sand. Everything is too dear and too distant
here. There are many attractive things too — the Houses
of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, English tragedy, and
prettv women. If I can leave England alive it will not
be the fault of the women, they do their best. English
literature at present is pitiful, more pitiful even than
ours — and that is saying a good deal.

To J. H. Detmold.

Ramsgate, July 28, 1827.

Leave your Hoffmann and his ghosts who are all the
more horrible for walking in the market-place in broad
daylight and behaving like one of us. It is I, Heine
who give you this advice. And I give you my example
at the same time, as one climbs up from that pit by the
aid of one's own hair. — I am high up at present, on the
last cliff* at Ramsgate and I am sitting in a high balcony,
and, as I write, I look down over the lovely wide sea,

197

HEINRICH HEINES MEMOIRS

whose waves clamber up the rocks and roar their most

joyous music for my heart. I tell you this, so that you

may know that my good advice comes down to you from a

good healthy height. I am on the point of leaving

England, where I have been since April, and I am going

to pass through Brabant and Holland and return in a few

months to Germany.

* * * * *

It is eight years since I went to London to make the
acquaintance of the language and the people ! The devil
take the people and their language ! They take a dozen
words of one syllable into their mouth, chew them, gnaw
them, spit them out again and they call that talking.
Fortunately they are by nature rather silent, and although
they look at us with gaping mouths yet they spare us
long conversations.

I will confess that if I could stomach nothing in England,
neither the people nor the cooking, the reason for it was
really in myself. I brought a good stock of ill-temper
with me from home, and I increased it among a people
who can only kill their boredom in the whirlpool of
political and mercantile activity. The perfection of
machinery, which is used everywhere in England and has
taken over so many human functions, is for me not a
little disquieting : this clever driving of wheels, and rods,
and cylinders, and a thousand different sorts of little loops
and pegs and teeth which move almost with passion, filled
me with horror. The certainty, the exactness, the
great madness, and the punctiliousness of life in England
made me not a little unhappy ; for just as the machines
in England appear like human beings, so do the human
beings appear like machines.

Bat there is nothing like the black mood that came
198

LONDON

over me once when I stood in the evening on Waterloo
Bridge and looked down at the waters of the Thames. It
was as though my soul were mirrored in them, as though
it were looking up at me out of the water with all its
wounds. . . . Then the most miserable thoughts came
into my head. ... I thought of the rose which has been
anointed with vinegar, and has lost its sweetest scents and
withered too soon. ... I thought of the lost butterfly,
which a naturalist who climbed Mont Blanc saw fluttering
there all alone between walls of ice. ... I thought of the
tame she-ape who was so accustomed to men, and played
and ate with them ; but one fine day she recognised in
the dish that was laid before them her own young, and
she snatched it away and rushed into the forest with it,
and never again appeared among her human friends. . . .
Ah ! I was so woe-begone, that the hot tears gushed
from my eyes. . . . They fell down into the Thames and
were carried away into the great sea which has already
swallowed up so many human tears without noticing
them. . . .

199

CHAPTER VI
THE BOOK OF SONGS

To Varnhagen von Ense.

LtJNEBURG, Oct. 21, 1826.

My fledgling years, the " Intermezzo," " Heimkehr "
and two parts of the "Sea Pictures" will make a fine
volume to contain the beginning and the end of my
lyrical youth. We can do this, for Maurer and Dummler
offer no oposition . Dummler compels me to do it. Maurer
does and has done nothing for my " Poems. " They can-
not therefore, let anything leak out of the projected
collection of my poems. But do you tell me, whether I
have the right to do it or not ? — of course many poems
will be omitted, many altered and many new ones added.

To Friedrich Merckel.

Luneburg, Nov. 16, 1827.

Some of my friends are urging me to publish a complete
collection of my poems, chronologically arranged, and
carefully selected, and they think that they would be as
popular as Burger's or Goethe's or Uhland's. Varnhagen
200

THE BOOK OF SONGS

has given me many precepts. I should include part of
my first poems, and I have the right to do so, for Maurer
has not paid me a penny, and the circulation has been
wretched ; I shall include almost the whole " Intermezzo1''
— Dummler cannot grudge me that — and then the later
poems if Campe, of whom I would not ask a shilling in
payment, will publish the book, and is not afraid of injuring
the " Travel Pictures " thereby. As I say, I would not
ask a shilling for this book ; cheapness and the other
requisites of popularity would be my only considerations ;
I should be delighted to show Maurer and Dummler that
I know how to help myself, and this book would be my
chef (Toeuvre and would give a psychological picture of
myself — the gloomy serious poems of my youth, the
"Intermezzo" bound up with the " Heimkehr." pure
blooming poems, such as those from the "Journey to the
Harz Mountains,'1 and a few new poems, and in conclusion
the colossal epigrams that go with them. Find out from
Campe if he can fall in with such an idea, and if he can
promise a sale for such a book — it would be no ordinary
collection of poems. If he cannot, then I will forget all
about my fine plan. I call it fine, because I should throw
in many fine things, and at the same time I should be
able, knowing my public, to attach myself to their passing
interests.

To Moses Moser.

Luxeburg, Oct. 30, 1827.

The "Book of Songs" is not a collected edition of my
published poems. ... It is beautifully fitted out and like
a harmless merchant-ship it will sail quietly away under

201

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

the protection of the second volume of the " Travel
Pictures " into the sea of oblivion. The second volume
being a man of war, carrying all too many cannon on
board, has incurred the world's displeasure.

(Paiis in the Spring of 1837.)

I give to the world the new impression of this book not
altogether without apprehension. It has cost me the
greatest effort ; I hesitated for almost a year before I could
bring myself to look through it hurriedly. At the sight
of it there awoke in me all the uneasiness which oppressed
my soul ten years ago when it was first published. This
feeling will only be understood by the poet or poetaster
who sees his poems printed for the first time. The first
poems ! They must be written on old odd sheets of paper,
and faded flowers must be between them, or a lock of
golden hair, or a discoloured ribbon, and there must be
here and there a trace of a tear. . . . But first poems
in print, printed in very black type on very smooth
paper, have lost their maiden charms and excite in the
composer of them a shuddering distrust. . . . Yes, it is
ten years since these poems first appeared, and I give
them in chronological order, and in the beginning are
poems which were written in those still earlier years when
the first kisses of the German muse burned into my soul.
Alas ! The kisses of the kindly wench have lost since
then much of their glow and freshness ! In so many long
years of marriage the ardour of the honeymoon must
gradually be consumed in smoke, but the tenderness of it
was all the more heartfelt, especially in bad times, and she
kept for me all her love and loyalty, the German muse !
202

THE BOOK OF SONGS

She comforted me in the days of oppression, she followed
me into exile, cheered me in the hours of despair,
never left me in the lurch, and she was able to help
me in my need for money, the German muse, the kindly
wench !

I have made as little alteration in the poems themselves
as to the order in which they come. Only here and there
in the first part a few verses have been improved. To
save space I have omitted the dedications. But I cannot
refrain from mentioning that the " Lyrical Intermezzo" is
taken from a book which appeared in 1823, with the title
of " Tragedies," and was dedicated to my uncle Solomon
Heine. I wished in that dedication to testify to the great
regard I had for the man, and to my gratitude for the love
that he showed me at that time. . . .

I deliver up the " Book of Songs " to the public modestly
and I crave their indulgence : for the frailness of these
poems may make some amends for my political, theological,
and philosophical writings. . . . But I must observe that
my poetical and my political, theological, and philo-
sophical writings are sprung from the same thought,
and that the one cannot be condemned without the other
being brought into disapprobation.

This is the old enchanted wood
With lime tree flowers scented ;
The moon shines out most wonderful,
And I am nigh demented.

And I went on and as I went
The nightingale was singing,
She sings of love and love's lament
Small comfort to me bringing.

203

204

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

She sings of love and love's lament

Of tears and merry-making,

Her laughter is mournful, her sobs are so gay,

Forgotten old dreams awaking.

And I went on and as I went
I saw in front of me clearly
A castle great in an open place,
Its towers rising sheerly.

The windows were closed and everywhere
Was silence, still complaining ;
It seemed as though the calm of death
Within those walls were reigning.

A sphinx lay by the gate, begot
Of fear and lust in teeming ;
A lion's body and paws, her head
And breasts a woman seeming.

A lovely woman ! her hot eyes
They told of wild desires ;
Her speechless lips were arched to kiss,
And smiled of yielding fires.

The nightingale, she sweetly sang,
I could withstand no longer ;
And when I kissed her worshipful face,
I knew which was the stronger.

The marble face took life once more,
The stone then fell to sighing,
She drank of my kisses the fire and heat
With my warm passion vying.

She almost drank in all my breath
In ecstasy unending,
She held me close with lion's claws
My wretched body rending.

THE BOOK OF SONGS

What torture sweet, what woeful bliss !
The pain like the joy beyond measure,
Her claws did wound me horribly,
Her mouth's kiss gave keen pleasure.

The nightingale sang. O lovely sphinx !
0 love, why dost thou blend me
Thy blessed joys with pangs of death,
And rob where thou dost lend me.

0 lovely sphinx ! O read me now
This riddle strange and vexing ;
For with it these ten thousand years
My mind Fve been perplexing.

I might have said all that just as well in prose. But
on reading my old poems through in order to polish them
up for a new impression, I am surprised in spite of myself
at the ring of the rhyme and rhythms. . . . Oh ! Phoebus
Apollo ! If these verses are bad, thou wilt forgive me. . . .
For thou art an omniscient God, and thou knowest well
why I have not been able these many years to apply my-
self altogether to the rhythm and harmony of words. . . .
Thou knowest why the flame which once delighted the
world with its brilliant display of fireworks had suddenly
to be turned to the feeding of far more serious fires. . . .
Thou knowest why it now consumes my heart with its
silent heat. . . . Thou dost understand me, great, beauti-
ful God. thou who dost thyself exchange ever and anon
thy golden lyre for the strong bow and the deadly
arrows. . . . Dost thou remember Marsyas whom thou
didst mortailv wound ? That was long ago, but now there
is need that thou shouldst make another example. . . .
O, eternal Father, thou dost smile !

205

CHAPTER VII
AUTUMN TRAVELS

To Freidrich Merckel.

Norderney, Aug. 20, 1827.

As you see, I am at Norderney iagain. I heard that
there was strong feeling against me here, talk of killing
me, etc., and I came here as quickly as possible. " Now
that shows courage,1' said some of my old acquaintances
when they saw me arrive. However, I think I have no
need of courage now that I am here : in the actual coming
and in despising any disturbance that might be made to
intimidate me, was courage. This time I have a right to
brag. England set me up financially, but I shall never do
like Walter Scott and write a bad, though lucrative,
book. I am the knight of the Holy Ghost ... I had
some fear in Holland, but I made haste to reach here and
not to miss the bathing season. I shall stay here for about
four weeks.

Wangeroge, Sept. 11, 1827.

You see that I did not stay at Norderney. I left orders
there to send on letters to me here. I have appeared in
heroic light at Norderney. A little before I left Hamburg
206

AUTUMN TRAVELS

I showed myself to be timid, but I have amply made up
for that now. I am terribly bored here. I am quite
alone.

Once at Langerog, after everybody had gone, I spent
two weeks with the schoolmaster. They were by two
weeks too long. I had already sent my luggage away and
I wanted to go with my bundle by way of Wangeroge and
Oldenburg to Hamburg. But days passed before there
came a ship. I had myself rowed out to the first ship that
came and did not budge from it. We were becalmed and
the captain could not put out to sea and would not put in to
land. So we stayed lying off the coast, until I could
bear it no longer and at ebb tide, with my bundle on my
head, walked all the way to the land through the sea.
After that I spent some time again alone with the school-
master at Langerog. Then they drove me into the
doldrums. Heavens, that is a strange life ! If I had
described it at all in my poems, no one would have under-
stood it, because no one knew it. Indeed it seems in-
credible to me when I think of it now, how, with my
bundle on my head, with the waters behind me, I walked
on foot through the North Sea.

To Varnhagen von Ense.

Hamburg, Oct. 19, 1827.

When I received Frau von Varnhagen,s " Responsum"
I was on the point of coming to you, and everything was
arranged for the journey when I received a letter from
Munich which made me decide to go thither. They have
wished me far from here for a long time. Now I am
promised Holland and Brabant. In any case I shall find

207

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

peace there, and that is my first consideration at present.
In January 1828, the "Political Annals" will appear at
Munich, edited by your friend Heine and Dr. Lindner.
This will be the first sign of the meaning of my presence
in Munich. More of this later. I accepted the editor-
ship because I was convinced that you will be not only
satisfied by it, but glad of it. You will foresee the policy.
In a few days I shall go to Munich. I will write to you
on the way. . . .

The third volume of the " Travel Pictures " will appear
as soon as I have written it. I am neither young, nor
have I a starving wife and children. I will therefore
speak more freely than ever. Frau von Varnhagen shall
be satisfied. I would write, my dear friend, a letter as
long as the world, as long-winded and intolerable as my
own life, but — I am just about to visit this morning a
ladv whom I have not seen for eleven years, of whom it is
rumoured that I was once in love with her. She is
Madame Findlander of Konigsberg, a sort of cousin of
mine. I saw her husband yesterday as a foretaste. The
good lady hurried hither and arrived yesterday, on the
day when the new edition of my " Sorrows of Youth " was
published by Hoffmann Campe. The world is stupid and
dull, and lifeless, and smells of dried violets.

But I am the editor of the " Political Annals," and I am
firmly convinced that when asses foregather and wish to
insult each other, they say, " Man."

If thy eye offend thee, pluck it out ; if thy hand offend
thee, cut it off' ; if thy tongue offend thee, cut it out . . .
In the new Bedlam in London I talked to a mad poli-
tician, who told me in confidence that God is a Russian
spy. The fellow should be a colleague in my " Politicial
Annals." . . .
208

AUTUMN TRAVELS

To Varnhagen von Ense.

LilNEBURG, Oct. 30, 1827.

I am just about to leave here (I have no great faith in
Hanoverians) and shall stay a few days at Cassel. I am
going to Munich by way of Frankfort on the Main. I
left Hamburg on Saturday, tearing myself away from
quite amusing company. They say that I am in love with
Peche, the actress, madly in love. Two people know that
that is impossible — myself and Frau von Vamnagen.
You will have heard in Berlin that Wolfgang Goethe
has spoken disagreeably of me : that would hurt Frau von
Varnhagen.

* * # $ *

I was told that Ludwig Borne was still living: at
Frankfort, and when I had to go through that town in the
year 1827, on my way to Munich, I made up my mind to
visit Doctor Borne at his house. I did so, but not without
much inquiry and many failures. Whenever I asked for
him I was looked at frigidly, and very few people in the
town where he lived seem to know him and still fewer to
bother about him. . . .

I had some difficulty in recognising the man, whose
appearance, as I had seen him before, remained vividly in
my memory. There was no trace of his discontented
distinction, or his former sinister quality. I saw a
contented little man, very thin, but not ill, a little head
with smooth black hair, a patch of red on his cheeks, very
lively bright brown eyes with intelligence in every look,
every movement, every sound. He received me warmly
and affectionately. Three minutes passed and we fell into

i o 209

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

the most intimate conversation. Of what did we talk at
first ? When cooks come together they talk of their
mistresses, and when German writers come together they
talk of their publishers. Our conversation began, there-
fore, with Campe and Cotta, and when, after the usual
complaints, I admitted Camped good qualities, Borne
confided to me that he was pregnant with a collected
edition of his works and would go to Campe for this
undertaking. I was able to assure him that Julius Campe
was no ordinary bookseller, who only did business with the
noble, the beautiful and the great, and will only make use
of a good conjunction of circumstances, but that he very
often prints the great, the beautiful and the noble, under
very unfavourable circumstances, and, in fact, does a very
bad business with them. Borne listened very attentively
to these words and as a result of them he went to Hamburg
to arrange with the publisher of the "Travel Pictures "
for a collected edition of his works. When they have done
with the publishers, two writers, who are in conversation
for the first time, begin to exchange compliments. I will
pass over what Borne said of my excellence and will only
mention the slight fault-finding which he let trickle into
the foaming cup of his praise. He had been reading a
little while before the second part of the " Travel Pictures"
and he thought I had spoken with too little reverence of
God, who created Heaven and Earth, and rules the world
so wisely, and with exaggerated respect of Napoleon, who
had been only a mortal despot. . . .

The work of Wolfgang Menzel had just appeared, and
Borne rejoiced that some one had arrived who had the
courage so recklessly to attack Goethe. " Respect," he
said naively, "has always kept me from saying such
things in public. Menzel, who has courage, is an honest
210

AUTUMN TRAVELS

man and a scholar. You must know him ; he will yet give
us great joy ; he has much courage ; he is a very honest
man and a great scholar." He returned often to this
theme. I had to promise him that I would visit Menzel
at Stuttgart, and he wrote me to this end a card of intro-
duction, and I can still hear him saying excitedly : " He
has courage, really extraordinary courage ; he is a good,
honest man, and a good scholar ! . . ."

With droll kindness he won from me a promise to give
him three days of my life. He (Borne) would not let me
go, and I had to go about the town with him and call on
all sorts of friends, both men and women.

The three days which I spent at Frankfort in Borne's
company passed in almost idyllic peacefulness ; he spared
no pains to please me. . . He was as gentle as a child.
Up to the last moment of my stay at Frankfort he was
perpetually with me, watching me to see if he could
show me some further affectionate attention. He knew
that I was going to Munich on the inducement of old
Baron Cotta to take up the editorship of the " Political
Annals," and to devote my activities to certain projected
literary institutions. It was a question of founding for
the Liberal Press those organs which have since exercised
so good an influence. The venom and the meanness with
which the ultramontane aristocratic propagandists attacked
me and my friends are well known.

" Beware of coming into collision with the parsons of
Munich,1-' were the last words that Borne whispered in my
ears as I left. As I sat in the coupe of the coach he re-
mained looking after me long and sadly, like an old sailor
who has retired on shore and is filled with feelings of pity
when he sees a youngster going to sea for the first time. . . .
The old fellow thought then that he had said farewell for

211

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

ever to the treacherous element, and would be able to bring
his days to a close in the safe harbour. Poor man ! The
gods would not grant him this peace ! He had soon to
put out again on the high seas, and then our ships met
while the terrible storm raged in which he was wrecked.
How it howled ! How it roared ! By the light of the
yellow lightning which darted out of the black cloud
wrack I could see how courage and care chased each
other across the man's face ! He stood at the tiller of his
ship and defied the waves which threatened to swallow
him up, now drenching him with spray, now sousing him
through and through ; and he was so wretched and yet so
comic a sight as to bring laughter and tears together.
Poor man ! His ship was anchorless ; his heart was
without hope. ... I saw the mast break and the wind
tear down the rigging. ... I saw him reach out his hand
to me. ... I could not take it. I could not deliver up
the precious cargo, the blessed treasure entrusted to me,
to certain loss. ... I was carrying on board my ship the
gods of the future.

CHAPTER VIII
THE POLITICAL ANNALS

To Varnhagen von Ense.

Munich at last, about Nov. 28, 1828.

I arrived a few days ago. Cotta, who stayed a few
days longer for me, has already gone back to Stuttgart.
His wife is an amiable lady. My verses give her pleasure,
and she likes me personally. Things do not look so bad
as I had expected. The people are afraid of its not
pleasing me, and they do not know that all I ask in the
world is a quiet room. I shall keep myself to myself and
write much.

I was eight days at Cassel. Jakob Grimm, who seemed
to like me ... is working at his history of German aw!
Ludwig Grimm struck me — a long German face, with eyes
turned longingly heavenwards. I spent three days at
Frankfort with Borne. We spoke much of Frau von
Varnhagen. I never should have believed that Borne
would be so much attached to me; we were inseparable up
to the moment when he accompanied me to the coach.
After that I saw no one at all except Menzel at Stuttgart.
I did not see the noble Sanger there. MenzePs book on
literature contains fine things.

213

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

To Julius Campk.

Munich, Dec. 1, 1827.

I am editing the " Annals " with Dr. Lindner, and also
some articles in the Ausland. Do not be afraid. The
third volume of the " Travel Pictures " will not suffer,
and my best hours shall be given to it. If I had not to
consider that I might perhaps have been persuaded to take
over the Morgenblatty the editor of which is just dead, or
the editorship-in-chief of the Ausland, and so have earned
very, very much money. But I want to be free, and if
the climate is really as terrible as they have threatened I
must not be fettered. If my health is endangered, I shall
pack my box and go to Italy. I shall not starve any-
where. I do not care about marks of honour ; I want to
continue to live. . . . Everywhere in my travels I found
the " Travel Pictures " en vogue, everywhere enthusiasm,
compliment, and admiration ; and I should not have
believed myself to be already so famous. I have two men
to thank for it : H. Heine and Julius Campe. These two
must hold together. I at least shall not change in order
to better myself or for money. I think we shall grow old
together, and always understand each other. Now that I
am more independently situated than heretofore, do you
accept my assurance of an unalterable disposition towards
you. I am now satisfied with you — but I am writing
vaguely. I wished to say really that even now that I am
become famous I am afraid of the fate of German writers
— an early death.

214

THE POLITICAL ANNALS

To Friedrich Merckel.

MrxicH, Sylvester Eve, 1827.

The climate is killing me, but otherwise I am well
enough off. I am well guarded. The king is a spruce
little fellow. In eight days from now the first number of
the " Annals,'''' edited by Heine and Lindner, will appear.
There is a little essay of mine in it on Liberty and
Equality.

Munich is a city built by the people themselves, and
by succeeding generations, whose spirit appears in their
buildings, so that one sees a succession of spirits of
different times, from the dark red spirit of the Middle
Ages, which steps forth in armour from the Gothic
porches of the churches, to the cultured bright spirit
of our own times, which holds up for us a mirror in
which each of us can look at himself with gratification.
In this succession there is the quality of reconciliation ;
the barbaric no more disturbs us, and the grotesque no
more offends us when we regard them as beginnings and
necessary transitions. We become serious, but are not
put out at the sight of the barbaric cathedral which still
rises like a bootjack above the town, concealing the shades
and ghosts of the Middle Ages in its womb. Just as little
are we put out, nay, we are even amused, when we look at
the bag-wig castles of a late period, the rude German
imitations of the smooth artificiality of the French, the
splendid buildings of insipidity, crazily scrolled without,
and within even more elaborately decorated with scream-
ing coloured allegories, gilded arabesques, stucco, and
those escutcheons on which the High and Mighty are

215

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

depicted. As I say, the sight of these things does not
strike discord in us, but rather helps to make us value
highly and properly the present, and when we look at the
new buildings erected by the side of the old, it is as
though a heavy periwig were taken from our heads, and
our hearts set free from steel fetters. I am speaking of
the bright temples of art and the noble palaces which
issue complete and fine from the genius of the great
master, Klinge ! But, between ourselves, it is rather
ridiculous to call the city a new Athens, and I should
be hard put to it to represent it as such.

To Wolfgang Menzel.

Munich, Jan. 19, 1828.

Life is very pleasant here, and if your lungs are good
and you think you can stand the climate, I advise you to
come. Do you at least come on a visit some time. Stay
with me. I can put you up, and do you be my guest as I
was yours at Stuttgart. If our descendants should some
day meet in literary conflict, perhaps they will, like
Glaucus and Diomedes, change weapons, and I think my
grandson will have the best of it. Farewell, and think
well of me.

To Varnhagen von Ense.

Munich, Feb. 12, 1828.

Cotta is treating me very generously. I am pledged to
him until July, and he gives me 100 karolin for the half-
year.
216

THE POLITICAL ANNALS

I will never in niv life go back to Hamburg: terribly
bitter things happened to me there. They would have
been insupportable were it not that only I know of them.
I am becoming very serious here, almost German. I fancy
the beer must be doing it. I often long for the capital,
Berlin. When I am well I shall try and see if I cannot
live there. I have become a Prussian in Bavaria. What
men do you advise me to keep in with in order to lead to
a speedy return ?

To Wolfgang Menzel.

Munich, April 10, 1828.

Ah ! Menzel, how boring are the contents of the
" Annals," with the exception of our essays. I am con-
vinced that the Germans have no inclination for politics —
for there are no good political writers to be found. I am
still ill and long for Italy. I am writing very little.
Kolb will tell you how I fare. It is a bad look out here.
A sea of little souls and a bad climate. . . .

If I have not approached you it has not been from lack
of goodwill, but because I have come upon nothing reason-
able in this place as yet. But I give you my word of
honour you shall not escape me. I was almost impotent
mentally this winter, and now I am distracted by the
spring in Munich. In a fortnight I shall retire into the
mountains for solitude and to work. There should be
much to write of Munich. Narrow-mindedness of the
most magnificent sort. I have not yet spoken to Schelling
and Gorres. But I see all the more of the two great
lights of the day, the dioscuri of the heavens of modern
poetry, M. Beer and E. Schenk. I have written an

217

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

account of Beer's tragedy in the Morgenblatt, and
shown the world how little I am affected by his fame,
but the naughty world has taken it amiss and calls it a
mystification of the public. I have had to suffer for my
good-naturedness.

To JOHANN FRIEDRICH VON CoTTA.

After what I told you yesterday you will easily under-
stand how important it is for me that these three books
enclosed should be sent as soon as possible to the king.
Please do not forget to take them with you when you to
go to the king. I should also be very glad if you would
tell him that the author himself is much gentler, better,
and perhaps altogether different from his early work. I
think the king is wise enough to value a sword only by its
sharpness and not by the good or ill use that has been
made of it. Excuse me if I am putting too much upon
you, but my continuance here depends so much upon it.

To WOLFANG MENZEL.

Munich, July 16, 1828.

I am just about to go into the mountains. I shall have

leisure there, and perhaps will write to you about my life

here. Ah ! if only I could induce you to come here !

You have admirers here, and would enjoy the life.
*****

There was winter in my soul ; my thoughts and feelings
were, as it were, snowed up. I was so withered and dead,
and in addition I had troublesome politics, sorrow for the
218

THE POLITICAL ANNALS

death of a dear child, and an old chagrin, and a cold in
the head. Besides I was drinking much beer, because I
was told that it makes the blood flow. But the best Attic
brew would not have any effect on me, for I had got used
to porter in England.

In the end there came a day when all was changed.
The sun broke forth from the heavens and fed the earth,
the old child, with the milk of his beams; the hills
trembled with pleasure, and the tears of their snow flowed
freely ; the ice coverings of the lakes cracked and broke ;
the earth opened her blue eyes ; the loving flowers and the
murmuring forests sprang from her bosom, the green
palaces of the nightingales, and all Nature smiled, and her
smile is called Spring. Then there began in me, too, a new
spring, new flowers budded forth from my heart, feelings
of freedom put forth shoots like roses, and a secret longing,
like young violets, and among them many a useless nettle.
Hope reared her bright green over the graves of my
wishes, and the melodies of poetry returned, like migratory
birds that spend the winter in the warm south and seek
once more their deserted nests in the north, and my
deserted northern heart sang again and bloomed as once
it did — only I know not how it all came about. Was it a
dark or a fair sun, that awoke once more the spring in my
heart and kissed all the sleeping flowers in my heart, and,
smiling, bade the nightingales return to it ? Was it
affinitive Nature herself seeking her echo in my breast, and
seeing herself mirrored in it in her new splendour of
Spring ? I know not, but I think that this new enchant-
ment came over mv heart on the terrace of Bockenhausen,
opposite the Alps of the Tyrol. As I sat there with my
thoughts, it seemed as though I saw a lovely boy's face
peep over the mountains, and I longed for wings to fly

219

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

away to the land where he lived — Italy. I felt the scent
of lemons and oranges blown about me, wafted down from
the mountains, cajoling and full of promise to charm me
away to Italy. Once in the golden half-light of the even-
ing I saw him on the peak of a mountain, the young god
of Spring, his head, all joy, crowned with flowers and
laurel, and with laughing eyes and lips aglow, he called
to me : " I love you, come to me in Italy ! "

220

CHAPTER IX
THE ITALIAN JOURNEY

While the sun shone ever fairer and most glorious in the
Heavens, and clad mountains and castles in veils of gold ;
there was ever more warmth and radiance in my heart,
and all my breast was filled with flowers, and they put
forth shoots and grew over my head, and through the
flowers of my heart there smiled at me the fair maiden-
divine : a captive in such dreams, myself a dream. I
came to Italy, and, as upon my journey I had almost for-
got that I was journeying thither, I was almost afraid
when the great Italian eyes looked at me, and all the
gay, vivid, warm and buzzing life of Italy glowed to meet
me. . . .

To Eduard von Schenk.

Livorno, August 27, 1828.

You will sooner or later read in print what I think
of Italy. I am plagued by my want of knowledge of
the Italian language. I do not understand the people
and cannot talk with them. I see Italian, but I do not
hear it. But I am often not altogether without conver-
sation. The stones here speak, and I understand their
dumb language. They seem to feel deeply what I am

22]

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

thinking. A broken pillar of the time of the Romans,
a crumbling Lombard tower, or a weather-beaten Gothic
arch, understands me right well. I am a ruin wandering
among ruins. Like and like understand each other
quickly. Often the old palaces wish to whisper some
secret to me, and I cannot hear them for the dull roar
of day : then come I again at night, and the moon is a
good interpreter who understands the language of stones,
and can translate it into the dialect of my heart. Yes,
I can wholly understand Italy by night, for then the young
nation with its young language of the the operas is asleep
and the ancients arise from their cold beds and talk
with me in the finest Latin. There is something ghostly
in coming to a land where one does not understand the
living language and the living people, and instead one
knows intimately the language which flourished there a
thousand years ago, and long since dead, is only spoken
by midnight spirits — a dead language.

However, there is a language in which one can be
understood from Lappland to Japan by one half of the
human race. And it is the fairer half, which is called
par excellence, the fair sex. This language flourishes
especially in Italy. What use are words where such eyes
with their eloquence cast their glances so deep into the
heart of a poor Tedesco, eyes which speak better than
Demosthenes and Cicero, eyes — I am not lying — which
are as large as stars. . . .

To Moses Moser.

Bagni di Lucca, Sept. 6, 1828.

You will receive this letter from the baths of Lucca,
where I bathe, gossip with pretty women, climb the
«i22

THE ITALIAN JOURNEY

Apennines, and commit a thousand follies. I should
have much to write to you about, but I see to my horror
that I am running out of paper. I shall stay here for a
fortnight more, then I am going to Florence, Bologna,
Venice. I think much of you, and I deem it unkind of
you not to have answered my letter from Munich. I led
a delightful life at Munich, and shall be glad to return
thither and stay there for ever. During the last weeks of
my stay there I had my portrait painted, and as I left in
a hurry, I gave the artist your address, and told him to
send the picture to you at Berlin. Probably you have
already received it. It is destined for my parents at
Hamburg, and I had it sent by Berlin so that you and
my friends could see it . . . Cotta is plaguing me to
found a new journal instead of the "Political Annals.''1
I know not what I shall do. I have no friends on whose
literary support I could rely. I stand alone. For the
present I shall go on amusing myself in Italy. I am
living much and writing little. I am reading the finest
poems, and poems of heroes. At Genoa a rascal swore
by the Madonna to stab me ; the police told me that such
people kept their word as a matter of conscience, and
advised me to leave the place immediately — but I stayed
for six days, and continued my usual walks by night
along the sea-shore. Every evening I read Plutarch,
and should I be afraid of such an assassin ? . . . When I
return to Germany I shall publish the third volume of the
" Travel Pictures/1 It is thought in Munich that I shall
not let fly so much at the nobility, since I am living in
the halls of the noblesse, and love the most amiable aris-
tocrats— and am loved by them. But they are wrong.
My love for the equality of men, my hatred of Clerw, were
never stronger than at present. I am become almost one-

223

HEINRICH HEINFS MEMOIRS

sided. But to do anything a man must be one-sided.
The German people and Moser will never do anything
very much because of their many-sidedness.

To Solomon Heine.

Lucca, Sept. 15, 1828.

You will receive this letter from the baths of Lucca in
the Apennines where I have been taking the water for
the last fortnight. Nature is beautiful here and men and
women are amiable. In the mountain air that one breathes
here, one forgets his little troubles and sorrows and
breadth comes into the soul.

I have been thinking of you so much in these days, and
so often have longed to kiss your hand, that it is quite
natural that I should write to you. If I were to put it
off until I came down from the mountains and bitterness
and sorrow came to my heart again, I should write of
bitterness and sorrow. But that shall not be : I will not
think of the things I might complain of in you which are
greater than you suspect. Therefore I pray you to lessen
the degree of the complaints which you may have to make
against me, since they are all reducible to terms of money,
and if they were reckoned up in hellers and pfennigs
would only amount to a sum which a millionaire could
quite easily throw away — but my complaints against you
are incalculable, infinite, for they are of a spiritual nature,
rooted in the depths of offended sensibilities. If I had
ever by a single word or a single look been wanting in
respect for you, or have injured your house — I have loved
it only too much ! — then you would have the right to be
angry. But not so now ; if all that you allege against
224

THE ITALIAN JOURNEY

me were counted up, it would all go comfortably into
a purse of no very great capacity. And I say, that
if the grey bag were to be too small to hold all that
Solomon Heine complains of in me, and were to break
— do you think, my uncle, that it would make as much
matter as the breaking of a heart that has been choked
with injuries ?

But enough ; the sun is shining so beautifully to-day
and when I look out at the window I see nothing but
smiling vine-clad hills. I will not complain : I will only
love you as I have ever done, and I will only think of
your soul and confess that it is more beautiful than all the
splendour that I have yet seen in Italy.

To Eduard von Schenk.

Florence, Oct. 1, 1828.

Ah ! Schenk, my soul is so full, so overflowing that I
know no other way of relieving myself than by writing
enthusiastic books. At Lucca where I spent the longest
time and the most God-like, I wrote about half a book, a
sort of Sentimental Journey. I have thought of you and
Immermann for the most part as my readers. . . . Yes,
dear Schenk, you shall give your honest name to this
book ; it is dedicated to you. But be not afraid ; it shall
first be given to you to read, and it will contain many
pleasing things and withal gentle. I must give some
public testimony to my feelings for you. You have
deserved it of me : you are one of the few who saw to it
that my position was assured, and, as truly as we serve
God, I hope the King of Bavaria will some day thank you
for it. I feel much strength in myself, and ... I will
turn it to good.

i p 225

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

To Teodor von Tjutscheff.

Florence, Nov. 11, 1828.

You know the state of my affairs with regard to my
appointment as Professor. It was arranged with Herr
Schenk that as soon as I had arrived in Italv I should
send him my address so that he could give me news of the
royal decree. To this end I wrote almost four weeks ago
to Schenk to tell him to send me the news to Florence,
poste restante. This morning I hurried to the post and
found no letter. I have written again to Schenk and
told him that I shall stay here to await his answer.
There may be a thousand reasons for his silence, but as
he is a poet, I suspect that it is indolence, that indolence
of mind, which besets us when we have to write to our
friends. This observation holds good for you too —
concerning myself, that you may know that I should not
have written either to Schenk or yourself, if it were not
that I must have as quickly as possible the news which is
to decide me either to stay in Italy or to return to
Munich, which I shall do as soon as I receive the decree
of my appointment.

To JOHANN FRIEDR1CH VON CoTTA.

Florence, Nov. 11, 1828.

So that you may not think that I am in love with a
dancer, and am staying here for that reason and being as
lazy as Borne, I have written up the beginning of my
Italian diary, that is I have removed strong words and
chapters so that it can be published, and soon in the
Morgenblatt.
226

THE ITALIAN JOURNEY

I have spent some very pleasant days at the baths of
Lucea, and at Leghorn. I have been here for six weeks,
waiting for letters and studying the fine arts — the ballet
is one of them. I have already called your attention to
the fact that I am not in love with a dancer, although
such a love sorts well with a cold in the head and a cough,
and is just as great a misfortune. On the contrary I am
industrious. I am writing a book, reading Malthus and
Bentham, and have thought out in my own head a new
theory of the law of punishment which will please you.

As for the continuation of the " Annals,1'' I do not
know if I can tell you anything definite. If you cherish
a desire not to let it come to an end I thought it would
be well to keep the title to a certain extent, but to make
it easier. " New Annals, a Journal of Politics, Literature,
and Economics,r> that would be a title which would give
the editor the greatest freedom, and one which would
serve to interest the literary public and give him the
opportunity of using up stuff which the Ausland cannot
take. As for the editorship, I confess that neither
my political knowledge, or rather my knowledge of
current politics, nor my manner of writing make me
fitted to be the editor of such a journal. But Baron, if
you wish particularly, to see my name as editor on the title-
page of the " Annals,'1 I will tell you frankly what I
think, so far as I know myself. . . .

To Gustav Kolb.

I have written to Baron Cotta to-day ; if Lindner insists
on retiring from the " Annals " I may have to be appointed

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

Editor in order to continue publication and in that case I
do very much want Dr. Kolb to be my co-editor. Besides
my friend Dr. Kolb will have to take on his shoulders
the whole burden of editing it, at least until next May,
when I return to Munich.

Dear Kolb, Baron Cotta himself will tell you how little
I am led by my private interests ; my only wish is to
maintain a journal for liberal opinion, which has few
organs of its own in Germany, and I thought that you,
my dear Kolb, would be glad to make a sacrifice for such an
end. It is a time of the battles of ideas, and the journals
are our fortresses. I am by habit lazy and indolent, but
where, as here, a general interest is to be served I shall
not be found wanting. Then do not let the "Annals"
go under ; my name is at your service.

Think of it ; I never went to Rome ; I have never seen
Rome ! It was strange that I did not go there. When I
was in Northern Italy I wanted to go to Rome, but found
that I had no money. For it only occurred to me when
I returned to Germany, that I could dispose of a whole
heap of English bank notes which I had kept from my
stay in London. But it would have been only to temporise,
for I was suddenly overcome by a sick longing to see my
father, and I could not away with it, and returned. There
was no apparent reason for it, but I could not help it.
On the way I had a letter from my brother saying that
my father was dangerously ill and that I would have
further news from Herr Textor at Wiirzburg. I went at
once to Wiirzburg, and when I arrived there my father
was dead.

He was a good man, and through all these years I have
228

THE ITALIAN JOURNEY

not been able to grasp the loss of him or to bear it patiently.
It is strange that we never believe in the death of a man,
unless we have seen him die, and that we do not believe
that a man whom we love can die.

Yes, yes ! They talk of meeting again in transfigura-
tion ! What have I to do with that ? I know him in his
old brown overcoat and I shall see him again in it. He
used to sit at the head of the table with salt-cellar and
pepper-pot in front of him, one on the left, the other on
the right, and if the salt-cellar were on the right and the
pepper-pot on the left he used to change them about.
I know him in his brown overcoat, and I see him again
in it!

£89

CHAPTER X
A SUMMER AT POTSDAM

To Moses Moser.

Potsdam, April 22, 1829.

I am well, thinking and working — Heaven ! when I
think how little I have thought and worked in the last
six months, I have good reason for thinking and working.

To Friedrieke Robert.

Potsdam, May 2, 1829.

It is dreadful weather here ; the flowers of spring are
fain to blossom forth, but a cold wind of reason blows
upon the young cups and they close again sorrowfully.

Cest tout comme chez nous ! whispers my heart, my
heart that in spite of the bad weather loves you and other
people much. . . .

I am no longer a solitary Crusoe here. A few officers
nave landed on my island, cannibals. Yesterday evening
in the New Gardens I fell into the company of some ladies,
and I sat among the fair of Potsdam like Apollo among
the cows of Admetus.
230

A SUMMER AT POTSDAM

The day before yesterday, I was at Saii.soitei, where
everything is bright and blooming, but, dear Lord ! it is
only a warmed up winter, streaked with green, and on
the terraces and pine trunks disguised as orange trees, I
strolled about and sang in my head :

Du moment qu'on aime, — Yon devient si doux
Et je suis moi-meme — aussi tremblant que vous.

The monster in " Zemire and Azor " says that I, poor
monster, I, poor enchanted prince, am so softly fashioned
that I am like to die. And oh ! if a man wishes himself
dead, then he is already half dead. I have laid aside my
great humorous work, and am applying myself afresh to
the " Italian Journey," Avhich is to fill the third volume of
the " Travel Pictures," and I shall hold a reckoning with
all my enemies in it. I have made a list of all those who
have sought to injure me, so that in my present mood of
softness I may forget no one. Ah ! sick and wretched as
I am, as though in mockery of myself, I am now writing of
the most brilliant time of mv life, a time when intoxicated
with high spirits and the joy of love I ran shouting about
the peaks of the Apennines, and dreamed of great, wild
deeds that should spread my fame over all the earth even
to the farthest islands where in the evenings by the fire the
seamen would tell of me ; now I am tamed since my
father's death ; now I may only be the cat in such a far
island, sitting by the warm hearth and listening to the
tales of famous deeds. . . .

Yes, it is very strange that once I was in love with a girl
seven years after her death. When first I met little Very,
she pleased me much. I was for three days busied with
her and found the greatest delight in all that she did and

231

HEINRICH HEINE^ MEMOIRS

said, in every expression of her wonderful charming self,
but I never was moved to excess of tenderness. Nor was
I so in the months that passed until I heard that she had
died suddenly of fever. I forgot her altogether, and I
am sure that for years I never gave one thought to her.
Seven years had passed and I was at Potsdam to enjoy
the beautiful summer in undisturbed solitude. I came into
touch with no one. For company I had only the statues
in the gardens of Sansouci. Then it happened one day
that there came into my mind a face and a rare trick of
speech and movement without my being able to recollect
to what person they had belonged. Nothing is more
disquieting than such a rummaging in old memories, and
it came to me as a glad surprise when a few days later
I remembered little Very, and knew that it was the dear
forgotten image of the child that had hovered before me
and made me so uneasy. Yes, I was glad of the discovery,
like a man who has unexpectedly found again his
dearest friend : the faded colours slowly took life again,
and at last the dear little creature stood vividly before
me, smiling, pouting, merry, and more beautiful than ever.
From that time the dear vision never left me : it filled
all my soul : wherever I went, wherever I stood, it
stood and walked by my side, talked with me, but gently
and without any great tenderness. But I was every day
more enchanted by this vision, which every day gained
in reality for me. It is easy to conjure spirits, but it
is hard to send them back again into their darkness and
void : they look at us so beseechingly, and our hearts do
intercede for them. ... I could not tear myself away
and I fell in love with little Very, seven years after her
death. So for six months I lived at Potsdam altogether
wrapped up in this love of mine. I kept from all contact
232

A SUMMER AT POTSDAM

with the outer world more rigorously than ever, and if
anybody brushed against me in the street I felt the most
uneasy sensation. I had a profound horror of such
encounters, such as perhaps the spirits of the dead in their
wandering by night do feel ; for spirits, they say, are
just as frightened when they meet a living man, as a
living man is when he meets a ghost. It chanced that
there came a traveller to Potsdam whom I could not avoid
— my brother. At the sight of him, and upon his telling
me the latest events and news, I awoke from my dream,
and I suddenly felt fearfully how horribly alone I had
been living for so long. In my strange condition I had
not noticed the passing of the seasons, and I was amazed to
see the trees, which had shed their leaves, and were covered
with the hoar frost of autumn. I left Potsdam and
little Very, and in another town, where important business
awaited me, I was very soon drawn into the torment of
hard reality by very tiresome relations and affairs. . . .

233

CHAPTER XI
COUNT PLATEN

The place in which I first heard of Count Platen was
Munich, the scene of his efforts, where he is much lauded
by all who know him, and where, as long as he lives, he
will be immortal ... I never saw him myself, and when-
ever I want to think of myself I call to mind the queer
spleen with which my friend Doctor Lautenbacher once
let fly at the folly of poets in general, and Count Platen
in particular, who with a laurel wreath upon his brow
once obstructed those who were walking on the public
promenade at Erlangen. . . .

I was little surprised when on the day before my
departure for Italy I heard from my friend Doctor Kolb
that Count Platen was very hostile to me, and had
already prepared my ruin in a comedy called King
GEdipus. . . . Others tell me that the Count hates me,
and opposes me as an enemy. As for the holy men who
proclaimed themselves with pious wrath against me I
could only gain by its being made clear that I was not
one of them. . . .

In North Germany, whither my father's death called
me suddenly, I received at last the monstrous creature
which had crept out of the great egg, on which our beau-
tiful plumed ostrich had been sitting for so long. . .
Grief, which I would not profane, allowed me only two months
234

COUNT PLATEN

later, when I was taking baths in the island of Heligoland,
to read King CEdipns, and then in a high mood from long
contemplation of the great splendid sea I could not fail
to perceive the smallness of purpose, and the patchiness of
the work of the noble author. His masterpiece showed
him to me as he is, with all his staleness, his plentiful
lack of intellect, his imagination without imaginative
force. . . . He is most harsh to Immermann. He does
not even spare Houwald, good soul. Mullner whom, as
he says, he has " replaced by real wit," is raked up from
the grave. Children and children's children are not left
alone. Raupach is a Jew . . " writes tragedies in the
dumps." It is far worse for " the baptized Heine."
Indeed, dear reader, there is no mistake ; it is myself at
whom he is aiming, and you can read in King QZdipiis,
that I am really a Jew, and how, when I have written
love songs for a few hours, I sit down to clipping ducats ;
and how on the Sabbath I hobnob with long-bearded
smugs, and sing the Talmud ; and how on Easter-night
I slay a young Christian, and out of malice often choose
an unlucky writer for the slaughter. No, dear reader, I
will not deceive you ; these well-painted pictures are not
in King (Edipus, and that is all the fault I have to find
with it — that they are not there. . . . However, true
merit has ever had its reward, and the author of the
(Edipus will not fail to find his . . .

To Moses Moser.

Heligoland, Aug. 6, 1829.

After a little storm at sea, I had the happiness to find
myself here, where I am living well and cheerfully on the

235

HEINRICH HEINE^ MEMOIRS

red rock. Indeed, I am very well and very cheerful. The

sea is my affinitive element, and the sight of it works a

cure for me. I was unspeakably wretched, as I feel now,

when I was in Berlin ; you must have suffered then. . .

I wish you could have seen the sea ; perhaps you would

have understood the delight with which every wave fills

me. I am a fish with hot blood and a chattering maw ;

on land I am like a fish on land.

*****

Workaday and grey the sky is !
Workaday and grey the city !
Bleak and grim where Elbe goes by is
What is mirrored — more's the pity.

Long their noses, very slowly
Wiped or blown by beggars riding,
Snivelling with accents holy, —
For their manners are abiding.

Lovely South, since my return here
To this dung-heap and this weather,
Mine thy homage, and I yearn here
For thy skies and Gods together.

To Karl Immermann.

Hamburg, Nov. 17, 1829.

Yesterday morning I trounced Count Platen, and yester-
day evening I applauded Karl Immermann. I had so long
delayed the first business that I had to apply myself to it;
it has only been done half successfully, and I was just as
curious as others to see what I should do. You, my dear
Immermann, have played the judge; I shall play the
236

COUNT PLATEN

executioner, or rather I shall do it in right good earnest.
I was for a long time sad for the death of my father, and
I am only just beginning to be in a better condition.

Old Cotta is a good fellow. A few evenings before I
left Munich when I told him that the Platen squib had
been published by him, he told me that I could get it
from his people. It would have cost me only a word, and
the printing of it would be stopped, but I declined, as
you may imagine. . . .

By the way my dear Immermann, my book, the second
half of which is interesting, because for the first time I
have attempted to make a character live and speak.
Perhaps I shall be able to send you the piece completed
by next autumn ; it is called " The Bathers of Lucca," and
is only a fragment of a larger novel of travel. . . If it is
published as a whole the Count, as is his due, will be
flung out of the book. . . .

I have no grudge against him, but against his colleagues
who stirred him up against me. I saw their good intent,
and how they wished to crush me in popular opinion, and
I should be a fool or a rogue, if I were to give quarter
from any consideration. My life is so pure that I can
look forward calmly to their spreading scandal about
me. . . . While Platen was wagging his tail at Cotta's,
he wrote to Schenk that Cotta was starving him, that
something must be done for him with the king, and that
he could not live long as he was in a decline. At that
time Beer swore to say nothing injurious of Platen,
because the royal grant of 600 gulden depended upon
Schenk. I spoke in his favour ; I spoke to Madame
Cotta for him. I did even more that I cannot now say
anything about, and at this very time the wretched fellow
was writing the (Edipus. . . . After a battle I am mildness

237

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

itself, like Napoleon who was always much moved when
he rode over a battlefield after a victory. Poor Platen !
Cest la guerre ! It was no tourney in jest, but a war to
the death, and I cannot yet see all the consequences of my
book. . . .

To Varnhagen von Ense.

Hamburg, Jan. 3, 1830.

Since my return from the sea, I have been living in
retirement here and writing and seeing through the press
the third volume of my "Travel Pictures." You will
easily discover of whom I was thinking as I wrote, and
upon whose approbation I counted. I do much wish
that the "Bathers of Lucca" may please you with its
characters. My Hyacinth is the first character that I
have drawn life-size. I shall try larger creations in
comedy as well as in the novel form. There is a fool
here who gives himself out to be the Marchese Gumpelino
and cries " murder " and takes horrid plunges. As for
Platen, I am very curious to have your judgment, I ask
no praise and I know that blame would be unjust; I
have done my duty and hang the consequences. At first
people were anxious to know what will happen to Platen.
Now, as always after an execution, there is compassion for
him, and I should not have handled him so severely. But
I do not see how any one could have been more gently
destroyed. People do not see that I only castigated him
as the representative of his party. It was a war of men
against men, and the reproach which is publicly made
against me, that I, the lowly born, should have spared
the noble estate, makes me laugh — for that was precisely
238

COUNT PLATEN

my motive : I wished to make an example whatever the
consequences.

There are domestic troubles as well, worry about my
publishers — do not misunderstand me — my anxiety is
partly literary, partly for my personal safety, partly
for my future, for I see how on all sides the ground is
being dug away from under my feet. I am telling you
all this because I am going to ask : " Shall I come to
Berlin?" . . .

No one feels more than I that I have done myself much
injury with the Platen chapter, and that I have offended
the better class of the public — but I feel also that with
all my talents I could not have done better, and that —
cottte que coute — I had to make an example.

The question of satisfaction is already on the carpet.
. . . You will remember that it was in my mind from the
beginning. . . . Then there is once more the complaint
that I have done a thing unheard-of in German literature.
As if the times were always the same ! The Schiller-
Goethe-Xenien campaign was only a sham war, it was
the period of art, the semblance of life was in question,
art, not life itself. Now the highest interests of life itself
are at stake, the Revolution enters into literature, and
this war is a more serious affair.

I say this because I make no claim to a citizen^ crown
in the Platen story. I was looking after myself — but the
reasons for doing so had their origin in the general
combat. When the priests at Munich first attacked me
and first flung the Jew in my face, I laughed — I thought
it mere stupidity. But when I scented a systematic
attack, when I saw how the absurd bogey was gradually
growing into a vampire, when I perceived the aim of
Platen's satire, when I heard through the booksellers of

239

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

the existence of similar productions steeped in the same
poison, and handed about secretly in manuscript, then I
girded mv loins and struck as quickly as possible, and
as lustily. Robert, Gans, Michel Beer and others have
always borne in Christian fashion, and maintained a
prudent silence when they have been attacked as I have
been. I am of another clay, and it is well. It is well
when the evil find a just man who fights to justify himself
and others recklessly and mercilessly.

240

CHAPTER XII
LIFE IN HAMBURG

In cataloguing the remarkable features of the Republic of
Hamburg, I cannot avoid mentioning that in my time the
Apollo Hall on the "Drehbahn"" was very brilliant. It
has fallen on evil days now, and philharmonic concerts
and conjuring displays and scientific lectures are given
there. Once it was otherwise ! Trumpets blared, drums
rattled, ostrich feathers waved, and Heloise and Minka
ran through the movements of the oginski-polonaise,
and everything was very decorous. Brave days, when
fortune smiled on me ! And fortune's name was Heloise !
She was a sweet, dear fortune, bringing happiness ; with
rosy cheeks and lily-white nose, warm scented lips, and
eyes like the blue mountain lake ; but there was a little
stupidity in her brow, like a dark bank of clouds over a
gleaming landscape. She was slender as a poplar and
lively as a bird, and her skin was so tender that it was
swollen for twelve days with the prick of a hairpin. Her
pout when I pricked her lasted only twelve seconds, and
then she smiled. Brave days when fortune smiled on me !
Minka smiled more rarely, for her teeth were not pretty.
But her tears were the prettier when she wept, and she
wept for every misfortune of others and she was bountiful
always. She gave her last shilling to the poor. She
was so kind of heart. This soft, yielding character was
i a 241

HEINRTCH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

strangely in contrast with her outer appearance. A brave
Junoesque figure ; a white bold neck ringed about with
wild black tresses, as by voluptuous snakes ; eyes which
shone commanding the world from under their dark
triumphal arches ; proud arching lips of carmine, com-
manding hands of marble, on which, alas, were freckles ;
and she had on her left hip a brown birth-mark in the
shape of a little dagger.

If, dear reader, I have brought you into so-called bad
company, then you may find comfort in the thought that
it has not cost you so dear as it did myself. But later in
this book there will not want for ideal women, and even
now I will introduce you to two respectable women whom
I met and learned to honour at this time — Madame
Pieper and Madame Schnieper. The first was a beautiful
woman at her ripest ; she had great black eyes, a great
white brow, black hair (false), a bold Roman nose, and a
mouth that was a guillotine for reputations. Indeed,
there was no better machine for the execution of a
reputation than Madame Pieper's mouth ; she did not
leave it wriggling long ; she made no elaborate prepara-
tions, and did the best of reputations come between her
teeth, she only smiled — but her smile was a falling axe,
and honour was cut off' and fell into the bag. She was a
pattern of respectability, uprightness, piety and virtue.
The same may be said of Madame Schnieper. She was a
tender lady ; she had little breasts, generally covered with
gauze of a melancholy thinness, fair hair, bright blue eyes,
which looked piercingly out of her white face, horribly
prudent. It was said that you could never hear her foot-
steps, and indeed she would often be standing by your
side before you were aware, and then as noiselessly she
would disappear. Her smile also was fatal to reputations,
UV2

LIFE IN HAMBURG

but was not so much an axe as like that poisonous wind of
Africa that withers every flower with its breath, and every
reputation withered wretchedly away, did she but lightly
smile upon it. She was ever a pattern of respectability,
uprightness, piety and virtue.

I would not fail to sing the praises of the sons of
Hammonia, and to cry the fame of certain men who are
much valued — valued at some millions of marks ; but I
shall suppress my enthusiasm for the present so that it
mav burst forth later in bright flames. I have in my mind
no less than to erect a temple of honour for Hamburg, on
the same place as that projected ten years ago by a
famous writer. . . . But for some reason or other, no matter
what, the work was not completed, and as I have always
wished, naturally, to do something great in the world, and
have always striven to achieve the impossible, I have
undertaken this monstrous project, and I shall erect for
Hamburg a temple of honour, an immortal and colossal
book, in which I shall describe the magnificence of all its
inhabitants without exception. And incidentally I shall
tell of the noble philanthropy which did not appear in the
journal, in which I told of great deeds, which nobody will
believe, and I shall give as a vignette a portrait of myself
sitting on the Jungfernstieg before the Swiss pavilion and
thinking of Hamburg's splendour. . . .

Ah ! That is a long time ago. I was young then

and foolish. Now I am old and foolish. Many a flower has
withered since then, and many a one has been trampled under
foot. Many a silken gown has been torn since then, and
Herr Seligmann's great striped cotton has lost its colour.
He himself is gone — the firm is now " Seligmann's widow,
deceased" — and Heloise,gentle creature, who seemed to have
been created only to walk on soft flowered Indian carpets, and

243

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

to be fanned with peacock's feathers, she died in a sailor's
brawl amid punch and tobacco smoke, and to the sound of
bad music. When I saw Minka again — she called herself
Kathinka then and lived between Hamburg and Altona —
she looked like the Temple of Solomon after Nebuchad-
nezzar had destroyed it, and she reeked of Assyrian
canister — and when she told me of Heloise's death, she
wept bitterly and tore her hair in despair and fainted
away and had to drink a large glass of brandy to be
restored to consciousness.

And the town itself, how it was changed ! and the Jung-
fcrnstieg ! The snow lay on the roofs and it looked as if
the houses had grown old and their hair turned white.
The limes of the Jungfernstkg were only dead trees with
barren twigs which moved ghost-like in the cold wind.
The sky was vividly blue, and quickly clouded over. It
was a Sunday, five o'clock, the common meal-time and
the carriages rolled by ; ladies and gentlemen descended
from them with a frozen smirk on their hungry lips —
Horrible ! the dreadful reflection shuddered through me
in that moment that there was an unfathomable imbecility
on those faces and that the men who passed me seemed to
be imprisoned in some strange delusion. Twelve years
ago I had seen them at the same hour going through the
same performance with the same expression, like the man-
nikins of a town-hall clock, and they had gone on counting
their money in the same way without ceasing, had gone to
the Exchange, entertained each other, wagged their jaws,
paid their tips and gone on counting their money ; twice
two is four — " Horrible ! " I cried : what if it should
suddenly occur to one of these people, sitting on his office
stool, that twice two is really five, and that he has there-
fore been miscounting all his life and has wasted the whole
344

LIFE IN HAMBURG

of his life by a horrible mistake ! But a mad illusion
took me once and when I looked more closely at the people
strolling by it seemed to me that they themselves were
only numbers, Arabic figures ; and a crabbed Two went by
with an unpleasant Three, his piegnant, full-bosomed lady
wife : Master Four hobbled by on crutches, a disagreeable
Five came waddling, round-backed, with a little head ; then
came a well-known little Six, and an even more well-
known evil Seven — but when I looked closely at the
unhappy Eight staggering by, I recognised the Insurance
Broker, who once went adorned like a Whitsun ox, but
now looked like the leanest of Pharaoh's lean kine — pale,
hollow cheeks he had like empty soup plates, a chalk-red
nose like a winter rose, a shabby black coat, which was
polished smooth and white, a hat in which Saturn with
his scythe had cut air-holes, but his boots were polished
bright as a mirror — and he seemed no more to think of
having Heloise and Minka for breakfast and supper; he
seemed much more to long for a mid-day meal of cus-
tomary beef. Among the noughts rolling by I recognised
many an old friend. These and the other human figures
rolled by, hungry, hungry, while not far from the
houses of the Jungfernstieg grimly comic passed a funeral,
a melancholy procession ! Behind the hearse strutting on
their thin legs in black silk hose, like marionettes of
death, walked the well-known servants of the Senate,
privileged mourners in a parody of old Burgundian cos-
tumes, short black cloaks and black French hose, white
wigs, and white chokers over which their red cipher faces
peeped out drolly : short swords at their hips, and green
umbrellas under their arms.

But still more strange and bewildering than these
figures, which passed by in silence like a Chinese shadow-

24/5

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

play, were the sounds which came to my ears from another
direction. They were harsh, jarring, dull sounds, a crazy
squalling, a troublous rippling, a desperate tapping, a
gasping and panting, a groaning and moaning, an inde-
scribable icy cold cry of pain. The pond of the Alster
was frozen, only near the bank a great wide square had
been cut in the ice, and the horrible sounds that I heard
came from the throats of the white creatures swimming
about in it ; they cried out in the horrible anguish of
death, and oh ! they were the same swans that had once
moved my soul with their softness and brightness. Ah !
the lovely white swans, their wings had been broken so
that they might not fly to the warm south in the autumn
and now the north held them fast in his dark ice caverns
— and the waiter of the pavilion thought that they would
be all right there, and that the cold would be good for
them. But it is not true, it is not well for a swan to be
prisoned in a cold pool, almost frozen, and to have its
wings broken so that it cannot fly away to the beautiful
south, where there are lovely flowers and golden sunbeams
and blue mountain lakes — Ah ! I was once in not much
better case, and I understood the agony of the wretched
swans, and when it was dark the stars above peeped out in
brightness, the same stars that once in warmth of love in
the lovely summer nights had wooed the swans but now
looked down so wintry cold, so frostily clear and almost
scornfully — I know well that the stars are not creatures of
love and compassion but only gleaming illusions of the
night eternal images in a sky that is a dream, golden lies
in the dark blue void

246

CHAPTER XIII
THE JULY REVOLUTION

To Vabnhagen vok Exse.

Wandsbech, April 5, 1830.

I am so isolated that at present you are the only
pouvoirs intermediaries between the better me and the
better world of appearances. I have been for ten days
now all alone in Wandsbech and I have spoken to no
one except Thiers and the good God. I am reading the
" History of the Revolution " of the one author and the
Bible of the other. I never feel the need of solitude more
than at the beginning of Spring, when the awakening of
nature shows itself even in the faces of the Philistines of
the town and makes them make terrible grimaces. How
much more nobly and simply do the trees bear themselves,
growing green in peace and knowing exactly what they
want ! . . .

Things went only too well with me at Hamburg last
month, especially after the end of the carnival. I have
no talent for being an invalid, and when I was fit to work,
except for my physical ill-health and a certain uneasiness
of mind — caused in part by my last book — I took to my
usual mode of living, which consists in being no longer

247

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

confined to the house and grabbing for my tiresome sick
body as many of the joys of life as possible. After such
a life, however, when I am exhausted I am usually seized
with a desire to work, and the lightness of heart and
indifference with which I have left the fleshpots and she-
fleshpots, the delights of theatres and balls, the good and bad
society of Hamburg, in order to bring myself to solitary
study, convinces me that I am different from others. Great
projects are whirling in my brain, and I hope that many
of them will come to maturity and appear this year.

I cannot tell whether I shall be left in peace enough to
be able to carry them into execution.

Heligoland, July 1, 1830.

I am weary of this guerilla warfare and long for peace,
at least for a condition of affairs in which I can give myself
freely to my own natural inclinations, my dreamy way of
living, my fantastic thoughts and ruminations. What
irony of fate, that I, who am so fain to sleep on the pillow
of the life of silent contemplation, should be marked out
to whip my fellow Germans from their complacency and
spur them on to activity. I, who most dearly love to
occupy myself with watching trailing clouds, with un-
ravelling metrical word-puzzles, with listening to the
secrets of the spirits of the elements, and with losing
myself in the wonder-world of old tales ... I have to
edit " Political Annals,11 to further the interests of the
time, to excite revolutionary desires, to stir up passions, to
go on pulling the nose of the poor honest German and
rouse him from his sound, giant sleep . . . Indeed, I have
*>48

THE JULY REVOLUTION

only been able to make the snoring giant sneeze gently,
and have been far from waking him up . . . And if I
snatched away the pillow from under his head he put it
back again sleepily . . . Once in despair I was about to
set fire to his nightcap, but it was so damp with the sweat
of his thoughts that it only smoked a little . . . and the
honest fellow smiled in his sleep. . . .

I am tired and I long for rest. I shall make myself a
German nightcap and draw it down over my ears. If only
I knew where to lay my head. It is impossible in Germany.
Every moment a policeman would come and shake me to
find out if I were really asleep, and this idea robs me of all
ease. But, indeed, whither shall I go ? South again ?
To the land where the citrons bloom and the golden
oranges. Ah ! Before every citron tree there stands an
Austrian sentinel and thunders as you approach a frightful :
" Who goes there ? " Like the citrons, the golden oranges
are very sour at present. Or shall I go North ? North-
East perhaps ? Ah ! the white bears are more dangerous
than ever, now that they are becoming civilised and wear
kid gloves. Or shall I go once more to that infernal
England : I do not hang there in effigy, but how much less
could I live there in person !

Heligoland, Aug. 1.

You have no idea how I am profiting by the dolcc

far niente here. I haven't brought a single book about
politics with me. My whole library consists of Paul
Warnefried's " History of the Lombards,'1'1 the Bible,
Homer, and some trash about witches. I should like to
write an interesting little book about witches. I should
begin by research into the last traces of heathenism in

249

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

modern times since the invention of baptism. It is very
remarkable how long and in what disguises the beautiful
beings of the Greek mythology have remained in Europe.

There is a fresh light to-day, and in spite of all the
melancholy doubts with which my soul is tormented,
wonderful presentiments come over me . . . Something
extraordinary is happening in the world . . . The sea
reeks of cooking, and the monks in the clouds looked so sad
last night, so troubled. . . .

I walked alone on the shore in the twilight. All about
me was solemn silence. The high vault was the dome of
a gothic church. The stars hung there like countless
lamps, but they burned low and flickered. The waves of
the sea roared like a hydraulic organ : stormy chants, full
of sorrow and despair, but triumphant withal. Above me
was a bank of white trailing clouds that looked like monks,
all passing with bowed heads and sorrowful faces, a
melancholy procession ... It looked almost as though
they were following a funeral ..." Who is to be buried ?
AVho is dead ? "" said I to myself. " Is great Pan dead ? "

(Heligoland, August 6)

While his army was fighting the Lombards, the King of
the Heruleans sat quietly in his tent and played chess.
He threatened with death any one who should bring him
news of defeat. The scout who was watching the battle
from a tree kept on crying : " We conquer ! We conquer ! "
— until at last he groaned aloud : " Unhappy King !
Unhappy Heruleans!" Then the King knew that the
battle was lost, but too late ! For the Lombards in the
same moment rushed into his tent and slew him. . . .
250

THE JULY REVOLUTION

I had just been reading the story in Paul Warnefried,
when my thick mail came from the mainland with the
news, warm, glowing, hot. There were sunbeams wrapped
up in printed paper and they kindled my soul so that it
burned with a wild Hame. It seemed as though I could set
fire to all the ocean, even to the North Pole, with the Hame
of my exultation and the mad joy that blazed in me. Now
I know whv all the sea smelt of cooking. The Seine spread
the news in all the sea, and in their crystal palaces the
lovely water ladies, who have ever looked with favour upon
all heroes, have given a The dansant to celebrate the
great event, and therefore the sea smelt of cooking. I ran
madly about the house and kissed my fat hostess and then
her old sea-dog friend. I embraced the Prussian magistrate,
from whose lips the frosty smile of disbelief had not
altogether disappeared. I clasped the Dutchman to my
heart. . . .

(Heligoland, August 10.)

Lafayette, the tricolour, the Marseillaise . . . my desire
for rest is gone. I know now what I ought to do, what I
must do ... I am the son of the Revolution and I take
up the charmed weapons upon which my mother has
breathed her magic words of blessing . . . Flowers !
Flowers ! I will crown my head with flowers even in the
last fight. And my lyre, give me my lyre that I may sing
a song of battle . . . Words like flaming stars that have
shot from the Heavens to burn palaces and illumine hovels
. . . Words like bright javelins, that go whizzing up to
the seventh Heaven and smite the pious hypocrites who
have crept into the Holy of Holies ... I am all joy and
song, all sword and flame !

251

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

{November 29, 1830.)

There was a time of depression and inactivity in
Germany when I was writing the second volume of the
" Travel Pictures," and having it printed as I wrote. But
before it appeared something of it had leaked out to the
public. It was said that my book aimed at stirring up
again the spirit of freedom which had been crushed, and
steps were taken to suppress it. With such rumours
afloat it was as well to hurry up the book and rush it
through the press. As it had to contain a certain number
of pages in order to evade the attentions of a laudable
enough censorship, I was like Benvenuto Cellini, who,
when he had not bronze enough for the casting of his
Perseus, threw into the furnace all the pewter plates on
which he could lay his hands in order to complete the
model. It was quite easy to detect the pewter from the
bronze, especially at the pewter end of the statue, but
those who understood the craft did not betray the
master.

But as everything in the world can be repeated, there
occurs a similar embarrassment in certain places in this
volume ; and I have had to cast a whole heap of pewter
into the mould, and I hope that my pewter moulding will
be put down to the needs of the times.

Ah ! the whole book was written from the needs of the
times, like earlier writings with the same object. The
author's intimate friends who are acquainted with his
private affairs know right well how little he is urged to
take the tribune by self-seeking, and how great are the
sacrifices that he has to make for every word of candour
which he has spoken and, please God, will yet speak.
252

THE JULY REVOLUTION

Now words are deeds the consequences of which cannot be
measured ; no man can rightly know whether in the end
he will not have to be a martyr for the words that he has
spoken.

I have been waiting in vain for several years for the
words of those bold speakers who once used to argue in
the societies of young men of Germany and overcame me
with their rhetorical talents and made speeches full of so
many promises. They were so loud beforehand, and are
so silent in the aftermath. How they despised the French
then, and foreign tongues and the frivolous un-German
traitor to the Fatherland who lauded the French ! Every
word of praise has been made good in the great week.

Ah ! the great week of Paris ! The spirit of freedom
which spread from thence to Germany has upset the bed-
room candles here and there so that the red curtains of
certain thrones have caught fire and golden crowns have
grown hot under blazing night-caps ; but the old bailiffs,
on whom the Imperial Government rely, bring along fire-
buckets and spy all the more warily and bind the faster
the secret chains, and already I perceive that a yet closer
prison wall is rising invisibly about the German people.

Poor captive people ! despair not in your need ! O that
I could speak catapults ! O that I could blaze forth fire-
bolts from my heart !

The coating of ice about my heart melts and a strange
sorrow creeps over me. Is it love ? Love for the German
people ? Or is it sickness ? . . .

I am filled with a great joy ! As I sit and write music
sounds under my window, and in the elegiac fury of the
long-drawn melody I know the hymn of the Marseillaise,
with which brave Barbarossa and his comrades hailed
Paris, the ranz des vaches of liberty, at the sound of which

253

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

the Swiss of the Tuileries were overcome with home-
sickness, that triumphant song of Death of the Gironde
the old, sweet cradle-song.

What a song ! It sends fire and joy shuddering through
me and kindles in me the glowing star of inspiration and
the rockets of raillery. Yes, they shall not fail in the
great firework display of the age. Streaming flames of
song ringing out shall flow from the heights of the j oy of
Liberty in brave cascades, as the Ganges hurls himself
down from the Himalayas ! And thou, sweet Satire,
daughter of great Themis and goat-footed Pan, lend me
thy aid. Thou art on thy mother's side sprung from the
race of Titans, and thou dost hate, even as I, the enemies
of thy kindred, the weakling usurpers of Olympus. Lend
me thy mothers sword that I may slay them, the detested
brood, and give me the reed-pipes of thy father that I
may pipe them down to death.

Already they hear the fatal piping and panic fear seizes
them, and they fly in the shape of beasts as in the days
when we piled Pelion on Ossa.

Aux amies, citoyens !

I can write no more, for the music under my windows
sets my head whirling, and ever louder comes the refrain
up to my ears :

Aiix armes, citoyens !

To Varnhagen von Ense.

Hamburg, Nov. 19, 1830.

As there are birds who have a presentiment of a
physical revolution by storm, earthquake or flood, so
254

THE JULY REVOLUTION

there are men who feel the coming of social revolutions,
and are paralysed, stunned and dumfounded by it. That
has been my condition this year until the end of July. I
was sound and well, but I could do nothing but read the
history of the Revolution day and night. I was for two
months by the sea in Heligoland, and when the news of
the great war reached there it was as though I knew it
already of myself, as though it were only a continuation
of my studies. On the Continent I assisted at events
here which might well have put a less stout heart out
of countenance with the beautiful. Nevertheless, I am
undertaking to make out of old materials a little book for
the times. I shall call it " A Supplement to the Travel
Pictures. " I sent it a fortnight ago to Leipzig, where it
is being printed for Hoffman and Campe, and I think you
will have it in three weeks. You will not be deceived by
my political preface and after-word in which I pretend
that the book was written at an earlier date. Ten sheets
ot the first half are old matter, and of the second only the
conclusion is new. The book is deliberately one-sided. I
know very well that the Revolution embraces every social
interest and that the aristocracy and the Church are not
its only enemies. But I have represented them as the
only allied enemies so as to consolidate the struggle. I
myself hate the uristocratie bourgeoise even more. . . .

To Varnhagen von Ense.

Hamburg, April 1, 1831.

When I remarked after last July how Liberalism had
won so many men suddenly, and how the oldest Swiss of
the old regime had cut up their red coats to make Jacobin

255

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

caps, I had no small inclination to retire and write novels.
But when the affair spread and terrible news, though false,
came from Poland, and those who cried for liberty hushed
their voices, I wrote an introduction to a work which you
will receive a fortnight from now, and in which, moved by
the urgent needs of the times, I was perhaps almost rushed
off my feet, and — you will find in it plenty of carelessness,
and you will pardon it as well as the dreadfully bad style.
However, I wrote even more crazy stuff which I threw into
the fire, when it took shape again more blithely than ever.
What now ? Now I am thinking of new retrogression : I
am full of evil prophecies, and every night I dream. I am
packing my box and going to Paris in order to breathe
fresh air and to devote myself altogether to the blessed
feelings of my new religion, and perhaps to be consecrated
as its priest. . . .

*_t* *^ »** *'* -*-

^% ^^ ^* ^^ *r*

Anno 1829

Give me a wide and noble field,

Where there at least is room to die !

O from this narrow huckstering world,
Ere I am stifled, let me fly !

Their meat and drink is of the best,

And, blind as moles, they take their pleasure ;

The opening in a poor-box lid

Their charity would more than measure.

Cigar in mouth, and idle hands

Stuck in their pockets, see them pass !

Their stomachs are beyond reproach —
"Pis how to stomach them, alas !
256

THE JULY REVOLUTION

They deal in every spice that grows,
But roots, the sweetest, cannot quell

The putrid foulness of their souls,
That vile as rotten haddocks smell.

O had I seen some monstrous vice,
Some crime colossal, bloody, found —

Aught save these virtues, morals smug
Of twenty shillings in the pound !

Ye clouds above, O bear me forth
To Africa, to Lapland drear :

To Pomerania itself —

No matter where, if far from here !

O take me with you ! But the clouds
Are far too wise to pause or heed.

For, when they travel o'er this town,
They hurry on at double speed.

257

BOOK IV
IN EXILE

(1831-1848)

CHAPTER I
FIRST IMPRESSIONS IN PARIS

I had done and suffered much, and when the sun of the
July Revolution rose in France I was very weary and stood
in need of some relaxation. The air of my own country whs
every day more unwholesome for me, and I had seriously
to think of a change of climate, and I had visions ; the
clouds oppressed me and cut all sorts of terrible capers
before me. Often I thought the sun was a Prussian
cockade ; at night I dreamed of an ugly black vulture
that ate my liver, and 1 was very melancholy. I also made
the acquaintance of an old judge of Berlin who had passed
many years in the fortress of Spandau, and he told me how
unpleasant it is to have to wear irons in winter. It
seemed to me very unchristian not to warm the irons a
little. If our chains were warmed a little they would not
make so unpleasant an impression, and even men of a
chilly nature could then bear them well ; care should also
be taken to scent fetters with roses and laurel as they do
here in this country. I asked my old judge if he had
often been given oysters to eat at Spandau. He said,
" No," and that Spandau was far from the sea. Meat,
too, he said, was rare there, and there was no other winged
creature than the flies that fell in the soup. At the same
time I made the acquaintance of a French commis voyageur,
who travelled in wine and could not praise enough the

261

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

jolly life of Paris, saying, how the sky is hung with fiddles,
and how they sing from morning to night the Marseillaise
and " En avant, marchons 1 " and " Lafayette aux cheveux
blancs" and how liberty, equality, and fraternity are written
up at all the street corners ; incidentally he praises the
champagne of his firm, of whose cards he gave me a great
number, and he promised me letters of introduction to
the best Parisian restaurants, in case I should ever
visit the capital in search of pleasure. And now as some
sort of recreation is necessary, and Spandau is too far
from the sea to eat oysters there, and the fly soup of
Spandau did not attract me much, and also the Prussian
chains are very cold in winter and would not be good for
my health, I made up my mind to go to Paris and in the
fatherland of champagne and the Marseillaise to drink the
one and to hear the other, together with "En avant,
marchons ! ,1 and " Lafayette aux cheveux blancs^

On May 1, 1831, I crossed the Rhine. I did not see
the old river god, Father Rhine ; I contented myself
with throwing my visiting card into the water. I only
saw the cathedral of Strassburg from a distance ; he
wagged his head like good Old Eckart when he sees a
youngster going to the Venusberg.

At Saint Denis I awoke from a sweet morning sleep
and heard for the first time the cry of the driver — " Paris !
Paris ! " — and the handbells of the cocoa-sellers. Here
already you breathe the air of the capital which is visible
on the horizon. An old rascal of a tout tried to persuade
me to visit the tombs of the kings, but I had not come to
France to see the kings ; I contented myself with letting
the guide tell me the legends of the place, how, for in-
stance, the wicked Pagan king had Saint Denis"* head cut
off, and the Saint ran from Paris to Saint Denis with his head
262

FIRST IMPRESSIONS IN PARIS

in his hand to be buried there, and to have the place called
after him. "If you think," said my guide, "if you think
of the distance you cannot but be amazed at the miracle
that any one could go so far on foot without a head " —
and he added with a strange smile : " Dans des cas pareils
il rfy a que le premier pas qui route.'''' It was worth two
francs and I gave them to him pour Vamour de Voltaire*
whose mocking smile I had already met in him. In
twenty minutes I was in Paris, and entered through the
triumphal arch of the Boulevard Saint Denis, which was
originally erected in honour of Louis XIV., but now served
to glorify my entry into Paris. I was really surprised by
the crowd of gay people, dressed very tastefully like
fashion plates. Then I was impressed by them all speak-
ing French, which is with us the mark of the polite world ;
but everybody is as polite here as the aristocracy in my
country. The men were all so courteous, and the lovely
ladies all so smiling. If any one jostled me without at
once begging my pardon, then I could wager that he was
a fellow countryman ; and if ever a pretty woman looked
sourly, then she had either been eating Sauerkraut or
could read Klopstock in the original. I found everything
so amusing, and the sky was so blue, and the air so sweet,
so generous, and the beams of the July sun flickered hither
and thither ; the cheeks of the fair Lutetia were touched
with the flaming kisses of that sun, and in her bosom her
bridal nosegay was not yet withered. At the street
corners " Libert c, equalite', fraternite" " had in places been
erased.

I sought at once the restaurants for which I had my
letters of introduction ; the proprietors assured me that
they would have received me without letters of introduc-
tion, that I had such an honest and distinguished appear-

26$

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

ance as to be a recommendation in itself. Never did a
German cookshop-keeper say the like to me, even if he
thought it ; such a fellow thinks that he must say nothing
pleasant, and that his German frankness compels him only
to say to one's face disagreeable things. In the maimers
and speech of the French there is so much of that precious
flattery that costs so little and yet is so kindly and refresh-
ing. My poor sensitive soul, that often recoiled in shyness
from German coarseness, opened out to the flattering
sounds of French urbanity. God gave us our tongues so
that we might say pleasant things to our fellow men.

There was a hitch in my French when I arrived ; but
after half an hour's conversation with a little flower-seller
in the Passage de TOpira, my French, which had grown
rusty since the Battle of Waterloo, became fluent again
and I stumbled about in the most gallant conjugations and
explained to my little friend the Linnaean system, by
which flowers are classified according to the filaments ; she
herself followed another method and divided the flowers
into those which smelled sweet and those which smelled
offensively. I believed that she applied the same method
of classification to men. She was astonished that I was so
learned, in spite of my youth, and she trumpeted the
fame of my learning through all the Passage de F Opera. I
drank in delightedly the sweet scents of flattery and was
much amused. I walked on flowers, and many a roast
pigeon flew into my open gaping maw. What amusing
things I saw on my arrival ! All the notabilities of public
pleasure and official absurdity.

Paris delighted me much with the cheeriness which
appears in everything, and influences even the most dole-
ful disposition. Strange ! Paris is the scene of the
greatest tragedies of the history of the world, tragedies at
264

FIRST IMPRESSIONS IN PARIS

the memory of which hearts in the most distant lands
tremble, and eyes grow wet ; but it is with the spectator
of these great tragedies as it was once with me when I saw
the Tour cle Nesle at the Porte St. Martin. I was sitting be-
hind a lady who was wearing a hat of rose- red gauze, and
this hat was so wide that it cut off altogether my view of
the stage, so that I could see the tragedy enacted through
the red gauze of the hat, so that all the horrors of the
Tour de Nesle appeared in the rosiest light. Yes, there is
such a rosy light in Paris, which makes bright every
tragedy for the spectator, so that it does not touch his
enjoyment of life, and so the terrors which we bring to
Paris lose their most bitter sting. Sorrows are strangely
softened. In the air of Paris wounds are healed quicker
than anywhere else ; there is something so noble, so gentle,
so sweet in the air, as in the people themselves.

The winter season began soon after my arrival in Paris
and I entered into the life of the salons, in which society
moves about more or less merrily. What struck me as
most interesting in this society was not so much the
equality of its fine manners as the difference between its
component parts. Often, as I looked at the people in a
great salon, gathered there peacefully, it was like being in
one of those curiosity shops where the relics of all ages
lie about higgledy-piggledy. A Greek Apollo next a
Chinese pagoda, a Mexican Vizli-puzli next a Gothic
Ecce homo, Egyptian idols with dogs1 heads, sacred gro-
tesques of wood, ivory, metal, etc. There I saw old mus-
keteers, who had once danced with Marie Antoinette ;
Republicans of the indulgent Observant, who had been
idolised in the National Assembly ; Montagnards without
pity or stain ; former men of the Directorate who had been
enthroned in the Luxembourg, high dignitaries of the

°.65

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

Empire, before whom all Europe had trembled ; ruling
Jesuits of the Restoration ; in short, all the decayed
deposed gods of old times, in whom all faith is lost.
Their names cry aloud, when they are stoned, but the
people stand near each other peacefully and amicably, like
the antiquities in the shops of the Quai Voltaire. In
Germanic countries where the passions are less amenable to
discipline such a sociable living together of such hetero-
geneous people would be impossible, and in the cold north
the need of talking is not so strong as in warmer France
where the greatest enemies, if they meet in a salon, cannot
long maintain gloomy silence. In France pleasure-seeking
is carried to such a pitch that the French are for ever
striving to please not only their friends but also their
enemies. They are for ever dressing up and cutting
capers, and the women have to look to it to surpass the
men in coquetry : but they succeed.

I do not wish to convey any ill meaning in this observa-
tion, no ill meaning, I mean, as regards the French
women and last of all as regards the Parisian women. I
am their greatest admirer, and I admire them for their
faults even more than for their virtues. I know nothing
more apt than the legend that Parisian women came into
the world with every possible fault, but that a good fairy
has taken pity on them and cast a spell on every one of
their faults so that they have the effect of new attractions.
This good fairy is Charm. . . .

To Varnhagen von Ense.

Paris, June 27, 1831.
La force des choses, the power of things ! In truth I have
not carried things to extremes, but things have carried me
266

FIRST IMPRESSIONS IN PARIS

to a high extremity, to the top of the world, to Paris —
yes, yesterday I stood on the topmost peak of this summit,
on the Pantheon.

I am surrounded by spies. Although I am keeping clear
of political intrigue, they are all much afraid of me.
Indeed, if they make war on me, then let them know that
I shall let fly at them, and with all my strength. I fore-
saw everything six months ago, and would fain have
retired into poetrv and left to others the rough and tumble
of battle — but it could not be : La force d-es choses, we are
pushed to an extremity. At Frankfort where I stayed for
eight days and talked with several congregationalists I
discovered the source of many of my own ills, which had
been inexplicable to me. I led a deadly life at Hamburg ;
I did not feel secure, and when the idea of going to Paris
came to me, I was easily persuaded when a great hand
beckoned to me. However it would be easy to flee if
one did not drag the Fatherland along with one on the
soles of his shoes ! . . . I shall probably stay here for
weeks, and then go to bathe at Boulogne, and then back
here — for how long ? Things can go no worse with me
here than at home where I have nothing but struggling
and necessity, and cannot sleep, and all the sources of life
are poisoned. Here indeed I am drowned in the vortex of
events, the dayspring, the roaring Revolution. I am
made of phosphorus, and — I drown in a wild sea of men. I
burn away by natural combustion. . . .

267

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

To Moses Moser.

Paris, June 27, 1831.

You will interpret my silence as a poet's vanity. I
must keep you from making this mistake. I was never
sensitive about a judgment of yours upon the Poet, and
whether you blamed or praised anything that I did as
man, I was, if not indifferent, certainly not vulnerable. I
am neither hurt nor insulted and my silence is not a dumb
protest. I only complain of the gods who have left me
for so long in error as to your opinion of my life and
work. You have not understood my work and it is
that that troubled me. You do not understand it,
you have never understood my life and work, and our
friendship has not come to an end, but rather never existed.
We never ask of a friend agreement, but understanding of
what we do : he may praise or blame according to his own
principles, but he should always understand and grasp the
necessity of it from our own point of view, even if it is
altogether different from his own.

Farewell, send enclosures not by the town post, but by
express and be convinced of my regard and love.

To Count Magnus von Moltke.

Paris, July 25, 1831.

I have not yet seen the work which I have published
against you. . . . The introduction was written in hatred
and passion and all sorts of objectionable things have
happened in printing. It is possible that I shall have to
disown it in its present shape. In any case, my dear
268

FIRST IMPRESSIONS IN PARIS

Count, you are not treated gently enough in it, and so I
beg your pardon. . . .

I must mention in addition with regard to Count Moltke
that he was here in Paris in July last year, and tried to
involve me in a war of words about the aristocracy, in order
to show the public that I had misunderstood and wilfully
misrepresented his principles. But it was a serious matter
for me at that time publicly to debate upon a theme
which must have made such a terrible appeal to the
passions of the moment. I told the Count of my scruples
and he was good enough not to write against me. As I
have attacked him first, I could not have ignored his
answer, and a reply should have been made from my side in
due course. For his discretion the Count deserves the
highest praise, and that I do now accord him, and all the
more readily because I have found him to be, personally,
a cultured and what is more, a thoughtful man, who
would have deserved to be treated not as an ordinary
nobleman in the preface to the Kahldorf letters.

To JOHAXN FRIEDRICH VON CoTTA.

Paris, Oct. 31, 1831.

Unhappy circumstances make it necessary for me to
wander for many years more in foreign lands. Life in
Paris, where I shall stay as long as possible, is not exactly
cheap : I have had to give up many of my old clubs, and
since the great week I have been much reduced, like most
of my friends in Berlin and Hamburg, who have all lost
much money. . . . Everything is quiet here. If things
become livelier and anything important happens you shall
have a report of it for the Allgemeine Zeitung. . . .

269

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

When I came to Paris in the summer of 1831 nothing
astonished me so much as the exhibition of pictures that
was opened there, and although the most important
political and religious revolutions took up my attention,
I could not avoid writing first of the great revolution
which has taken place in art here, and the aforesaid salon
was to be regarded as the most significant sign of it. I
had, no less than the rest of my fellow countrymen, a
strong prejudice against French art and particularly
against French painting, the late development of which
was quite unknown to me. Painting in France was in a
peculiar condition. It followed the social movement and
had grown young again with the people.

Ah ! it is needful that the melodious history of
humanity should bring comfort to our souls in the
discordant uproar of the history of the world. Now, at
this moment, I can hear more menacing, more deafening
than ever the discordant uproar, this maddening din ;
drums roar and arms clash ; a tossing sea of men and
women is rushing with crazy pangs and curses through
the streets, the people of Paris yelling, " Warsaw has
fallen."" . . .

In such a din all thoughts and images jostle one another
and are in confusion. . . . Yesterday I could write no
more of this report after I had gone in the middle of it
to the Boulevards, where I saw men, deadly pale, drop
down from hunger and misery. But if a whole people is
to drop down dead in the Boulevards of Europe — then it
will be impossible to write any more in peace.

If the eyes of the critic are troubled with tears, then his
judgment is of little value.

My old prophecy of the end of the period of art, which
began in Goethe's cradle and will come to an end in his
270

FIRST IMPRESSIONS IN PARIS

coffin, seems to be near fulfilment. . . . Our present art
must perish because its principles are rooted in the old
regime, in the past of the Holy Roman Empire. . . . The
new age will beget a new art, which will be in spiritual
union with itself, which will not need to borrow its
symbols from the dead past, and must produce a new
technique altogether different from what has been. . . .
* * * * *

It was in the autumn of 1831, a year after the July

Revolution, that I saw Doctor Ludwig Borne again at

Paris. I visited him at the Hotel de Castille, and I was

not a little surprised at the change which appeared in all

his being. The little flesh that I had formerly noticed on

his body had altogether disappeared, perhaps melted by

the rays of the July sun which, alas, had also penetrated

to his brain. Sparks flashed from his eyes. He sat, or

rather he lived, in a great dressing-gown of bright silk like

a tortoise in its shell, and when he thrust out his skinny

little head I felt uncanny. But pity gained in me when

he reached out his poor emaciated hand from his wide

sleeve, in greeting or for a friendly handshake. There

was a certain quavering sickliness in his voice, and on his

cheeks was the hectic flush of consumption. The sharp

distrust that was in his every feature and movement was

perhaps a result of the hardness of hearing from which he

had begun to suffer long ago, and which steadily increased

and made conversation with him difficult. " Welcome to

Paris,"" he cried, " this is good ! I am sure that all the

good men who have done their best will soon be here.

This is the convention of the patriots of all Europe, and

all nations must join hands in the great work."

371

CHAPTER II
CHOLERA

To Varnhagen von Exse.

(Paris, the middle of May > 1832.)

I have been wanting to write to you for the last two
months. But the infernal cholera came between and now I
have for the last fortnight been having violent pains in my
head, worse than usual. Now, thank God, fear of cholera
has rid me of many a tiresome fellow. It was not from
courage that I did not fly from Paris when the panic broke
out : to tell you the truth I was too lazy. Borne wanted
to go away long ago, and it was unjust to ascribe his
departure to fear. However, I did not see him for a
fortnight before : we were on very bad terms. He had
let loose upon me certain Jacobin intrigues which I did
not like at all. I regard him as a madman. . . .

(Paris, April 19, 1832.)

I have been much disturbed in my work, mostly by the

horrible screams of my neighbour who died of cholera. I

must say that the circumstances have had an ill effect upon

the following pages. I am not conscious of having felt
ana

CHOLERA

the slightest uneasiness, but it is very disturbing to hear
too clearly the sound of Death sharpening his scythe. A
nervousness, more physical than mental, of which it is
impossible to be rid, would have driven me away with the
other foreigners, but my best friend lay ill. I tell you
this, so that my remaining in Paris may not be looked
upon as bravado. Only a fool could bring himself to defy
cholera. It was a fearful time, far more horrible than that
earlier time when executions took place so quickly and so
secretly. A masked hangman with an invisible guillotine
drove about Paris. " One after another we are put into
the sack," said my servant every morning with a groan, as
he told me the number of the dead or of the death of a
friend. The phrase, " Put into the sack,11 was no figure of
speech. Coffins soon gave out and the majority of the
dead were buried in sacks. As I walked past a public
building last week and saw the merry people in the great
hall, the buoyant, gay French children and the neat,
chattering French women making their purchases there
laughing and joking, then I remembered that during the
cholera time there were in this place, piled high one on
another, many hundred white sacks which contained
corpses, and that there were very few voices to hear and,
all the more disagreeable, only those of the gravediggers
counting over the sacks for the graves with uncanny
indifference, and in muffled tones recounting them as they
loaded the carts with them, or grumbling aloud and freely
that they had been given a sack too few, and then not
infrequently a strange quarrel would arise. I remember
that two little boys stood by me with sad faces and one
asked me if I could tell him in which sack his father was.

The stillness of death reigns over all Paris, a stony
expression, serious, is on all faces. For many evenings

i s 273

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

together few people were seen on the Boulevards, and what
few there were hurried quickly by, with their hands or a
cloth in front of their mouths. The theatres are empty.
If I go into a Salon people are astonished to see me still
in Paris, since I have no business to keep me here. Most
of my friends, my fellow countrymen, left at once. Obedient
parents had received orders from their children to come
home as quickly as possible. God-fearing sons fulfilled at
once the tender prayers of their dear parents who wished
them to return home : honour thy father and thy mother
that thy days may be long upon the earth ! In others
there awoke suddenly an infinite longing for the dear
Fatherland, for the romantic countries of the venerable
Rhine, for the beloved hills, for gracious Suabia, for the
land of devout love and faithful women, and pleasant
songs, and a more healthy air. It is said that more than
120,000 passes were issued at the Hotel de Ville. . . .

My barber told me that an old lady had sat the whole
night through at her window in the Faubourg Montmartre
to count the corpses earned by : she counted three hundred
corpses and when day broke she herself was seized by the
frost and the convulsions of cholera and died soon.
Wherever one looked in the streets one saw funeral
processions or, what is even more melancholy to see,
hearses followed by no one. As the existing hearses were
not enough, all sorts of vehicles had to be used, which,
covered with a black cloth, looked fantastic enough.
Tn the end these too were not enough aud I saw
coffins carried by in fiacres. They were laid in the
middle so that both ends stuck out of the open windows.
It was a revolting sight when the great furniture
vans, which are used for removals, were driven round
like omnibuses for the dead, omnibus mortuis, and the
274

CHOLERA

coffins were exposed in the streets and taken by the
dozen to the cemetery.

I will not tell the things that I saw at Pere-ki-Chaise* so
as to spare your feelings. It is enough to say that
hardened as I am, I could not rid myself of a profound
horror. One can learn how to die by the side of a death-
bed, and so wait for death cheerfully and calmly ; but
one cannot learn how to bear with being buried among
the cholera corpses in the graves of quick-lime. I hurried
away as quickly as possible to the highest hill of the
churchyard, whence one sees the town lying so beautiful
before one. The sun had just gone down, the last rays
seemed sadly to take farewell, the mists of twilight veiled
sick Paris like a white shroud, and I wept bitterly over the
unhappy city, the city of liberty, of inspiration and
martyrdom, the Redeemer City, which has suffered so much
for the universal salvation of mankind.

275

CHAPTER III
FRENCH AFFAIRS

To Friedrich Menkel.

Dieppe, Aug. 24, 1832.

I am going through so many great things in Paris ; I
am watching the history of the world with my own eyes.
I consort amicalement with its greatest heroes, and some
day, if I am given life, I shall be a great historian. I have
had better fortune lately in the writing of belles lettres.
The whirlpool in which I am swimming was too great for
me to be able to be free to work in poetry. I have missed
fire with a novel ; but I shall probably publish some frag-
ments in a collection which I am going to prepare this
winter, and in which I shall also include the " Rabbi." I
have written few poems, but I must write some more for a
special impression of the " New Spring," so that it may
look like a book. I am more industrious than I was, for
the simple reason that I need six times as much money in
Paris as in Germany. . . .

276

FRENCH AFFAIRS

To Ferdinand Hiller.

Paris, Oct. 24, 1832.

If any one asks you how I am tell him " like a fish in
water," or rather, tell people that when one fish in the sea
asks another how he is, he receives the reply : " I am like
Heine in Paris." Remember me to Professor Oppenheim
at Frankfort — he drew my portrait — and ask him, in case
he should wish to send me one or two copies of the litho-
graph as a present, to give me them through you. You
will find me still in my old lodging and up to my neck in
the most delightful society. I spent two months by the
sea, as I do every year, and for the first time have been
bored with it. I now go to the opera diligently, I am a
hanger-on of Louis Philippe ; my cheeks are ruddy ; two
fingers of my left hand are crippled ; I wear coloured coats
and gay waistcoats — you will hardly recognise me.

To Varnhagen vox Exse.

Paris, 28 March, 1833.

I am still unable to write to you. As soon as I take up
my pen to say a word to you then my head turns dizzy
and my heart is torn. And I am otherwise so calm, and
self-control itself.

But there are at present happening in my life things which
would move a stone. This morning I received the news of
the death of my uncle de Geldern at Dusseldorf, where
he died at a time when I must feel this misfortune more
profoundly than at any other. Ah, my dear Varnhagen,

277

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

I feel now the meaning of the Roman saying : " Life is
warfare.1' So I stand in the breach and see my friends
falling round about me. Our good friend has fought
doughtily, and has well earned her laurels. I cannot
write for weeping — oh ! we poor men, we have to fight
with tears in our eyes. What a battlefield is this earth !

This morning a book of mine was published here by
Heideloff, an article in German on Literature, which I
wrote for his Europe Litteraire. I will send you both
versions : there are good sword-blows in it, and I have
sternly practised my duty as a soldier.

I know that I give you poor comfort, my dear Varn-
hagen. No man can give comfort ; only Time. Time,
the sly Saturn, heals us of every wound, only to deal new
wounds to our hearts with his scythe.

You will have understood why I did not write to you on
Robert's death, and that of his wife.

There is some consolation for me if you liked my article
in the Allgemeine Zeitung. For I am not confident of its
value. I wrote it partly to justify myself in this way,
partly for mere gain. Do you think it would be worth
while some day to send out into the world a dozen of such
articles as a book ? It is a form not much used. . . .
*****

"The Return Home,11 which first appeared in the
"Travel Pictures,1' is dedicated to the late Freidericke
Varnhagen von Ense. I can be proud of having been the
first to pay open tribute and homage to that great lady.
It was a great thing for August Varnhagen to do, dis-
regarding every petty consideration, to publish those
letters in which Rahel's personality is revealed. The
book came at the right time for it to produce its utmost
effect ; to strengthen and console. It is as though Rahel
278

FRENCH AFFAIRS

knew the posthumous mission that was marked out for
her. She believed that she would recover, and she waited ;
but when there was no end to the vigil, she shook her
head impatiently, looked at Varnhagen and died quickly —
so as the sooner to rise again. She reminds me of the tale
of that other Rachel, who arose from the grave and stood
by the wayside and wept to see her children going into
captivity.

I cannot think of her without sorrow, my dear, dear
friend, who gave me always an inexhaustible sympathy,
and often used to be not a little worried about me in the
days of my youthful fits of annoyance, the days when the
flame of truth gave me more heat than light. . . .

To Varnhagen von Ense.

Paris, July 16, 1833.

Things are still going well with me ; better than ever
indeed, and my physical illness has not been so serious
lately. Rut I have still to struggle against my nerve
trouble ; it hinders me in my work and I have much to do,
but only a small retail business. My life has become a
business, a horrible peddling business.

I could not send you the letters you ask for because I
left them in Germany. I only brought one letter because
it expressed most profoundly one of the bitterest feelings
that has ever moved me. My greatest trouble two years
ago was that I had to leave the children of my family,
especially my sister's youngest child. Rut duty and
prudence bade me go. I had to choose between laying
down my weapons altogether, and fighting all my life, and
I chose the latter, and the choice was not lightly made.

279

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

But I was forced to take up arms in the beginning by the
scorn of strangers, by the cloud over my birth — in my
cradle already was the line of march laid down for all

my life. . . .

*****

I hear that the preface to the " French Affairs " has
appeared in such a mangled shape that I am compelled to
publish it in its original form. I shall order a special
impression of it, and I ask that it may not be thought
that my object is to annoy or injure those at present in
power in Germany. I have rather endeavoured to moderate
my expressions as much as truth would permit. I was not
a little astonished to see that the preface was considered
too bitter. Good Lord ! What will it be like if ever I
allow my heart fully to express itself in unguarded lan-
guage ! And it may come to that. The unpleasant news
which reaches us ever)' day to set us groaning is quite
likely to move me to it.

Forgive me, dear reader, if these lines are not fitted to
the seriousness of the times. But my enemies are too
ridiculous ! I say enemies. I give them this title from
courtesy, although they are mostly only my slanderers.
They are little people who in their hatred do not reach
even to the calf of my leg. With blunt teeth they gnaw
at my boots. They wear themselves out with barking
down them.

It is more distressing when my friends mistake me.
That might upset me, and indeed it does so. . . .

Among our Jacobin tmigrts who have made such a row
since the days of July are certain imitators of that style
of polemic which I practised during the period of the
Restoration with firm disregard of consequences and at
the same time thoughtful self-assurance. But they have
280

FRENCH AFFAIRS

conducted their affair very ill, and instead of ascribing the
personal grievances which arose from it to their own
clumsiness, their indignation fell upon the writer of these
pages, whom they saw go unmolested. They were like the
ape who had watched a man -having. As soon as the
man loft the room the ape came and took the razor from
the drawer and lathered himself and then cut his throat.
I do not know how far these German Jacobins have cut
their throats, but I see that they are bleeding profusely.
Now they rail at me. " See," they say, " we have lathered
ourselves honestly and we bleed in a good cause, but
Heine is not honest in his shaving ; he is not properly
serious in his use of the razor; he never cuts himself;
he quietly washes the lather away and whistles carelessly
as he does so, and laughs at the bloody wounds of those
who have cut their throats in sober earnest."

Be content ; this time I have cut myself. . . .

I am publishing in this book a number of articles and
reports which I wrote for the Augsburger Allgemeine
Zeitung to satisfy the needs of the moment, in stormy
circumstances, with an object easily conjectured, and under
limitations even more easily conjectured. I am publishing
these anonymous fugitive pages in book form under my
own name so that no one else, as I have been threatened,
may collect them according to his own fancy and arrange
them according to his own caprice, or mix up with them
any other matter ascribed to me in error.

I make use of this opportunity to declare definitely that
for the last two years I have published not a word in
any political journal in Germany except the Allgemeine
Zeitung. This paper, which is of such great merit in its
world-renowned authority and might well be called the
General News of Europe, seemed to me, on account of its

281

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

reputation and its extraordinarily large circulation, to be
the proper journal for reports which have only been
intended to aid in comprehension of the present. If we
can make the masses understand the present, then nations
will no longer be incited to war and hatred by the hack
writers of the aristocracy. The great union of peoples
the blessed alliance of nations will be brought about, and
we shall no longer need in our mutual distrust to feed
standing armies of many hundreds of thousands of mur-
derers. We shall make use of their swords and horses for
the plough, and we shall attain peace and well-being and
liberty. To effect all this is the object of my life : it is
my office. The hatred of my enemies can be taken as a
pledge that hitherto I have fulfilled this office faithfully
and honestly. My enemies will never mistake me even if
my friends, in the frenzy of passion, take my deliberate
calmness for indifference. Now indeed they will mistake
me less than at the time when they believed themselves to
have reached the goal of their desires and the hope of
victory blew out the sails of their thoughts. I had no
share in their folly, but always I shall share in their mis-
fortunes. I shall not return home as long as there is a
single one of those noble fugitives who could not lend
an ear to reason in the mightiness of their enthusiasm,
remaining in exile in a strange land. . . .

To Heinkich Laube.

Paris, July 10, 1833.

Yon have no idea what a storm is raging about me at
present. I have the juste milieu, the hypocritical Catholic
Carlist party, and Prussian spies about my ears. My
282

FRENCH AFFAIRS

" French Affairs " has appeared in French, together with
my preface complete and unabridged. The preface has
also been published by Heideloff in German, and is
probably also at Leipzig by this time, where you will see
it. I would send it you if I were not afraid that you
might be compromised. Take care. There is no safety
here. Several Germans were arrested here, and I am
afraid that I may be arrested at any moment.

Perhaps my next letter will be dated from London. I
am impressing all this on you to urge you to be careful
and moderate.

I thank you with all my heart for all the friendly things
that you have written and published about me. Rest
assured that I understand you, and do therefore prize and
honour you. You stand higher than all others, who only
understand the Revolution superficially and do not grasp
the profound questions raised by it. These questions are
concerned neither with forms nor persons ; neither with
the introduction of a republic nor the limitation of a
monarchy ; but with the material well-being of the people.
The spiritual religion which has prevailed hitherto was
wholesome and necessary as long as the greater part of
men and women lived in wretchedness and had to find com-
fort in a Divine Religion. But since it has become possible
through the advance of industry and economi ,s to extricate
men from their material wretchedness aid give them
blessedness on earth, since — you understand me. And the
people will understand us when we tell them that now
thev shall eat beef every day instead of potatoes, and shall
work less and dance more.

288

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

To Varnhagen von Ense.

My book, the French translation of the " Affairs," is a
great success. I have to thank the translator that the
unabridged preface was added to it. This, the product of
my passionate indignation at the resolutions of the
Bundestag, will perhaps prohibit my ever returning to
Germany; but it will perhaps save me from death a la
lanterne at the next insurrection, since my gentle fellow
countrymen can no longer accuse me of being in league
with Prussia.

My publisher at Hamburg printed the preface especially
and with parentheses from another land. Although I
forbade him to publish it, he sent some copies to Poland,
and a German here has completed the preface with the aid
of one of these copies and the French translation, and
published it on his own responsibility. I am telling you
this so that you may not blame me for the greatest follies
in it. I have no intention of seizing the moment dema-
gogue-fashion, and I do not believe in the possibility of
an immediate effect on the Germans. Beside, I am re-
tiring from politics and busying myself at present for the
most part with art, religion and philosophy.

284

CHAPTER IV
SAINT-SIMONIANISM

To Varnhagen von Ense.

Paris, Middle of May, 1833.

I am much occupied now with the history of the French
Revolution and Saint-Simonianism. I shall write books
about both. Last year I learned to understand much by
watching party dealings and the phenomena of Saint-
Simonianism, for example, the Moniteur of 1793 and
the Bible. I want now only health and a life free from
care. I have had many opportunities of gaining such a
life, but always under conditions for which I had a certain
repugnance, not as a patriot, but as a man of culture. I
certainly agree with what you say about Saint-Simonianism.
Michel Chevalier is my very good friend ; one of the
finest men I know. That the Saint-Simonians have with-
drawn is perhaps a good thing for the doctrine itself, it
falls into wiser hands. The political part especially, the
doctrine of property, will be better worked out. For my
part lam only interested in the religious ideas, which only
need to be expressed for them sooner or later to enter into
the common life. Germany will fight lustily for its
spiritualism : mais Vavenir est a nous.

285

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

I have had long discussions on religion with Michel
Chevalier, who wishes to be remembered to you.

To Prosper Enfantin in Egypt.

Paris, April 8, 1835.

You wished to know about the progress of ideas in
Germany in recent times in order to understand the
relation in which the intellectual movements of that
country stand to the synthesis of your doctrine.

I thank you for the honour which you have done me in
asking me to give you information concerning these things,
and I am glad to find an opportunity, by the way, of
coming into contact with you even at such a distance.

Permit me to dedicate this book to you (" On the
History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany "). I
believe that it may sort with the tendency of your thought.
However that may be, I beg you to accept it as a token of
esteem and sympathy.

At the time, the name to which I made this dedication
was, so to speak, a shibboleth, and stood for the most
advanced party in the struggle for the emancipation of
mankind, which has been defeated by the gens-d 'arme and
courtiers of the old social order. While I patronised the
vanquished, I hurled at their opponents a haughty
challenge and openly proclaimed my sympathy with the
martyrs, who were being maltreated at that time and
mercilessly held up to scorn in the journals and in society.
I was not afraid of giving myself up to the absurdity with
which this good cause, it must be confessed, is a little
affected. The position has changed since then. The
martyrs of those days are no longer despised and perse-
286 *

SAINT-SIMONIANISM

cuted ; they no longer bear the cross, unless perchance it
is the Cross of the Legion of Honour ; they no longer run
barefoot through the deserts of Arabia, there to seek the
free woman — these deliverers from the marriage yoke,
these destroyers of the marital fetters, married after their
return from the East, and became the boldest wooers of
the West ; they even wore boots. Most of these martyrs
are now well-to-do ; several of them are newly fledged
millionaires, and many of them have reached the most
honourable and lucrative positions — there is speedy
travelling with railways. The earlier Apostles, who were
fired with enthusiasm for all mankind and a Golden Age,
are not content with preaching an Age of Silver, the
dominion of the God of Silver, who is the father and
mother of everybody and everything — he is perhaps the
verv God who has been foretold in the words : All is in
Him, nothing is outside Him ; without Him is nothing.
But He is not the God to whom the author of this book
bows his head. . . .

As the French do not understand the language of our
German schoolmen, I have, in discussing the Being of
God, made use of the same expressions which have been
familiarised by the apostolic zeal of the Saint-Simonians ;
as these expressions do express barely and definitely my
meaning, I have kept them in the German version.
Squires and parsons who have lately feared the power of
mv words more than ever, and have sought to make me
unpopular, will probably misuse these expressions in order
to accuse me of a seeming materialism and atheism ; they
will probably make me out a Jew or a Saint-Simonian ;
they will probably bring all sorts of accusations of heresy
against me before their riff-raff. No consideration or
caution shall induce me to veil my conception of Divine

287

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

things with the usual equivocations, and my friends will
probably be angry with me for not concealing my thoughts
and for bringing to light the most delicate matters, and
for causing trouble — neither the animosity of my enemies,
nor the silliness and folly of my friends, shall keep me
from expressing straightforwardly and openly my opinion
of the most vital question of humanity, the existence of
God.

I do not belong to the materialists who clothe the
spirit in flesh ; rather do I give to bodies their spirits ; I
spiritualise bodies, I sanctify them.

I do not belong to the Atheists, who deny ; I affirm.

The Indifferentists, the so-called wise men who will not
express an opinion on God, are the real blasphemers of
God. Such silent blasphemy is now a social crime, for by
it misconceptions are subserved, which have always been a
prop for despotism.

The beginning and the end of all things is inGod.

J288

CHAPTER V
THE SALON

Paris, Oct. 17, 1833.

" I give you this counsel, gossip : let me paint on
your crest not a golden angel, but a red lion. I am
used to painting red lions and you shall see that, even
if I painted a golden angel for you, it would look
like a red lion."

These words of an honest fellow artist shall stand in
front of the first volume of the " Salon," since they can
meet every reproach which may be made against it. To
be done with it, let me say at once that this book, with
certain unimportant exceptions, was written in the summer
and autumn of 1831 at a time when I was occupied chiefly
with cartoons for future red lions. I was then living in
the midst of all sorts of uproar and disturbance.

The sanctimonious of every shade will sigh deeply over
many a poem in the book, but it will not do them any
good. Another "succeeding generation'1 has perceived
that everv word and every song of mine springs from a
great, divinely joyous idea of Spring, which, if not better,
is at least as respectable as that gloomy, mouldy Ash
Wednesday idea which has sadly de-flowered our lovely
Europe and peopled her with ghosts and Tartuffes. Where

i t 289

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

once I skirmished, lightly armed, is now a great war
toward — and I am no longer in the front rank.

Thank God ! The July Revolution has let loose the
tongues that have for a long time seemed tied : aye, when
those who were suddenly awaked wished to reveal at once
all that has been clothed in silence, then arose a great
outcry which deafened my ears and robbed me of my joy,
and not myself alone. Often I was seized with a desire to
give up my spokesman's office altogether, but that is not
so easy to do as to give up a secret office of state, though
that brings in more than the highest public tribunate.
People imagine that what we do is a matter of idle choice
and that we pick out of the supply of new ideas one for
which we wish to speak and work, and struggle and suffer,
as a philologist chooses his classic with which he is occupied
all his life in commenting upon — no we do not seize an
idea, but the idea seizes us, and enslaves us, and whips us
to the arena, so that we, gladiators perforce, may fight for
it. So it is with every true tribunate or apostolate. It
was a sorrowful confession that Amos made to King
Amaziah : " I am no prophet, nor son of a prophet, but I
am a cowherd who gathers mulberries ; but the Lord took
me from my flock and said to me : ' Go hence and
prophesy ! ' It was a sorrowful confession that the poor
monk made when he stood arraigned for his teaching
before the Emperor and the Empress at Worms and
declared that recantation was impossible, and concluded
with these words : " Here I stand. I can no otherwise.
God help me. Amen.11

If you knew this sacred impulse you would no longer cry
out upon us, and shame upon us, and no longer would you
calumniate us — indeed, we are not the masters, but the
servants of the Word. It was a sorrowful confession that
290

THE SALON

Maximilian Robespierre made: "I am the slave of
Liberty."

And I, too, will make confession now. It was no vain
desire of my heart that made me leave everything that was
dear to me, and fair and smiling, in the Fatherland — there
were many to love me there : my mother, for instance —
but I went without knowing why. I went because I must.
Afterwards I was very weary. I had for so long before
the days of July fulfilled the office of prophet that the
inward fire consumed me, so that my heart was worn out
by the mighty words that broke forth from it like the body
of a woman in the hour of birth. . . .

I thought : When there is no more need of me I will live
for myself for a space and write the beautiful poems,
comedies and novels, the tender and gay play upon thoughts
which are gathered together in my brain-pan, and I will
slip away quietly to the land of poetry where I lived so
happily as a boy.

And I could have chosen no place where I could be in a
better position for carrying out this project. It was at a
little villa close to the sea, near Havre-de-Grace in
Normandy. A wonderfully beautiful view of the great
North Sea, an ever-changing and yet simple prospect : to-day
a grim storm, to-morrow a pleasant calm, and high above
the white trailing clouds, gigantic, fantastic, as though
though they were the walking shadows of those Normans
who have lived their wild life upon these waters. But
under my window there grew the most lovely flowers and
plants. Roses that looked at me love-lorn, red carnations
with their most pleading scent, and laurels that clambered
up the wall to me and grew almost in at the window, like
the flame which pursues me. Yes, once I ran timid
behind Daphne, and Daphne runs after me like any Moll,

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

and thrusts her way into my room. What I once longed
for pleases me no more, and I would fain have peace, and
wish that no man should speak of me, least of all in
Germany. And I would fain write songs in peace, and
read them only to myself, or, perchance, to some hidden
nightingale. And what I wished began to come to pass —
my mind was soothed by the spirit of poesy, familiar
noble poems and golden visions dawned upon my mind ;
once more I was lost in dreams, and drunk with fairy lore,
and enchanted, and I needed only to take my pen and
write down in peace what I felt and thought — I began.

But now it is common knowledge that a poet in such a
state does not sit in his room, but often runs into the open
fields, his cheeks glowing, inspiration in his heart, and
gives no heed to the way by which he goes. So it was with
me, and, without knowing how, I suddenly found myself
on the high road from Havre, and in front of me peasants
were driving slowly their high carts loaded with all sorts
of poor chests and boxes, old Frankish furniture, women
and children. By the carts marched the men, and to my
great surprise when I heard them speak, they spoke
German, the Suabian dialect. I understood : they were
emigrants, and when I looked at them closer there rushed
through me a sudden feeling such as I have never known
in my life. My blood rushed suddenly into the chambers
of my heart and knocked against my ribs, as though it must
burst from my breast, as though it must get out as quickly
as possible, and my breath choked me. Yes, it was the
Fatherland itself that I encountered ; on those carts sat
fair-haired Germany, with his grave, blue eyes, his sad and
all too thoughtful face, and in the corners of the mouth
was still that sad tightness over which I had waxed so
weary and so angry, but now it touched me to sorrow — for
292

THE SALON

if, in the hot desire of youth, I had often girded at the
perverseness and Philistinism of my home, if, in my happy
Fatherland, pompous as a Burgomaster, slow as a snail,
I had often excited squabbles such as always occur
in large families, all memory of such things was gone
from my soul as I beheld my Fatherland in exile ; in
a strange land, in exile. Even his crimes became
suddenly dear and of much worth to me. I became
reconciled even to his pettiness and I shook his hand. I
shook the hands of those German emigrants as if I were
giving to my Fatherland the handshake of a new bond of
love, and we spoke German. These people were very glad
to hear the sound of it on a road in a strange land, the
anxious shadows flitted from their faces, and they almost
smiled. And the women, of whom many were very pretty,
called their pretty •' Godden ! " from the carts, and the
youngsters greeted me blushing and polite, and the tiny
children shouted at me with their little toothless mouths.
" And why have you left Germany ? " I asked them.
"The land is good and we would gladly have stayed
there," they answered, "but we could no longer endure
it:' . . .

From this encounter my heart was filled with a profound
sorrow, a black gloom, a leaden despair, that I cannot
describe in words. I, who had been roaring so lustily as a
conqueror, I walked limply and simply home like a broken
man. It was not the effect of patriotism suddenly
roused. I felt it was something nobler, something better.
For years everything that bears the name of Patriotism
has been offensive to me. The cause itself had been
spoiled for me in some measure by the sight of the
mummery of those black fools who made a regular trade
of patriotism and donned a trade uniform, and divided

29S

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

themselves into masters, journeymen, and apprentices, and
had their guild cries with which they went out into the
country to fight.

Patriotism is one thing ; a true love of one's country is
another. It is possible to love one's Fatherland, and live
eighty years in it without knowing it ; but for that one
must have stayed at home. One best knows the nature of
spring in the winter ; and the best songs of May are written
behind the stove. The love of freedom is a prison flower,
and only in captivity does one feel the value of liberty.
And love for the German Fatherland begins on the
German frontier, but it waxes strong at the sight of
German unhappiness in a strange land.

I am no patriot, I assure you, and if I wept on that day
it was because of the little girl. It was towards evening,
and a little German girl whom I had noticed among the
emigrants stood alone on the shore, as if lost in thought,
and looked out over the wide sea. She was, perhaps,
eight years old ; she wore two pigtails neatly plaited, a
little short Suabian coat of woollen flannel ; she had a
pale sickly face, great serious eyes, and in a soft anxious,
though at the same time curious, voice, she asked me if
that was the ocean ? . . .

Far into the night I stood by the sea and wept. I am
not ashamed of those tears. Achilles wept at the sea, and
his mother with her silver feet had to arise from the waves
to comfort him. I, too, have a voice in the waters, but
not so much a voice of comfort, as rousing, commanding,
and very, very wise. For the sea knows everything ; the
stars confide to him by night the most hidden secrets of
the Heavens ; in his depths is the fabulous sunken treasure
like the hoar-old tales of the earth that are long since
dead ; he listens by all coasts with the thousand thousand
294

THE SALON

curious ears of his waves, and the rivers, which flow down
to him, bring him all the news that they have gleaned
from the most distant lands or have overheard in the
chatter of the little brooks and mountain streams. But if
the sea reveals his secrets to a man, and whispers to the
heart of a man the great word that liberates the world,
then. Peace, farewell ! and, peaceful dreams farewell !
Farewell to the novels and comedies that I began so
charmingly, and that will not for long be continued !

The colours for the golden angels are almost dry on my
palette, and only a bright red, that looks like blood, and
is used for painting red lines, has remained soft. Yes,
my next book will be a red lion, neither more nor less, and
after the above confession, a public that is worthy of all
reverence will find excuses for it.

29.5

CHAPTER VI

THE FRENCH TRANSLATION OF THE

"TRAVEL PICTURES''

To Maximilian Heine.

Paris, April 21, 1833.

Give me your advice as a doctor, what to do for my
headaches from which I have suffered these last two
months more than ever. It is perhaps the result of great
mental activity. Not that I have been working much
lately but the difficulties which I have had to encounter
in consequence of political events, have prevented my
working. My position is only brilliant externally ; I am
almost crushed by the most extraordinary marks of honour.
You have no idea what a colossal reputation I have — but
it is a burden like any other and has necessity, vexation,
distraction, trouble and torment in its train.

I understand now only too well why all famous men
have an unhappy life. Give me your advice, dear Max ;
shall I go to a watering-place again this year ? The sea
has never yet suited me ill, actually ill. But it did not
do much for me last year. In any case I cannot leave
Paris until August, for I am having my "Travel Pictures"
translated into French and my translator is so bad that I
296

TRANSLATION OF "TRAVEL PICTURES"

have to do most of the work myself. Then I have to write
a series of articles on Germany, a promise which I should
not keep, were it not that I need an enormous amount of
money here. I have spent enormous sums this last year.
*****

When I made use of the talent for translation of the
late Loeve-Veimars I was astonished at the way in which,
while we were collaborating, he made me feel my ignorance
of French idioms in his own linguistic superiority. When
we had committed an article to paper after hours of work,
he would praise my familiarity with the spirit of the
French idiom so seriously, and with such apparent astonish-
ment that I was forced to believe in the end that I myself
had translated it, the more so, as the subtle flatterer used to
assure me frequently that he understood German only very
little.

It was a strange whim of Loeve-Veimars that he who
understood German as well as I should yet assure every-
body that he knew no German. . . .

It will always be a question difficult for me to decide
how a German writer should be translated into French.
Ought thoughts and images to be expunged if they do not fit
the civilised taste of the French, and if they might appear
unpleasing to them or perhaps even absurdly exaggerated ?
Or should one introduce into the fine society of Paris the
unlicked German with his transrhenish originality, with all
his Germanisms, fantistically coloured, and even loaded
with hyperromantic decorations ? I for my part do not
think that the unlicked German should be translated into
the disciplined French, and so I present myself in my
native state of barbarism, like the Indians of Carruaos, for
whom such a kindly reception was prepared last summer.
And I too am a warrior hero, like the great Takuabeh. He

i u 297

HEINRICH HEINKS MEMOIRS

is dead now, and his mortal frame is carefully preserved
in the museum of the Jardin des Plantes : that zoological
Pantheon of the realm of beasts.

My book is an Exhibition Hall. Enter it without fear.
I am not so bad as I look. I have only painted my face
with savage colours in order to frighten my enemies more
in battle. At bottom 1 am as gentle as a lamb. Calm
yourselves and give me your hands. You may also touch
my weapons, even the quiver and arrows, for I have blunted
the points of them, as is the custom with us barbarians
when we approach a hallowed place. Between ourselves,
the arrows were not only sharp, but also poisoned. To-
day they are quite harmless, and you can amuse yourselves
by looking at the gay coloured feathers : your children
could use them as a toy.

The style, the linking of the thoughts, the turns, the
grotesque interpolations, the unusual expressions, in short,
the whole character of the German original is as far as
possible rendered word for word in the French translation
of the " Travel Pictures." The sense of beauty, the
elegance, the grace and charm have been mercilessly
sacrificed to literal fidelity. It is now a German book in
French, and this book makes no claim to please the French
public but to make the public acquainted with a foreign
original. In short, I wish to instruct, not merely to amuse.
In this way we Germans have translated foreign writers,
and there was this much use in it that we gained new
points of view, word forms and turns of language. Such
an acquisition could not harm you. Having undertaken
to make you acquainted in the first place with the character
of this exotic book it does not matter much that I present
it to you abridged because several passages only contain
local and passing allusions, puns and other specialities of
298

TRANSLATION OF "TRAVEL PICTURES"

the kind and therefore could not be reproduced in French ;
and because several of the passages are most iniinically
directed against certain persons unknown in this country,
and might, if they were repeated in French, give rise to
the most unpleasant misunderstandings.

This book with the exception of a few pages was written
before the July revolution. At that time the political
pressure in Germany had produced a general dull quies-
cence ; men's minds were sunk deep in the lethargy of
despair, and if any man dared to speak, he had to do so
the more passionately, the more he despaired of the victory
of freedom and the more bitterly the party of the priests
and the aristocracy raged against him. I used the ex-
pressions " priests " and " aristocracy " from habit, because
I was for ever making use of these words at that time,
when alone I was chanting this polemic against those
champions of the past. These words were then understood
throughout the world, and I must confess that I adhere to
the terminology of 1789, and I expended a vast quantity
of tirades against Clerics and Nobles, or as I called them
the Priests and the Aristocracy. But I have gone further
along the path of progress since then, and my beloved
Germans, roused by the July cannon, have trod in my foot-
steps and now speak the language of 1789 or 1793, and
are still so far removed from me that thev have lost sight
of me and say that I have remained behind them. I am
accused of being too moderate, of being in league with the
aristocrats, and already I see the day breaking when I shall
be accused of connivance with the priests. The truth is
that now I understand by the word " aristocracy,11 not only
the nobly born, but rather all those who, whatever name
they may bear, live at the expense of the people. The
fine formula for which together with so many other

299

HEINRICH HEINE'S MEMOIRS

admirable things we are indebted to the Saint-Simoniaus,
" Exploitation de Thomme par Thomme " (The exploita-
tion of man by man) raises us above all declarations against
the privileges of birth. Our old war-cry against the priest
has also been replaced by a better phrase. It is no longer
a question of upsetting the old church, but of building up
the new, and far from wishing to abolish priests, we are
nowadays thinking of being priests ourselves.

Without a doubt the period of negation is not yet
passed for Germany, it has only just begun. In France on
the other hand it seems to have come to an end ; at least

think that people have to devote themselves to positive
activities and build up again all that the past has left us
of Good and Beautiful.

From a sort of literary superstition I have left my book
its German title. Under the name of " Reisebilder " it
has made its way in the world (with more success than the
author himself), and I wished it to keep this happy title
also in the French edition.

END OF VOL. I.

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Full text of "Heinrich Heine's memoirs, from his works, letters, and conversations; ed. by Gustav Karpeles. English translation by Gilbert Cannan"

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