Heinrich Heine (1797–1856)

I was very positively surprised by this book. I first read it about a decade ago and didn't enjoy it at all. I think I didn't take my time then and maybe I didn't have enough background knowledge. It is an epic poem, written in rhymed verse, which might have put me off as well.
This time, I chuckled almost nonstop because I found it so funny. The depiction of German "woodenness" and people's opinions and reactions in certain situations are spot on.
In 1844, Heinrich Heine returned home to show more Germany after thirteen years in France. He had left Germany because of censorship and because he was against Prussian politics, and also because as someone born Jewish, he had no chance of a career in his legal profession, although he even had converted to Christianity.
In this text he describes his thoughts, feelings and observations during his trip from the French border back to Hamburg, stopping in Aix la Chapelle/Aachen, Cologne, Hannover and other towns and cities. The text is very funny and ironic, which is Heine's way to circumvent the still looming scissors of censorship. It didn't really help, though: The book was banned in Prussia almost at once, and an arrest warrant was issued for Heine, he fled back to Paris.
His publisher was able to sell another edition of the Wintermärchen which was altered and smoothed.
Of course, during the Third Reich Heine's works were totally banned and he was hated frantically, not only because of being an author of Jewish ancestry, but because of his witty criticism of German habits and culture and how he portrayed the tendencies of Germans to sleep while important incidents and developments are happening that they should be cautious about or even fight. This is also what the title is about: A fairytale, a pretty and sleepy Germany that lulls him with nice food and Gemütlichkeit, while the authorities, censorship and persecution wait under the surface. show less

Summary: A collection of translated poems of Heinrich Heine.

Heinrich Heine composed poetry during the height of the romantic period. Some of his early lyric poetry was set to music by Schubert and Schumann. His later poetry reflects a certain cynicism toward romanticism. For example, the opening poem in this collection, Prologue, begins with him “walking into a fairy wood” and concludes with a statue of The Sphinx coming ravenously to life: “her kisses drove me wild/Her claws dug in show more again.”

A favored theme is one of beautiful, romantic beginnings with sad or grievous endings, typified in the poem “Sweet-bitter,” beginning with loving embraces under the lindens (lindens are everywhere in Heine) only to end with “the coldest curtsey” and frosty goodbyes. There are poems that draw on mythology, such as The Lorelei, of a beautiful blonde siren atop a rocky outcropping, who distracts shipman who crash upon the rocks. He also has a poem on the Tannhauser legend.

Some of his poetry is political. Heine supported revolutionary movements and fled Germany to Paris in 1831, resenting the censorship of his works. By 1835, his work was banned in Germany. His Germany: A Winter’s Tale is a barbed commentary on its pretensions. In No Need to Worry he observes:

We call them 'fathers', it's 'fatherland'.
Which makes it easy to understand
Why it all belongs to them, and we
Have sausage and sauerkraut for tea.

In October 1849 marks the failed revolutions of 1848. He laments:

This time the Austrian Ox has made
An ally even of the Bear.
Take comfort, Magyar, though you fall --
We have a far worse badge of shame to wear.

During the last eight years of his life, Heine was paralyzed and confined to bed. His poems are increasingly dominated by reflections on his own mortality. Double Vision is an encounter with an doppelganger, one healthy, one sickly that ends with the healthy one pummeling the sick one only to find he was pummeling himself. You may recognize Morphine and its concluding, Job-like lines:

To sleep is good, and death is better, but
Far better still never to have been born.

Heine captures the reality of life as bittersweet. Our loftiest aims will often end disappointed. Life is a tragicomedy for Heine and many of his poems are satires on the romantics with a grotesque or bitter twist. This translation seems to capture the almost “tongue-in-cheek” ironic character of Heine’s poetry. It is accessible, easy to read, even as one ponders the ironic twists. This work, if you can find it, is a wonderful introduction to this unusual poet. show less

I'm afraid the English Wikipedia intimated correctly that this was not Heine's finest hour. For a lover of Heine's feuilleton writing and a student of Junges Deutschland (such as I) it barely serves as the intended helper into Junges Deutschland; one is better off reading the huge appendices in the latest edition of Gutzkow's Wally and, of course, just reading Börne's Paris Letters themselves. It's not all bad. Heine is, for better or worse, funny as hell. He shows a genuine love and show more admiration for Börne and Menzel (the latter whom I still need to read), and a willingness to make himself look like an idiot to stand up for his friends. His comments on the psychology of exile couldn't be improved today.
Nevertheless the reader finds oneself constantly wondering who the intended audience was for this book. To put it short, Heine spends wwaaaaaaayyyy too much time griping about his own life, organizes the five books into sometimes-incomprehensible collections of pity parties and beery recollections, and even goes out of his way about page 80 to say that in this whole book he desires not to add any critique whatever to Börne's work, but rather merely to pose the man as he remembers him. So what? Heine never answers. One gets the feeling that Heine was sick and let this thing loose to make money with a final insistence that he was a political writer worthy of note. But was he? Harzreise is political memory enough for me. Speaking of which, the moment I reopened my Harzreise, there was a quote in the very front of the thing by Börne, so Heine must feel something about his writing.
Before we learn what that was, he goes out of his way to diss Tieck (any UCSC grads in the house?? Remember Tieck??), jams paragraphs that should've been straight political analysis with his poetic goofy stuff, weighs the decisions by the "radical and authoritarian parties" to label him and his comrades as politically such and such, and generally demonstrates that he should've been happy as a poet. As a writer who himself would like to contribute to political and social thought, I found this book very cautionary.
In the end Heine makes his worst mistake, which is to put in a long citation of the Paris Letters in which Börne critiques Heine. As we read, we're reminded how much better an essayist Börne was than Heine, and we find ourselves, having survived this book, agreeing with Börne's spot-on and lyrically beautiful analogies on Heine's shortcomings.
When you read this stuff, you have to remember that this was early journalism, and free thought was made practically possible by a free press. So we're going to find all the extravagance, individual weirdness and desperate charm in this kind of writing by people who could be banned, jailed or exiled just for writing. There was a certain class with access to this technology, and we're going to get that class's perspectives. Now take that awareness and go see the rampant classism on GR!
A worthy read, but not a book for anyone near a beginner; for pros, not a great defense of Heine's writing (and character, he insists!) nor a great summary of Börne's work. Read it for the long quotes in the first two books, and hope that Börne could really talk that sexy in person. show less

A Truly Great But Underrated Essayist That Should Not Be Missed, July 21, 2006

To begin, I have to admit that I always have been less than completely impressed with the somewhat ironical poetry of Heine. True, this lyrical poetry has made him famous throughout the world. But the over-rating of his poetry has also won the under-rating of his prose. This worldly-wise author produced some of the best prose of his, or any, century. It is not for nothing that Nietzsche said of him, "And how he show more employs German! It will one day be said that Heine and I have been by far the first artists of the German language... (Ecce Homo, Why I am so Clever, 4.)" Yes, I know, this section starts out with Nietzsche praising Heine for his lyric poetry. But in order to demonstrate Nietzsche's debt to Heine's prose, I now present two passages for consideration:

"Of this catatrophe, deism's 21st of January, we shall speak in the following section. A peculiar awe, a mysterious piety, prevents our writing more today. Our heart is filled with shuddering compassion - it is ancient Jehova himself who is preparing for death. We knew him so well, from his cradle in Egypt, where he was reared among divine calves and crocodiles, sacred onions, ibis and cats. We saw him as he bade farewell to these playmates of his childhood and to the obelisks and sphinxes of his native Nile valley and became a little god-king in Palestine among a poor shepherd people and lived in his own temple-palace. We saw him later when he came in contact with Assyrian-Babylonian civilization and put aside his all too human passions, no longer spitting nothing but wrath and vengence, at least no longer thundering at every trifle. We saw him emigrate to Rome, the capital, where he renounced all national prejudices and proclaimed the divine equality of all nations, and with such fine phrases established an opposition to old Jupiter, and intrigued until he gained supreme authority and from the Capitol ruled the city and the world, urbem et orbem. We saw how he became even more spiritual, how he whimpered in bland bliss, becoming a loving father, a universal friend of man, a world benefactor, a philanthropist - but all this could avail him nothing. -

Do you hear the little bell ringing? They are bringing the sacraments to a dying god." (Heine, 'Concerning the History of Philosophy and Religion', p 200 of this collection.)

"When he was young, this God out of the Orient, he was harsh and vengeful, and he built himself a hell to amuse his favorites. Eventually, however, he became old and soft and mellow and pitying, more like a grandfather than a father, but most like a shaky old grandmother. Then he sat in his nook by the hearth, wilted, grieving over his weak legs, weary of the world, weary of willing, and one day he choked on his all-too-great pity." (Nietzsche, Zarathustra, Fourth Part, the section known either as 'Retired' or 'Out of Service'.)

The debt of Nietzsche to Heine in this passage is quite obvious. What isn't at all obvious is that the palm goes to Nietzsche. Marx also recognized the merit of Heine, but if the testimony of his daughter can be trusted, Marx also -in my perhaps ill-informed opinion- over-rated the poetry.

"At the request of Karl Kautsky in 1895 Eleanor Marx wrote a comment on the friendship of Heine and Marx. It read in part: "I remember both my parents ... speaking much of Heine, whom (in the early forties) they saw constantly and intimately. It is no exaggeration to say that Mohr [Marx's nickname] not only admired Heine as a poet, but had a sincere affection for him. He would even make all sorts of excuses for Heine's political vagaries. Poets, Mohr explained, were queer kittle-cattle, not to be judged by the ordinary or even extra-ordinary standards of conduct. [...] Heine used, at one time, to run up constantly to their rooms, to read them his 'verses' and ask their opinion. Again and again, Mohr would go over some 'small thing' of eight lines, discussing, analyzing. [...] Politically, as far as I can understand, they seldom discussed things. But certainly Mohr judged Heine very tenderly, and he loved not only the man's work, but also the man himself."" From a lecture by David Walsh, 'The Aesthetic Component of Socialism', January, 1998.)

But Heine was no mere poet, he had a keen, if sardonic, eye for the philosophy that went on around him, and while he mocked their secretive nature he did not spare himself.

"We now have monks of atheism who would burn Monsieur Voltaire alive because he was a hardened deist. I have to confess that this music is not pleasing to me, but it also doesn't frighten me; for I stood behind the maestro when he composed it, to be sure in indistinct and convoluted signs so that not everyone would decipher it. - I sometimes saw how he gazed around anxiously out of fear that he was understood. He was very fond of me, for he was sure I wouldn't betray him; at that time I even thought that he was servile. Once when I was annoyed with the phrase: "Everything that is, is reasonable", he laughed strangely and remarked: "It could just as well read, 'Everything that is reasonable, must be'." He glanced around hastily, but soon calmed himself, for only Heinrich Beer had heard what he said. I only understood such expressions later. Thus I also only understood later why he asserted in his philosophy of history that Christianity already represents progress because it teaches about one God who died while pagan gods knew nothing at all about death. What progress it would therefore be if God had never existed at all!" (Letters on Germany, p 289 of this collection.)

Thus Heine, in a few well-chosen words, exposes the heart of the Hegelian Left: the notion that the real (i.e., existing conditions) must be made rational and also its uncompromising atheism. And, in addition, he attributes all this to Hegel! Also note how he gently makes fun of his own comprehension; thus both he and Heinrich Beer could be trusted by Hegel - neither would 'betray him'. ...This is really very nicely done. In fact, though the tone is often playful, the matter is never frivolous. The essay 'Concerning the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany' remains an excellent piece to use to introduce first-year students to German Philosophy. His asides on Kant (his 'murder' of God, followed by his 'murder' of his first Critique to protect his servant 'Old Lampe') are especially sharp, and even a little poignant; although I think he underestimates the later Schelling throughout. Even though he is often ironic, at times, he even borders on the cynical, Heine never seemed to despair of humanity having a brighter future.

This book of Heine's prose consists of not only 'The Romantic School' and 'Concerning the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany' but also some letters and excerpts too. The 'Concerning the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany' remains indispensable for anyone starting to study German philosophy and really should not be passed up. In fact, the only way Heine could have been better was if he had become a genuine philosopher. ...But, honestly, how many of them are there? show less