Heine had already written three volumes of what would have been the most interesting autobiography in the world, but how could he continue it if it were to cost his beloved wife the little pension of five thousand francs a year, which would ensure his dear one comparative comfort after his death?
For sweet love's sake, Heine burnt his autobiography and wrote this poem on the incident:
Wer ein Herz hat und im Herzen
Liebe tragt, ist uberwunden
Schon zur Halfte und so lieg' ich
Jetzt geknebelt und gebunden.
Wenn ich sterbe wird die Zunge
Ausgerissen meiner Leiche
Denn sie furchten redend kam' ich
Wieder aus dem Schattenreiche.
Stumm verfaulen wird der Todte
In der Graft und nie verraten
Werd' ich die auf mir verobten
Lacherlichen Freveltaten.
Was there ever a greater poem written as comment on an actual occurrence?
With rare understanding Heine called himself the best of all the humorists; he is that, and something more, wittier even than Shakespeare, while Goethe, to judge by the scene in Auerbach's Keller in Faust, had hardly more humor than a pancake. It is Heine's humor that gilds all his books and makes them unforgettable-a possession of mankind forever. Who can ever forget the verses in the poem entitled Deutschland, which he calls "A Winter's Tale," in which he has set forth our modern creed better than anybody else:
Bin neues Lied, ein besseres Lied,
O Freunde, will ich euch dichten:
Wir wollen hier auf Erden schon
Das Himmelreich errichten.
Wir wollen auf Erden glucklich sein,
Und wollen nicht mehr darben;
Verschlemmen soil nicht der faule Bauch, Was fleissige Hande erwarben.
Es wachst hiernieden Brot genug
Fur alle Menschenkinder,
Auch Rosen und Myrten, Schonheit und Lust, Und Zuckererbsen nicht minder.
Ja, Zuckererbsen fur jedermann,
Sobald die Schoten platzen!
Den Himtnel uberlassen wir
Den Engeln und den Spatzen.
Here for the first time is the modern gospel, complete in essentials and unforgettable in humor. It is indeed "a new song and a better song" that Heine sings to us: "the resolve to found the Kingdom of Heaven here in this world."
"We want to be happy on this earth," he says, "and no longer suffer want or allow the lazy belly to consume what industrious hands have created."
"There's enough bread for all the children of men," he cries, "and roses and myrtles and beauty and passion besides: ay, and sweet peas to boot-yes, sweet peas for all, and with full content we can leave Heaven to the angels and sparrows."
I would rather have written those four verses than all Schiller.
And in his history of religion, Heine has written our modern faith in prose even more perfectly than in his poetry:
The happier and more beautiful generations who are produced through free choice of love and who come to blossom in a religion of joy will smile sorrowfully over us, their poor ancestors who stupidly controlled ourselves instead of enjoying all the pleasures of this beautiful life, and by denying and killing our passions and desires made ourselves into pale ghosts of real men and women. Yes, I say it boldly, our descendants will be more beautiful and far happier than we are.
This, too, is the heart of my belief and of my hope for the future of mankind, and I have preached it even more boldly than Heine or Whitman and have been punished for it even more savagely.
How wise Heine was and far-sighted!
Think of what he wrote to a friend about Alsace-Lorraine thirty years before the war of 1870 and seventy-five years before the Great War:
I am the friend of the French, as I am the friend of all men who are good and reasonable. Rest quiet, I will never give up the Rhine to the French, and that for the very simple reason that the Rhine belongs to me. Yea, it belongs to me, through inalienable right of birth. I am of the free Rhine, the still freer son; my cradle stood on its banks, and I do not see why the Rhine should belong to any other than the children of the soil.
Alsace and Lorraine can I truly not so lightly incorporate with Germany as you are in the habit of doing, since the people in these countries are deeply attached to France, on account of the rights which they won at the great revolution, on account of those equal laws and free institutions which are very agreeable to the citizen spirit, but which yet leave much to be desired by the stomachs of the masses.
Meanwhile Alsace and Lorraine will again be attached to Germany when we accomplish that which the French have already begun; when we surpass them in action, as we have already done in thought; when we can exalt ourselves to the last consequence of such thought; when we rout out servility from its last corner of refuge-from heaven; when we free the God who dwells upon earth in humanity from Ms state of degradation; when we again restore to their dignity the people disinherited of its happiness, and genius and beauty brought to shame… Yea, not alone Alsace and Lorraine, but all France, all Europe, the whole world shall then fall to our share, the whole world shall become German! I often dream of this mission and universal dominion of Germany when I wander among the oak trees. Such is my patriotism!
Yet Heine poured deathless sarcasm on the worst faults of the German, the wooden, pedantical Prussians with their frozen conceit and on their behinds a coat of arms.
Heine saw life more deeply and fairly than any of his contemporaries:
What will be the end of this agitation to which, as ever, Paris gave the first signal? War, a most frightfully destructive war, which, alas! will call into the arena the two most noble nations of civilization-I mean Germany and France. England, the great sea serpent which can always creep back to its monstrous lair in the ocean; and Russia, which has most secure hiding places in monster pine forests, steppes, and ice-fields-these two would not be quite overthrown by the most decisive defeats; but Germany in such case is threatened with a far worse fate, and even France might have to part with its political existence.
Yet that would only be the first act of the great extravaganza — the prelude as it were. The second act is the European, the world revolution, the great duel of the destitute with the aristocracy of wealth, and in that there will be neither talk of nationality, nor of religion. There will then be only one nation, to wit, the world: and only one faith, to wit, prosperity upon earth…
And then the inevitable twinkle of the eye:
I advise our descendants to come into the world with a very thick skin to their backs.
Heine was just as wise and far-seeing about persons. The best portrait extant of Lassalle, the great socialist, is from Heine's pen, written when Lassalle was only a youth of nineteen.
My friend, Herr Lassalle, is a young man of the most distinguished intellectual gifts, of the most accurate erudition, with the widest range of knowledge, with the most decided quickness of perception which I have yet known; he combines an energy of will and an ability in conduct which excites my astonishment, and, if his sympathy for me does not deceive me, I expect from him the most effective assistance.
I can't help noticing here Heine's extraordinary prophecy of Lassalle's future.
"You will do great things in Germany," Heine said to him, "though I fear you will probably be shot by someone."
Heine was always generous in encouragement and lavish in praise of contemporary writers-a rare quality with successful writers; and in the "Romantic School" he has especially praised such young writers "for not having divorced life from literature, and for making politics go hand in hand with science, art, and religion," so that they were all at the same time artists, tribunes, and apostles.