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November 4, 1854.] THE LEADER/ 1047
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HENRI HEINE. Of far deeper interest than...
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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The Appearance Of Punctis Pocket-Hoolc, ...
Siecle , says : —" All our books of any repute at present have been written by Democracy . Yesterday it was Reto-aitis to-day it is Quinet , to-morrow it will be Michelet , another day some one else . What would you have ? "We are reduced to the glory of thought : and we endeavour to do honour to our condition . " The French press is beginning to speak out a little .
November 4, 1854.] The Leader/ 1047
November 4 , 1854 . ] THE LEADER / 1047
Henri Heine. Of Far Deeper Interest Than...
HENRI HEINE . Of far deeper interest than Madame Sand's Autobiography—woman of genius and of" European fame as she is—is a little autobiographic fragment of another notability in the literary world—the German poet Heine . This extraordinary fragment appeared the other day , in French , in the Revue des Deuat Mondes , under the title of Les Aveux el ' un Po & te , in anticipation of its publication in German , as a preface to the first volume of a collection of Heine ' s miscellaneous writings , on the point of being issued by a Hamburg firm . ^ The fragment seems to have escaped notice in this country , notwithstanding its appearance in the first of French periodicals ; but it is worth much more than a passing remark . It has been known for some time that a sin gular mental transformation has come over this most remarkable of the poets of Young Germany , now in . the fifty-fifth year of his age , and living , the poor bed-ridden victim of a painful form of disease , in Paris .
Humours of his conversion from the utter Hegelian scepticism which he bad formerly professed , and in the spirit of which he had worked both as a poet and as a politician , have long been going about—some saying he had become a Protestant Evangelical of the Berlin school , and others that he had Joined the Romish communion . The present fragment clears up , or at least throws li ght upon , the facts of the case . It is a most curious paper—full of "brilliant and eccentric thought on various subjects ; and exhibiting a strange mixture of the speculative , the humorous , the sarcastic , and the poetical . It is not unlike some of De Quince y ' s papers , but far more biting and fervid in its spirit . It is specially with reference to his work De I'Allemagne , published some years ago , and in which he expounded the nature of the newest German philosophy to the French , in sl manner most original and striking , that he makes his present revelations . He tells what led to the preparation of that work , and how it dissipated the ideas till then entertained in France of the German philosophy .
" As regards tie German philosophy , I divulged without reserve the secret of the school which , enveloped in scholastic formulas , was then only known to the highest of the initiated . My revelations excited in France the greatest astonishment , and I remember that some eminent thinkers of this country told me frankly they had always regarded the German philosophy as a mystic confusion , in which the Divinity - \ ras concealed at the back as in a sanctuary of clouds . They added , that the German philosophers had always appeared to them to be visionaries in a . state of ecstasy , breathing nothing but piety and the fear of God . It is not my fault if it was otheryise , and if the German philosophy is just the contrary of what people have been in the habit of calling , -up to the present , piety and the fear of God . The most logical of these terrible sons of philosophy , our modern Porphyry , who bears Teally the name of Fireflood ( Feuerbach ) , proclaims , with his friends , the most radical atheism Jls the last word of our metaphysics . " With the frenzy of Bacchantes , these impious fanatics have torn off the biue veil from the German heaven , crying : * Look ! all the Divinities have fled , and on high there resides no longer aught but an old woman-with iron hands and a desolate heart—Necessity . '"
Of this philosophy M . Heine was once a votary , as far as it was in the nature of a poet to be . As a young man in Germany lie had known Hicgei . himself—had " seen him , " as he says , " sitting in his woeful way , like a hen , on his terrible eggs , and heard his clucking . " He thus sketches the philosopher from memory : — " Hegel ' s conversation was never anything but a species of monologue ; ho seemed ill ways to be speaking to himself , and I was often struck with the sepulchral sound of his wooden voice , as well as with the rough vulgarity of his images , of which many remain dagucrrcotyped in my memory . One evening at his house , talcing
coffee after dinner , I found myself by his side in a window rcccs 3 , and youth as I was of twenty years , I looked with ecstasy at Hie star-lit heaven , and called the stars the aliodo of the blessed . The master then miittorod to himself : ' The stars , hum ! hum ! the stars are but a scab shining on the sky ' s fitce . ' In God ' s name , ' I cried , 'is there then no place of happiness up above for the reward of virtue after death ? ' Hegel , regarding me fixedly with his wan eyes , saiid to me in a dry tone : ' So then you look in the end for something extra , above your fare , for having taken care of your worthy mother when she was ill , and for not having poisoned your brother . ' ITo then turned away , alarmed at -what ho had sai < 1 , but appeared re-assured when he & tvw that his words had been heard only by Henry B . "
When Heine came to Paris in 1831 he was an exulting sceptic , carrying a personal adaptation of HegHliunism about with him , if the essential , doctrine had not pierced his poetical heart . " I never was a great metaphysician , and I hud accepted ¦ without examination the Hj'ntliusi . s of tho Hegeliuu philosophy , the consequences of which tickled my vanity . I was young and proud , and my pride was not a little flattered with tho idoa that I was u god . I had never cared to believe that God hud become ninii ; I tinwd tins sublime doctrine with superstition ; but I latterly took Hegel ' s word for it when I heard him iiflirm that Mnn is God . Such an idea pleased me , I took it scriouuly , m » d I acted my part of God as honourably us possible . I wan myself the living and moral law ; I -was infallible . "
And so he led his brilliant , wild life , tho literary fruits of which axo before the world . His first shock was on finding that l « ia philosophy wus no longer the exclusive possession of im > n of culture and goniuB liko himself , but woa getting down among the u manses . " On thissu " masses" and hia own sentimental relations to them ho has a curious pn . ssuge . Ho avows that though theoretically un ardent friend of the people , yet in fact he had always had u horror of everything done by their ngoncy , nnd a dinliko to peraonul ontiict with them . So long ay ho « ml his i ' ricmls hud " blasphemed among themselves lit their little philosophical a uppers , " he v / nn contented ; but when " tho same themc'B began to bo diriciiBsod in tho low symposiums , " when u atheism begun to ainoll of tallow , and ticliiiajin , and tobacco , " ho wun Murtled . This leads him t . o Hay something of the workiny-dussos iu Germany . The puKsago in striking : —
" Tho Gonmun workmen form tho cunt . ro of an army of prolntuiroH woll indoctrinated if not ( liHcipUnad . These Gonnnn workman nlmont nil proftiNH atholsin , nnd , to toll t . h « truth , they cannot , avoid than < UHponnli » s with nil tho rcligioun idcat * of tho paat , without contradicting their principle uud boooiniucr i > uwurl « H » . TUoho cohorts of
destruction , these terrible sappers , whose axe threatens every edifice of the old society are much superior to the Chartists of England and the levellers and equalitariana of other lands . The English Chartists are pushed on by hunger , not by an idea * - . The chiefs , more or less occult , of the German Communists , are great logicikos > of whom the ablest have come of Hegel ' s school ; and they are , without doubt } fee best heads , the most energetic characters in Germany . These teachers of revolntlott and their disciples , remorselessl y bent on carrying out their principles , are the onlymen in Germany who have life , and it is to them , I believe , that the future belongs All other parties and their representatives are corpse-dead , and buried under the -vault of St . Paul ' s Church at Frankfort . " It was the French Revolution of February 184 S , however , that worked tfce real change in Heine : —
' The events of those foolish days of February , in which one saw human wisdom at a discount , and the elect of idiotcy carried in triumph , were so extraordinary , -so fabulous , that they turned things and ideas upside down . Had I been a man of sense , my intelligence would have given way ; but , fool as I was , the contrary occurred , and , strangely enough , it was precisely at a moment of general lunacy that I returned to reason . " Poverty and paralysis were the more immediate agents of hie disenchantment . Poverty , apparently , did a good deal , but paralysis did more . Here is a touch of Heine ' s irony—almost ghastly on such a subject : — " Besides my financial deficiencies , I have not been in the enjoyment of brilliaat health ; I am even affected with an indisposition , slight , it is true , according to what nry physicians say , bat which has now kept me more than five years in . bed . In such a / position it is a great comfort to me to have someone in heaven to whom I can address my groans and lamentations during the night , after my wife has gone to -sleep .. " In this strange , mocking way , I ^ eine announces his recantation of scepticism , Hegelianism , and atheism , and his conversion—to what ? This is the question ; and he answers it in a roundabout and characteristic way . First
, he tells us of his great and sudden comfort in reading the Bible , out of -which he derived as much , though not precisely the same in kind , as Uncle Tom did . This leads him into a dissertation on the religion and iastitutions of . Judaism , in the course of which he breaks out into a singularly eloquent descant on the character of Moses—the greatest of human beings ; as he thinks—mixed , in an odd manner , with sneers at the present King of Prussia . Then , resuming the autobiographic thread , he announces that , on the whole , his conversion has neither been to Koman Catholicism , nor to Prussian Evangelical Protestantism , but , if We may so express it , to a kind of Biblical Deism , formed by himself for Iiis own . uses . The rumour of bis having become a Catholic arose , he says , from the fact . of jbis . ' hayiiig consented to be married in a Catholic church to a . 'Catholic lady . In connexion with this there is introduced a strange discussion— -in part serious , in part ironical—of the merits of Roman Catholicism , wound up by an ideal vision of Heine himself as Pope ; which , he says , he might have been , had he studied for the Church . Not having done so , however , he remains only a Poet .
" But I will not for all that abandon myself to a hypocritical humility , and depreciate this fine name of Poet . It is a . good deal to be a Poet , especially when one is a great lyric poet in Germany , among that peopl * which in two things—philosophy and lyric poetry—lias surpassed all other nations . I shall not , with false modesty , deny my glory . None of my colleagues gained the poetic laurel at so early an age as I did , and if my compatriot , Wolfgang Gcethe , was pleased to think that the Chinese , with a trembling hand , painted Werther and Charlotte on glass , I can , on my side , oppose to this Chinese reputation one still- more fabulous—a reputation in Japan . " Hkinje ' s poems , it seems , have been translated into Japanese —the first European book so honoured . The following concluding passages of the Aveux are strangely touching and bitter , and show that , whatever religion M . Heine may have embraced , his style of speech is still rather out of keeping with the usual forms of the pious : —¦
" What serves it me that people drink to my health at feasts from g-old cups and with the most exquisite wines , if , during tlie . se ovations , far away and isolated from all tlie pleasures of the world , I can only wet my lips with thin barley-water V What serves it me that all the roses of Shiraz bloom and glow for me , radiant with tenderness ? Alas ! Shim / , is two thousand miles away from the KnedWniBtcrdum , whore , in tlie fiad solitude of my sick chamber , tlift only perfumes arc those of hot napkins . Alas ! God ' s mockery has fallen on me . Tim great author of the universe , the Aristophanes v ( Heaven , has chosen to let it be keenly felt by tlie little terrestrial author , calling himself the German Aristophanes , how truly iii . H most refined narcasins are after ull but pitiful pin-prickings , compared with tho lightning strokes ¦ which I / in divine humour can launch against poor mortals . You , the bitter Hood of raillery which the great Muster turns against nio is terrible , and l » ta epigrams make me wince cruelly , . . All humbly 1 Venturis to observe , in thu first place , that the ntrudoun pleasantry wliicli
lie in perpetrating n # ain . Htmu is being carried too fur ; it ha . s now lasted more tluin six years , nnd is beginning to grow awkward . 1 would also , in nil humility , romurk that this pleasantry is not now , and that the great Aristophanes lias employed it on many other occasions , so that he is committing a plagiarism on hinitwlf . Thu Chronicle oj / j imburr / relates that , in the year 1 ' 180 , people played and . sang , ovor thu whole of Cicrmaiiy , Hongrt more . sweet and charming than hud ever been known hei ' oro in tho Gorman , lands , and that young and old , especially tho women , were ao deliriously fond of them that they wore to bo heard Hinging thorn from morning till night . Only , thorns nongs , add * the Chronicle , hud boon compoHod by a young clerk , ullliutod wilU loprony , and living Hoparutcd from all the world , in a desert place . . . . Sometimes , in my sombre visions of tho night , I think 1 sen before nio llio poor leprous clerk of tho Ohmnick of Limbnrf j , my brother in Ajiollo , his Hufloring eyes regarding me from under bin yroy Iiood , with a lix « d and Htrangc look . "
Unhnppy IIijink ! It was lie , we thUilc , who , when ho was asked what ¦ w » H Ihh reason for joining iu the attacks und depreciations to which ( Jor / raw wiw subjected during th « rise of the litarury hcIiooI of Young ( jrurniuny , answered thut his rcumm was " qiwy—nh « or env }' . " Hu Iiuh nlwuyn \ w . i \ a slmngo mocking nuin , nnd tin ' s la » t change winch ho records mid avows auoina , after all , to have loft , him much us ' liewnc Wo huvo laid U huforo o ' ur readers uh u psychological curiosity of thu tiny , without conumuit , sind can only ivfcr them to the iiirlhconiitijr collucLnd ksuo of IIkims ' k _ worlc » ( whW'h is to iippenr mniiihuneoiiMly , in French ami ( Jcnnan , in l ' nris smd in Hamburg ) for tho full history of his Ufa Tho million hi to be intcr-Bporscd with KHemys from tho new point , of view , correct ivo of thu " uttor h ' tl . stthood" of much of tho previous * writing , nnd among these is to be a acri « H of EsBuys on tlio social and intellectual liio oi' France under Louis-Philippe .
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Nov. 4, 1854, page 15, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_04111854/page/15/
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