The collection through which Heine's poems have achieved this world renown, entitled simply and appropriately Buch der Lieder[Book of Songs], was published by Hoffmann und Campe in Hamburg in 1827. The book contains poems Heine wrote beginning at age sixteen, although the majority originated between 1821 and 1824, that is, two to five years after he had left Hamburg and his muse. It is divided in chronological order into sections entitled "Junge Leiden" [Young Sorrows], "Lyrisches Intermezzo" [Lyric Intermezzo], "Heimkehr" [Homecoming], "Aus der Harzreise" [Songs from the Harz-Journey], and two sections called "Nordsee" [North Sea].

The book first attracted only moderate attention, but from 1837 onward its popularity soared. In its thirteenth edition at the time of the author's death, Buch der Lieder became the most widely read book of poetry in world literature, establishing the fame of its author and the wealth of its publisher, to whom Heine had sold it for a pittance. Indeed, so great was the popularity of Buch der Lieder that it overshadowed Heine's other, more mature and superior work, or at least delayed its appreciation. The broad public which the poet of Buch der Lieder so successfully wooed would have been shocked and repelled by the views that Heine actually held, while many of those who might have appreciated the more problematic and sophisticated "other" Heine turned away from the poet whose name was synonymous with Buch der Lieder.

The format, tone, and style of Buch der Lieder is that of the folksong. Despite—or because of—his adherence to the simple forms and metric lines of the conventional fourline stanza, Heine achieved a distinctive voice surprisingly early. For, by and large, Heine's poetry owes much of its unique appeal to the subtle tension and interaction between the seemingly natural, homespun format and the flashes of his agile, sophisticated mind. Still, modern readers of the Buch der Lieder may well wonder what captivated the imagination of readers for a century. They will find in it much that seems mannered and derivative—especially in the early sections—and throughout, they will encounter verses that are flawed and weak, glib and trivial, and many that seem unbearably sentimental. The thought of facing 240 poems of which all but a handful deal with unrequited love may lead us to ask with Heine, albeit in a different context than he had in mind:

Anfangs wollt ich fast verzagen,
Und ich glaubt, ich trüg es nie;
Und ich hab es doch getragen—
Aber fragt mich nur nicht, wie?¹
(1:38)

(At first I almost despaired and thought I could not bear it; yet I did—but do not ask me how.)

Yet when we pause to scrutinize these lines, glib and facile as they seem, like an entry for an album which, in fact, they originally were, we find that even they tell us something about Heine's craft. We note the easy melodious rhythm, the syntactic simplicity along with a talent for the mot juste: "verzagen" has a certain tentative, poetic flavor; "getragen" is more subtly effective than the anticipated "ertragen" would have been; we note the rising crescendo inherent in the second "und"; and, finally, the turn in the last line when the all-too-easy rhythmic flow is halted to introduce the suggestive question. Moreover, this poem achieves a certain poignancy, as the penultimate of nine songs and the only one compressed into one stanza within a cycle that tells the usual bittersweet tale. Heine had a knack for arranging his independently conceived poems so that they complemented and enhanced each other in content, rhythm, and mood, to form a larger whole.

Early in the Buch der Lieder, amid a mixed lot of clichéridden tales which for the most part team love with death, we encounter two ballads of extraordinary power. "Die Grenadiere" has become an international favorite in the setting of Robert Schumann in which the strains of the Marseillaise underscore the climactic ending. But the verses retain their impact even if one blocks out the memory of Schumann's tune. Two returning soldiers of Napoleon's defeated Grand Army reveal a simple, unconditional loyalty to their immortal hero, whose presence shines through with almost mythic force. It is noteworthy that here, in one of his first poems, Heine has combined the traditional genre with a topic of current interest: in 1813—Heine tells us that he wrote the ballad when he was sixteen—Napoleon was still very much in the news. While borrowing from tradition—echoes of the Scotch ballad "Edward" are clearly discernible²—Heine already shows his own touch. Such lines as "Der eine sprach: Wie weh wird mir/Wie brennt meine alte Wunde" ("One of them said: oh, what grief comes over me—how my old wound is burning") exemplify his penchant for presenting an abstract concept (grief) through concrete, sensual experience and his skill in making the experience palpable: here, for instance, the alliteration reinforces the semantic content of "weh" and "Wunde."

An even more dazzling example of Heine's early artistry is the ballad "Belsazar," which used to provide a trusty showpiece for recitalists in days long past. The biblical tale of the blasphemous challenge to Jehovah originally is told in the Book of David (V), but it is likely that Heine's immediate source of inspiration was Byron's version of "Belshazzar." Lord Byron, discoverer of new worlds of suffering, was Heine's admired model in many ways. Scene and mood are established with a few strokes, in a perfect blend of sound and sense, starkly contrasting the nocturnal stillness in the town below with the riotous goings-on in the king's palace. Note the verbal economy which is maintained throughout the poem:

Die Mitternacht zog näher schon;
In stiller Ruh' lag Babylon.

Nur oben in des Königs Schloss,
Da flackert's, da lärmt des Königs Tross.
(1:52)

(Midnight was slowly coming on;
In silent rest lay Babylon.

But above in the palace of the king,
There is the blaze of torches and the noise of the king's gang.)

After Belsazar's brazen challenge to Jehovah the tension mounts, beginning with the anxiety that suddenly grips the king himself, followed by the deafening silence of his men and finally, the spine-chilling writing on the wall. By the choice of words and the blend of rhythm, image, and sound the poet does not so much describe as physically reproduce the scene. The hand really appears and writes on the wall:

Doch kaum das grause Wort verklang,
Dem König ward's heimlich im Busen bang.

Das gellende Lachen verstummte zumai;
Es wurde leichenstill im Saal.

Und sieh! und sieh! an weisser Wand
Da kam's hervor wie Menschenhand;

Und schrieb, und schrieb an weisser Wand
Buchstaben von Feuer, und schrieb und schwand.
(1:53)

(No sooner was the gruesome word spoken
When the king's heart secretly filled with dread.

The shrill laughter suddenly stopped;
Deadly silence filled the hall.

Behold, behold! On the white wall
A thing appeared like a human hand;

And wrote and wrote on the white wall
Letters of fire, and wrote and was gone.)

In contrast to the biblical source as well as to Byron's poem, both of which dwell on the interpretation of the Mene Tekel, Heine invented his own ending, a "man-made" ending so to speak, leaving the reader to ponder its implications with regard to human relations: "Belsazar ward aber in selbiger Nacht / Von seinen Knechten umgebracht" ("Belsazar, however, in the selfsame night / was put to death by his own horde"). According to Heine's own recollection, this ballad was also written when he was not quite sixteen. And it may or may not be a coincidence that the topic anticipates Heine's later concerns and his announcement, in quite different tones, of the death of Jehovah.

With "Lyrisches Intermezzo" and "Heimkehr" we come to the poems with which Heine's name is most commonly identified. Here he developed some of his most characteristic features: his flair for epigrammatic brevity and suggestive terseness that leaves room for the reader's imagination, his vivid imagery, his musical phrasing, his unexpected ironic turns and brilliant quips. Among these poems we find many of Heine's most renowned gems. In all the world's literature, they have invited the greatest number of musical settings; of the approximately five thousand songs that have been made of Heine's poems, the majority by far is based on verses from the middle period of Buch der Lieder, pieces which he wrote when he was between twenty-four and twenty-seven years of age.

Heine never made a secret of the care and deliberation that went into his work. Yet the very charm of his poetic style lies in its seeming artlessness and easy grace. His language flows so naturally that the meaning rather than the binding meter appears to dictate the word order. Rhyme and meter do not seem strained or restraining but have a heightening effect. In his best pieces, each line is a perfect blend of content and expression, and with their melodious cadences the words themselves seem to make music. Take, for example, the poem which opens the cycle, "Intermezzo No. 1":

Im wunderschönen Monat Mai,
Als alle Knospen sprangen,
Da ist in meinem Herzen
Die Liebe aufgegangen.

Im wunderschönen Monat Mai,
Als alle Vögel sangen,
Da hab ich ihr gestanden
Mein Sehnen und Verlangen.
(1:72)

(In the lovely month of May
When all the buds were bursting.
'Twas then that in my heart
Love sprang up.

In the lovely month of May,
When all the birds were singing,
'Twas then that I confessed to her
My longing and my yearning.)

The attempt to render this little poem in English makes one realize just how meager is its intellectual content and, conversely, how intricate and magical (pronounce: untranslatable) the fusion of the various lyrical elements which produce its effect. It consists of two sparse quatrains of similar structure, each containing a statement which in turn is made up of two parts. The most obvious feature, shared by the two stanzas, is their first line which sounds like a mellifluous, perhaps somewhat old-fashioned formula—a refrain positioned at the beginning—suggesting the sweetness and recurrent renewal of spring. This seemingly swift-footed tetrameter with masculine ending is followed by three trimetric lines with feminine endings.³ The resulting effect is a sense of slowing down, of a waiting for something more significant to happen, and the content confirms it: springtime reigns not only outdoors but within the heart of the lyrical "I." The smooth-running phrase is filled with meaning, and the general, natural phenomenon is transformed into something unique and personal.

But, apart from rhythm and meter, how is this crescendo of feeling achieved? Each of the two stanzas contains a statement about two events which are linked by coincidence. But what the syntax presents as a temporal relationship turns out, by way of image, to be a relationship of another kind. "Als alle Knospen sprangen" ("when all the buds were bursting"): No translation can do justice to the effect of the explosive onomatopoeia (kn, sp, spr, ng) of this line, especially in contrast to the mellow and softly undulating one that preceded it: spring's awakening is physically converted into language. "Da ist in meinem Herzen die Liebe aufgegangen." "Aufgehen" is a rather commonplace word which is used in connection with many things, but "Liebe" ("love") is not one of them: it means "to open" as a door might open, or "to rise" as the sun or dough rises. And it means to come up, as a seedling comes up. Of course, herein lies the creative spark of the poem. Before our mental eye we see the human heart suddenly transform itself into a bud and simultaneously we recognize the heartlike quality of the bursting buds; human love becomes part of a natural, elementary force, participant in the universal rite of spring.

The second quatrain seems to run parallel to the first. Again the alluring phrase rolls prettily along, followed by "als alle Vögel sangen": in context, even this sturdy cliché exudes a childlike simplicity. Again the natural event and the human experience turn out to be not merely simultaneous events but of the same quality. Once again, what is implied is not so much a comparison as an equation. But this time, the equation does not quite balance. Something new is added which introduces the difference between singing creatures and the human lover. The subtle turn occurs with the reference to her ("ihr"). That it takes two to be in love is not much of a novelty. Novel, however, is the manner in which the reference is made, almost inadvertently, through the dative of a pronoun: not as "dir," which the verse would have equally allowed and which would have been the conventional way, but which also—and that is of course the crux of the matter—would have invited this "du" into the poem. No, the focus does not shift even for a moment from the lyrical "I" at its center. What the rhythms and imagery of these two stanzas have led up to, what moreover all the rhymes have prepared us for, is the lover's "Sehnen und Verlangen," which fills the last line and which seems to linger on after the poem has ended.

What began as a celebration of harmonious unity with nature has turned into its opposite, a feeling of loneliness and deprivation in the midst of a blossoming world. There is none of the exuberance that emanates from the passage in Goethe's famous "Mailied":

O Mädchen, Mädchen
Wie lieb ich dich
Wie blinkt dein Auge
Wie liebst du mich!

(Sweetheart, sweetheart, how I love you! How your eyes shine, how you love me!)

Note that Goethe's joyous declaration was ushered in by a stanza that in essence has the same semantic content as Heine's:

Es dringen Blüten
Aus jedem Zweig
Und tausend Stimmen
Aus dem Gesträuch

(Buds press forth from every branch and thousand voices [sing out] from the bush).

With Heine, love is never a partnership, never the shared, fulfilling and mutually enriching experience conveyed by Goethe, but it always results in an even deeper isolation. Heine's capacity for inventing different modes of presenting the lament of the aching heart seems inexhaustible. In one of the best known ("Lyrisches Intermezzo No. 33"), the lone pine tree in the barren north yearns for the palm in the distant, torrid south. Besides embodying, to the point of absurdity, hopeless love and extreme isolation, this poem also exemplifies Heine's view of the universe in which Eros reigns supreme:

Ein Fichtenbaum steht einsam
Im Norden auf kahler Höh'.
Ihn schläfert; mit weisser Decke
Umhüllen ihn Eis und Schnee.

Er träumt von einer Palme,
Die, fern im Morgenland,
Einsam und schweigend trauert
Auf brennender Felsenwand.
(1:85)

(A fir-tree stands lonely
Far north on barren height.
It drowses; ice and snow
Envelop it with a white blanket.

It dreams of a palm-tree
Which far away in the Orient
Mourns lonely and mute
On a sunparched cliff.)

Instead of the parodies which this pining pine tree and the silently mourning palm would seem to invite, numerous imitations have been stimulated by it and it provided the lyrics for no less than 121 musical settings.⁴ It is, by the way, one of the few poems which objectivizes the theme without the presence of the lyrical "I." This is also true in the case of the lotus flower in love with the moon ("Lyrisches Intermezzo No. 10"). Prompted by the information that the lotus closes its bloom in sunlight, Heine depicts her dreamily awaiting her lover the moon, being awakened by him, and revealing her "friendly" beauty to his sight, and finally, in an even more suggestive third stanza, glowing and trembling with desire. Such are the purely tonal effects of these lines that even a reader who knows no German will appreciate its sensuality:

Sie blüht und glüht und leuchtet,
Und starret stumm in die Höh';
Sie duftet und weinet und zittert
Vor Liebe und Liebesweh.
(1:76)

(She blooms and glows and shines
And silently gazes upward;
Full of fragrance, she weeps and trembles
With love and loving woe.)

To present the female as the loving partner is not exactly Heine's habit, and even in this instance the point of view is not really that of a woman: clearly the lotus flower, paragon of purity, modesty, and beauty yet exuding affectionate devotion and exotic sensuousness, is the product of a man's wishful thinking. For Heine, it is almost always the man who is endowed with a passionate heart, while the object of his longing and cause of his perennial grief and frustration is the distant, heartless, inscrutable beauty. She is a Sphinx, a vampire, a marble statue, a siren. She is the "Loreley."

The poem which popularly goes by this name, "No. 2" in the cycle "Heimkehr" (where it appears untitled), has, in the setting of Friedrich Silcher, achieved the status of a folksong comparable to Goethe's "Heidenröslein" (or in English to Robert Burns's "Auld lang syne"). It is so beloved and so much felt to be part of German folksong heritage that even in Hitler's Germany, when the name of the Jew Heine was unmentionable, the "Loreley" could not be left out of songbooks. It was accompanied by the note "author unknown." How Heine would have savored the irony of it all as well as the implicit compliment!

"Loreley," meaning "elfin rock," was the name associated with a cliff in the Rhine valley (between B ingen and Koblenz) in the vicinity of some hazardous reefs. Clemens Brentano had transformed it into "Lore Lay" and given the name to a woman whose tragic death near the treacherous rock he described in a ballad of that name. Other contemporary poets picked up the theme, among them Joseph von Eichendorff, who in "Waldgespräch" made her into a demonic wood nymph, and Count Otto Heinrich von Loeben, whose ballad "Der Lurleyfels" thematically is very similar to Heine's. Anyone interested in comparing two treatments of essentially the same subject, one eminently forgettable and the other a masterpiece, should read Count Loeben's "Der Lurleyfels" and compare it with Heine's poem, which runs:

Ich weiss nicht, was soll es bedeuten,
Dass ich so traurig bin;
Ein Märchen aus alten Zeiten,
Das kommt mir nicht aus dem Sinn.

Die Luft ist kühl und es dunkelt,
Und ruhig fliesst der Rhein;
Der Gipfel des Berges funkelt
Im Abendsonnenschein.

Die schönste Jungfrau sitzet
Dort oben wunderbar,
Ihr goldnes Geschmeide blitzet,
Sie kämmt ihr goldenes Haar.

Sie kämmt es mit goldenem Kamme,
Und singt ein Lied dabei;
Dat hat eine wundersame,
Gewaltige Melodei.

Den Schiffer im kleinen Schiffe
Ergreift es mit wildem Weh;
Er schaut nicht die Felsenriffe,
Er schaut nur hinauf in die Höh.

Ich glaube, die Wellen verschlingen
Am Ende Schiffer und Kahn;
Und das hat mit ihrem Singen
Die Loreley getan.
(1:103)

(I don't know what it means that I am so sad; I can't get out of my mind a tale from olden times. The air is cool and it is growing dark, and the Rhine flows peacefully; the peak of the mountain sparkles in the evening sunshine. The fairest maiden sits up there, wonderfully, her golden jewelry glitters, she combs her golden hair. She combs it with a golden comb, and sings a song the while; it has a wondrous, powerful melody. The boatman in his little boat is seized with wild woe; he does not see the rocky reefs, he only looks up to the heights. I believe the waves finally swallow the boatman and his boat; and that the Loreley has done with her singing.)

Even without the sentimental strains of Silcher's tune, the words seem to sing. The trimetric lines with crossed rhymes, feminine cadenzas alternating with masculine ones, make up six quatrains, each of which forms a closed unit—with the exception of the two middle ones which, not accidentally, belong together. Throughout, structural elements seem to fuse perfectly and naturally with image and sound, each stanza weaving its own particular spell. In the first it is mainly the broken syntactical awkwardness which reinforces the vague melancholy and groping uncertainty evoked by the haunting memory of "ein Märchen aus uralten Zeiten." Next, the view shifts from the subjective mood, the mindscape, to the external scene. Twilight is descending on the calmly flowing river. The uncertain rhythm gives way to smoothly flowing lines which, with their dark vowels, physically convey what the words say, finally coming to rest on the one majestic noun that almost takes up the whole last line of the stanza: "Abendsonnenschein." With this our gaze has lifted to perceive "die schönste Jungfrau." Having somehow materialized out of the glowing radiance, she unmistakably sits there, triply endowed with objects of gold as befits the fairytale figure, all three of them—jewels, hair, and comb—feminine attributes that are now brought into play in a stunningly simple, commonplace, and yet exquisitely feminine act: the lady combs her hair. The reiteration, "Sie kämmt es mit goldenem Kamme," leads into the next stanza and thus into the siren's song. Moreover, it underscores the repetitive quality of the stroking motion itself, with the hint of hypnotic fascination and sexual lure, at the same time connoting narcissistic aloofness. Similarly evocative are the allusions to the song itself. Presently the view is again lowered to the river, to show the devastating effect of it all on the man in the small boat who is now mentioned for the first time. The circle is finally completed with the return to the "I" with which it began: "Ich glaube die Wellen verschlingen." The initial question has been answered, and the haunting tale has been recreated, as it were, before our eyes. Only at the very end does the spell receive a name, and the untitled poem the title under which it was to be remembered, making Loreley an archetype of the forever elusive one whose beauty is matched by the coldness, if not the evil, within.

Break of Mood

Heine's talent for establishing mood with a few vivid strokes was matched only by his flair for breaking it. The sudden change of mood became a characteristic feature of the Buch der Lieder, known as Stimmungsbrechung. In its early form it had ensued from the dream situation, when fantasy inevitably ended with a return to reality. But from Lyrisches Intermezzo onward, this awakening takes on many guises that are symptomatic of that tension between nostalgia and disillusion, romantic sentiment and critical judgment, emotion and intellect which inform Heine's entire work and being. In effect it usually means that his sense of humor asserts itself. Readers come to expect the tongue-in-cheek punch lines and ironic reversals as quintessential Heine. It should be noted that Heine's irony does not fall into the category of "Romantic irony" associated with other poets of the era. Unlike the ironic flights of the Romantics which allow them to escape from reality, Heine's irony has precisely the opposite effect; it bursts the idealistic bubble by confrontation with reality:

Die Jahre kommen und gehen,
Geschlechter steigen ins Grab,
Doch nimmer vergeht die Liebe,
Die ich im Herzen hab.

Nur einmal noch möcht ich dich sehen,
Und sinken vor dir aufs Knie,
Und sterbend zu dir sprechen:
"Madame, ich liebe Sie!"
(1:117; "Die Heimkehr, No. 25")

(The years keep coming and going,
Generations pass to the grave,
But never the love will perish
Which in my heart I have.

Just once more I'd like to see you
And sink upon my knee
And speak to you while dying:
"Madame, ich liebe Sie.")

What prompts the reader's chuckle in the first place is of course the deflating last line with its startling shift—a linguistic shift that cannot be duplicated in English—from the intimate du of the first seven lines to the tamely formal address of "Madame" with Sie instead of the climax which we were led to expect. This shift in speech levels denotes the incongruity between the grandiloquently idealized "eternal" passion and the rather mannered and lean relationship on which it had fed, revealing a world of difference between illusion and reality. In presenting this love in such obviously hyperbolic terms, Heine exposes its hollow bathos and histrionic posturing. In mocking maudlin sentiment, he mocks not only contemporary poetic trends but also himself.

Ein Jüngling liebt ein Mädchen,
Die hat einen andern erwählt,
Der andre liebt eine andre,
Und hat sich mit dieser vermählt.

Das Mädchen heiratet aus Ärger
Den ersten besten Mann,
Der ihr in den Weg gelaufen;
Der Jüngling ist übel dran.

Es ist eine alte Geschichte,
Doch bleibt sie immer neu;
Und wem sie just passieret,
Dem bricht das Herz entzwei.
(1:88; "Lyrisches Intermezzo, No. 39")

(A young man loves a girl
Who has chosen another;
This other one loves another
And has married her.

The girl in vexation
Marries the first man
Who comes her way;
The young man is up against it.

It is an old story,
But it remains ever new;
And when it happens to someone
His heart breaks.)

The Stimmungsbrechung in this poem has a diametrically opposite effect. Here the unadorned summary of the plain facts, the cheerfully galloping meter, the colloquial idiom and carefree tone, all combine to make light of the old predicament—up to the last two lines, that is, when the right of feeling is reaffirmed.

Heine's touch can at times be so subtle that the ironic undertones may be—and indeed have been—overlooked. In pieces that nineteenth-century readers (including the composers) took at face value, modern readers can frequently savor an ironic intent and sophistication that eluded his contemporaries. To give just one example: I am convinced that poem "No. 14" in "Die Heimkehr," "Das Meer erglänzte weit hinaus" [The sea shone far into the distance], which sounds hopelessly maudlin when taken literally, actually contains a parodistic inversion of Goethe's ballad "Der Fischer" to which its second stanza unmistakably alludes. (Compare: "Der Nebel stieg, das Wasser schwoll"… "Aus deinen Augen, liebevoll", and the reference to a "Fischerhaus" in the beginning.) Both poems involve a man by the water's edge and a "damp lady" that draws him to his watery doom. But the fatal waters in the peculiarly Heinesque version flow from the lady's eyes. Does he mean to provide a more realistic interpretation of the liquid element's demonic power?

A return visit to Hamburg in 1823 inspired one of the key poems of the cycle "Die Heimkehr," about the man who visits the deserted house of his former beloved. It is a powerful poem about suffering revisited, embodied in his agonizing former self, the man shut out from love and home whom the lyrical "I" encounters under his sweetheart's window. The concept of the divided self does not, of course, originate with Heine. "Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach, in meiner Brust" ("Two souls, alas! dwell in my breast"), Goethe had said in Faust, and in the Romantic era the theme of the double was a familiar one, notably in the formulation of E. T. A. Hoffmann, from whom Heine may have borrowed the image of the ghostlike companion. But it was probably Heine's poem, unforgettably set to music by Franz Schubert, which gave the term "Doppelgänger" European currency.

Still ist die Nacht, es ruhen die Gassen,
In diesem Hause wohnte mein Schatz;
Sie hat schon längst die Stadt verlassen,
Doch steht noch das Haus auf demselben Platz.

Da steht auch ein Mensch und starrt in die Höhe,
Und ringt die Hände, vor Schmerzensgewalt;
Mir graust es, wenn ich sein Antlitz sehe—
Der Mond zeigt mir meine eigne Gestalt.

Du Doppelgänger! du bleicher Geselle!
Was äffst du nach mein Liebesleid,
Das mich gequält auf dieser Stelle,
So manche Nacht, in alter Zeit?
(1:115; "Die Heimkehr, No. 20")

(The night is still, the streets are at rest,
My darling used to live in this house;

She has long since left town,
But the house still stands in the same place.

A man stands there too and stares up,
And wrings his hands in agony;
I shudder when I see his face—
The moon shows me my own features.

You double-ganger! pale fellow!
Why do you ape my love-pain
Which tormented me in this very place
On so many a night in times gone by?)

"North Sea"

Reading Buch der Lieder today, one cannot help but marvel at this amazing phenomenon of thematic monotony—the critic Gerhard Storz calls it "monstrous"⁵—coupled with such a seemingly inexhaustible wealth of variations. Each poem a self-contained unit, almost always bound internally by finely wrought antithesis, yet all of them, by clever arrangement, bonded together through links of association or contrast. One of the early pieces is about Minnesänger, the medieval troubadours. Clearly, this is a label Heine wished to apply to himself—he actually did so in his letters—thus placing his preoccupation with Eros into an ancient and highly respected European tradition.⁶ Still, no one was more aware of the ridiculousness of the eternal love plaint than the poet himself.

"Teurer Freund! Was soll es nützen,
Stets das alte Lied zu leiern?
Willst du ewig brütend sitzen
Auf den alten Liebeseiern?

Ach! das ist ein ewig Gattern,
Aus den Schalen kriechen Küchlein,
Und sie piepsen und sie flattern,
Und du sperrst sie in ein Büchlein."
(1:127)

("Dear friend! What use is it
To grind out the same old tune?
Do you want to go on hatching
Those old love-eggs?

What a never ending clucking!
Out of the shells crawl little chicks
And they chirp and they flutter
And you lock them into a little book".)

Even within the Buch der Lieder one can discern Heine's progressive attempts to free himself from the shackles of the love theme and the format of the folksong. One new concern which begins to emerge in the longer poems that follow "Die Heimkehr"—a concern which will assume great prominence in his later opus—has to do with religion. "Donna Clara" is a biting satire on anti-Semitism. When his friends found this poem amusing, the poet expressed surprise: he, for once, was not amused. More or less oblique allusions to the topic of religion are also contained in "Götterdämmerung" [Twilight of the Gods], "Almansor," "Die Wallfahrt nach Kevlaar" [Pilgrimage to Kevlaar], and, most explicitly, "Bergidylle" [Mountain Idyll].

The breakthrough in content and form which Heine evidently sought was achieved in a cycle of twenty-two poems entitled "Die Nordsee" [North Sea] which makes up the last part of Buch der Lieder. They are rhapsodic hymns that were inspired by the poet's encounters with the sea. (Beginning in 1823, as already mentioned, he vacationed on the isle of Norderney to cure his headaches.) But the thematic focus on the seascape was novel not only for Heine: it is said that he "discovered" the sea for German literature, much as Albrecht Haller had discovered the majesty of the Alps.

The experience of the ocean's elemental power, grandeur, and beauty seems to have opened fresh perspectives and vistas and unleashed an exuberant surge of feeling in Heine. Others made use of free verse before him. Klopstock's famed odes had been succeeded (and surpassed) by the hymnic masterpieces of the young Goethe, and in Heine's own time Ludwig Tieck brought free verse into vogue. Yet once again Heine develops a distinctive note. In his inimitable way he uses the freedom of free verse to create rhythmic and tonal effects that sensually convey the ebb and flow, the roar and music of the surf. In marked contrast to the simple idiom of his folksongs, he now produces high-flown rhetoric and compounds descriptive epithets with a Homeric ring, in line with the mythological topics which he introduces. It is mythology with a difference, however, as Heine presents his own irreverent interpretation of the familiar classical figures. His deities of antiquity do not stand for eternal and universal absolutes—quite the opposite. He shows them as exiles, deposed and replaced by Christian gods (the plural is his), and he means to infer the relative and changing validity of all religious "truths." One of the key poems which makes this point explicit is entitled "Die Götter Griechenlands" [The Gods of Greece] and uses Schiller's poem of the same title as point of reference and departure.

The hymnic tone does not preclude the use of Stimmungsbrechung or the treatment of humorous and even burlesque topics. In fact, just as some of Heine's seemingly simple songs achieve their particular piquancy by sophisticated nuances, so the exalted format when superimposed on commonplace topics produces hilarious effects, which were not appreciated by all of Heine's readers.

Throughout these poems, one can hear and feel the sea, not by itself but always in relation to the reflecting, questing man at the center whose loneliness and vulnerability (and sometimes fatuity) it throws into relief:

     Fragen

Am Meer, am wüsten, nächtlichen Meer
Steht ein Jüngling-Mann,
Die Brust voll Wehmut, das Haupt voll Zweifel,
Und mit düstern Lippen fragt er die Wogen:
"O löst mir das Rätsel des Lebens,

Das qualvoll uralte Rätsel,
Worüber schon manche Häupter gegrübelt,
Häupter in Hieroglyphenmützen,
Häupter in Turban und schwarzem Barett,
Perückenhäupter und tausend andre
Arme, schwitzende Menschenhäupter—
Sagt mir, was bedeuter der Mensch?
Woher ist er kommen? Wo geht er hin?
Wer wohnt dort oben auf goldenen Sternen?"

Es murmeln die Wogen ihr ew'ges Gemurmel,
Es wehet der Wind, es fliehen die Woklen,
Es blinken die Sterne, gleichgültig und kalt,
Und ein Narr wartet auf Antwort.
(1:207)

     Questions

The sea, the midnight, the desolate sea
Where a young man stands,
His head full of doubts, his breast of sorrows,
And with bitter lips he questions the ocean:

"O solve me the riddle of being,
The painful, primordial riddle,
Whereover so many heads have been cudgelled,
Heads in hieroglyphic bonnets,
Heads in turbans and scullcaps of black,
And heads in perukes, a thousand other
Heads of poor men who drudged and sweated—
Tell me, what purpose has man?
From whence does he come here? And whither goes?
Who lives above there, beyond where the stars shine?"

The billows are murmuring their unending murmur,
The breezes are blowing, the cloudbanks are flying,
The stars are blinking, indifferent and cold,
And a fool awaits his answer.⁷

In 1827, Heine was glad to have found in Hoffmann und Campe a publisher who was willing to bring out in one book all the poems that had been published here and there, in the volume Gedichte, in journals, as a "lyrical interlude" between the tragedies William Ratcliff and Almansor (which, for all the energy, enthusiasm, and hope he invested in them, never did catch on), or in the two volumes of Reisebilder [Travel Sketches]. And Heine must have actually meant it when he supposed that his poems "would now sail into the sea of oblivion,"⁸ for he was willing to forego any honorarium or royalties (Campe, in fact, paid him fifty Louis d'or by canceling a debt). He lived to experience his world fame as the poet of the Buch der Lieder, with translations into many languages. It was the first German book to be translated into Japanese—comparable to Werther's translation into Chinese, a parallel which did not escape Heine's notice. But at the time of its publication, he believed that he had done with lyrical poetry and that his strength and his mission lay elsewhere. He had established himself as a successful, albeit controversial, author of brilliant, scintillating, challenging prose.

Notes

¹ In the context of Buch der Lieder, this poem is a love plaint. But it was originally written to commiserate with Heine's Düsseldorf school friend Gustav Friedrich von Unzer, who had been badly wounded at Waterloo and returned to the Lycée while still on crutches. See Düsseldorfer Heine Ausgabe, vol. 1, pt. 2, p. 686.

² "Und was soll werden dein Weib und Kind? Edward, Edward … Die Welt ist gross, lass sie betteln drin, Mutter, Mutter!" Johann Gottfried Herder, Stimmen der Völker in Liedern (Leipzig: Reclam, 1968).

³ This is the only instance of such "irregularity" in "Lyrisches Intermezzo," where tetrametric lines usually alternate with trimetric ones.

⁴Düsseldorfer Heine Ausgabe, vol. 1, pt. 2, pp. 812-14.

⁵ Gerhard Storz, Heinrich Heines Lyrische Dichtung, (Stuttgart: Klett, 1971), pp. 40, 48.

⁶ Manfred Windfuhr, "Heine und der Petrarkismus," in Heinrich Heine, ed. Helmut Koopmann (Darmstadt 1975), pp. 207-31.

⁷ Transi. by Howard Mumford Jones, in Heine's Poem "The North Sea" (Chicago, 1916).

⁸ Hirth, 1:329, October 30, 1827.