BOOKS
The works are often consulted, but only to squeeze out the last drop
of personal revelation. Thus Untermeyer finds Heine's mistress in his
Shakespearean criticism (263) and his. first
love
in
Die Lorelei
(117)-
even though this ballad is scarcely more than a paraphrase of a poem by
Graf Loeben. Attempts to reach a wider orientation prove embarrassing.
It is a nice question whether the statement that Wordsworth and Cole-
ridge were at their height in 1827 (156) proceeds from a lack of historical
background or of critical insight. The very names of Shakespeare's plays,
and of the kings of England as well, suffer a sea-change (264). There
are footnotes on Jewish cooking (l35f.), but no explanation of Saint-
Simonism. There are pages on venereal disease, and a single paragraph
on those brilliant polemical achievements, the
Romantische Schule
and
Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland
(225). There are lavish intro-
ductions to Jewish student friends, but great teachers like Wolf and
Bopp, who helped to shape the modern mind, are dismissed with wise-
cracks (70). Heine-to labor the point no longer - has fallen into the
hands of a philistine.
And he is shorn of his distinction. The shabby story is there-the
debts and diseases, the malice and vanity, the shrill audacity and nervous
compliance. Virtually a blackmailer, conceivably an
agent provocateur,
a
verruchter Abenteurer
Gentz called him, and he was a connoisseur of
such matters. Yet Heine remains an exciting figure because his adventures
took place in the realm of ideas, a realm which Untermeyer's ignorance
of the landmarks prevents him from entering. Hence he exhibits Heine's
wounds, without giving us any notion of the battles in which they were
gained. He is at home with Heine's weaknesses. In terms of
kosher
domesticity and
boulevard
lubricity he can explain everything except
what is important, what differentiates Heine from any cloak-and-suit
dealer. The paradox is that Heine, as an intellectual adventurer and
literary technician, is constantly contradicting these initial factors of
environment and temperament. This volume can account for the sordid
compromises of his life, but not for the flashing contradictions of his art.
Nor can the other volume, since Untermeyer's versions of Heine's
poems betray the same trivializing
T endem:..
Take, for example, the lines
on Germany,
I ch hatte einst ein schones Vaterland.
By the expedient of
twisting a neuter subject to the second person, Un term eyer insinuates a
femme fatale
into the second stanza, and touching reminiscence becomes
erotic fantasy. Uniformly the fatherland is soft-pedalled and the flesh-
pots are played up. Hyperion's sensuality becomes a satyr's leer. One
celebration of feminine charms, beginning
Welch ein zierlich Ebenmass,
terminates with Aphrodite rising from the sea,
Anmutbliihend,
schonheitstrahlend,
Und, versteht sich, wohlgewaschen.
The last word is translated "well-developed," having evidently been con-
fused with
wohlgewachsen.
Untermeyer can be forgiven for his Freudian
lapse, but not for missing the point. For sheer palpable grossness, how-
51
