52
PARTISAN REVIEW
ever, the first stanza of the
Schopfungslieder
is to be recommended:
Hierauf schuf er auch die Ochsen,
Aus dem Schweisse seiner Stirne.
Here, where the Old Testament would be really relevant, Untermeyer
has a surprise for us:
Thereupon he fashioned cattle
From his excess perspiration.
As a suggested exercise, compare the translation of
Geh nicht durch die
bose Strasse
with the original; see how Untermeyer-unaware that Heine
is addressing himself-starts off on the wrong tack, is forced to transpose
sexes throughout, and achieves nonsense.
It is hardest to translate the poet who, like Heine, uses the simplest
language. To satisfy the exigencies of rhyme and meter, and of meaning
wherever possible, sooner or later requires recourse to the far-fetched
and the artificial. Translation has no power over Heine's crucial quality,
his natural diction, which is notably more idiomatic within the attenuated
compass of the songs than in the free verse of
Die Nordsee.
Untermeyer's
English versions have one of the virtues of
Lieder:
they can be sung.
Somehow or other he has coaxed, cajoled, cabined, cribbed, confined,
and crammed them into the original measures. Often he has thrown
everything else overboard, in the attempt to capture some slight nuance.
It is a Pyrrhic victory to have retained the rhymes of
Die Erde war so
lange gei;:.ig,
when it has cost him the whole effect of the poem, the
contrast between
Madame
and
Leibchen,
gallicized, gentility of style
and downright emotion of content.
It would have been fairer to Heine and himself if, instead of concen·
trating on youthfully romantic lyrics, he had rendered some of the more
loosely-knit topical
pieces-Deutschland,
Atta Troll,
or more of the mock
heroics and grim realities of
Romanzero.
The encyclopaedic doggerel of
]ehuda ben Halevy
is all there, except for a final fragment that bore
traces of Heine's antisemitism. But, since Heine the critic and satirist
is neglected by Untermeyer's canon, we have no grounds for considering
his development and maturity, or for reconsidering his place in litera·
ture. So we are left with the Jewish Nightingale of DUsseldorf, that
agonizing, attitudinizing, impossible young man who had such sleight.
of-hand facility in appropriating a vocabulary of symbols and a repertory
of gestures for his own selfish purposes. Easy and melodious we find him,
but full of conceits and echoes. For freshness and intensity he cannot
stand up beside Goethe at his straightforward
best-Freudvoll
und leid·
voll
or
Wer nie sein Brot mit T ranen ass.
It is significant that Heine's
greatest popularity has been outside Germany, just as his disciple, A.
E.
Housman, appeals chiefly to those who have no particular interest in
poetry.
Seeking comparisons, we get a sharper impression by looking ahead
to Baudelaire than by harking back to the inevitable Bums. In both
Heine and Baudelaire we encounter a poetry of streets and attics, an
