HEIDI URBAHN DE JAUREGUI
The Freedom of a Poetic Mind
Wir kiimpfen nicht fur die Menschenrechte des
Volks, sondern fur die Gottesrechte des Menschen.
Our struggle is not for the human rights
of the nation, but for the divine rights of
humankind.
Heine,
Uber Deutschland
"Ich bin ein deutscher Dichter, / Bekannt im deutschen Land [I am a
German poet, and known throughout the land]." This resonates with all the
self-confidence of a boy whistling to keep his fear at bay in the woods.
Heine's "lch aber war nicht geladen [But I was not invited]" sounds rather
more like himself. On this point he was right, for quite a long time: myoid
copy of the
Geschichte der Deutschen National-Litteratur
of 1901, which devotes
entire pages to the most bizarrely obscure names, grants Heine only three
disapproving sentences. He was not invited to the
Nationalspektakel
that
developed beginning in the first years of the nineteenth century. It is partly
his Jewish ancestry that accounts for his clear-sighted and combative oeuvre,
one that never succumbs to the pathetic tendencies of the age. He himself
seems to attribute the greatest importance to his warrior-like mode of
expression: "I have never set much store in poetic fame, or whether people
praise or criticize my work; this concerns me little. But set a sword on my
coffin, for I have been a fearless soldier in the struggle for the liberation of
humankind." The first sentence, at least, seems something of an exaggera–
tion. No true poet undertakes his ceaseless efforts without an eye to fame .
Heine does not so much reject fame as emphasize the primacy of the fight–
er within himself. The above sentences can be understood only wi th the
addition of this explanation from the poet: "My poetry arose from the very
same thought as my political and philosophical writings."
Like any great poetic
oeuvre,
Heine's contains a strong inward-looking
element, not conforming to the world but rather drawing the world towards
itself with a powerful hand. The tenor of his thought and feeling, indepen–
dently establishing their voice in defiance of the anti-Napoleonic,
anti-French Zeitgeist, is already clearly established in the boy-poet of "The
Grenadiers," a ballad inspired by Napoleon.
