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PARTISAN REVIEW
This is precisely why Heine is so often misunderstood. He was very
decided that the people deserves its right and that it should fight for this if
necessary. (His conception of this right was very broad, not res tricted to
the right to life, but extended even to the right to a good life.) But this did
not mean that the masses were ready to take over society. Since they were
not educated, they were "easily manipulated," as words shouted into a for–
est send back an echo. The people is "without character," today
proclaiming "Hosanna" and tomorrow, "Crucify
him!"
Hence, for Heine,
the need for "great individuals' strength of mind" to steer the people. Since
he recognized no such guiding force in the Revolution of 1848 (when
forces "without the slightest knowledge of political navigation" were at
the helm), he dismissed the events as anarchical. This was the classical atti–
tude that we know from Goethe: better injustice than disorder. He was
taken by the Jacobins, who had in their arsenal figures like Robespierre and
Saint-Just who could give the signal to the masses when the time came.
But the '48ers had no such "worldly saviors," only a military alliance
between the masses and a few intellectual spokesmen as in 1789. God
knows he was no aristocrat, but in good Saint-Simonian fashion support–
ed a meritocracy where the demands of the people were entrusted to the
most gifted and industrious, instead of to the "middling exponents of the
will of the Party," or those who chummed up with popular whim. The
will to dominate was less hateful to him than mediocrity and incompe–
tence. Hence he managed to praise an (albeit brilliant) opponent, the
notorious reactionary who forbade the publication of Heine's works
although (or perhaps because) he knew them well and appreciated them:
"Even in the turmoil of his heart, Metternich has never played the dema–
gogue. It was always clear that he was acting magnificently within the
framework of a system, driven neither by love nor by mean-spiritedness."
Heine saw no larger system, only base tendencies. If there was anything
he detested, it was what he called a "coterie economy" (what we today
would call a lobby economy). What the poet expected of a good leader was
that he transcend party politics and bring the demands of the majority into
harmony with the course of history. For Heine, a universalist was required,
someone capable of moving from the "synthetic generality"
to
an "overview
of the whole." There is nothing surprising in this, since in his view being
consists of the exercise of art and power, as well as the coordination of the
world's manifold contents in a highly objective vision. Here, too, there is
room for a touch of charisma: "Gods are distinguished by their gaze, which
is unswerving, like that of Goethe and Napoleon. It does not waver."
Heine's admiration for Napoleon is well known. One tends to empha–
size how powerful and durable it was, lasting throughout the poet's life, but
the quotation most often repeated is one that dates from his youth, on the
