HEIDI URBAHN DE JAUREGUI
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Get much to add to this. / But one without, will one day have / this lit–
tle wrested from him."
It
is odd that he forgot in practice what he clearly
knew in the poem: he was a frequent speculator in the stock market, with
very little success, lacking the means to get involved on a large scale.
In Paris, too, Heine found ample material to study the dominance of
the bourgeoisie. Louis-Philippe was not the people's choice but that of "a
small coterie of financiers ." In Heine's view, it was the bourgeoisie, not the
people, who started the Revolution of 1789 and put an end to that of
1830; it was this against which the people was now reacting.
Such was the course of history. At no time would he have wanted to
turn it back (as did Balzac, who fled backwards from bourgeois rule into
the nostalgia of the
ancien regime) .
How could the faithful Jacobin have dis–
avowed the Great French Revolution, whose heir was Napoleon? Like
Goethe and Hegel, he had no illusions about history's present progress
through a phase of bourgeois rule. Napoleon made this path more hope–
ful
in his eyes, and this is why he seized on any solution that seemed
similar, however distantly, to Napoleon's, even clinging ultimately to
Louis-Philippe. Heine takes special note of Napoleon's predictions for the
world, which would become, in Heine's formulation, "either a Russian–
style universal monarchy or an American-style republic." What has here
seemed to some a hauntingly accurate prediction is actually simply the
announced al ternative between a dark restoration and bourgeois rule.
Heine's comment: "What a prospect! To die in the best case of boredom
as a republican! My poor grandchildren!"
When we die, it is probably not of boredom; Heine was referring to
that prosaic pragmatism and short-term opportunism that sooner or later
kill any efforts that aim to soar. In such an environment there is no place
for "beauty and genius." He could only portray this predicted time as bleak
and hostile to art. As for boredom, time would indeed weigh heavily upon
a mind rich with ideas in a period unfavorable to great notions. Heine was
accustomed to consider history and the present that derives from it in a sig–
nificant and universal manner; this has often been overlooked, since he
generally couched his thoughtful visions in a conversational tone, thereby
also making them more cheerful. "A new song, a better song / My friends,
I now compose for you!" Because of this cheerfulness, there was reluctance
for a long time to acknowledge the poet's seriousness at such moments. Any
contraband packed in with Heine's verse and prose is still not clear to many
of his admiring readers. Poems like: "There grows enough bread on this
earth / For all of humankind, / Rose and myrtle, beauty, passion, /
Including even peas" are taken as utopian poetic lullabies "To lull to sleep,
when it cries / that giant lout, the people." These verses contradict Heine's
fear (mentioned above) that the only thing that can be shared is shortage.
