Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/111

 Weigand 105 which Heine found so full of suggestion, so capable of taking on the greatest variety of meanings, so satisfying as a means to express love, admiration, pity, indifference, hatred, contempt-the whole gamut of feelings-always mixed with a varying dose of ridicule With particular fondness he applied the term 'Narr' to himself' His sense of the ridiculous was always lurking in the background when the introspective mood was upon him. Already in the second of his letters to his friend Christian Sethe he exclaims- 'Werdetwie die Kindlein,' lange wahnte ich dies zu verstehen o ich narrischer Narr. Kindlein glauben" (Oct. 27, 1816). Nothing could be further from the truth, however, than to suppose that Heine felt himself lowered in his own estimation whenever he chose to apply the epithet ' Narr ' to himself. Usually there is a touch of raillery at his own foibles or of sentimental pity for himself implied in such an apostrophe. There are moments, too, when he regards himself as simply crazy. Fre- quently, however, the word 'Narr' is seasoned with a flavor of that vanity which always came to the fore in Heine when he became conscious of the chasm separating his life from that of the ordinary mortal. In such cases the epithet 'Narr' is an ironical expression of the stupid world's dull lack of understanding for what is exceptional. Often, of course, he identifies himself directly with the court fool of the middle ages, proud of his fool's cap and its effect on the public; but at the same time he feels this buffoonery to be a mere mask put on to hide the most intense suffering from the public gaze. Heine's love for the word 'Narr' extends to the attributes 'narrisch' and 'Narrheit' as well. At times he means to stamp something as utterly ridiculous by applying these words. But just as often anything peculiar, original, eccentric, bizarre, or even tragic anything defying the optimism of conventional logic has the light of aesthetic interest flashed upon it by the epithets 'narrisch' or 'Narrheit' uttered with a peculiar intonation. This use of Heine's is most pregnant with meaning when we find an mean things all the way from intelligent, clever, rational, reasonable, wise, sage, sane, to worldly-wise, opportunistic, unimaginative, wooden. As there is no one single word in English which could suggest all these shadings of mean- ing, I have refrained from translating them at all in the majority of cases, so as to preserve the humor resulting from the play on words.