Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/125

 Weigand 119 All of Heine's allusions to his learned friend's knowledge of the Hegelian philosophy are flavored with a touch of humor. One feels that Heine constantly had a vision of Moser as reading his immature remarks about Hegel with a tolerant smile. When Heine, about to enroll as a student in Gottingen for the second time, requests Moser to get him a certificate of lectures attended at Berlin, and mentions the names of the professors whose signa- tures are to be obtained, he adds three exclamation points after the name of Hegel, just as any student might do who regards it as something of a joke that he should be given credit for once having imbibed the utterances of some great academic celebrity whose discourse he had followed with average undergraduate intelli- gence (Dec. 1, 1823). On another occasion, on realizing that Moser's sensitiveness had been offended by one of his remarks, Heine exclaims: "For heaven's sake, a man who reads and under- stands Hegel and Valmiki in the original can't understand one of my ordinary short-cuts of speech. For God's sake, how must the rest of the people misunderstand me, when Moser, a pupil of Fried- lander and contemporary of Gans . . ., my bosom friend, the philosophical part of myself . . . misunderstands me" (Jan. 9, 1824). Announcing to Moser his plan to take a vacation trip to Berlin, he complains of headaches which compel him to avoid all kinds of nervous excitement and adds: "I beg you in advance, don't let me hear a single Hegelian word at our meeting; take lessons of Auerbach (a Jewish Rationalist) so that you can tell me lots of stale and watery stuff (March 19, 1824). I have purposely gone into all this detail to show how intensely Heine knew his Berlin friends, and especially Moser, to be engrossed with the study of Hegel's teachings. The above quotations also show Heine's double attitude of profound respect and trifling mockery toward this philosophy and its champions. Granting now, in a tentative way, the identification of 'die Vernlinftigen' with the Hegelians, the "new associates" Heine speaks of correspond to the circle of his Berlin friends. Then his confession, "ich selbst bin zwar keiner von den Verniinftigen, aber ich habe mich zu dieser Partei geschlagen, " also corresponds to the facts, insofar as Heine, tho not a member of the Hegelian group himself, sympathized with their aims and their outlook upon life. Then we understand, too, that secret tittering of his associates who