Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 09.djvu/783

* HEINE. 728 H£IN£. that he found small inspiriilion (o patriotism in the thirty years that folloxveil Waterloo. While iirepariiij; liiiiiself to become a nierehant and learning English, French, and Italian, he began to write poetry under tlie inspiration of a child-love for 'Veronica,' probably also the 'Reseda' of early poems. He conceived a pass- ing affection, too, for an executioner's daugh- ter, .losepha, the subject of several poems, of his "Dream Pictures," and of the most exquisite passage in his memoirs. She was. he says, his 'love's purgatory' before he fell into love's hell in his unrequited affection for his cousin Amalie at Hamburg, whither he went in 1816. He tried to set up a business there in 1818, but he liked neither the business nor the city. For Amalie, under the names Ottilie, Maria, Clara. Evelina, Agnes, Juliana, he voiced his passion in many beautiful songs, and it has since been made the subject of two novels, Zianirtza's Heinrich Heine der Liederdirhter (1864). and Dietz's Heinrich Heincs erste Liebe (1870). He failed in business, and at the e.- pense of his uncle and Ainalie's father, who aided him generously through life, he went in 1819 to study law at Bonn, where he came under the influence of A. W. Schlegel, and the Romantic School, in so far as it stood for the re- awakening of the poetic spirit of the !Middle Ages. He shared with them also a gift of irony, though in him this sprang from the incompatibil- ity of two elements in his nature, a Greek joy of life inherited from his mother, and fostered by the influence of Goethe, and a congenital Hebrew earnestness. There was never harmony between these antinomies of his character, and from their jarring came a mocking spirit that he possessed in higher degree than any writer of the century. At Bonn tuider this new inlhience Heine wrote more lyrics and had liegun a tra- gedy. Alman.ior, when he left Bonn for Got- tingen, and 'oeing soon suspended from the xuii- versity there for participation in a frustrated duel he went to Berlin, where he came under the philosophic influence of Hegel and associated with Grabbe, Immermann, Willibald Alexis, Gans, Moser, Zunz, Chamisso, Fouque, and par- ticularly with Varnhagen and his Rahel, who led him to a juster appreciation of Goethe, though he never became one of his unqualified admirers. In Berlin, Heine's genius found warm appre- ciation. He essayed journalism, and in 18'22 published a volume of poems (Gedichte), which for delicacy, fancy, conciseness, originality, and depth of lyric expression had no equal in Ger- many. A second volume (18'23) contained the Ljirisches Intermez'o, which served to carry off two tragedies. Ahiurnfior and RntcUff, his sole ii'amatie efforts. The Jnlcrmezzo is more bitter, reckless, sensual, than the Poems, but contains some of his most perfect lyrics. At home. Heine tells us, his mother read it and diil not like it; his sister tolerated it; his brothers did not un- derstand it, and his father did not read it at all. In 18'23 a visit to the North Sea inspired Heim- kehr, which with the later North Sea cycle (Sordsee) are Germany's best poems of the sea, worthy to rank with the best of Byron or Shelley. The year 1824 brought him to Giittingen again, and in June, 182.'5. he submitted to baptism that he might obtain an advocate's license. "T assure you," he writes to a friend, "if the law had allowed stealing silver spoons instead, I .should not have been baptized." This dishonor, forced on him bj- llie State, makes a melancholy close to a brilliant university career. During the second stay at Giittingen Heine made the tour of the Harz Mountains and wrote the narzreise (1826), the best known of his prose works. After taking las degree he revisited the North Sea and wrote Sorderncij, incorporated with the Har.rreise in the Heischilder ( I'icturcs of Travel), which later embraced also Das ISuch Lb Oraiid and Die liiider von Lucca. Such light. easy, sparkling prose, such graceful, daring, bubbling Avit, had never yet been know'u in Germany, and the lieisehildcr remains an unapproached model. Heine in this field has never been equaled save by himself, and he has not always maintained the level of the Harzreise. The liuch Le Oraiid, writ- ten in 1820, was revolutionary in tendency and in its admiration for Napoleon. Heine thought it safer to abide its publication in England (1827). It was enthusiastically received and generally prohibited by the police. It was grace- ful, grotesque, cynical, naive; it had a brilliancy, a vigor, a keenness of scorn, a fire of enthusiasm that have seldom been surpassed. Heine made but a short stay in England, which was not con- genial to him. He said, "The ocean would have swallowed it long ago if he had not been afraid it would make him seasick." He admired, however, the liberty of England. In September, 1827, he was again in Hamburg, seeing through the press his collected lyrics, the now famous Biich der Licder. Thence he went to Munich, tried journalism, lio[}ed in vain for a Government post, and in July, 1828, went disappointed to Italy, a journey that he describes after his man- ner in Die Iliider ron Lueca — brilliant, witty, entertaining, immoral, coarse, revolutionary, and atheistic. After this Prussia was closed to him ; influential men had been made his mortal enemies wantonly, and in the case of the poet Platen Heine's enmity assumed an iitterly indefensible shape. Having been recalled to Hamburg by his father's death, Heine went in 1829 to Hel- goland, where he gave himself up for two months to the fascination of the sea. He returned to his family in Hamburg famous throughout Ger- many as the aiithor of the Reiscbilder. the third volume of which appeared early in 18.30. but as nuieh feared as admired, and fiercely attacked on the part of those whom his reckless satire had wounded. Prussia, where the government had prohibited the circulation of the third vol- ume of the Reisebilder, was now closed to him, and the thought of a professorship, which he had long cherished, had to be abandoned. He turned his thoughts to Paris. The news of the French Revolution of 1830 reac'ned him In Hel- goland, where he spent the summer of that year, and filled him with enthusiasm. May, 1831, saw Heine in Paris, which remained his home till death. Heine's first years in Paris were busied with journalism and dreary feuds with German Lib- erals. He soon found himself at home in the French capital, and enjoyed the society of Madame Rccamier, Balzac, Dumas, George Sand. Berangcir, Thiers.Chopan, Liszt. Berlioz, and many lesser celebrities. He considered it his mission to draw Germany and France closer together, and wrote a .series of papers on Frcm'li condi- tions for the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung, which