Heinrich Heine [pp. 23-31]

APPLETONS' JO URNAL.
have been one of the first to excoriate such mewling
passion. He retained the verses, and wisely; for
they were excellent in art, however callow as to inspiration.
Berlin took all the nonsense out of Heine, and
a good deal more. It so rudely pulled up many of
his sensibilities by the roots that his faith and much
of his affection and sympathy were torn up with
them. There his disposition to satire and insouciance was clinched, and his prodigious audacity confirmed. All the fresh hue of his early life faded, and
his constitutional irritability crystallized into sardonic humor. The lack of appreciation of his poems
rankled in his breast; he could not forget it; it
soured such sweetness as his youth had retained.
He resolved to relinquish literature and pursue law.
He returned to Gbttingen, studied hard, and took
his degree when he was twenty-five. About the
same time he abjured Judaism, and is reported-there
are different stories about this-to have been received into the Lutheran Church at Heiligenstadt.
Whether he was or not, it made no change in his
belief. All his life long, as has been said, he resembled the Israelite Sheridan speaks of, who, having left his creed without adopting any other, rested
like the blank leaves between the Old and New
Testament. Heine was a born pagan without the
pagan's superstition; he had no theology whatever;
he did not want nor need any. All faiths were alike
to him, and all equally false. He was religious in
his irreligiousness. His belief in total disbelief was
positive. He felt assured in his own mind that all
theologies were the invention of man, and that they
were invented for the purpose of fettering mankind,
who were better and freer without any such trammels. He had faith in morals, humanity, and the
world; these were all-sufficient, as he conceived, for
the advancement and happiness of the race. But
religious systems, as such, were as external to him,
and as unnatural, as Buddhism is, or would be, to a
newly-converted Baptist.
Strange as this may seem to some persons, it was
exactly so; Heine, in his complete no-faith, as the
Germans would put it, was absolutely and invincibly
sincere. In his later years he was suspected of having abandoned infidelity; and there was some reason for the suspicion, since he had the Bible read to
him, and took great pleasure in it. But the pleasure
was purely literary, and his love of paradox and
mystification, as seen in his works, he preserved in
his conversation, and thereby induced some of his
friends to think he had become evangelical. But
they who knew him best hold the very opposite, and
their opinion is borne out by multiplied evidence in
his writings and in his life, even to the very last,
both of which prove that he had no actual belief in
God, except in the broadest pantheistic sense.
After receiving his degree, Heine went to Hamburg, and set up law-practice; but he had only moderate success, for his mind was not, and never could
be, in it. His rich uncle, who now saw that literature was his nephew's vocation, gave his consent to
his pursuing it, and assisted him handsomely. At
this time-he was twenty-six-he published the first
part (" Harzreise ") of his" Travel-Pictures "(" Reise bilder "), which did not attract any particular atten tion, and excited new rage in him at what he termed
the superlative stupidity of the public. In a year
and a half he went to Munich to edit with Dr. Lin der the Politische Annalen, hoping to be better ap preciated there. But as the Roman Catholic city of
Southern Germany evinced no more fondness for his
productions than the Protestant cities of Northern
Germany, he determined to make a journey through
Italy and England. He made it, and was delighted
with the former picturesque country. Returning, he
issued the second and third volumes of the "Reise bilder" (the fourth was issued some time after), and
they had immediate success. He had made his as sertion good; they proved to be his "Childe Hlar old." Henceforth he had no cause to complain.
Germany accepted him at something like his own
estimate. His work was prose and poetry combined,
embracing graphic and striking impressions of his
travel, and his reflections thereon, eloquent, charm ing, often pathetic, but mingled with the caustic irony
and biting satire that are inseparable from his com positions. Very few books have had a more cordial
and enthusiastic reception in Germany. Three
months after the volumes had been issued, Hein rich Heine's name was known from the Pregel to
the Rhine, and mentioned with the highest praise.
This was a great consolation to him, especially after
the deep wound to his pride caused by the almost
total neglect of two dramas published not long be fore. They were "Almansor" and "Radcliff," and
were really of mediocre merit, and had no dramatic
interest. Their author had cherished great hopes
of them; but he came to regard them as the public
had regarded them-a rare thing with him concern ing literature or anything else-and made no further
attempts upon the theatre.
On the grand wave of general favor he was car ried back to Berlin, anxious to triumph where he had
appeared to fail. His self-love was abundantly grati fied; but his success rendered him more haughty
and insolent than usual to his social superiors, and
the number of his dissensions was increased. It was
there that he had his notorious quarrel with Platen,
who had provoked him by a sharp satire. Heine's
retort was the quintessence of wormwood; it was
terrible, withering, annihilating. It showed the im mense power of his sarcasm, his genius for stabbing
with poisoned stilettos. Though Platen was the orig inal offender, it is hard to avoid pitying him-long
since dead-even now, when we read over that savage castigation. Heine, seeing that his time had
come, made another collection of his poems, adding thereto those which had appeared in his first vol ume, but carefully pruning them of much that had
given umbrage, and published the whole with the
title, "The Book of Songs" (" Das Buch der Lieder "). They were eagerly and widely read, particularly by the students of the universities, and all who
regarded themselves as the representatives of Young
I Germany. They were learned by heart, and sung
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