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Heinrich Heine, aetat 56, loquitur:
CAN that be you, La Mouche? Wait till I lift | |
| This palsied eyelid and make sure…. Ah, true. | |
| Come in, dear fly, and pardon my delay | |
| In thus existing; I can promise you | |
| Next time you come you’ll find no dying poet! | 5 |
| Without sufficient spleen to see me through, | |
| The joke becomes too tedious a jest. | |
| I am afraid my mind is dull today; | |
| I have that—something—heavier on my chest, | |
| And then, you see, I’ve been exchanging thoughts | 10 |
| With Doctor Franz. He talked of Kant and Hegel | |
| As though he’d nursed them both through whooping-cough; | |
| And, as he left, he let his finger shake | |
| Too playfully, as though to say, “Now off | |
| With that long face—you’ve years and years to live.” | 15 |
| I think he thinks so. But, for Heaven’s sake, | |
| Don’t credit it—and never tell Mathilde. | |
| Poor dear, she has enough to bear already … | |
| This was a month! During my lonely weeks | |
| One person actually climbed the stairs | 20 |
| To seek a cripple. It was Berlioz— | |
| But Berlioz always was original. | |
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| Come here, my lotus-flower. It is best | |
| I drop the mask today; the half-cracked shield | |
| Of mockery calls for younger hands to wield. | 25 |
| Laugh—or I’ll hug it closer to my breast! | |
| So … I can be as mawkish as I choose | |
| And give my thoughts an airing, let them loose | |
| For one last rambling stroll before—Now look! | |
| Why tears?—you never heard me say “the end”. | 30 |
| Before … before I clap them in a book | |
| And so get rid of them once and for all. | |
| This is their holiday—we’ll let them run— | |
| Some have escaped already. There goes one … | |
| What, I have often mused, did Goethe mean? | 35 |
| So many years ago, at Weimar, Goethe said, | |
| “Heine has all the poet’s gifts but love.” | |
| Good God!—but that is all I ever had. | |
| More than enough!—so much of love to give | |
| That no one gave me any in return. | 40 |
| And so I flashed and snapped in my own fires | |
| Until I stood, with nothing left to burn, | |
| A twisted trunk, in chilly isolation. | |
| Ein Fichtenbaum steht einsam—you recall? | |
| I was that northern tree and, in the South, | 45 |
| Amalia…. So I turned to scornful cries, | |
| Hot iron songs to save the rest of me: | |
| Plunging the brand in my own misery, | |
| Crouching behind my pointed wall of words— | |
| Ramparts I built of moons and loreleys, | 50 |
| Enchanted roses, sphinxes, love-sick birds, | |
| Giants, dead lads who left their graves to dance, | |
| Fairies and phoenixes and friendly gods— | |
| A curious frieze, half renaissance, half Greek, | |
| Behind which, in revulsion from romance, | 55 |
| I lay and laughed—and wept—till I was weak. | |
| Words were my shelter, words my one escape, | |
| Words were my weapons against everything. | |
| Was I not once the son of Revolution?— | |
| Give me the lyre, I said, and let me sing | 60 |
| My song of battle: words like flaming stars | |
| Shot down with power to burn the palaces; | |
| Words like bright javelins to fly with fierce | |
| Hate of the oily philistines, and glide | |
| Through all the seven heavens till they pierce | 65 |
| The pious hypocrites who dare to creep | |
| Into the Holy Places. “Then,” I cried, | |
| “I am a fire to rend and roar and leap; | |
| I am all joy and song, all sword and flame!” | |
| H’m—you observe me passionate. I aim | 70 |
| To curb these wild emotions lest they soar | |
| Or drive against my will. (So I have said | |
| These many years—and still they are not tame.) | |
| Scraps of a song keep rumbling in my head … | |
| Listen—you never heard me sing before. | 75 |
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| When a false world betrays your trust | |
| And stamps upon your fire, | |
| When what seemed blood is only rust, | |
| Take up the lyre! | |
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| How quickly the heroic mood | 80 |
| Responds to its own ringing; | |
| The scornful heart, the angry blood | |
| Leap upward, singing! | |
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| Ah, that was how it used to be. But now, | |
| Du schoner Todesengel, it is odd | 85 |
| How more than calm I am. Franz said he knew | |
| It was religion, and it is, perhaps; | |
| Religion—or morphine—or poultices—God knows. | |
| I sometimes have a sentimental lapse | |
| And long for saviors and a physical God. | 90 |
| When health is all used up, when money goes, | |
| When courage cracks and leaves a shattered will, | |
| Christianity begins. For a sick Jew | |
| It is a very good religion…. Still | |
| I fear that I shall die as I have lived, | 95 |
| A long-nosed heathen playing with his scars; | |
| A pagan killed by Weltschmerz…. I remember, | |
| Once when I stood with Hegel at a window, | |
| I, being full of bubbling youth and coffee, | |
| Spoke in symbolic tropes about the stars. | 100 |
| Something I said about “those high | |
| Abodes of the blest” provoked his temper. | |
| “Abodes? the stars?”—he froze me with a sneer; | |
| “A light eruption on the firmament.” | |
| “But,” cried romantic I, “is there no sphere | 105 |
| Where virtue is rewarded when we die?” | |
| And Hegel mocked: “A very pleasant whim— | |
| So you demand a bonus since you spent | |
| One lifetime and refrained from poisoning | |
| Your testy grandmother!”… How much of him | 110 |
| Remains in me—even when I am caught | |
| In dreams of death and immortality! | |
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| To be eternal—what a brilliant thought! | |
| It must have been conceived and coddled first | |
| By some old shopkeeper in Nuremberg, | 115 |
| His slippers warm, his children amply nursed, | |
| Who, with his lighted meerschaum in his hand, | |
| His nightcap on his head, one summer night | |
| Sat drowsing at his door; and mused: “How grand | |
| If all of this could last beyond a doubt— | 120 |
| This placid moon, this plump gemüthlichkeit; | |
| Pipe, breath and summer never going out— | |
| To vegetate through all eternity….” | |
| But no such everlastingness for me!— | |
| God, if he can, keep me from such a blight. | 125 |
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| Death, it is but the long cool night, | |
| And life’s a sad and sultry day. | |
| It darkens; I grow sleepy; | |
| I am weary of the light. | |
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| Over my bed a strange tree gleams, | 130 |
| And there a nightingale is loud | |
| She sings of love, love only … | |
| I hear it, even in dreams. | |
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| My Mouche, the other day as I lay here, | |
| Slightly propped up upon this mattress-grave | 135 |
| In which I’ve been interred these few eight years, | |
| I saw a dog, a little pampered slave, | |
| Running about and barking. I would have given | |
| Heaven could I have been that dog; to thrive | |
| Like him, so senseless—and so much alive! | 140 |
| And once I called myself a blithe Hellene, | |
| Who am too much in love with life to live. | |
| The shrug is pure Hebraic … for what I’ve been, | |
| A lenient Lord will tax me—and forgive. | |
| Dieu me pardonnera—c’est son métier. | 145 |
| But this is jesting. There are other scandals | |
| You haven’t heard…. Can it be dusk so soon?— | |
| Or is this deeper darkness…? Is that you, | |
| Mother?—how did you come? And are those candles | |
| There on that tree whose golden arms are filled?— | 150 |
| Or are they birds whose white notes glimmer through | |
| The seven branches now that all is stilled? | |
| What—Friday night again and all my songs | |
| Forgotten? Wait … I still can sing— | |
| Sh’ma Yisroel Adonai Elohenu, | 155 |
Adonai Echod …
Mouche—Mathilde … | |
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