From the Memoirs of Mr. Schnabelewopsky, Esq

by Heinrich Heine

 

Harry Heine (1797 – 1856) was born when Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was the undisputed doyen of German literature. Once he and Heine even met. Heine says, he was walking from Jena to Weimar, Goethe’s domicile, and on the way plucked a few plums from trees along the road. Eventually he encountered the great man and the first thing that came out of his mouth was, how sweet these plums had been. “There I had thought all afternoon what I should say to Goethe and how to make an impression, and all that came out was, that the plums are sweet” (Heine, The School of the Romantics).

At that time Heine had already a reputation. His collection of poems was extremely popular. So popular in fact, that when a century later the Nazis tried to purge Jewish authors from German literature, they didn’t remove the poems themselves but changed the name of the author. Heinrich Heine became Mr. Anonymous. So it is no surprise when after Goethe’s death many people thought, including Heine himself, that he had become – to borrow T.S. Eliot’s phrase – the “king of the cats.” Which he was, he had tons of talent to burn, despite the fact that there were others, like Clemens von Brentano (1778 – 1837) who squandered their talent by the shiploads. Heine said about him: “Have you heard of the tiny Chinese princess who passes all day in her pagoda, tearing to bits precious sheets of silk with her long fingernails?”

Heine was a journalist and showman who never missed a scandal; he would resort to personal libel and knew how to ruin a reputation. Who would still read the poet von Platen or Heine’s compatriot and competitor in exile, Karl Ludwig Börne (1786 – 1837), if not for Heine’s brilliantly performed assassinations. Not everybody approved, but Heine said to his critic: “You may be right, but isn’t it a piece of superb writing?” Forced to leave the country, Heine became very “famillionaire” with Baron Rothschild, and later married a Belgian woman, Mathilda, the companion of his final years.

In the terminology of the time, Heine was an “assimilated Jew.” He had taken the baptism and changed his first name to “Heinrich.” Yet he was quite capable to see Christianity for what it is: "I am speaking of the religion” he said, “whose earliest dogmas contain a condemnation of the flesh, and which not merely grants the spirit superiority over the flesh but also deliberately mortifies the flesh in order to glorify the spirit. I am speaking of the religion whose unnatural mission actually introduced sin and hypocrisy into the world, since just because of the condemnation of the flesh the most innocent pleasures of the senses became a sin and just because of the impossibility of our being wholly spirit hypocrisy inevitably developed. I am speaking of the religion, which also, due to the doctrine of the evil of earthly passions and the doctrine that imposed a dog-like humility and an angelic patience, became the most reliable support of tyranny.”

"I do not know whether the melancholy flower that we call passion flower in Germany also bears this name in France and whether that mystical origin is likewise attributed to it by folk legend. It is a strange flower of unpleasing color, in whose chalice can be seen depicted the instruments of torture used at the Crucifixion of Christ, namely hammer, tongs, nails, etc., a flower that is by no means ugly, only eerie, indeed the sight of which even arouses in us an uncanny pleasure like the convulsively sweet sensations which result even from suffering itself. In this respect the flower would be the most fitting symbol for Christianity, whose most gruesome attraction consists in this very ecstasy of suffering."

He concluded: "People have now recognized the nature of this religion, they will no longer let themselves be fooled by promissory notes on Heaven” (Heinrich Heine, The School of the Romantics). It turned out to be not only a statement of unwarranted optimism but also an expression of untested bravado. When the spirochetes began attacking his spinal chord, Heine confessed his apostasy from atheism: “Yes, I have returned to God, like the prodigal son, after I have farmed the pigs with the students of Hegel for such a long time. Was it misery that made me turning back? Perhaps it was a less miserable reason. A sudden fit of heavenly nostalgia drove me through forests and ravines and over the steepest mountain paths of dialectic philosophy. Along the way I met the god of the pantheists, but he was of no use to me. This poor and dream stricken being is meshed in and interwoven with the world, almost imprisoned in its fabric, and it yawns at you, helpless and with no will of its own.”

“To have willpower you need to be a person, and in order to exercise it, you need to have your elbows free. Yet if you ask for a god who is able to help – and isn’t that all that really matters – it must be a real person, who is endowed with his holy attributes of being preternatural, all merciful, all wise, and full of justice. Immortality of the soul and the afterlife then go into the bargain as a bonus, just as the butcher is shoving a shank into the basket free of charge, as a token of satisfaction with his customer. Such a bone, in the language of French cuisine, is called “la rejouissance,” and they cook some excellent broths with it, which to the poor patient, worn down and ailing, is very nutritious and invigorating. That I don’t reject such rejouissance and rather enjoy it with all my heart should be acceptable for every man with a bone of compassion in him” (Heinrich Heine, Romanzero – Preface)

Matilda, his wife, was a very down-to-earth woman; when Heine suffered a stroke she screamed at him, “Henry, Henry, don’t you dare dying on me. Today my parrot died, and if you go, what shall become of me?” Heine died in exile and is buried in Paris.

michael sympson  

Chapter IX

When the pot-roast was particularly bad, we turned to debating the existence of God. The good Lord always was with the majority. Only three at the table held atheistic views; yet they as well listened to reason if we had at least a good cheese for dessert. The most zealous theist was little Simon, and whenever he debated with the tall Vanpitter the existence of God, he sometimes became extremely agitated, paced up and down the room, and couldn’t help shouting: “By God, this cannot be permitted!” The tall Vanpitter, a gaunt man from Friesland, whose soul drifted as quietly as the water in a Dutch canal and whose words pulled along as steady as a river barge, acquired his arguments from the warehouses of German philosophy, which at the time was all the rage in Leiden.

He mocked the narrow-minded people that would attributed to the good Lord an existence of his own, he even accused them of blasphemy, insofar as they depict God as full of wisdom, justice, love and similar features of human nature, which doesn’t suit him at all, since these characteristics, in a manner of speaking, are the negation of human failings and so had been conceived as the opposite to human stupidity, injustice and hatred. Yet when Vanpitter developed his own pantheistic ideas, the fat Fichtean, a certain Driksen from Utrecht, stepped up against him, and managed to give his somewhat vague and all pervasive God, who therefore is still existing in space and time, a run for his money; he even asserted, it would be already blasphemy to permit the term “existence of God” as a form of expression, since “existing” is a concept that demands a certain space, in short something substantial. In fact it would be blasphemy to say about God “he is;” because even in its purest form, “existence” cannot be imagined outside of the boundaries of the sensual world; so if one wishes to think about God one must take away all semblance of substance and one should not consider him as a form extended in space. Instead one should think of an order of events; God would not be a being, but pure activity, the underpinning principle of a metaphysical world-order. These arguments, however, utterly enraged the little Simon every single time, and pacing up and down the room, he screamed ever more frantically and louder: “Oh God! By God, this is not permissible; oh God!” I think for the honor of God he would have pummeled the fat Fichtean, had his little arms not been too thin.

There were moments he actually jumped at him; in which case the fat man took hold of little Simon’s arms, and keeping him steady, quietly explained his system without taking his pipe from the mouth, blowing at his face tobacco smoke and his rarefied arguments, so that the little fellow almost choked from smoke and anger, and imploring for help, whimpered in a flagging voice: “Oh God! Oh God!” But God never came to his aid, although it was a fight for his own cause. Yet despite this divine indifference and in spite of this almost human ingratitude of God, little Simon remained the staunch champion of theism, and this, I believe, from an inborn inclination. Because his forefathers once had been God’s chosen people, a people who God had graced with his personal affection, and who therefore have preserved a certain attachment to the good Lord.

The Jews have always been the most obedient theists, especially those, who, like little Simon, are born in the free city of Frankfurt. In political matters they may feel as republican as they please, even roll in the mire with the French Sans-culottes; yet when religious ideas come into play, they remain the subservient retainers of old Jehovah, this ancient fetish, although he doesn’t want to be seen in their company anymore and has undergone a facelift to become the spirit of pure divinity.

I do believe, this spirit of pure divinity, the latest parvenu in heaven, who is now coming down on us so full of morality, cosmopolitanism and universal wisdom, may actually hedge his secret misgivings against the poor Jews who still recall the crudity of his previous manifestation and continue to commemorate in their synagogues him and his obscure tribal origin. Maybe the old gentleman no longer wants to know that his origin was in Palestine and that he was the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and that his name had been Jehovah.

© – 4/4/2009 – translated by michael sympson, 1,850 words, all rights reserved