The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1882-09-15
THE people of Maine believe in the courts
aud propose to sustain them.
Henry Haina.

acterlStlc llI0 he nau resolved, aIter a lew
mercantile ventures, complicated with many
follies, to study law, and, with his inevitable
inconsistency, applied himself to the study of
the Nibelungenlied and the Eddas He car
rien to Bonn the then much coveted imputa-
ton of Byronism; but he was still pattern of
abstinence and calm to the unruly youth of
the time. He eschewed beer and tobacco,
without whose united aid, it was reigiously be-
lieved by German students of a vanished type,
the seal of romantic inspiration could not be
broken. To all except few friends he was
impassably reserved Though sharing with
his coevals the revolutionary notions which
then filed the soul of young Germany, his ex-
cessive sensitiveness restrained him from frank
interchange of ideas. He sought to hide his
native weakness of tender feeling under
brusque and repulsing manner. He was one
of those" writes his friend Schlegel. "who are
ashamed of having wept, because there are
some men who, although the source of their
tears be ever SO tender or noble, yet cannot
weep without fearfully distorting their fea-
tnres.' His sternness was relaxed only in
repartees, which were usually of pitiless sar-
casm. Bonn did not pleasantly impress this
Incorporating youth, nor was the sedate
university loath to lose him when, in a fit of
spleen, he went to Gottingen From Coffin
gen he was rusticated in consequence of
barely prevented duel He appeared forth
with at the university of Berlin, but not until
his sombre nature had an access of bitterness
in an unfortunate love affair at Hamburg.
After great waste of time, he returned to Got
tingep, and having first matriculated at the
baptismal font (the religious disabilities pre-
vailing in Germany during Heine's youth de-
barred him, as of the Hebrew faith, from the
learned professions). he finally received the
doctors degree in law. Thus equipped, Heine
faced the world-young, with frail consttu-
ton, poverty stricken, and pensioned on the
bounties of an uncle who never hesitated to
rebuke fault which, however natural In
poet, was lntolerable in dependent. What
wonder that he became, to use Matthew Ar
nold's adroit epithet, an 'acrid dissolvent' OF
the elaboration of customs that fingered as
froth upon the stirring ferment OF ideas into
which he was born. Hardly had he become
known as poet when he was exiled on ac-
count of the political tendency of his prose
writings, and without we'll knowing why, he
found himself disappointed, baf1sd, harassed
by griefs, at war with friends and surround
ings; all this Joined with briefly intermittent
bodily torture.
Impelled by the magnetism which constantly
drew him toward whatever he could ridicule,
he repaired to Paris and there plunged into
a society which readily accepted dexterlty
with irony in offset of social disabilities. He
first charmed the ladies of the salons, and then
made the rest of the world laugh at them in
his letters from the French capital. Bankers
and ballet dancers, actors, poets, politicians,
came in for heavy share OF his bitter 1un.
Disease gained upon him the while, and para
lytic stroke in 1913, heralded the close of his
life. Thenceforward till 1856 he passed his ex-
istence ION a couch, with the use of his limbs
gone; wasted SO that woman could carry
him; the sight of one eye lost, that of the other
greatly dimmed, and requiring, that 1t might
be exercised, to have the palsied lid lifted
and held up by the finger; all this, and suffer
ing besides this, at short intervals, paroxysms
of nervous agony" 81 have said," continues
Matthew Arnold, "that he was not pre-emi-
nestly brave; but in the astonishing force OF
spirit with which he retained his activity of
mind, even his gayety, amid all this suffering,
and went on composing with undimlnshed
fire to the last, he was truly brave In the
lately published memoirs of Miss Williams
Wynn, Nine. Joubert tells of his desperate
clinging to life and society when he knew that
the chill of death was already upon him. Ii
was his fancy to be carried to the Louvre and
placed sitting in front of the Venus of Melos,
and he would remain in silent meditation for
hours before the statue. Here, as over anoth
or statue, he fell into rhapsody, but garnished
now, as he nearly always garnished lovely
things, with mockery. "Why," he afterward
exclaimed why did l not die then and
pdocC0
A few hours before death friend asked him
how he stood with his maker. "Have no fear
for me-" he answered in French; "God will
pardon me; that is his part"
The "Florentine Nights" small book OF
fantastic stuff, is, in my opinion, the most
characteristic production OF Heine. 1t Is
least in q subjective sense, autObiographlc, and
blending as it does the qualities OF his other
works. prose and verse; reveals the 1dylllc and
the misanthropc side of his nature. Pagan
failing Garman mysticism, morbid senSlDIIltY.
are interviewer in this marvellous imaginative
fabric which, look at it as we will, reveals the
sheen of the ideal shot through the duller
threads of the real. The hero, Macmillan,
vino is CLEARLY Heine, relates singular expert
cnces to young lady slowly dying of consump-
ton, to whom he is bound by some inexplica-
BILE tie. He tells how, when boy, he fell in
love with the beautiful statue OF goddess
which he had discovered in a ruined
garden, Shining forth from the high
grass like Grecian revelation" He
cannot sleep, and steals out in the moon
light to kiss its lips He fancies her limbs
locked in deep slumber, and steps lightly, lest
he awaken her. "My heart beat as if were
about to commit murder, and at last kissed
the lovely goddess. Never since than have
kissed with such ardor, such tenderness, such
passionate despair" But the worlds wonder
hour was long since gone, and his kiss could
not, as Pygmalion's, touch the marble to refu-
ent love- Macmillan next tells OF his passion
conceived for the Madonna of a painting seen
at Cologne and of his falling in love with
maiden, seven years after her death. The
chief interest of the narrative centers, howev-
er, about Mile Laurence, being made up of
Willis Bassarid, and Bayadere, whose fate is
linked for time with some travelling mounte-
banks the mysterious stout woman, the
learned dog and the dwarf whose triangle tin
kes forever in our ears. The coloring OF the
story is sensuously unearthly, as of disembod-
led Giorgione Heine's Muse is ever playing
fantasy, with the supernatural for theme and
human passions for variations. His personal
and artistic analogue is to be found only in an
other art-in Chopin, the soul of whose music,
the ftful melancholy, the melody, the fire, sthe
dreamy passion, are transmitted in Heine
After Thackeray, the deadliest enemy of |
shams in this age was Heine; but, unlike |
Thackeray his mind was weighted with an in
soluble sediment of cynicism. He believed |
that his only defense against the insolenee of |
wealth and power was satire and death. "Hs |
dread of soft tender emotion causes him to ac- |
company his noblest utterances with flavor of |
blasphemy; to array his cupids in cap and |
bells; to endow every one OF his graces with a |
club foot. His praise turns to irony; |
his censure to humor; every collocatlon OF !
things arouses his wit; love is superseded by |
scorn; raptRous delight by serpent's stlngs;
and all this, too, OF songs that hlnt Oh the
inmost soul-life OF their author. 1t is IN his
prose, however, that the caustic and venomous |
turn is most necessarily shown. In the mood |
of Hamlet, he dropped upon all things and per-
sons with his acid irony, and watched tne reac-
tons with the eye of speculative kobold. 10 |
the authors of his exile he flung back this |
tsunt: "How terrible is exile! Among its |
Saddest annoyances is the fact that it forces |
one into bad company, which cannot be avoid
ed unless one is willing to expose him
self to another coalition of rogues at |
home" Some one called him an insane
visionary, and he replied: ''Perhaps you are
right and am only Don Quixote whose
head has become added by reading all sorts of
I L. n Hry,. l..
my ideas are quite different from the knight
of La Mancha. lie tried to restore the declin-
ing era OF chayaly; /, ON the contrary, tried TO
annihilate every Vestige that remained to re-
mind us OF 1t, He mistood windmills |
for giants, while in the giants Of to-day | can
see naught but windmills. He mistook leath-
ern wine-pouches for powerful magicians,
while TO me our modern magicians are
naught but wind-pouches. He mlstook beg
CARS inns for castles, mule-drivers for knights,
while look upon our castles as beg
gars' lodging-places, our knights as mule-driV-
ers While he mistook puppet snow
for Of ofa 7 Of Ia