New-York tribune., 1893-11-26
HEINE MEMORABILIA.


WoRDs Edited by Gusiaye :D Ksrpe1es @ az and
octave. Pp vi. s75. New.Yo Henry Holt
Company 1893.
| This amorphous compilation Is at once good
and bad. amusing and irritating a thing of
| shreds and patches and a tolerably satisfactory
monograph. 1t is bad because 1t has the dis
jointed, unsymmetrical character offensive to
| all sound conceptions Of literary art In bio
| graphical writing. and because 1t introduces
| Heine's poems too copiously. wrenching them
from the setting in which they belong. and fore
| Ing their vagrant music to play the part Of
photographed confessions. 1t Is good be-
cause the life of the poet and journalist is told
| in his own words-than which there could not
be any more interesting-and because the
| dthyrambic nature Of his genius was suited TO
a mode of self-revelation which discards routine
and convention. and follows its own sweet will
Side by side with a, protest against the rreg-
ularity Of the narrative pieced out by
Herr Karpeles there goes positive enjoyment of
its spiritual harmony with the wayward tenn
per Of it's subject.
Heine was born yrlst. He has left on rec
ord, in a memorable passage. his desire to be
recognized brave soldier in humanity's
war Of liberation. Posterity, awarding him the
Iccts wreath. has been slow to crown him with
the sterner laurel which ne chiefly craved
Even the authority of Matthew Arnold, who In
a famous essay. has generously accepted
Heines claims emancipation. has not
served to consecrate the German poet as a hero
of reform 1t is question OF temperament OF
Unborn taste. He protested that he would rather
be orator. stirring the great heart Of the
people with impassioned words OF liberty. than
another Petrarch, going to the capito! for his
coronation; but his postscript to this confession
sums up the last impulses of his nature.
Fancy my horror" he says. when I entered
the Peoples Union to find every savior
Of his country with pipe between his Jaws
and the whole room 30 filed with the smoke
OF bad tobacco that my lungs felt choked and
1t would have been utterly impossible for me
to say word cannot bear tobacco smoke.
and saw that In German revolution the part
OF braggadocio in the style Of Borne and his
followers would never do for ! also OBJ
served that the path Of German tribune is
not strewed with roses-certany mot with
sweet roses. For one thing. you must shake
hands with all your hearers. your dear COM
panions and brothers, Borne may have spoken |
metaphoricaly when he declared that II a king |
should take him by the hand he would put 1t |
in the fire to cleanse IT, but. say. in figurative
sense. but quite literally that II the people took
me by the hand ] should wash it at once" |
democratic In HIS heart and In his imagination, |
Heine was. In temperament and taste. not only |
al aristocrat, but an epicurean, and there is |
not 30 much moral fermentation In his prose
as 'here Is quverng of aesthetic scnsibili-
ues' lie was not dllletante by any means. yet
ms satire was never more instinct with feeling
'nah when 1t was levelled at some intellectual
oo'ec' ana transfxed, not a tyrant. but a
uore' ne hears a noise in his entry and says
- souhos "as II one Of Klopstock's odes had
'a''e" oo"nstsis" The Walls Of his wrath