HEINE.
Becomes Interested in India through Schlegel—Influence of India's Literature on his Poetry—Interest in the Persian Poets—Persian Influence on Heine—His Attitude toward the Oriental Movement.
"Was das Sanskrit-Studium selbst betrifft, so wird über den Nutzen desselben die Zeit entscheiden. Portugiesen, Holländer und Engländer haben lange Zeit jahraus, jahrein auf ihren grossen Schiffen die Schätze Indiens nach Hause geschleppt; wir Deutsche hatten immer das Zusehen. Aber die geistigen Schätze Indiens sollen uns nicht entgehen. Schlegel, Bopp, Humboldt, Frank u. s. w. sind unsere jetzigen Ostindienfahrer; Bonn und München werden gute Faktoreien sein."
With these words Heine sent forth his "Sonettenkranz" to A.W. von Schlegel in 1821.[192] These sonnets show what a deep impression the personality and lectures of the famous romanticist made on him while he was a student at Bonn, in 1819 and 1820. Schlegel had just then been appointed to the professorship of Literature at the newly created university, and to his lectures Heine owed the interest for India which manifests itself in many of his poems, and which continued even in later years when his relations to his former teacher had undergone a complete change.
He never undertook the study of Sanskrit. His interest in India was purely poetic. "Aber ich stamme aus Hindostan, und daher fühle ich mich so wohl in den breiten Sangeswäldern Valmikis, die Heldenlieder des göttlichen Ramo bewegen mein Herz wie ein bekanntes Weh, aus den Blumenliedern Kalidasas blühen mir hervor die süssesten Erinnerungen" (Ideen, vol. v. p. 115)—these words, with some allowance perhaps for the manner of the satirist, may well be taken to characterize the poet's attitude towards India. Instinctively he appropriated to himself the most beautiful characteristics of Sanskrit poetry, its tender love for the objects of nature, for flowers and animals and the similes and metaphors inspired thereby, and he invests them with all the grace and charm peculiar to his muse. Some of his finest verses owe their inspiration to the lotus; and in that famous poem "Die Lotosblume ängstigt,"—so beautifully set to music by Schumann—the favorite flower of India's poets may be said to have found its aesthetic apotheosis. As is well known, there are two kinds of lotuses, the one opening its leaves to the sun (Skt. padma, paṅkaja), the other to the moon (Skt. kumuda, kāirava). Both kinds are mentioned in Śakuntalā (Act. V. Sc. 4, ed. Kale, Bombay, 1898, p. 141): kumudānyēva śaśāṅkaḥ savitā bhōdhayati paṅkajānyēva "the moon wakes only the night lotuses, the sun only the day lotuses."[193] It is the former kind, the nymphaea esculenta, of which Heine sings, and his conception of the moon as its lover is distinctively Indic and constantly recurring in Sanskrit literature. Thus at the beginning of the first book of the Hitōpadēśa the moon is called the lordly bridegroom of the lotuses.[194]
The splendor of an Indic landscape haunts the imagination of the poet. On the wings of song he will carry his love to the banks of the Ganges (vol. i. p. 98), to that moonlit garden where the lotus-flowers await their sister, where the violets peep at the stars, the roses whisper their perfumed tales into each other's ears and the gazelles listen, while the waves of the sacred river make sweet music. And again in a series of sonnets addressed to Friederike (Neue Ged. vol. ii. p. 65) he invites her to come with him to India, to its palm-trees, its ambra-blossoms and lotus-flowers, to see the gazelles leaping on the banks of the Ganges, and the peacocks displaying their gaudy plumage, to hear Kōkila singing his impassioned lay. He sees Kāma in the features of his beloved, and Vāsanta hovering on her lips; her smile moves the Gandharvas in their golden, sunny halls to song.
Allusions to episodes from Sanskrit literature are not infrequent in Heine's writings. The famous struggle between King Viśvāmitra with the sage Vasiṣṭha for example is mockingly referred to in two stanzas (vol. i. p. 146).[195] His own efforts to win the favor of a certain Emma (Neue Ged. ii. 54) the poet likens to the great act of penance by which King Bhagīratha brought down the Ganges from heaven.[196]
Heine's prose-writings also furnish abundant proofs of his interest in and acquaintance with Sanskrit literature. In the opening chapters of the Buch Le Grand (c. 4, vol. v. p. 114) he brings before us another vision of tropical Indic splendor. In his sketches from Italy (Reiseb. ii. vol. vi. p. 137) he draws a parallel between the priesthood of Italy and that of India, which is anything but flattering to either. It is also not correct; he notices, to be sure, that in the Sanskrit drama (of which he knows only Śakuntalā and Mṛcchakaṭikā) the rôle of buffoon is assigned invariably to a Brahman, but he is ignorant of the origin of this singular custom.[197] In his essay on the Romantic School, when speaking of Goethe's godlike repose, he introduces by way of illustration the well-known episode from the Nala-story where Damayantī distinguishes her lover from the gods who had assumed his form by the blinking of his eyes (vol. ix. p. 52). In the same essay (ibid. pp. 49, 50), he bestows enthusiastic praise on Goethe's Divan, and this brings us to the question of Persian influence upon Heine.