Weinsberg, 7, 15, ’27.
am Tage euerer nächtlichen
Erscheinung.
I once came myself in personal contact with Uhland, the head of the Swabian school of poetry, when he was already an old man. He came to Leipzig when I was a student there, and stayed at the house of Professor Haupt, the famous Latin and German scholar. Uhland was a very shy and retiring man, and had declined every kind of public reception. However, the young students would not be gainsayed, and after assembling in the afternoon to consider what should be done to show their respect to the German poet and the liberal German politician, they marched off, some 600 or 800 of them, drew up in front of the house where they knew Uhland was staying, and sang some of Uhland’s songs. At last Uhland, a little, old, wrinkled man, appeared at the window, and expected evidently that some one should address him. But no arrangements had been made, and no one ventured to speak, fearing that at the same time two or three others might step forward to address the old poet. After waiting a considerable time, the position became so trying that I could bear it no longer; I stepped forward, and in a few words told Uhland how he was loved by us as a poet, as a scholar, and as a fearless defender of the rights of the people, and how proud we were to have him amongst us. We then waited to hear him speak, but he could not overcome his shyness, and sent a message to ask some of us to come into his room to shake hands with him. Even then he could say but very little, but when he knew that I was the son of his old friend, Wilhelm Müller, he was pleased. To me it was like a vision of a bygone age when I looked the old poet in the eyes, and whenever I hear his song, “Es zogen drei Burschen wohl über den Rhein,” or when I read his beautiful ballads, I see the silent poet looking at me with his kind eyes, unable to use meaningless words, but simply saying “Thank you.”
Another poet who was a friend and admirer of my father, and whom I saw likewise like a vision only passing before me, was Heinrich Heine. He was younger than my father (1799–1856), and evidently looked up to him as his master. “I love no lyric poet,” he wrote, “excepting Goethe, so much as Wilhelm Müller.” I found a letter of his which deserves to be preserved. Alas! the whole of my father’s library and correspondence was destroyed by fire, and this letter escaped only because my mother, a great admirer of Heine’s poems, had preserved it among her own books. Here is the letter, or at least parts of it. The original was sent about the years 1841–43, when I was a student at Leipzig, to Brockhaus’ Blätter für Litterarische Unterhaltung, but the original was never returned to me. It has often been quoted in histories of German literature, and I give the extracts here from Gustav Karpeles’ “Heinrich Heine’s Autobiographie,” Berlin, 1888, pp. 149, 150:—
Hamburg, 7th June, 1826.
I am great enough to confess to you openly that my Small Intermezzo metre[[5]] possesses not merely accidental similarity with your own accustomed metre, but probably owes its most secret rhythm to your songs—those dear Müller-songs which I came to know at the very time when I wrote the Intermezzo. At a very early time I let German folk-song exercise its influence upon me. Later on, when I studied at Bonn, August Schlegel opened many metrical secrets to me; but I believe it was in your songs that I found what I looked for—pure tone and true simplicity. How pure and clear your songs are, and they are all true folk-songs. In my poems, on the contrary, the form only is to a certain extent popular, the thoughts belong to our conventional society. Yes, I am great enough to repeat it distinctly, and you will sooner or later find it proclaimed publicly, that through the study of your seventy-seven poems it became clear to me for the first time how from the forms of our old still existing folk-songs new forms may be deduced which are quite as popular, though one need not imitate the unevennesses and awkwardnesses of the old language. In the second volume of your poems the form seemed to me even purer and more transparently clear. But why say so much about the form? What I yearn to tell you is that, with the exception of Goethe, there is no lyric poet whom I love as much as you.
Another fragment of the same letter occurs on page 195 (951). Here Heine, referring to his North Sea poems, writes:—
The “North Sea” belongs to my last poems, and you can see there what new keys I touch, and on what new lines I move along. Prose receives me in her wide arms, and in the next volume of my “Reisebilder” you will find in prose much that is mad, bitter, offensive, angry, and very polemical. Times are really too bad (1826), and whoever has strength, freedom, and boldness has also the duty seriously to begin the fight against all that is bad and puffed up, against all that is mediocre, and yet spreads itself out so broad, so intolerably broad. I beg you, keep well disposed towards me, never doubt me, and let us grow old together in common striving. I am conceited enough to believe that when we are both gone my name will be named together with yours. Let us therefore hold together in love in this life also.
I never came to know Heine. I knew he was in Paris when I was there in 1846, but he was already in such a state of physical collapse that a friend of mine who knew him well, and saw him from time to time, advised me not to go and see him. However, one afternoon as I and my friend were sitting on the Boulevard, near the Rue Richelieu, sipping a cup of coffee, “Look there,” he said, “there comes Heine!” I jumped up to see, my friend stopped him, and told him who I was. It was a sad sight. He was bent down, and dragged himself slowly along, his spare greyish hair was hanging round his emaciated face, there was no light in his eyes. He lifted one of his paralysed eyelids with his hand and looked at me. For a time, like the blue sky breaking from behind grey October clouds, there passed a friendly expression across his face, as if he thought of days long gone by. Then he moved on, mumbling a line from Goethe, in a deep, broken, and yet clear voice, as if appealing for sympathy:—