"Du alte, einsame Thräne,
Zerfliesse jetzunder auch!"[4]
[4] Thou tear-drop old and lonely,
Do thou, too, pass away!
The sentimentality is so crude that no parody could be more comic than this mournful apostrophe, which the arch-scoffer wrote in all good faith.
Every defect in the artist as a man, comes out in his art. It is always a want of simplicity, of genuine feeling, that produces the sentimental or ostentatious or clap-trap expression. Heine's shortcomings in this way are strongly felt when we compare certain outbursts of his with Goethe's expression of similar feelings.
Take, for example, the poem in which Heine describes himself as the ill-fated Atlas; condemned to bear the whole world of suffering:
"Du stolzes Herz, du hast es ja gewollt,
Du wolltest glücklich sein, unendlich glücklich,
Oder unendlich elend, stolzes Herz!
Und jetzo bist du elend."[5]
[5] Proud heart, 'twas thine own choice,
Thou chosest to be happy, infinitely happy,
Or infinitely miserable, proud heart!
And now thou art miserable.
These are lines one does not forget. But the exclamation of the first line, which expresses a perilous extreme of self-reliance, becomes self-complacency when Heine's stanza is placed alongside of Goethe's simple and grand
"Alles geben die Götter, die Unendlichen,
Ihren Lieblingen ganz:
Alle Freuden, die unendlichen,
Alle Schmerzen, die unendlichen,
Ganz."[6]
[6] What the eternal Gods, give to their favourites, they give without alloy-infinite joy, infinite sorrow—without alloy.