"Wer ist wohl der grösste Lump
Unter allen deutschen Lumpen;
Die in allen sechs und dreissig
Deutschen Bundesstaaten leben?"[11]
[11] Who, think you, is the paltriest wight
Amongst the crowd of worthless fellows
In all the different States of Germany,
Which are in number six-and-thirty?
Balkis, to whom the question is put, sends secret messengers to make inquiry in every country and state in Germany, but each time she informs Solomon of the discovery of a specially contemptible wretch, he answers:
"Kind! es giebt noch einen grösser'n!"
(Child! there is a worse one still!)
And it is explained to us as a peculiarity of Germany, that as often as we imagine we have discovered her most despicable character, one still more despicable makes his appearance. There is no progress so certain as the progress in general contemptibility. It was only yesterday that X. appeared to be the sorriest knave, to-day he is not to be named in comparison with N. N. Heine must have felt that he had plentiful stores of invention to draw upon, else he would hardly, in his final revision of the poem, have rejected this means of satirising his opponents, one by one, in the most amusing manner.
In purely literary satire, too, Heine's methods have a distinct resemblance to those of Aristophanes. An example of this is the hit in Atta Troll at the Swabian school of poets—the cat in the witch's cottage, which is a bewitched Swabian poet, who will turn into a man again when a pure maiden can read Gustav Pfizer's poems on New Year's eve without falling asleep. Another example is the satire in the same poem on the following rather ridiculous lines of Freiligrath's Der Mohrenfürst (The Moorish Prince) with their far-fetched simile:
"Aus dem schimmernd weissen Zelte hervor
Tritt der schlachtgerüstete fürstliche Mohr;
So tritt aus schimmernder Wolken Thor
Der Mond, der verfinsterte, dunkle, hervor."[12]
[12] From the glistening white tent the royal Moor issues forth, armed for the fray; even as the moon, gloomy and dark, issues from the glistening gate-way of the clouds.
It is a poem about a negro king, who is taken prisoner, brought to Europe, and made to play the drum outside a circus; while doing so he thinks of his former greatness, and beats his drum to pieces. The idea of the black man at the opening of the tent resembling the moon appearing through the clouds is undoubtedly comical.
In Atta Troll the red tongue hangs out of the bear's black jaws as the moon shows herself through white clouds. And towards the end of the poem Heine tells us how, in the Jardin des Plantes, he makes acquaintance with a negro caretaker, who confides to him that he is Freiligrath's negro king, that he has married a white Alsatian cook, whose feet remind him of the feet of the elephants in his native land, and whose French sounds to him like the negro tongue. She feeds him so well that he has developed a little round black stomach, which shows itself through the opening of his shirt like a black moon, appearing from behind white clouds.