Let their ears seek to catch these painful notes. Let their eyes accustom themselves to the deceitful light of the moon; let them endeavour to pierce through the romanticism on the surface to the underlying meaning of the poem.... A little patience and we shall see clearly....
Atta Troll, the dancing bear, is the representative of the people. He has—by means of the French Revolution, of course—broken his fetters and escaped to the freedom of the mountains. Here he indulges in that familiar ranting of a sansculotte, his heart and mouth brimming over with what Heine calls frecher Gleichheitsschwindel ("the barefaced swindle of equality"). His hatred is above all directed against the masters from whose bondage he has just escaped, that is to say against all mankind as a race. As a "true and noble bear" he simply detests these human beings with their superior airs and impudent smiles, those arrogant wretches, who fancy themselves something lofty, because they eat cooked meat and know a few tricks and sciences. Animals, if properly trained, if only equality of opportunity were given to them, could learn these tricks just as well—there is therefore no earthly reason why
"these men,
Cursèd arch-aristocrats,
Should with haughty insolence
Look upon the world of beasts."
The beasts, so Atta Troll declares, ought not to allow themselves to be treated in this wise. They ought to combine amongst themselves, for it is only by means of proper union that the requisite degree of strength can ever be attained. After the establishment of this powerful union they should try to enforce their programme and demand the abolition of private property and of human privileges:
"And its first great law shall be
For God's creatures one and all
Equal rights—no matter what
Be their faith, or hide, or smell,
"Strict equality! Each ass
May become Prime Minister,
On the other hand the lion
Shall bear corn unto the mill."
This outrageous diatribe of the freed slave cuts deeply into the poet's heart. He, the poet, does not believe in equal, but in the "holy inborn" rights of men, the rights of valid birth, the rights of the man of ἁρετἡ. He, the poet, the admirer of Napoleon, believes in the latter's la carrière ouverte aux talents, but not in opportunity given to every dunce or dancing bear. He holds Atta Troll's opinion to be "high treason against the majesty of humanity," and since he can endure this no longer, he sets out one fine morning to hunt the insolent bear in his mountain fastnesses.
A strange being, however, accompanies him. This is a man of the name of Lascaro, a somewhat abnormal fellow, who is very thin, very pale, and apparently in very poor health. He is consequently not exactly a pleasant comrade for the chase: he does not seem to enjoy the sport at all, and his one endeavour is to get through with his task without losing more of his strength and health. Even now he is more of an automaton than a human being, more dead than alive, and yet—greatest of all miseries!—he is not allowed to die. For he has a mother, the witch Uraka, who keeps him artificially alive by anointing him every night with magic salve and giving him such diabolic advice as will be useful to him during the day. By means of the sham health she gives to her son, the magic bullets she casts for him, the tricks and wiles she teaches him, Lascaro is enabled to find the track of Atta Troll, to lure him out of his lair and to lay him low with a treacherous shot.
Who is this silent Lascaro and his mysterious mother, whom the poet seems to hold in as slight regard as the noisy Atta Troll? Who is this Lascaro, whose methods he deprecates, whose health he doubts, whose cold ways and icy smiles make him shudder? Who is this chilliest of all monsters? The chilliest of all monsters—we may find the answer in "Zarathustra"—is the State: and our Lascaro is nothing else than the spirit of reactionary government, kept artificially alive by his old witch-mother, the spirit of Feudalism. The nightly anointing of Lascaro is a parody on the revival of mediæval customs, by means of which the frightened aristocracy of Europe in the middle of the last century tried to stem the tide of the French Revolution—the anointed of the Lord becoming in Heine's poem the anointed of the witch. But in spite of his nightly massage, our Lascaro does not gain much strength or spirit: no mediæval salves, no feudal pills, no witch's spell, will ever cure him. Not even a wizard's experiments (we may add, with that greater insight bestowed upon us by history) could do him any good, not even the astute magic tricks that were lavished upon the patient in Heine's time by that arch wizard, the Austrian Minister Metternich. For we must not forget the time in which "Atta Troll" was written, the time of the omnipotent Metternich! Let us recall to our memories this cool, clever, callous statesman, who founded and set the Holy Alliance against the Revolution, who calmly shot down the German Atta Troll, who skilfully strangled and stifled that promising poetical school, "Young Germany," to which Heine belonged. Let us recall this man, who likewise artificially revived the old religion and the old feudalism, who repolished and regilded the scutcheons of the decadent aristocracy, and who, despite all his energy, had at heart no belief in his work, no joy in his task, no faith in the anointed dummies he brought to life again in Europe—and those puzzling personalities of Uraka and Lascaro will be elucidated to us by a real historical example.
Metternich is now part of history. But, alas! we cannot likewise banish into that limbo of the past those two superfluous individuals, the revolutionary Atta Troll and the reactionary Lascaro. Alas! we cannot join the joyful, but inwardly so hopeless, band of those who sing the pæan of eternal progress, who pretend to believe that the times are always "changing for the better." Let these good people open their eyes, and they will see that Atta Troll was not shot down in the valley of Roncesvalles, but that he is still alive, very much alive, and making a dreadful noise, and that not in the Pyrenees, but just outside our doors, where he still keeps haranguing about equality and liberty and occasionally breaks his fetters and escapes from his masters. And when this occurs, then that icy monster Lascaro is likewise seen, with his hard, pallid face and his joyless mouth, and his disgust with his own task and his doubts and disbeliefs in himself. He still carries his gun and he still possesses some of that craftiness which his mother the witch has taught him, and he still knows how to entrap that poor, stupid Atta Troll, and to shoot him down when the spirit of "order and government," the spirit of a soulless capitalism, requires it.
No, there is very little feeling in the man as yet, and he seems as difficult to move as ever. There is apparently only one thing that can rouse him into action, and that is when a poet appears, one who knows the truth and who dares to speak the truth not only about Atta Troll, the people, but also about its Lascaros, its leaders, its emperors, and kings. Then and then only his hard features change, and his affected self-possession leaves him, then and then only his mask of calmness is thrown off, and he waxes very angry with the poet, and has his name banished from his court and his statues turned out of his cities and villas—nay, he would even level his gun to slay the truth-telling poet as he slew Atta Troll.