The Prose Writings of Heinrich Heine

by Heinrich Heine

Just as little as we find anti-Catholic, so also do we fail to discover anti-absolutist strains in Don Quixote. The critics who think that they scent such sentiments therein are clearly in error. Cervantes was the son of a school which went so far as to poetically idealise the idea of unquestioning obedience to the sovereign. And that sovereign was the King of Spain at a time when its majesty dazzled the whole world. The common soldier felt himself a ray in that halo of glory, and willingly sacrificed his individual freedom to gratify the national pride of the Castilian.

The political grandeur of Spain at that time contributed not a little to exalt and enlarge the hearts of her poets. In the mind of a Spanish poet, as in the realm of Charles V., the sun never set. The fierce wars against the Moors were ended, and as after a storm the flowers are most fragrant, so poesy ever blooms most grandly after a civil war. We witness the same phenomenon in England at the time of Elizabeth, and at the same time as in Spain there arose a galaxy of poets, which invites the most remarkable parallelisms. There we see Shakespeare, here Cervantes, as the flower of the school.

Like the Spanish poets under the three Philips, so also the English poets under Elizabeth present a certain family likeness, and neither Shakespeare nor Cervantes have claim to originality in our sense of the word. They by no means differ from their contemporaries through peculiar modes of thought or feeling, or by an especial manner of portrayal, but only through greater depth, fervour, tenderness, and power. Their creations are more infused and penetrated with the divine spark of poetry.

But both poets were not only the flowers of their time, but they were also the germs of the future. As Shakespeare, by the influence of his works, particularly on Germany and the France of to-day, is to be regarded as the creator of the later dramatic art, so must we honour in Cervantes the author of the modern novel. I shall allow myself a few passing observations on the subject.

The older novels, the so-called romances of chivalry sprang from the poetry of the middle ages. They were at first prose versions of those epic poems whose heroes are derived from the mythical traditions of Charlemagne and the Holy Grail. The subject was always knightly adventures. It was the romance of the nobility, and the personages that figured therein were either fabulous, fantastic beings, or knights with golden spurs; nowhere an allusion to the people. These romances of knighthood, which degenerated into the most ridiculous absurdities, Cervantes overthrew by his Don Quixote. But while by his satire he destroyed the earlier romances, he also furnished a model for a new school of fiction, which we call the Modern Novel. Such is always the wont of great poets; while they tear down the old, they at the same time build up the new; they never destroy without replacing. Cervantes created the modern novel by introducing into his romances of knighthood a faithful description of the lower classes, by intermingling with it phases of folk-life. This partiality for describing the doings of the common rabble, of the vilest tatterdemalions, is not only found in Cervantes, but in all his literary contemporaries, and among the Spanish painters as well as among the poets of that period. A Murillo, who stole heaven's loveliest tints with which to paint his beautiful Madonnas, painted with the same love the filthiest creatures of this earth. It was perhaps the enthusiasm for art itself that made these noble Spaniards find equal pleasure in the faithful portrayal of a beggar lad scratching his head as in the representation of the Blessed Virgin. Or, perhaps, it was the charm of contrast that led noblemen of the highest rank, a dapper courtier like Quevedo, or a powerful minister like Mendoza, to fill their romances with ragged beggars and vagabonds. They perhaps sought to relieve the monotony of their lofty rank by putting themselves in imagination into a quite different sphere of life, just as we find a similar tendency among some of our German authors, whose novels contain naught else but descriptions of the nobility, and who always make their heroes counts and barons. We do not find in Cervantes this one-sided tendency to portray the vulgar only; he intermingles the ideal and the common; one serves as light or as shade to the other, and the aristocratic element is as prominent in it as the popular. But this noble, chivalrous, aristocratic element disappears entirely from the novels of the English, who were the first to imitate Cervantes, and to this day always keep him in view as a model. These English novelists since Richardson's reign are prosaic natures; to the prudish spirit of their time even pithy descriptions of the life of the common people are repugnant, and we see on yonder side of the channel those bourgeois novels arise, wherein the petty, humdrum life of the middle classes is depicted. The public were surfeited with this deplorable class of literature until recently, when appeared the great Scot, who effected a revolution, or rather a restoration, in novel-writing. As Cervantes introduced the democratic element into romance, at a time when one-sided knight-errantry ruled supreme, so Walter Scott restored the aristocratic element to romance when it had wholly disappeared, and only a prosaic bourgeoisie was to be found there. By an opposite course Walter Scott again restored to romance that beautiful symmetry which we admire in Cervantes's Don Quixote.

I believe that the merits of England's second great poet have never in this respect been recognised. His Tory proclivities, his partiality for the past, were wholesome for literature, and for those masterpieces of his genius that everywhere found favour and imitators, and which drove into the darkest corners of the circulating libraries those ashen-grey, ghostly remains of the bourgeoisie romances. It is an error not to recognise Walter Scott as the founder of the so-called Historical Romance, and to endeavour to trace the latter to German initiative. This error arises from the failure to perceive that the characteristic feature of the Historical Romance consists just in the harmony between the aristocratic and democratic elements, and that Walter Scott, through the re-introduction of the aristocratic element, most beautifully restored that harmony which had been overthrown during the absolutism of the democratic element, whereas our German romanticists eliminated the democratic element entirely from their novels, and returned again to the ruts of those crazy romances of knight-errantry that flourished before Cervantes. Our De la Motte-Fouqué is only a straggler from the ranks of those poets who gave to the world Amadis de Gaul, and similar extravagant absurdities. I admire not only the talent, but also the courage of the noble Baron who, two centuries after the appearance of Don Quixote, has written his romances of chivalry. It was a peculiar period in Germany when the latter appeared and found favour with the public. What was the significance in literature of that partiality for knight-errantry, and for those pictures of the old feudal times? I believe that the German people desired to bid an eternal farewell to the middle ages, but moved with emotion as we Germans are so apt to be, we took our leave with a kiss. For the last time we pressed our lips to the old tombstone. True, some of us behaved in a very silly manner on that occasion. Ludwig Tieck, the smallest boy in school, dug the dead ancestors out of their grave, rocked the coffin as if it were a cradle, and in childish, lisping accents sang, "Sleep, little grandsire, sleep."

I have called Walter Scott England's second great poet, and his novels masterpieces; but it is to his genius only that I would give the highest praise. His novels I can by no means place on an equality with the great romance of Cervantes. The latter surpasses him in epic spirit. Cervantes was, as I have already stated, a Catholic poet, and it is perhaps to this circumstance that he is indebted for that grand epic composure of soul, which, like a crystalline firmament, overarches those picturesque and poetical creations; nowhere is there a rift of scepticism. Added to this is the calm dignity which is the national characteristic of the Spaniard. But Walter Scott belongs to a church which subjects even divine matters to a sharp examination; as an advocate and as a Scotchman he is accustomed to action and to debate, and we find the dramatic element most prominent in his novels, as well as in his life and his temperament. Hence his works can never be regarded as the pure model of that style of fiction which we denominate the Romance. To the Spaniards is due the honour of having produced the best novel, as England is entitled to the credit of having achieved the highest rank in the drama.

And the Germans, what palm remains for them? Well, then, we are the best lyric poets on earth. No people possesses such beautiful songs as the Germans. At present the nations are too much occupied with political affairs, but when these are once laid aside, then let us Germans, English, Spaniards, French, Italians, all go out into the green forests and chant our lays, and the nightingale shall be umpire. I am convinced that in this tournament of minstrelsy the songs of Wolfgang Goethe will win the prize.

Cervantes, Shakespeare, and Goethe form the triumvirate of poets, who, in the three great divisions of poetry, epic, dramatic, and lyric, have achieved the greatest success. The writer of these pages is perhaps peculiarly fitted to sound the praises of our great countryman as the most perfect of lyric poets. Goethe stands midway between the two classes of song-writers, between those two schools, of which one, alas! is known by my own name, the other as the Suabian school. Both have their merits; they have indirectly promoted the welfare of German poetry. The first effected a wholesome reaction against the one-sided idealism of German poetry, it led the intellect back to stern realities, and uprooted that sentimental Petrarchism that has always seemed to us as a Quixotism in verse. The Suabian school also contributed indirectly to the weal of German poetry. If in Northern Germany strong and healthy poetical productions came to light, thanks are perhaps due to the Suabian school, which attracted to itself all the sickly chlorotic, mawkishly-pious, clumsy votaries of the German muse. Stuttgart was the fontanel, as it were, for the German muse.

While I ascribe the highest achievements in drama, in romance, and in lyric poetry to this great triumvirate, far be it from me to depreciate the poetical merits of other great poets. Nothing is more foolish than the query, "Which poet is greater than the other?" Flame is flame, and its weight cannot be determined in pounds and ounces. Only a narrow shopkeeper mind will attempt to weigh genius in its miserable cheese scales. Not only the ancients, but some of the moderns, have written works in which the fire of poetry burns with a splendour equal to that of the masterpieces of Shakespeare, Cervantes, and Goethe. Nevertheless, these names hold together as if through some secret bond. A kindred spirit shines forth from their creations, an immortal tenderness exhales from them like the breath of God, the modesty of nature blooms in them. Goethe not only constantly reminds one of Shakespeare, but also of Cervantes, and he resembles the latter even in the details of style, and in that charming prose diction which is tinged with a vein of the sweetest and most harmless irony. Cervantes and Goethe resemble each other even in their faults, in diffusiveness of style, in those long sentences that we occasionally find in their writings, and which may be compared to a procession of royal equipages. Not infrequently but a single thought sits in one of those long, wide-spreading sentences that rolls majestically along like a great, gilded court-chariot, drawn by six plumed steeds. But that single idea is always something exalted, perhaps even royal.