There can be little doubt that his own works were influenced in no small degree by these illustrious predecessors, but it would seem that he was even more directly inspired by the Bible itself, and particularly by the lyric songs, which especially abound in the Book of Psalms and the Song of Songs. He refers to it more than once in eulogistic terms, but most characteristic are the following remarks[[167-1]]: “I have to-day,” he writes, “again looked through the Old Testament. What a marvellous book it is! Its contents are wonderful, and so is its diction. Every word it contains is as natural as the growing tree, the smiling flower, the flowing ocean, the glittering star, and the living man. The Bible is divine and emanates from God, while all the other books in existence are but the poor products of feeble-minded mortals. The Bible is the drama of the human race, and may, moreover, be pronounced to be the book of books—Biblia. . . . The Jews ought, indeed, to console themselves for the loss of Jerusalem and the Temple, together with the Ark of the Covenant, and the precious jewels of King Solomon; such a loss is surely quite insignificant when compared with that indestructible treasure, the Bible, which they have luckily saved. . . . My admiration for it is extremely great.”
These were the views of Heine, the sceptic and the mocker, who said, for instance, of Judaism, that it was not a religion, but a misfortune. His early antipathy for his religion may not improbably have been due to the repellent effect, which the performance of a number of unattractive and to him meaningless rites would naturally cause to a man of his aesthetic sensibilities. But, as he grew older and more serious in disposition, he looked upon Judaism in a different light, and he changed his mockery into a hymn of praise and admiration. He was deeply impressed by the great antiquity of the Jewish race, which had bravely withstood the shocks of time, and continued to live and to endure in spite of the many obstacles and hostile influences to which it had been subjected. In his so-called “Confessions,” written when he was already advanced in years, he said that he felt proud of the fact that his ancestors had been members of the noble house of Israel, and that he was thus descended from those very martyrs, who had given to the world a God and an admirable code of ethics, for the sake of which they had often suffered and died.
Heine's knowledge of Hebrew was, as already stated, by no means so extensive as to make it credible that he had of himself been able to detect in the poetical portions of the Hebrew Bible certain beauties of form and diction, as well as many of the graceful irregularities which constitute a unique characteristic of their own. Yet he seems to have had a sort of instinctive feeling for them. That such singularities are also met with in many of Heine's lyric songs is a fact that will hardly be disputed, though it is uncertain whether they were really imitations of the Biblical ones or not. At all events, they possess many of the unique qualities which distinguish the poems in the Hebrew Bible. They are characterized by a certain peculiarity of rhythm, by their charming word-pictures, and by their changes from gaiety to melancholy, from sobriety to mirth. They have, moreover, supplied the theme for many of the charming compositions of musicians, like Schubert, Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, and Schumann. Further, though they have been repeatedly translated into various languages by some of the most eminent scholars of the day, there is scarcely a single version which can be said to preserve a reproduction of the spirit of the original. The following two examples, which are English versions of a Hebrew and German lyric song respectively, may be considered sufficient to prove this. The Hebrew one occurs in the Song of Songs (viii. 6 and 7), and its English translation runs thus:—
Love is strong as death;
The passion thereof is hard as Shéol;
Its heat is the heat of fire,
A very flame of the Lord!
Many waters cannot quench love,
Neither can the floods drown it:
If a man would give all the substance of his house for love,