Heine - romantic, ironist, leftist, visionary - the bard of heaving breasts and bemused diagnosis - died in Paris in 1856, having spent the better part of the previous decade bed-ridden. The Nineteenth Century asssumed that syphillis was the cause of Heine's debilitating condition, as it was to do in the case of several of its other black sheep. Recent clinical tests seem to indicate that progressive lead poisoning was the cause of the agony which, at the time of the composition of today's poem, "Lord Have Mercy", still had several years to run.
The poem displays the typical symptoms of Heine's later attitude to Christianity: wisecracks at the expense of catholic dolts and Christian chokers by no means exclude a genuine religious sense of the poet's more-than-bodily wretchedness and need of more-than-worldly deliverance. Late Heine's cast of mind is basically deeply heterodox - a personal amalgam of Jewish, Christian and pantheist belief that would have been deeply unacceptable to the religious mainstream of Heine's day and to the orthodox Judaism and Christianity of our own day. His alleged last words were "God will forgive me. It's his job" - a line in which you might hear an undertone of anguish for sins committed or heresies proclaimed - a line in which for the rest of it what you hear is a man whose beliefs are something which, however deep, he always puts an ironist's inverted commas around.
In late Heine, the impulse to mock and kick at those whose religious belief takes on the form of doctrinal insistence is always a little stronger than his sense that the world has a stable religious meaning. In short, if the poet who "lay seven years on the floor of a garrett in Paris unable to die" can be called religious, then any belief you attribute to him has to be one that acknowledges the primacy of the anti-religious backhander. . . [CS]
1. Lord Have Mercy
The poem displays the typical symptoms of Heine's later attitude to Christianity: wisecracks at the expense of catholic dolts and Christian chokers by no means exclude a genuine religious sense of the poet's more-than-bodily wretchedness and need of more-than-worldly deliverance. Late Heine's cast of mind is basically deeply heterodox - a personal amalgam of Jewish, Christian and pantheist belief that would have been deeply unacceptable to the religious mainstream of Heine's day and to the orthodox Judaism and Christianity of our own day. His alleged last words were "God will forgive me. It's his job" - a line in which you might hear an undertone of anguish for sins committed or heresies proclaimed - a line in which for the rest of it what you hear is a man whose beliefs are something which, however deep, he always puts an ironist's inverted commas around.
In late Heine, the impulse to mock and kick at those whose religious belief takes on the form of doctrinal insistence is always a little stronger than his sense that the world has a stable religious meaning. In short, if the poet who "lay seven years on the floor of a garrett in Paris unable to die" can be called religious, then any belief you attribute to him has to be one that acknowledges the primacy of the anti-religious backhander. . . [CS]
1. Lord Have Mercy
I do not envy Fortune’s sons
Their lives, instead I’m smarting
At the way they meet their deaths
Their quick and painless parting
In festive garb, heads wreathed in laurel,
Smiles upon their lips
At life’s banquet’s grand array
Death’s scythe down on them slips.
In golden cloaks, bedecked with roses
Their blossoms still to savour
They reach the realm of shadows, those
Whom fortune deigns to favour.
Untroubled by infirmity,
Their brows without a line,
They’re welcomed graciously to court
By Empress Proserpine.
Their fate fills me with envy for
It’s seven years I lie
Writhing sourly on this floor
Unable still to die.
O Lord God shorten this my torment
Bring me death’s recess
The gifts one needs for martyrdom
You know I don’t possess.
I’m gob-smacked by your contrary ways, Lord,
Please don’t get the irits
The cheeriest poet you ever created
- You rob of his high spirits.
Pain dulls live minds and adds to life
A melancholic salt
If this grim fun does not stop soon
I’ll end a catholic dolt.
Then I’ll howl your ears full Lord
Like other Christian chokers
O Lord have mercy, thus departs
The best of literary jokers.
2. Body and Soul
Said soul to body in soulful pain
I cannot leave you, I’ll remain
With you – in death’s night I’ll with you sink,
Of death’s dispersion with you drink.
You were my ever-faithful second,
Flung me round, or so I reckoned,
In a festive cloak of satin
Warmly lined, of flawless pattern.
Woe is me, now naked, wracked,
Bodiless and quite abstract
I’m to lounge in blissful blight
Above in realms of heavenly light
In heavenly halls ‘midst heavenly norms
Where Time’s great surge in silence forms
Itself into a Yawn – where saintly trogs
Clack round bored in leaden clogs.
This is one second-rate result
Dear body, stay, and I exult!
So body said to downcast soul:
Take comfort and show self-control
Bear in peace with patient frown
What fate for each of us set down.
Burn out I must as our lamp’s wick,
But you, the spirit ever-quick
Will in heaven no doubt go far,
Will twinkle like a little star
Of beamiest purity – me, I’m junk,
Lumpen matter, a dead tree’s trunk
Slumping to the ground I become
That which I was – an earthly crumb.
Now fare you well and end your sighs,
Think, maybe there are funnier guys
Than you now believe up there.
And if you pass by heaven’s great bear
(NOT MEYER-BEAR) Some place in heaven’s starry sea
Say ten-times hi to him from me.
Auf Deutsch
1. Miserere
Die Söhne des Glückes beneid ich nicht
Will ich sie nur ob ihrem Tod,
Dem scmerzlos raschen Verscheiden.
Und Lachen auf der Lippe,
Sitzen sie froh beim Lebensbankett –
Da trifft sie jählings die Hippe.
Im Festkleid und mit Rosen geschmückt,
Die noch wie lebend blühten,
Gelangen in das Schattenreich
Fortunas Favoriten.
Nie hatte Siechtum sie entstellt,
Sind Tote von gutter Miene,
Und huldreich empfngt sie an ihrem Hof
Zarewna Proserpine.
Wie sehr muß ich beneiden ihr Los!
Schon sieben Jahre mit herben,
Qualvollen Gebresten wälz ich mich
Am Boden und kann nicht sterben!
O Gott, verkürze meine Qual,
Damit man mich
Du weist ja, daß ich kein Talent
Zum Martyrtume habe.
Erlaube, daß ich staune:
Du schufest den fröhlichsten Dichter, und raubst
Ihm jetzt seine gute Laune.
Der Schmerz verdumpft den heitern Sinn
Und macht mich
Nimmt nicht der traurige Spaß ein End,
So werd ich am Ende katholisch.
Ich heule dir dann die Ohren voll,
Wie andre gute Christen –
O Miserere! Verloren geht
Der beste der Humoristen!
2. Leib und Seele
Die arme Seele spricht zum Leibe:
Ich laß nicht ab von dire, ich bleibe
Bei dir – Ich will mit dir versinken
In Tod und Nacht, Vernichtung trinken!
Du warst ja stets mein zweites Ich,
Das liebevoll umschlungen mich
Als wie ein Festleid von Satin,
Gefüttert weich mit Hermelin –
Weh mir! Jetzt soll ich gleichsam nackt,
Ganz ohne Körper, ganz abstract,
Hinlungern als ein selges Nichts
In jenen kalten Himmelshallen,
Wo schweigend die Ewigkeiten wallen
Und mich
Langweilig mit ihren Pantoffeln von Blei.
O das ist grauenhaft; o bleib,
Beib bei mir, du geliebter Leib!
Der Leib zur armen Seele spricht:
O tröste dich und gram dich nicht!
Ertragen müssen wir in Frieden
Was uns vom Schicksal ward beschieden.
Ich war der Lampe Docht, ich muß
Verbrennen; du, der Spiritus,
Wirst droben auserlesen sein
Zu leuchten als ein Sternelein
Vom reinsten Glanz – Ich bin nur Plunder,
Materie nur, wie morscher Zunder
Zusammensinkend, und ich werde,
Was ich gewesen, eitel Erde.
Nun lebe wohl und tröste dich!
Vielleicht auch amüsiert man sich
Im Himmel besser als du meinst.
Siehst du den großen Bären einst
(Nicht Meyer-Bär) im Sternensaal,
Grüß ihn von mir vieltausendmal!
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