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{too}

This is to certify that the
dissertation entitled

FROM MAIDENS TO MEPHISTOPHELA:
THE TRANSFORMATION OF HEINRICH HEINE’S FEMALE
FIGURES

presented by

Caryl Lyn Einberger

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for the

PhD. degree in German

 

 

 

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FROM MAIDENS TO MEPHISTOPHELA:
THE TRANSFORMATION OF HEINRICH HEINE’S FEMALE FIGURES

By

Caryl Lyn Einberger

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulﬁllment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian, and African Languages

2006

ABSTRACT

FROM MAIDENS TO MEPHISTOPHELA:
THE TRANSFORMATION OF HEINRICH HEINE’S FEMALE FIGURES

By
Caryl Lyn Einberger

This dissertation explores how Heinrich Heine’s female ﬁgures develop from
objects of desire in his early writing into sensually expressive active characters in his
later works. Heine creates ﬁgures who are rooted in literary tradition but evolve into
something new. Upon initial reading, Heine’s female ﬁgures, drawn from Romanticism,
Greek mythology, the Bible, and the works of Shakespeare, appear to be stereotypes.
Upon closer examination they resist and transcend these labels.

I use a gender studies approach to examine how Heine portrays women. In his
early works the women are predominately deﬁned by the gaze of the male. Still, in subtle
ways, these ﬁgures ﬁnd means of self expression — they sing and dance, or even scratch
and hurt the male protagonist. Over time Heine creates more self-assertive female
characters. Contrary to contemporary scholarship, which largely dismisses Heine’s
female ﬁgures as destructive, I argue that they are sensual, multi-dimensional creations.

I credit the transformation of his female portrayals throughout his works in part to
the strong, liberal women in his life. Heine developed substantial friendships with four
intellectual women: Rahel Vamhagen, Cristina Belgiojoso, George Sand, and Fanny
Lewald. As evidenced in their surviving correspondence, Heine exchanged ideas with

them on politics, literature, philosophy and even their own writings.

Copyright by
Caryl Lyn Einberger
2006

To my Grandparents, Joseph and Mary Burk, in loving memory

iv

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank my committee members, Elizabeth Mittman, Karin Wurst, and
Laurence Porter for their help and guidance. I would especially like to thank my advisor,
George Peters, for his diligent, professional feedback on my writing and for all the
support he has lent to my career over the years. I want to thank my family and ﬁ‘iends for
their continued love and encouragement, especially my parents for always believing in
me. I am grateful for the love of my husband, Brad. I thank him for all the listening,
talking, and cooking he has done to help me accomplish this goal. I give thanks to Steve

and Lori for helping me ﬁnd my inner strength.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABBREVIATIONS .......................................................................................................... vii
INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 1
CHAPTER 1
OBJECTS OF DESIRE .................................................................................................... 12
CHAPTER 2
SALONS AND LETTERS
Introduction ................................................................................................................... 29
Rahel Levin Vamhagen ................................................................................................ 40
Princess Cristina di Belgiojoso ..................................................................................... 61
George Sand ...................................................................................................... ' ............ 76
Fanny Lewald ................................................................................................................ 91
CHAPTER 3
FANTASTICAL FIGURES
Introduction ....................................... 104
F Iorentinische Ndchte ................................................................................................. l 10
E lementargeister ......................................................................................................... l 30
CHAPTER 4
THE INFLUENCE OF SHAKESPEARE
Introduction ................................................................................................................. 146
Shakespeares Mc’idchen und Frauen ........................................................................... 152
Atta Troll. Ein Sommernachtstraum ........................................................................... I68
Deutschland. Ein Wintermdrchen ............................................................................... 182
CHAPTER 5
THE GODDESS AND THE DEVIL .............................................................................. 192
CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................... 207
BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................... 212

vi

ABBREVIATIONS

The following abbreviations are used throughout the text.
B Heine, Heinrich. Séimtliche Schriften. Ed. Klaus Briegleb.

DHA Windfuhr, Manfred, ed. Heinrich Heine: Historisch—kritische
Gesamtausﬁgabe der Werke.

HHP Das Heinrich-Heine-Portal. Heinrich-Heine-Institut, Dusseldorf and
Kompentenzzentrum Universitéit Trier.

HSA Nationalen F orschungs- und Gedenkstatten der klassischen deutschen
Literatur in Weimar and Centre National de la Recherche Scientiﬁque in
Paris, eds. Heinrich Heine Séikularausgabe: Werke, BriefwechseL
Lebenszeugnisse.

vii

INTRODUCTION

It is easy to ﬁnd evidence of destructive and dangerous female ﬁgures in the
works of Heinrich Heine; one needs only to think of the Loreley, or the seductive women
of the “Verschiedene” poems, or even the devil, herself - Mephistophela. There is no
shortage of references to death, coldness, or women being corpse-like in Buch der Lieder.
The ﬁgures in his epic poems, Atta Troll. Ein Sommernachtstraum and Deutschland. E in
Winterma'rchen appear at ﬁrst glance to be either prostitutes or predictable femmes
fatales. Heine’s non-ﬁctional, often degrading remarks about women in Lutezia could
further be used to justify reading his ﬁctional representations negatively. Such was the
focus in this area of Heine scholarship prior to the onset of feminist and gender studies.1
However, a much more interesting reading of these ﬁgures unfolds when they are not so
quickly dismissed. The female ﬁgures in Buch der Lieder, F lorentinische Na’chte, and
even in his later Die Ga'ttin Diana are frequently associated with marble. While this may
represent hardness and coldness in his early works, it later becomes associated with the
statues of Greek antiquity as a symbol of sensuality. Upon closer examination the
seemingly dangerous characters in the epic poems as well as the ﬁgure Mephistophela are
revealed as instrumental in the narrator’s or male protagonist’s transformation and
change rather than his annihilation. Considering gender in Heine’s works allows us to
ask new questions: How is the embodiment of the feminine tied to Heine’s political and
social critique? What does the portrayal of the female look like in Heine’s utopian
visions? And ﬁnally, perhaps the most interesting question, how did his representation of

women, ﬁctional and non-ﬁctional, change throughout his life?

 

' While many studies could be mentioned here, Jeffrey Sammons‘ T he Elusive Poet (1969) is one example
of insightful interpretations of Heine’s major works that pre-dates the onset of feminist and gender studies.

This study seeks to address the ﬁrst of these questions by speciﬁcally examining
how the women function within a text. To what degree are they relegated to be the object
of the narrator’s gaze/desire or permitted to express themselves as subjects? While
feminist theory helps us to see how these ﬁgures express autonomy, this study does not
aim to prove that Heine was at some unconscious level a feminist. If feminist theory has
taught us anything it is that binaries — feminist/misogynist, masculine/feminine — only
hinder our access to meaning. Judith Butler has been one of the seminal voices in
abolishing the binary and thus hierarchical structure in the perception of gender. She
argues for gender to be understood as a performance that is subject to change. Thus the
focus on Heine’s portrayals will be on how they change within each text and also
throughout his career. Since be frequently revisits motifs and themes from his past, it is
necessary to begin this study with his early representations and follow their development.

To claim that Heine was a product of his times — coming into his own as a writer
after the Classicism of Goethe and Schiller, and upon the heels of Romanticism, not to
mention the changing political environment fueled by the inﬁltration of liberal ideas from
the French Revolution, and the industrial revolution with all its progress in transportation
and communication — would be both accurate and an underestimation of the unique
talents of Heine as a writer. While all these factors had a deﬁnite impact on him as a
writer, Heine developed a means of expression that differentiated his work from that of
his contemporaries, including those with whom he is most closely identiﬁed, the writers
of the Young Germany group. Heine’s female ﬁgures are constructed with complex
layers of imagery and generally do not follow literary expectations. He appropriated

different traditions with such clever wit and irony that scholars today are still debating

how to read him. It is surprising, then, that Heine’s female representations have not
received more scholarly attention.

Until 2005 with the emergence of two monographs, one by Koon-Ho Lee and the
other by Edda Ziegler, there existed only article-length studies of Heine’s female ﬁgures.2
While it is promising that these studies are beginning to open up Heine’s writing to new
means of interpretation, neither Lee nor Ziegler consider the interconnections or
evolutions of Heine’s ﬁctional portrayals, something also missing in studies that are
textually limited. One seminal work that did impact the perception of sexuality in
Heine’s works, although without regard to gender designations, was Dolf Stemberger’s
Heinrich Heine und die Abschaffung der Siinde (1972). The goal of my study is to
provide a new reading of Heine’s female ﬁgures which reafﬁrms the originality of his
writing, offers a different perspective on the philosophical messages imbedded within his
texts, and exposes how his close relationships with intellectual women ﬁnd expression in
his works.

To recognize Heine’s portrayals as unique it is necessary to understand how the
previous tradition, Romanticism, constructed gender. Martha B. Helfer reminds us that
Romanticism tended to repeat “traditional philosophy’s inscription of the male as the
desiring subject and the female as the object of desire” (236). While her study highlights
the exceptions to this rule, both from male authors with the incorporation of the male
muse and by female writers whose presence as writers has been overlooked in the

construction of a Romantic theory, it nevertheless helps us understand the general

delineation of masculine and feminine for this literary period.

 

2 See for example Yoko Nagura (1990) and Fernanda Mota Alves (1998).

3

How do Heine’s ﬁgures develop beyond Romantic representations? Consider, for
example, the virtuous maiden from the second poem of the “Traumbilder”:
Inmitten in dem Blumenland
Ein klarer Marmorbrunnen stand;
Da schaut ich eine schone Maid,

Die emsig wusch ein weiBes Kleid.

Die Wanglein 560, die Auglein mild,

Ein blondgelocktes Heilgenbild;

Und wie ich schau, die Maid ich fand

So fremd und doch so wohlbekannt. (B l: 21)
At this point in the poem she seems to fulﬁll Romantic expectations as a chaste ﬁgure
positioned exactly in the middle of nature. Yet, even the narrator himself recognizes that
there is something different about her. The poem continues with her singing a rhyme.

Die schone Maid, die sputet sich,

Sie summt ein Lied gar wunderlich:

“Rinne, rinne, Wasserlein,

Wasche mir das Linnen rein.” (B l: 21)
This rhyme takes on a foreboding tone when she says it is his “Totenkleid” she is
washing. The maiden appears twice more in the poem within a Romantic setting and
each time she is preparing for the narrator’s death by making his tomb and digging his
grave. How shall we then interpret this dichotomous portrayal, who is both “fremd” and

“wohlbekannt,” both sweet-checked and a “Graun” (B 1: 22)? The key to this study will

be to allow her to be both of these things. She is a representation of Romanticism and
she symbolizes death for the poet. Perhaps it is Heine’s acknowledgment that following
the literary tradition of the Romantics will only stiﬂe him and that he needs to look
beyond their formulas in order to ﬁnd his poetic voice. Even in this simple poem, the
narrator stands to learn from the female, who moves beyond her initial objectiﬁed role
not only by singing and speaking, but also by washing, building, and digging.

While the other female ﬁgures in Heine’s early writings may not express
themselves as boldly as she, in chapter 1, Objects of Desire, 1 will examine the ways in
which these ﬁgures break from stereotypes and begin to exert themselves, even if only
subtly, as subjects. How do they surprise, frustrate, or as the maiden above, warn, the
narrator with their unexpected behavior? Geertje Suhr’s (1998) study Venus und Loreley:
Die Wandlungen des F rauenbildes in der Lyrik Heinrich Heines was groundbreaking in
its attempt to show that Heine was doing something different in his representations of
women that did not adhere to Petrarchan or Romantic poetic traditions. In this ﬁrst
chapter of my study I will focus on the variety of portrayals present in Heine’s Buch der
Lieder (1827). I will highlight those images and themes that recur throughout Heine’s
writing, not just in his poetry.

Because this study draws on modern theoretical approaches, 1 must take care to
observe Heine’s female ﬁgures without imposing my twenty-ﬁrst-century judgements
onto the texts. It is important then to continually and consciously acknowledge the
nineteenth-century framework, especially in terms of how the role of women in society
was being contested. Women were caught within a paradox as they sought to champion

their inclusion into society but often did so by reafﬁrming traditional gender roles. In

Respectability and Deviance: Nineteenth-Century German Women Writers and the
Ambiguity of Representation (1998) Ruth-Ellen Boetcher Joeres explains how German
women, including Louise Otto, Hedwig Dohm, Bettine von Armin, Fanny Lewald,
Louise Aston and others, used various strategies to lessen the radical label applied to
them. In Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man (1996) Joan
Wallach Scott examines how French women during this time found themselves caught in
a similar struggle as they sought to gain citizenship. In her preface Scott explains how
the issues confronting the women of the nineteenth century are still plaguing feminist
discourse today because the primary way we seek to gain our equality is by marking our
difference from men (x). Considering that Heine was inﬂuenced by both cultures,
German and F rench. after he moved to Paris in 1831, I do not expect his reﬂections upon
women to be any more coherent or sympathetic than those of the women with whom he
had the closest contact.

In chapter 2, Salons and Letters, 1 consider four women with whom Heine had the
most signiﬁcant relationships: Rahel Vamhagen, Cristina Belgiojoso, George Sand, and
Fanny Lewald. He met Vamhagen through her Berlin salon in 1821 and remained in
contact with her even after he moved from the city. She enthusiastically supported Heine
as a young writer and introduced him to Berlin’s intellectual circle. While Vamhagen
has received substantial scholarly attention for her legacy of letters,3 only a few shorter
studies speciﬁcally examine the relationship between her and Heine.4 Carola Stem’s
biography, Der Text Meines Herzens: Das Leben der Rahel Vamhagen (1994), also

includes a brief section on the role Heine played in Vamhagen’s life. Shortly after Heine

 

3 See for example Sabine Becker, “Mein Leben” (2001); and Goodman, “Poesis” (1982).
4 Elke Frederiksen (1990) and Joseph Kruse (2001 ) explore Heine’s relationship with Rahel. while
Christian Liedtke (2002) considers Heine’s relationship with both Rahel and Karl August Vamhagen.

moved to Paris in 1831, he met Cristina Belgiojoso, an Italian princess who was actively
involved in Italy’s underground national movement, and the infamous George Sand. He
attended each of their salons and became familiar with their written works. A substantial
number of their remaining letters reveal not only Heine’s personal admiration of these
women but also the intellectual topics that they discussed. Ulrike Reuter’s (1997) article
is the only modern study devoted solely to the relationship between Heine and
Belgiojoso. Belgiojoso, herself, despite her political and literary activity, has generally
received little scholarly attention and the only two English monographs dedicated to her
are from the 19705.5 Heine’s relationship with France’s most notorious nineteenth-
century woman, George Sand, has likewise failed to inspire more interesting scholarship.
Martha Kaarsberg Wallace’s (1990) study considers both Sand and de Staél’s impact on
Heine’s works and Peter von Matt’s older study (1983) speciﬁcally considers Heine’s
writings on Sand. Heine met the German writer Fanny Lewald upon her visit to Paris in
the spring of 1848 and they remained friends through correspondence and her subsequent
visits. But again scholarship is scant; the only study on their relationship is by Gabriele
Schneider (1994), who considers Heine’s impact on Lewald more than hers upon him.
As a nineteenth-century woman writer, Lewald, like Vamhagen, has become a popular
subject for feminist scholars.6

Generally there has been little research upon the collective impact of women
writers on Heine’s ﬁctional writing or on his general perception of them.7 Rudolf Walter
Leonhardt’s (1975) book marks a beginning of this area of inquiry. Unfortunately the

positivistic stance of his study, which mainly seeks biographical sources for Heine’s

 

5 See Charles Neilson Gattey (1971), and Beth Archer Brombert (1977).
6 See especially Joeres (1998).
7 See for example the shorter study by Neuhaus-Koch (1997).

ﬁctional ﬁgures, appears outdated beside today’s post-modem research. It is surprising
to see that Ziegler’s 2005 work tends toward a similar pattern With her chapter devoted to
Heine’s cousin Amalie. Lee’s study, Heinrich Heine und die F rauenemanzipation
(2005), does consider Rahel Vamhagen, and even the impact of the French revolutionary
Olympe de Gouge, but Bel giojoso, Sand and Lewald are remarkably absent. It is
interesting to note the scholarship that has been done on Heine and women. Why has
there been a full-length study on Heine und die Droste: eine literarische
Zeitgenossenschaft (1996) when they never even met? Perhaps Wilhelm Gossmann felt
that a contemporary of Heine’s who was considered part of the canon, such as Annette
von Droste-Hiilshoff, provided enough of a topic.8 But even the literary presence of
Madame de Staél’s de I’Allemagne (1810), upon which Heine reﬂects in his Die
Romantische Schule (1836), elicits only one full-length French study (1974).9 And
ﬁnally, Heine’s close ﬁ’iendship in the last years of his life with Camille Selden,
“Mouche,” has no doubt appealed to scholars for its personal and erotic potential, but
their relationship does little to illuminate the literary ﬁgures that Heine created earlier in
his life.”

Written in the 18303, the texts considered in chapter 3, F antastical Figures,
represent a period in Heine’s writing in which his female portrayals assume a greater
signiﬁcance. In F lorentinisehe Nc‘ichte (1836), the narrator Maximilian recalls past
relationships with two imaginary women, thereby allowing these ﬁgures to develop in a

space beyond reality. Elementargeister (1837) is Heine’s interpretation of the spirits

 

8 See Joeres (1998) for an enlightening perspective on Droste’s position within the cannon.

9 See Eve Sourian (1974) or the more recent smaller studies by Clarissa Klucklich (1990) and Renate Stauf
(1998).

I” See Menso Folkerts (1999).

found in German folktales, myths. and legends. He recognizes how their fantastical
abilities are gender speciﬁc. Within Elementargeister Heine includes his ﬁrst version of
the poem “Tannhauser,” in which the male protagonist attempts to ﬂee the decadence of
the mountain of Venus. The fact that Heine altered the ending of this poem when it was
republished in Neue Gedichte (1844), provides for an interesting point of comparison
between the two versions. As in “Tannhauser,” the “Verschiedene” poems of Neue
Gedichte express a saturation of sensuality and contrast with the unrequited love poems
of Buch der Lieder. The female ﬁgures in all these texts express an expanded sense of
autonomy as compared to those in his earlier writings, but they still occupy a secondary
position in relation to the dominant role of the male ﬁgures; there would be no story
without Maximilian or the poetic male voice. Among these works, it is primarily the
sexual poems found in Neue Gedichte that have sparked scholarly interest.ll Discussions
of F lorentinische Na'chte and Elementargeister are often incorporated into studies
addressing Heine’s continual use of mythology and his tendency toward Hellenism. '2
What is generally lacking from such studies is an attention to gender. How is Heine’s
representation of sensuality, his appropriation of Greek antiquity, tied speciﬁcally to his
representations of the feminine?

Since the goal of this study is to better understand Heine’s female portrayals, it
seems logical to believe that the intellectual women with whom he was in closest contact
most likely inﬂuenced him. Yet, a man from another culture and era also signiﬁcantly
inﬂuenced Heine’s portrayal of women. Chapter 4, The Inﬂuence of Shakespeare,

examines how Heine’s fascination with the English renaissance writer ﬁnds expression in

 

n For studies on the erotic elements of Heine’s “Verschiedene” poems see Paul Peters (2002) and lost
Hermand (I991).
‘2 See for example Ralph Martin (1999) or Ji'irgen Fohrmann’s smaller study (1999/2000).

9

three particular texts. In 1838 Heine was commissioned to write commentary for forty-
ﬁve copper etchings of Shakespeare’s leading ladies. The resulting work, Shakespeares
Ma'dchen und Frauen (1839), provides a valuable glimpse into the Shakespearean
portrayals which Heine ﬁnds most intriguing. It is then interesting to see how Heine’s
involvement with Shakespeare’s works unfolds in Deutschland. Ein Wintermc'irchen
(1844) and Atta Troll. Ein Sommernachtstraum (1847). The most thorough analyses of
Shakespeares Ma‘dchen und Frauen date from the 19705 and there has been no recent
attempt to reread this text from a post-modem perspective.l3 And while Deutschland.
Ein Winterma'rchen and Atta Troll have received substantial scholarly attention, the
female ﬁgures in these texts have been primarily understood as destructive.I4

The culmination of this study is chapter 5, The Goddess and the Devil. It
examines Heine’s two most fully developed female protagonists, the goddess Diana and
the devil Mephistophela. These two ﬁgures are found in the ballet scenarios Die Go'ttin
Diana (1854) and Der Doktor Faust (1851), both written toward the end of his career.
Because Die Go'ttin Diana is based in part upon the mythological ﬁgure of Diana and Der
Doktor Faust is based upon the German legend of Faust, these two works will be
examined to determine how Heine transforms the female ﬁgures from the original stories.
As might be expected, the critical scholarship on Heine’s Faust has sought to compare it
to Goethe’s version.‘5 Very little attention has been devoted to Heine’s gender
transformation of Mephistopheles into Mephistophela and even less to the ﬁgure of

Diana.

 

'3 For the most recent and thorough discussion of this text see Volkmar Hansen (1978).
'4 See for example Maximilian Bergengruen (1997) and Karlheinz F ingerhut (1992).

'5 See for example George F. Peters (1999).

10

When we examine the portrayal of women throughout Heine’s works, it becomes
clear that they evolve from objects of desire, to fantastical ﬁgures, and ﬁnally into multi-
dimensional protagonists. Their increasing depth was undoubtedly a product of Heine’s
inﬂuential environment, which included an inﬂux of French liberalism in opposition to
the conservative Restoration of the German Confederation. I further believe that Heine’s
intellectual relationships with Rahel Vamhagen, Cristina Belgiojoso, George Sand, and
Fanny Lewald contributed greatly to his perception of women and his views on the
appropriateness of their participation in the public sphere. By reading Heine with a new
attention to gender we are able to restore the signiﬁcance of his female portrayals so that
they can be understood as something other than destructive femmes fatales or dangerous

seductresses.

ll

CHAPTER 1
OBJECTS OF DESIRE

Heinrich Heine’s Buch der Lieder (1827) remains an intriguing collection of
poetry for scholars today, not because of its timeless depiction of unrequited love, nor
because of the canonization of the Romantic siren, the Loreley. What brings scholars
back to this work is always the hope of ﬁnding new meaning or insight into Heine’s later
works or his position on a particular Controversial topic relating to religion, philosophy,
or literature. In these poems the familiar themes and easy rhymes draw us in; however, it
is the unexpected change, the break from tradition, and the irony that captivate us.

This study, which examines the development of Heine’s female ﬁgures,
necessarily begins with a discussion of Bach der Lieder as an example of his early
writing. Even though this work is has generated an abundance of scholarship from
Heine’s time until today, there are surprisingly few recent studies. '6 Christian Liedtke’s
(2002) Heinrich Heine: Neue Wege der F orschung is a collection of essays, all of which
have had a substantial impact on Heine studies or introduced new directions for research
(9). The entry included on Buch der Lieder is by Norbert Altenhofer (1982): he
considers the importance of the collective or cyclic aspect of these poems. While
Liedtke’s introduction suggests that Heine’s “Frauenbild” is an area of research missing
from this selection, it is astonishing that Altenhofer’s dated study should take precedence
over a feminist or gender-studies reading of some of Heine’s most famous female ﬁgures.

Roger F. Cook’s similar anthology, A Companion to the Works of Heinrich Heine (2002)

 

'6 For an understanding of the scholarly attention this work has received see the following critical
bibliographies: Gottfried Wilhelm (1822-1953); Siegfried Seifert (1954-1964); Siegfried Seifert and Albina
A. Volgina (1965-1982); Erdmann von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff and Gunther Mﬁhlpfordt (1983-1995);
and from 1996 on see the yearly bibliography in the Heine Jahrbuch. Gerhard Hohn‘s Heine Handbuch
(2004) lists approximately 100 studies which have made substantial contributions to the understanding of
this one work. However, there are only a few studies listed newer than 1990.

12

contains an attempt at such a study by Paul Peters, “A Walk on the Wild Side: Heine’s
Eroticism.” While Peters focuses on the female ﬁgures in Heine’s Buch der Lieder and
also his later “Verschiedene” poems, he is unable to consistently conclude whether or not
the female is a subject. Peters writes, “what it [Buch der Lieder] reveals above all are not
simply the agonizings of a male protagonist, but some of the deepest mysteries of the
female subject”; and then in the next sentence, “the female subject of Buch der Lieder is
not, in the habitual sense, a subject at all” (58). And yet only a few pages later in his
analysis of a female ﬁgure he writes, “In it, woman as pure body instantaneously
undergoes an even more shocking metamorphosis: that from sexual object into sexual
subject” (72). The difﬁculty Peters has in deciding whether the female in Heine’s early
poetry is a subject shows her to be more complex than she initially appears. While one
may ﬁnd a repetition of similar female portrayals in these poems, the many deviations
from this pattern make generalizations about “her” role tempting but largely inaccurate.
To avoid the pitfalls of Peters’ study, I will deﬁne how I will be using the terms
‘subject’ and ‘object.’ The subject is active, expresses a sense of self, and exhibits
autonomous behavior. The object is deﬁned by another’s physical description, is the
recipient of action, and participates only in behavior that conﬁrms its existence as a
characterized type. A common example of the object in poetry is the beautiful female
who is introduced by the male narrator’s gaze upon her body. If she speaks or moves
those actions help deﬁne her as worthy of his affection. Even the traditional femme
fatale, who is beautiful but behaves viciously, remains an object through her creation of
mystery and danger. She does not behave in a way that challenges the narrator’s

perception of her, rather she reafﬁrms her negative position as an irresistible object. The

13

female ﬁgure becomes more interesting when she behaves unexpectedly. Judith Butler
explains how small acts of deﬁance — such as the return of the gaze - predict trouble for
the authoritative position of the masculine subject:
For that masculine subject of desire, trouble became a scandal with the
sudden intrusion, the unanticipated agency, of a female “object” who
inexplicably returns the glance, reverses the gaze, and contests the place
and authority of the masculine position. (xxvii-xxviii)
For Butler these small acts of agency do not constitute a full position of subjecthood, yet
I view them as the ﬁrst steps toward achieving that position. I see in Heine’s early poetry
such signs of “unanticipated agency” in which the female expresses herself beyond her
typecast limitation as a maiden, princess, muse, or demon. What begin as recognizable
signs of self-expression here are developed in his later works into fully realized female
subjects.

The second step in understanding Heine’s ﬁgures is to acknowledge the literary
traditions in which they are based. Robert C. Holub critically examines Heine’s early
essay writing, including “Romantik” (1820), to better understand how Heine envisioned
himself between Romantic and Classic tendencies. Holub concludes that:

Heine chooses certain elements from the past and develops them further,
retains others and utilizes them in a different context or fashion, and
rejects others as unsuitable for modern times. Thus, to speak of Heine as
simultaneously breaking with and continuing the traditions of Classicist
aesthetics and as representing a turning point is only an apparent

contradiction. (46)

14

Heine’s appropriation of different elements from each of these schools of thought is
exactly what makes his writing interesting. In order to recognize how Heine uses and
alters these classical and Romantic structures, it is necessary to ﬁrst understand the
foundation of these literary movements.

“The essence” of Romanticism is deﬁned by Gerhard Schulz as “the literary
attempts toward the end of the eighteenth and at the beginning of the nineteenth century
that try to invoke a Christian-European consciousness and depart from the traditions of
forms and the mainly mythological imagery of classical antiquity” (33). The Christian
inﬂuence is often visible in portrayals of chaste and virtuous maidens, depictions of
nature that celebrate creation, such as the sun, ﬂowers, and birds, and a common faith in
poesy as the revelation of the spirit. There is comfort in the belief that love that is not
fulﬁlled in this world (Diesseits) will be in an afterlife (Jenseits) (Windfuhr 214).
Classicism, in contrast, is characterized by a greater attention to structure and form; it
afﬁrms life on earth, including all of its sensual pleasures, and celebrates the polytheistic
nature of Greek mythology.

Since the role of the female in poetry has traditionally been deﬁned in terms of
her relation to the male, it is necessary to examine the history of this relationship.
Manfred Windfuhr identiﬁes three main literary representations of love: Goethe’s
Erlebnislyrik (individualized love), Romantic (spiritual love), and Volkslieder (universal
love). The love represented in Volkslieder is based upon the assumption that love is
experienced by all similarly. It follows that there are two main types — fulﬁlled,
Anacreontic, and unfulﬁlled, Petrarchan, love. Windfuhr claims that of these traditions,

Heine most closely identiﬁes with the Petrarchan model (220). Petrarch’s poems portray

15

a love for Laura that is not reciprocated due ﬁrst to her status as a married woman and
then her death (Windfuhr 215). Where Laura’s refusal of Petrarch was based on moral
integrity, Windfuhr sees Heine’s female ﬁgures exhibiting, “Egoismus, Betrug, Verrat,
Qualsucht oder Gleichgﬁltigkeit” (231). For Windfuhr, especially in the poems dealing
with unrequited love, there is little room for a positive interpretation of Heine’s female
ﬁgures.

Geertje Suhr’s full—length study of the portrayal of women in Heine’s poetry
arrives at a slightly different conclusion than Windfuhr. Considering especially Heine’s
“Traumbilder,” Suhr argues that with the exception of one instance of betrayal, the
female ﬁgures here are more appropriately understood as oblivious objects of affection
(27). Suhr removes the blame for the poet’s unhappy situation from her and places it
instead upon the circumstance, that of the unfulﬁlled love. She reads the role of the
female in Heine’s songs as two-fold: “Als Muse erﬁillt sie im Leben des Dichters ihre
Aufgabe, als Liebesobjekt versagt sie sich ihm und enttéiuscht ihn” (34). By remaining
unattainable, she inspires the poet to write. In “Lyrisches Intermezzo” Suhr ﬁnds
evidence that the poet is able at times to celebrate the muse without criticizing her (46).
Because Suhr more carefully considers the variations of female ﬁgures in each of the
distinct sections of Buch der Lieder, she avoids the limitations of Windfuhr’s more
generalized study.

While both Windfuhr and Suhr have considered Heine’s female portrayals as
something more than traditional representations, their analyses focus on the effects of the
relationship upon the male: How is he inspired by her? How does he suffer because of

her? If we turn these questions around and ask instead — What does she do? What does

16

she refuse to do? — then we are able to see how she achieves moments of “unanticipated
agency,” as Butler describes. How do these ﬁgures break from tradition and behave
unexpectedly? How do they surprise the poet?

The ﬁrst section of Buch der Lieder, “Traumbilder,” as the title implies, deals
with dreams or imaginary scenes. In “IX” the poet dreams of “die allerschonste Maid”
(B 1: 35). She is introduced by the gaze of the poet, who describes her physical features
and deﬁnes her as the object of his desire. Once they embrace, the poet realizes that
something is not right; she is cold. What is unexpected in this poem is that she conﬁrms
her lack of desire by speaking in her own words. It is not simply the poet who chastises
her for not being/doing what he had hoped. She speaks in two of the last four stanzas:

Wie bebt und pocht vor Weh und Lust
Mein Herz, und brennet heiB!
Nicht bebt, nicht pocht der Schonen Brust,

Die ist so kalt wie Eis.

“Nicht bebt, nicht pocht wohl meine Brust,
Die ist wie Eis so kalt;
Doch kenn auch ich der Liebe Lust,

Der Liebe Allgewalt.

Mir blﬁht kein Rot auf Mund und Wang,

Mein Herz durchstrdmt kein Blut;

Doch straube dich nicht schaudemd bang,

l7

Ich bin dir hold und gut.”

Und wilder noch umschlang sie mich,

Und tat mir fast ein Leid;

Da kraht der Hahn — und stumm entwich

Die marmorblasse Maid. (B I: 36)
She says that she will not hurt him but then she forcefully reaches for him. In a poem
that is only seven stanzas long, she is compared to marble four times (Marine/stein,
marmorblasse). This reference is so frequent that it loses its impact as an adjective and
instead becomes a motif even within this poem. Considering the Romantic introduction
of her character — she is a vision in a dream, she is “heimlich wunderbar,” she has eyes
like pearls and hair that blows in the breeze — her association with marble seems out of
place. That she is not warm to the poet but rather cold and hard like marble is what
makes her unique. Although we might expect Suhr to give the female credit here for
admitting that she knows love but simply does not feel it for him, Suhr instead reads her
as a symbol of death and ruin (23). Suhr further removes her from the discussion by
claiming that it is the idea of love that is so threatening to the poet:

Hier ist weniger der Gegensatz von mannlicher Glut und weiblicher Kalte

dargestellt, als ein Vorgang zwischen Mann und Frau, der auf

symbolischer Ebene deutlich machen soll, daB der Dichter von der Macht

seiner eigenen Liebesgeﬁihle der Frau gegenﬁber, nicht aber eigentlich

von einer ‘wirklichen’ Frau bedroht ist. (26)

I8

The crow of the rooster wakes the poet from his dream, or according to Suhr rescues him
(23). What she reads as threatening is really just a subtle expression of agency. The
“allerschonste Maid” from the ﬁrst stanza disappears in the last line as “die marmorblasse
Maid.” While her transformation here is fairly minor, it still represents a step beyond the
expectations of a dreaming poet. As in this poem, throughout Heine’s writing we ﬁnd
examples of how marble is used to indicate a change in character or a disruption of
expectation. In Heine’s later works the association with marble as a symbol of Greek
antiquity and sensuality is further developed.

The “Prolog” to the second section of poems, Lyrisches Intermezzo, contains a
similar dream sequence. Here an awkward knight, who is laughed at by women, receives
a visit from a beautiful “Liebste,” who arrives singing at his door (B l: 74). She enters
wearing a “Wellenschaumkleide,” a jeweled veil, and she glows like a rose (B 1: 74).
However, there is something foreboding about her that prevents a purely Romantic
reading of her character and indicates that things are not exactly as they appear. The
knight hears “Ein seltsames Singen” when she arrives at midnight, and there is a “stiﬂe
Gewalt” in her eyes (B I: 74). He stands there stiff and pale as she teases him and then
covers his head with her veil. Magically they arrive at her “Wasserpalast” where she has
become a “Nixe” and he her groom (B I: 75). There is a celebration with music, dancing
and singing but when the knight attempts to cling to her too tightly the entire scene
disappears.

Sie spielen und singen, und singen so schon,
Und heben zum Tanze die F tiBe;

Dem Ritter dem wollen die Sinne vergehn,

l9

Und fester umschlieBt er die SﬁBe —

Da loschen auf einmale die Lichter aus,

Der Ritter sitzt wieder ganz einsam zu Haus,

In dem diistem Poetenstﬁbchen. (B 1: 75)
This poem is a further example of a female ﬁgure who is expressive. She sings, knocks
on his door, teases him, and transports them both to a different place. As a female ﬁgure
she moves from a predominantly Romantic portrayal of a woman adorned with jewelry
and blond curls to a fantastical mermaid. Since both are variations of Romantic images
and because Heine has so consciously played with Romantic convention, it is not
surprising that the dream dissolves into a poet’s dingy studio. Yet there is a difference
between the knight’s home and the merrnaid’s palace, namely, the fantastical realm
provides a place for something to happen that otherwise could not. Suhr likewise sees the
dream as an escape for the poet, making possible a union with the beloved despite the
otherwise adverse circumstances (44). In this poem it is their happy union that is realized
in the dream; in Heine’s later works this realm provides an alternative to reality and a
reprieve from constraining social rules. It is within the imaginative layers of his writing
that glimpses of his utopian vision can be found.

Death can also function as an alternative reality. The Schauerromantik tradition
of poetry focuses on representations of the grotesque, but here Heine infuses a liberating
spirit into this association. The pairing of women with death, as in poem “IX” of
“Traumbilder,” seems to express a critique of her lack of emotion — she is cold as a
corpse. Yet there is a way to read Heine’s use of this dark imagery differently. In the

poem “XXXII” of Lyrisches Intermezzo, the woman is most deﬁnitely an object, she is

20

dead. The narrator kisses, embraces, and holds her. Yet, something happens when he
crawls into the grave.

Ich kusse, umschlinge und presse dich wild,

Du Stille, du Kalte, du Bleiche!

Ich jauchze, ich zittre, ich weine mild,

Ich werde selber zur Leiche. (B I: 87)
Instead of the female undergoing a transformation, he does. He cheers, shakes, and cries
as he becomes a corpse. Death offers them a space where they can be together away
from a society that had prevented their union. It could even be argued that in some ways
this poem resembles the Anacreontic tradition of poetry. Windfuhr describes the
characteristics of Anacreontic poetry as a happy and fulﬁlled love, “Die Liebenden
genieBen das Glﬁck der Sinnlichkeit und Herzenseinheit, einmal mehr bacchantisch, das
andere Mal mehr gedampft-innig” (215). As the other corpses wake and dance around
them in a bacchanal fashion, they choose to remain lying together. The fact that he lies in
her arms signiﬁes both her ability to embrace him and fulﬁllment to a certain degree of
their union. Furthermore there is an interesting linguistic change from the use of the
pronoun “ich,” at the beginning which implies an object (dich). to “wir,” which allows
for both to be at least grammatical subjects.

Die Toten stehn auf, die Mittemacht ruft,

Sic tanzen im qutigen Schwarme;

Wir beide bleiben in der Gruft,

Ich liege in deinem Arme.

21

Die Toten stehn auf, der Tag des Gerichts
Ruft sie zu Qual und Vergniigen;

Wir beide bekﬁmmern uns um nichts,

Und bleiben umschlungen liegen. (B 1: 87)

In contrast to the female ﬁgures examined so far who have been either cold or
disappeared just at the moment of their union, there are also those ﬁgures who are
passionate. If we consider again Butler’s claim that small acts of female autonomy
contest the authoritative position of the male, then we begin to understand how Heine’s
most expressive females are also the most dangerous. While Heine’s female ﬁgures
participate in many different actions throughout his works — moving, speaking, singing,
dancing, cooking, casting magic spells, and rescuing — in these poems she expresses
emotion. One very simple example is the short poem, “LII” from Lyrisches Intermezzo.
In three stanzas Heine conveys the image of a couple swearing their love for one another.
The poem follows the Romantic formula of being a dream, in the month of May, as the
couple sits under a linden tree. But the woman behaves in an unscripted way:

Das war ein Schworen und Schworen aufs neu

Ein Kichern, ein Kosen, ein Kﬁssen;

DaB ich gedenk des Schwures sei,

Hast du in die Hand mich gebissen. (B l: 96)
She bites him and thereby challenges his idealization of her.

The two most common examples of this alluring yet dangerous female are the
Loreley and the Sphinx from the Preface to the third edition of Buch der Lieder (1839).

While sitting atop the cliffs of the Rhein, the Loreley combs her blond hair and sings

22

“eine wundersame,/ Gewaltige Melodei” (B l: 107) The sailors are distracted by her and
steer their ships into the cliff: “Und das hat mit ihrem Singen/ Die Lore-Ley getan” (B l:
107). Whether she intended this to happen remains unclear, yet it is still something she
did “hat. . .getan.”
In the Preface, the narrator is walking past a city gate when he sees a statue of a

sphinx who is both horrible and pleasurable to look at.

Dort vor dem Tor lag eine Sphinx,

Ein Zwitter von Schrecken und Liisten,

Der Leib und die Tatzen wie ein Low,

Ein Weib an Haupt und Briisten. (B 1: 14)
As the narrator approaches he cannot resist kissing the beautiful marble sphinx, as
nightingales sing around him. She comes to life and kisses him back, drinking the breath
and poetic soul from his lips while scratching him with her claws.

Sie trank mir fast den Odem aus -

Und endlich, wollustheischend,

Umschlang sie mich, meinen armen Leib

Mit den Lowentatzen zerﬂeischend.

Entzﬁckende Marter und wonniges Weh!
Der Schmerz wie die Lust unermeBlich!
Derweilen des Mundes KuB mich beglt’rckt,

Verwunden die Tatzen mich graBlich. (B l: 15)

The sphinx is half woman and half beast, allowing for her to be both seductive and
destructive without that being a contradiction in her character. However, it is not the poet
who questions the sphinx’ character, rather it is the nightingale.

Die Nachtigall sang: “O schone Sphinx!

O Liebe! was 5011 es bedeuten,

DaB du verrnischest mit Todesqual

All deine Seligkeiten?” (B l: 15).

So ‘what should it mean?’ that both the Loreley and the sphinx are powerfully
beautiful female ﬁgures? Suhr reads them both as a symbol of the power of love (52) and
thereby removes the female herself almost completely from the analysis. Windfuhr
similarly focuses his attention away from the representation of the Loreley and onto her
connection with nature. He claims that the cliffs of the Rhein represent how nature can
“wreck” a relationship (225).17 While the depiction of nature and love are integral parts
of these poems, they should not replace the female as an originator of action. It is the
woman who surprises the narrator and thereby reveals his vulnerability. Although their
behaviors are not substantial enough to grant. them consideration as completely
autonomous subjects, the fact that the Loreley sings, the sphinx scratches, and the girl
bites are enough to agitate the narrator.

While other scholars have described those of Heine’s female ﬁgures who are
sensual and powerful as femmes fatales, I think that this perspective diminishes the
importance of these interesting ﬁgures. Carola Hilmes explains how the position of the

femme fatale is not a liberated one:

 

'7 “Aber in keiner der dichterischen Vorlagen [Brentano. Eichendorf’f. Grafen Loeben] ist der allegorisch
verstandene Felsen die Ursache ﬁir den Schiftbruch der Liebhaber” (225'). “Die Natur ist einbezogen in die
Liebesklage” (226).

24

Sieht man sich die Geschichten der F emme fatale in der nachromantischen
Literatur an, muB man erkennen, daB der ihr zugestandene
Handlungsspielraum nicht nur begrenzt ist, sondem auch ein geliehener.
Nur unter der Herrschaft des mannlichen Blicks verrnag die F emme fatale
ihre Macht zu entfalten. (xiv)
Although her description is of the femme fatale in the post-Romantic literature, a period
during which I believe that writers like Heine were beginning to use this idea differently,
I concur with Hilmes’ understanding that the femme fatale does not derive her power
from within, but rather through her objectiﬁcation by the. male.

Clemens Brentano’s Romantic poem about the Loreley (1801/02) serves as a
revealing example of how the male gaze traps the female. Brentano’s Lore Lay is
described as a “Zauberin” who is beautiful and breaks hearts (16: 535). After she is
invited to speak by the Bishop, she asks that he put her to death. She is tired of people
becoming tainted after looking into her eyes.

“Herr Bischof, laBt mich sterben,
Ich bin des Lebens mt‘rd,
Weil jeder muB verderben,

Der meine Augen sieht.

Die Augen sind zwei Flammen,
Mein Arm ein Zauberstab —
O legt mich in die Flammen!

O brechet mir den Stab!” (Brentano 16: 536)

25

But the Bishop cannot damn her since he too is taken by her spell.

“Ich kann dich nicht verdammen,

Bis du mir erst bekennt,

Warum in diesen Flammen

Mein eigen Herz schon brennt.” (Brentano I6: 536)
When the Bishop asks how she became cursed, she tells him that her lover deceived her.
Brentano’s Lore Lay is thus deﬁned either by those who desire or betray her. Only at the
end of the poem does she leave the three knights who are escorting her to a cloister and
climb up the cliff overlooking the Rhein. There, believing she sees her former lover in a
boat below, she jumps to him and her death. Even in the act of suicide, her behavior has
been inspired by another.

Thus far in Heine’s female ﬁgures we have encountered a virtuous maiden, a
fantastical nymph, a corpse-like partner, a seductive siren and a beastly statue. Within
their imaginary realms of dream and fantasy, these ﬁgures have undergone a certain
degree of liberation. They have progressed beyond their initial descriptions as
representations of nature, depictions of death, and marble statues. One ﬁnal aspect of
their character, which begins to surface in the not-so-fatal femmes fatales, is their
capacity for passion. This is one trait that Heine develops more extensively in his later
writing, especially during his period of study on Shakespeare.

In the midst of nature poems about unrequited love, there exists a socially critical
poem that stands in stark contrast to the others. In “L” from Lyrisches Intermezzo Heine
directly addresses the topic of passion and voices for the ﬁrst time his dislike of social

institutions that attempt to control and restrict sensual expression. It is a poem about an

26

aftemoon tea where men and women are seated around a table discussing the topic of
love. Heine speciﬁcally places the capacity for passion within his female and not his
male ﬁgures. As they take turns speaking, the men express practical and rational views
of love, while the women express varying degrees of emotion.

Sie saBen und tranken am Teetisch,

Und sprachen von Liebe viel.

Die Herren die waren asthetisch,

Die Damen von zartem Geﬁihl. (B 1: 95)
Although this poem clings to gender stereotypes — men are rational and women emotional
— there is something clever in Heine’s portrayal of the situation. In the second stanza, the
“Hofrat,” a representative of elected authority, speaks ﬁrst, saying that love is platonic.
His wife smiles ironically and sighs in disagreement. In the second stanza the
“Domherr,” a representative of the Church, warns of the physical hazards of love while
his wife lisps in protest. In the fourth stanza the “Graﬁn,” a woman of nobility, speaks
ﬁrst saying, “Die Liebe ist eine Passion!” but then graciously presents her husband with
his cup of tea (B 1: 95). The ironic contrast of the Graﬁn’s words with her action is
further reinforced by the blatantly sarcastic tone of the last stanza.

Am Tische war noch ein Platzchen;

Mein Liebchen, da hast du gefehlt.

Du hattest so hﬁbsch, mein Schatzchen,

Von deiner Liebe erzahlt. (B l: 96)
The narrator reduces his partner both by omitting her from the table and by the

diminutives, “Liebchen” und “Schiitzchen,” making it clear that her answer would not

have deviated from the expected social convention. While the poem offers no solution to
combat the exclusion of sensuality from society, it does mark the beginning of what later
develops in Heine’s work as an idealization of sensuality and a rejection of spirituality.

In the majority of these poems, Heine began with Romantic descriptions of
women and nature but then altered the anticipated outcome. While there are Petrarchan
elements in his writing, including the theme of unrequited love, this does not always
result in a negative portrayal of the woman. Even in the antithesis of pleasure — death —
we ﬁnd a semi-Anacreontic portrayal of love. At the heart of these alterations of poetic
forms is the female ﬁgure, who in small but important ways begins to deﬁne herself other
than through the narrator’s gaze. As Heine develops as a writer, he continues to contest

the boundaries of literary forms especially within his female characters.

28

CHAPTER 2
SALONS AND LETTERS

Introduction

In order to understand Heine’s literary representations of women, this study
logically turns to his biography for some insight. While an immediate connection
between the writer’s life and his works may at ﬁrst seem natural, there is always the
danger that this association may lead to an oversimpliﬁcation of a text or an exaggeration
of a biographical fact. The goal here is to gain a more balanced perspective on the
women with whom Heine was in close contact and to explore how they individually
affected and collectively altered his perception of women in society. Each of these four
women fashioned her own unique interpretation of what it meant to be a self-assertive
woman in the nineteenth century; together they represent a challenge to socially imposed
gender roles.

Before the lives of these women are explored for the ways in which they rejected
traditional femininity, it is necessary to understand how women were expected to behave.
Karin Hausen collected a list of the predominant character traits of the sexes from
nineteenth-century encyclopedias, pedagogical texts, and literary works. She summarizes
that men were seen as independent, brave, ambitious, intelligent and reasonable while
women were described as dependent, modest, sympathetic, receptive, and religious (56).
Thus normative masculinity included rational, intellectual, and public behavior whereas
proper femininity was emotional. Since women required supervision, they were conﬁned
within the limits of the family and the home. While class would also have played a part

in determining an individual’s role in society, it can be assumed that the texts Hausen

29

selected were aimed at the literate middle to upper classes. Joeres uses these delineations
with hesitation, since any deﬁnition that seeks to be deﬁnitive without considering
possibilities for contestation is problematic (3-4). Yet gender stereotypes do provide a
foundation for conceptualizing the behavior of the women I have selected for this study.
Although Joeres focuses only on German women writers, while I also consider a French
and an Italian woman, I agree with the argument at the heart of her study about how
women internalized their prescribed roles in society:
As the labels of appropriate gender characteristics were increasingly and
more widely accepted, their activity as writers might well be seen as
deviant, and that judgment would be absorbed, interiorized, and possibly
believed by the writers themselves. And in most instances it is also
apparent that the women themselves acknowledged their own deviance
and waged ongoing struggles to have themselves accepted as respectable
despite their activities. (5)
How the women of this study represented themselves in their writings is important, since
Heine not only read their published works but also received their personal letters. If their
own self-representations contained ambiguities or if there existed contradictions between
their public and private writing, then it would follow that the impression these women
made on Heine was complex. This might also provide one possible explanation of why
his journalistic writings on women seem at times to contradict his more liberated ﬁctional
representations.
The following four sections explore Heine’s intellectual relationships with Rahel

Vamhagen (1771-1833), Cristina Belgiojoso (1808-1871), George Sand (1804-1876),

30

and Fanny Lewald (181 1-1889). 1 do not believe it was coincidence that Heine chose to
cultivate lasting relationships with women whose names, with the possible exception of
Belgiojoso, are familiar to nineteenth-century feminist scholars. These women were
interesting to Heine for many of the same reasons that they elicit study today. They
sought to discover and express themselves through writing, political activity, salon
organization, travel, and unconventional partnerships. They entered Heine’s life at
different formative stages. He met Vamhagen in Berlin in 1821 before he had gained a
presence as a poet or writer. Heine met Belgiojoso and Sand shortly after his move to
Paris and cultivated their friendship during the height of .his social interaction with the
Parisian intelligentsia. Lewald initiated and maintained visits to him after his health
deteriorated and he was conﬁned to his home. Heine’s relationship with Elise Krinitz
(Camille Selden) during the last nine months of his life has been omitted from this study
although she, too, was a writer, since Heine composed little original writing after they
met. Since the goal of this chapter is to seek sources of inﬂuence upon his perception of
women, it may at ﬁrst seem contradictory to omit consideration of his wife, Crescence
Eugenie Mirat (Mathilde). However, Hauschild and Werner make a convincing
argument in their biography that she shared few of his literary interests (311). Although
Heine had a close relationship with his mother, Betty Heine, and his sister, Charlotte
Embden, as evidenced by their letters, I have left them out of this study in order to focus
instead on the women outside of his family who greatly altered his disposition toward
women.

Through his friendships with the four women mentioned above, Heine was

introduced to other intellectual women. Of importance are Vamhagen’s sister-in-law,

31

F riederike Robert, and Belgiojoso’s friend, Caroline Jaubert. Heine was introduced to
both at salons and they became a topic of common interest within the exchange of letters.
Fanny Lewald’s traveling companion, Therese von Bacheracht, who was Karl Gutzkow’s
mistress, also became an acquaintance of Heine’s. While Heine’s relationships with
these women were tangential and not developed as much as those with the four he knew
well, they do provide additional examples of women in Heine’s life who led
unconventional lives.

Vamhagen, Belgiojoso, Sand, and Lewald will be discussed individually in order
to reveal how their relationship with Heine developed over the years. An understanding
of their friendship will be gleaned from remaining letters, both between Heine and these
women, and from letters to acquaintances in which one or the other is mentioned.
Jaubert’s memoirs illuminate Heine’s friendship with Belgiojoso, and Lewald’s memoirs
contain detailed information about her visits with Heine. Heine himself refers to the
public personae of these women in Lutezia (1854), his collection of articles written for
the Allgemeine Zeitung between 1840-1854. Visible in these texts is not only the mutual
respect and companionship Heine shared with these woman, but also an intellectual
dialogue on current events, each other’s writing, literature, and travel. Since the remains
of these relationships are reassembled through a variety of sources, including some
secondary interpretations, it is continually important to acknowledge the original purpose
of these texts. Joeres concludes that the women writers in her study consciously
developed strategies in order to manipulate, but not annihilate, gender expectations. As
we consider how women consciously highlighted their respectable traits in their letters

and memoirs, we must also keep in mind that Heine’s correspondence and essays are

32

likewise self—representations. This leads us to ask whether Heine portrays himself
differently in his personal letters to these women than he does in his public writing. I
believe that depending on the purpose of the text, Heine conveys both a deep-seated
admiration for these women and an apparent dismissal of their work as writers.

Inﬂuence has traditionally been understood as a linear concept, in which one side
provides the ideas that the other side passively receives (Joeres 26). What needs to be
considered, instead, is a concept of intertextuality that allows for the interplay of ideas
without hierarchal privilege. Intertextuality is important in feminist studies because it
gives agency to nineteenth-century women writers who appropriated and utilized male
literary traditions (Joeres 26-7). In Joeres’ study on women writers she contends,
“German women borrowed heavily from the male context of writing and philosophy and
political thinking that surrounded them, but they also revised, reacted to, changed, or
subverted the ideas they absorbed” (27). This study, one that aims to show how women,
the perceived recipients of inﬂuence, provided stimuli for a male writer, also requires a
similar understanding. Heine gained insight from the experiences of these women and he
“reacted” to, “revised,” and sometimes rejected their ideas. What this chapter seeks to
prove is that through his relationships with them Heine was forced to consider women’s
changing position in society.

The presence of these women in Heine’s life had a cumulative effect, one that is
minimized by the structure of this chapter, which considers each friendship individually.
It is important to consider how these women were interconnected. Heine became close
friends with Vamhagen’s husband, Karl August, his sister, Rosa Maria Assing, and her

daughter, Ludmilla. Rosa Maria’s husband was David Assing, Fanny Lewald’s uncle.

33

While Lewald and Rahel Vamhagen never met, Lewald writes in her memoirs what an
inspiration she found her letters to be (Goodman Dis/Closures 152-3). Lewald also
sought Karl August Vamhagen’s help in gathering information for her historical novel on
Prince Louis Ferdinand, who had been a friend of Rahel’s. At different times Sand and
Belgiojoso shared intimate relationships with the French poet Alfred de Musset. Sand
had a lasting partnership with F rédéric Chopin and a strong connection with Franz Liszt,
both of whom were also friends of Belgiojoso. Since Belgiojoso and Sand both lived in
Paris at the same time, there were many mutual acquaintances within their social circles
and Heine’s. Heine also facilitated the connections among these women by sharing their
individual works with the others.18

No analysis of Heine’s relationships with women would be complete without
considering the role the Saint-Simonian movement played in shaping the perception of
gender roles. The Saint-Simonian movement was centered in Paris and Lyons, but its
socialist utopian message reached a widespread audience between 1826 and 1834.
According to the movement’s leader, Barthélemy Prosper Enfantin, society should be re-
organized around female emotion rather than male reason that leads to military conﬂict
(Moses 243). Enfantin thus encouraged female participation in the public sphere, and
believed that women’s emancipation required an acceptance of their sexuality, a
“rehabilitation of the ﬂesh” (Moses 244-5). As Claire Moses explains, it is important to
realize that Enfantin’s vision was based on the notion that women have a greater capacity
for emotion and that men are more rational (244). Another leader within the movement,

Joseph-Benjamin Buchez, proposed that the movement instead be based upon equal

 

'8 Heine writes in his letter to Belgiojoso on January 14. 1834, that he is sending her a novel of one ofhis
friends. The HSA has referenced it to be an early version of George Sand’s Leone Léoni (1834) (HHP. n
73, 26).

34

rights for all individuals. He believed that differences between men and women were not
inherent to their gender but rather a result of socialization and education (Moses 244).
However, he lost the debate to Enfantin. Thus, supporting this movement appeared on
the one hand beneﬁcial for women as it furthered their participation in public life. While
on the other hand, the encouragement of women to be overtly sexual attracted attention to
them as promiscuous or deviant, in a manner that Joeres might argue, and also threatened
to dismantle the support structure of marriage without a viable alternative to replace it.

Rahel Vamhagen wrote to Heine in 1832 saying how she wished they had the
opportunity to discuss the Saint-Simonian movement. Sand maintained a close '
relationship with Pierre Leroux, also a member of the movement.'9 While scholars such
as Jost Hermand have tended to inﬂate Heine’s association with this movement and rely
on it as an explanation for his progressive attitudes toward women, especially with
regards to his sexual “Verschiedene” poems ( 121), I agree with Koon-Ho Lee’s more
conservative assessment of Heine’s involvement with this group. He claims that Heine
had already been considering the question of women’s emancipation before he was
introduced to the Saint-Simonist ideas, and continued to deal with it after he had
terminated his association with this group. For Lee this period served simply to
challenge and strengthen his existing position on women’s role in society (150).

Before we turn our attention to these women individually, there is a paragraph
from Heine’s fragmentary work, Briefe iiber Deutschland (written 1844), which serves as
an. excellent example of Heine’s conﬂicted ideas about women. As we will see in his

personal letters Heine, writes to each of these women with expressions of affection and

 

’9 Leroux was against Enfantin’s proposal for a rehabilitation of the ﬂesh. and he leﬂ the movement along
with many others when the debated ended in Enfantin’s favor (Lee 135).

35

admiration, yet here in this public forum he seems to degrade Sand, Belgiojoso and other
women writers. Was Heine simply following the public protocol that women’s writing is
trivial, or was he using irony as a strategy to mask his appreciation of their work?

The opening and concluding sentences of this passage attempt to categorize
women as dangerous, however, within the paragraph Heine gives examples of how
powerless these women are. For Heine, it seems that a woman’s beauty is inversely
related to her ability to defend herself. Belgiojoso is portrayed as the most beautiﬁil, but
also the least likely to reject criticism. As he ends the paragraph by explaining ironically
how deadly dangerous the Comtesse is. one can extrapolate what Heine must have
thought of her appearance. There is an attempt in the text to view these women in terms
of their sexuality and thus diminish their importance as writers:

Ja, die Weiber sind gefahrlich; aber ich muB doch die Bemerkung machen,
daB die schonen lange nicht so gefahrlich sind wie die haBlichen. Denn
jene sind gewohnt, daB man ihnen die Cour mache, letztere aber machen
jedem Manne die Cour und gewinnen dadurch einen machtigen Anhang.
Namentlich ist dies in der Literatur der Fall. Ich muB hier zugleich
erwahnen, daB die franzosischen Schriftstellerinnen, die jetzt am meisten
hervorragen, alle sehr htibsch sind. Da ist George Sand, der Autor des
Essai sur le développement du dogme catholique, Delphine Girardin,
Madame Merlin, Louise Collet [sic] — lauter Damen. die alle Witzeleien
ﬁber die Grazienlosigkeit der bas bleux zu schanden machen, und denen
wir, wenn wir ihre Schriften des Abends im Bette lessen, gem personlich

die Beweise unseres Respekts darbringen mochten. Wie schon ist George

36

Sand und wie wenig gefahrlich, selbst ﬁir jene bosen Katzen, die mit der
einen Pfote sie gestreichelt und mit der andem sie gekratzt, selbst ﬁir die
Hunde, die sie am wﬁtendsten anbellen; hoch und milde schaut sie auf
diese herab, wie der Mond. Auch die Fﬁrstin Belgiojoso, diese Schdnheit
die nach Wahrheit lechzt, kann man ungestraft verletzen; es steht jedem
frei eine Madonna von Raffael mit Kot zu bewerfen, sie wird sich nicht
wehren. Madame Merlin, die nicht bloB von ihren F einden, sondern sogar
von ihren Freunden immer gut spricht, kann man ebenfalls ohne Gefahr
beleidigen; gewohnt an Huldigungen, ist die Sprache der Roheit ihr fast
fremd, und sie sieht dich an verwundert. Die schone Muse Delphine,
wenn du sie beleidigst, ergreift ihre Leier, und ihr Zorn ergieBt sich in
einem glanzenden Strom von Alexandrinnern. Sagst du etwas MiBfalliges
ﬁber Madame Collet, so ergreift sie ein Kﬁchenmesser und will es dir in
den Leib stoBen. Das ist auch nicht gefahrlich. Aber beleidige nicht die
Comtesse **! Du bist ein Kind des Todes. Vier Vermummte stﬁrzen auf
dich ein — Vier souteneurs littéraires — Das ist die Tour de Nesle — du wirst
erstochen, erwiirgt, ersauﬁ — den andem Morgen ﬁndet man deine Leiche

in den Entreﬁlets20 der Presse. (B 5: 193)

Heine most likely had met the other women he cites in this paragraph through the

salons. Delphine de Girardin (1804- I 855) was a writer who contributed to La Presse and

had her individual works published. The exact identity of Madame Merlin is not known,

but 1 speculate that she may have been the wife of the French army general Antoine

 

Klaus Briegleb explains that “Entreﬁlets” are smaller articles that deal with the dispensing of rumor or

gossip (B 5: 926).

37

Francoise Eugene Merlin (1778-1854). Louise Colet was the longtime lover of the
French novelist, Gustave Flaubert, as is documented by their correspondence. She later
became the mistress of Alfred de Musset in 1850 (Gattey 62). The Comtesse was Marie
Comtesse d’Agoult (1805-1876), a writer and companion to Franz Liszt (B 5: 925).
Heine dismisses these women ﬁrst by referring to their writing as petty (Witzeleinen) and
then by remarking that he would like to pay his respects to them in bed. He further
mocks them by claiming that they would be able to defend themselves only with a lyre or
a blunt kitchen knife. By focusing on their physical weaknesses Heine reduces their
presence as literary adversaries. Still, it is clear that he knows how and what these
women write. He mentions speciﬁcally the title of Belgiojoso’s essay on Catholicism
and describes how Merlin’s language lacks power.2| What is interesting about this
passage is that Heine has devoted so much energy to prove how unthreatening these
women are that we might be tempted to conclude that'they were threatening to him. The
ambiguous nature of his judgements underscores how Heine had difﬁculty reconciling
the literary abilities of these women with the conception of them as feminine.

A revealing way to read this paragraph from Briefe z‘iber Deutschland might be in
connection with poem “XXXIV” from Neue Gedichte (1844). Here a woman’s lengthy
protest of love is interpreted as a sign of her affection:

Der Brief, den du geschrieben,
Er macht mich gar nicht bang;
Du willst mich nicht mehr lieben,

Aber dein Brief ist lang.

 

2' Ulrike Reuter explains that Belgiojoso’s essay. published in the “Revue des Deux Mondes” had received
negative criticism and Heine had planned to write an article in her defense in “Allegemeine Zeitung” (154,
n13). Belgiojoso’s essay was published in 1842 (Gattey 221).

38

Zwolf Seiten, eng und zierlich!
Ein kleines Manuskript!
Man schreibt nicht so ausﬁihrlich,
Wenn man den Abschied gibt. (B 4: 314)
In his wordy dismissal of the women in Brie/e aus Deutschland, Heine, like the lady in

this poem, “doth protest too much, methinks” (Hamlet).

39

Wir dummen Poeten, wir vergleichen die Frauen immer, wenn es hoch kommt, mit Engel;
wir sollten wahrlich letztere mit ersteren vergleichen.
Heinrich Heine in a letter to
Karl August Vamhagen, July 29, 182622
Rahel Levin Vamhagen
Four years after Rahel Vamhagen’s death, and six years after Heine moved to
Paris, German liberal Theodor Mundt wrote to Karl August Vamhagen about his visit
with Heine:
Er [Heine] hat etwas F eines, Elegantes in seinem Wesen, idas ich nicht bei
ihm suchte, das mir aber auch nicht miBfallt und das von vielem
weiblichen Umgang zeugt. Er dreht es mir zum Kompliment, daB er mich
dfter sieht, da er sonst alle Deutschen durchaus meidet. Die Briefe von
Rahel sind ihm leider mit mehreren andem Papieren verbrannt. (April 7,
1837; Werner l: 342)
The fact that Mundt so readily attributes a change in Heine to his interactions with
women, and not, as one might expect, to his new surroundings within France’s more
egalitarian society, indicates that Mundt must have had a reason to believe this. Mundt’s
subsequent comment on the misfortune of Rahel Vamhagen’s lost letters connects
Heine’s history with her to the other inﬂuential women of his Paris years.
Mundt is correct that the majority of letters Rahel Vamhagen wrote to Heine
perished in a ﬁre at his mother’s home in November, 1833 (Mende 110). Only ﬁve
letters of their correspondence remain. However, many of the letters exchanged between

Heine and Rahel’s husband, Karl August Vamhagen, have survived.

 

23 This and all subsequent quotations of Heine’s letters are taken from the Heinrich Heine-Portal website
(HHP) which is the most current collection of Heine’s correspondence.

40

Heine met the Vamhagens in 1821 while studying in Berlin. She was hosting her
second salon at their residence on F ranzdsische Straﬂe. It is here where Heine came in
contact with many prominent members of Berlin’s intelligentsia, including Achim and
Bettine von Arnim, Michael Beer, Adelbert von Chamisso, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, G. W.
F. Hegel, Elise von Hohenhausen, Alexander von Humboldt, Friedrich von F ouque',
Friederike and Ludwig Robert.23 As is apparent from this list, Vamhagen’s24 salon
included a variety of well-known philosophers and writers. She also had connections to
Berlin’s Jewish intellectual society through her childhood friend Henriette Herz, who also
hosted a salon, and the Mendelssohns. Vamhagen’s ﬁrst salon (1790-1806), which she
had conducted in her family’s home before her marriage, included prominent Romantics
Clemens Brentano and Ludwig Tieck, along with Caroline and Wilhelm von Humboldt,
August Wilhelm and Friedrich Schlegel, Dorothea Veit-Schlegel, Friedrich
Schleiermacher, and Jean Paul (Becker, “Gelebte,” 20; Waldstein 97-8). While a number
of these people moved in and out of Vamhagen’s immediate circle of the salon, she
maintained relationships with many through letters. Exceptional in both her salons and
her correspondence was the value Vamhagen placed upon conversation. Sabine Becker
understands Vamhagen’s attention to personal dialogue as a product of Romantic
thought. She explains:

Aber im Unterschied zur Auﬂdiirung mochte sic in Salon und Brief nicht

das ‘gelehrte Gesprach’ ﬁber Wissenschaft und Philosophie ﬁihren;

 

2" In Harzreise (1826) the narrator recommends to the women he meets at the Brockenhaus the German
translations of Lord Byron by Elise von Hohenhausen (Heine 2: 145). For more complete lists of those
who attended Vamhagen’s salon see Mende 23; Stem 249; Tewarson 181; and Waldstein 98.

2" From this point forward the name Vamhagen will refer to Rahel Vamhagen. While some scholarship,
including Tewarson. has chosen to use Rahel, Sabine Becker reminds us that we no longer have the ability
to establish such a familiar relationship with her and in keeping with standard scholarly convention, an
author’s surname should be used (Studien 14). Only in discussions involving both Rahel and Karl August
Vamhagen will ﬁrst names be used for clarity.

41

vielmehr gilt es, personliche, literarische und allgemeingesellschaftliche

Themen zu diskutieren. (Becker, “Gelebte,” 19)
Thus Vamhagen’s salon emphasized interaction through discussion more than the
dissemination of philosophical thought. She was also a life-long admirer of Goethe
(Becker, “Gelebte,” 20). It was an atmosphere that focused on literature and was
characterized by a promotion of individual rights for Jews and the involvement of women
in intellectual discussions to which Heine was introduced at age twenty-three. With the
exception of a few visits in 1824 and 1829 (Frederiksen l7), Heine’s direct involvement
with her salon ended when he moved from Berlin in June 1823, although their ﬁiendship
lasted until her death in 1833.

Shortly before Heine left Berlin he wrote a letter to Vamhagen in which he
summarizes what her friendship has meant to him. Even though Heine exaggerates the
role she has played in his life, it is clear that she made an impact upon him. He uses
Romantic conventions — talk of an afterlife and the comparison of her to the most
beautiful ﬂower — to express his feelings.

Ich reise nun bald ab, und ich. bitte Sie werfen Sie mein Bild nicht ganz
und gar in die Polterkammer der Vergessenheit. Ich kdnnte wahrhaftig
keine Repressalien anwenden; und wenn ich mir auch hundertmal des
Tags vorsagte: ,,Du willst Frau v. Vamhagen vergessen!“ es ginge doch
nicht. Vergessen Sie mich nicht! Sie dtirfen sich nicht mit einem
schlechten Gedachtnisse entschuldigen, 1hr Geist hat einen Contrakt
geschlossen mit der Zeit; und wenn ich vielleicht nach einigen

Jahrhunderten das Vergnﬁgen habe Sie als die schonste und herrlichste

42

aller Blumen, im schonsten und herrlichsten aller Himmelsthaler,
wiederzusehen, so haben Sie wieder die Gtite mich arme Stechpalme (oder
werde ich noch was schlimmeres seyn?) mit Ihrem freundlichen Glanze
und lieblichen Hauche, wie einen alten Bekannten, zu begriiBen. Sie thuen
es gewiB; haben Sie ja schon anno 1822 11 1823 Aehnliches gethan, als Sic
mich kranken, bittem, mﬁrrischen, poetischen und unausstehlichen
Menschen mit einer Artigkeit und Gﬁte behandelt, die ich gewiB in diesem
Leben nicht verdient, und nur wohlwollenden Errinnerungen[sic] einer
frtihern Connoissanz verdanken muB. (HHP, April 12, 1823)
From this letter, it is possible to conclude that Heine wished to encourage her attentions
to him. Considering that she was the same age as his mother,25 and supported his interest
in writing in a way that Heine’s mother did not, it is entirely possible that Heine found a
maternal comfort in her ﬁiendship.

Heine wrote the “Heimkehr” cycle of poems between 1823-24. They were ﬁrst
published along with the poems from “Harzreise” and the “Nordsee” cycle in 1826 under
the title Reisebilder.26 Heine included a simple dedication before the “Heimkehr” poems
to Vamhagen.27 He then sent a copy of Reisebilder as it was published to Vamhagen
enclosed in a letter addressed to her husband. In the letter, dated May 14, 1826, Heine
explains how he arrived at this form of a dedication. He begins by ﬁrst asking Karl
August to give the enclosed book to Rahel in his name and then apologizes for not

writing (to her), saying he will again soon. In these opening remarks Heine uses her

 

25 Joseph A. Kruse makes this observation (“Gewonnen” 181).

26 In 1827 the “Heimkehr” poems were included in the ﬁrst edition of Buch der Lieder (B l: 674).

27 “Der Frau Geh. Legationsratin F riedrike Vamhagen v. Ense widmet die achtundachtzig Gedichte seiner
‘Heimkehr’ der Verfasser” (B 1: 717). This wording was only slightly altered for publication in the ﬁrst
edition of Bach der Lieder (1827).

43

Christian name, Friederike (and later in the letter addresses Karl August as Vamhagen).
But despite Heine’s initial claim to write a quick letter, it turns into a lengthy one in
which he describes speciﬁcally to Karl August his reasoning for publishing the
Reisebilder at this time. In the middle of the letter Heine strategically returns to the
subject of Rahel’s dedication.
Und nun, nachdem ich es solange aufgeschoben, muB ich Ihnen pldtzlich
und ganz in der Hast schreiben. Doch ist dieses auch gar kein Brief,
sondern bloB eine Bitte das beyfolgende Buch unserer lieben, guten, edlen
Friedrike in meinem Namen zu ﬁberreichen und ihr recht viel Schdnes
dabey zu sagen. Der eigentliche Brief, den ich Ihnen zu schreiben habe,
soll nachstens folgen, [. . .] Doch still davon, ich komme sonst ins
Medisiren, und auBerdem drangt mich der Abgang der Post und ich wollte
nur wenige Zeilen schreiben. Aber ich' und Fr v. Vamhagen konnen nun
ein ﬁir alle mahl keine kurzen Briefe schreiben — und daher wird meine
liebe F reundinn wohl wissen warum ich gar nicht schreibe. Anfangs dacht
ich ihr einen Dedikazionsbrief vor das Buch drucken zu lassen, doch
dieser wurde zu warm und zu lang, ein zweiter Brief wurde zu kurz und zu
kﬁhl, und nach dreymaligem Umgedrucktwerden erscheint endlich das
gegenwartige Meisterstﬁck dedizirender Beredsamkeit. Anbey auch die
verunglﬁckten und verworfenen Blatter. — Eine andre, groBere Noth war
der beangstigende Gedanke dali das Buch im Grunde zu schlecht sey um
der geistreichsten Frau des Universums dedizirt zu werden. Doch mich

trostete der Gedanke, daB Fr v. Vamhagen nicht an mir irre wird, ich mag

44

schreiben was ich will, Gutes oder Schlechtes. Bey Ihnen, Vamhagen, ist
es etwas anders, Ihnen ist es nicht hinreichend daB ich zeige wie viel Tone
ich auf meiner Leyer habe, sondern Sie wollen auch die Verbindung aller
dieser Tone zu einem groBen Conzert — und das soll der Faust werden den
ich ﬁir Sie schreibe. Denn wer hatte grdBeres Recht an meinen poetischen
Erzeugnissen als derjenige der all mein poetisches Dichten u Trachten
geordnet und zum Besten geleitet hat! (HHP, May 14, 1826)
It is interesting that Heine avoids writing to Rahel directly and instead interweaves the
necessary explanation of her dedication into his business affairs. Perhaps in an effort to
put her at ease for not speciﬁcally writing to her or to ensure that his dedication will be
well received, he pays her grand compliments and compares his lengthy letter writing
style to hers. Yet Heine is also careful not to offend Karl August and indicates that he
wants to write a version of Faust for him. Heine’s suspicion that Vamhagen might not be
entirely ﬂattered by his dedication was in fact correct.

While no direct correspondence from either Karl August or Rahel to Heine
remains from the time following this incident, Rahel does express her dislike for the
dedication years later in a letter to Friedrich von Gentz (Oct. 9, 1830). Responding to
comments that Gentz had written about Heine, she agrees that he has talent for writing,
but complains that he also has a tendency to hear only good things about himself. She
then reﬂects on her ﬁiendship with Heine in Berlin:

- Heine wurde uns vor mehreren Jahren zugeﬁihrt, wie so Viele, und
immer zu Viele; da er fein und absonderlich ist, verstand ich ihn oft, und

er mich, wo ihn Andre nicht vemahmen, das gewann ihn mir; und er nahm

45

mich als Patronin. Ich lobte ihn wie Alle, gem; und lieB ihm nichts durch,
sah ich’s vor dem Druck: doch das geschah kaum; und ich tadelte dann
scharf. Mit einemmale bekam ich sein fertiges, eingebundenes Buch von
Hamburg, wo er war, die Zueignung an mich drin. Der Schlag war
geschehn: und nur darin konnte ich mich fassen, daB ich schon damals
wuBte, daB alles Geistige vergeht (nicht so ein zerschlagenes Bein); und
sogar bald von Neuem der Art verschlungen wird, ja, das Meiste fast
unbeachtet bleibt; tun konnte ichinach vollbrachtem Attentat nichts, als
ihm schreiben: nun sahe ich es vollig ein, weBhalb man bei F ﬁrstinnen erst
die Erlaubnis erbittet, ihnen ein Buch zueignen zu diirfen etc. Wir blieben
uns aber hold nach wie vor: und Sie haben mir jetzt durch ihn ein groBes
Kompliment gemacht. (Werner 2: 489)
This letter reveals Vamhagen’s relationship with Heine to have been complex. She
recognizes his strengths and weaknesses, and readily names herself his patroness. Her
description of the dedication as a “Schlag” that damaged the intellectual connection she
shared with Heine is especially telling. Her subsequent acknowledgment that one
normally asks permission before writing a dedication to a woman of nobility, indicates
that she may have felt more disrespect than honor from Heine’s presumptuous action.
It is not apparent, however, that she expressed any of her discontent to Heine. In
fact, Heine wrote back to Karl August just a few months after sending the copy of
Reisebilder and expressed his joy in receiving a letter in which Rahel graciously accepted

his collection of poetry:

46

Meine Nordseebilder sind con amore geschrieben, u ich freu mich daB sie
Ihnen gefallen. Ueberhaupt, wie freu ich mich daB meine Reisebilder eine
gute Aufnahme bey Ihnen gefunden! Entzﬁckt, wahrhaft entzﬁckt, fast
berauscht hat mich Frau v. Vamhagens Brief. In der That, ich hab sie nie
verkannt. Ich kenne sie ein bischen. Dabey gestehe ich daB mich niemand
so tief versteht u kennt wie Fr v. V Als ich ihren Brief las wars mir als war
ich traumhaﬁ im Schlafe aufgestanden und hatte mich vor den Spiegel
gestellt u mit mir selbst gesprochen, und mit unter etwas gepralt. Das
Beste ist, ich brauch Fr v. Vamhagen keine lange Briefe zu schreiben.
Wenn sie nur weiB daB ich lebe, so weiB sie auch was ich ﬁihle u denke.
Die Grunde meiner Dedikazion hat sie, glaub ich, besser errathen als ich
selbst. Mir schien es als wollte ich dadurch ausspreche daB ich jemanden
zugehore. Ich lauf so wild in der Welt herum, manchmal kommen Leute
die mich wohl gem zu ihrem Eigenthum machen mochten, aber das sind
immer solche gewesen die mir nicht sonderlich geﬁelen, und solange
dergl der Fall ist, soll immer auf meinem Halsbande stehen: j'appartiens at
Madame Vamhagen. (HHP, July 29, 1826)
As in Heine’s other letter, he overemphasizes his connection to Vamhagen. Here he
envisions her as his mirror image, able to see more than he himself can. In case there
were still any question about Heine’s need to attach himself to her, it is answered when
he concludes this section of the letter by stating that on his collar it will say that he

belongs to her. The letter clearly reveals Heine’s need to feel understood by her.

47

The overt sentimentality of Heine’s letters should not overshadow the substance
to their ﬁiendship. As Vamhagen admits in her letter to Gentz, she chastised him for not
sharing his manuscripts with her before they were published. While it is clear from the
May 14, 1826 letter above that Heine turned to Karl August for counsel on his
publications, I believe that Rahel made equally valuable intellectual suggestions about his
work. In one of only three remaining letters of hers to Heine, she asks not only for a
letter from him but also for his work:
Sie aber, schreiben Sic! lassen Sie mich Ihre Handschriﬁ sehen: und wenn
Sie drucken lassen, vergessen Sie nie dabey, daB ich es lese; geﬂissentlich.
Das schﬁtzt Sie vor Manchem und hilft Ihnen in Vieles. Sie haben keinen
passioniertem, keinen erwagerndern Leser, keinen grdBern aplaudeur.
(HHP, June 5, 1832)

She believes that her comments could help him. As the letter continues, she laments that

they do not have the opportunity to discuss the Saint-Simonian movement which she says

has occupied her time:
Schade! daB uns nicht eine halbe Stunde mﬁndlichen Gesprachs ﬁber den
St. Simonism geschenkt ist. Mich dﬁnkt, wir sind ﬁber manches davon
nicht einer Meinung. Er ist das neue, groBerfundene Instrument, welches
die groBe alte Wunde, die Geschichte der Menschen auf der Erde, endlich
berﬁhrt. Er operiert und sahet; und unumstdBliche Wahrheiten hat er ans
Licht gefo'rdert. Die wahren F ragen in Reihe und Glied gestellt: viele,
wichtige beantwortet: die Religionsfrage mir nicht zur Gnﬁge, und

hierﬁber mﬁBten wir streiten, sprechen. Den ganzen Winter waren diese

48

Schriften, besonders der Globe meine Nahrung, Unterhaltung
Beschéiftigung: sein Ankommen meine ganze Erwartung. Die Erde
verschdnern. Mein altes Thema. F reyheit zu jeder menschlichen
Entwickelung: ebenso. Wenn wir lﬁgen, muB der gehaBt werden, dem wir
vorlﬁgen mﬁssen. Und das tun wir auch. Hieraus kann jedes VerhaltniB
deduziert werden, also auch Ehe. (HHP, June 5, 1832)
She acknowledges that they would have a difference of opinion, but wishes for the
opportunity to have that discussion with Heine. She interprets the goals of the Saint-
Simonian movement positively and welcomes its message of freedom for all and the
utopian concept that relationships, including marriages, should be based on truth and not
lies. Her engagement with this topic reﬂects her knowledge of current social topics. She
ends the letter by encouraging Heine to write, saying that his work there (in France) is
important for Germany and that every word matters. Unfortunately, Heine and
Vamhagen never had the chance to have that conversation; she died less than a year later
on March 7, 1833.
Karl August wrote to Heine a month after her death, still deeply grieving the loss
of her. He thanks Heine for his expression of sympathy in his letter (March 28, 1833),
but questions whether he will be able to comment on the books Heine has sent him
without the help of his wife.28 This letter further proves that Rahel actively participated
in the assessment of Heine’s works:
Ihre Sendungen, die franzosische und die deutsche, sind mir

zugekommen. Ich danke Ihnen, danke Ihnen in jeder Beziehung. Ich

 

2“ Heine sent him newly published German and French versions of “Geschichte der neueren schonen
Literatur in Deutschland” (HHP, April 17, 1833, HSA n51, I l).

49

werde kﬁnftig diese Gaben genieBen, davon sprechen. Das Beste wird aber
auch dabei fehlen, die Gemeinschaft mit Rahel! Sie war der fruchtbare
Boden, auf dem alle Reize und Bezﬁge mir herrlich wuchsen und
gediehen, wo mein eigner Antheil in warmender Sonnengluth reifte und
wucherte. Nun ist das alles verdorrt und geknickt; ich muB erst sehen, ob
das zerrﬁttete Erdreich neue, von ihr nicht gepﬂegte und nicht gesehene,
junge Pﬂanzen wird gedeihen lassen! Les Dieux s'en vont! Schrecklich

wahr! (HHP, April 17, 1833)

In this letter, Karl August also states that his only consolation at the moment is in

organizing her letters and papers for publication. The manuscript for Rahel. Ein Buch des

Andenkensﬁir ihre F reunde (1834) was completed a few months after her death. He asks

Heine for any letters he may have of hers. Heine responds by telling him that he only

took one of her letters with him to Paris, one that touched him deeply:

Die verlangten Briefe hatte ich nicht schicken konnen, weil sic in
Deutschland geblieben. Nur einen Brief hatte ich mitgenommen, weil er
eins der schmerzhaftesten Geﬁihle, die mich eben bewegten, am tiefsten

aussprach. (HHP, July 16, 1833)

The one that Heine took with him was dated Sept. 21, 1830. In it Rahel expresses how

much she misses her niece’s three children who had been staying with them for eight

weeks but had recently left. Toward the end of the letter she asks that Heine write to her,

implying that his words would be a source of comfort. She describes her sadness

honestly and poignantly, but her open expression of needing something from Heine

undoubtedly reassured him of his place in her life. She writes: “Ich muBte mich mit

50

Ihrem Buche gestem freuen, umsomehr, als ich dachte, das Paket enthielt auch einen
Brief. Schicken Sie mir einen recht argen, aus tiefstem Herzen, ganz nachlassig” (HHP,
Sept. 21, 1830). The package that Heine sent her was the second edition of Reisebilder
(1830).29
While Vamhagen’s desire for comfort from Heine might have been reason
enough for Heine to especially value this letter, Joseph A. Kruse points to another. He
focuses on the middle part of the letter where she voices her frustration about the
disadvantaged position of Jews in Germany as evidenced by the recent “Hepp”
conﬂicts.3O She writes:
Hepp ist mir so wenig unvermuthet als alle andere Unzucht. [. . .]
Unversehens habe ich Sie hier gegrﬁBt mit Allem, was ich jetzt ﬁber jetzt
zu sagen weiB. Sie werden dies herrlich, elegisch, phantastisch,
einschneidend, auBerst scherzhaﬁ immer, gesangvoll, anreizend, oft
hinreiBend sagen; nachstens sagen. Aber der Text aus meinem alten
beleidigten Herzen wird doch dabei der Ihrige bleiben mﬁssen. (HHP,
Sept. 21, 1830)
Kruse reads this as a charge to Heine to write about the injustice to Jews and their history,
in a way that she is not able to (172). In the letter she voices her frustrations over the
ineffectiveness of the current government, thereby offering further proof that their
relationship also included discussions of political matters.
Yet something more than a shared Jewish identity, maternal support, or the

introduction to diverse intellectual discourse which Heine shared with Vamhagen comes

 

2" See HSA n61.19 to this letter on HHP.
3” See HSA n60.36 to this letter on HHP about the Hepp uprisings.

51

through in his literary portrayals of women at this time. Heine saw modeled in her
presence as a salon hostess and in the crafting of ideas in her letters a ﬂuid nature which
captivated him. Sabine Becker believes that Vamhagen preferred open discussions to
readings and describes her understanding of Vamhagen’s salon:
Ihr ging es in erster Linie um das aktiv-dialogische Moment der
Salongeselligkeit; dieses lieB sich durch das Vorlesen kaum einl'o'sen,
bedeuteten Lesungen doch letztlich Monologe und erforderten von der
Mehrheit der Salonteilnehmer eine passiv-rezeptive und consumptive
Haltung. (“Mein” 111)
Thus according to Becker, Vamhagen wanted to promote an active participation of her
guests at the salon. In a similar manner, Katherine Goodman explains how Vamhagen’s
letters engaged her readers, “They [the letters] move quickly in stretch-like fashion from
daily experience, to literary and philosophical reﬂections, to self-explorations, to personal
news, to cultural and political phenomena, to dreams” (“Poesis” 133). In a letter to her
husband, Vamhagen herself compares her thought process to a river: “ich habe keine
fertigen Gedankenplane zur Ausarbeitung in mir vorliegen: sondem Einfall, Anregung,
Gedanke, Ausdruck, ist alles eine dieselbe Explosion und ein F luB” (qtd. in Becker,
“Mein,” 113).3 ' It is the absence of an authoritative voice in her salon, coupled with the
stream of conscience character of her letters, that closely mirrors Heine’s prose style.
Heine’s conversational-style prose is especially noticeable in Harzreise (1826) as
the narrator moves from one topic to the next. The work contains his reﬂections from a

journey taken through the Harz mountains in September, 1824 (B 2: 716). Toward the

 

3' Unfortunately Becker misquotes both the date of the letter as June 1833, which would have been a month
after her death. and the original citation, making it difﬁcult to ﬁnd the origin of these words.

52

beginning of the work a dream sequence occurs in the Gﬁttingen library and includes an
unusual female portrayal. What makes this scene of particular interest is its close
resemblance to a dream written by Vamhagen in 1812. Rahel. E in Buch des Andenkens
refers to ﬁve dreams, but only two, the ﬁrst and third, are included for publication
(Isselstein 648). Ursula lsselstein has located what is presumably the missing “Zweiter
Traum” and published it in her 1987 study. While no direct evidence suggests
Vamhagen ever shared this text with Heine, the similarity between her dream and his is
uncanny.32 Their shared experiences and mutual literary inﬂuences must have inspired
them in remarkably similar ways.
Vamhagen’s dream begins in a dimly lit room ﬁlled with works of art.
In diesem befand ich mich in einem sehr hohen zimlich groBen in
gotischen bogen ohne fenster gebautem Saal; der aber obgleich auch keine
Lichter darin zu sehen waren wunder schﬁn erleﬁchtet war: die[s] [Licht]
Hellung schien aus den Panelen des Gemaches zu kommen, an denen alle
je gamachen bﬁsten u Statuen standen; ﬁber diesen, hingen all mogliche
Gemahlde, u bilder; besonders die Portraite aller bildhauer u Mahler die es
je gegen hat u giebt; gemahlt u gehauen. die Mahler u bildhauer selbst aus
allen Zeiten umgaben mich in groBem Gedrﬁnge, in allen nur erdenklichen
Kostﬁmen; um diese Kunstwerdke zu beurtheilen: eine Art letztes Gericht

der Ku-nst! (Isselstein 650-51)

 

’2 All that is known about her sharing her these dream texts is that she included the ﬁfth one in a letter to
Alexander von der Marwitz, July 2, 1812 (lsselstein 648).

53

She goes on to describe the clothing and appearance of artists from different time periods

who have gathered here to discuss the art. She ﬁnds the artists themselves the most

interesting.
...Viele der Manner ihr Werkzeug in den Hﬁnden. der Lerm war fast
ﬁbematﬁrlich; denn sie sprachen alle 11 beurtheilten ihre Werke; das
Gedrange hinderte sie u mich, den Kunstwerken nah zu komen, u die
Meisten wie ich [kam] blieben weit ab; fur mich waren die Mahler u
bildhauer die Kunstwerke; ich beschaute sie mit unendlicher
beschaﬁigung .... (Isselstein 651)

Suddenly there is a loud clamor and as she wishes to escape to the periphery of the room

she is pulled into an adjoining chamber. All are chanting “das Ideal!” and in the middle

of the room sits a young artist.
das Ideal sagen noch manche leise zischlend; u ein Erstaunen zukt
gleichsam durch den Raum wo wir sind: ich aber sehe mitten auf
demselben, einen Jungen Menschen von etwa 20 Jahren in gewﬁhlicher
Kleidung ohne Huth, in einem blauen frak stehen; der die hande
zusammen vor sich hin halt; die Augen mit Gewalt herunter schlagt;
zimlich hﬁbsch ist, rothe baken hat, u obgleich er wie verlegen steht, sich
das Lachen verbeiBt: die Andem sehen das nicht; ich rufe aber, es ist ja ein

Mensch, er lebt; er kann sich ja das Lachen nicht enthalten (Isselstein

652)

54

The narrator then approaches the artist and cements on his inability to hide his smile.

He embraces her and they begin to dance as the other artists in the room stare with

astonishment.

Heine’s dream begins in the Gottingen library, which is likewise dimly lit, where

the narrator is browsing through the old dissertations.
Im Traume kam ich wieder nach Gottingen zurﬁck, und zwar nach der
dortigen Bibliothek. Ich stand in einer Ecke des juristischen Saals,
durchstoberte alte Dissertationen, vertiefte mich im Lesen, und als ich
aufhﬁrte, bemerkte ich zu meiner Verwunderung, daB es Nacht war, und
herabhﬁngende Kristall-Leuchter den Saal erhellten. (B 2: 108-9)

As the church bells ring midnight, the doors to the hall open and in walks the female

representation of justice as if she had just stepped out of a painting. Heine describes her

clothing and the objects she is carrying in much the same way as Vamhagen describes the

artists and their tools.
Die nahe Kirchenglocke schlug eben zw'o'lf, die Saaltﬁre 'o'ffnete sich
langsam, und herein trat eine stolze, gigantische Frau, ehrfurchtsvoll
begleitet von den Mitgliedem und Anhangem der juristischen F akultéit.
Das Riesenweib, obgleich schon bejahrt, trug dennoch im Antlitz die Zﬁge
einer strengen Schﬁnheit, jeder ihrer Blicke verriet die hohe Titanin, die
gewaltige Themis. Schwert und Waage hielt sie nachlassig zusammen in
der einen Hand, in der andem hielt sie cine Pergamentrolle, zwei junge
Doctores juris trugen die Schleppe ihres grau verblichenen Gewandes...

(B 2: 109)

55

Heine, like Vamhagen, includes in the dream a group of men from past centuries.

Und immer kamen noch neue Gestalten herein, alte Rechtsgelehrten, in
verschollenen Trachten, mit weiBen Allongeperucken und langst
vergessenen Gesichtem, und sehr erstaunt, daB man sie, die
Hochberﬁhmten des verﬂossenen Jahrhunderts, nicht sonderlich
regardierte; und diese stimmten nun ein, auf ihre Weise, in das allgemeine
Schwatzen und Schrillen und Schreien, das, wie Meeresbrandung, immer
verwirrter und lauter, die hohe Gﬁttin umrauschte, bis diese die Geduld
verlor, und in einem Tone des entsetzlichsten Riesenschmerzes plﬁtzlich
aufschrie: “Schweigt! schweigt! ich hﬁre die Stimme des teuren
Prometheus, die hﬁhnende Kraft und die stumme Gewalt schmieden den
Schuldlosen an den Marterfelsen, und all Euer Geschwﬁtz und Gezﬁnke

kann nicht seine Wunden kﬁhlen und Seine F esseln zerbrechen!” (B 2:

109-10)

Also as in Vamhagen’s dream, the scene is interrupted by a loud scream. The goddess

demands silence in order that they may hear Prometheus’ cries. She is frustrated with the

lack of respect that the men of past centuries are showing toward the Greek gods. This

scene symbolizes how Christian ideology has replaced Greek sensitivity in Enlightened

thought:

So rief die Gﬁttin, und Tranenbache stﬁrzten aus ihren Augen, die ganze
Versammlung heulte wie von Todesangst ergriffen, die Decke des Saales
krachte, die Bﬁcher taumelten herab von ihren Brettem, [. . .] es tobte und

kreischte immer wilder, - und fort aus diesem dréingenden Tollhauslarm

56

rettete ich mich in den historischen Saal, nach jener Gnadenstelle, wo die
heiligen Bilder des belvederischen Apolls und der mediceischen Venus
neben einander stehen, und ich stﬁrzte zu den F ﬁBen der Schﬁnheitsgﬁttin,
in ihrem Anblick vergaB ich all das wﬁste Treiben, dem ich entronnen,
meine Augen tranken entzﬁckt das EbenmaB und die ewige Lieblichkeit
ihres hochgebenedeiten Leibes, griechische Ruhe zog durch meine Seele,
und ﬁber mein Haupt, wie himmlischen Segen, goB seine sﬁBesten
Lyraklange Phﬁbus Apollo. (B 2: 110)
The ideal in Vamhagen’s dream is a young man, not a god, who resembles Goethe’s
Werther with his blue coat. This coincides with her real admiration of Goethe and belief
in the revolutionary power of literature. Heine’s narrator runs away from law and seeks
refuge in a neighboring room where he falls to the ﬂoor beneath a painting of Venus and
Apollo. The resolution of the tension in Heine’s dream into an idyllic scene from Greek
Classicism likewise mirrors Heine’s artistic beliefs. Heine had studied law in Berlin but
turned away from that profession in order to become a writer. Although this work by
Heine does not include a reference to dance, in many of his other works including
F lorentinische Nc'ichte and his two ballet scenarios, he does use dance in a similar manner
to Vamhagen, to symbolically represent the union or discord between two ideas.
One ﬁnal passage in Heine’s work illuminates the role Vamhagen played as a
literary inﬂuence on him. It is actually a portrayal of Rahel Vamhagen herself in the ﬁrst
book of Heine’s Ludwig Borne. Eine Denkschrift (1840). Heine started writing this work

months after Bﬁme’s death in 1837 (Hohn 415). In it he recalls how Karl August gave

57

him some essays by Ludwig Borne (~1829), but it was Rahel’s subtle smile that
convinced him to read them:
Der Ton, womit er mir diese Lektﬁre empfahl, war bedeutsam dringend,
und das Lacheln, welches um die Lippen der anwesenden Rahel schwebte,
jenes wohlbekannte, ratselhaft wehmﬁtige, vemunftvoll mystische
Lacheln, gab der Empfehlung ein noch groBeres Gewicht. Rahel schien
nicht bloB auf literarischem Wege ﬁber Borne unterrichtet zu sein, und wie
ich mich erinnere, versicherte sie bei dieser Gelegenheit: .es existierten
Briefe, die Borne einst an cine geliebte Person gerichtet habe, und worin
sein leidenschaﬁlicher hoher Geist sich noch glanzender als in seinen
gedruckten Aufsﬁtzen aussprache. (B 4: l 1)
Heine gives Rahel credit not only for understanding the literary merits of Bﬁme’s works,
but also for possessing an intimate knowledge about him. Rahel knew of Bﬁme’s ability
to express himself more passionately in his letters because his “Geliebte” was Henriette
Herz, a friend of Rahel’s (B 4: 766). Rahel’s insight into Bﬁrne intrigued Heine and
inspired him to cite her opinion of Borne years after this exchange took place:
Auch ﬁber seinen Stil ﬁuBerte sich Rahel, und zwar mit Worten, die jeder,
der mit ihrer Sprache nicht vertraut ist, sehr mtierstehen mochte; sie
sagte: Borne kann nicht schreiben, eben so wenig wie ich [Heine] oder
Jean Paul. Unter schreiben verstand sie nﬁmlich die ruhige Anordnung, so
zu sagen die Redaktion der Gedanken, die logische Zusammensetzung der
Redeteile, kurz jene Kunst des Periodenbaues, den sie sowohl bei Goethe,

wie bei ihrem Gemahl so enthusiastisch bewunderte, und worﬁber wir

58

damals fast tﬁglich die fruchtbarsten Debatten ﬁihrten. Die heutige Prosa,
was ich hier beilﬁuﬁg berrnerken will, ist nicht ohne viel Versuch,
Beratung, Widerspruch und Mﬁhe geschaffen worden. Rahel liebte
vielleicht Borne um so mehr, da sie ebenfalls zu jenen Autoren gehﬁrte,
die, wenn sie gut schreiben sollten, sich immer in einer leidenschaftlichen
Anregung, in einem gewissen Geistesrausch beﬁnden mﬁssen: Bachanten
des Gedankens, die dem Gotte mit heiliger Trunkenheit nachtaumeln. (B
4: 11)
According to Heine, Rahel believed that good writing was organized in a structured
manner as found in Goethe’s. However, she “loved” Bﬁme because he wrote in a
passionate style that resembled the intoxication of the Bacchantes. The aspects of
Bﬁme’s works that excited Rahel involve the same sensual qualities that Heine more
thoroughly developed in his subsequent writing. That Rahel and Heine engaged in lively
debates about the position of modern prose, proves once again that Heine gave her
literary perspectives serious consideration.
A study of how Rahel Vamhagen, along with her husband Karl August,
inﬂuenced Heine would not be complete without recognizing one more letter of Heine’s:
Als ich 1hr 11 Frau v. Vamhagens Brief erhielt war ich entzﬁckt — doch,
das wissen Sie auswendig — ich las die lieben Briefe drey, vier, dreyzig,
vierzig mahl, so daB mir das Herz sehr heiter und der Kopf ganz klar
wurde, und, wie ein Stern in der Nacht, der lichte Gedanken in mir
aufstieg: ich will nach Paris reisen, Ja! Ja! (HHP, to Karl August

Vamhagen, October 24, 1826)

59

Although this passage was written four and a half years before Heine’s move to Paris, we
can conclude that the Vamhagens must have foreseen that Heine would beneﬁt

artistically and personally from the more liberal environment of Paris.

60

Princess Cristina di Belgiojoso

The often quoted phrase by Heine, “Ich bin verdammt, nur das niedrigste und
thﬁrichste zu lieben. . .” has been used by many scholars to show the inequalities in
Heine’s relationship with his future wife Mathilde.33 However, if one looks at this entire
passage found in Heine’s letter to Heinrich Laube, something much more interesting than
self-pity becomes apparent: I

...da ich mich auf dem Lande befand, bey Saint-Germain, auf dem
Schlosse des schonsten und. edelsten und geistreichsten Weibes in
welches ich aber nicht verliebt bin. Ich bin verdammt nur das niedrigste
und thﬁrichtste zu lieben begreifen Sie wie das einen Menschen quﬁlen
muB, der sehr stolz und sehr geistreich ist? (HHP, Sept. 27, 1835)
The most beautiful, noble, and witty woman to whom Heine is referring, is the Princess
Cristina di Belgiojoso (1808-1871).

Heine arrived in Paris May 1831 and according to Fritz Mende’s chronicle of
Heine’s life, he had already met the Princess by June (89). But it was not until Heine was
invited to her salon by a mutual friend in March, 1833 that their friendship began (Mende
103). By the middle of June, 1835 Heine accepted an invitation to stay at her estate in
Jonchere. It is this visit that he describes months later in the above letter to Laube. The
melancholy tone expressed there, and which is so prevalent in much of Heine’s
correspondence, is notably absent in the letter to his publisher, Julius Campe, written
while he was staying with Belgiojoso in July. Here Heine cheerfully acknowledges the

positive effect that Belgiojoso’s company has on his disposition:

 

3" For example see Kortlanderl481-

61

Ich, Thor, glaubte die Zeit der Leidenschaft sey fur mich vorﬁber, ich
kﬁnnte niemals wieder in den Strudel rasender Menschlichkeit
hineingerissen werden, ich sey den ewigen Gottem gleichgestellt in Ruhe,
Besonnenheit und MaBigung — und siehe! ich tobte wieder wie ein
Mensch, und zwar wie ein junger Mensch. Jetzt, Dank meiner
unverwﬁstlicheri Gemﬁthskraﬁ ist die Seele wieder beschwichtigt, die
aufgeregten Sinne sind wieder gezahmt, und ich lebe heiter und gelassen
auf dem Schlosse einer schonen F reundinn in der Nahe von Saint-
Germain, im lieblichen Kreise vomehmer Personen und vomehmer
Persdnlichkeiten.

Ich glaube mein Geist ist von aller Schlacke jetzt endlich gereinigt;
meine Verse werden schﬁner werden, meine Bﬁcher hannonischer. Das
weiB ich, vor allem Unklaren und Unedlen, vor allem, was gemein und
mﬁfﬁg ist, habe ich in diesem Augenblick einen wahren Abscheu. (HHP,
July 2, 1835)

Not only does Heine credit his stay at Jonchére with a change in his soul, but he also
credits the company of the people there for adding a new harmonious spirit to his writing.
Who was this woman whom Heine did not love, but who had the capacity to case his
tormented soul and affect his writing with a new sense of clarity?

Cristina di Belgiojoso was born to a noble family in the Italian region of
Lombardy. When this region was returned to Austria under Prince Mettemich’s rule in
1815, her stepfather, Marchese Alessandro Visconti d’Aragona, became a leader of the

liberal party working to free Italy (Gattey 2). Belgiojoso was then aligned with the cause

62

at a young age and shared his passion by devoting much of her life to the same goal. At
seventeen she married Prince Emilio di Belgiojoso d’Este in 1825 (Gattey 4). While they
separated only three years later, he continued to receive ﬁnancial assistance from her and
may even have fathered her daughter, Maria, in 1838.34 Between 1829 and 1831 Cristina
Belgiojoso traveled extensively within Italy and became very involved with the
revolutionary forces of the Carbonari. She knew many dignitaries, including Prince
Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (1808-1870).35 In order to escape arrest for her
political involvement, she ﬂed to Marseilles in 1831 (Gattey 11). One of the ﬁrst people
she met was Augustin Thierry, historian and co-founder of Saint-Simonism. They
became very close friends and years later, in 1847, she built a home for the two of them.
Through Thierry, she was introduced to another life-long ﬁiend, Francois Mignet.
Mignet was then the editor of a radical paper, Le National, for which Belgiojoso also
later wrote. Mignet introduced her to Adolphe Thiers and the politically powerful
Marquis de Lafayette, who had helped the Citizen King Louis-Philippe attain the throne
in 1830 (Gattey l6). Lafayette and Belgiojoso developed a strong friendship and when
his health began to fail she nursed him until his death in May, 1834 (Gattey 36).
Belgiojoso’s newly made French political connections allowed her numerous
opportunities to summon support for Italy’s independence. Her knowledge on the subject
also led to her ﬁrst job as a journalist writing for Le C onstitutionel about Italian politics
and providing French translations of English newspapers (Gattey 18).

Her ﬁrst small apartment in Paris became a meeting place for Italian immigrants

and by 1835 she began hosting her own salon. As many as 600 guests attended her

 

3’ Reuter speculates that Francois Mignet was most likely the father (148).
35 Later known as Napoleon 111, he became president of the second republic in France (1852-1870).
Belgiojoso had hoped that their friendship would inﬂuence his position toward Italy (Gattey 208).

63

salons and parties, including Mignet, as well as Vincenzo Bellini, Fréde'ric ChOpin,
Eugene Delacroix, Caroline Jaubert, Franz Liszt, Alfred de Musset, and Heine (Gattey
38; Reuter 147). Belgiojoso and Musset met at her salon shortly after he had returned
from a tumultuous trip to Italy with George Sand. Belgiojoso listened sympathetically to
Musset but when he in turn professed his love for her she kept her distance. Only
through the help of Belgiojoso’s close ﬁiend, Caroline Jaubert, were they able to
maintain a ﬁiendship (Gattey 56-7). Belgiojoso met Franz Liszt when he was living with
the Countess Marie d’Agoult and often invited him to play at her salon (Gattey 48).
Despite Belgiojoso’s connections to Liszt and Musset, both close acquaintances of
George Sand, it is not clear that a relationship between Belgiojoso and Sand existed.36
In 1840 Belgiojoso returned to Italy to help further social change by helping
farmers improve their living conditions and helping women ﬁnd work in a glove factory
and a hospital (Reuter 153-4). Belgiojoso describes how her work in the military hospital
helped change the lives of the women volunteers:
After having selected my staff, I had constantly to play the role of a strict
duenna, armed with spectacles, going on my rounds of the wards with a
stick in my hand to put a sudden end to conversations which might
become too intimate. These girls and women from the streets of Rome
had no morals and in peacetime led disorderly selﬁsh lives, but now
redeeming qualities in their characters became apparent. No longer did
they think of themselves or their personal well-being. I have seen the

most depraved, the most corrupt among them keeping watch at a dying

 

36 Marrone's study offers speculative evidence for the existence of a friendship between them. but strongly
suggests that their inﬂuence can be seen in each other’s writing.

64

man’s bedside, never leaving him either to eat or to sleep for three or four
days and nights. I have seen them undertaking the most unpleasant and
distressing tasks, [. . .] and doing it all without showing disgust or
impatience. [...]

In nearly all the women I engaged to work in the hospital I have seen
this contrast between what they were and what they became. All changed
in the same way. Once pity entered their hearts, it drove away at least
temporarily all the vices which up till then had possessed them. It makes
my own heart bleed to see women capable of such nobility and self-
sacriﬁce forced to lead lives no better than beasts through lack of
education and equality of opportunity. (trans. and qtd. in Gattey 133-4)

Although not speciﬁcally stated in this excerpt from her Souvenir dans l'exil, much of the
social work she was involved it at this time was connected to Christian organizations.
This is clearly stated in the letter she writes to Heine requesting a donation (Jan. 21 ,
1840). When she returned to Paris in 1842 she published her four-volume theological
work entitled Un essai sur la formation dogme catholique (Reuter 154). Most deﬁnitely
inspired by her volunteer experience, it also marks her turn from Saint-Simonism toward
Catholicism. In 1848 she participated in the uprisings in Milan and later wrote about
them in the Revue des Deux Mundes (Reuter 154). Fearing her arrest for her political
participation, she ﬂed to Greece in 1849 and spent the next six years traveling.
Throughout her travels she sent letters to Jaubert in Paris which were published in Le
National as a means to supplement her income (Gattey 145, 149). Later these letters,

which also included recollections of her salon in Paris and social work in Italy, were

65

published collectively as Souvenirs dans l’exil (1852).37 From Greece she went to
Constantinople where she purchased a small territory and established a community of
Italian immigrants. With her determination and medical knowledge she established a
successful, self-sustaining farming community, Ciaq-Maq-Oglou (Gattey 151-3). In
January, 1852 she embarked on a tour of Asia Minor including Syria, Palestine, and
Jerusalem. She returned to Ciaq-Maq-Oglou the following January and due to the
political situation in Italy, the assets from her Italian estate were frozen. In order to
support herself, she sent articles describing her Asian trip and short stories based on
Eastern folk tales to Thierry for publication in the Revue des Deux Mondes (Gattey 183,
194). In June of 1853, an attempt was made on her life and she was repeatedly stabbed.
She survived the incident, eventually returning to Italy and Paris in 1855. She was able
to visit Heine once more before he died. In her later years she became more involved
with the women’s movement and wrote an essay, “On the Present Condition of Women
and Their Future,” which was published in the ﬁrst edition of Nuova Antologia in January
1866 (Gattey 215). She believed that society needed to change in order to view women
as intellectually equal to men, and she speciﬁcally supported women’s admission to the
medical profession (Gattey 215). Belgiojoso died July 5, 1871, and is buried at her estate
in Milan.

Through her political involvement with the Italian freedom movement, her
journalistic publications, her social connections in Paris, and her independent travels,
Belgiojoso led a very unconventional life for a woman of the nobility. How then did
Heine react to her endeavors and her unique lifestyle, after he was so initially charmed by

her as a salon hostess? It might be safe to assume that he felt a certain sense of

 

’7 Brombert mentions an 1850 publication (171) while Gattey lists the publication date as Paris, 1852 (221).

66

connection to her, since they both desired to free their home countries of Austria’s
oppressive rule and had chosen to live their self-imposed exile among the liberal-minded
intellectuals and artists in Paris. The thirty-seven letters that remain of their
correspondence provide a glimpse into the evolution of their ﬁiendship. By studying
these letters, which were written in French and date from January 1834 to September
1850, it becomes readily apparent that Heine’s initial coqiuettish praise and Belgiojoso’s
brief responses soon give way to warm and honest expressions of friendship. Their
letters include many references to literature and politics and an openness toward the
other’s differences of opinion.

In Heine’s ﬁrst known letter to her, he writes about being tormented for the last
three days with the desire to know her preference between two literary characters, one
written by Victor Hugo and the other by Alexandre Dumas (HHP, January 14, 1834). He
also included in his letter a copy of George Sand’s novel, Léone Le'oni (1834), hoping
that she would enjoy the depictions of Italy. By March Heine found the courage to share
with her his own work, the ﬁrst volume of the Salon (1833). Yet he was not able to do
this without taking a modest position toward the work, saying that it is “mediocre” and
thereby guarding himself, at least initially, against any criticism she might have (HHP,
March 1, 1834). It is in this letter that he also gives the ﬁrst indication that she has an
effect upon his writing:

Je n'avais alors pas encore l'avantage de vous connaitre, Madame. Depuis
cette bienheureuse époque j'écris mieux. Du moins je 1e crois. Ne riez pas

de cette phantaisie. C'est ma superstition a moi. (HHP, March 1, 1834)

67

It is Heine’s slightly longer letter from April 18, 1834, that more clearly reveals
how he viewed their budding friendship. He writes that in a few weeks the French
version of his Reisebilder (1834), which contains reﬂections of his trip to Italy, will be
published and asks whether she would like to read it. He sends it to her on the condition
that she not show it to anyone else. However, the most interesting aspect of this letter is
the indication, albeit in a ﬂirtatious manner, that her passionate stance concerning the
needs of society when they last met had intimidated him:

Soyez sﬁr, Madame, que j'ai beaucoup pensé a vous depuis la soire'e
d'avant-hier, que je voudrais plutot nommer une joumée. En effet vous
avez livré une bataille, qui vallait bien celle du juste-milieu; vous avez
mitraillé le peuple, c'e'tait un feu terrible, et peu s'en fallut que mon coeur,
qui est une republique, ne soit devenue une monarchie. Cependant
aujourd'hui je commence de reprendre'courage; le bon sens, ce poltron qui
avait prit la fuite a ll'/2 heures lorseque 1e voile noire tomba, revient tout
doucement, et j'ai déja l'audace de penser a vous sans trembler. Seulement
je n'oserais pas encore vous regarder on face. (HHP, April 18, 1834)38
While his tone here almost mocks her strong convictions, his subsequent sharing with her
of his own work as well as other literary articles indicates that he has grown to value her
opinions. 3° Belgiojoso even comes to expect that he will share his work with her and
chastises him for not doing so when the French publication of Deutschland. Ein

Winterma'rchen is released. She writes to him using a familiar tone:

 

3” The misspellings in this and all subsequent letters have been preserved from the original.

39 He sends her a copy of I ’Allemagne (1835) in his April 17, 1835 letter. He sends her a critique of this
work which was published in the Quarterly Review (Dec. 1835) in his April 30, 1836 letter. On April I.
1838. Heine sends her some articles on the French theater (HHP).

68

J'ai de graves reproches a vous faire que j'ai oublié l'autre jour de vous
addresser[.] Vous publiez des poesies et vous ne me les donnez pas? a moi
qui vous ai lu avant de savoir l'allemand, et qui l'ai appris en grande partie
pour vous lire mieux? [. . .] Mais voyez 11 y a huit jours je n'aurais en que
des remerciments a vous adresser pour vos poesies; aujourd'hui les poesies
no me sufﬁsent plus et i1 me faut un dédommagement pour mes huit jours
de perdus Vous viendrez diner avec moi Dimanche prochain; ou si
Dimanche ne vous va pas, Mardi. Quand je vous verrai assiz a ma table et
que j'aurai vos poe'sies dans ma poche, ma clémence se fera jour et je vous
pardonnerai. [. . .] Mon pauvre Thierry a bien envie de vous connaitre — Il
m'a demandé d'arranger cela et je l'ai assure que je n'y manquerais pas,
ayant une querelle a vous faire, ce qui est un moyen infaillible d'obtenir
ce qu'on veut - (HHP, April 23, 1845).
Belgiojoso likewise sends Heine a copy of the beginning manuscript for a novel and asks
that he dictate his comments to his secretary without using her name and send them to her
through Jaubert’s messenger (HHP, September 18, 1850). Unfortunately neither her
manuscript nor Heine’s comments, if they ever existed, remain.

While Heine’s exaggerated expressions of affection become milder during their
ﬁiendship, in the beginning there is a familiar need for female affection and
understanding that is reminiscent of the ﬂattering tone used in his letters to Rahel
Vamhagen. Where he compared Vamhagen to the Romantic ideal of the ﬂower, here he

compares Belgiojoso to classic Italian poetry and painting:

69

Mais je pense demain ou apres-demain j'aurais regagné tout mon
sangfroid tudesque et je pourrai vous entretenir avec une assez judicieuse
analyse de la coeffure, que je vous ai vue pendant cette memorable
journee du 16 avril. Je n'ai jamais rien vu de si fabuleux, de si poetique,
de si féerique que cette noire chevelure qui se dessinait en sauvages
ondulations sur la transparente paleur de votre ﬁgure. Et cette ﬁgure vous
l'avez volé a quelque tableau du VIicm [XVI’cm] siecle, a qu[ T extverlust]
vieux fresque de l'ecole lombarde, peut- étre de votre Luini, ou meme aux
poesies de l'Arioste, que sais-je moi! Mais cette ﬁgure me poursuit, jour et
nuit, comme une enigme que je voudrais resoudre. (HHP, April 18, 1834)
Heine was captivated by Belgiojoso’s beauty and in June he writes, “Adieux, la plus
belle, la plus bonne, la plus admirable personne que j'ai rencontrée sur cette terre. Votre
souvenir embeaumera toute mon existence” (HHP, June 28, 1834). In another letter to
Belgiojoso Heine expresses sentiments similar to those in his letters to Vamhagen and
even uses the same metaphor of the mirror. Searching for emotional support, Heine
likewise claims to belong to Belgiojoso and begs her not to forget him:
Je sais qu'e'crire des lettres ne vous amuse guerre; c'est pour cette raison
que je ne vous donne pas mon addresse. Ne m'ecrivez pas, mais pensez a
moi. N'oubliez jamais qu'au bout du compte, je vous appartiens, et que je
vaux quelque chose. Vous ne retrouverez pas si vite un miroir comme
moi, si vrai, si intelligent, miroir parlant qui, tout en vous disant combien
vous étes belle, pourra aussi vous donner l'explication philosophique de la

nature merveilleuse de votre beauté. (HHP, Aug. 26, 1835)

70

Heine ﬂatters Belgiojoso with a classically inspired vocabulary that reﬂects his
increasing interest in Greek antiquity. In this same letter from August 26, 1835, he
thanks Belgiojoso for her compassion by saying:

Que les Dieux immortels vous recompensent de votre compassion

bienfaisante! Je vous recommande a leur protection particuliere; quoique

je ne suis plus un Dieu moi—meme, j'ai encore assez de credit dans

l'Olympe, je suis encore assez bien avec le grand Jupiter, mon pere, pour

le rendre favorable a ceux que j'aime. — J'embrasse vos pieds. (HHP)
That Heine more than once40 ends his letters to her with this symbolic act of Greek
supplication — I kiss your feet — is a further indication of his tendency to use classical
imagery. In contrast, Belgiojoso’s Catholic beliefs can be seen in her letters through her
closing references to God and prayers for Heine.4|

In addition to their diverging political viewpoints, Heine’s overstated admiration
of her, the exchange of their writings, and differing religious references, there exists in
these letters an honest expression of friendship. Belgiojoso arranges a meeting with
Mignet and Thiers for Heine to discuss his pension opportunities with the French
government.42 She further suggests that her connections could help him become
nominated to the French Academy, a very prestigious honor (July 17,1842). After he
writes of his failing health, she responds by recommending an apartment near hers so that
she would be closer to him and could offer his wife assistance with his health care (Sept.
1847). She arranges for a doctor who specializes in maladies such as Heine’s to visit him

(Nov. 5, 1848). Heine, likewise makes attempts to assist her when the assets from her

 

4” See also his April 1, 1838 letter (HHP).
4: See especially her April 23. 1845 and Sept. 1847 letters (HHP).
4‘ See Heine’s reply to her arrangement in his April 1 l, 1835 letter (HHP).

71

Italian estate are frozen by the Austrian government (Gattey 195). He makes donations
to the charitable organizations she was working with (January 26, 1840).
To more fully comprehend Belgiojoso’s and Heine’s relationship it is necessary to
include perspectives other than their letters to each other. In a letter to Franz Liszt, Jan.
19, 1838, Belgiojoso describes the volatility of her ﬁiendship with Heine, but does not
deny their mutual respect:
En revanche je vois plus souvent Heine qui a, dit-il, repris sa liberte’. Vous
savez que j’ai toujours soutenu que le satanique Heine était bon diable. Je
persiste -, et je lui sais gré d’avoir éte’ de tout temps a peu pres 1e meme
pour moi, malgre' certains petits maneges au moyen desquels on a tente’ de
m’en faire un ennemi. L’on a faitﬁasco, et sauf quelques quodlibets je
suis persuadée qu’Heine ne me ferait aucun mal pour beaucoup. (Werner
1:370)

Belgiojoso’s honest words indicate the sincerity of her friendship with Heine.

Caroline Jaubert also played an important role in Heine’s and Belgiojoso’s
friendship, facilitating as the contact person when Belgiojoso was traveling. After Heine
is introduced to Jaubert he writes to Belgiojoso about his ﬁrst impression:

La petite femme [J aubert] que j'ai vue hier chez vous a un attrait dans sa
personnalité, un je ne sais quoi, qui agit sur moi d'une singulie're maniére.
Habitué a me rendre compte de tout ce que je sens, je cherche en vain de
m'expliquer cette sensation. Je crois que c'est une nature tres confusement
agitée dont l'agitation est contagieuse pour des allemands aux grands yeux

bleux, elle me fait mal dans l'ame, elle y eveille des regrets endormis, elle

72

est douloureusement bonne, elle est gaiement mechante; je n'en veux pas

et cependant j'en voudrais; c'est un charme (HHP, April 5, 1835).

As with Belgiojoso, Heine is both surprised and intrigued by Jaubert’s self-conﬁdence

and beauty. I believe that Heine’s contemporaneous friendship with Jaubert reinforced

the messages of female autonomous behavior he was receiving from Belgiojoso. Heine’s

initial gesture of affection toward Jaubert was to send her the novel André ( 1834) by

George Sand.43 In addition to the thirty letters that still exist of the correspondence

between Jaubert and Heine, dating from April 1835 to July 1855, her interpretation of

their relationship is recorded in her memoirs, Souvenirs, letters et correspondances

(1879). In the following passage she recalls the summer of 1835 and describes how

Heine and Belgiojoso were of contrasting nature and intellectually sparred with each

other:

La campagne de Marly [...], était habitée par la princesse de Belgiojoso, chez qui
aussi nous nous retrouvions souvent. Henri Heine admirait beaucoup son genre
de beauté a la fois e'trange et classique, son intelligence vive et sérieuse, son esprit
passionné et piquant. Cette riche nature, fortement contrastée préoccupait
l’observateur. Prompt a l’enthousiasme, l’esprit de la princesse était trop
pénétrant pour ne pas l’obliger souvent a revenir sur ses pas. A ce sujet, 1e poete
allemande avait essaye’ quelques plaisanteries, en traitant d’engouement les
opinions de la belle Milanaise. Mais la re'plique, dardée sans ménagement, 1e
gue'rit bien vite de cette velléité. Désormais il préfe'ra discuter ou ferrailler avec
ceux que le hasard amenait tour a tour, litte'rateurs, academicians ou philosophes,

dans le cercle de Mme de Belgiojoso. (Werner I: 304)

 

’3 See Heine’s reference to this in his April 5, 1835 letter to Belgiojoso (HHP).

73

According to Jaubert’s depiction, Heine and Belgiojoso not only discussed topics ranging
from literature to philosophy, but also freely disagreed with each other. Jaubert’s words
further substantiate Heine’s overly dramatic claim that Belgiojoso provided him with an
intellectual challenge.44 This alone must have made a substantial impact on Heine’s
general perception of learned women.
In fact, Belgiojoso does make a lasting impression upon Heine. In his own
overstated manner, he describes how her presence has affected him:
Vous étes la personne la plus complete que j'ai trouvé sur la terre. Oui,
avant de vous connaitre je me suis imagine que des personnes comme
vous, douées de toutes les perfections corporelles et spirituelles,
n'existaient que dans les contes de fe'es, dans les réves du poéte. Apresent
je sais que I'idea-le n'est pas une vaine chimere, qu'une realité correspond 2‘:
nos idées les plus sublimes, et en pensant a vous, Princesse, je cesse
quelque fois de douter d'une autre divinite’ que j'avais aussi l'habitude de
releguer dans l'empire des réves. (HHP, October 30, 1836)
Because Heine sees in her what he previously had thought existed only in literature, it
stands to reason that she could have helped inspire a new portrayal of women in his
writing.
Heine compares his later encounters with intellectual women to that with
Belgiojoso. In Fanny Lewald’s memoirs, she recalls a visit with Heine in September
1850 during which he expresses surprise that she is both beautiful and can think. Lewald

quotes what Heine said about her:

 

4’ See again his letter from April 18, 1834 as discussed on page 68.

74

“Es ist sehr merkwﬁrdig, Sie haben viel gedacht, Sie denken ﬁberhaupt
viel, und Sie haben doch das Herz einer Frau! Das ﬁberrascht mich! Ich
habe das nur an einer F rau erlebt: an der F ﬁrstin Belgiojoso, und ich
glaubte, sie ware die einzige. Im Allgemeinen ist Denken nicht der Frauen
Sache!” (Werner 2: 204)
Heine pays this backhanded compliment to Lewald after she has explained the tension
that occurred when she dedicated her novel to Karl August Vamhagen for his assistance
with the research. Perhaps her story reminded Heine too much of his own dedication that
was not so favorably received by Rahel Vamhagen. Heine might have also felt
threatened by Lewald’s statements which clearly established her as a writer, and thus felt
the need to respond with sarcasm. While the motivation and intent of these words
directed at Lewald is uncertain, what is clear is the high regard Heine continued to hold
for Belgiojoso. It is certainly true that Heine found in no other woman the combination

of beauty and intelligence that he found in Belgiojoso.

75

There was something unexpected, something powerful in the ardent and audaciously
outspoken passion, with which France ’s foremost living author, George Sand, presented
women characters to us, ﬁgures whose great hearts men were unable to treasure, and
who were unable to ﬁnd peace or happiness, because no man was in a position to cherish
or merit such a heart. - Fanny Lewald”
George Sand

According to German writer Fanny Lewald, George Sand was notorious at least in
part for her passionate portrayals of women. From her unconventional depictions of
marriage and relationships in her writing to her own promiscuous lifestyle, George Sand
became a symbol for women’s emancipation in Germany and in France. . Gisela Schlientz
contends that Sand was used strategically by liberals, including authors of the Young
Germany, because of her message of equality. They tried to minimize her sexual
reputation since it was used by the conservative opposition to combat women’s rights
(155). Heine’s attitude toward this pivotal ﬁgure, whom Schlientz labels as either
“monstrous or sublime,” is critical to understanding how his portrayals of women
evolved (153). Heine developed a friendship with her that lasted more than twelve years;
it seems impossible to conclude that Sand did not in some way affect his perception and
representations of women. By brieﬂy examining her life and works, the sentiments and
information shared in their letters, and Heine’s essays about her in Lutezia ( 1854), we can
begin to evaluate her inﬂuence.

Through the encouragement of Franz Liszt, Heine met Sand over dinner at her
Paris residence in November 1834 (Mende 118). A month later Heine sent her a copy of

the French version of his Reisebilder (1834) with the inscription, “A ma jolie et grande

cousine George Sand comme témoignage d'admiration” (HHP, End 1834). By this time

 

4" This passage was taken from her autobiography, but here translated by Margaret E. Ward and quoted in
Ward and Storz (264).

76

Sand had already become famous through her novels Indiana (1832) and Lélia (1833).
She was in the midst of a tumultuous relationship with Alfred de Musset after they
returned separately from their trip to Italy. That trip was recorded in her Lettres d ’un
voyageur, which were published in the leading French literary journal, La Revue des
Deux Mondes, beginning in May 1834 (Jack 231). Heine’s own work, “Zur Geschichte
der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland” was translated and published in successive
articles in the Revue des Deux Mondes at about the same time, between the fall of 1833
and the fall of 1834 (Hdhn 340).“6

From the beginning of their friendship through 1840, the correspondence between
Heine and Sand focuses on invitations to dinner with friends Franz Liszt (Spring 1835),
Frederic Chopin (Dec. 13, 1836) and Balzac (Jan. 9, 1843) (HHP). After Sand’s
relationship with Musset, she became involved with Chopin. The two had adjoining
apartments in the Rue Pigalle in Paris where they entertained many guests including the
musicians Hector Berlioz and Giacomo Meyerbeer, the painter Eugene Delacroix, the
Saint-Simonist Pierre Leroux, the priest F élicien Lamennais, and the patrons of the arts
James and Betty Rothschild, along with Liszt and his partner Marie d’Agoult (Jordan
195).

During her ﬁiendship with Heine, Sand published numerous works, the ﬁrst of
which was a novella, Le'one Léoni (1834), about a love triangle in Venice that resembled
her relationship with Musset and his doctor Pietro Pagello (Cate 301). A ndré (1834)
deals with marriage between classes (Cate 301-2). Spiridion (183 8) was inspired by her

relationships with Lamennais and Leroux (Cate 445). It is about Spiridion, a Jew who

 

46 Other contributors to the magazine included Alfred de Vigny. Honoré de Balzac. Alexandre Dumas.
The'ophile Gautier. Musset, Prosper Mérimée and Gustave Planche (Jordan 73. 82).

77

engages on a spiritual quest that leads him to found a Benedictine monastery and write
his own religious doctrine (Jordan 201). The novel marks a turn away from Sand’s tales
of romantic relationships. Les Sept C ordes de la Lyre (183 8) was Sand’s version of the
Faust legend. It includes the ﬁgures of Mephistopheles, a philosopher, and a beautiful
young woman, Helen, and her magical lyre. George A. Kennedy describes this work as
“a reaction against eighteenth-century rationalism and an assertion of the existence of
some higher truth to be found in music, poetry, and a sympathetic response to nature” (I).
Heine’s later Der Doktor Faust (1851) also celebrates the sensual. Unfortunately, there
is no mention of Sand’s work in Heine’s correspondence with her or elsewhere, so his
familiarity with it remains uncertain.
Sand also wrote on more political topics including equality, emancipation, and
socialism in her contributions to La République (Jordan 251). Schlientz, however,
explains how Sand’s revolutionary message differed from that of the Young German
authors:
Her thinking was not in terms of bourgeois reforms; her thought was more
utopian. She was not interested merely in improving bourgeois marriage;
rather, she looked for a far-reaching change in the concept of the
relationship between husband and wife, with the ultimate goal of a greater
equality and justice among all human beings. (157)

Feminists have had a difﬁcult time reconciling her refusal of the nomination to petition

for a seat in the National Assembly in 1848 with her expressed beliefs in social

78

equality.47 She likewise rejected her proposed consideration in 1863 for membership into
the exclusively male Acade’mie Francaise (Jordan 319-20).

Heine’s correspondence with Sand is different from that with either Vamhagen or
Belgiojoso. While there is deﬁnitely an expression of affection — they address each other
as cousins — he does not ask Sand to be his patroness or his conﬁdant. What remains of
their twenty-two letters indicates more of a collegial friendship. While Heine seemed to
be continually requesting the opportunity to visit Belgiojoso, he often writes to Sand
declining invitations to dinner due to ill health or other commitments.48 This does not
mean that Heine did not desire her company. He very much did, as can be seen in this
excerpt from his August 17, 1838 letter:

La veille de mon depart j'ai recu par Choppin [sic] votre aimable billet et
je vous remercie de l'interet que vous me temoignez. Mille merci! J'aurais
bien voulu vous voir! Les rayons de vos yeux m'auraient fait du bien. Le
son de votre voix m'aurait fait du bien. Je suis tres triste. [. . .]
Vous m'effrayez en disant que vous quittez bientdt 1e pays; j'espere que je
vous trouverai encore a Paris au mois d'octobre; si vous pouvez me donner
cet espoir, ecrivez moi deux lignes, [. . .]
Je vous aime beaucoup, de tout mon coeur, de tous les lambeaux de mon
coeur. (HHP)
Heine’s willingness to cancel dinner or not to recognize they had made plans (March 17,
1840) simply indicates a lesser degree of emotional connection to her. There is almost a

businesslike quality in two of Heine’s letters, which are responses to her requests for

 

’7 See for example Elizabeth Harlan’s biography on George Sand (2004).
’8 See for example the letters (HHP, Jan. 8, 1835, ~March 1836, March 17, 1840).

79

information. In his letter dated January 1840, he sends her an article from the Revue des
Deux Mondes (HHP), and in another he sends a translation of his descriptions of Potsdam
and Sanssouci for use in her novel (HHP, May 13, 1843).49 In addition to his initial gift
of Reisebilder, Heine also sends her a copy of the French translation of Deutschland. Ein
Winterma'rchen (HHP, Dec. 28, 1844). Unlike in the correspondence with Belgiojoso
and Vamhagen, there is no direct request by either Heine or Sand to comment on each
other’s works. Sand also does not initiate in her letters a discussion of her works. The
only invitation for a directed reading comes from Heine, who asks that Sand read the
humorous lines seriously in Deutschland. Ein Winterma’rchen in order to understand why
people talk about her (HHP, Dec. 28, 1844). In Caput VI of this work there is a reference
to Musset’s “schandliche Spﬁtterzunge” which is then followed by this stanza:

Und trommelt er dir einen schlechten Witz,

So pfeifen wir ihm einen schlimmern,’

Wir pfeifen ihm vor, was ihm passiert

Bei schﬁnen Frauenzimmem. (B 4: 589)
After Sand and Musset ended their relationship, Musset published a chapter of his
forthcoming novel, La Confession d 'un enfant du siecle, in the Revue des Deux Mondes
(Jordan 121). The entire novel, published in 1836, was a romanticized version of their
Venetian affair. After Belgiojoso refused his advances, he wrote a poem about her lack
of affection, “Sur une morte,” which was published in the summer of 1842 in the Revue
des Deux Mondes (Brombert 286-7). Heine’s stanza no doubt refers to these instances as

well as to Sand’s public exposure of her relationships.

 

49 It was most likely a passage from the manuscript for the French translation of Heine’s Brie/e iiher die
franzo'sische Bz'ihne (1838) to be used in her novel Consuelo (1842) (HHP, 60,9).

80

Sand recognized Heine’s sharp tongue even before he sent her that letter. In a
diary entry dated January 7, 1841, she writes:
Heine dit des choses tres mordantes et ses saillies emportent le morceau.
On 1e croit foncierement me’chant, mais rien n’est plus faux; son cceur est
aussi bon que sa langue est mauvaise. Il est tender, affectueux, de'voué,
romanesque en amour, faible méme et capable de subir la domination
illimitée d’une femme. Avec cela, il est cynique, railleur, sceptique,
positif, matérialiste en paroles, a effrayer et a scandaliser quiconque ne
sait pas sa vie intérieure et les secrets de son ménage. Il est comme ses
poesies, un mélange de sentimentalité des plus e'levées et de moquerie la
plus bouffonne. (Werner 2: 493-4)

This entry indicates that Sand understood Heine and his writing very well. Her

description of his work as a mixture of “sentimentalite’” and “moquerie” rings true.

To broaden our perspective on their relationship, it is necessary to consider the
impressions they made on mutual ﬁiends. In a letter to Sand, Emmanuel Arago writes
how he had just visited Heine:

Doch ich habe Dir tausend Dinge zu sagen von Heine, der in Paris zurﬁck
ist und den ich vorgestem traf; er ist so munter, so click, so frﬁhlich wie eh
und je. Ein lieber Kerl, der Dich sehr gem hat und den auch ich recht
schﬁtze. Er hat mir zwei Stunden lang von seiner Cousine erzéihlt und von
den wundervollen Bﬁchem seiner lieben Cousine (Jan. 1836; Werner

1:316)

81

Arago’s letter is not surprising. It simply conﬁrms that Heine spoke fondly of her to
others and was adequately familiar with her works. Slightly more informative is the
letter of January 31, 1848, from Felix Bamberg to Friedrich Hebbel written a few years
after Heine and Sand’s last exchange of letters:
Vor einigen Wochen stand von Heine ebenfalls unter falschem Zeichen
ein Artikel in der A[ugsburger] A[llgemeinen] Z[eitung] der so anﬁng:
“Die Sand die bekanntlich 10 Jahre lang mit Chopin gelebt hat, hat sich
jetzt von ihm getrennt!” u.s.w Heine und die Sand waren. frﬁher intim
befreundet [. . .]
Heine ist dieser Tage sehr krank auf’s Land gebracht worden. (Werner
2:102)
This news alone did not cause Heine’s illness, but Bamberg seems to infer that it did
increase his suffering. Heine’s interest in Sand’s life and works did not end when their
correspondence did. Recalling the week before his death, Heine’s companion Elise
Krinitz (Camille Selden), known as “Mouche,” writes to Alfred MeiBner:
Ce fut le Mardi avant sa mort, que pour la demiere fois, j’entendis le son
de sa voix. Bien qu’indisposée, je’tais allée chercher un joumal-dans
lequel se trouvait un article que notre ami de'sirait connaitre. C ’e'tait une
critique, deja ancienne, de Jules Janin, sur Favilla — piece de George Sand,
sur le mérite de laquelle les jugements avaient été tres diffe’rents. D’abord
impatienté de ne pas me voir chez lui a l’heure habituelle, il me recut
d’une facon touchante lorsqu’il apprit pourquoi j’e'tais en retard. Je lui lus

aussitot l’article désiré — (Werner 2: 481-2).

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Even until his death, Heine was interested in knowing how Sand’s works were being
received.

Before we examine Heine’s essay on Sand, it is necessary to consider Heinrich
Laube’s article, “Ein Besuch bei George Sand” published in the Allgemeine Zeitung
(December 1840). Laube begins the article as a dialogue in which he asks Heine about
his ﬁiendship with Sand. When Heine states that he has not seen Sand in two years,
Laube questions whether she takes offense at this. Heine replies, “Ich denke nicht; sie
lebt ja auch in Paris, und ihre Bﬁcher les’ ich doch alle. Der franzdsische Autor ist nicht
so ehemannisch empﬁndlich wie der deutsche” (qtd. in Werner 1: 427). Heine does not
appear bothered by his lack of immediate contact with Sand and still is quick to mention
her works. The remainder of the article is Laube’s description of their visit with Sand
and others over coffee. Laube writes that Sand greets Heine warmly and describes how
Sand attentively listens to the conversation before expressing her own opinions in a direct
but unassuming manner. Other scholars have also commented on Sand’s tendency to
observe and listen rather than engage in lively dialogue. In this sense she stands in
contrast to the vocal partner Heine found in Belgiojoso. Laube captures the mood of their
visit by detailing how Sand offers everyone cigarettes and welcomes a new, not yet
identiﬁed guest:

Die Sand hieB ihn freundlich und vertraut willkommen. [. . .] Dann kam er
neben mich zu sitzen, bewafﬁrete sich mit einer groBen und solid gefaBten
Brille, und hﬁrte eine Zeitlang schweigend dem Gesprache zu, das Heine
in diesem Augenblicke auf sein Lieblingsthema, den Sensualismus, zu

werfen wuBte. Die Sand, dieB bemerkend, sah lachelnd mit halbem Blicke

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auf den neuen Ankﬁmmling und dann auf Heine, und nannte diesen einen

Wildfang. (Werner 1: 429-30)
The new arrival was Sand’s friend, the priest Lamennais, and Laube captures the irony in
the timing of his arrival coinciding with Heine’s attempt to turn the conversation toward
his favorite topic of sensuality. According to Laube’s account Heine was quite animated
in the discussion with Lamennais and even Sand was not able to tame his remarks.
Although Laube’s article is less directly enlightening about Heine’s and Sand’s
relationship, it provides insight into how Sand’s social circle stimulated Heine.

What Laube’s article fails to tell us is how the discussion between Lamennais,

Heine and Sand unfolded and what sentiments were expressed. A few months after this
article was published, Sand wrote a letter to Lamennais, who had since been imprisoned
for political reasons. Her opinions stated here about women’s place in society and their
treatment by the Church challenge Lamennais’ position as a priest. Even if Sand had
refrained from sharing these ideas during the conversation described by Laube, we might
safely assume that the core of these beliefs was in some form also shared with Heine.
Sand proclaims:

Cela posé, j’oserai vous dire que je ne suis pas convaincue encore de

l’infériorite’ des femmes a cet égard-la. [. . .]

[. . .] Mais j’attribue cette infe'riorité de fait qui est réelle en general, a
l’infe'riorité qu’on veut consacrer perpe'tuellement en principe pour abuser
de la faiblesse, de l’ignorance, de la vanite’, en un mot de tous les travers
que l’éducation nous donne. Réhabilite’es a demi par la philosophic

chre’tienne, nous avons besoin de l’étre encore plus, et comme nous vous

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comptons parrni nos saints, comme vous étes pour nous 1e pere d’une
Eglise nouvelle, nous voila toutes et désolées et décourage’es quand au lieu
de nous benir et d’attirer en haut notre intelligence incomplete, vous nous
dites un peu franchement, dans un moment d’ennui: Arriere, mes bonnes
ﬁlles, vous étes toutes de vraies sottes.
- C ’est la ve'rité, maitre: mais enseignez-nous a ne plus l’étre et le
moyen, ce n’est peut-étre pas de nous dire que le mal tient a notre nature,
mais de nous démontrer que c’est a la maniere don’t votre sexe nous a
gouvemées jusqu’ici. (Feb. 1841; Sand 5:.303—4)
The articles that Heine wrote for the Allgemeine Zeitung between March 1840 and
July 1843 were published collectively as Lutezia. Berichte iiber Politik, Kunst und
Volksleben as a part of his Vermischte Schriften (1854). Article V, originally titled,
“George Sands Cosima” was written on April 30, 1840, just following the opening of her
play (B 5: 990). Like other works by Sand, this play addresses marriage and love. Ruth
Jordan explains the plot in her biography:
Cosima was a young middle-class wife from Florence who fell in love
with a seductive Venetian nobleman. The understanding husband was
prepared to step aside and relinquish his place to the lover, but the
Venetian turned out to be no better than Casanova. In the end the
dishonoured Cosima committed suicide in order to save her kind and loyal
husband from a duel with the ﬁckle lover. (204)
According to Jordan, the play failed. The hostile behavior of the audience caused the

actors to miss their lines and the play was cancelled after only seven performances (205).

85

Upon an initial reading of Heine’s review one might falsely conclude, as Jordan does,
that Heine has nothing positive to say (Jordan 205). This is not the case. His review
deals less directly with the play and more about the position of Sand within the literary
tradition in France and women’s role in society. Heine begins by characterizing the
anticipation and intrigue that preceded opening night. Since the play did not produce the
expected scandal, Schlientz understands Heine’s embellishment of it as a strategy to
entice his German audience (153). I disagree. Heine appropriately describes how this
play had the potential to be shocking, but instead criticizes Sand for not remaining true to
her ideas and instead producing a work that upheld the status quo in order to ensure her
debut into theater. He writes using the masculine pronoun for Sand:
Der Autor hatte sehr gut seine miBliche Stellung begriffen, und in seinem
Stﬁck alles vermieden, was die adeligen Ritter der Religion und die
bﬁrgerlichen Schildknappen der Moral, die Legitimisten der Politik und
der Ehe, in Hamisch bringen konnte; und der Vorfechter der sozialen
Revolution, der in seinen Schriften das Wildeste wagte, hatte sich auf der
Bﬁhne die zahmsten Schranken gesetzt, und sein nachster Zweck war,
nicht auf dem Theater seine Prinzipien zu proklamieren. sondem vom
Theater Besitz zu nehmen. (B 5: 256)
Heine is disappointed that Sand did not bring more of her message of women’s
emancipation to the stage. He clearly champions her attack on social standards of
morality and traditional views of marriage expressed in other works.
This speciﬁc article uses Sand and her play as a framework for comparing the role

of the theater and the value of the dramatist in both countries. Heine contends that there

86

is a signiﬁcant difference between literature and drama. He is critical of what is
produced on stage as being superﬁcial and is at the same time envious of the success that
playwrights achieve. Quoting the voice of the theater Heine writes:
“F ﬁr euch [poets] der Rausch der Poesie, ﬁir uns [playwrights] der
Schaum des Champagners, den wir vergnﬁglich schlﬁrfen in Gesellschaft
des Chef der Claqueure und der anstandigsten Damen. Wir essen, trinken,
werden applaudiert, ausgepﬁffen und vergessen, wﬁhrend ihr in den
Revﬁen “beider Welten” gefeiert werdet und der erhabensten
Unsterblichkeit entgegenhungert!” (B 5: 256)
His remark about being immortalized by the critics in the “Review of two worlds” is an
ironically self-deprecating play on words, since both Sand and Heine wrote for the Revue
des Deux Mondes. While it appears that Heine in some ways would enjoy the lush life of
sipping champagne and becoming rich from his writing, the falsity of high-society does
not entice him. Heine is also critical of the standard use of the claque, in which audience
members were paid to applaud and laugh on cue. Sand speciﬁcally prohibited its use for
her play (B 5: 257; Jordan 204).

In this article Heine also describes the social status of the actresses. This is where
his essay reﬂects not only Sand’s politics, but also Belgiojoso’s. Heine writes how men
receive unfair advantages over women, which contributes to the inferior social status of
women:

...da die Frauen durch eine ungerechte Gesetzgebung, durch die
Ursurpation der Manner, von allen politischen Amtem und Wﬁrden

ausgeschlossen sind und ihre Fahigkeiten nicht auf den Brettem des Palais

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Bourbon und des Luxembourg geltend machen konnen. Ihrem Drang
nach Offentlichkeit stehen nur die ﬁffentlichen Hﬁuser der Kunst und der
Galanterie offen, und sie werden entweder Aktricen oder Loretten, oder
auch beides zugleich, denn hier in F rankreich sind diese zwei Gewerbe
nicht so streng geschieden [. . .] Hier in Frankreich im Gegenteil, wo so
viele Vorurteile ausgerottet sind, ist das Anathema der Kirche noch immer
wirksam in bezug auf die Schauspieler; sie werden noch immer als
Verworfene betrachtet, und da die Menschen immer schlecht werden,
wenn man sie schlecht behandelt, so bleiben mit wenigen Ausnahmen die
Schauspieler hier im verjahrten Zustande des glanzend schmutzigen
Zigeunertums. (B 5: 258-9)
While Belgiojoso might not have agreed with Heine’s position that the Church’s
stigmatization of these women perpetuates the cycle, since much of her charitable work
was tied to Christian organizations, she would have most deﬁnitely concurred with his
comments about women being unjustly excluded from politics. Even though Sand
refuses to petition years later to run for public ofﬁce, her letter to Lamennais indicates
that she likewise believed that the Church needed to do more to improve the position of
women. She would have also sided with Heine’s defense of actresses because for this
play the only person she would consider for the female lead was her close friend, Marie

Dorval (204).50

 

50 Jordan hints that Sand and Dorval’s sixteen year friendship might have also included an intimate
relationship (67). Rumors about them added to the intrigue that surrounded the opening of the play (204).

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Heine goes on to explain how women who draw attention to their bodies become
addicted to this type of appraisal. He chastises them less but warns of the seductive
power that they develop. He further describes these women:

Die Weiber, von welchen hier die Rede, sind nicht bose oder falsch, sie
sind sogar gewﬁhnlich von aulierordentliche Herzengﬁte, sie sind nicht so
betrﬁglich and so habsﬁchtig wie man glaubt, sie sind mitunter vielmehr
die treuherzigsten und groBmﬁtigsten Kreaturen. (B 5: 260)
For Heine such highly sexual women are not false or bad. Neither are they greedy or
deceptive. However, they can be dangerous because they may possess the desire to
destroy the men they love (B 5: 260). Heine likens this type of woman to someone who
chops down a tree in order to enjoy the ﬁ'uit or to Shakespeare’s Cleopatra, whose
passionate love for Antony caused their demise (B 5: 260). Thus it is not the women of
high society who inspire Heine as a writer; rather he wishes to write about women, like
these actresses, who are sensual and expressive. Heine contrasts portrayals such as
Shakespeare’s with that of Balzac’s depictions of women, which lack emotion. Of
Balzac Heine writes:
Er beschreibt sie, wie ein Naturforscher irgendeine Tierart oder ein
Pathologe eine Krankheit beschreibt, ohne moralisierenden Zweck, ohne
Vorliebe noch Abscheu. Es ist ihm gewiB nie eingefallen, solche
Phanomena zu verschonem oder gar zu rehabilitieren, was die Kunst

ebensosehr verbote als die Sittlichkeit. (B 5: 260-1)

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Heine clearly does not like Balzac’s realistic representation of women. We can expect
that Heine’s portrayals of women will follow more Shakespeare’s creative model than
Balzac’s scientiﬁc one.
Heine added an additional article entitled simply “Spatere Notiz” written in 1854
speciﬁcally for the Lutezia publication (B 5: 1053). This article also addresses Sand, but
it is less about a speciﬁc work than about her life and his general impression of her
accomplishments as an author. Similarly to his use of Balzac in the preceding article,
here Heine degrades the work of Victor Hugo as cold and unimaginative. It is not until
the last paragraph that the reader understands his digression to the works of Hugo. Heine
writes:
Wir erleichtem uns die Beurteilung der Werke George Sands, indem wir
sagen, daB sie den bestimmtesten Gegensatz zu denen des Victor Hugo
bilden. Jener Autor hat alles, was diesem fehlt: George Sand hat
Wahrheit, Natur, Geschmack, Schﬁnheit und Begeisterung, und alle diese
Eigenschaften verbindet die strengste Harmonie. [. . .] und alles was sie
ﬁihlt und denkt, haucht Tiefsinn und Anmut. 1hr Stil ist eine Offenbarung
von Wohllaut und Reinheit der Form. (B 5: 267)

Heine sincerely compliments both the style and content of her work. Few instances in

Heine’s writing express such a level of admiration without an ironic twist.

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Fanny Lewald

In March 1848 Fanny Lewald and her travel companion, Therese von Bacheracht,
visited Heine in Paris. In a letter to Heine written shortly after they ﬁrst met, Lewald
expresses her lifelong admiration of him:

Mein Leben lang habe ich mir gewﬁnscht, Sie kennen zu Iemen; endlich
komme ich nach Paris, ﬁberwinde die Scheu zudringlich zu scheinen, habe
die Freude Sie zu sehen — da knallen die Deutschen ihre unreifen
Revolutionen auf, mein Bruder schreibt, ich solle gleich zurﬁckkommen
und ich muB so schnell von Paris abreisen, dal3 ich Ihnen nicht einmal
Lebewohl sagen kann. (HHP, Aug. 6, 1848)
This short passage reveals the two most deﬁning aspects of her relationship with Heine.
Before they even met, Lewald had formed an association with Heine through reading his
works. When they ﬁnally did meet in the spring of 1848, political protests were taking
place in the streets of France, which affected not only the possibility for their ﬁiendship
to develop, but also became the background for their discussions.

Because their relationship began late in Heine’s career as a writer, it is difﬁcult to
ascertain how her friendship might have directly inﬂuenced his thinking. Yet the very
fact that Lewald met Heine as his health was declining makes their interactions unique.
Despite his physical dependence on Lewald for visits, he retained his presence as
Heinrich Heine the poet, whom she had admired since her youth. This adds a dimension
to their friendship, that did not exist in any of the other relationships Heine shared with
intellectual women. Vamhagen could not have been so familiar with Heine’s works

when they met, since many of his early writings had not yet been published, let alone

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written. Belgiojoso likewise, could not have had the same extensive knowledge of
Heine’s writing before they met, since few of his works had been translated into French.
While Sand was more involved in the literary circles in Paris and wrote for the same
journal Heine did, she also did not possess the same familiarity with his work that Lewald
professed to have.

No correspondence from Heine to Lewald has survived. We cannot know how he
responded to her ﬂattering comments here or in her other letters. Through the ﬁve
remaining letters that she wrote to him, plus one written by Heine but addressed to her
husband, Adolf Stahr, we can assemble the characteristics of their friendship. A more
detailed account of their visits has been preserved in Lewald’s and Stahr’s memoirs.
Through these we are able to gain insight as to how Heine conversed about topics relating
to women and his own writing process, a perspective missing from the other discussions
of Heine’s relationships. While we have approximated guest lists and proceedings of
Vamhagen’s, Belgiojoso’s and Sand’s salons, we have yet to discover a ﬁrst-hand
account of how Heine intellectually interacted with them in person. Lewald and Stahr
document their conversations and visits with Heine between 1848-1855. Lewald’s Zwo‘lf
Bilder nach dem Leben (1888) contains a section devoted to Heine, Erinnerungen an
Heinrich Heine. Adolf Stahr’s memoirs Zwei Monate in Paris (1851) and Nachﬁinf
Jahren. Pariser Studien aus dem Jahre 1855 (1857) augment Lewald’s recollections. It
is important to remember that their memoirs were written and re-written after their visits,
sometimes even years later, thus we need to consider their words as subjective, albeit
informative, impressions. By studying these memoirs and what remains of their

correspondence we learn about Heine’s personal interaction with another intellectually

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assertive woman and his general position on women’s emancipation in light of the
political changes after 1848.

Fanny Lewald was born in 1811 to a Jewish family. Like Vamhagen and Heine,
she was also later baptized. She attended school until 1824 and then watched as her
brothers were allowed to attend the Gymnasium and later the university. In 1832 her
father invited her to join him on a business trip which included an extended stay with her
uncle, Friedrich Lewald. While staying with him, she participated in social gatherings
where politics, literature, and society were discussed among many inﬂuential people,
including composer Giacomo Meyerbeer, writers Ludwig Borne and Heinrich Hoffmann
von F allersleben, and Ludwig Robert, Rahel Vamhagen’s brother (Rheinberg 90;
Schneider Lewald 29). Through her uncle’s extensive library, Lewald had access to
German authors including Goethe, Ludwig Tieck, Karl Gutzkow, Heinrich Laube,
Theodor Mundt and Heine. She also was introduced to French literature through her
access to the foreign journal La Revue des Deux Mondes and the works of Balzac, George
Sand, Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas (Rheinberg 90).

She began writing anonymously in 1841 and her ﬁrst two novels, Jenny and
Clementine, were published in 1843. Both these novels, as well as her short story Der
dritte Stand(1844), were socially critical works addressing class divisions, religious
boundaries, and marriage. By 1844 she had generally given up writing under a
pseudonym. Der dritte Stand as well as Diogena (1847) were reactions to works by
George Sand and Ida Hahn-Hahn respectively (Schneider Lewald 45, 136). Her
connections to literary society strengthened when she traveled to Italy and gathered

impressions for her Italienisches Bilderbuch (1847). In Rome she shared the company of

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the writers Adele Schopenhauer and Ottilie von Goethe. She also attended the salons
hosted by the baronesses Emma von Schwanenfeld and Sibylle Mertens-Schafﬂrausen
(Schneider Lewald 57).

Her unconventional public life as a woman who wrote and traveled was paralleled
by her private life. While in Rome in 1845 she met Adolf Stahr (l805-1876), and they
soon developed a lasting love relationship despite his existing marriage and ﬁve children.
In 1847 Lewald and Stahr both resided in Berlin where they regularly hosted their own
small salon. Visitors included Theodor F ontane, Gottﬁied Keller, Friedrich Spielhagen,
George Eliot, Levin Schﬁcking, Paul Heyse, Franz Liszt, Ferdinand Lassalle, Johann
Jacoby, Heinrich Simon, and other liberal-minded intellectuals (Schneider Lewald 93-4).

In March of 1848 Lewald traveled to Paris with Therese von Bacheracht. 5 I By
collecting the letters she had written to friends during this period, Lewald documents the
fourteen-day trip and the political uprisings in Erinnerungen aus dem Jahre 1848 (1848).
In 1849 Lewald’s historical novel Prinz Louis Ferdinand was published. It includes a
ﬁctionalized account of F erdinand’s ﬁiendship with Rahel Vamhagen. Although Lewald
and Vamhagen never met, Lewald writes in her autobiography, Meine Lebensgeschichte
(1861/2), how profound an impact Vamhagen’s letters had on her as a young writer. She
writes:

[Die Briefe] waren eine Offenbarung und eine Erldsung Was mir auch
begegnet war, was ich Unbequemes, Peinliches, Schmerzliches zu
ertragen und zu erleiden gehabt hatte, Rahel Levin hatte das Alles

gekannt, hatte das Alles durchgemacht, hatte ﬁber Alles mit der

 

5 ' Therese von Bacheracht and Karl Gutzkow had a relationship between 1841-1849. Bacheracht and
Lewald shared the similar fate of being in relationships with married men (Schneider Lewald 52-3).

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innewohnenden Kraft den Sieg davon getragen, und sich endlich an den
Platz hinzustellen gewuBt, an dem sie gefunden, was sie ersehnt: die
Mﬁglichkeit zu genieBen und zu leisten nach dem eingebomen Bedﬁrﬁiis
ihrer Natur. (qtd. in Goodman Dis/Closures 152-53)
Searching for a way to reconcile her desire to write, Lewald ﬁnds in Vamhagen a role
model and source of inspiration. To research her novel on Ferdinand, Lewald requested
the help of Karl August Vamhagen when she was living in Berlin. Establishing contact
with him was not difﬁcult since another uncle, David Assing, was married to Karl
August’s sister, Rosa Maria. 52 Lewald dedicated the work to Karl August and in her
memoirs explains to Heine his mixed reaction (Werner 2: 201-4).53
In September 1850, Lewald returned to Paris with Stahr and they stayed through
October. Together they visited Heine, who was now bedridden due to his degenerative
illness. After their marriage in February 1855, Lewald and Stahr returned to Paris in the
fall. Heine cherished their visits not only for their companionship but also for the
additional reading materials they brought him. In his October 7, 1855 letter to Adolf
Stahr Heine writes, “Ich schmachte nach ihrem Kommen um so mehr, da ich nichts mehr
zu lesen habe” (HHP). Apparently, they visited Heine often during this trip, as Heine
writes to his publisher Julius Campe on November 1, 1855, “Hier ist Stahr neben Fanny

Lewald, die ich oft sehe” (HHP).

 

53' For a more complete look at her biography and also her relationship to Heine, see the chapter on Rosa
Maria Assing in Hundt, 91-1 10.

53 This and all subsequent references to Lewald’s and Stahr’s memoirs are cited from Michael Wemer’s
(1973) anthology. Since this work combines passages from their respective memoirs. organizes them by
date, and indicates sections which were added in Lewald’s later revisions. it provides a more
comprehensive approach to their study. For these reasons 1 will cite from him rather than from Lewald
directly.

95

Since Bacheracht had known Heine from Hamburg, she and Lewald decided to
visit him unannounced on Lewald’s ﬁrst trip to Paris. In the 1886 revision of her
memoirs Lewald further defends their presumptuous behavior by explaining why they did
not write to him, “Was man in solchem Anmeldungsbriefe sagt, ist eigentlich immer ein
thﬁrichtes Gemisch von Schmeichelei und erlogener Bescheidenheit” (Werner 2: 108). In
her later years Lewald had apparently forgotten the ﬂattery her early letters contained. In
her very ﬁrst letter to Heine alter their visit she begins:

Bester Herr Doktor! eigentlich kam ich neulich mit einem rechten
Herzensinterresse zu Ihnen, um Ihnen fur alle die guten Stunden zu
danken, die ich von frﬁher Jugend an, Ihnenschuldig geworden bin. Sie
sind ein ganz entschiedenes, ﬁir sich gesondertes Element meiner, in stiller
Prosa dﬁrftigen Jugend gewesen und ihr Buch der Lieder hat mir die
sonnigsten Mahrchen an den sehr engen Horizont jener Tage gemalt. Das
und noch Vieles hatte ich Ihnen sagen wollen und gewuBt, es wﬁrde Sie
freuen (HHP, ~ 10. March 1848)
She had not been able to tell Heine how much she had enjoyed his poetry over the years
because of the other people in his room at the time of her visit. A small fragment of their
initial dialogue is preserved in Lewald’s memoirs. In an attempt to be optimistic about
his physical condition, she says, “Herr Heine hat den Frﬁhling so schdn gefeiert, daB der
Frﬁhling wohl etwas ﬁir ihn thun mﬁBte.” To which he responds, “ ‘Ich habe das Meer
auch sehr schﬁn besungen und bin immer seekrank gewesen. Und die Frauen erst! quel
mal elles m’ont fait! ’ He laughed heartily” (Werner 2: 1 10). Although Heine’s words

should deﬁnitely be read in jest, his suggestion that he has celebrated women in his

96

writing coincides with the central theme of this study. Heine’s friendship with Lewald
provided the stimulation for him to consider once again his position toward women in
society and their role in literature. In her ﬁrst letter following this visit, Lewald notes his
poor vision and offers to come in the mornings to read to him, “Ich mochte Ihnen kleine
Zinsen rﬁckzahlen von dem Kapital, das Sie mir gegeben haben” (HHP, ~March 10,
1848). Her gracious offer highlights her position as a recipient of literature — she is
familiar with German and French authors — and a producer of it — she is not only a writer
but also here a reader. Due to the political-circumstances, she and Bacheracht left Paris
early and were not able to visit him again.

Years later a shared literary interest resurfaces in their letters. In October 1855,
Heine sends Lewald and Stahr not only copies of his own works, L ’Allemagne, Lutezia,
part one of his Salon, and a collection of poems, but also a copy of the Revue des Deux
Mondes (HHP, Oct. 7, 1855). In response to this, Lewald shared her work with him
despite her fear that he would mock her. In her letter accompanying a copy of
Wandlungen (1853) she writes, “Ihnen, vor dessen vemichtendem Spotte so Weniges
besteht, den Roman zu senden, ist mir aber, ich gestehe Ihnen das ganz ehrlich, ein
wahrer Act der Selbstverleugnung” (HHP, October 10, 1855). According to her
memoirs, Heine did not mock her work, but. rather discussed it with her.

In Lewald’s and Stahr’s combined memoirs there are many passages which
provide insight into Heine’s thoughts on speciﬁc people, including Rahel Vamhagen,
George Sand and Cristina Belgiojoso. Also included in their recorded discussions with
Heine are his reﬂections on cities visited, religion, literature and the changing political

environment. Four passages in particular help clarify Heine’s position toward women’s

97

equality, his willingness to discuss his own writing with a female contemporary, and his
reaction to Lewald’s writing. The conversations replicated in Lewald’s memoirs are in
the spirit of Heine’s writing in which topics change quickly, taking new directions.
Lewald herself acknowledges this in recalling her ﬁrst visit with him in 1848, “So
plauderten wir lange; Heine war sehr angeregt, sehr heiter, kam aber immer auf den Ernst
der Zeitfragen zurﬁck [. . .] Sein Wesen und seine Werke sind vollkommen identisch, und
die Originalitéit seines mﬁndlichen Ausdrucks ganz seiner Schreibweise gleich” (Werner
2: 113-4). Lewald’s keen description of Heine and his writing style lend credibility to her
portrayal of him in the remainder of her memoirs.

It is hardly surprising that the topic of marriage is addressed during Lewald’s
visits with Heine. When she and Bacheracht ﬁrst visited Heine, Bacheracht was involved
in a relationship with Karl Gutzkow who was married. On her second trip to Paris
Lewald was accompanied by Stahr, who was also at the time married to another woman.
Considering this context, Heine’s words during her September 1850 visit seem to reﬂect
a moderate position:

Das GeschlechtsverhaltniB ist dadurch unheilbar korrumpirt. Wir haben bis
jetzt nur auf der einen Seite den ganz unertraglichen Zwang der Polizeiehe des
Christenthums, und auf der andem die Depravation, der das Konkubinat
anheimf‘allt, weil es auBer dem Gesetz ist und unnatﬁrlich genug ﬁir eine
Schande gilt. Das Alles muB geéindert werden. Es ist nur schlimm, daB wir
bis jetzt nach allen Seiten hin nur lauter vereinzelte Aenderungen erlebt

haben, die dann zum Unglﬁck ausschlugen, weil sie zusammenhanglos waren.

(Werner 2: 210)

98

Heine’s insistence on the need to change the perception of sexual relationships is
progressive. He is clearly against the oppressive inﬂuence of the Christian Church. Yet
he is not convinced that relationships such as Bacheracht’s or Lewald’s provide the
appropriate alternative. During a visit in October they return to the discussion of
marriage. After considering Theodor Gottlieb Hippel’s text “Uber die Ehe” (1774) Heine
comments on known liaisons involving famous writers including Goethe, Charlotte von
Kalb,54 Karl Immerman, as well as Therese Bacheracht and Karl Gutzkow. He states,
“Haben Sie wohl darﬁber nachgedacht, Welch eine geheime Macht den Dichtem die
Liebe bedeutender Frauen zu wendet? jene Liebe, welche der Sanktion von auBen, von
Kirche und Staat nicht bedarf, weil sie ja an sich von Gottes Gnaden ist?” (Werner 2:
215). Heine’s suggestion that the secret to these relationships, which are sanctiﬁed by a
spirit beyond that of church or state, lies in the power of the (male) poet misses half of
the equation. These relationships are unique in part because the women are “bedeutend.”
They have achieved either ﬁnancial or social independence and therefore do not require
the same degree of public approval that women of a lower class might.

The subject of women’s emancipation arises in a slightly more generalized
context also in the fall of 1850. Lewald and Stahr had recently given Heine Georg Jung’s
Geschichte der Frauen (1850). They recall his reaction to it:

Er sprach heute davon mit groBem Lobe, meinte aber doch, daB ihm der
Verfasser zu enthusiastisch fur die Frauen Partei zu nehmen scheine. [. . .]
“Wir vertrauen ja den Frauen die ganze Zukunft, die kﬁnftige Generation

an, da kﬁnnen wir sie doch nicht so ohne Weiteres auf der Gasse

 

5" Kalb had relationships with Friedrich Schiller and Jean Paul. See Sohn for his chapter on Charlotte
Marschalk von Ostheim (Kalb) ( 123-30).

99

umherlaufen lassen. Vor sozialen Ungerechtigkeiten mﬁssen wir sie
sicher stellen durch vemﬁnftige Institutionen, — im Uebrigen ﬁir sie
sorgen. Das ist die Sache.” (Werner 2: 242-3)
This divided stance on women follows Heine’s position on marriage. On the one hand he
can relate to the liberalism expressed by Jung, yet on the other he wants social institutions
to protect women.
Had Lewald also documented conversations with Heine about his ﬁctional
portrayals of women, then we might better understand how his viewpoints on marriage
and women’s emancipation were translated into his artistic expressions. Alas, no such
easy answer exists. While Lewald and Heine do discuss his Deutschland. Ein
Wintermc'irchen (1844) and Atta Troll. Ein Sommernachtstraum (1847), their
conversation does not include his representations of women (Werner 2: 244-5).
The only discussion about the creative process of writing occurs during one of
their last visits in 1855. With reservations, Lewald had just sent him a copy of her
Wandlungen (HHP, October 10, 1855). Linda RogoIs-Siegel explains how this work
marked a different period in Lewald’s writing:
...Wandlungen is the ﬁrst of Fanny’s large works of ﬁction to move away
from the political T endenzroman, although now and then the plot does
allude to the struggle between conservatism and liberalism; the setting of
the novel is also international in scope (the action takes place in Germany,
France and Italy), as opposed to her earlier Prussian novels. (77)

The novel explores how class can be a greater determining force in relationships than

love as two commoners are rejected in favor of more wealthy suitors. The work also

100

contains “a highly realistic portrayal of the hardships of the lower class” (Rogols-Siegel
76-7). As we read in Heine’s comments about Balzac’s works, Heine was not fond of
realistic portrayals. Nor was he an admirer of T endenzliteratur, as we will see in chapter
4. Thus we might expect Heine to judge this work unfavorably.
His conversation with Lewald about Wandlungen has been recorded in her
memoirs. It is one of the few sources that captures Heine engaged in a serious discussion
about the production of literature by a female author. His remarks indicate that he has
given her work careful consideration, but that he has his reservations:
“Horen Sie!” begann er, “1hr Roman hat mich heute die ganze Nacht
beschﬁftigt. Deutschland kommt mir ordentlich fremd vor, daB man ihm
wieder so emsthafte Bﬁcher bieten kann und ﬁber Sie wundere ich mich
auch.”
Fanny Lewald: Ueber mich? weBhalb?
Heine: Dali Sie so mit der Sprache herausgehen, so Alles sagen!
F .L.: Ja, wie kann man denn anders?
Heine: Und obenein Ihre Ansichten ﬁber Ethik und Religion, Alles so
nackt und blank, nirgends ein Ausweg gelassen! Es hat mir etwas
Unheimliches! Dieses unverblﬁmte Hinstellen der eigenen Tendenz, dieses
offene Preisgeben der innersten Meinung kann Ihnen einmal theuer zu
stehen kommen. Sie mﬁBten durchaus vorsichter sein; ich sage Ihnen das,
weil ich es gut meine.

For Heine, who masked his intended meaning from censorship and others through layers

of conﬂicting imagery, sarcasm, irony. and ambiguity, which will be explored in the

101

coming chapters, the idea of stating things openly and plainly was not only risky, but also
simply not his style. He courteously conveys his preference for masking one’s ideals
within the text rather than stating them so forcefully. Lewald responds to his hesitant
remarks about her style by claiming that the only control she has over her writing is to
not write at all:
F .L: Lieber Heine, Willkﬁr habe ich nur ﬁber meine Gestalten, und auch
das nur halb unbewuBt, im Momente des Schaffens; denn wenn sie da
sind, bekommen und ﬁben sie selbst die zwingende Kraft ihrer inneren und
nothwendigen Folgerichtigkeit. Ueber meine Tendenzen und
Ueberzeugungen aber habe ich vollends nur die Gewalt, sie etwa ganz zu
verschweigen, und wenn ich das mﬁBte oder wollte, so wﬁrde ich
ﬁberhaupt nicht mehr schreiben. (Werner 2: 429)
Heine, who so meticulously edited and reworked his writing, searches for a different way
to voice his concern:
Heine (nachdem er langere Zeit geschwiegen): Ja, aber wie wird es sein,
wenn sich Ihre Ansichten einmal andem? und andem ko'nnen sie doch!
Wenn dann Einer kommen wird und wird Ihnen sagen: “damals hast du so
gedacht, und jetzt denkst du so” und Sie haben sich alsdann gar keinen
Riickzugfreigelassen? Haben Sie daran nie gedacht? Er hat mich in diesen
Tagen, und zumal gestem beim Vorlesen, fdrmlich verfolgt, der Gedanke:
ob Sie denn wirklich gar keine BesorgniB hegen?”
F .L.: Gar keine, bester Heine. Sie sehen ja schon an dem Titel, den ich

. meinem Buche gegeben, daB ich den Menschen, und aus dem Buche

102

selbst, in welchem Sinne ich ihn fﬁr wandelbar halte. Also kann ich mir
wohl vorstellen, daB auch meine Ansichten sich noch ﬁndem konnen.
Aber da ich eine im Grundprincipe feste Lebens-Ueberzeugung habe, so
konnen alle meine etwaigen Wandlungen doch immer nur aus dem Einen
Keme hervorgehen und eben nur Berichtigungen und Erweiterungen
meiner ErkenntniB sein. Und wenn mir Jemand einmal dies nachweisen
will, so sorgt mich das eben so wenig, als wenn er den Leuten erzﬁhlte,
daB ich erst klein gewesen,.dann gewachsen bin und schlieBlich werde alt
werden. GewiB, das hat mich nie gehindert; darﬁber bin ich stets ruhig
gewesen. (Werner 2: 429-30)
For Lewald the prospect of someone attacking a difference in perspective within her
writing is less threatening than it appears to be for Heine. She tries to convince him that
she embraces change, as the title of her novel suggests, and that it is a welcome sign of
growth. Perhaps recognizing that Lewald will not be persuaded, Heine changes his tone,
“. . .(hier lachelte er wieder in seiner Weise und ﬁel aus dem emsten in den scherzenden
Ton)” as he jokingly recalls his past mistakes (Werner 2: 430).
This conversation reveals that Heine did give Lewald’s work consideration and
did not mock or dismiss it. Instead of diminishing Lewald’s achievement, Heine holds
her to the same standards by which he judges others. His protective tone and his loss for
words indicate a respect for her and her work, even if he disagrees with her artistic

approach.

103

CHAPTER 3 -
FANTASTICAL FIGURES

Introduction

“Was bedeutet dieses Weib? Welcher Sinn lauert unter der Symbolik dieser
schﬁnen Forrnen?” (B 1: 613). Standing in the bedroom, looking into the eyes of the
woman he has longed for, Maximilian ponders these questions in F lorentinische Na'chte
(1837). These are the same questions that this study seeks to address. The answers do
not lie simply within the structure of the narrative nor are they to be found by looking
only at literary convention; rather, an understanding of Heine’s multifaceted female
ﬁgures requires careful consideration of the changing social, political and literary context
within which they were created.

Heine moved to Paris in 1831 to pursue his career as a writer in a political
atmosphere that more closely matched his liberal values. Heine thrived in his new
environment, as he himself notes in a letter to Ferdinand Hiller:

Fragt Sie jemand wie ich mich hier beﬁnde, so sagen Sie: wie ein F isch im
Wasser. Oder vielmehr, sagen Sie den Leuten; daB, wenn im Meere ein
Fisch den anderen nach seinem Beﬁnden fragt, so antworte dieser: ich
beﬁnde mich wie Heine in Paris. (HHP, Oct. 24, 1831)
As described in chapter 2, Heine quickly found his way into the salons and was exposed
to a variety of new ideas. Among the ﬁctional texts written during his early years in
Paris, there are two which illustrate most vividly how this progressive environment

inﬂuenced his female portrayals: F lorentinische Ndchte and E lementargeister.

104

Heine’s second collection of poetry, Neue Gedichte, also reﬂects a change in his
representations of women. This work was ﬁrst published as a complete text in 1844;
however, many of the poems, including those from the provocative “Verschiedene” cycle
were written as early as 1831 (B 4: 922). In contrast to the abundance of unrequited love
poems of Buch der Lieder (1827), many of these poems portray a sensual, erotic love.
Geertje Suhr explains:

Der “Realist” und “Sensualist” Heine beschreibt nicht mehr die groBen

Leiden der unerwiderten Liebe, sondem die kleinen und groBeren F reuden

und Leiden der erwiderten sinnlichen Liebe, die jedoch nicht ohne

Problematik ﬁir den Dichter ist. Die Gedichte umkreisen nicht mehr eine

“Immergeliebte,” wie im “Buch der Lieder,” sondem sie richten sich

ausdrﬁcklich an verschiedene Frauengestalten — daher wohl auch der Titel

“Verschiedene” (73).
The female ﬁgures in these poems are no longer objects of desire, but approximate
subjects. In this position they are still a source of pain for the narrator. The poem
“Angelique,” originally published as the prologue to “Verschiedene” in 1833 (B 4: 895),
serves as an excellent example of the new role these ﬁgures fulﬁll. The poem is divided
into nine sections. The ﬁrst section reminds us of the narrator’s longing for the female
that was so present in the Buch der Lieder poems. However, here the narrator recognizes,
in a self-deprecating manner, that he has outgrown this model:

Nun der Gott mir gﬁnstig nicket,

Sol lich schweigen wie ein Stummer,

Ich, der, als ich unbeglﬁcket,

105

So viel sang von meinem Kummer,

DaB mir tausend arme Jungen

Gar verzweifelt nachgedichtet,

Und das Leid, das ich besungen,

Noch viel Schlimmres angerichtet! (B 4: 330)
A new relationship needs to be portrayed between the narrator and the female. A
different position for the female begins in section II of “Angelique.” Here she becomes
actively present and not a far away object as she returns the gaze, “Noch einmal schautest
du zurﬁck” (B 4: 330). The narrator responds to her change with despair equal to that of
his former longing. She has lost the “Wildheit” that she once possessed and the narrator
now laments that she still loves him (B 4: 330). In section IV her emergence into a
subject is most visible:

Ich halte ihr die Augen zu

Und kﬁB sie auf den Mund;

Nun laBt sie mich nicht mehr in Ruh,

Sie fragt mich um den Grund. (B 4: 331)
In the remaining two verses, each time the narrator closes her eyes, she asks why. In the
end he admits he does not know. In this part of the poem there is a grammatical switch to
the third person pronoun “sie” whereas in all other sections he addresses her with “du.”
This change distances her slightly from the poem and lessens her strong expressions of
self by allowing the narrator to speak for her. In section V the narrator requests that she

not be so assertive:

106

Ich bitte dich, laB mich mit Deutschland in F rieden!

Du muBt mich nicht plagen mit ewigen Fragen (B 4: 332).
By section VII, the narrator even claims to be too “beschaftigt” and tells her to come
again tomorrow (B 4: 332). This is a very different narrative voice than the one that so
longingly sought his beloved in Buch a’er Lieder. Their relationship dissolves into a
ﬁiendship in section VIII and then they become bored with each other in IX. Geertje
Suhr helps us interpret this new almost egalitarian position of the woman:

Solange die Frau noch “fern Geliebte” ist, tauchen romantische Klischees

— ironisch verwendet — auf; sobald sie aber seine Bettgefahrtin geworden

ist, beginnt die Problematik der sinnlichen Liebe, da der Mann die Nﬁhe

der Frau Ieicht als Belastigung empﬁndet. Das Extrem an Geﬁihlen des

“Buchs der Lieder” ist einem MittelmaB gewichen; und die Frau wird

nicht mehr idealisiert, aber auch nicht mehr verurteilt. Sie erlebt die Liebe

ganz wie der Mann: als Sinnenrausch, der in Emﬁchterung, aber nicht in

Bitterkeit endet. (78)
For Suhr the woman is no longer idealized and both partners experience love in the same
way. While I agree that the woman is deﬁned here differently, I do not see that she
experiences love in the same way as the man. Despite the increased presence of the
female in these poems and in the other works composed by Heine during this time, the
male still determines the direction of their relationship and of the narrative.

Heine’s novella F lorentinische Na'chte contains examples of female ﬁgures who

are subjects but do not participate equally within the story. The main character is

Maximilian who is surrounded by female characters, each of whom expresses varying

107

degrees of self. The initial female ﬁgures introduced in the work are mixtures of fantasy
and reality. Only the ﬁgure of Maria, Maximilian’s sick friend, remains ﬁrmly situated
in the present and therefore achieves the strongest expression of self. Mademoiselle
Laurence is allotted an increasingly larger portion of the text as she develops from a
traveling gypsy into a sophisticated woman of the salon. Her ability to exist in both
fantastical and realistic environments allows Heine to envision a different role for women
both in literature and society.

The female ﬁgures in this work have drawn scholarly attention. However, the
majority of studies tend to reduce them to cliches or representations of death and
coldness. Christine Mielke (2002) examines the link between sexuality and death and
Jﬁrgen F orhmann (1999/2000) views marble throughout Heine’s works as a
representation of the space between life and death. While both of these observations are
initially true about the characters in F lorentinische Ndchte, they overlook how Heine’s
female representations evolve beyond this position. If we instead examine his ﬁgures for
the ways in which they cross boundaries between fantasy and reality, then we can begin
to see how marble also represents beauty and the poetic ideal.

Heine examines myth and the evolution of fairytales and German folklore in his
Elementargeister. This work was published alongside F lorentinische Na'chte in the third
volume of Salon ( l 83 7). In Elementargeister Heine retells stories recorded by others,
including Paracelsus, the Brothers Grimm, and even Goethe. In his explanations and
revisions of these tales, we see how Heine celebrates the sensual aspects of the stories
and cherishes the representations that expose the ﬂaws and weaknesses of spirituality. In

this work Heine pays attention to gender as he relates the different supernatural

108

characteristics attributed to the male and female elemental spirits. The female ﬁgures in
these stories are signiﬁcant, sometimes even more so than their male counterparts.
Because Heine incorporates so many references to spirits and mythology in his later
works it is important to understand how he deals with this subject matter during the
middle of his career.

While many of the female ﬁgures in these texts begin as objects such as marble
statues, corpses, ghosts, or silenced women, they do not remain there. Most scholarship
has overlooked how they evolve out of these positions in order to speak, dance, and react
to or even alter the behavior of the male protagonist. Because these women tend to
acquire their voice within the fantastical realm, it is necessary to consider how Heine
creates this world by using literary models and mythological references. Once we can do
this we will begin to understand how he recycles themes and ﬁgures from these traditions
and reinvents them in new, interesting ways. By focusing on the complexity of Heine’s
female ﬁgures, we avoid reading them as simply categorical representations of the
goddess, fairy, witch, or seductress. We begin to understand how these ﬁgures reﬂect

Heine’s unique abilities as a writer and his socially critical viewpoints.

109

F lorentinische Na'chte
“Und Sie liebten immer nur gemeiBelte oder gemalte Frauen? kicherte Maria.
Nein, ich habe auch tote Frauen geliebt, antwortete Maximilian, ...” (B 1:563). In the
novella F lorentinische Nc'ichte (183 7) the protagonist, Maximilian, reminisces about his
past loves to Maria. The women he describes, a marble statute, the painting of the Virgin
Mary, and the memory of a long ago acquaintance, Very, are not that different from the
marble statues, corpses, and visions that Heine created in the poems of Buch der Lieder
(1827).55 Indeed many of the images created in F lorentinische Ndchte draw upon the
tradition of the Schauerromantik, as Ralph Martin has noted. However, Martin’s
description of the work as “irritierend” is a clear indication that he misunderstands how
Heine appropriates this literary genre. Martin writes:
Die ‘Florentinischen Nachte’ sind wohl ﬁir die meisten Leser, die mit den
Werken Heines vertraut sind, cine irritierende Lektﬁre. Sie treffen auf
Ungewohntes. Verantwortlich daﬁir ist weniger die Tatsache, daB Heine
einen Ausﬂug in die Schauerromantik untemimmt — seine Sammlung
unheimlicher Ereignisse und Gestalten umfaBt den morbiden Fall einer
Statuenliebe, den Auftritt des Teufelgeigers Paganini samt hﬁllischem
Patron, die Lebensgeschichte eines ‘Totenkinds’ und ein kurzes
Stimmungsbild der tﬁdlich vergnﬁgten Pariser Boheme —, die eigentliche
Irritation ensteht vielmehr dadurch, daB der sonst ﬁbliche
emanzipatorische Horizont in diesem Fall weitgehend zu fehlen scheint.

(141)

 

55 Heine’s original name for the role of Maximilian was the Italian version of his own, Signor Enriko (DHA
5: 964).

110

What Martin fails to see is how Heine’s message of emancipation is expressed within
these seemingly macabre representations. I believe there is a new way to understand
these ﬁgures that liberates them from Romantic convention and reﬂects the changing
position of women during the nineteenth-century.

F lorentinische Na'chte is framed by the dialogue between Maximilian and Maria.
Within this narrative are Maximilian’s stories and recollections. In the beginning the
imaginary world of Maximilian’s dreams stands in strong contrast to his real conversation
with Maria. In the second half of the work the space between fantasy and reality
narrows, making it increasingly difﬁcult to distinguish between these two realms. Where
reality and fantasy intersect we ﬁnd Heine’s social and literary message. If we examine
how Heine’s characters behave unexpectedly we will begin to understand them as
something other than cliche's.

Maximilian is told by the doctor that the best thing he could do for his sick
girlfriend, Maria, whose name appropriately invokes the image of the Virgin Mary, is to
allow her to sleep, and when she awakes to keep her quiet by telling her stories. The
doctor’s orders belittle her and strip her of any form of self expression:

Sie muB ruhig liegen, darf sich nicht rﬁhren, nicht im mindesten bewegen,
darf nicht reden, und nur geistige Bewegung ist ihr heilsam. Bitte,
erzahlen Sie ihr wieder allerlei niirrische Geschichten, so daB sie ruhig
zuhﬁren muB. (B 1: 558)
The doctor does more to reduce her mobility than he does to heal her. However, what is
interesting is that Maria actually does have a voice and actively exerts herself. She

succeeds in passionately interrupting Maximilian to interject her ideas. which are often

lIl

marked by exclamation points, to prod him to continue the story, or to ask a question. In
contrast to the other imaginary women in this work, and many of Heine’s female ﬁgures
in general, Maria’s voice is one of reason, often vocalizing what the reader might be
thinking. Just as Maximilian is about to become absorbed in a memory she demands to
know what he is thinking. The narrator tries to diminish her by comparing her voice to a
child’s, the “Lallen eines Kindes,” or a bird, “das Zwitschem eines Vogels,” or even that
of the dying, “das Gerﬁchel eines Sterbenden” (B I: 559). However, her actions resist
this diminution as she quickly sits up and repeats her question so that Maximilian is
jarred out of his dreamlike state. As the story unfolds, Maximilian delves deeper into his
unconscious, and is tied to the present only by Maria’s interjections.

Maximilian’s ﬁrst love was for a marble statue in the garden of his mother’s
vacation home, “das SchloB meiner Mutter” (B 1: 559). The attention drawn to the
mother and Maximilian’s repeated references to her serve to intensify the pubescent
excitement of the scene. He ﬁrst sees the statue lying in the grass among other broken
ones and is amazed that she was spared destruction:

Nur eine Statue, Gott weiB wie, von der Bosheit der Menschen und der
Zeit verschont geblieben; von ihrem Postamente freilich hatte man sie
herabgestﬁrzt ins hohe Gras, aber da lag sie unverstﬁmmelt, die mannome
Gottin, mit den reinschﬁnen Gesichtszﬁgen und mit dem straffgeteilten,
edlen Busen, der, wie eine griechische Offenbarung, aus dem hohen Grase

hervorglanzte. (B I: 560)

112

She is eroticized through Maximilian’s description of her body. She is not the depiction
of death that Martin, F orhmann (285), and Mielke (65) suggest; rather, she evokes in the
narrator “eine sonderbar schwﬁle Scheu” (B l: 561 ).

Lying in bed, thinking about the statue, Maximilian is so aroused that he decides
he must go out to the garden and kiss her. Maximilian sneaks out of the house, careful
not to wake his mother, nor the statue who appears to be sleeping peacefully, “Im grﬁnen
Grase lag die schﬁne Gﬁttin ebenfalls regungslos, aber kein steinemer Tod, sondem nur
ein stiller Schlaf schien ihre lieblichen Glieder gefesselt zu halten. . (B 1: 562).
Maximilian’s heart is pounding with a “knabenhafte Lﬁsternheit” (B l: 562) as he leans
in to kiss her with “Ziirtlichkeit” (B I: 562). The feeling he receives from this kiss is not
what he had expected. Instead of fulﬁllment he feels a “grauenhaft sﬁBe Empﬁndung”
and a “beseligende Kalte” that he will never forget (B 1: 562). Heine’s statue is not
simply a representation of another “romantisch-literarische Mustergestalten” as Bettina
Knauer claims (835). Heine’s portrayal has an additional erotic aspect.

Maximilian pauses in the story to tell Maria how much she resembles the statue,
lying on the green couch in her white gown, and he admits to wanting to kiss her. Maria
is not like his past loves and violently protests his confession, “Max! Max! schrie das
Weib aus der Tiefe ihrer Seele — Entsetzlich! Sie wissen, daB ein KuB von Ihrem
Munde. . .” (B I: 562). The consequences of this kiss even she cannot express in words.
Presumably they cannot kiss due to her illness, but also because their kiss would involve
a realistic portrayal of love. At this point in the novella such a representation of love is
not possible. The only place for it to exist is in the fantastical realms of dreams and

memory. Since Maria cannot be the object of his affection, she retains the power to

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express herself and even inﬂuence the behavior of Maximilian. She pleads with him to
ﬁnish telling his story. She even provides a way back into this memory by asking him,
“Wie lange liebten Sie die marmome Schone, die Sie im SchloBgarten Ihrer Mutter
gekﬁBt?” (B 1: 652).

As a ﬁgure “die marmome Schone” receives no further mention, however
Maximilian’s love for her is transferred to marble statues in general. He brieﬂy explains
how he was captivated by one of Michelangelo’s marble sculptures and then how he
identiﬁed with a painting of the Madonna in the Cologne Cathedral. His infatuation with
her as a symbol of Christianity was brief because he found a deeper connection with a
painting of a Greek goddess. Each of these women remain works of art and do not
evolve into anything more than objects. Maximilian’s love for the painting of the
goddess and the garden statue suggest that further references to Greek antiquity should be
interpreted positively.

The third story Maximilian tells Maria is how he loved a woman only after she
had been dead for seven years. They ﬁrst met when she was alive. Everything she did
then pleased him, but nothing especially excited him. Even her sudden death did not
provoke much of a response. It is not until he recognizes her likeness in a statue in the
garden of Sanssouci that she becomes interesting to him. He explains how the memory
of her surprised him:

Nichts ist qualender als solches Herumstﬁbem in alten Erinnerungen, und
ich war deshalb wie freudig ﬁberrascht, als ich nach einigen Tagen mich
auf einmal der kleinen Very erinnerte und jetzt merkte, daB es ihr liebes

vergessenes Bild war, was mir so beunruhigend vorgeschwebt hatte. Ja,

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ich freute mich dieser Entdeckung wie einer, der seinen intimsten F reund
ganz unerwartet wieder gefunden; die verblichenen Farben belebten sich
allmahlig, und endlich stand die sﬁBe kleine Person wieder leibhaﬁig vor
mir, lachelnd, schmollend, witzig, und schﬁner noch als jemals. Von nun
an wollte mich dieses holde Bild nimmermehr verlassen, es fﬁllte meine
ganze Seele, wo ich ging und stand, stand and ging es an meiner Seite,
sprach mit mir, lachte mit mir, jedoch harmlos und ohne groBe
Zartlichkeit. (B 1: 564)
As a ﬁgment of his imagination Very is more interesting than she was as a real person.
The moment her image disturbs him is when she begins to express herself. In this
imaginary realm she is more alive and active than she was before. Here she walks by his
side, speaks, and laughs with him. The only thing missing from this ideal partner is
tenderness. Just as the statue’s frigid response stilled his love, Very’s lack of compassion
also signals that something is wrong. A further indication that this love will fail comes
from Maximilian’s statement that she is becoming more realistic: “Ich aber wurde taglich
mehr und mehr bezaubert von diesem Bilde das taglich mehr und mehr Realitat ﬁir mich
gewann” (B 1: 564). For the same reason that Maximilian cannot kiss Maria, Very must
remain within his imagination in order to continue to be a viable romantic partner. When
Maximilian’s brother visits him this interjection of reality is too powerﬁil and the image
of Very dissolves:
Bei seinem Anblick und bei seinen Erzahlungen von den letzten Vorfallen

der Tagesgeschichte, erwachte ich wie aus einem tiefen Traume und

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zusammenschreckend ﬁihlte ich plﬁtzlich in welcher grauenhaften
Einsamkeit ich so lange fﬁr mich hingelebt (B 1: 565).

After his relationships with marble statues, paintings, and an imaginary woman,

Maximilian remarks about his interactions with real women:
Lieber Himmel!... die lebendigen Weiber mit denen ich damals in
unabweisliche Berﬁhrungen kam, wie haben sie mich gequalt, zartlich
gequiilt, mit ihrem Schmollen, Eifersﬁchteln und bestﬁndigem in Atem
halten! Auf wie vielen Ballen muBte ich mich mit ihnen herumtraben, in
wie viele Klatschereien muBte ich mich mischen! Welche rastlose
Eitelkeit, welche F reude an der Lﬁge, welche kﬁssende Verraterei, welche
giftige Blumen! (B 1: 565).
A false sensuality characterizesthese superﬁcial women. They annoy rather than entice
Maximilian with their deceptive games and gossip. Thus Heine ﬁnds neither the
depiction of women from contemporary society nor those borrowed from literary
tradition inspirational. As a result, in the remainder of the text Heine creates new literary
portrayals that are alternatives to these two options.

One of the characters that Heine develops is the ﬁgure of Maria. As already
mentioned she stands as a voice of reason amidst Maximilian’s fantastical stories. In
contrast to her role as a dying woman, there is nothing weak about her character. In
response to Maximilian’s dismissive words about women, she poignantly corrects him,
“Ich bitte Sie, rief Maria, schmahen Sie nicht die Weiber. Das sind abgedroschene
Redensarten der Manner. Am Ende, um glﬁcklich zu sein, bedﬁrﬁ Ihr dennoch der

Weiber” (B 1: 566). In the ﬁrst part of the story, “Erster Nacht,” Maria is clearly deﬁned

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as the point of entrance and exit into and out of the imaginary world created through
Maximilian’s recollections. Maria either draws him back into a story with her leading
questions or pulls him out of that realm through her interruptions. However, in the
conclusion to this part of the story, at the end of Maximilian’s description of the lullaby
played by the violinist Paganini, Maria has fallen asleep. This event almost displaces her
pivotal position and pushes her closer to the dream world. The doctor assists with this
shift by comparing her face to that of a corpse, “Dieser Schlaf, fuhr der Doktor fort,
verleiht ihrem Antlitz schon ganz den Charackter des Todes. Sieht es nicht schon aus wie
jene weiBen Masken, jene Gipsabgﬁsse, worin wir die Zﬁge der Verstorbenen zu
bewahren suchen?” (B 1: 584). His comments incite Maximilian to want to make a death
mask of her, “Sie wird auch als Leiche noch sehr schﬁn sein” (B 1: 584). In the end, the
doctor advises Maximilian against this intrusion and leads him out of the room by his
arm, thereby preserving Maria’s position on the cusp of fantasy.

In the “Zweite Nacht” Maria’s role is diminished. Aﬁer she convinces
Maximilian to tell his story of the one woman with whom he had a meaningful
relationship, Maria has little to say. As a ﬁgure she has become less necessary and her
absence allows the focus to be directed toward the development of Mademoiselle
Laurence, who also exists within the ambiguous space between fantasy and reality.

Maria speaks only twice in the remainder of the second section, both times to say, “Und
das ist die ganze Geschichte?” in protest to Maximilian’s threats to end the story (B l:
596, 604). Her last words betray her fading role within the narrative. As Maximilian
pauses in his story, there is the expectation that Maria will interject a response. When she

remains silent, Maximilian asks whether she is sleeping, to which she replies, “Ich

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schlafe” (B I: 612). Even though Maria’s character is less prominent in the second half
of the story, it does not reduce the signiﬁcance of her as a strong female portrayal. This
has been overlooked by scholars like Christine Mielke who see her simply as a variation
of the “Marrnorstatue” portrayals (74). Likewise Slobodan Grubaéié sees her only as
fulﬁlling a structural function in the text, namely to heighten anticipation and assist in the
narrative (98).

As Maximilian introduces Laurence he does not know how to describe her
without comparing her to a dream: “Ich bin aber nicht im Stande Ihnen von dieser
Geliebten einen richtigen Begriff zu geben. Sie war so ﬁtherischer Natur, daB sie sich mir
nur im Traume offenbaren konnte” (B 1: 566). At the same time she is also intensely
real:

Ich denke, Maria, Sie hegen kein banales Vorurteil gegen Traume; diese
nachtlichen Erscheinungen haben wahrlich eben so viel Realitﬁt, wie jene
roheren Gebilde des Tages, die wir mit Handen antasten konnen und
woran wir uns nicht selten beschmutzen. Ja, es war im Traume, wo ich sie
sah, jenes holde Wesen, das mich am meisten auf dieser Welt beglﬁckt
hat. (B l: 566)
Laurence is the woman who made him the happiest. Thus her character promises to be a
positive literary portrayal of a woman. As we can guess from Maximilian’s introduction,
she will be composed of both idealized or Romantic imagery and also contain some
realistic traits. She develops as a compilation of the previous female portrayals by
physically resembling a Greek statue, her association with death, and her ties to the real

woman, George Sand. Even Maria remarks about her multifaceted nature, “Aber sagen

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Sic mir, war Mademoiselle Laurence cine Marrnorstatue oder ein Gemalde? cine Tote
oder ein Traum? Vielleicht alles dieses zusammen, antwortete Maximilian emsthaft” (B
1: 567). She embodies all of the images thus far associated with female characters, but in
contrast to them she resists these objectifying positions and exerts herself as a subject.
Before Heine fully develops Laurencc’s character he redeﬁnes Maximilian’s
engagement with the real world. At the end of the “Erste Nacht” Heine incorporates the
topic of music and opera into Maximilian’s conversation with Maria. Maria’s comments
about the lives and work of actual composers ground the scene in reality while still
allowing Maximilian to describe his memories that include additional representations of
women. Music serves as a medium to connect the realms of memory, vision, and reality.
In contrast to the balls Maximilian was forced to attend, which emphasized the
“Klatschereien” nature of the women, the opera opens women to reveal their more
alluring qualities. Maximilian claims:
Aber wie schon sind sie erst diese Italienerinnen, wenn die Musik ihre
Geschichter beleuchtet. Ich sage beleuchtct, denn die Wirkung der Musik,
die ich, in der Opcr, auf den Gesichtcm dcr schonen Frauen bemerke,
gleicht ganz jenen Licht- und Schattencffektcn, die uns in Erstaunen
setzten, wenn wir Statuen in der Nacht bei Fackelschein betrachtcn. Diese
Marmorbilder offenbaren uns dann, mit erschreckender Wahrheit, ihren
innewohnenden Geist und ihre schauerlichen stummen Gchcimnisse. (B 1:
569)
This experience invokes a familiar feeling in Maximilian, leading him to compare these

women at the opera to the marble statues he once loved. Through the music Maximilian

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is able to see into their souls and understand their feelings, memories, and desires (B 1:
569). He is also able to read novellas by Boccaccio and sonnets by Petrarch in their eyes
(B 1: 569). For Heine, good art whether in the form of music, sculpture, or literature is
sensual. The women that Maximilian has loved — the Greek statue and the spirit of Very
— were mysterious yet appealing. The women in Maximilian’s past that were not in any
way beautiful, alluring, or enticing were the realistic women be entertained. In the
remainder of the novella, Heine attempts to join the imaginary world of Maximilian’s
memories and dreams, which are full of sexual and sensual impressions, with a reality
that is missing these qualities.

Heine succeeds in merging these two worlds in the character of Bellini.
Maximilian initially describes Bellini as passionlcss, “Dicscr Ausdruck von Schmerz
crsetzte in Bellinis Gesicht den mangelnden Geist; aber es war ein Schmerz ohne Tiefe;
er ﬂimmerte poesielos in den Augen, er zuckte leidenschaftlos um die Lippen des
Mannes” (B l: 571). He is ﬁirther characterized as insensitive due to his inability to
speak French with any sense of eloquence. Maximilian ﬁnds his speech aesthetically
offensive especially in the company of others, “Ja, wenn man mit ihm in Gesellschaft
war, and er die armen franzﬁsischen Worte wie ein Henker radebrach und
uncrschﬁtterlich seine kolossalen Coq-a-l’ane auskramte, so meinte man manchmal die
Welt mﬁsse mit einem Donnergekrachc untergehen. . .” (B 1: 572). However, shortly
before his death — in the space between reality and an afterlife — Maximilian looks upon
Bellini for the ﬁrst time sympathetically. At a salon, presumably hosted by Caroline

Jaubert, Bellini’s image changes for Maximilian.56 The impetus to his transformation is

 

5” The reference to her in the text reads, . .nachdem wir im Hause einer groBen Dame, die den kleinsten
F uB in Paris hat” and according to Briegleb, Jaubert was known in Paris for her dainty feet (B l: 573, 872).

120

the affection he receives from a beautiful woman whose portrayal implies the Italian
princess Cristina Belgiojoso. The depiction of her closely resembles Heine’s ﬂattering
letter to Belgiojoso on April 18, 1834, where he also writes of her pale face that was
taken from a Lombard painting. Here, Maximilian describes this woman:
Es war eins jener Gesichtcr, die mehr dem Traumreich der Pocsie als der
rohen Wirklichkeit dcs Lebens zu gehﬁren scheincn; Konturen die an Da
Vinci erinnem, jenes edle Oval mit den naiven Wangengrﬁbchen und dem
sentimental spitzzulaufenden Kinn der lombardischen Schule. [. . .] Kurz
es war cin Gesicht, wie es nur auf irgend einem altitaliensichen Portrate
gefunden wird, das etwa cine von jenen groBen Damen vorstellt, worin die
italienischen Kﬁnstler des scchzehten Jahrhunderts verliebt waren, wenn
sic ihre Mcisterwerke schufen, woran die Dichter jener Zeit dachten, wenn
sic sich unsterblich sangen, [. . .] (B 1: 773-4).
In this scene Jaubert and Belgiojoso represent real women who provide inspiration
through their poise, beauty, and intellect. They stand in contrast to the women
Maximilian accompanied to social balls. As Maximilian watches this woman play with
Bellini’s hair, he cmpathizes with him:
In diesem Augenblick erschien mir Bellini wie berﬁhrt von einem
Zauberstabchen, wie umgewandelt zu einer durchaus befreundeten
Erscheinung, und er wurde meinem Herzen auf einmal verwandt. Scin
Gesicht crglﬁnztc im Widerschein jenes Lachelns, es war vielleicht der

blﬁhcndstc Moment seines Lebens. . .. (B 1: 574)

121

Within the setting of this salon, Maximilian discovers the sensual aspects of life he
thought had been preserved only in selected works of art.

Paganini is a violinist, who, according to Maximilian, has sold his soul to the
devil in order to be the best at his trade. What is signiﬁcant about him as a character is
the way in which Maximilian describes his music. Maximilian has the ability to visualize
music, and the story that he sees when Paganini plays includes the major traditions from
which Heine borrows many of his images. Maximilian describes the ﬁrst piece that
Paganini plays using vocabulary taken from Romanticism. As soon as he begins to play
the curtains around the stage change as if in a dream. Maximilian envisions a room
belonging to a prima donna who accompanies Paganini with her singing. Maximilian
describes the music:

0, das waren Melodicen, wie die Nachtigall sic ﬂﬁtet, in der
Abenddammcrung, wenn der Duft der Rose ihr das ahnendc Frﬁhlingshcrz
mit Sehnsucht berauscht! [. . .] Ja, die Tone tricben ein hciteres Spiel, wie
Schmetterlingc [...] (B 1: 579).
Only there is a foreboding tone which Maximilian recognizes in the music, “Aber cine
Spinnc, cine schwarzc Spinnc kann solchen verliebtcn Schmetterlingen mal plotzlich ein
tragischcs Schicksal bereiten” (B 1:579). Maximilian is correct and the piece ends
violently as Paganini stabs his accompanist. Maximilian is the only one who perceives
this and the applause of the audience restores a sense of reality. In the second movement
Maximilian sees spirits from the underworld and Paganini appears more like a
“Hexcnmcistcr” than a violinist (B I: 582). The ﬁnal movement is one of spiritual

tranquility in which Maximilian hears the sounds of a church organ, sees “cin crhabenes

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Gﬁtterbild,” and describes the harmony that poets try to capture (B l: 583). The music
dissolves into a lullaby and the last image that Maximilian describes is that of a Greek
work of art. Through the images that Maximilian sees in Paganini’s music, Heine is able
to allude to the variety of places where he ﬁnds sensuality, many of which reappear in the
story of Mademoiselle Laurence.

Besides the names of famous nineteenth-century musicians and the depiction of
the salon, the majority of the “Erste Nacht,” including the imagery created by Paganini’s
music, is not speciﬁc to a particular time or place. This changes in the “Zweite Nacht” as
the descriptions of London and Paris become signiﬁcant aspects of the narrative. They
function to bring both depth and mystery into the real world that is no longer limited to a
garden, a green sofa, or the opera. In Maximilian’s description of London he expresses
his dislike for the harsh sound of the English language, the tasteless food, and the
unattractive facial features of the English (B 1: 586-7). This serves as a strong contrast to
the artistic expression he sees when he ﬁrst notices Laurence. Unlike the other women
whom Maximilian desired, who were either alone or part of a collective group, Laurence
is a young girl who has her own individual form of expression among a company of street
musicians. The troupe consists of a mother ﬁgure dressed in black who plays a drum, a
poodle who spells words with wooden letters, a dwarf named Monsieur Tﬁrlﬁtﬁ, who
plays a triangle and crows like a rooster, and Laurence, who dances. The description of
her emphasizes her sensual characteristics, from her blue silk jacket to her black hair and
Greek facial features (B 1: 590). Her dance is not like the classical dances that are hill of
“ldealitﬁt und Lﬁge” (B 1: 592), rather “sic tanztc wie die Natur den Menschen zu tanzen

gebietct” (B 1: 593). In the same way that Maximilian could see Paganini’s music as a

123

ﬂow of images, he can hear words in her dance: “Was aber sagte dieser Tanz?” (B 1:
593). Her dance is so “leidenschaftlich” (B l: 593) that Maximilian is not able to fully
understand it. He particularly contemplates the ending, “Sic warf dabei scitwarts einen
Blick, der so bittcnd, so ﬂchend, so seelenschmelzend und dieser Blick ﬁel zufallig
auf mich” (B l: 594). Maximilian follows them around the city watching their
performances, and each time her dance ends with her gaze upon him. In this part of the
novella Laurence’s character is similar to the statue, Very, and many of the female
ﬁgures in Buch der Lieder. She is able to create. mystery and desire in the male by
literally and ﬁguratively returning the gaze, but she is not yet deﬁned as an autonomous
subject.

When Maximilian is no longer able to ﬁnd the troupe he returns home. Five years
later he travels to Paris just following the July Revolution. He ﬁnds Paris delightful. It is
no coincidence that Heine, like Maximilian, dislikes England and is stimulated by Paris.
Maximilian explains the effect the city has on him: “Paris ergﬁtzte mich sehr, durch die
Heiterkeit, die sich in allen Erscheinungen dort kund gibt und auch auf ganz verdﬁsterte
Gcmﬁter ihren EinﬂuB ausﬁbt” (B I: 597). The biographical references to Heine continue
as Maximilian explains how he arrives in Paris and participates in the salons:

Die Wintersaison began bald nach meiner Ankunﬁ in Paris, und ich nahm
teil an dem Salonlebcn, worin sich jene Welt mehr oder minder lustig
herumtreibt. Als das Intercssantcste dieser Welt frappierte mich nicht
sowohl die Gleichheit der feinen Sitten, die dort herrscht, sondem

vielmehr die Verschicdenhcit ihrer Bestandteile. (B l: 598)

124

This sentence by Maximilian, could easily describe Heine, who soon after his arrival in

Paris began working his way through the salon circles. What excites Maximilian in Paris

is the variety of artistic expression. He reﬂects about the array of stimuli at the salons:
Manchmal, wenn ich mir in einem groBen Salon die Menschen
betrachtetc, die sich dort friedlich versammelt, glaubte ich mich in jenen
Raritiitenbutiken zu beﬁnden, wo die Reliquien aller Zeiten kunterbunt
neben einander ruhen: ein griechischer Apollo neben einer chinesischcn
Pagode, ein mexikanischer Vitzliputzli neben einem gotischen Ecce-
homo.... (B 1:598-9)

In contrast to London, Paris is sensual and serves as a possible background for real and

envisioned worlds to converge. It is in this place that Laurence’s character is able to

evolve beyond an object of desire.

Maximilian secs Laurence for the ﬁrst time after his visit to London, during an
evening party on the “Chausse'e d’Antin.” She notices him with the same sideways
glance that she had given him before. This time her face is not so “marrnorrein,” an
indication that her character is changing and she is becoming a person (B I: 602). She is
wearing pearls and a dress appropriate for a woman of society. The simple style of her
outﬁt accentuates her beauty among the other overly primped women. Maximilian stands
behind her chair, too afraid to speak to her. Without looking at him she pulls a ﬂower
from her bouquet and hands it to him over her shoulder. The realistic aspects of this
scene are threatened by Maximilian’s Romantic interpretation of this gesture:

Sondcrbar war der Duft dieser Blume und er ﬁbte auf mich cine

cigcntﬁmliche Verzauberung. Ich ﬁihlte mich cntrﬁckt aller

gesellschaftlichcn Formlichkeit, und mir war wie in einem Traume, wo
man allerlei tut und spricht, worﬁber man sich selber wundcrt und wo
unscrc Worte einen gar kindisch traulichen und einfachen Charackter
tragen. (B I: 603)
The scene is not lost into the abyss of the Romantic “blauc Blume.” Instead Maximilian
crosses the imaginary boundary which preserves her as a distant beloved, by asking her
about the other members of the troupe. After giving brief answers to his questions, she
disappears. Maximilian inquires about her from the other guests at the salon. He is told
that Herr Casimir Périer might be able to help him.

The second meeting with Laurence clearly shows the transition of her character
from the bohemian life of a street performer in London to an upper class lady of the salon
in Paris. Not only does the scene not dissolve into fantasy, but Laurence becomes even
more securely anchored in reality. The street name indicating the location of the party is
given, and Franz Liszt is playing piano. Laurence’s black curls resemble those of George
Sand, whose estranged husband was also named Casimir Dudevant. The allusions to
Sand should not indicate that Heine attempted to represent her in the ﬁgure of Laurence,
but rather that these similarities serve to make Laurence more realistic and less idealistic.
The development in Laurencc’s character is an aspect that has been largely overlooked by
scholars. Grubacic' views her as remaining the “schone Unbekannte” (103). Even Rudolf
Drux, who does differentiate Laurence from the “Traumfrauen” in the beginning due to
her “lebendig” and “wirklich” characteristics, does not see Laurence but rather

Maximilian as changing (55).

126

The shortcomings of Drux’ and Grubacic’s interpretations are most visible in the
ﬁnal meeting between Maximilian and Laurence. Maximilian is standing outside of the
opera when Laurence pulls up in her carriage and offers him a ride. She is present and no
longer unattainable, just as Angelique was in the “Verschicdenc” poem. In the caniage
they do not speak. They simply arrive at her residence where they are told by the maids
that the only heated room in the house is her bedroom. After the narrator’s active pursuit
of her, he is now passively following her lead. In contrast to their brief dialogue at the
party, in her bedroom they engage in a lengthy conversation. Maximilian tells her what
he has discovered about the fate of the other members ofthe group and she tells him what
really happened among them. She describes the abuse she endured from them and her
solemn childhood. She explains how she felt like a different person when she danced.
Laurence does not remain unknown, but through this scene we understand how she
became a street performer and the source of the sorrow she was expressing through her
dancing. The more Laurence is built up as a character, the more Maximilian is reduced in
stature. At the conclusion of her story, Maximilian is able to respond only by imitating
the voice of a military general and thereby pretending to be like her husband, who is
away on duty.

After the mystery of Laurence has been solved and she is established as a real
ﬁgure, the only way for the bedroom scene to progress to the physical union of
Maximilian and Laurence is for the fantastical realm to be rc-introduced. This time it is
Maximilian who imagines himself differently:

Die Vorhﬁnge des Bettes waren von roter Seide, and da die Flammen des

Kamines sehr stark hindurchschienen, so befand ich mich mit Laurence in

127

einer ganz feuerrotcn Beleuchtung, und ich kam mir vor wie dcr Gott
Pluto, dcr, von Hollenglutcn umlodert, die schlafendc Proscrphine in
scinen Armcn halt. (B 1: 612-613)
Without entirely dissolving into fantasy, Maximilian returns to the present and asks the
rhetorical question about the meaning of Laurence and the symbolism of her beauty. His
answer addresses how inseparable dream is from reality for him:
Aber ist es nicht Torheit, den inneren Sinn einer fremden Erscheinung
crgrﬁnden zu wollen, wahrcnd wir nicht einmal das Ratsel unsercr eigenen
Seele zu losen vermogen! Wissen wir doch nicht einmal genau, ob die
fremden Erscheinungen wirklich existieren! Kﬁnnen wir doch manchmal
die Realitat nicht von bloBen Traumgcsichtcn unterscheiden! War cs ein
Gebilde meiner Phantasie, oder war es cntsctzlichc Wirklichkeit, was ich
in jener Nacht horte und sah? Ich weiB‘ es nicht. (B I: 613)

For Heine to express sensuality — to describe art, music, a beautiful woman, or
sexual behavior — an element of fantasy must be retained. While the female ﬁgure is the
most prominent vehicle for representations of sensuality — the statue, Very, and Laurence
— this text also includes male ﬁgures — Paganini, Bellini, and in the last scene
Maximilian — who are empathetically portrayed. What is different for the female ﬁgures
especially in this text, is that the more they approach realistic portrayals and assume a
greater sense of self, such as Maria or Laurence at the end, the more their sensual
characteristics are compromised.

After Maximilian envisions himself as a god, a humorous analogy for the physical

act of love, Laurence slips through his arms and begins to dance. It is the same dance

that she did before, with all the same gestures, only now Maximilian does not ﬁnd it
alluring:
Dieses Tanzen mit verschlossenen Augen im nachtlich stillen Zimmer gab
diesem holden Wesen ein so gespenstischcs Aussehcn, daB mir sehr
unheimlich zu Mute wurde, daB ich manchmal schauderte, und ich war
herzlich froh als sic ihren Tanz bccndigt hatte.
Wahrhaftig, der Anblick dieser Tanz hatte ﬁir mich nichts Angenehmes.
Aber der Mensch gewﬁhnt sich an alles. (B 1: 614)
It is clear that Maximilian’s liaison with Laurence has now become a habit, and like the
relationship described in the “Angelique” poem so, too, does Maximilian’s and
Laurence’s dissolve into friendship. Laurence’s husband becomes Maximilian’s
“intimster Freund” and Maximilian cries when Laurence and her husband leave for Sicily

(B 1:615).

129

Elementargeister
In Elementargeister (183 7) Heine describes how one must read beyond the
borrowed traditional names that Paracelsus uses in his study of old Germanic myths:
Man muB seine Terminologie nicht immer in ihrem traditioncllcn Sinne
verstehen. In seiner Lehre von den Elementargeistem gebraucht er die
Namen Nymphcn, Undinen, Silvanen, Salamander, aber nur deshalb weil
diese Namen dem Publikum schon gelauﬁg sind, nicht weil sic ganz
dasjenige bezeichnen wovon er reden will. Anstatt neue Worte willkﬁrlich
zu schaffen, hater es vorgezogen ﬁir seine Ideen alte Ausdrﬁcke zu
suchen, die bisher etwas Ahnliches bezeichneten. (B 3: 646)
Just as Paracelsus reinvented the meaning of these spirits so does Heine. He begins by
explaining how the four elemental spirits have been portrayed differently in various
ethnic traditions. For each spirit he cites particular examples, some of which he credits to
original sources, while others he admits to modifying. In addition to drawing from
Paracelsus, Heine also incorporates the stories retold by the Brothers Grimm, Prﬁtorius,
and Kommann, and those created by Shakespeare, Dante, and Goethe. We must caution
against reading Heine’s images as cliche. If we can understand how Heine views the
origins and traditional depictions of these spirits, we are better poised to interpret his
appropriation of them. Because Heine refers to the elemental spirits throughout his
writing, and devotes more attention to them in his later works, especially in his ballet
scenarios, it is necessary to examine their representation in this expository text more

carefully.

130

In Elementargeister the female ﬁgures appear as elemental spirits, marble statues,
queens, and the goddess, Venus. In their relationships to the male ﬁgures they sometimes
fulﬁll the role of the seductress. but there are also stories in which they resolve conﬂicts.
Scholars like Dirk Moller have universally read the female ﬁgures negatively due to their
association with the devil and because some of the love stories end tragically or
suspiciously. Moller sees love as fundamentally damned in these tales: “Liebe tritt darin
als elementares Ercignis in Erscheinung, in cnger Nachbarschaft zu Tod und Verdamnis
stehend” (Moller 140). As is the case in F lorentinische Na'chte, these ﬁgures are not all
the same as F ohrrnann proposes (285). Thus an entirely negative perception of'the
female ﬁgures, including reading them all as seductresses as Renate Francke does (395),
diminishes the ways in which these women may indeed be heroic, strong, beautiful and
loving. Since Heine selected these representations of women from a variety of sources, it
is appropriate to analyze them individually and avoid generalizing conclusions. By
focusing on one female ﬁgure at a time, it becomes easier to recognize how she develops
into an assertive ﬁgure that may or may not please her male partner or, on the other hand,
how she remains objectiﬁed.

Elementargeister begins with the Brothers Grimm story of a woman who wished
not to be captured by enemy troops. To avoid this fate, she asked to be buried alive.
According to legend, “Man sagt, daB die alte Frau noch lebt. Nicht alles ist tot in
Westfalen, was begraben ist” (B 3: 645). Although this story does involve the death of a
woman, it was an act of self-deterrnination that precipitated it. This is also Heine’s way

of reminding us that things are not always as they appear.

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He then turns his attention to the deﬁnition of the elemental spirits, the ones born
of earth, air, water and ﬁre (B 3: 646). The “Zwergen” are of the earth. They are little
people who live in the mountains. Because of their size they are able to mine gold, silver
and diamonds easily. Under their caps they are invisible and secretly help farmers with
their crops. Other than the legend that some Zwerge were turned to stone on their
wedding day, providing an explanation for strange rock formations, there is little mention
of gender in Heine’s summary. In contrast, the “Elfen,” or “Fcen,” the spirits of air, are
predominantly female. In Germany these ﬁgures are considered the offspring of witches
who courted evil. In Ireland and northern France they are less sinister and instead
beautiful. These ﬁgures pledge themselves to men but make their husbands promise not
boast about their good fortune. This is the story of the Count Lanval as Heine explains:

Als aber Kdni g Arthus, bei einem F estgelage zu Karduel, seine Konigin

Genevra ﬁir die schﬁnste Frau der Welt erkléirte, da konnte Graf Lanval

nicht langer schweigen; er sprach, und sein Glﬁck war, wenigstens auf

Erden, zu Ende. (Heine 3: 651-2)
The same is true for the Knight Grﬁelan, whose “geliebtc Fee” disappears after he is
unable to remain silent about her beauty. It is easy to see how the ﬁgure of the fairy was
used by Romantic poets since the knight and the count do ﬁnd happiness again in the
afterworld of Avalon. “Es ist das Land der Poesie” as Heine explains, and there they are
reunited with their wives and may boast about their beauty as much as they wish (B 3:
652).

Heine turns to the portrayal of fairy queens in literature and refers to

Shakespeare’s Titania from A Midsummer Night ’s Dream as an example. He then asks,

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“Ist es aber wahr, daB cs cin Vorzeichcn des Todes, wenn man diese Elfenkﬁnigin mit
leiblichen Augen erblickt und gar einen freundlichen GruB von ihr empfangt?” (B 3:
652). He gives two examples from Danish folksongs. The ﬁrst depicts a young boy who
falls asleep near where the fairies reside. In his dream they tempt him by singing and
dancing for him. When he refuses their advances, they threaten to kill him with a knife.
He is spared this fate by a rooster crowing, which awakens him. In the second poem a
knight rides off to invite guests to his wedding the next day. As he rides through the
woods fairies stop him and try to tempt him with precious gifts. He refuses each,
claiming that tomorrow is his wedding day. Finally theylose patience and strike him in
the heart. Wounded, he rides home and dies before his bride arrives at his door the next
morning. Both of these poems remind us of Heine’s Buch der Lieder. In poem IX of
“Lyrisches Intermezzo” the narrator is rescued from the embrace of the “marmorblasse
Maid” by the crowing rooster and in the “Prolog” the scene dissolves from the
“Wasserpalast” into the poet alone in his studio. In place of the fairy, a spirit of the air,
Heine has substituted a marble maiden and a water nymph. We will see in his discussion
of nymphs that they are very similar to fairies.

Fairies are also known for their dancing. According to Austrian legend, “die
Willis” are brides who have died before their wedding day and thus never have the
chance to fulﬁll their desire to dance. Thus at midnight they rise from their graves, ﬁnd a
willing soldier, and make him dance until he falls over dead. Heine describes their
appearance, “1hr Antlitz, obgleich schneeweiB, ist jugendlich schon, sie lachen so
schauerlich heitcr, so frevelhaft liebenswﬁrdig, sic nicken so geheimnisvoll lﬁstem, so

verheiBend; dicse toten Bacchantinnen sind unwiderstehlich” (B 3: 655). Although they

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are dead, his description of them is full of life. Heine writes of these ﬁgures also in the
“Lyrisches Intermezzo” in poem “XXXII.” However, instead of getting up and dancing
at midnight with the others, the narrator remains lying in the grave with his beloved.
Heine also speciﬁcally refers to the “Willis” in F lorentinische Nc'ichte, where his
description of them is the same as it is here. He compares the nature of the Willis to
women in Paris who have a thirst for life:
Dieser Durst das Leben zu genieBen, als wenn in der nachsten Stunde der
Tod sic schon abriefe von der sprudelnden Quelle des Genusses, oder als
wenn diesc Quelle in der nachsten Stunde schon versiegt sein wﬁrde, dicse
Hast, diesc Wut, dieser Wahnsinn der Pariserinnen, wie er sich besonders
auf Ballen zeigt, mahnt mich immer an die Sage von den toten
Tanzerinnen, die man bei uns die Willis nennt. (B 1: 601)
Instead of using the comparison to the Willis to emphasize death, Heine uses it to show
how superﬁcial the Parisian women are. This description is reminiscent of Maximilian’s
account of the tedious women who forced him to attend balls in F lorentinische Na'chte.
Water nymphs are similar to fairies but more dangerous. Whereas fairies are
predominantly female, nymphs can be both male and female as Heine explains:
Die weiblichen Nixen erkennt man an dem Saum ihrer weiBen Kleider, dcr
immer feucht ist. Auch wohl an dem feinen Gespinste ihrer Schleier und
an dcr vomehmen Zierlichkcit ihres geheimnisvollen Wesens. Den
mannlichen Nix erkennt man daran, daB er grﬁne Zéihne hat, die fast wie

F ischgrﬁten gebildet sind. Auch empﬁndet man einen inneren Schauer,

wenn man seine auBcrordentlich wcichc, ciskaltc Hand berﬁhrt. (B 3:
656)
Heine ascribes to the female the power of mystery and allure, while the male is depicted
as more fearful in nature and appearance. However, both guard their true identity. As
examples Heine retells a story by the Grimm brothers in which three female nymphs die
due to the inquisitiveness of a young man. In another story, the male nymph disappears
when the female asks too many questions. Yet despite the symmetry of these stories,
Heine ironically reads the behavior of the women as a more serious offense.
Aber es ist auch wirklich verdrieBlich, wenn die Weiber zu viel fragen.
Braucht Eure Lippen zum Kﬁssen, nicht zum F ragen, Ihr Schdnen.
Schweigen ist die wesentlichste Bedingung des Glﬁckes. Wenn der Mann
die Gunstbczeugungen seines Glﬁckcs ausplaudert, oder wenn das Weib
nach Gcheimnissen ihres Glﬁckes neugierig forscht, dann gehen sic beide
ihres Glﬁckcs verlustig. (B 3: 659)

One of the characteristics of the fairies and nymphs is that they can change their
form. Sometimes they can even be the recipient of a spell that transforms them into
something hideous. The spell can be broken only by the power of love as Heine explains:
“Keine Verwﬁnschung widersteht der Liebe. Liebe ist ja selber der stiirkste Zauber” (B
3: 659). Heine ﬁnds an example of a truly powerful love in an old Danish song that he
describes:

Dieses Lied ist so schauerlich, so grauenhaft, so duster, wie cine
skandinavische Nacht, und doch glﬁht darin cine Liebe, die an wilder SﬁBc

und brennender Innigkcit nicht ihres Gleichen hat, cine Liebe, die, immer

135

gewaltiger cntlodemd, endlich wie cin Nordlicht emporschieBt und mit
ihren leidenschaftlichen Strahlcn den ganzen Himmel ﬁberﬂammt. (B 3:
662)
Love can appear to be dark and grey as long as there is passion. This is what
contemporary scholarship on Heine’s female ﬁgures so often misses, as it is quick to
decipher references to death and the devil as bleak and hopeless, when in fact they can be
soulful expressions of deep emotion.

The Danish love poem, which Heine admits to have altered, is taken from the
Grimms’ “Altdﬁnischen Heldcnliedem” (B 3: 1028, n662). It contains three heroes, two
of whom are female. The story tells of a king and queen at sea whose boat is held captive
by the spirits. To free their ship and save herself and her husband, the queen offers the
spirits what they demand — the keys from her waistband. As she tosses them into the
water their ship is released. Five moon cycles later she gives birth to a son and realizes
that her bargain was actually for her son. As he reaches the age to take a bride the mother
worries about his fate. In order to meet his promised wife, he must don a feather suit,
borrowed from his mother, and ﬂy to a nearby island. On the way he is attacked by
ravens who peck out his eye and drink the blood from his heart. He promises to return to
the birds, if they will let him go long enough to meet his bride. When he arrives at his
betrothed the other women stand and stare, but she jumps up to receive him and help him.
She combs his hair and takes care of him. When he says he must leave, she begs him not
to go and blames his mother. He defends her but says he must fulﬁll his pledge. She
ﬂies after him, staying close behind. Still she loses him in ﬂight and the birds kill him.

She avenges his death by cutting the ravens in half with her scissors. In comparison to

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the other female ﬁgures Heine has described so far in this work, here both the queen and
the bride derive their strength from love and their unselﬁsh behavior.

Although Heine did not create this poem, it is still signiﬁcant that he cites it as an
example of love. Elementargeister, in its entirety, has received little scholarly attention.57
This particular poem is not mentioned in the studies that do discuss this work since the
women are not directly the cause of the male hero’s death nor are they associated with
marble. In this poem the female characters are more active. They make decisions and
behave on their own free will. Even though Heine mentions that the feather suits are
often worn by nymphs, neither the queen nor the bride-to-bc occupy the usual objectiﬁcd
position, since neither seek to preserve or create mystery as the other nymphs do.

Heine further explains that ﬂying used to be attributed to queens and women of
nobility during the time of the heathen gods (B 3: 668). It was only later under the
inﬂuence of Christianity that ﬂying became an abomination associated with witchcraft (B
3: 668). Heine claims that even Shakespeare’s witches in Macbeth are
misrepresentations of the old fables where such ﬁgures were portrayed more nobly. The
fact that Heine considers witches to often be misrepresentations of nymphs, or
“Valkyren” as he refers to them here, will play a more signiﬁcant role in the
understanding of his later works, namely, Shakespeares Ma'dchen und Frauen (1839) and
Der Doktor Faust (1851), which directly address the role of witchcraft.

The elemental spirit of ﬁre is the salamander, often associated with the devil.
Like the nymphs who can change form, so can the devil. Heine explains his

characteristics:

 

57 In the Wilamowitz-Moellendorff and Mﬁhlpfordt Bibliography there is no listing for a single analysis of
this work that does not focus on the “Tannhauser” poem. There is no mention of this work at all in the
Hauschild biography and only referentially mentioned by Sammons in his biography.

137

Der Teufel ist kalt, selbst als Licbhabcr. Aber haBlich ist er nicht; denn er
kann ja jedc Gestalt annchmen. Nicht selten hat er sich ja auch mit
weiblichcm Liebreiz bekleidet, um irgend einen frommen Klosterbrudcr
von seinen BuBﬁbungen abzuhalten oder gar zur sinnlichen Freude zu
verlocken. (B 3: 675)
Heine’s Der Doktor Faust begins in this way as the devil takes on the form of a ballerina
in order to capture F aust’s attention. Since the portrayal of Mephistophela in that work is
so central to the text as a whole it is important that we fully consider Heine’s comments
here about the history of the devil in legends and folktales. Heine writes that the devil
can also take on the form of a black buck who presides over the witches’ Sabbath. These
images are also found in Der Doktor Faust. Even within this text, Elementargeister,
Heine mentions how in the puppet play Faust sells his soul to the devil in exchange for
“die Befriedigung aller irdischcn Genﬁsse” (B 3: 677).
The devil’s association with earthly pleasures and his ability to reason are his
most prominent characteristics as Heine explains:
Der Teufel ist ein Logiker. Er ist nicht bloB der Reprﬁsentant der
weltlichen Herrlichkeit, der Sinnenfrcude, des F leisches, er ist auch
Reprasentant dcr menschlichen Vemunﬁ, eben weil diese alle Rechte der
Materie vindizicrt; und er bildet somit den Gegensatz zu Christus, dcr
nicht bloB den Geist, die asketische Entsinnlichung das himmlische Heil,
sondem auch den Glauben rcprasenticrt. Der Teufel glaubt nicht, er stﬁtz
sich nicht blindlings auf fremde Autoritaten, er will vielmehr dem cigncn

Denken vertrauen, er macht Gebrauch von der chunft! (3:678)

138

Thus for Heine the devil has the power to reason and is a symbol for the material
pleasures of life. Heine’s positive interpretation of the devil as a ﬁgure contrasts with
Christianity’s depiction of physical pleasures as sinful and with the goal of spiritual
salvation. Heine uses references to the devil and Greek mythology in his works to
emphasize the sensual and challenge the authoritarian position of Christianity. For Heine
sensuality and the devil are sometimes one and the same. In his explanation of how the
ﬁrst Christians reﬁrsed to pray to the Greek statues, they are referred to as the “Teufel
Jupiter,” “Teufelin Diana,” and the “Erztcufelin Venus” (B 3: 685). Gerhard Hﬁhn
appropriately identiﬁes Heine’s depiction of the elemental spirits and heathen gods as
polemical:
Zusammen gchorcn Elementargeister und Heidengﬁttcr ebenfalls zum
daucrhaften Grundstamm von Heines politischer Symbolik: Die
Wiederkehr der untergegangenen antiken und nordischcn Gﬁtter
signalisiert die Sehnsucht nach umfasscnder, crotischer und asthetischer
Befreiung. Ihre Prﬁsenz im Werk versteht sich als Protest. (362)
To understand Heine’s later works it is necessary to consider the devil as a positive
symbol of protest and change.
According to legend, alter the triumph of Christianity the old Greek gods lost
their power and became “argc Teufel,” who hide during the day but come out at night (B
3: 686). Heine claims this idea has been used as a model for many poems. The setting is
typically Italy, but the hero is a naive German knight. While out walking, he ﬁnds a
garden with statues and falls in love with one of them. Heine then includes two

variations on this story. In the ﬁrst the marble statue appears to the narrator as a person

139

in a dream and the entire story is fantastical. In the second, which is adapted from
Kommann’s “Mons Veneris,” there is more of a mix between the real world and the
narrator’s dreams.

The story is of a knight who is playing ball with his ﬁiends and places his
cumbersome ring on the ﬁnger of a nearby female marble statue for safe keeping. When
he returns to retrieve his ring, she has bent her ﬁnger, making it impossible for the knight
to remove it. On the knight’s wedding night, the statue appears to him in his dreams and
claims that she is his rightful bride, as he placed his ring on her ﬁnger. Unable to
consummate his marriage, he asks for the Priest Palumnus to help him. The priest writes
a series of symbols on parchment paper and tells the knight to wait for the spirit of this
statue at the road crossing at midnight. When she appears and he shows her the paper the
priest had written for him, she throws her hands up and with tears in her eyes exclaims,
“grausamer Priester Palumnus! du bist noch immer nicht zufriedcn mit dem Leid das du
uns zugeﬁigt hast! Doch deincn Verfolgungen wird bald ein Zicl gesetzt, grausamer
Priester Palumnus!” (B 3: 690). The power of the priest to free the knight from his
obligation to the statue symbolizes the victory of Christianity over the Greek gods. The
statue is not pleased about being defeated once again, and three days later she carries out
her threat and the priest dies. By focusing on Venus’ self-deﬁning behavior, we are able
to see that she protests her banishment rather than passively accepting it. She is not, as
Forhmann proposes, a variation of the Virgin Mary (284); rather she stands in opposition
to her.

Heine’s ﬁnal representation of Venus is in the “Tannhauscr” poem. In order to

capture the tender expression of love present between Venus and Tannhauser, Heine

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compares it to the Old Testament story of the Song of Salomon (B 3: 696). Although
Heine may attack the conservative inﬂuence that Christianity has had on society, he
values the poetic nature of the stories from the Bible. We will witness his engagement
with Biblical ﬁgures again in the discussion of the female ﬁgures in Atta Troll: Ein
Sommernachtstraum (1847). In the version by Prﬁtorius that Heine includes, Venus is
depicted as the sultry Goddess of Love. Her primary goal in the beginning is to convince
Tannhﬁuscr to stay with her on the mountain; she tempts him with bedroom play, “Nun
laBt uns in die Kammcr gehn, / Und spielen der heimlichen Minnen” (qtd. in B 3: 693).
Tannhauser rcﬁises her and calls her as a “Teufclinne” (qtd. in B 3: 693). He seeks
salvation in Christianity and asks the Pope for guidance. When Tannhiiuscr returns to the
mountain, he plants a barren twig as the Pope suggested. The branch blooms as an
indication that Tannhéiuser has been absolved of his sins.
Heine’s version begins where the legend does, but moves in a different direction.

Venus is still portrayed as the Goddess of Love and is even more assertive in her attempts
to lure Tannhauser to stay. She demands that he kiss her, “KﬁB mich geschwind, und
sage mir: / Was du bei mir vermissct?” and offers her body, “Mein schﬁner liljenwciBer
Leib / Erhcitert deine Sinne”(B 3: 697). After Tannhﬁuser refuses her pleas to stay,
Venus is insulted. She says:

“Ich wollte lieber du schlﬁgest mich,

Als daB du Beleidung sprﬁchest;

Und mir, undankbar kalter Christ,

Den Stolz im Herzen brﬁchcst.” (B 3: 698)

I41

Recognizing that he has chosen to seek salvation in Christianity and thereby condemning
her existence as a Greek goddess, she opens the door for him to leave:

“Weil ich dich geliebet gar zu sehr,

Nun hﬁr ich solche Worte -

Leb wohl, ich gebc Urlaub dir,

Ich ﬁffne dir selber die Pforte.” (B 3: 698)
Tannhauser goes to Rome to seek council from the Pope. Instead of repeating for his
sins, Tannhauser can only speak of how much he loves her:

Ich liebe sic mit Allgewalt,

Nichts kann die Liebe hemmen!

Das ist wie cin wilder Wasserfall;

Du kannst seine F lutcn nicht dammen; (B 3: 700).
The Pope cannot help Tannhﬁuser because he views her as a devil, “Der Teufel, den man
Venus nennt, / Er ist dcr schlimmstc von allen,” (B 3: 701). Tannhauscr returns to the
mountain where Venus lovingly welcomes him home. This is where a transformation
takes place in Heine’s portrayal of Venus. She is no longer the Goddess of Love, but
rather a “Hausfrau.”

Aus ihrer Nase rann das Blut,

Den Augen die Tranen cntﬂosscn;

Sic hat mit Trﬁnen und Blut das Gesicht

Des geliebten Manncs begossen.

Der Ritter legtc sich ins Bett,

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Er hat kein Wort gesprochen.

Frau Venus in die Kﬁche ging,

Um ihm einc Suppe zu kochen. (B 3: 701)
She is not able to contain her love for him, as it physically ﬂows from her nose and eyes.
Venus gives him soup and bread, washes his wounded feet, combs his hair, and laughs
“so sﬁBe” while doing these things (B 3: 702).

Geertje Suhr misinterprets Venus’ bloody nose to be an indication that
Tannhauser has hit her (86). She further describes Venus in this part of the poem as a
“erotischc Hﬁterin des ehelichen Hcims” ( 86). This reading coincides with the '
interpretation offered in the DHA which categorizes this scene as a “Genrcbild einer
bﬁrgerlichen Ehegemeinschaﬁ” and then more speciﬁcally describes Venus’s role:

Die Liebesgﬁttin, die die Materie in ihre Rechte einsetzt und die
elementarcn Bedﬁrfnisse des Leibes bcﬁicdigt, vollzieht zugleich die
christliche Demutshandlung der F quaschung an ihrem ‘Herm.’ Ihre
Verﬁihungsmacht bleibt ungebrochen. Auf dicsc Weise scheincn amor
und caritas, Liebe, Trost und Lust zu einer Einheit verschmolzcn. (DHA 9:
531)
Both Suhr’s interpretation and this one from the DHA fail to sufﬁciently recognize how
Heine has transformed the ﬁgure of the erotic goddcs, Venus, into a model bourgeois
housewife. Just as Mademoiselle Laurence in F lorentinische Na‘chte became less alluring
to. her lover once she was more realistically deﬁned, so, too, does Venus; the more she is
described as fulﬁlling subservient tasks, including washing Tannhéiuser’s feet, the less

she retains of her goddess stature.

143

The poem ends as Tannhauscr describes his journey home through Italy and

Germany. He then declares he will never leave “Venusberg” again:

“Zu Hamburg, in der guten Stadt,

Soll keiner mich wiedcrschauen!

Ich bleibc jetzt im Venusberg,

Bei meiner schonen Frauen.” (B 3: 703)
It is not clear what happens to Venus. Is she restored to her position as a goddess or does
she remain a housewife? The ambiguous ending allows Heine to avoid choosing either
position. The only place where Heine can envision a realistic and sensual relationship is
within the mythical space of the Venusberg. That Tannhﬁuser chooses to stay on the
mountain rather than return to Germany has been interpreted as paralleling Heine’s
decision to remain in exile in Paris (DHA 9: 531).

The “Tannhauscr” poem was republished as part of the “Verschiedcne” cycle in

Neue Gedichte (1844). In this version Heine made only minor changes, namely the last
stanza:

Zu Hamburg sah ich Altona, .

Ist auch cine schone Gegend;

Ein andcrrnal erzahl ich dir

Was mir alldort begegent. (B 4: 355)
While Venusberg is still the only place where a sensual relationship can exist, this new
ending forcshadows Heine’s intent to focus on the changing social and political scene in

Germany. The story that Tannhauser wants to tell is about his trip through Germany and

144

speciﬁcally his experience in Hamburg, which becomes the premise for Deutschland. Ein

Wintermc'irchen (DHA 9: 531).

145

CHAPTER 4
THE INFLUENCE OF SHAKESPEARE

Introduction
In the “Zweitcs Buch” of Ludwig Borne: Eine Denkschrift (I840) Heine writes
the following description of Shakespeare:
Nur bei einem einzigen Schrifsteller ﬁnde ich etwas, was an jenen
unmittelbaren Stil der Bibel erinnert. Das ist Shakespeare. Auch bei ihm
tritt das Wort manchmal in jener schauerlichen Nacktheit hervor, die uns
erschreckt und crschﬁttert; in den Shakespeareschen Werken sehen wir
manchmal die leibhaﬁige Wahrheit ohne Kunstgewand. Aber das
geschieht nur in einzclncn Momenten; der Genius der Kunst, vielleicht
seine Ohnmacht’ fﬁhlcnd, ﬁberlieB hier dcr Natur sein Amt auf cinige
Augenblicke, und behauptet hemach um so eifersﬁchtiger seine Herrschaft
in der plastischen Gestaltung und in der witzigen Verknﬁpﬁrng des
Dramas. Shakespeare ist zu gleicher Zeit Jude und Grieche, oder vielmehr
beide Elemente, der Spiritualismus und die Kunst, haben sich in ihm
versdhnungsvoll durchdrungen, und zu einem hﬁheren Ganzcn entfaltet.
(B 4: 46-7)
Shakespeare represents the reconciliation of spirituality and art, two concepts that are
normally in opposition for Heine. In Shakespeare’s work Heine sees the possibility for
nature and truth to be captured in a beautiful way that reminds him of the stories of the
Bible. As we witnessed in Elementargeister, Heine enjoys drawing on sources of

inspiration and manipulating them for his own purposes. It therefore becomes an

146

interesting task to trace Heine’s exposure to Shakespeare and then follow how it ﬁnds
expression in Heine’s works, especially in his female ﬁgures.

Between 1840 and 1848 there was an abundance of new political poetry written
by authors such as Heinrich Hofﬁnann von F allersleben, Ferdinand Freiligrath, Georg
Hcrwegh and Georg Weerth (Hauschild, Werner 492-4). Heine found the majority of this
T endenzpoesie lacking in aesthetic value. Equally problematic for Heine was the overly
sentimental poetry of the Swabian school of poets that included Gustav Schwab and
Gustav Pﬁzer (Hauschild, Werner 351-2).58 Thus Heine’s writing during this period
reﬂects his desire to express socially relevant ideas poctically. Heine turns to
Shakespeare as a model of an author who succeeded in writing works with political
themes, especially in his histories, without sacriﬁcing his artistic integrity.

In Shakespeares Ma'dchen und Frauen (1839) Heine comments on numerous
leading ladies from Shakespeare’s plays. We learn from this work the characters that
inspire him, those he ﬁnds most creative, and those he would have written differently.
After reading Heine’s sympathetic interpretation of the spirits of the underworld in
chapter 3, it is not surprising to ﬁnd that Heine is intrigued with many of Shakespeare’s
characters who exhibit supernatural qualities or who appear as dark ﬁgures. Whether
heroic or deplorable, the ﬁgures who are more deeply developed are those to whom
Heine is most drawn.

Shakespeare’s inﬂuence on Heine is most evident in his two epic poems Atta
Troll. Ein Sommernachtstraum (1847) and Deutschland. Ein W interma'rchen (1844).

Deutschland. Ein Winterma'rchen was ﬁrst published along with Neue Gedichte in 1844,

 

5“ Hauschild and Werner explain that Schwab wrote an unﬂattering review of Heine’s Buch der Lieder in
1828 and Pﬁzer wrote a polemic essay on Heine in 1838 (351-52). Both of these incidences unmistakably
contributed to Heine’s wish to distance himself from them as authors.

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situating it one year after the initial journal publication of Atta Troll at the beginning of
1843, but prior to its book publication in 1847. The fact that these two works were
written at about the same time helps us understand their related messages and shared
imagery. The apparitions encountered in the woods in Atta Troll recall the fairies in
Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night ’5 Dream. The comparison of Shakespeare’s The
Winter '5 Tale to Heine’s Deutschland. Ein Winterma'rchen reveals a hidden structure in
Heine’s work and offers a more meaningful interpretation of the main female ﬁgure,
Hammonia.

Heine’s exposure to the works of Shakespeare dates back at least to his studies at
the University of Bonn in 1819-1820 (Mende 17-21). There he studied with August
Wilhelm Schlegel, whose Shakespeare translation Heine used in writing Shakespeares
Mc'idchen und Frauen (B 4: 881). Heine’s ﬁrst attempt at a dramatic work, Almansor
(1821), followed his introduction to drama by Schlegel and contained elements of
Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet (Hﬁhn 47). Between 1821 to 1823, when
Heine lived in Berlin, he attended many Shakespeare performances including Romeo and
Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, Henry IV, Macbeth, and Hamlet (Wadepuhl 117).
According to Walter Wadepuhl Heine was introduced to Franz Hom’s “Shakespeares
Schauspiele erlﬁutert” (1823) at Vamhagen’s salon during this time (116). It is one of the
sources Heine cites in the foreword to Shakespeares Mc‘idchen und Frauen as having
contributed to his Shakespeare studies (B 4: 187), along with A.W. Schlegel (B 4: I84)
and Ludwig Tieck (B 4: 186). Heine’s personal exposure to Shakespeare’s works
intensiﬁed during his trip to London in 1827 when he was able to see the famous actor

Edmund Kean perform in a number of Shakespeare plays (DHA 10: 351). Heine’s

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interest in Shakespeare did not cease with the writing of Almansor, Shakespeares
Mddchen und Frauen, Atta Troll, and Deutschland. Ein Wintermc'irchen. As late as 1854
he expressed the desire to revise “half ’ of his Shakespeares Ma'dchen und Frauen (HHP,
to Julius Campe, Feb. 1, 1854).

Heine ﬁrst conceived of Atta Troll in 1841 during a trip with his wife Mathilde to
the Pyrenees, and he wrote most of it between February and March of the following year,
1842. While the Cauterets region in France has been a popular romantic setting for
French writers, including George Sand, Heine is credited with being the ﬁrst German to
write of this area (DHA 4: 358). Through the help of his editor and ﬁiend Heimich
Laube, Atta Troll was ﬁrst published in his journal “Zeitung ﬁlr die elegante Welt”
between January and March 1843. Over the next four years Heine continued to revisit
the text, preparing it for publication in book form and also for publication in the French
journal La Revue des Deux Mondes, both in 1847. While some of the revisions may be
attributed to his attempts to avoid the censors, they also indicate the difﬁculty Heine had
in balancing the Romantic and socially critical elements in the text (DHA 4: 308). In a
letter to Laube prior to its ﬁrst publication, Heine explains how he views the second half
of this work (which he promises to send in a few days) as much more poetic than the
ﬁrst:

Sic werden sehen die zweite Sendung ist uncndlich schdner und wichtiger,
jedenfalls poetischer, als die heutige. Ich habe in dieser zweitcn Hﬁlfte
versucht die alte Romantik, die man jetzt mit Knﬁppeln todtschlagen will,
wieder geltend zu machen, aber nicht in dcr wcichen Tonart dcr frﬁhem

Schule. sondem in der keksten Weise des modemcn Humors, der alle

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Elemente dcr Vergangcnheit in sich aufnehmcn kann und aufnehmcn soll.
Aber das romantische Element ist vielleicht unscrer Gegenwart allzuschr
verhaBt, untergegangen bereits in unscrer Literatur, und vielleicht in dem
Gedichte, das ich Ihnen jetzt schicke, nimmt die Muse der Romantik auf
immer Abschied von dem alten Deutschland! (HHP, Nov. 20, 1842).
The notion of using elements from Romanticism in a new way had been a hallmark of
Heine’s writing since Buch der Lieder. But here Heine acknowledges that the Romantic
muse is no longer relevant. What replaces her?
In the fall of 1843 Heine returned to Germany for the ﬁrst time in twelve years.
The trip, which included visits to Cologne and Hamburg, became the backdrop for
Deutschland. E in Wintermc'irchen. Most of the text was written once Heine had returned
to France between December 1843 and May 1844. In a letter to his editor, Julius Campe,
Heine describes it with language similar in tone to that of his letter to Laube:
Es ist cin gereimtes Gedicht, welches. .. die ganze Gahrung unscrer
deutschen Gegenwart, in dcr keksten, persﬁnlichsten Weise ausspricht. Es
ist politisch romantisch und wird der prosaisch bombastischcn
Tendenzpoesie hoffcntlich den TodcsstoB geben. (HHP, April 17, 1844)
Whereas Atta Troll was supposed to beat Romanticism to death with “Knﬁppeln” here he
hopes to give T endenzpoesie the “TodesstoB.”
To understand these works it is essential to recognize how Heine resolves the
tension between highly stylized literature and blatant political commentary. Heine begins

to create female ﬁgures who are not simply poetic objects. Following the examples set

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by Shakespeare, Heine writes characters who are more complex, express emotion, and

actively participate in the storylines.

151

Shakespeares Mddchen und Frauen

Many reasons explain the lack of scholarly attention to Heine’s Shakespeares
Ma‘dchen und Frauen (1839): it was a commissioned piece by an unfamiliar publishing
house hoping to capitalize on Heine’s name; the project was not originally conceived by
Heine; the copper etchings of Shakespeare’s leading female ﬁgures selected to
accompany Heine’s remarks were considered trivial works of art at best;59 Heine himself
wrote to his primary publisher Julius Campe regarding this work, “unter uns gesagt, kein
Mcisterstﬁck, abcr immer gut genug ﬁir den Zweck” (HHP, July 23, 1838); and ﬁnally
nearly half the portraits, speciﬁcally those designated as comedies, did not contain
original commentary by Heine but rather a dialogue quoted from the corresponding play.
However, none of these factors are strong enough to inhibit Heine’s voice, which
emerges clearly in this text. In the twenty-four entries addressing Shakespeare’s
tragedies and histories, Heine reveals to us why he ﬁnds certain portrayals more
interesting than others. In the foreword and afterword to this text we gain a clearer
perspective of how Heine viewed Shakespeare as an author, and which aspects of
Shakespeare’s ability to balance the political with the poetic he sought to emulate.

In the beginning of the foreword Heine compares Shakespeare’s regrettable
English heritage to that of Jesus’ Jewish background. Heine’s familiar denigration of
England and its culture contrasts with his praise of Shakespeare. Heine begins his text in

this way in order to create a bond between Shakespeare, as an underdog, and German

 

59 The July 5/ 6/ 8, 1839 editions of the “Halleschcn Jahrbﬁchem fur deutsche Wissenschaft und Kunst”
contained a series of reactions to Heine’s “Shakespeare” text. Included was the following critique about
the etchings, . .ich sehe keine Portraits Shakespeare’scher Frauen darin, und noch weniger sind es
Kunstwerkc. Aber es sind niedlichc Schnupftabaks-Dosen-Deckel-Madchen-Kﬁpfe oder allerliebste
Berliner-Porzellan-Fabrik-Pfeifenkopf—Fraucn-Gesichter, welche ich dem Publikum nicht als Meisterstﬁcke
der Gravicrkunst vorzulegcn wage...” (qtd. in B 4: 882).

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Jews. This strategy echos the connection he makes in Ludwig Borne: E ine Denkschrift
where he refers to Shakespeare as a Jew and a Greek. Heine further strengthens his
afﬁnity to this literary forefather by claiming that the difﬁculties Shakespeare
encountered with the Puritans are similar to Heine’s own present protest of the German
Restoration. Later in the foreword Heine writes, “Die Aufgabe Shakespeares war nicht
bloB die Poesie, sondem auch die Geschichte” (B 4: 178). By setting Shakespeare up as
the model of a writer who successfully integrated historical topics into his works without
sacriﬁcing aesthetic expression, Heine hopes to lend credibility to his own writing in this
same respect.

Within the individual portraits Heine takes notice of Shakespeare’s ability to
develop female characters who are not limited to their prescribed roles as wives, queens,
daughters, or mothers. Many of these women move beyond their predestined familial
relationships by actively pursuing, confronting, betraying, or persuading the male ﬁgures
around them. Heine clearly states that his purpose with this work is to focus on the
female ﬁgures, especially those in the historical plays where they carry as much of the
plot as the men. He writes:

Ich will ja ﬁberhaupt die dramatischcn Gedichte, worin Shakespeare die
groBen Begcbcnhcitcn dcr englischen Historic verherrlicht hat, nicht
dogmatisch erlautem, sondem nur die Bildnisse der Frauen, die aus jenen
Dichtungen hervorblﬁhen, mit einigen Wortarabeskcn verzieren. Da in
diesen englischen Geschichtsdramen die Frauen nichts weniger als die
Hauptrollen spielen, und der Dichter sic nie auftretcn laBt, wie in andem

Stﬁcken, weibliche Gestalten und Charaktere zu schildem, sondem

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vielmehr, weil die darzustellende Historic ihre Einmischung erforderte: so
werde ich auch desto karglicher von ihnen reden. (B 4: 218)

Although Heine speciﬁcally expresses that his intention in this work is not to
provide a critical analysis of the plays but to focus on Shakespeare’s portrayal of women,
Heine scholars have missed this point. Walter Wadepuhl sought to prove that Heine
lacked the critical knowledge necessary to make a contribution to Shakespeare studies
and therefore assesses Shakespeares Ma’dchen und Frauen as, “eines der schwﬁchsten
Werke von Heine” (134). Sicgbert Prawer understood Heine’s intention‘much better
when he wrote, “Above all, Heine never forgot that he was himself a poet, not a scholar,
not a dispassionatc critic, not merely a receptive reader; and that he therefore had the
right and duty to ‘use’ Shakespeare for his own purposes” (40). Prawer is correct in his
perception that Heine used Shakespeare, not only within Shakespeares Ma’dchen und
Frauen, but in his later works as well. However, still missing from Prawer’s study is a
speciﬁc focus on what Heine has to say about these female ﬁgures. Volkmar Hansen
docs pay considerable attention to Heine’s remarks about the individual portraits but
draws some skeptical conclusions. Hansen reads Heine’s reference in the “Desdemona”
portrait to a “hohe Schﬁnc” as an allusion to Princess Belgiojoso (235). Why Hansen
believes this remains unclear. Scholarship that seeks only to ﬁnd biographical
explanations for Heine’s female depictions provides little insight as to how those
portrayals function within a text. Instead we need to focus on why Heine perceives
Shakespeare’s portrayal of Desdemona as beautiful. What imagery or literary tools might
Heine be inclined to borrow from this ﬁgure for his own writing? By examining Heine’s

reaction to a variety of female characters — from virtuous maidens to villainous queens —

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we can gain a better idea of how Heine understands representations of women who are
not simply Romantic muses.
The ﬁrst portrait Heine introduces is “C ressida” from T roilus and Cressida. She
was not placed ﬁrst because of her virtue or because she is a typical female character (B
4: 192). Those qualities do not interest Heine. The reason he has emphasized her is
because this play is inspired by Greek mythology. Since we have already witnessed
Heine’s idealization of Greek antiquity, it is somewhat surprising that he values
Shakespeare’s interpretation over the mythological story:
Im Gegensatz zu den antiken Tragikem, die, wie die antiken Bildhauer,
nur nach Schb’nheit und Adel rangen, und auf Kosten des Gchaltcs die
Form verherrlichtcn, richtete Shakespeare sein Augenmerk zuniichst auf
Wahrheit und Inhalt; daher seine Meisterschaﬁ der Charakteristik, womit
er nicht selten, an die verdrieBlichste Karikatur streifend, die Helden ihrer
glanzenden Hamische entkleidet und in dem lacherlichstcn Schlafrock
erscheinen laBt. (B 4: 193)
Heine values Shakespeare’s ability to strip characters of their outward appearances and
expose their inner truths. However, in this play none of the female characters actually ﬁt
that description. Heine criticizes Shakespeare for portraying Cressida as simply “cine
gewﬁhnliche Schﬁrze,” who lacks depth (B 4: 193). Cassandra, like her mythological
namesake, is a visionary whose warning is disregarded. Heine likewise chastises
Shakespeare for not giving her a more signiﬁcant role: “Kﬁrgliche und eben nicht sehr
bedeutungsvollc Worte widmet Shakespeare der schﬁncn Seherin; sic ist bei ihm nur cine

gewohnliche Unglﬁcksprophetin, die mit Wehegeschrci in der verfemten Stadt

155

umherlauft” (B 4: 195). Since Heine recognizes her potential it is not surprising that in
Deutschland. Ein Winterma'rchen he develops a similar female oracle in the ﬁgure of
Hammonia. The last portrait from Troilus and Cressida is “Helena,” whose abduction
caused the Trojan war. Heine focuses less on what Shakespeare does with her but rather
uses the opportunity to explain his own idealization of this ﬁgure. Heine remembers
from his youth how Homer’s version of Helen was the object of every German
schoolboy’s affection. Later, when they were old enough to make a pact with the devil, it
was the beautiful Helen they would have asked for (B 4: 196). Heine further explains
that a German Faust would ask for pleasures rather than knowledge. This interpretation
becomes the foundation for Heine’s own version of Faust eight years later.

The fourth portrait of “Virgilia” from Coriolanus illuminates for Heine a strategy
in character portrayal, the power of opposites. Virgilia is Coriolanus’ wife and she has
nothing to say. She is “cine schﬁchteme Taubc, die nicht einmal zu girren wagt in
Gegenwart des ﬁberstolzen Gatten” (B 4: 197). Heine’s description of her uses Romantic
stereotypes to further reinforce her objectiﬁed role: “sic schweigt wie die crrdtende Rose,
wie die keusche Perle, wie der schnsﬁchtigc Abendstcm es ist ein volles, kostbares,
glﬁhendes Schweigen” (B 4: 197). She stands in direct contrast to the commandeering
presence of her mother-in-law, Volumnia. She is the “Wolﬁn Volumnia, die den Wolf
Cajus Marcius einst geséiugt mit ihrer ciscmen Milch” (B 4: 197). Heine is intrigued by
her strength as a matriarchal ﬁgure: “Ja, letztere ist die wahrc Matrone, und aus ihren
patrizischen Zitzcn sog die junge Brut nichts als wilden Mut, ungcstﬁmen Trotz und
Verachtung des Volkes” (B 4: 197—8). Whereas Heine used Romantic imagery to

describe the delicate nature of Virgilia, he uses brutal, offensive words to convey the

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dominance of Volumnia’s character. For Heine one of the reasons that this play succeeds
as a powerful tragedy is because of the ﬁgure of Volumnia.

Heine emulates Shakespeare’s masculine focus in the play Julius Ceasar and does
not even mention Portia until the last paragraph of this entry. There he describes her as
the wife of Brutus and the daughter of Cato. Although Portia’s desire to know of her
husband’s secret provides the potential for her character to be developed, she remains
trapped in the limited role of the “Weib” (B 4: 203). Heine cites Shakespeare’s words
where Portia recognizes her limitations, “Ich habe Mannessinn, doch Weibcrohnmacht./
Wie fallt doch ein Geheimnis Weibem schwer!” (B 4: 203). Portia, like Cressida and
Virgilia, does not arouse Heine’s interest since she remains a typical female
representation.

Cleopatra, of Antony and Cleopatra, is altogether different. She is powerfully
passionate, but dangerously self-serving. Heine describes her with a string of unﬂattering
adjectives: “Dieses launische, lustsﬁchtige, wetterwcndische, ﬁeberhaft kokette Weib. . .”
(B 4: 210). In the play she convinces her lover Antony to lead battle on sea, instead of on
land where his strengths as a general lie. At the decisive moment she withdraws her
ships. As Antony does the same, to follow her, he is defeated by Caesar. Cleopatra is
surely the cause of Antony’s downfall as Heine explains, “Die egyptische Zauberin halt
nicht bloB sein Herz, sondem auch sein Him gefangen, und verwirrt sogar sein
Feldherrntalent” (B 4: 204). Despite her manipulative behavior, Antony continues to
love her. Cleopatra’s ability to love and betray at the same time is the characteristic
Heine ﬁnds most fascinating. He warns that while such a combination may have no

effect on a mediocre man, it can destroy a hero. This is exactly the outcome of the play —

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both Cleopatra and Antony commit suicide. While Heine ignores Cleopatra’s death and
ends the portrait saying that she rules as queen, he is not far from the essence of the play.
In a ﬁnal act of good will, Caesar orders that Anthony and Cleopatra be buried together.
Cleopatra’s strong will may have been her downfall, but it also proved powerful enough
to inﬂuence Caesar’s opinion. Cleopatra, who is as beautiful as she is destructive, leaves
a similar lasting impression onHeinc. He returns to her in the afterword as a
representative of one of his three types of love.

Titus Andronicus is Shakespeare’s most gruesome play, yet Lavinia can be
understood as a precursor to Lessing’s Emilia Galotti as a protector of virtue. Heine
writes of her, “sic scheut nicht den Tod, sondem die Entchrung” (B 4: 212). After having
her hands and tongue cut off, she is spared further misery and put to rest by her father’s
hand, and thereby parallels Emilia’s death by her father, Odoardo. As Heine observed of
Virgilia and Volumnia from Coriolanus, contrasting ﬁgures are easier to develop. This
principle is also apparent here with Lavinia, whose innocence contrasts with the
vengefulness of Tamora. Of their oppositional natures, Heine writes:

In dieser jungfraulichen Reinheit bildet Lavinia den vollendeten
Gegensatz zu dcr Kaiscrin Tamora; hier, wie in den meisten seiner
Dramcn, stellt Shakespeare zwei ganz gemﬁtsverschicdcne weibliche
Gestalten neben einander, und veranschaulicht uns ihren Charakter durch
den Kontrast. (B 4: 212)
Although there is no etching supplied for Tamora, Heine still speciﬁcally address her
character. She is portrayed in the play as the villainous queen and Heine relishes her

vivid depiction:

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Sic ist ein schoncs majestatisches Weib, cine bezaubemd imperatorische
Gestalt, auf dcr Stime das Zeichen der gefallcnen Gottlichkeit, in den
Augen cine weltverzehrcnde Wollust, prachtvoll lasterhaﬁ, lechzcnd nach
rotem Blut. Weltblickend milde, wie unser Dichter sich immer zeigt, hat
er schon in dcr ersten Szene, wo Tamora erscheint, alle die Greucl, die sic
spatcr gegen Titus Andronicus ausﬁbt, im voraus justiﬁziert. (B 4: 212-3)
She is a dark and powerful ﬁgure, yet Heine identiﬁes with her motives for revenge.
Even though she is not easily likeable, Heine appreciates the depth which Shakespeare
wrote into Tamora’s character.
Under the portrait of “Constanze” Heine sidesteps the topic of Shakespeare
entirely and instead includes his own parable. While supposedly attending an uninspiring
theatrical performance, Heine falls asleep and overhears the mice of the theater talking.
The older mouse reveals the secrets of the theater, stripping the stage of its magical
facade by explaining the sound effects and unveiling the true character behind the actors.
The hero is really a drunk and the virtuous princess is neither virtuous nor a princess.
According to the mouse:
Jene tugcndhafte Prinzessin, die sich ﬁlr ihre Tugend aufzuopfem schien,
ist wcder cine Prinzessin noch tugcndhaft; ich habe geschcn, wie sic aus
einem Porzellantﬁpfchen rote F arbe genommen, ihre Wangcn damit
angestrichcn, und dicses galt nachher ﬁ'rr Schamrﬁte; am Ende sogar warf
sic sich gahnend in die Arme eines Gardelcutnants. .. (B 4: 216)

The story indicates that Heine is not looking for feminine virtue or masculine heroism

but rather wants the theater to be authentic. In the end the mouse proclaims, .. all das

159

GroBe und Edle, das uns hier voragicrt wurde, ist Lug und Trug; Eigennutz und
Selbstucht sind die geheimen Tricbfedern aller Handlungcn, und ein vcmﬁnftiges Wesen
laBt sich nicht tauschcn durch den Schein” (B 4: 216). This is not the direction Heine
wishes for modern theater and thus this story stands in contrast to the truthful expressions
he ﬁnds in Shakespeare’s work.

Heine identiﬁes with the historic ﬁgure of “Johanna d’Arc,” a simple French
maiden, who upon hearing voices of divine inspiration, leads French armies to defeat the
English. However, Shakespeare’s portrayal of her in Henry VI, Part I deviates from
historical accounts by turning her into a cowardly ﬁgure who is accused of witchcraft and
executed (Boyce 318). Heine criticizes Shakespeare’s portrayal:

Ja, cs war brittischer NationalhaB oder mittelalterlicher Abcrglaube, was
seincn Geist umnebcltc, unser Dichter hat das heldenmﬁtige Madchen als
cine Hexe dargestellt,die mit den dunkeln Machten der Hﬁlle verbﬁndet
ist. Er laBt die Damoncn der Unterwelt von ihr beschwﬁrcn, und
gerechtfcrtigt wird durch solche Annahme ihre grauseame Hinrichtung. (B
4:221)
The possibility that she might have been inspired by hellish forces bothers him less than
Shakespeare’s “unfreundlich” and “lieblos” portrayal (B 4: 222). Heine would have
written her differently since she deserves “Ehrfurcht und Bewundcrung” for liberating
her country (B 4: 222). Heine hopes to excuse Shakespeare’s representation of her by
entertaining the idea that this was not an original work by him. As much as he would like
to believe this, in the end Heine must admit that there is too much of Shakespeare’s style

within the play for it not to be his.

160

“Taken as a single role, running through four plays, Margaret is surely the
greatest female part in Shakespeare” writes Boyce about the character Margaret in Henry
VI, Part 1, 2, 3 and Richard III (399). From what we have read so far of Heine’s
disinterest in ﬂat, undeveloped ﬁgures and his desire to champion unsung heroines, we
can expect Heine to examine Shakespeare’s creation of her. She is in fact allotted two
portraits, one for Henry VI, Part 1, and the other for Part 2, and Part 3. In her ﬁrst
portrait Heine comments on her ability as a prisoner to capture the heart of Suffolk.
Heine credits Shakespeare with inventing Margaret’s and Suffolk’s relationship beyond
what is historically accurate. In the second portrait Heine acknowledges a change in her
character. She was a young daughter in the ﬁrst play; here she is a grown queen.
However, she has not simply matured. As Heine explains, “Die Knospe hat sich entfaltct,
sic ist jetzt cine vollblﬁhende Rose; abcr ein widerlicher Wurm liegt darin verborgcn. Sic
ist cin hartes, frevelhaftes Weib geworden” (B 4: 224). Heine cites how heartless she is
in offering York a handkerchief soaked in the blood of his own son. Heine further
speculates that if her teeth were visible in the copper etching, they would be pointed like
those of a predatory animal; he is clearly intrigued by her as a multifaceted character.
Boyce describes how she undergoes a transformation among the plays: “She develops
from an ingenuous young woman thrust into prominence, through a career as a scheming
plotter and a courageous and persistent military leader, to a ﬁnal appearance as a raging,
Fury-like cricr of curses against her triumphant enemies” (399). In Heine’s ﬁnal
comment about her from Richard 111 he relates the scene where she is carrying Suffolk’s
head: “Wenn spatcrhin Margaretha, das blutige Haupt des Geliebten in der Hand tragcnd,

ihre wildest Vcrzweiﬂung ausjammcrt, mahnt sic uns an die fruchtbare Chrimhilde des

161

Nibclungenslieds” (B 4: 225). Heine’s comparison of Margaret to Kriemhild from the
Nibelungenlied conﬁrms his opinion of her as a vicious ﬁgure. Just as Heine reacted
favorably to the passionate portrayals of Cleopatra and Tamora, so too, does he react to
Margaret. This image of a woman carrying the head of her lover resurfaces in Heine’s
portrayal of Herodias in Atta Troll.

Reminiscent of his positive explanation of the ﬂying “Valkyrcn” in
Elementargeister, Heine expresses a favorable disposition toward the three witches in
Macbeth. He refers to them as “wundersame Frauen” and “schauerliche Luftgottinnen”
(B 4: 237) and is disappointed with Shakespeare’s sinister transformation of them:

Shakespeare verwandelte sic in unheilstiftende Hexen, entkleidetc sic aller
furchtbarcn Grazic des nordischcn Zaubertums, er machte sic zu
zwitterhaften MiBweibem, die ungcheuerlichen Spuk zu trciben wissen,
und Verderben braucn, aus hamischer Schadenfreude oder auf GeheiB der
Hollc: die sind Dienerinnen dcs Bosen. .. (B 4: 238).
Heine does not like Shakespeare’s degradation of these ﬁgures because it simpliﬁes their
complex nature and minimizes the fall of thehero as simply succumbing to the power of
Satan. Still Heine credits Shakespeare with doing a better job than his contemporaries at
preserving the mystical qualities of these characters.

“Was bedeutet dieses Weib? Welcher Sinn lauert unter der Symbolik dieser
schﬁncn Formcn?” (B l: 613), asks the narrator in F lorentinische Ndchte in the presence
of the alluring Mademoiselle Laurence. In Heine’s portrait of “Ophelia” from Hamlet he
fuses a personal encounter with a friend’s daughter with the image of Ophelia.

Spellbound by her smile, Heine poses a very similar question: “Was bedeutet jenes

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Lacheln? Was bedeutet jene Stimme, jener geheimnisvoll schmachtendc Flﬁtenton?” (B
4: 240). By using rhetorical questions such as these Heine is able to add another
dimension to the characters with his answer. In contrast to the use of this literary tool
with Laurence, where it allowed her to be more deeply developed, here the comparison of
Ophelia to a garden reiterates her status as an “armes Kind” (B 4: 240).
In the portrait to “Desdemona” from Othello, Heine compares her to Juliet from
Romeo and Juliet:
Vcrgleicht man Julie mit Desdemona, so wird ebenfalls in jener ein
nordisches Element bemerkbar; bei aller Gewalt ihrer Leidenschaft bleibt
sic doch immer ihrer selbst bewuBt and im klarsten Selbstbewuﬁtsein
Herrin ihrer Tat. Julie liebt und dcnkt und handclt. Desdemona liebt und
ﬁihlt und gehorcht, nicht dem cigncn Willen, sondem dem starkem
Antrieb. (B 4: 248)
Juliet is seen as a more determined ﬁgure since she thinks before acting on her desires,
whereas Desdemona obeys her emotions. Heine gives the latter little credit for choosing
Othello as her husband despite her father’s reluctance toward the marriage. Boyce
describes Desdemona as representative of “the spirit of self-sacriﬁce traditionally
associated with the most intense and spiritual love” (155). Since Heine typically
distanced himself from spiritual representations it is not surprising that he supports the
objectiﬁcation of her character, “Sic ist die Sonncnblume, die selber nicht wciB, das sic
immer dem hohen Tagesgestim ihr Haupt zuwcndet.” (B 4: 248).
Kenneth Hayens convincingly argues that Heine relied on Anna Jameson’s book

“Fraucnbildcr oder Charakteristik dcr vorzﬁglichsten Frauen in Shakespeares Dramen. .

163

(1834) more than he gives her credit for (42). One place where Heine docs acknowledge
her work is in the portrait to “Portia” from Merchant of Venice. There he quotes two
complete paragraphs by her in which she describes Portia’s unique qualities. Portia’s
“besondere Gaben” include a “hohe geistige Kraft,” “begeisterte Stimmung,” and an
“cntschicdcne F cstigkeit” (qtd. in B 4: 261). Heine agrees with Jameson saying that her
words are “nicht bloB schﬁn sondem auch wahr” (B 4: 262). He continues to show
appreciation for Portia as he compares her, in his own words, to Shylock:
Wollen wir letzteren [Shylock], in ﬁblichcr Auffassung, als den
Reprascntanten des starrcn, emsten, kunstfeindlichen Judaas betrachten, so
erscheint uns dagegen Portia als die Reprasentantin jener Nachblﬁtc des
griechischen Geistcs, welche von Italien aus, im scchszehntcn
Jahrhundert, ihren holden Duft ﬁber die Welt verbreitetc und welche wir
noch heute unter dem namen ‘die Renaissance’ lieben und schatzen.
Portia ist zugleich die Reprﬁsentantin dcs heitem Glﬁcks [. . .] Wie
blﬁhcnd, wie rosig, wie reinklingend ist all ihr Denken und Sprcchcn, wie
freudewarm sind ihre Worte, wie schﬁn alle ihre Bilder, die meistens dcr
Mythologie entlehnt sind! (B 4: 262).
Heine expresses his admiration of Portia by associating her ﬁrst with Greek mythology
and then with the Renaissance. Heine recognizes her as a fully developed character who
is both intelligent and passionate.
In the afterword Heine addresses Shakespeare’s comedies. In a dream sequence
he envisions a muse in a boat. She is similar to the poetic muse found in Heine’s Buch

der Lieder (1827), who assumes a partially active role by speaking, teasing, and steering

164

her own boat. She calls to the narrator, “Nicht wahr, mein F reund, du hattest gem eine
Deﬁnition von der Shakespeareschen Komodie?” (B 4: 291). She then wakes him by
splashing him in the face and laughing. What follows is Heine’s familiar rhetorical
question: “Wer war jene anmutige F rauengestalt, die mich solchermaBen im Traume
neckte?” (B 4: 291). His answer allows him to describe her character with added detail.
He begins with her physical features, including her clothing and horned cap (a reference
to the devil), then her sexual body, and ﬁnally her spirit which he likens to that of a
goddess:
Es war vielleicht die Gottin der Kaprize, jene sonderbare Muse, die bei der
Geburt Rosalindens, Beatrices, Titanias, Violas, und wie sie sonst heiBen,
die lieblichen Kinder der Shakespeareschen Komodie, zugegen war und
ihnen die Stime kﬁBte. (B 4: 291-2)
Although Heine generally pays less attention to the ﬁgures in the comedies, those listed
here — Rosalind, Beatrice, Titania, and Viola — represent very strong female leads. Still,
for Heine there is a difference between the protagonists in the comedies and those in the
tragedies. It lies in their capacity for passion. He explains:
Wie bei den Mannern, so auch bei den Weibem in der Shakespearschen
Komodie, ist die Leidenschaft ganz ohne jenen furchtbarcn Ernst, ganz
ohne jene fatalistische Notwendigkeit, womit sie sich in den Tragodien
offenbart. (B 4: 292)
Heine’s preference for the tragically expressive ﬁgures is evident in his reactions to

Volumnia, Cleopatra, Tamora, and Margaret.

165

Finally, Heine revisits the topic of love and compares the ways that Miranda from
the Tempest, Juliet, and Cleopatra express this emotion. Miranda’s love is as pure as
“Blume eines unbeﬂeckten Bodens, den nur GeisterﬁiBe betreten durﬁen” (B 4: 292).
Juliet’s love, “tragt, wie ihre Zeit und Umgebung, einen mehr romantisch
mittelalterlichen, schon der Renaissance entgegenbh‘ihenden Charakter” (B 4: 292). As
her love is more passionate, Heine equates it with Lombardi’s painting. Although
Cleopatra’s love is not loyal it is still wild, “Diese Liebe ist ohne Glaube und ohne Treue,
aber darum nicht minder wild und gliihend” (B 4: 293). These three characters, as
described by Heine, in fact reﬂect the development of his own female ﬁgures. Miranda
represents the Romantic ideal, whose presence is infused into many of the portrayals in
Heine’s Buch der Lieder. Just as Portia from Julius Caesar attempted to challenge her
prescribed gender roles but still remained a “Weib,” so too, do these female characters by
Heine exert themselves yet fail to become complete subjects. Juliet symbolizes the
transitional ﬁgure who has not yet completely evolved out of previous conventions but
stands on the edge of a new era. Like Portia from The Merchant of Venice, who also
exhibited Renaissance qualities, these are the ﬁgures by Heine who retain a sense of
literary tradition, yet become real as they embrace modern thought. Most indicative of
these intermediary ﬁgures in Heine’s works are Laurence from F lorentinische Nachte,
Venus from the “Tannhauser” poem, and Hammonia from Deutschland. Ein
Wintermc’irchen. Finally, Heine describes Cleopatra’s love as “erkrankte Zivilisation” (B
4: 293). However, this is not an entirely negative view, it is just extremely intense. In
order to vividly describe this love, Heine turns to mythological imagery, “Im argerlichen

BewuBtsein, daB diese Glut nicht zu dampfen ist, gieBt das ungelduldige Weib noch (")l

166

hinein, und stﬁrtzt sich bachantisch in die lodemden F lammen” (B 4: 293). The dancing
Bacchantes in Greek mythology are wildly passionate females who are also unpredictably
ravenous (Hamilton 67-8). In chapter 5 we will encounter two female characters whose
love and sexuality do not represent a Christian-based morality. However, unlike
Cleopatra, who has very near-sighted goals, Diana and Mephistophela control their

passion with insight and intelligence.

167

A tta Troll. Ein Sommernachtstraum

In the foreword to the 1847 publication of Atta T roll. Ein Sommernachtstraum,
Heine criticizes current literature that overtly addresses political issues by using this vivid
analogy:

Die Musen bekamen die strenge Weisung, sich hinﬁiro nicht mehr mﬁBig
und leichtfertig umherzutreiben, sondem in vaterlandischen Dienst zu
treten, etwas als Marketenden'nnen der Freiheit oder als Wascherinnen der
christlich-germanischen Nationalitéit. (B 4: 494)
The poetic muse is stripped of all her mystery and allure and forced instead to serve a
political cause. As a reaction against this trend, Heine intends to prove with this work
that literature can retain its artistic qualities and still express critical ideas. He achieves
this in part through the creation of interesting female ﬁgures who do not behave as
expected. These characters surprise the male narrator as they exert a sense of self. While
each of them alludes to their literary heritage — the Bible, Shakespeare, Greek mythology
and Romanticism — they move beyond the limitations of those traditions. Where these
ﬁgures break with literary stereotypes is where Heine inserts his social commentary.

The use of mythological and Romantic imagery is not new to Heine’s female
portrayals; rather a mixture of the two have been present in most of the ﬁgures discussed
this far. Different in this work is Heine’s intention not to rely on the Greek gods to help
him. Acknowledging his indebtedness to them in the past, he writes:

Bei den ewigen Gottern! damals galt es die unverauBerlichen Rechte des

Geistes zu vertreten, zumal in der Poesie. Wie eine solche Vertretung das

168

groBe Geschafte meines Lebens war, so habe ich sie am allerwenigsten im
vorliegenden Gedicht auBer Augen gelassen, (B 4: 495)
Instead Heine writes a fable about dancing bears and only in the brief portrayal of the
goddess Diana is Greek mythology directly mentioned.

Heine had a variety of German fables on dancing bears, including those by
Christian Gellert, G.E. Lessing, and Gottliebe Konrad Pfeffel, to draw upon for the
creation of his Atta Troll (DHA 4: 342-7). There was also a popular two-volume French
publication entitled, “Scenes de la vie priv'e'e et publique des animaux. Vignettes par
Grandville” (1842). This was a collection of fables commissioned from prominent
French authors including: George Sand, Balzac, L. Baude, and Paul de Musset, brother to
Alfred, written to accompany caricatures drawn by the illustrator Grandvi11e(Woesler
159). Winfried Woesler argues that the similarities between Heine’s work and the stories
in this collection indicate that he was familiar with them (160). Of particular interest is
the similarity of Heine’s fable to an entry credited to George Sand called “Voyage d’un

. . (,0
momeau de Paris.”

There is a “Vogelcaput” from an early version of A tta Troll in
which the narrator converses with the lark “Hut-hut” that bears a resemblance to this
piece (DHA 4: 350). Whether Heine and Sand ever discussed the fable as a genre or
engaged in a dialogue about these two works remains unknown. However, we can derive
from this coincidence that the Parisian literary environment was ﬁnding expression in his
writing. In this work Heine uses a mixture of literary models to create a new form for his
political message.

A tta Troll is an epic poem about emancipation. The main ﬁgure, Atta Troll, is a

dancing bear who one day escapes from his trainer and returns home to the cave in the

 

(’0 Woesler speculates that her text was actually written by Balzac (163).

169

mountains where he and his wife Mumma had raised a family. He is restored as the
patriarch of the family, which is underscored by his name, “Atta,” a derivative of the
Yiddish word for father, Atta (Woesler 227). He teaches his children about the
oppressive nature of mankind, but fails to see how his fond reminiscing about his success
as a dancing bear, under the control of a trainer, contradicts his message. Despite Atta
Troll’s position as the leading protagonist, it is really within the representations of the
female ﬁgures that Heine more directly challenges bourgeois morality. Mumma, Juliette,
and Uraka are portrayed as realistic sexual ﬁgures, whereas Diana, Abunde, and Herodias
are alluring apparitions that the narrator encounters in the woods.

In contrast to “der edle Atta Troll” who dances “Stief und emsthaﬁ, mit
Grandezza,” his wife Mumma is described as “zottgen” and she dances without “Wurde”
or “Anstand” (B 4: 497). The trainer also notes the “Immoralitat” of her performance (B
4: 497). When Troll escapes, the trainer directs his anger toward her and she is beaten.
As the story progresses and Atta Troll reminisces about their life together, it becomes
clear that Mumma has not always been submissive, but rather quite assertive. Atta Troll
and Mumma had four sons and two daughters who are described as virtuous:

Wohlgeleckte Barenjungfraun,

Blond von Haar, wie Predgerstocher;

Braun die Buben, nur der Jﬁngste

Mit dem einzigen 0hr ist schwarz. (B 4: 504)
Mumma, who is also black, shares a connection with the youngest son that differentiates
them from the rest of the family:

Dieser Jﬁngste war das Herzblatt

170

Seiner Mutter, die ihm spielend

Abgebissen einst ein 0hr;

Und sie fraB es auf vor Liebe. (B 4: 504)
This very expressive display of motherly love does not correspond with the Christian
portrayal of the family. Toward the end of the story this deﬁant aspect of Mumma’s
personality is restored. After the hunt for Atta Troll has ended, we learn of her fate.
Contrary to the reintroduction of her character in Caput XXVI with the description of
women as fragile as porcelain, she is not so:

Als des Schicksals Hand sie trennte

Von dem glorreich edlen Gatten

Starb sie nicht des Kummertodes,

Ging sie nicht in Trﬁbsinn unter —

Nein, im Gegenteil, sie setzte
Lustig fort ihr Leben, tanzte
Nach wie vor, beim Publiko

Buhlend um den Tagesbeifall.

Eine feste Stellung, eine
Lebenslangliche Versorgung,
Hat sie endlich zu Paris

1m Jardin-des-Plantes gefunden. (B 4: 566)

171

Not only does she not succumb to despair, but she ﬁnds a new, more liberated position in
Paris. She now dances with a renewed spirit and has even found a new lover:
Ein gewaltger Wﬁstenbar
Aus Sibirien, schneeweiBhaarigt.
Spielte dort ein ﬁberzartes
Liebesspiel mit einer Barin. (B 4: 567)
It is only after seeing the gleam in her eyes that the narrator recognizes her as Mumma.
She has succeeded in ﬁnding love outside of the context of a Christian marriage.
Woesler misses her autonomous expressions when he reads the above description of her
as a sign of her sexual objectiﬁcation. Despite his acknowledgment of her second
relationship, Woesler still views her as a representation of the typical feminine:
Wie Troll als typisch mannliches Oberhaupt einer burgerlichen Familie, so
wird Mumma in der traditioncllen weiblichen Rolle gezeichnet. Troll
erwahlte sie zur Gattin und zeugte mit ihr Kinder, die Mumma
auBerordentlich liebt, einen Sohn sogar bis zum ExzeB; sonst verhalt sie
sich passiv, sie reiBt sich nicht von ihrer Kette los (Cap. 11), sie wird
geschlagen und erscheint als Sexualobjekt (Cap. XXVI). Nur eine einzige
“Aktivitat” wird auBer dem Tanzen von ihr erwahnt: daB sie heult (Cap. 1)
und F lehend, auf den Hintertatzen (Cap. 11) stehenbleibt. (230)
Woesler’s interpretation also overlooks how Atta Troll is shot at the end of the story,

whereas Mumma not only survives but breaks from her chains to ﬁnd a better life.

172

Atta Troll’s daughter, Liljen, falls in love with a human who has made his living
by robbing soldiers. The reference to Lessing’s Emilia Galotti underscores Atta Troll’s
position as a protector of his daughter’s virtue:

Gleich dem alten Odoardo,
Der mit Burgerstolz erdolchte
Die Emilia Galotti,

Wﬁrde auch der Atta Troll

Seine Tochter lieber toten,

Toten mit den eignen Tatzen,

Als erlauben, daB sie sanke

In die Arme eines Prinzen! (B 4: 560)
Although Atta Troll neither kills her nor Ieams of her secret, her choice of an unworthy
human contradicts her expected role as a “Predgerstochter.”

Juliette is a minor ﬁgure in the story, whose sole purpose is as the narrator’s
companion. From her Shakespearean balcony, she watches Atta Troll break from his
chains (B 4: 499), however she does not share her namesake’s nature. Unlike the
description of Juliet in Shakespeares Ma'dchen und Frauen, Juliette does not express this
type of love or compassion. Instead of “Mitgefuhl” she laughs as Atta Troll runs away
(Heine 4: 499). Her change in character might be explained by the discovery that Heine
and Mathilde were referred to by friends as Romeo and Juliette (DHA 4: 743). The text
reads:

Juliette hat im Busen

173

Kein Gemﬁt, sie ist F ranzosin,
Lebt nach auBen; doch ihr AuBres

Ist entziickend, ist bezaubemd.

Ihre Blicke sind ein sﬁBes

Strahlennetz, in dessen Maschen

Unser Herz, gleich einem F ischlein,

Sich verfangt und zartlich zappelt. (B 4: 499)
Juliette is not Italian, but French like Mathilde. The narrator is captivated by her
powerful gaze. Her overt sexuality is reafﬁrmed by the narrator’s cement on spending
“die Halfte / Jener Nacht” on her balcony (B 4: 501). However, there is no indication in
the text that Juliette is the wife of the narrator as Ritchie Robertson concludes (73).
Instead she represents a challenge to traditional gender roles as her promiscuous behavior
is highlighted. When she reappears in Caput XXV, she has become the owner of Atta
Troll’s pelt, which she places in front of her bed (B 4: 565). The narrator often ﬁnds
himself standing barefoot upon it:

0, wie oft, mit bloBen F ﬁBen,

Stand ich Nachts auf dieser irdisch

Braunen Hulle meines Helden,

Auf der Haut des Atta Troll! (B 4: 565)
In this ironic image, the narrator stands upon the symbolic remains of bourgeois morality

while he climbs into bed with his sexual partner.

I74

The inspiration for the ﬁgure of Uraka, the witch who deals in herbs and lives in a
cabin in the Pyrenees region of France, most likely came from folk tales of witches in
that region (DHA 4: 765). While Heine recognizes her heritage, he resists labeling her as
such:

Ob die Alte, die Uraka,
Wirklich eine ausgezeichnet
GroBe Hexe, wie die Leute

In den Pyrenan behaupten .

Will ich nimmemmehr entscheiden. (B 4: 535)
This ambiguity allows Heine to create her differently. The narrator only commits to
describing her as “verdachti g” (B 4: 534). Her other attributes — being incredibly strong
and mean — he has only heard from second-hand sources. Her characterization becomes
more respectable when she is credited with running an honest business (B 4: 535).
Uraka’s portrayal does not match that of the flying nymphs described in
Elementargeister, with the exception of her seductive nature. The narrator meets Uraka’s
dog, who explains that he was once a virtuous Swabian poet before Uraka cast a spell on
him for rejecting her advances (B 4: 556). There is yet another aspect to her character
besides her strong sexuality which is revealed in C aput XXI. Upon returning to Uraka’s
cabin, the narrator ﬁnds her preparing a red cream which she rubs on the chest of her son.
The scene invokes the Christian image of the pieta:

Wie ein Leichnam, gelb und knochem.

Lag der Sohn im SchoB der Mutter;

175

Todestraurig, weit geoffnet

Starren seine bleichen Augen. (B 4: 550)
Whether she is as pure as the Virgin Mary or an active seductress as the dog describes,
she is most deﬁnitely not the stereotypical representation of a witch. She is not an
observer or foreseer of the action as are the witches in Macbeth, but an engaged
participant. Together with her. son she molds the bullets to be used in the hunt for Atta
Troll (B 4: 536). She is the one who mimics the voice of Mumma in order to entice Atta
Troll from his cave to be shot (B 4: 562).

From the window of Uraka’s but, the narrator observes the hunt for Atta Troll.

First he sees apparitions of Goethe and Shakespeare and then “schone Nymphen,” who
are reminiscent of the fairies from A Midsummer Night ’s Dream. Among these are three
memorable ﬁgures, “Nie vergeB ich / Diese holden F rauenbilder” (B 4: 540). The ﬁrst is
the goddess Diana, characterized by her white tunic and her marble skin. However, she is
no longer the huntress but has been changed into a witch ﬁgure:

Wie verandert ist Diana,

Die, im Ubermut der Keuschheit,

Einst den Aktaon verhirschte

Und den Hunden preisgegeben!

BﬁBt sie jetzt ﬁir diese Siinde
In galantester Gesellschaft?
Wie ein spukend armes Weltkind

F ahrt sie nachtlich durch die Lﬁfte. (B 4:541)

176

Like the title ﬁgure from Die Go'ttin Diana, who is discussed in chapter 5, this Diana is
also banished due to Christianity’s triumph over the Greek gods.
Sagt, wohin seid Ihr entﬁohen?

Sagt, wo hauset Ihr am Tage?

Unter alten Tempeltrﬁmmem,

Irgendwo in der Romagna,

(Also heiBt es) birgt Diana

Sich vor Christi Tagesherrschaft. (B 4: 545-6)
The second ﬁgure is the Celtic fairy, Abunde, who has a sweet smile and wears a blue
nightgown that blows in the wind. In contrast to Abunde’s origin as the good luck fairy
(DHA 4: 770), here she does not bring good fortune. The narrator is tempted to kiss her
but then realizes how such a mistake could cause his demise. As Diana is banished to the
temple ruins, Abunde seeks refuge on the island of poetry, Avalun, away from the sound
of church bells.

The last ﬁgure is not so easy to deﬁne, and the narrator is not sure at ﬁrst whether
to call her a devil or an angel (B 4: 542). She is Herodias, mistress of Herod, who desired
the head of John the Baptist. Heine claims that the folk version of her story is different
than the biblical one:

Denn sie liebte eins Johannem —
In der Bibel steht es nicht,
Doch im Volke lebt die Sage

Von Herodias’ blutger Liebe —

177

Anders war ja unerkléirlich
Das Gelﬁste jener Dame —
Wird ein Weib das Haupt begehren

Eines Manns, den sie nicht liebt?

War vielleicht ein bchhen bose
Auf den Liebsten, lieB ihn kopfen;
Aber als sie auf der Schﬁssel

Das geliebte Haupt erblickte,

Weinte sie und ward verriickt,

Und sie starb in Liebeswahnsinn. (B 4: 543)
In Heine’s version she is driven to insanity out of her love for John. Herodias’ behavior
is reminiscent of Cleopatra’s betrayal and Margaret’s outrage.

Néichtlich auferstehen tragt sie,

Wie gesagt, das blutge Haupt

In der Hand, auf ihrer Jagdfahrt —

Doch mit toller Weiberlaune
Schleudert sie das Haupt zuweilen

Durch die Liifte, kindisch lachend,

Und sie fangt es sehr behende

178

Wieder auf, wie einen Spielball. (B 4: 543-4)
While playing with John’s head like a ball, she smiles and ﬂirts with the narrator causing
him to ponder, “Warum hast du mich so zartlich/ Angesehen, Herodias?” (B 4: 544).
Heine uses this question to further develop all three of the ﬁgures.

He returns to the portrayal of Herodias when he chooses her over the other two:

Denn ich liebe dich am meisten!

Mehr als jene Griechengottin,

Mehr als jene Fee des Nordens,

Lieb ich dich, du tote Jﬁdin! (B 4: 547).
The scholarship dealing with this scene has failed to adequately answer why the narrator
selects Herodias. Robertson (73) and Woesler (236-7) both see these three ﬁgures as
femmes fatales. Maximilian Bergengruen even goes so far as to say that any one of them
could have been given preference since they are equal: “Allerdings handelt es sich hierbei
um keine hinreichende Bedingung ﬁir die Wahl der Herodias. Die eben angeﬁihrten
Kriterien hatten die zwei anderen femmes fatales ebenso erﬁillt” (78). While I agree in
part with the assessment that these three ﬁgures are representatives of Greek antiquity,
Romanticism, and Judaism, I believe that Heine is too direct about his preference for
Herodias for his choice to be inconsequential. Given Heine’s Jewish background, one
might be tempted to interpret the narrator’s preference for Herodias as a return to
Judaism. However, the narrator warns that this is a false understanding.

Alte Juden, die vorbeigehn,

Glauben dann gewiB, ich traure

Ob dem Untergang des Tempels

179

Und der Stadt Jeroscholayim. (B 4: 548)
Like Diana and Abunde who live in exile, Herodias is permitted to rise only at night. The
narrator is not bemoaning the loss of Jerusalem, but rather mourning Herodias’
banishment.

I read these highly symbolic ﬁgures not as destructive females, but rather as
challenges to traditional conceptions of sensuality. If we consider the overarching theme
of Heine’s work as an attempt to demonstrate that political messages can be poetic, then
the choice of Herodias begins to make more sense. Although Heine has referenced the
Greek gods in many of his works, he addresses in the foreword to Atta Troll his intention
not to rely on them here. This may in part explain why Diana is not the chosen ﬁgure.
While Heine has a tradition of appropriating Romantic elements into his works, he has
continually evolved beyond the limitations of Romanticism. His letter to Laube
substantiates that Romanticism had lost some of its power for him (HHP, Nov. 20, 1842).
Instead, Heine turns to the poetic stories of the Bible which he radically manipulates. It
is also ﬁttingly ironic that the character Heine selects as his literary muse, the one who
will help oppose the authoritarian force of Christianity, is the Jewish princess, Herodias.
Carola Hilmes, likewise, argues that with Herodias Heine is not creating “den Prototyp
einer F emme fatale” (123) but rather presenting a female ﬁgure who rejects “die Gebote
der Keuschheit und der Passivitat” (124).

In each of these female ﬁgures we have witnessed an expression of female
sexuality that is not congruent with the origin of their character. Mumma and Liljen do
not follow bourgeois expectations for female behavior and Juliette does not remain true

to her Shakespearean model. The pieta image of Uraka does not coincide with her

180

seductive nature as a witch. Diana is not a Greek goddess, but resembles a witch who
satiates her desire for men in quantity rather than quality (B 4: 541). Abunde is not a
petite fairy but rather is “Streng gemessen” (B 4: 541). Within the passionate portrayal of
Herodias, Heine has created a ﬁgure that most directly challenges Christian spirituality as
the dominating social force. Even though these ﬁgures remain ancillary characters and
are not developed into full protagonists, they do function as self-determining subjects.
The sexual aspects of their character reflect Heine’s attempt to redeﬁne female sensuality

in literature.

181

Deutschland. Ein Winterma'rchen

At ﬁrst glance the similarity between Heine’s Deutschland. Ein Winterma'rchen
and Shakespeare’s The Winter ’5 Tale appears to end with the title. Because Heine’s work
lacks a strong, unifying narrative and instead contains a series of impressions about
Heine’s return trip to Germany, it seems to have little in common with its Shakespearean
namesake. In contrast to Atta Troll, which remains more allegorical, Deutschland. Ein
Winterma'rchen contains direct political critique as Heine refers to speciﬁc people, places
and events. Heine mentions in a letter to Caroline Jaubert that this work contains “de
mille et une allusions insaisissables pour le lecteur francais” (HHP, Dec. 16, 1844).

Since French readers of the time would have been puzzled by his encrypted references it
is not surprising that scholars today have focused on deciphering Heine’s revolutionary
message. Still, it is odd that the majority of studies on Heine’s Deutschland. Ein
Winterma'rchen barely mention Shakespeare, if at all,'and that most overly simplify the
very prominent female ﬁgure in this work, Hammonia.61 If this work is examined with a
greater attention to the female ﬁgures and in connection with Shakespeare’s The Winter ’3
Tale, a new understanding of it unfolds, one that underscores Heine’s belief in the power
of literature to effect social change.

In Deutschland. Ein Winterma'rchen, the narrator returns to Germany and tells
about the places he visits, the food he has missed, and the people he encounters. Since
the distinct events of the journey are in themselves complete stories, scholars like Jeffrey
Sammons have tended to focus on the disjointed nature of this work: “One cannot claim

[. . .] that Deutschland. Ein Winterma'rchen holds together as a whole; its composition is

 

6' F ingerhut offers a book-length study on this work, but provides barely three pages of discussion on the
ﬁgure Hammonia (73-5). There is also no apparent reference drawn to Shakespeare.

182

forced and awkward. . (299). While the individual vignettes stand separately from one
another, a base structure uniﬁes the entire work. Harold Bloom reminds us that “winter’s
tales by their very name render homage to repetition and to change” (639). If the
narrator’s recollections are instead considered as a winter’s tale -— a story that is told late
in life and includes a sense of maturity and the possibility for transformation — then we
have discovered not only a way to unify this work, but also a different way to interpret its
ending.

Shakespeare’s The Winter ’5 Tale is about King Leontes, whose jealousy causes
him to lose his family and drive his best friend into exile. For sixteen years Leontes
repents the behavior that he believes has caused the death of his wife and daughter. In
fact, his infant daughter Perdita was secretly taken to Bohemia and raised by a shepherd’s
family. She is reintroduced into the play as a young woman about to dance in a spring
celebration when Florizel, a prince, professes his love for her. Heine quotes from this
scene in his portrait of Perdita in Shakespeare 's Ma'dchen und Frauen. Together Perdita
and F lorizel represent the pure, pastoral aspects of the play and contrast to the corrupt
nature of the King. Unable to marry because she cannot prove her lineage, Perdita
returns home. Her reunion with her father at the end of The Winter’s Tale symbolizes the
return of spring and the possibility for his rebirth. The discovery that Leontes’ wife
Hermione is still alive completes his redemption. Bloom describes the play in part as “a
mythic celebration of resurrection and renewal” (639).

Heine’s Deutschland. Ein Winterma'rchen similarly addresses the corruption of
the government, the return from a politically imposed exile, and self revelation. As the

narrator confronts the current state of Germany, he is forced to deal with his own past and

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come to terms with the prospect of Germany’s future. His tale begins, “im traurigen
Monat November” (B 4: 577). The narrator hears “ein kleines Harfenmadchen” sing a
lullaby about love, sorrow, and the hope for joy and fulﬁllment in heaven (B 4: 577).

The narrator wishes to write a different song, “ein neues Lied, ein besseres Lied” (B 4:
578). He rejects the Christian ideology that she represents and instead desires to attain
heaven on earth, “Wir wollen auf Erden glﬁcklich sein” (B 4: 578). He expresses his new
vision with the image of a wedding between “Die Jungfer Europa” and the “Geniusse der
F reiheit” (B 4: 578). This marriage would be valid even if it were not sanctioned by the
Church (B 4: 579). Heine’s revolutionary message, therefore, clearly attacks both
Christianity in general and the Church as a social institution.

In contrast to the Romantic innocence of the girl from Caput 1, Heine creates a
worldly ﬁgure in Caput XXIII in the character Hammonia. Of all Heine’s female ﬁgures,
Hammonia in Deutschland. E in Winterma'rchen is the most political. She plays various
roles including that of prostitute, goddess, mother, and oracle. Such a reading of her
stands in contrast to the predominant scholarship, which consistently views Hammonia as
simply a destructive ﬁgure. Ross Atkinson sees her as a representation of Germany’s
Restoration and thus as contrary to Heine’s revolutionary aspirations (197). Karlheinz
F ingerhut (84) and Wilhelm Gossmann (Literatur 179) are unable to comprehend
Hammonia as anything more than a prostitute who causes the demise of the poet.
Fingerhut (85) and Jﬁrgen Walter (250) further suggest that the relationship between the
narrator and Hammonia is the antithesis of Heine’s utopian vision of marriage at the
beginning of the work and thereby signifies a bleak outlook for Germany’s future. I

instead liken Hammonia to Shakespeare’s Hermione. It is Hermione’s kind words to a

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friend that initiate the King’s jealousy, yet it is her return that completes his redemption.
While Hammonia may begin as a prostitute, she progresses beyond this role and becomes
the agent for the narrator’s transformation. She represents Germany, its past, present, and
ﬁJture, and through her he is able to deal with his German past and ﬁnd some hope for the
country’s generally bleak political future.
Hammonia is introduced as the narrator is walking the streets of Hamburg, and
she stands out among the other “Helenen” (B 4: 630). The narrator describes her
voluptuous appearance as she retains the characteristics of a Greek goddess. Her calves
resemble Doric columns, peeking out from beneath her white tunic (B 4: 630). This
image is further reinforced in an unpublished French introduction to the text.62 There
Heine indicates that she is different than the Goddess of Germany:
Cette demiere [Hammonia] est la divinité tute'laire de la cite’ de Hambourg,
et nous voyons ici une belle femme dont la partie inférieure au dela des
reins a cette ampleur magniﬁque qui fait le charme célebre de Ve'nus
Callipige. La carnation des chairs aussi dures que le marbre de la fameuse
statue rappelle le pinceau ﬂamand de Rubens... (DHA 4: 304)

She is a large, Rubenesque woman who has a dominating presence in the text.

She knows that the narrator is looking for the women of his past. She tells him
times have changed and he will no longer ﬁnd them:

Du ﬁndest die holden Blumen nicht mehr,
Die das junge Herz vergottert;

Hier blﬁhten sie — jetzt sind sie verwelkt,

 

62 The DHA speculates that this text originated around 1854 and was intended to be used with the second
edition of Germania. Come d ’Hiver (DHA 4: 1216).

185

Und der Sturm hat sie entblattert. (B 4: 180)
This stanza parodies Lessing’s Emilia Galotti (DHA 4: 1149-50). As a literary ﬁgure
Emilia represents virtue and is similar to Shakespeare’s Perdita, who avoided the
corruption of the court. These ﬁgures stand in stark contrast to the prostitutes on the
streets of Hamburg. Hammonia’s omnipotent position causes the narrator to question
who she is:

Wer bist du? — rief ich -— du schaust mich an

Wie ‘n Trauma aus alten Zeiten -

Wo wohnst du, groBes Frauenbild?

Und darf ich dich begleiten? (B 4: 631)
To which Hammonia responds:

“Du irrst dich, ich bin eine feine,

Anstandige, moralische Person;

Du irrst dich, ich bin nicht so Eine.

Ich bin nicht so eine kleine Mamsell,

So eine welsche Lorettin -

Denn wisse: ich bin Hammonia,

Hamburgs beschiitzende Gottin!” (B 4: 631)
While Hammonia’s appearance and position on the street make her character suspect, her
intimate knowledge of the narrator’s intentions gives her the authority to offer him
guidance. She is not simply a moral person, she is in fact the patron saint of the City of

Hamburg. In only three verses Heine transforms her character from prostitute to an all-

186

knowing goddess thereby creating his most multifaceted ﬁgure to date. She is also the
ﬁrst ﬁgure who really has the power to effect a change in the narrator.

In Caput XXV the narrator follows her home where she becomes a mother ﬁgure.
Although Joseph Kruse focuses on the seemingly negative outcome of her portrayal, he
too recognizes the “mﬁtterlich-verliebte” aspect to her character (Heines 325). She
worries about the narrator being corrupted in France and tries to convince him to stay in
Germany:

“Ich dachte manchmal mit Schrecken dran,

DaB du in dem sittenlosen

Paris so ganz ohne Aufsicht lebst,

Bei jenen frivolen Franzosen. (B 4: 635)
She explains to him the current state of Germany, pointing out how things have
improved. She tries to show him that he also has changed and has the ability to see
things differently:

Du selber bist alter und milder jetzt,

Wirst dich in manches schicken,

Und wirst sogar die Vergangcnheit

In besserem Lichte erblicken. (B 4: 636)
She promises to reveal to him Germany’s future if he swears to keep it a secret. His oath
takes on a sexual form:

lch hob das Gewand der Gottin auf

Und legte an ihre Hiiften

Die Hand, gelobend Verschwiegenheit

187

In Reden und in Schriften. (B 4: 638)

In Caput XXVI she becomes Germany’s oracle. As Perdita did in Shakespeare’s
play, Hammonia must provide proof of her noble heritage. She does so by revealing
herself as the daughter of the monarch Carolus Magnus. In a bitter twist of irony, Heine
compares the emperor’s coronation stool to his chamber pot, which Hammonia inherited.
She tells the narrator to look inside the pot to see the future of Germany. Since this work
in its entirety is a criticism of the Restoration and its attempts to restrict civil liberties,
what the narrator sees is no surprise. His simple response, that “it stinks” is more than
adequate to complete the imagery of the scene. But as he is consoled on Hammonia’s
breast the scene takes on an unexpected change, one that for the most part has been
viewed negatively by scholars.

Mir schwanden die Sinne, und als ich aufschlug
Die Augen, saB ich an der Seite
Der Gottin noch immer, es lehnte mein Haupt

An ihre Brust, die breite.

Es blitzte ihr Blick, es gliihte ihr Mund,

Es zuckten die Nﬁstern der Nase,

Bacchantisch umschlang sie den Dichter und sang

Mit schauerlich wilder Ekstase: (B 4: 640)
Her sexuality is more prominent than before as we recognize by Heine’s use of the
adjective “Bacchantisch.” Through her singing and dancing she begs him to stay and

promises to love him as a German poet (B 4: 640). She then begins to hear wedding

188

music. In her own words she describes her vision of their wedding day. It ends tragically
as diplomats, priests, and rabbis arrive with their censorship scissors and cut out his ﬂesh
(B 4: 641). This wedding scene can be understood as a realization of the metaphorical
marriage from the beginning of the work. However, most scholars interpret the tragic
end, the cutting into the narrator’s ﬂesh, to symbolize his castration and resulting
impotence as a poet and the failure of his new European vision.63 I view the end instead
as his symbolic death allowing for his rebirth in the following Caput.

After spending the night with Hammonia, he is transformed. In contrast to the
beginning of the tale, which took place in November, the story of his “Wundernacht”
with Hammonia is a more ﬁtting story to be told “In warmen Sommertagen” (B 4: 641).
What develops from their union is his restored hope for Germany’s future, which lies in
its youth:

Es wachst heran ein neues Geschlecht,

Ganz ohne Schminke und Sﬁnden,

Mit freien Gedanken, mit freier Lust —

Dem werde ich Alles verkﬁnden. (B 4: 642)
The new generation is one without disguise or sin, which engages instead in free thought
and freedom of passion. This is the realization that was hinted at in Caput I with the
marriage between Europe and freedom. Contrary to what most scholars have claimed,
the narrator here ﬁnds promise and hope for Germany. Optimism is reﬂected in the
following stanzas:

Schon knospet die Jugend, welche versteht

 

63 (Atkinson 197; Fingerhut 84; Kruse. Heines, 325; Walter 250)

189

Des Dichters Stolz und Gute,
Und sich an seinem Herzen warmt,

An seinem Sonnengemr‘ite.

Mein Herz ist liebend wie das Licht

Und rein und keusch wie das F euer;

Die edelsten Grazien haben gestimmt

Die Saiten meiner Leier (B 4: 642)
The narrator’s strings have been tuned. He has been re-bom in a similar manner to
Leontes. He can now envision a positive direction for Germany. It lies not only in the
youth but also in the poets. As the narrator reﬂects on his literary strategy, which
contains elements borrowed from the past, he advises the king to honor past poets and
forgive the present ones. The criticism of the Prussian Restoration throughout this work
has now been simpliﬁed into this charge. Just as Leontes was absolved of his sins when
he was reunited with his family, Heine appeals to the government to accept his restored
loyalty.

In the ﬁgure of Hammonia, Heine has not only written a physically bold ﬁgure,
but also one that is active. As she encourages the narrator to follow her, he is almost
intimidated by her presence:

Du stutzest und erschreckst sogar,
Du sonst so mutiger Stinger!
Willst du mich noch begleiten jetzt?

Wohlan, so zogre nicht langer.” (B 4: 631)

190

Not only does she lead him and offer him new information, but she also knows his past.
She invites him home with her and in her own words shares her knowledge of Germany
with him. She is a sexual subject who does not destroy her mate, but rather offers him

the opportunity to grow. To view her simply as a prostitute overlooks the ways that this

political text addresses the issue of women’s emancipation.

191

CHAPTER 5
THE GODDESS AND THE DEVIL

In the two ballet scenarios, Die Gdttin Diana (1854) and Der Doktor Faust (1851)
Heine once again brings to life the elemental spirits and the Greek goddesses Diana,
Helen, and Venus. In addition to the enhanced importance of these female ﬁgures within
the narrative, Heine also envisions a female devil, Mephistophela. Die Gottin Diana was
written early in 1846 and Der Doktor Faust later that year. When these works were
eventually published, neither received much critical attention (DHA 9: 647, 736). The
London theater director Benjamin Lumley, who had originally commissioned Heine to
write these ballets, ultimately decided against producing them. Even today these works
remain in the shadows of Heine scholarship."4 This neglect is surprising considering that
the interplay between spirituality and sensuality, an underlying theme in much of Heine’s
writing, is the central focus of them.

Der Doktor Faust: Ein Tanzpoem nebst kuriosen Berichten iiber T eufel, Hexen
und Dichtkunst is the title of the manuscript which includes “Einleitende Bemerkung,” a
thirteen-page scenario, and Heine’s additional “Erlauterungen” (DHA 9: 753).65 Die
Gdttin Diana is approximately the same length as the scenario for Der Doktor Faust
(DHA 9: 69-81). But despite the brevity of these works, they represent the apotheosis of
Heine’s development of female ﬁgures. In contrast to Heine’s typical free-ﬂowing prose
style, here he is concise in his descriptions of the scenes, giving speciﬁc details about the
dancing styles, costumes, lighting, and stage design necessary to convey his vision. As

the subtitle “Tanzpoem” implies, these works are poetic in nature not only in Heine’s

 

6" The Wilamowitz-Moellendorff and Mt‘ihlpfordt bibliography lists only four studies speciﬁcally on
Heine’s Der Doktor Faust newer than 1990 and only one German study on Die Gottin Diana.
(’5 In the 1851 publication the scenario was ten pages, 5-14, in the DHA (9) it is on pages 85-97.

192

choice of words, but in his use of contrasting imagery to heighten the tension in both
pieces. All of this affects his portrayals of the leading women in these scenarios, who are
less ambiguous and more directly described and incorporated into the story. Although
Heine could easily set aside supporting female ﬁgures in his other works, here he is
required to resolve the actions of his more integral female characters.

Heine addresses the restrictions of this literary medium in his “Erléiuterungen.”
The original purpose of this supplemental text was to provide Lumley with the necessary
background information about the legend of Faust so that he could pass it on to the
audience (DHA 9: 687). Today this text provides us with valuable information on how
Heine viewed his version of the Faust legend within the literary tradition, especially his
choice of a female devil. When Die Go'ttin Diana was ﬁnally published, Heine provided
introductory comments, explaining its thematic connections to Elementargeister and Die
Go'tter im £in (1854). It is therefore necessary to remember the mystery, excitement,
and wonder that he wrote into those stories as we seek to interpret the meaning of the
Greek goddesses and elemental spirits in this context.

The two lead female ﬁgures, Diana and Mephistophela, are different from any
other characters in Heine’s works. They are the ﬁrst female protagonists to drive the
action of the story and determine the fate of their male partners. While there are
numerous ancillary female ﬁgures who resemble those from Heine’s other works, Diana
and Mephistophela are as alluring as they are strong. Through dance these two ﬁgures
express themselves with autonomy and exhibit their sexuality. Most importantly they
transform from mythological and legendary cliches into multidimensional, active

characters.

193

In spite of Lia Secci’s desire to offer a “feministisch inspirierte Interpretation” of
Die Go'ttin Diana and Der Doktor Faust, she fails to recognize the strength and power
that Heine wrote into the female ﬁgures in these works. Citing the “Willis” from
E lementargeister, Laurence from F lorentinische Ndchte, and Mephistophela from Der
Doktor Faust, Secci concludes that all these female ﬁgures are negative portrayals due to
their association with death (97). She writes, “Diese weiblichen Gestalten drucken auf
die geeignetste Weise das Geﬁihl der Entfremdung von der historischen Wirklichkeit, der
asthetischen Dekadenz, der nekrophilen, vampirhaﬁen Entartung des klassischen-
romantischen Eros aus” (Secci 97). As I have argued previously, these are not macabre
ﬁgures, but sensual ones. Secci further concludes that Heine follows a patriarchal
ideology in his Dionysian portrayals:
Man konnte also zu der F olgerung kommen, daB auch Heine seinen
Beitrag zur patriarchalischen Ideologie leistet, die der Frau den negativen
Pol der Passivitat, der sozialen und intellektuellen Machtlosigkeit, der
erotischen Repression und Perversion zuweist — wobei dem Mann der
positive Pol des lntellektes, der sozialpolitischen Tat, der sexuellen
Initiative zugeschreiben wird. (98)
Again, I disagree with her reading and believe the reverse of her analysis to be true.
Especially in the two ballet scenarios, it is the women who show their intelligence and
take the sexual initiative, whereas the men follow behind.
Die Go’ttin Diana begins with a Greek statue coming to life. In the same spirit as
the opening scene in F Iorentinische Nachte and the legend described in Elementargeister,

here there is a young German knight who ﬁnds temple ruins and sees a marble statue.

194

But this time instead of the statue itself coming to life Diana is hiding behind it. She is
dressed to reveal her huntress nature, and in the moment that the knight picks up a knife
and contemplates offering himself to the gods, she grabs his arm, forcing him to release
his grip. This is the ﬁrst but not the last time that she saves his life. They then exchange
glances, “beide schauen sich an” (B 6/ 1: 429). The look is reciprocal and neither person
is objectiﬁed because they both participate equally. After this they begin a dance that
reﬂects the progression of their courtship and ends in an embrace. Diana shares with the
knight her knowledge that the old gods are not dead, but in hiding. At this point Apollo
and his muses along with Bacchus and his Bacchantes enter the stage and everyone
engages in a joyful, passionate dance. Max Niehaus rightly recognizes that to Heine
dance means multiple things, “Der Tanz ist ihm bald Erlebnis sinnlicher Realitat, bald
Spiegel der Zeit oder des Seelischen, bald Gleichnis oder Symbol” (1 1). Here it is used
to portray how mankind is reunited with the Greek gods.

Heine speciﬁcally chooses Apollo and Bacchus as the gods to come out of their
exile. Secci reminds us that Heine often refers to the female Bacchantes who accompany
Bacchus, and repeatedly uses the name as an adjective (91). The other text where
Bacchus himself is portrayed is in Die Go'tter im £in (1854). There Heine explains how
Bacchus was the God of Celebration, who since his banishment has been allowed to
partake in festivities only once a year. Apollo’s exile in that work is also brieﬂy noted.
He lived as a shepherd in Austria until his beautiful singing raised suspicion among the
people. In Die Go‘ttin Diana Heine uses Apollo and Bacchus not only for their
association with music and feasting, but more importantly for their inherent link between

gods and humans. Edith Hamilton describes Apollo as “the most Greek of all the gods”

195

but also as the one who taught mankind the art of healing. He is the God of Light and of
Truth (29). Bacchus (or Dionysus) is the only god whose parents were not both divine.
Born in a valley he became the God of the Vine and therefore is associated with wine
(Hamilton 65). As an adult he saved his mother from death and brought her to live at
Olympus, where she was received by the gods (Hamilton 67). The way that the goddess
Diana and the mortal German knight are surrounded by these two gods and their
followers as they dance at the close of this act symbolizes the temporary restoration of
Greek harmony. When this unity is compromised the healing powers of Apollo and
Bacchus will be called upon to mend the situation.

The Zweites Tableau brings the banished gods back into society through the
public sphere of the court. This is a scene of extreme opposition, pinning the
unpredictability and emotion of the Greek world with that of the strict, precise nature of
the court. In Heine’s articulate description of the costumes and types of dances it is clear
that he is trying to show that modern man is not ready to accept the unregulated freedom
of the erotic world of the gods. This idea is presented visually as Diana “dances” or
rather ﬁghts in a martial arts manner with the knight’s wife. It is a “Pas-de-deux, wo
griechisch heidnische G'o'tterlust mit der germanisch spiritualistischen Haustugend einen
Zweikampf tanzt” (B 6/1: 431). It seems as though there will be no reconciliation
between these two opposing worlds.

1n the Drittes Tableau the knight has escaped courtly society and is searching in
the woods for Diana when he is held back by the elemental spirits who try to seduce him.
Whereas in the Zweites Tableau Diana did not ﬁt easily into the knight’s environment,

here he has difﬁculty navigating hers. The same fairies, nymphs and salamanders that

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Heine so thoroughly explained in Elementargeister are re-created here. Only on hearing
Diana’s hunting horns is the knight able to tear himself away from them. He is once
again saved by her. After recognizing that they cannot exist in either realm, Diana and
the knight seek refuge on the Venusberg. However, the protector of Christian spirituality,
“der treue Eckart,” prevents them from entering (B 6/1: 433).66 Eckart challenges the
knight to a duel and slays him, believing that he has saved his soul from corruption.

Distraught, Diana brings the body of the knight to the Venusberg and asks the
gods for help in the ﬁnal act, Viertes Tableau. The period is the Renaissance, as reﬂected
by the Corinthian columns, the paintings of Venus, and marble vases with exotic ﬂowers
that decorate the scene. It is populated by people who fostered artistic and poetic
expression from different time periods: “sie selber sind eben die berﬁhmten Manner und
Frauen der antiken und mittelalterischen Welt, die der Volksglaube, wegen ihres
sensualistischen Rufes oder wegen ihrer F abelhaftigkeit in den Vensuberg versetzt hat”
(B 6/1: 434). Among the inhabitants are some of Heine’s most treasured female
characters: Helen of Sparta, Cleopatra, and Herodias. Naturally Venus and Tannhauser
are also present, dancing passionately. The gaiety of the scene is interrupted when Diana
anives with the body of the knight. Apollo tries to revive him by using music, but he is
able to awaken the knight only brieﬂy. Bacchus then tries, and through his offer of music
and wine the knight is revived. What Bacchus once did for his mother by bringing her to
Olympus, he does for the knight by restoring his body so that he may reside on the
Venusberg. Once the knight is brought back to life, he and Diana take their place as
leaders of the mountain, receiving wreaths of roses from Venus and Tannhauser.

Although the gods and humans were unable to create a sustainable relationship on earth,

 

6" This ﬁgure is most familiar from Ludwig Tieck’s “Der getreue Eckart und Tannhiiuser” (1799).

197

Diana and the knight are able to co-exist within the sanctuary of the mountain, where
harmony and sensuality are allowed to prevail.

Diana’s actions lead the narrative. She introduces the knight to the banished
gods, protects him from the power of the elemental spirits, and brings him to the
mountain to revive him after he has been slain. She is a sensual subject from the
beginning of the ballet and remains so throughout. She does not undergo a
transformation as do most of Heine’s other female ﬁgures. Since she was never deﬁned
by the knight’s idealization of her, she does not have to change or become more realistic
for the story to unfold. The inherent conﬂict in their relationship — she is a goddess and
he a human — is resolved not in a bitter reality, nor in a fantasy, but rather on the
Venusberg, which is a combination of both worlds. Diana and the knight are
appropriately welcomed onto the mountain by Venus and Tannhauser. The fact that both
couples reside in the mountain underscores it as the only place for a sensual, modern
portrayal of love to exist.

Diana is similar to Mephistophela, Heine’s other female protagonist. In Der
Doktor Faust, Mephistophela leads Faust in and out of different time periods as he
searches for his ideal mate. Considering the frame of the legend, there is no way for
Mephistophela’s and Faust’s relationship to end in a compromise. The question, then, is
where Faust ﬁnds temporary fulﬁllment and harmony and where he experiences harsh
reality.

In a letter to Benjamin Lumley that has been preserved only in English

198

translation,"7 Heine offers a provisional title for his ballet and refers to the accompanying
“Erlauterungen” as a “brochure”:
My brochure ought to be very interesting to those who only know
the “Faust” of Goethe. I shall, therefore, at some future time, publish it in
German, but in an ampliﬁed form, [. . .] Keep the name of my ballet a
secret till the last, and in case of necessity, call it “Astaroth.” I have shown
in my letter that this name, as well as Mephistopheles, belonged to the
demon invoked by Faust; and hence in your announcements you may
fairly make use of it as a provisional title. (HHP, Feb. 27, 1847)
In Heine’s “Erléiuterungen” to Der Doktor Faust he explains how a particular version of
the Faust legend interests him. It was published by Karl Simrock and titled, “Clavis
Astarti de magica” (381). In this version Faust is tempted by the devil, Astaroth, who
Heine explains is a female, “Astaroth ritt aber wirklich allerliebst und war ein schlankes,
hiibsches Madchen mit den grbBten, schwarzen Augen der Holle” (B 6/1 383). Astaroth
offers Faust different women and Heine paraphrases the legend:
Nachdem der Teufelsbund geschlossen, bringt Astaroth mehrer schone
Weiber in Vorschlag, die er dem Faust anpriest, z.B. die Judith. Ich will
keine Kopfabschneiderin, antwortet jener. Willst du die Cleopatra? fragt
alsdann der Geist. Auch diese nicht, erwidert Faust, sie ist zu
verschwenderisch, zu kostspielig und hat sogar den reichen Antonius
ruinieren konnen; sie sauft Perlen. So rekommandiere ich dir die schone
Helena von Sparta, spricht lachelnd der Geist und setzt ironish hinzu: mit

dieser Person kannst du Griechisch sprechen. Der gelehrte Doktor ist

 

”7 The letter was originally in French.

199

entzr'ickt ﬁber diese Proposition und fordert jetzt, daB der Geist ihm

korperliche Schonheit und ein prachtiges Kleid verleihe. . .. (B 6/1: 382)
While Judith and other Old Testament ﬁgures appear in various puppet plays, the
inclusion of Cleopatra is most likely Heine’s own addition (DHA 9: 828). Just as in
Simrock’s version, Heine’s Faust also desires Helen of Sparta.

In 1824 Heine apparently told his student friend Eduard Wedekind how his Faust
version would differ from Goethe’s were he to write one. According to one of the
comments Wedekind wrote in his journal, Heine’s Mephistopheles would be a
dominating power (DHA 9: 729). Wedekind wrote, “Bei Goethe handelt Faust immer, er
ist es, welcher dem Mephisto beﬁehlt, dies und das zu tun. Bei Heine aber soll der
Mephisto das handelnde Prinzip sein, der den Faust zu allen Teufeleien verﬁihrt” (qtd. in
DHA 9: 729). This is exactly what Mephistophela does as she leads Faust to three
potential female partners.

Although Heine did not express a desire in 1824 to write his devil as a female, he
does allude to this possibility in Elementargeister where he admits that the devil can take
on any form (Heine 3: 675). To dismiss this change in gender as purely structural — Faust
needed a partner to dance with — as Gunther Mahal (420) and George F. Peters (431-2)
have suggested, undermines Mephistophela’s role as a representation of sensuality.
Heine also claims in the “Erlauterungen” to have chosen the female ballerina for the form
of his devil because it is closer to the tradition of the Faust legend (B 6/l: 338).

Mephistophela ﬁrst appears in the ballet scenario in the form of a Tiger, but Faust

hardly notices (B 6/1: 357-8). When she appears as a snake, the biblical symbol for

200

knowledge, he is likewise uninterested. Only when she takes on the form of a ballerina
with a graceful body does she gain F aust’s attention:
Faust ist anfanglich darob befremdet, daB der beschworene Teufel
Mephistopheles keine unheilvollere Gestalt annehment konnte als die
einer Ballettanzerin, doch zuletzt gefallt ihm diese lachelnd anmutige
Erscheinung und er mach ihr ein gravitatisches Kompliment. (B 6/1: 358)
She parodies his compliment by dancing around him in a “kokett” manner (B 6/ l: 358).
Mephistophela cannot lure him with intellectual rewards but she can entice him into
making a pact with her by conjuring up the image of a possible mate.

Before Faust will sign a contract with her, he wants to see proof of her “h‘o’llischen
Machte” (B 6/1: 359). She is no longer a coquettish ballerina as she produces an array of
“Ungetﬁme” for F aust’s approval. He responds by conjuring up an equally unusual
collection of creatures. Mephistophela’s powers for the moment match Faust’s.
However, with the wave of her wand she changes the monstrous ﬁgures into ballet
dancers and produces in the mirror the image of a beautiful duchess. This image arouses
F aust’s interest and he signs away an afterlife in heaven in exchange for the immediate
rewards of “irdische Genﬁsse” (Heine 6/1: 360). This idea coincides with what Heine
wrote about the devil in Elementargeister. There he claimed that in the original puppet
plays of the legend Faust was likewise tempted by the “Befriedigung aller irdischen
Geniisse” (B 3: 677).

After her initial display of magical powers, she further exerts her dominance over
Faust by teaching him to dance. Along with her entourage of dancers, Mephistophela

instructs him how to move his body. This scene is overtly sexual:

201

Mephistophela gibt dem Faust jetzt Tanzunterricht, und zeigt ihm all Kunststiicke

und Handgriffe, oder vielmehr F uBgriffe des Metiers. Die Unbeholfenheit und

Steifheit des Gelehrten, der die zierlich leichten Pas nachahmen will, bilden die

ergotzlichsten Effekte und Kontraste. Die teuﬂischen Tanzerinnen wollen auch

hier nachhelfen, jede sucht auf eigne Weise die Lehre durch Beispiel zu erklaren,
eine wirft den armen Doktor in die Anne der andem, die mit ihm herumwirbelt; er
wird hin und her gezerrt, doch durch die Macht der Liebe und des Zauberstabs,
der die unfolgsamen Glieder allmahlich gelenkig schlagt, erreicht der Lehrling der

Choreographie zuletzt die hochtse F ertigkeit: er tanzt ein brillantes Pas-de-deux

mit Mephistophela, und zur F reude seiner Kunstgenossinnen ﬂiegt er auch mit

ihnen umher in den wunderlichsten F iguren. (B 6/1: 360)

Faust Ieams from Mephistophela what he needs to know in order to seduce his duchess.
Robert E. Stiefel appropriately recognizes this scene as “lessons in the art of seduction”
(190).

F aust’s ﬁrst encounter with the duchess is in the second act, where the scene is
dominated by courtly order and Rococo ornamentation. Just as the Zweites Tableau in
Die Gottin Diana stands in contrast with the bacchanal dancing in the previous scene, so
does this scene stand in opposition to the dance of seduction between Faust and
Mephistophela in act one. To further highlight their difference, Heine has Mephistophela
and the duke parody the dance between Faust and the duchess. As a ﬁnal indication that
F aust’s relationship with the duchess is false and overly stylized, Heine includes the
detail of her golden left shoe, a sign that she is the bride of Satan. She represents the

corruption of nobility and readily accepts F aust’s invitation to a witches’ Sabbath.

202

Act three is similar to the gaiety of the Greek celebrations in the Erstes Tableau
of Die Go'ttin Diana, but here the fantastical world of Greek mythology has been replaced
by a Baroque “Maskenball” (B 6/ l: 364). Heine describes the surreal nature of the scene:

Wie barock, bizarre und abenteuerlich auch manche dieser Gestalten, so
dﬁrfen sie dennoch den Schonheitssinn nicht verletzen, und der haBliche
Eindruck des Fratzenwesens wird gemildert oder verwischt durch
marchenhaﬁe Pracht und positives Grauen. (Heine 6/1: 364)
Despite the positive qualities Heine attributes to this witches’ Sabbath, there is a false
pretense to the scene. Mephistophela’s dance highlights this:
...doch wahrend Faust und die Herzogin die ganze Stufenleiter einer
wahren Leidenschaft, einer wilden Liebe, durchtanzen, ist der Zweitanz
der Mephistophela und ihres Partners, als Gegensatz, nur der buhlerishe
Ausdruck der Galanterie, der ziirtlichen Luge, der sich selbst
persiﬂierenden Lﬁsternheit. (B 6/1: 364-5)
Mephistophela’s dance once again mocks Faust and his chosen mate. The duchess
willingly accepts F aust’s physical advances and at the “Hohe ihres Liebestaumels” they
exit the scene (B 6/1: 365). There is no lack of sensuality in their relationship, but the
continual presence of her husband, the duke, marks her behavior as deceptive. Upon
their return Faust refuses the duchess’ caresses, “Er gibt ihr seinen UberdruB und
Widerwillen in unzweideutiger Weise zu erkennen” (B 6/1: 365), thereby proving what
Mephistophela already knew. As the duchess is called to dance a minuet with her
husband, Faust watches with “Widerwillen” and “Ekel” (B 6/ l: 366). He expresses his

dislike for the “Verhohnung der kirchlichen Aszetik” that this gothic scene represents and

203

desires instead Greek harmony (B 6/1: 366). Mephistophela conjures up the image of
Helen of Sparta and Faust immediately reacts with interest. Together they ﬂy away and
escape the duchess.
They arrive in act four on the Greek island of Sparta, which stands in direct

contrast to the previous scene:

Alles atrnet hier griechische Heiterkeit, ambrosischen Gotterfrieden,

klassische Ruhe. Nichts erinnert an ein neblichtes Jenseits, an mystische

Wollust- und Angstschauer, an ﬁberirdische Ekstase eines Geistes, der

sich von der Korperlichkeit emanzipiert: hier ist alles reale plastische

Seligkeit ohne retrospective Wehmut, ohne ahnende leere Sehnsucht. (B

6/ 1: 367)
Consistent with Heine’s representation of Helen in Shakespeares Ma'dchen und Frauen,
she is introduced here as “die schonste Frau der Poesie,” dancing before the temple of
Venus (B 6/1: 367). Helen and her followers dance for Faust and Mephistophela and
offer them food and drink. They accept her offer by dancing and exchanging their
“mittealterlich romantische Kleidung” for “einfach herrliche griechische Gewander” (B
6/1: 367). Then the three of them, Faust, Helen, and Mephistophela engage together in a
mythological dance. The inclusion of Mephistophela in this dance is not only a reminder
of F aust’s imminent doom, but also a validation of this scene, since she does not ridicule
him by dancing in a contrasting style with another partner. Once Faust and Helen take
their places on the throne, Mephistophela inspires Helen’s nymphs to trade their crowns
of rose and myrtle for ones made of vine. She then leads them in a bacchanal dance,

which resembles a pantomimed war, the Trojan war. The entire scene is described as a

204

“heroische Pastorale” (B 6/ l: 368). Just then the duchess in a jealous rage ﬂies in on her
bat and destroys the tranquility. Mephistophela continues to dance with the nymphs so
that they stand in joyful contrast to the scorn of the duchess. Unable to control her
temper, the duchess waves her magic wand and the island is immediately transformed as
if by a powerful storm. Faust is angered that the duchess has destroyed his chance at
happiness and attacks her, boring his sword into her chest. Contrary to Stiefel’s reading
that the demise of the scene is caused by Mephistophela (191), she simply observes it
with “Schadenfreude” (B 6/1: 368), until she actually orchestrates his rescue:
“Mephistophela hat die beiden Zauberrappen wieder herbeigeﬁihrt, sie treibt den Faust
angstvoll an, sich schnell aufzuschwingen, und reitet mit ihm davon durch die Luft” (B
6/1369).

Even before the ﬁfth and ﬁnal act, there is no doubt that Faust is running out of
possibilities. For Heine, who has continually envisioned Greek antiquity as his poetic
goal, the destruction of Helen and the island of Sparta signals F aust’s impending demise.
The last scene is representative of the Reformation. Under the dominating presence of a
cathedral, the townspeople participate in a folk festival, and the entire scene reinforces
the values of virtue and purity. The mayor sits under a tree alongside his wife and
blonde-haired daughter, who, as Peters points out, is reminiscent of Goethe’s Gretchen
(434). As Faust is mesmerized by the daughter’s “reine Natiirlichkeit, Zucht und
Schone” he asks for the father’s permission to marry her (B 6/1: 370). Believing that he
has found happiness in the “bescheiden sﬁBen Stilleben” he and his bride proceed toward
the church (B 6/1: 371). Mephistophela intervenes in the procession, demanding that

Faust follow her. When he disobeys, she causes a great storm and all run for shelter to

205

the church. Faust also desires to ﬂee there, but a black hand rises from below and holds
him back. Mephistophela triumphantly presents him with the signed parchment roll.
Despite Faust’s attempts to delay his fate, Mephistophela insists on the fulﬁllment of his
contract. She turns into a snake, strangles him, and together they sink into the earth as
church bells ring in the background. By framing the scene within the dominating
presence of the cathedral in the. beginning and the ringing of the bells at the end, Heine
parodies the Christian Faust legend that emphasizes the victory of spirituality over
sensuality.

Mephistophela is portrayed in this text as intelligent, sexual, and powerful. Her
magical abilities exceed F aust’s. She is not a passive observer, but rather the one who
participates in the action and orchestrates Faust’s movement between scenes. It is
through her help that Faust is able to experience both earthly pleasures and idyllic
harmony, even if neither is sustainable.

Mephistophela may be a powerful devil, but she is not merely the stereotype of
evil. Diana may be a strong goddess, but she does more to restore sensuality to human
existence than deny it. As sensual subjects, Diana and Mephistophela have the ability to
introduce their male partners to material realms they could never experience on their
own. The fact that their existence in these sensual worlds cannot be maintained is not the
fault of these women. Rather, it once again represents Heine’s criticism of the socio-

political and religious climate of the times.

206

CONCLUSION

In honor of Heine’s 200th birthday, Joseph A. Kruse, director of the Heinrich-
Heine-Institut in Dﬁsseldorf, edited a commemorative volume of essays written in
connection with Heine’s international birthday exhibition. This weighty, illustrated book,
“Ich Narr des Glz'icks Heinrich Heine 1 79 7—1856: Bilder einer Ausstellung (1997),
includes not only the voices of many Heine scholars, but also of many recognizable
names from outside the ﬁeld. One entry is by German feminist Alice Schwarzer. She
uses the form of a letter to write a provocative attack on Heine for his exclusion of
women in his revolutionary vision. Frustrated by his lack of inspiring female ﬁgures,
Schwarzer compares herself to Mumma from Atta Troll. She cannot completely disavow
her love for Heine, in the same way that “die dumpfe Mumma” did not break from her
chains but remained dancing for her “Sklaventreiber” (363). With respect to
Deutschland. Ein Winterma'rchen, Schwarzer complains of having to choose between
identifying with a nurturing mother or a “bedienende Hure” (363). Schwarzer broadly
dismisses Heine’s female portrayals as negative and stereotypical. Further, she contends
that Heine did not address women’s emancipation in his writing in general: “Doch bis auf
die einmalige Erwahnung der ‘groBen Frauenfrage’ (als eine der Fragen des
Jahrhunderts) hat die Begegnung mit dem F eminismus kaum Spuren bei dir
hinterlassen. . .” (Schwarzer 364). While such a damning view of Heine’s treatment of
women in his creative writing has pervaded most contemporary Heine scholarship, it is
truly surprising that Schwarzer misses the degree to which Heine does address the issue

of women’s emancipation in his writings. Once we stop reading false expectations into

207

Heine’s works, we can recognize that Mumma breaks from her chains and Hammonia is
not a whore but a source of inspiration and hope.

Beginning with Heine’s Buch der Lieder this study focused on how the female
ﬁgures in these poems behaved unexpectedly. The romantic muse did not solely provide
inspiration to the poet, but also prepared his cofﬁn and grave. The marble sphinx
scratches the narrator in a way that both excites him and causes him pain. The fantastical
nymph transports the knight to a castle and then disappears. The female corpse is not
grotesque, but rather in her arms the narrator seeks refuge from the outside world. Heine
creates these ﬁgures using Romantic imagery, but incorporates a challenge to those
literary cliche’s.

In the 1830’s Heine’s portrayals of women began to change in his works as they
evolved to take on a greater signiﬁcance in the text. The ﬁgure of Laurence in
F lorentinische Na'chte is developed throughout the last half of the novella. She is
introduced at ﬁrst as a mysterious street performer, but evolves into a sophistical woman
of the salon, and ﬁnally a romantic partner for the narrator Maximilian. By the end of the
novella Laurence is not only the most realistically deﬁned character but also the most
sensual. This merging of realism and sensuality is a deviation from Heine’s more
simplistic characters, who retain their allure by remaining within the fantastical realm.
Venus in the Tannhéiuser poem is another example of a female ﬁgure created by Heine
who is socially relevant and also rich and expressive.

In Shakespeares Ma'dchen und Frauen we see how Heine engaged with other
literary portrayals of women. His preferences for Shakespeare’s passionate characters,

even ones who are vengeful or destructive, becomes apparent. In Elementargeister Heine

208

discusses folklore and myth with close attention to the way females have been
represented in these stories. He is especially interested in portrayals of powerful women,
who are determined, dangerously seductive, or motivated by love.

The two epic poems Atta Troll and Deutschland. E in Winterma'rchen contain
multiple female characters who are initially described as being a part of a literary,
religious, or mythological tradition. However, Heine radically changes the way one
might expect these characters to behave as they evolve beyond their roots. As these
ﬁgures are transformed they become the site of his social critique as modern
conceptualizations of the female in literature.

His female portrayals are most fully developed in the two ballet scenarios, Die
Gattin Diana and Der Doktor Faust. In these two works, Heine created female ﬁgures
who are independent, strong, intelligent, sexual, and alluring. They are the initiators of
the story and are responsible for the fate of the male protagonists.

The transformation of Heine’s female ﬁgures throughout his career reﬂects, in
part, his consideration of the changing position of women in society. His close
friendships with Rahel Vamhagen, Cristina Belgiojoso, George Sand, and Fanny Lewald
brought him in contact with women who were deﬁning themselves in new, liberated
ways. Vamhagen, Belgiojoso, and Sand are all speciﬁcally referred to in his essays.
Heine values Vamhagen’s literary opinion of Borne in the ﬁrst book of Ludwig Borne.
Eine Denkschrift. Heine struggles to reconcile Belgiojoso’s feminine beauty with her
intelligence in his remarks about women writers in Briefe z'iber Deutschland. Despite the
initial critical tone in his article about the opening of Sand’s play in Lutezia, Heine was

actually disappointed that she did not write something more in alignment with her radical

209

views. His subsequent essay about her praises her abilities as a writer. Heine’s
conversations with Lewald, as preserved in her memoirs, indicate that he was aware of
the need to re-deﬁne marriage. His careful reading and discussion of her Wandlungen
show that he gave her work serious consideration. In subtle ways these women also left
their impressions on his poetic works. The library scene in Harzreise bears remarkable
resemblance to Vamhagen’s “Zweiter Traum.” The depiction of Bellini’s companion at
the salon in F lorentinische Na'chte matches almost verbatim a ﬂattering description of
Belgiojoso in one of Heine’s letters to her. The character of Mademoiselle Laurence is
composed of many different images, one of which is the association with George Sand.
In this study I have concentrated on Heine’s ﬁctional portrayals of women and
less on his direct confrontation with issues of women’s emancipation. For the latter
topic, Koon-Ho Lee’s study provides sufﬁcient evidence that Heine does address this
question in his essays and letters. Even though Lee examines different texts by Heine
and asks a slightly different question than I, it is signiﬁcant that he reaches a similar
conclusion: the relationships Heine had with intelligent women affected his perception of
women in general. Lee writes about Heine’s relationship with Vamhagen:
Die Qualitat ihrer Beziehung und ihrer geistigen Verwandtschaft macht
sinnfallig, daB Heine sich ﬁber den geistigen und menschlichen Verkehr
mit Rahel auch ihr frauenemanzipatorisches Gedankengut zur Kenntnis
genommen und angeeignet hat. Im Grunde genommen wurden sein sozial
reﬂektiertes lnteresse an der Frau und seine ﬁir damalige Verhaltnisse
unkonventionelle Vorstellungen vom Geschlechterverhéiltnis durch seine

Gonnerin geweckt. (194)

210

Although Schwarzer and others have insisted on Heine’s neglect of women in his
emancipation message, Lee’s study and mine help restore Heine’s recognition of them.
Even if Heine’s political views about women’s emancipation remain ambiguous, he

clearly envisions a larger, more developed role for women in his literary portrayals.

211

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