Heine vs Goethe

 
Goethe mentioned Heine in his conversations with Eckerman, but never took an interest in his existence. Meanwhile, Heine never ceased trying to figure out how to deal with Goethe's greatness and its meaning.

Goethe was world famous, when Heine was  an outsider looking for a teaching job.  Goethe did not even consider receiving Heine's visit. -- Heine somehow put up with it.

However, after Goethe's death, when there was a sudden romantic reaction against Goethe's classicist stance, Heine came to Goethe's defense full-force.
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Both produced the greatest of Germany's lyrical poetry -- poems that are similar to songs.

Both also wrote carloads of Gelegenheitsgedichte -- poems for  social occasions: an anniversary, a wedding, a political squabble.

Goethe was also famous for some great prose, whereas Heine's prose is bumpy, because some is suppressed verse and the rest is politics.

However, at present Heine's poetry is read even in translation, and Goethe is not known anymore except as a  great name. The fact is that he himself did not think that his poetry was as wunderbar as his theory of light and colour, whereas Heine knew that his poetry was world class. --

Heine lived from 1797 to 1856
Goethe lived from 1749 to 1832

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What follows is the prose translation of a Heine poem.

It is not  lyrical, and so it doesn't risk losing as much in translation as any of his famous little songs where translation would be sheer vandalism.

This is why I chose this fairy tale beauty thing based on some legend about King Salomon. At least it exemplifies Heine's deep irony that accompanied him even in his "mattrass grave".
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"The drums, the trombones and the cornettos have been silenced. Angels with swords on their belts keep a vigil at his bed, six thousand on the left and six thousand on the right.

 "They protect the King from dreaming sorrow, and if a frown darkens his expression, instantly twelve thousand swords like flames of steel shoot forth

"But the swords of the angels fall back into their sheaths. The nocturnal terror vanishes. The sleeping king’s expression is serene again and he says slowly:

"Oh Sulamith! The kingdom is my inheritance, the lands are my subjects, I am King  of both Judah and Israel -- but if you don’t love me, I’ll fade and die." ..........................................................................................

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Verstummt sind Pauken, Posaunen und Zinken.
An Salomos Lager Wache halten
Die schwertgegürteten Engelgestalten,
Sechstausend zur Rechten, sechstausend zur Linken.

Sie schützen den König vor träumendem Leide,
Und zieht er finster die Brauen zusammen,
Da fahren sogleich die stählernen Flammen,
Zwölftausend Schwerter, hervor aus der Scheide.

Doch wieder zurück in die Scheide fallen
Die Schwerter der Engel. Das nächtliche Grauen
Verschwindet, es glätten sich wieder die Brauen
Des Schläfers, und seine Lippen lallen:

»O Sulamith! Das Reich ist mein Erbe,
Die Lande sind mir untertänig,
Bin über Juda und Israel König -
Doch liebst du mich nicht, so welk ich und sterbe.«
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Ach ja, Goethe.

In his youth he wrote Faust I and a first version of Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship. These two things are maybe greater than anything Heine could do, but what happened?


Goethe aged, and he was not the strong man he always tried to be. He needed institutional support.


He wrote Faust II, but he himself said it was too heavily based on Greek culture for anyone to understand it still. Formerly,  I could certainly not read it, and as if the classical culture were not oppressive enough, there are also an old man's obscenities to decorate the`supposedly more popular scenes of devils and witches in Faust I. Nobody reads Faust II.



And that first version of Wilhelm Meister went under! It was lost in the mountains of Switzerland and discovered there 100 years ago! Now you'd think that caused a sensation and a Goethe revival. Nothing happened. Such a pretty little novel! -- called William's Theatrical Mission -- not to be confused with the later version called Willliam's Apprenticeship which is lengthy.

It is a shyly autobiographical account of the very young Goethe traveling with a road show and getting fleeced.  It is also a first-love story with a long, long end. And yet the book is unknown!

Whereas, ach ja, whereas!


Goethe's conversations with Eckermann.








Copied from Google books at http://tinyurl.com/pz9pycq


Nietzsche seems to have said it was after Goethe's the best book in the German language and Heine was reading it on his deathbed.

I hope they judged it by its language, for content there is none. It is almost painful to read;  such platitudes! until you get to the page where Goethe says that his poetry is not too bad, but he has a right to feel superior to the physicists of his time thanks to his theory of colour. There you put that book away or sell it at ABE's.

 :-(

Half clown, half angel and poet, the young Goethe had written the greatest little songs, the funniest, sweetest, saddest scenes in Faust I, had worked all his life to somehow tie it to Faust II which failed, and now ....

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"...a writer and politician with a variety of meters and styles...!!!!!"

and politician, too ! ..... idiot.

Imagine! Goethe's greatest is certainly as great as Shakespeare's, but there is considerably less of it,  and rather more of the forgettable kind.

Finally, Shakespeare was probably no believer, but he acknowledged knowing about

The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns....

and also about Blaise Pascal's

eternal silence of these infinite spaces 

Goethe, however .....

:-(

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Faust I is not hard to read, but you'll have to omit the long introductory address and go directly to where it begins with Faust at his study room:

"So now I have studied every damned thing
and know less than before I started.

,,,,"

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Credits

Goethe at the window by Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein 1787, painted at a flat where Goethe and Tischbein both stayed during their studies in Rome. The Google version is in public domain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Heinrich_Wilhelm_Tischbein
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Postscript

Sorry this is getting a little long, but I didn't know that Goethe's unknown little novel had become available in German on Gutenberg at   http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/6772/2 :

"written between 1777 and 1785; first printed in 1911"



Now let's see whether maybe it also exists in English.......
Indeed.
It is "out of stock" in one place

and it costs US$ 425,- second hand at Barnes & Noble ...... !!!
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Added in July 2015 

" "Im Jahr 1909 fand Schulthess’ Ururenkel Gustav Billeter in ihrem Nachlass Buch I–VI der von Goethe vernichteten Urfassung des Wilhelm Meister. Es handelte sich dabei um eine Abschrift des Originals von Schulthess und ihrer ältesten Tochter und gilt als einzige erhaltene Version des Ur-Meisters. Sie erschien erstmals 1911 unter dem Titel Wilhelm Meisters theatralische Sendung bei Rascher & Cie.""

Now it appears that the only existing copy of Goethe's manuscript was made by Mrs Schulthess and her daughter in 1911.  I can't spend more time on this kind of research which prevents other university folks from reading the author himself, but
..... now, with Google ...