READING HEINRICH HEINE

From the private life of Everyman: Buch der Lieder 55
Before the gate there lay a Sphinx. –
Terror and lust cross-bred!
In body and claws a lion’s form,
A woman in breast and head.
Alovely woman! Her white eyes
Spoke of desire grown wild;
Her lips gave silent promises,
Her mute lips arched and smiled.
The nightingale! She sang so sweet –
I yielded, passion-tossed –
And as I kissed that lovely face
I knew that I was lost
The marble image came alive,
Began to moan and plead –
She drank my burning kisses up
With ravenous thirst and greed.
She drank the breath from out my breast,
She fed lust without pause;
She pressed me tight and tore and rent
My body with her claws.
O rapturous torment and exquisite pain!
Anguish and bliss evermore!
While the kiss of her mouth was thrilling joy,
Her lion claws ripped and tore.
The nightingale sang: ‘O lovely Sphinx!
Olove, explain to me:
Why do you blend the pain of death
With every ecstasy?
‘O lovely Sphinx! O read me right
This riddle of sages and seers!
I’ve thought and thought about it now
For many thousand years.’
(D 7–8)
‘Das ist der alte Märchenwald!’ falls into four parts: after an opening quatrain,
the nightingale and its song first hold the poem’s attention; this is
followed by a castle marked by mourning and silence as if it were the
dwelling of death (‘der stille Tod’); then comes the embrace of the sphinx
which lies at its gates; and finally the poem returns to the nightingale’s song
and the riddle of the sphinx as a figure of Love. This narrative appears to
introduce images and allegories which are already familiar, as the opening