READING HEINRICH HEINE

74 Reading Heinrich Heine
EinFichtenbaum steht einsam
Im Norden auf kahler Höh.
Ihn schläfert; mit weißer Decke
Umhüllen ihn Eis und Schnee.
Er träumt von einer Palme,
Die, fern im Morgenland,
Einsam und schweigend trauert
Aufbrennender Felsenwand.
(B 1, 88)
A pine tree standing lonely
In the North on a bare plateau.
He sleeps; a bright white blanket
Enshrouds him in ice and snow.
He’s dreaming of a palm tree
Far away in the Eastern land
Lonely and silently mourning
Onasunburnt rocky strand.
(D 62)
The most obvious manoeuvres of the poem are derived from the uncertain
status of the dream in stanza 2: isitentirely framed by the narrative of
the previous four lines, as a dream which the pine tree has, quite simply;
or does the palm tree really exist as an object of the pine tree’s desire? Is
the anthropomorphism of the blanket of snow a dead metaphor; or does
it seriously imply some vitalistic sympathy among the elements? (And in
any case is it not excessively domestic?) If these uncertainties conjure up
Heine, his hand against his cheek as Karl Kraus thought, the poet we
encounter is withdrawing from the biographical, rather than acceding to
it. The evacuation of metaphor and the exhaustion of allegory allow many
possibilities, and insist on the powers of reading and interpretation. One
recent reader, for instance, Martin Walser, relates the allegory to Heine’s
nostalgic relations with Judaism, conceived in the poem as a profound
natural sympathy between the Germanic North and the East. 32 The power
of Walser’s fine reading has not been sufficiently recognized, but it too is
qualified by the implausibility of the anthropomorphic trees and a later
poem, the comic parody ‘Der weiße Elefant’ (‘The White Elephant’) in
Romanzero, takes it back in the same way that ‘Romanzen’ VI of the Neue
Gedichte (NewPoems), with the loaded title ‘Unstern’ (‘Unlucky Star’), gives
the game away on Lyrisches Intermezzo LIX. 33
There are perhaps two reasons why this risky openness to reading should
come about. Confidence in the adequacy of nature to reflect and express