READING HEINRICH HEINE

From the private life of Everyman: Buch der Lieder 79
Vorbei sind die Kinderspiele,
Und alles rollt vorbei –
DasGeld und die Welt und die Zeiten,
UndGlauben und Lieb und Treu.
(B 1, 126–7)
My child, we were both children,
Two children, little and gay;
We’d crawl into the hen house
And hide ourselves under the hay.
We crowed like cocks whenever
Somebody passed on the road –
‘Cock-a-doodle-do!’ They really
Thought that a cock had crowed.
We papered up the boxes
That round the yard were laid,
And there we lived together
In the splendid house we made.
The old cat of our neighbor’s
Would come to visit there;
We received her with bows and curtsies
And compliments to spare.
‘How are you?’ we’d ask very kindly
As usual, time and again.
We’ve uttered the same polite murmurs
To many old cats since then.
We’d sit like oldsters exchanging
Nuggets of wisdom and truth,
Complaining how better the world was
In the good old days of our youth;
Howlove and faith and devotion
Were ready to disappear,
How money was getting scarcer,
And coffee was getting too dear! –
Gone are the games of childhood,
And everything’s crumbled to dust –
The times, and the world, and money,
And faith and love and trust.
(D 92)
The refocusing occurs at two levels. First, we encounter children in the context
of keeping livestock: ‘Wir krochen ins Hühnerhäuschen, / Versteckten
uns unter das Stroh’. The role-play and the essentially urban background