READING HEINRICH HEINE

136 Reading Heinrich Heine
Heine made little effort to conceal – not least because he felt confident that
his public would not notice the inadequacy.
Against this sense of a large allegorical pattern which will never quite
settle into complete focus because its targets are too many and too varied,
it is possible to set the strategy of the poem as a serial production and as an
exercise in parody. Heine stresses the intermittent and fractured result of
his method, in recommending Atta Troll to Cotta for the Morgenblatt (B
4, 985). Admitting to his poem’s inconsistency and its reliance on a kind
of ‘collage’ effect, in his letter to Laube he is subsequently optimistic about
the likely reception of the piece in the spirit of Goethe’s advice from the
‘Prelude’ of Faust.
The fragmentary nature of the poem also reflects what is known of
Heine’s habits of composition. He says of himself: ‘People talk about inspiration
and the like–Iwork like a goldsmith making a chain – one little link
after another – each joined to the next.’ 17 Ernst Weidl’s description of the
process of writing which can be discerned in the MS evidence confirms this
serial and additive procedure: ‘Tiny interchangeable linguistic elements are
experimentally put together in constantly different combinations, varied
and thus polished up.’ 18 Indeed the art of aesthetic arrangement displayed
by the construction of Buch der Lieder parallels Heine’s description of the
Harzreise as ‘Lappenwerk’ or patchwork, in letters to Moser and Merckel. 19
Weidl summarizes this process of montage: ‘Heine’s skilled artifice depends
on the combination of the most subtle obsession with detail and a sophisticated
calculation of the organization of all the parts within the context of
the whole.’ 20
parody
If,inHeine’s own eyes, unifying organization seems to be wanting in Atta
Troll, the poem undoubtedly provides a case of his obsession with detail.
This is so because of the strategy of parody which dominates in the poem.
In this respect, the leading allusion to Freiligrath’s ‘Der Mohrenfürst’ (‘The
Moorish Prince’), which is parodied throughout the poem, is a significant
measure of its general character. The motto to Atta Troll pinpoints the
central reference:
Aus dem schimmernden, weißen Zelte hervor
Tritt der scharlachgerüstete fürstliche Mohr;
So tritt aus schimmernder Wolken Tor
Der Mond, der verfinsterte, dunkle hervor.
(B 4, 492)