READING HEINRICH HEINE

138 Reading Heinrich Heine
From the shirt like a black moon
Peering out of whitish cloudbanks.’
(D 479)
Freiligrath himself does not venture as far as a ‘black moon’, of course; Heine
extrapolates it from the confused simile of his source. Freiligrath’s work is
not simply judged for its sentimentality and forced exoticism – though these
judgements are made, especially in Canto XXVI. Fundamentally, however,
it is the strains in metaphorical language itself which are stressed. This is
perhaps the point of Atta Troll’s ironic query in Canto V:
Singen nicht die Nachtigallen?
Ist der Freiligrath kein Dichter?
(B 4, 508)
‘Do not nightingales make singers?
Isn’t Freiligrath a poet?’
(D 431)
In Canto XI of Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen, Heine draws attention
to another aspect of Freiligrath’s craft as a poet when he writes that, had
Hermann not won the battle of the Teutoburger Wald against Varus’s
legions
But asthings have turned out:
Der Freiligrath dichtete ohne Reim,
Wie weiland Flaccus Horatius.
(B 4, 601)
And Freiligrath would write unrhymed verse
As once did the great Horatius.
(D 502)
In Reimen dichtet Freiligrath,
Ist kein Horaz geworden.
(B 4, 602)
Freiligrath writes in rhyming verse –
He hasn’t become a Horace.
(D 503)
The original poem, ‘Der Mohrenfürst’, provides a fine example of this
aspect of Freilgrath’s art when rhyme seems the best reason for believing
that in Africa, on the banks of the Niger, the Prince could have hunted
the lion and tiger! The Moor’s claim in Canto XXVI that he is finally
surrounded by the flora and fauna of his homeland, including the lion and