READING HEINRICH HEINE

The real Heine: Atta Troll and allegory 149
ironic, and therefore ‘real’ Heine who writes to his friend Varnhagen in the
final canto.
What frustrates the reader is the constant display of critical temperament
without any corresponding positive commitments. Alexander Jung’s review
of the first published version of the poem in 1843 called Atta Troll ‘the ruin
of a ruined poet’ precisely because, in spite of all its rejection of mood,
‘here and there the style of the genre picture and the cheerful sensuality
of the old Heine still flashes out’ – and Jung is clearly thinking of the
treacherously moody middle cantos (B 6/2, 677). Even a more sympathetic
reviewer looked forward to ‘many more, even less “tendentious” poetic
productions’. 34 Heine’s prismatic authorship, dispersed between poet, ‘I’,
and Hunter, declines to take up an authorial position.
In this, of course, he could not be less like his hero. Atta Troll is bursting
with opinions to which he gives the full authority of his age and worldly
experience. As a result, the bear is celebrated in the Wittelsbach Valhalla
after his death not for the views he holds but for the very fact that he holds
them:
Atta Troll, Tendenzbär; sittlich
Religiös; als Gatte brünstig;
Durch Verführtsein von dem Zeitgeist,
Waldursprünglich Sanskülotte;
Sehr schlecht tanzend, doch Gesinnung
Tragend in der zottgen Hochbrust;
Manchmal auch gestunken habend;
Kein Talent, doch ein Charakter.
(B 4, 563)
‘Atta Troll: bear with a cause.
Moral, pious. Ardent husband.
Led astray by our Zeitgeist,
Primitive sans-culotte of the forest.
‘Dancing: bad. But strong opinions
Borne within his shaggy bosom.
Sometimes also stinking strongly.
Talent, none; but character, yes!’
(D 475)
It was the reverse of this antithesis that Heine had suffered in much of the
criticism he faced. He insists on the point in the preface to Atta Troll: ‘In
those days talent was a very unfortunate gift, for it meant you were suspected
of a lack of character’ (B 4, 494); the terms of this populist critique are rigid,