READING HEINRICH HEINE

Ventriloquism in Ludwig Börne: eine Denkschrift 169
character
Heine offers the following definition of ‘Charakter’:
Character is what someone has who lives and acts within the particular circles of a
particular life-view, and as it were identifies himself with it, and never finds himself
contradicting it either in thought or in feeling. In the case of very distinguished
minds that tower above their age, the masses can therefore never know whether
they possess character or not . . . Less gifted people, whose more superficial and
narrower life-view is more readily plumbed and assessed, and who have proclaimed
their life’s programme, as it were, in the public arena once and for all and in popular
language – the honoured public can always get hold of such people in context. It
possesses a criterion for each of their actions, taking pleasure meanwhile in its own
intelligence just like finding the answer to a guessing game, and joyfully announces:
that is a character! (B 4, 130)
There is a personal edge to this account – since Börne claimed he always
checked any new publication against his previous writings to insure that no
new or contradictory opinion had crept in unnoticed. But, more generally,
Heine’s careful use of what seem to be two neologisms (‘as it were identifies
himself with it’ (‘gleichsam mit derselben identifiziert’), ‘their life’s
programme, as it were’ (‘gleichsam ihr Lebensprogramm’)) registers a shift
in public awareness according to which character must be identified with
a publicly defined ethical programme. Those with lesser gifts are reduced
without remainder to their views, and so they are solved like a riddling
word-game of the time (‘Charade’). The match between principles and
actions or statements engenders a joyous q.e.d.
Heine rejects the opposition of character and talent by introducing a
different term. Just as the scandalous disclosures relating to Börne and
Jeanette Wohl ultimately challenge Börne on the very margin between life
and literature, so too in the discourse of the Denkschrift the ethical universal
of character is challenged by the ‘real’ – and singular – Heine, who refuses
to be reduced to any identification with ethical programmes.
However, if this constant assertion of my personality is, on the one hand, the most
appropriate means to promote an independent judgement on the part of the reader,
I also believe, on the other hand, that I have a particular duty to emphasize my own
person in this book because, through the confluence of the most heterogeneous
circumstances, whenever either Börne’s friends or enemies discussed him, they
never ceased to expatiate more or less kindly or maliciously on my own writings
and doings. (B 4, 128)
What Heine calls the conjunction of the most heterogeneous circumstances
was in fact the consistent attempt by Börne’s party to exploit Heine’s