READING HEINRICH HEINE

The tribe of Harry: Heine and contemporary poetry 253
a sequence of Heine poems to the journal Neue deutsche Literatur
(NewGerman Literature) for the 175th anniversary of Heine’s bith in 1972.
These were reprinted with a brief commentary by the author in the catalogue
of the 1997 Düsseldorf centenary exhibition, ‘Ich Narr des Glücks’
(‘I, Fortune’s fool’ ). 15 As Kunert explains, Heine serves here as a mask behind
which it was possible to mount an attack on the GDR itself, though some
allusions, such as that to Heine’s claim to be ‘buiding a mountain’ (‘Ich baue
am Berg’) in his Börne book, seem to lack any specific point. Kunert is at his
best here where he impersonates Heine’s rhyming and tone. More recently,
the title of his 1990 collection Fremd daheim (At Home and Out of Place)
suggests a mood similar to Biermann’s. The collection includes a sequence
of poems entitled ‘In Heines Sinn’ (‘In Heine’s Sense’). They continue the
catastrophist tone which has become Kunert’s stock in trade, and Heine is
required here to sound out the angry theology of his ‘Zum Lazarus’ poems
from the Gedichte 1853 & 1854.Kunert’s ‘Ratschlag in Heines Sinn’ (‘Advice
in Heine’s Spirit’) offers this guidance:
DieAugen zu. Die Ohren taub.
Kein Wort zuviel. Vor allem glaub
der stillen Güte jener Macht,
die über deinem Haupte wacht,
das ständig es von Leere voll
und weiterhin so bleiben soll: 16
Eyes closed. Ears deaf
Notaword too many. Above all believe
In the quiet goodness of that power
That watches over your head
That it may be full of emptiness
And should remain so, on and on.
It may be that this is intended to echo
Also fragen wir beständig,
Bis man uns mit einer Handvoll
Erde endlich stopft die Mäuler –
Aber ist das eine Antwort?
(B 6/1, 202)
Thus we ask and keep on asking,
Till a handful of cold clay
Stops our mouths at last securely–
But pray tell, is that an answer?
(D 709)
from the end of ‘Laß die heilgen Parabolen’ (B 6/1, 201) (‘Drop those holy
parables’ (D 709)) in the Lazarus supplement of the 1853 & 1854 collection;