Kansas University Weekly.
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LITERARY.
A Study of Heine's "Reisebilder."
I am not quite sure how many of Heines' shorter works are properly included in the collection known as the "Reisebilder:" Some editions are much larger than others, and Heine's biography is not explicit on the point. Therefore, I shall begin by explaining that I include in the "Reisebilder," "A Tour Through the Harz," "Norderney," "Letters from Berlin," "Poland," "Italy," "English Fragments" and the "Memoirs."
This explanation makes one thing evident—the book is not, like other books of travel, one continuous narrative; it is rather a series of essays—Travel-Pictures, as its name implies. Even this vague, general title will not cover some parts of it. The "Book of Ideas" has in it little of travel and much autobiography; and the "Memoirs" are almost purely autobiographical. The pictures, too, are not photographs; they are the paintings of an impressionist. No one will ever get accurate scientific knowledge from them; but because the poet saw the scenes subjectively, and colored them with the beauty of his own imagination, he made the landscape the more beautiful for later travelers.
A word in description of each of the essays is necessary. The "Tour in the Harz," which came first in point of time and made its author famous, is a description of a pedestrian journey taken through the Harz mountains in the summer of 1824. An ascent of the Brocken a night in the inn at its summit, and a journey through the lovely valley of the Ilse, formed the most notable features of the trip, and are exquisitely described. Heine tells us here how the sun-set looks to a poet watching it from the height of the Brocken. "While we were talking, it began to grow dark, the air became still colder, the sun sank lower, and the tower filled with people who came to watch the sunset. It is a majestic sight, that calls the soul to prayer. For perhaps a quarter of an hour
we stood, solemnly hushed, and watched the beautiful fiery ball sink slowly down in the west; our faces were illumined by the red glow of even, our hands were involuntarily folded; it was as though we stood, a silent congregation, in the nave of a giant cathedral, and the priest elevated the Host and from the organ gushed down Palestrina's eternal hymn." In this part of the book there are also several lyrics, and some of them are very lovely, especially the "Princess Ilse," and the account of the night in the miner's cabin.
Heine's health was none of the best, and more than once he was compelled to spend several weeks resting at the seashore. His favorite resort at such times was the island of Norderney, near the coast of Holland.
The outcome of these weeks of retirement by the sea was a second part of the "Reisebilder," entitled "Norderney." In it he describes the dull, taciturn fishermen who were his companions, the desolate sand-dunes along which he wandered, and the sea that here for the first time ceased to be for him a mere "commercial fluid" and became a part of nature. But he deals with many things besides description. His fondness for sarcasm gets the better of him; he satirizes everything. The Hanoverian nobility, Sir Walter Scott, the Catholic church—all come in for their share.
In the summer and autumn of 1828 the poet took a long-wished-for journey to Italy. This journey and his Italian experiences he desribed in another book of the "Reisebilder." The book is in three parts: "A Journey from Munich to Genoa," "The Baths of Lucca," and "The City of Lucca." It is brilliant and poetic, for in it Heine tells of his travels in the land that appeals to every traveler's feeling for the beautiful, but it is disfigured by a coarseness almost brutal.
The "English Fragments" deals with many subjects--such as London, the national debt. Wellington, and the emancipation of the Cath-