What was Heine's life like?

Heine was born on December 13, 1797, in Düsseldorf. His father, Samson Heine, was a Jewish merchant, and his mother came from a family of doctors. Heine lived through the Napoleonic Wars as a child and teenager.

Heine worked in the bank in Frankfurt am Main and in the bank of his uncle Solomon Heine in Hamburgerland. in the fall of 1819, with the consent of his uncle, he entered the University of Bonn to study law, close to the representative writer of the Romantic school, August Wilhelm Schlegel. in the fall of 1820, he transferred to the University of G?ttingen. in 1821, he was disciplined by the school for a duel, and took a break from school for six months, and soon afterward, he transferred to the University of Berlin to He was soon transferred to the University of Berlin, where he listened to Hegel's lectures. In Berlin, he became acquainted with Mr. and Mrs. Farnhagen von Enzig and writers such as Chamisso and Fouquet. Under their influence, Heine's first collection of poems was published in Berlin in 1821. Following the Collected Poems, the Tragedy-Lyrical Interludes were published in 1823. The unfortunate fate of the Jews inspired Heine to fight against oppression, and he became active in the "Jewish Cultural and Scientific Society" in Berlin.

In January 1824, Heine studied law at the University of G?ttingen, and continued to write poetry, completing his "Return to the Country". He later wrote "Travels in the Harz Mountains," his first prose work in a distinctive style.

Heine was baptized a Christian in 1825 and received a doctorate in law the same year. The updated version of Return to the Country was published in 1826 as Travels with Travels to the Harz Mountains and North Sea Chronicle, a compilation of poems from the 1st part of the group, which attracted a strong reaction. In the same year he wrote the 2nd and 3rd parts of the Chronicle of the North Sea.

1826 ~ 1827, Heine writing similar autobiographical prose "Le Grand Collection". 1827 early to Hamburg, the same year, "Travels" volume 2 published. Returning to Hamburg after a trip to England his Songbook was published, containing most of the poems published before then, laying the foundation for Heine to become an outstanding lyric poet.

In 1827, Heine was invited by the publisher Kodak to Munich to edit the New Yearbook of General Politics. After returning to Germany, he wrote the 3rd volume of Travels in Berlin and Potsdam, which consisted of "A Journey from Munich to Genoa" and "The Baths of Lucca", the last part of which was a polemic against the poet Platten. 1829 he supervised the printing of the 3rd volume of Travels.

In the summer of 1830, during Heine's treatment at the Hérgoland Baths, the July Revolution broke out in Paris, which he enthusiastically cheered.

The July Revolution made Heine decide to go to Paris. Before the trip he published in Hamburg, "New Spring Collection", which contains 14 poems in a group, ending the love poems of his youth. There was also an addendum published to a volume of Travels, including "The City of Lucca" and "English Fragments".

In May 1831, Heine arrived in Paris, where he became acquainted with Balzac, Berenreich, Berlioz, Chopin, Dumas, Hugo, Liszt, and George Sand, and socialized with the devotees of St. Simeon. 1833~1834, he published in the Augsburger Zeitung Générale "The Present State of France" and "On the Painters of France," and wrote for the French press "A Brief History of Modern German Literature" (expanded in 1836) A Short History" (expanded in 1836 as "On the Romantics") and "On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany" for French newspapers.

The German political commentator Ludwig B?llner, then in exile in Paris, had an argument with Heine. Bernard denounced Goethe and Hegel as "rhyming lackeys" and "unrhyming lackeys" and attacked Heine as an "aesthete". Although Bernard was a patriot, he was a narrow-minded petty-bourgeois radical. Heine replied by publishing "Ludwig B?rner, Memorandum of Henrich Heine" in 1840.

In the spring of 1834, in Paris, Heine met and married in 1841 a French workwoman, Crescens Eugenie Mira (Mathilde Mira), and in 1835 the German Federal Assembly banned the works of writers of the "Young Germany" school, to which Heine did not belong, but to which he was ranked first. At the same time, he was persecuted, he was at odds with his uncle, lost his financial support, and therefore accepted the relief offered by the French government in a situation of desperate financial distress, and was thus attacked and slandered by his opponents.

In 1843, Heine returned home from Paris. This trip led to the conception of Germany, a Winter Fairy Tale. After returning to Paris at the end of the year, he got down to writing. At the end of the year, he met Marx in Paris, and his ideas were influenced to some extent. Since then, Heine often published satirical poems in the German-French Almanac edited by Luger and Marx ****. 1844 July, Heine for the supervision of the printing of the "New Poetry" to Hamburg, and from Hamburg to send "Germany, a winter fairy tale" clear sample to Marx, Marx on behalf of the Forward published in the newspaper.

As early as the 1930s, Heine showed signs of paralysis, and in the 1940s his health got worse and worse, and he nearly lost his eyesight due to an eye disease.At the end of December 1844, Heine was completely blind in his left eye and had very weak vision in his right eye. By this time his uncle had also died, leaving him an inheritance of only a few thousand marks. When his cousin Carl Heine refused to allow the publication of anything written about the family and promised him an annuity in exchange, Heine was forced to destroy his carefully written Memoirs. The Memoirs, now preserved, were rewritten later, and Engels visited the ailing Heine on each of his trips to Paris in 1846 and 1848.

In May 1848, Heine was completely paralyzed as a result of the dramatic deterioration of his condition, and he lay in a bed of "mattresses and tombs" for eight years. However, he insisted on writing with amazing perseverance, and completed the collection of poems "Romancero" orally, which was published in 1851. He also wrote a number of prose works, and a selection of his newsletters for the Augsburger Zeitung in the 1940s was collected in a book entitled Lutetia (a Latin alias for Paris). The preface to the French edition of Lutétia, written a few months before his death, shows his profound dissatisfaction with the disparity between rich and poor and the irrationality of the existing social system, which led him to wish for the triumph of ****anism, but to fear that the advent of a ****anist society would be followed by the destruction of his Geschichte by those "ignorant idolatrous destroyers". On February 17, 1856, Heine died in Paris.

Heine's life has left countless precious spiritual treasures for future generations, and his major works are introduced as follows:

1. Poetry: Heine is regarded as the most important German poet after Goethe in the history of literature. His poetry can be divided into three stages according to the three periods of his life. The first stage is the early lyric poetry, represented by the Songbook. Heine had a passion for literature, and during his study in Bonn, he was specially instructed by August Wilhelm Schlegel in metrical science. Therefore, his early lyrical poems were sincere and beautiful in language, with the style of Romanticism, the tunes and rhythms of folk songs. Most of the content is lyrical about his experiences, feelings, longing, especially the joys and pains of love. The North Sea Chronicle is the earliest eulogy of the sea in German poetry and the most wonderful poems.

Heine's early lyric poems have a strong Romantic color, but not like the Romantic poets are accustomed to create a dream, so that people are immersed in it, forgetting the reality, but with the "Romantic mockery" approach, so that the dream is destroyed, to face the reality, and never to the beauty of the poem to deliberately cover up the reality of the ugly. The poem contains a critique of society.

Heine's lyrical poems, although mainly about love, have the content of the new era, reflecting the praise of the French bourgeois revolution, contempt for the restoration of feudalism and its main pillars of the church and the aristocracy, and antipathy to the mercenary habits of the emerging bourgeoisie and its morality, which is reflected in the earliest part of the Songbook, "Trouble with Youth", and "The Two Bomb Throwers," all of which belong to the politically colorful poems. .

The main poetic creations of the 2nd stage were: the New Poems, including Poems of the Times, the long poems "Atta Troll, a Midsummer Night's Dream" and "Germany, a Winter Fairy Tale". In the 1930s, Heine's thinking became more mature, and he studied St. Simon's doctrine of idealistic socialism, and later was influenced by Marxism, and personally participated in the revolutionary movement at that time, therefore, in terms of literary creation, he was against both the romantic poetry which was divorced from reality, and the so-called "tendency poems" which were devoid of any poetic meaning and only had revolutionary slogans at that time.

The long poem "Atta Troll, a Midsummer Night's Dream" (1843) is a bitter satire on the authors of empty tendency poems, using the metaphor of a dancing bear. In the preface to this long poem, Heine says that he could not help but laugh at how small-minded contemporaries were rude, clumsy, and stupid about human ideals. He believed in writing poems that were poetic, original, and in keeping with the spirit of the times. A Poem of the Age is a political poem, a poem that expresses a new understanding in a beautiful poetic form, combining political views with aesthetic ideas. Thus his poetry is not only strongly combative, but also highly artistic. The Catechism, Warning, Tendency, Wait and See, as well as The Emperor of China, which satirizes King Wilhelm Friedrich IV of Prussia, and Elucidation, which lashes out at the German petty bourgeoisie, are all excellent works in which politics and art are skillfully combined.

Heine called Germany, a Winter Fairy Tale "a travelogue in verse which will show a higher politics than those of the most famous political agitprop poems." This long poem is the culmination of Heine's poetic output. The poem is based on what he saw and heard during his trip to Hamburg in 1843, expressed in light and fantastic, exposing and satirizing the feudal division of Germany, the vulgarity of the citizens, and the arbitrariness of Prussia, and at the same time expressing his philosophical viewpoints, political beliefs, and hopes for the future of mankind.

When the textile workers' uprising broke out in Silesia in 1844, Heine wrote the famous "Song of the Silesian Weavers". Engels once praised the poem, saying, "One of the most distinguished of contemporary German poets, Henrich Heine, joined our ranks and published poems propagating socialism." Heine's poetry of this period directly trumpeted the preparations for the revolution of 1848.

Phase 3: After the failure of the revolution in 1848, Heine was paralyzed, but he still produced a large number of excellent poems. 1851 published "Romancero" and "Poems of 1853 ~ 1854", as well as a number of posthumous poems, some of which were written about historical events, and some of which were the continuation of the "poems of the times". The mood of the poems is sometimes filled with grief and anger, sometimes with melancholy, but the ironic edge and delicate lyricism are still implicit in them. Heine never gave up his hope for the future of his country and mankind, and his poems are full of fighting spirit. The Sentinel of the Dying and The Slave Ship are representative masterpieces of this stage.

2. Travelogue: In 1822, Heine said in a letter to the writer Immermann: "Poetry is in the end only a beautiful secondary thing." In 1826 he wrote to the poet Miller that; "I am finished as a writer of poetry, and prose has embraced me in its broad embrace." This shows that by this time Heine had felt that it was more direct and powerful to fight in prose. He compares the Songbook to a "merchant ship" and the Travels to a "battleship", and the Songbook will be escorted by the Travels as a "battleship". The four volumes of Travels, from "Travels in the Harz Mountains" to "Fragments of England", have a wide range of content, reflecting the author's thinking in progress, and the self-consciousness of the battle is being strengthened. Until his later years, he believed that the great task of the times is "the liberation of all mankind", and he was fighting for "the liberation of mankind".

Heine's "Travels" is one of the best in German literature in terms of genre and style. The author in a rambling tone, the writing style is free, the mood of the sea and the sky, travelogue in the political theory, poetic and embodied in the political theory. For example, "Travels in the Harz Mountains" is accompanied by wonderful descriptions of landscapes while satirizing the tiresome teaching of German universities and the Junker aristocracy and mercenaries; "Le Grange" recalls the life of his childhood, in which the glorification of Napoleon shows the author's rich imagination and profound knowledge; "Travels from Munich to Genoa" gives a powerful attack on Restoration-era Germany; in "Luca In The Baths of Lucca, the author's polemic with Platten criticized the evasion of reality and the simulation of classical formalism in poetry; in Fragments from England, the author revealed that the development of capitalist industry in England had brought about new social contradictions, and that behind the apparent prosperity was the miserable life of the working people; in The City of Lucca, Heine expressed his strong belief in the revolution. Travels reflects the process of his political and ideological development; his enthusiastic welcome to the July Revolution in 1830 and his departure from Germany for Paris in 1831 were the inevitable actions of his ideological development.

3. Critical Writings: Since his arrival in Paris in 1831, Heine wrote a series of articles on religion, philosophy, literature, painting, music, and theater. the most important ones in the 30's were On the Painters of France, On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany, and On the Romantics. These articles, the role is to communicate the cultural exchanges between the German and French people, to correct the erroneous views in the French Mrs. Stahl's book "On Germany"; at the same time, let the Germans understand the traditions and achievements of the French Revolution, to recognize the backwardness of their own country, to overcome the negative factors, and to see the hope of their own national culture, and to promote the revolution in Germany.

Heine, in his essay "On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany," criticized the classical philosophy of German idealism, pointing out, on the one hand, that behind the obscure and perplexing words of the German philosophers lay revolutionary ideas. The German philosophers had carried out a far-reaching and significant philosophical revolution and were convinced that, after the philosophical revolution, a political revolution would follow. Engels praised Heine for this view. On the Romantics provides a brief but precise analysis of the development of German literature, and realistically evaluates the representative figures of German classical literature, such as Lessing, Goethe and Schiller, thus defending the progressive tradition of German literature. Heine believed that Romantic literature, which was all the rage at the time, was politically reactionary but still had artistic merit. Heine's two works are profound and far-sighted, far exceeding the level of the relevant works of his contemporaries, and are of great value.

From the 1940s to the 1950s, Heine also wrote Ludwig B?rner, Memorandum of Henrich Heine, Confessions, Memoirs, and Lutetia, which discussed literary criticism and creation, literature and reality, literature and politics, and the relationship between philosophical and political revolutions. These commentaries are beautiful and dashing, fresh and timeless.

4. Novels and Plays: Heine wrote some novels and plays. The story of the persecution of the Jews in the Middle Ages is "The Teacher of the Law in Barach", the first draft of which was written in 1824, was burned in 1833, and three chapters were compiled and published from the remnants of the manuscript in 1840. Among the unfinished fragments are the Memoirs of Mr. Schnabelwopsky, written in 1826 and published in 1834, and A Night in Florence, written in Paris in 1836. The tragedies Almansor and Wilhelm Ratcliffe are found in Tragedy-Lyrical Interludes, 1823, and in 1851 the publication of the dance-play Footwood, Dr. Faustus, which he wrote in the 1940s.

The Germany in which Heine lived was a time of transition politically from the deadening Restoration to the coming tide of revolution; philosophically from idealism to materialism; and literarily from romanticism to realism. These shifts are reflected in his writings. As Merrill puts it in his History of Germany since the End of the Middle Ages, "very harmoniously embodies the colors and forms of the three great world-views that alternated successively during the century ...... Heine called himself the last king of fantasy of the Romantic school, yet he ridiculed Romanticism with a resounding voice and made it no place in the world. Heine always fought for the ideals of bourgeois liberty, yet he attacked bourgeois liberalism with the utmost ferocity for all its shortcomings of appeasement and strife. Heine was quite proud of his discovery of ****productivism in living reality and of his repeated predictions of its inexorable triumph in the future; yet he never dispelled his inner fear of ****productivism."

Heine was a giant of world literature, and his poetry and prose had a positive influence on the literary scene in Germany and other countries. But he was evaluated and treated in two very different ways, both in life and in death. He was admired and loved by all the revolutionaries and progressives since Marx and Engels, but at the same time he was hated and vilified by some stubborn and reactionary forces, and during the fascist dictatorship in Germany his name was even erased from the history of German literature.

In the Chinese literary world, Heine's penetrating thoughts and sharp prose had a wide influence. Since the May Fourth Movement, Heine's poetry has been widely popular; after the founding of New China, Heine's works have been published in new translations.

Newer editions of Heine's writings:

Writings and Letters of Heine, edited by Kaufmann, 10 volumes, published in Berlin in 1961-1964.

Proofreading of the Complete Works of Heine, edited by Windfuhr, 16 volumes, published successively in Hamburg from 1970.

The Complete Works of Heine, edited by Brigleb, 6 volumes, published in Munich from 1968 to 1976.

Also available in a commemorative edition, including all writings, letters and biographical data, edited by the Center for Research and Commemoration of German Classics in Weimar, planned in 50 volumes, published successively in Berlin from 1969.