Selected Verse

by Heinrich Heine, Peter Branscombe (Editor)

'One of the first men of this century' is how Heine described himself when he claimed to have been born in the early hours of 1800. It was typical of Heine to create this humorous doubt - he was in fact born in 1797. He was a restless and homeless poet, a Jew among Germans, a German in Paris, a rebel among the bourgeoisie and always, as his famous doppelgänger poems show, a man divided against himself. This selection, with the German originals accompanied by English prose translations, provides the perfect introduction to Heine. He can be magnificent as an acute, irreverent commentator on politics and current events, though his genius most often strikes home in the poems filled with despair, or sensuality, or sweetness, or self-mockery, in which he draws out the whole gamut of emotions provoked by love and immanent death.

Genres: Poetry, German Literature, 19th Century, Germany, Classics, Romanticism

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1965

About the author

Christian Johann Heinrich Heine was one of the most significant German poets of the 19th century. He was also a journalist, essayist, and literary critic. He is best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry, which was set to music in the form of Lieder (art songs) by composers such as Robert Schumann and Franz Schubert. Heine's later verse and prose is distinguished by its satirical wit and irony. His radical political views led to many of his works being banned by German authorities. Heine spent the last 25 years of his life as an expatriate in Paris.

Reviews

[E. G. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Foreword
Introduction & Editor's Note
Textual and Bibliographical Note

--Selected Verse

Index of Titles and First Lines

[Aaron Facer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unfortunately, I feel like Heine is let down by the rather flat and over-literal prose translation. His charm and vivacity shine through in moments throughout this edition, but they're few and far between.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book because I'm researching the life of a distant relative that I'm writing about. I learned, from a book written by his friend, that he was in love with Heinrich Heine. So I picked this up to get a sense of Heine. I've only read a few of his poems before, years ago, in college. I found this collection of his poems--interesting, but not that compelling. I'm guessing a lot was lost in translation. There are hints of evocative notes. My favourite is a quote that opens his poem The Homecoming: "I don't know why I am so sad; I can't get out of my mind a tale from olden times." I think I'll use that as the epigraph for the book I'm working on. I'm surprised that the subject of my research, a very conservative hyper-Calvinist from the Netherlands, enjoyed Heine so much. The poems are often bawdy, celebrating easy-come, easy-go love affairs. That wouldn't have resonated with my subject's own morals. Or, perhaps, the "antithesis" ran through his own heart!

[Şeyma Gürbüz]

it is always interesting to read 19th-century German authors and see their thoughts on Germany then. Since I'm currently living in the city that Heine is from, and live in a neighborhood that is filled with Heine's verses all over the walls, I've wanted to read him and see the hype for myself. There is no denying that he is a good poet, I absolutely see the hype now. However, it is difficult for me to relate to any of his verses since we have basically nothing in common except for living in the same city.

[Brok3n · Rating 4 out of 5]

Flowers and nightingales and scorn

I find that I cannot read a book of poetry as I would a novel: starting at the beginning and reading one page after another continuously until the end. Poetry requires a little time to sink in. Therefore it is my practice each morning to read a page or two of poetry. For prolific poets like Heinrich Heine I choose books of selected poetry. Thus I hope to be able to read a poet's best work in a few months. From 20-Sep-2023 to 21-Dec-2023 I thus worked my way through Selected Verse, typically two pages each morning, except when the poems were longer than that.

The layout is like this: at the top of each page we have the verses in German. Underneath, in smaller type, is an English prose translation. If your native language is German the English translation is a waste of space -- if you read English but not German this is not the book for you -- Heine in English prose is not what anyone wants to read. It is, however, the ideal format for someone like me who understands German fairly well, but is not a native speaker, and therefore might miss some of Heine's subtleties if reading only in German. There is also a useful introduction (in English) by Peter Branscombe -- mostly a short biography of Heine.

Heine is, I think, most famous for his love poetry. I was not, to be honest, all that impressed by it. It seemed conventional to me, all flowers and nightingales and infantilization of women. (It did, however, inspire me to find a YouTube recording of the song of a nightingale, which I, as an American, have never heard in the wild.)

But Heine contains multitudes. His later poetry has more bite. As a lover of fantasy, I particularly enjoyed his poems based on heroic and religious myth. These often come with a sharp stab of scorn. For instance, in "Adam der Erste" we have this pointed criticism of Eden

Vermissen werde ich nimmermehr
Die paradiesischen Räume;
Das war kein wahres Paradies –
Es gab dort verbotene Bäume.

The English translation is

I shall certainly never miss the realms of Paradise; it wasn’t a true Paradise – there were forbidden trees there.

For its intended audience: German-readers whose first language is not German, this is an excellent, scholarly selection of Heine's breadth.

Blog review.

[Don Gubler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great poet. Nice opportunity to read something that challenges my German proficiency.

[Joe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Finally, someone more jaded by love than me!

[Agilitycape · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ironic in his expression and jaded with love, Heine's poems are predictable and platitudinous in their subjects and denouément - The Sea everywhere, the latent Lady somewhere, and the lamenting Man mourning; conceits reappear numbingly, a proper emotion is scarcely felt and the imagery is hardly recollected afterwards.

Heine shines most brightly in his novellas, where he takes the reader on his semi-autobiographical journeys. There he evokes the wondrous Nature to full bloom where we can understand birds twitterings and where the rationalistic worldview is superseded by the wondrous, imaginative and mythological nature. The selfsame tree, wind and mountain imageries reappear there as in his poems, but they are much more welcome in there, in a novella form, than as a separately read poem. Nor does Heine's lamentable pessimism ever reach maturity in his poems - it's a withered flower desperately left for display. His poems lack proper feeling - and beside feeling, his novellas are also laden with heavy meaning and you get to see Heine's opinionated side in full bloom. Though preceding it, his reference-filled text ( The Harz Journey, The Book of Le Grand, The Town of Lucca) is at times comparable to that of Huysmans' À rebours.

The little boy seemed to be on the best of terms with the flowers; he greeted them as friends, and they seemed to rustle in reply to his greeting. He whistled like a finch, the other birds all around answered by twittering, and before I knew what was happening, he had scurried off with his bare feet and his bundle of twigs into the thick of the forest. ‘children are younger than we are,’ I thought, ‘and can still remember how they too used to be trees or birds, and understand what these are saying; but we are already old, and our heads are too full of worries, jurisprudence, and bad verses.’
The Harz Journey