The BURIED Book Club discussion

Heinrich Heine, with over 2000 ratings for his 241 distinct works (mostly German language editions of poems, but some translations as well) probably wouldn't qualify as buried under anyone's definition. (Still, I'd never heard of him... but I'm an ignorant bastard).

However, while his poetry is not buried, none of his prose-only collections has more than 7 ratings.

The English language edition of The Prose Writings of Heinrich Heine is available for FREE at Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37478 and it reads well.

My friend Ziggy Freud recently turned me onto Herr Heine by references the work "Gods in Exile" in a citation within The Uncanny.

"Gods in Exile" isn't exactly a story. Wiki has it as a "prose essay," but it seems to me more akin to a Borges "fiction." It's essay-like, but includes elements of literary story telling. Also, remarkably (but you may not agree that it is a valid or remarkable association) it felt akin to Vollmann in the author's wit and wistfulness. When Herr Heine tries to locate any information he can about medieval myths associated with the god Jupiter, he reports (writing in 19th century Düsseldorf):

I have ransacked many libraries, where I was shown the magnificent codices ornamented with gold and precious stones, true odalisques in the harem of science. To the learned eunuchs who, with such affability, unlocked for me those brilliant treasures, I here return the customary thanks. It appears as if no popular tradition of a medieval Jupiter exists...

In the end, I'd say it's worth a look.

Like Schiller, he was one of those people who was canonical in pre-war Europe, and didn't quite transfer into English. I'm no expert in his work, but I'd guess he was seen as being a little too Gothic/Romantic for modern sensibilities - nothing like the German poetry which did cross over, à la Rilke, Celan, Brecht, etc.

Sorry Zag ;; but I just can't certify this guy. It'd be nigh-on like certifying a few scraps from Goethe. Maybe's it's just my pro-German bias....

[I'll lock this thread once you've either a) capitulated, or b) thrown a convincing BURIED fit re: Herr Highny]

Well, maybe I've said all I could regarding the lack of any readers of his prose works. Otherwise he's just a highly recommended not-buried guy..

Oh, wait, i can invoke RACE. That's the ticket! He's buried because Hitler and the Nazis tried to bury him for his Jewish ancestry, and he hasn't recovered in the postwar era. We wouldn't want to continue this anti-semitic trend, would we?

Well, that's the best I got. Where's Johnny Cochraine when I need him?

Zadignose wrote: "He's buried BURN'd because Hitler and the Nazis tried to bury BURN him"

It's a perhaps technical distinction, but BURN'ing and BURY'ing function according to different laws.

I do recognize my Translation=Exception and the attempt to correct for our Anglo-bias ;; but Heine has had his chance and anyone even close to Germanistik knows Little Hines. Like trying to Certify someone with a volume or two in Loeb.

But by all means read Heine ;; almost the entirety of classical and romantic German Lit is BURIED from the angle of the Anglo=view.

[I'll refile him over to that other thread so you might add a few more of his unKNOWN titles]

Nevermind. jebus chistub I should look at the filing you've already done. So right yeah ;; give us whatever Heine titles you can find -- and perhaps you just want to dive into the entirety of the BURIED German Romantics!! (for to do us a favor)

To set the record a little straighter, Heine was NOT a Romantic. Rather anti- in fact. Vide his long poem Atta Troll in especial.

I think a lot of people come to Heine by way of the "Gods". I did, through the lens of Pater, who quotes a bit of it in his Renaissance studies.

Eric wrote: "To set the record a little straighter, Heine was NOT a Romantic. Rather anti- in fact. Vide his long poem Atta Troll in especial."

He was romantic enough that the Authorities over a wikipedia are able to say :: and I quote "Starting from the mid-1820s Heine distanced himself from Romanticism by adding irony, sarcasm and satire into his poetry and making fun of the sentimental-romantic awe of nature and of figures of speech in contemporary poetry and literature."

Thus the record just a bit straighter....

Whew... I was afraid I might get exiled to the MOst POpoular BOok SOciety (a.k.a. MOPOBOSO).

(By the way, don't look it up, it doesn't really exist.)

Zadignose wrote: "Whew... I was afraid I might get exiled to the MOst POpoular BOok SOciety (a.k.a. MOPOBOSO)."

Not to worry. With my administrative duties (always self=imposed!) having wan'd somewhat in the last several months, being Zag'd is a lot less problematic. IOW's, Zag=away!!

Taking a quick look at the Hinny wiki I see he wrote three unfinished novels. I suspect even in Deutschland they remain BURIED. So there's that.

How to label him is not as important as just reading him--a delight. I’m afraid my limited exposure to Goethe (Elective Affinities and some of the poetry) almost put me off pre-modern German literature altogether, but Heine redeems it.

Nathan "N.R." wrote: "a bit straighter"

NOPE. WRONG. NEEDS A CITATION!!!

It may be a question of face value versus intrinsic value. Reisebilder, which I'm reading currently, seems to demonstrate that Heine does overblown romanticism so well that he can very effectively skewer it... though he may have once written such stuff with more sincerity... and there can be ambiguity about intent... when is he being sincere, and when is he parodying. The context, the inherent hypocrisy, and some of the plain absurdity suggests parody, yet sometimes he does the romanticism so well you'd think he takes a special pleasure in it and may hope that it could be appreciated on two levels.

E.g. And I live! The great pulsation of nature beats too in my breast, and when I carol aloud, I am answered by a thousand-fold echo. I hear a thousand nightingales. Spring has sent them to awaken Earth from her morning slumber, and Earth trembles with ecstasy; her flowers are hymns, which she sings in inspiration to the sun--the sun moves far too slowly; I would fain lash on his steeds that they might advance more rapidly. But when he sinks hissing in the sea, and the night rises with her great passionate eyes, oh! then true pleasure first thrills through me, the evening breezes lie like flattering maidens on my wild heart, and the stars wink to me, and I rise and sweep over the little earth and the little thoughts of men.

Never mind the fact that the speaker is a foolish ass who hurls himself back and forth between suicidal impulses and life-embracing rapture over... well, next to nothing... and makes mockery of the tortures of hell, etc.

Anyway, Romantic parodist? Ironic wit who outdoes the romantics at their own game just to have sport with them?

P.S. Now I'm thinking he's not only Vollmannesque, he's a rather less bitter (so far) Comte de Lautréamont.

As a person who for years sported gigantic black All-Set tangles of Cure victim hair while driving a 1973 Pontiac Grande Ville hearse, I certify the above passage as Gothic. Aside from that, this dude is buried to me (as in unheard of) but then again my Alemanic experience goes not much further than Adorno, Brecht, and Hagen (as in Nina). @Nathan re the add: GOOD MAN! You're not as stubborn as you look in your pic. Oh, wait...

That passage WAS ironic, right?

Yeah... I guess to typify the material I'm now reading as romantic would be a mistake, but it's an understandable mistake to make, considering. I now wonder though whether his earlier poetic work was more subtle in its irony, or rather void of irony. I'll have to check it out later... or Eric can just tell us.

Zadignose wrote: "Yeah... I guess to typify the material I'm now reading as romantic would be a mistake, but it's an understandable mistake to make, considering. I now wonder though whether his earlier poetic work w..."

No not void of it. Apotheosis in, as mentioned, the Bearbuch (atta boy!), funny as hell too. Vide http://www.gutenberg.org/files/31305/...

Eric wrote: "Zadignose wrote: "Yeah... I guess to typify the material I'm now reading as romantic would be a mistake, but it's an understandable mistake to make, considering. I now wonder though whether his ear..."

Ah, and how damned clumsy its tetrameters. Too bad I can't read joyman.

With language so florid, it's amazing anyone correctly straddles the serious/ironic fence with any fidelity. I admit to watching horrible Spanish language telenovelas, but translated they would seem so overblown--just cuzza translation issues-that they would consistently maintain a sense of irony which would then drown out the effect when they are--and sometimes they ARE--actually ironic. Spanish, in translation, often comes across as super-emo. Does German have a similar misleading effect, translated?

Gregsamsa wrote: "With language so florid, it's amazing anyone correctly straddles the serious/ironic fence with any fidelity. I admit to watching horrible Spanish language telenovelas, but translated they would se..."

I doubt that even if it does that the distinction would obtain here. Heine's bombast, as I've seen it, is more than bombast, in that it moves beyond bombast to critique bombast.

Atta Troll retrieved, thanks.

Re: language, I know the question wasn't directed at me, but I dunno... BUT, even casting language aside, the hyperbole of the ideas expressed is dramatic enough.

E.g., the protagonist goes on about how, in Hell, even over the wails of the the sinners being boiled in pots upon some infinite stove, he can still hear the song of one teardrop that was never shed... presumably the tear he hoped to see in the eye of his beloved. And, regarding his own family's noble lineage:

I have good reason to believe that the entire Mahabarata, with its two hundred thousand verses, is merely an allegorical love-letter which my first fore-father wrote to my first fore-mother. Oh! they loved dearly, their souls kissed, they kissed with their eyes, they were both but one single kiss.

Regardless of who translated it, or how it was translated, unless the translator himself/herself is a clever fabricator, there's hyperbole in there.

Yup. That's Goth. I have spoken. I have spoken. Big Medicine.

I'll attempt to listen to Bauhaus while reading to see if it enhances the experience. Meanwhile, I had to look up All-set. I learn something every day.

I just Google All Set to see what that might have netted (btw Final Net was an alternative brand if All Set was unavailable). The first two pages said nothing about powerful coif control in even the most humid and Smokey club conditions.

I attempted "all set hair" and got there.

Are you guys really talking about hair and cure and bauhaus in this thread? Maybe it's just me.

You guys are also making me regret more and more (Eric did it earlier) that I tossed my nice four volume set of ancient date of Heine's Werke. Naja.

@Caroline -- Don't miss Faust!!

“Habe nun, ach! ......
Da steh ich nun, ich armer Tor!
Und bin so klug als wie zuvor."

I had forgotten Faust--it was so long ago. Thanks for the reminder. Also, I recently bought a used copy of the Italian Journey, which I think might be more to my taste.

I had to go look up and sample Bauhaus (rock ignoramus)--I see the point, but streaming Heine in my eyes and Bela Lugosi’s Dead in my ears...might rotate my brain 10 degrees.

Eric, thanks for the link to Atta Troll; I had been looking for a hard copy. But according to the introduction I’m doomed: for no woman ever quite understood Heinrich Heine, who is still a riddle to most of the men of this age.

Caroline: So is the downside of the upside of there being these valums in the Pubic Domen.

If we make it past the Anteductions and Onwords we come upon a text proper which, liable to same, is perhaps the more likely to not be Manhandled.

As for Heine, I'd should needs get mine own Heiny into gear and finish the little thing of essays of his I have.