Georg-August-Universitt Gttingen

SoSe 2013
Philosophische Fakultt
Napoleon and the Napoleonic Wars in the British and European Literary Imagination
Prof. Dr. Barbara Schaff
Modul Komparatistik 09: Interkulturalitt und Intermedialitt

Heine's Napoleon Complex: The Poetics of

Demystifying through Mystification

vorgelegt von:
Wenyan Gu
Theaterstrae. 11a
37073 Gttingen
oliviaistgut@gmail.com
Komparatistik
2. Semester
Matr. -Nr.:21227712

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. Heine's Construction and Reconstruction of Napoleon-Myth

2.1 Lyrical Hero-Worship "Die Grenadiere"

2.2 Aesthetical Re-Presentation in "Die Nordsee"

2.3 Comments on Walt Scott's Napoleon Biography

3. Irony and Metaphor: Das Buch le Grand

3.1 Double and Simple Irony

3.2 The Drumming

13

3.3Imagery and Idea

16

4. Conclusion

18

5.Bibliography

20

1. Introduction

Among all canonical Romantic writers who have lingered along the figure of Napoleon
Bonaparte on their literary paths was Heinrich Heine a most special one. Besides the
abundant writings involving Napoleon and his blatant enthusiasm towards the fallen
Emperor who was greatly condemned by most of his contemporaries, Heine deploys the
Napoleon image, or more accurately, the Napoleon imaginary, as poetical raw material,
while conjuring up a highly politicized world of Romantic literature1. This poetical use of
the political, however, does not distinguish Heine from other authors as much as the
complexity of his Napoleon image itself does, for his depictions of Napoleon in different
Works solemnly discord one other, while his bravery of appearing as a NapoleonWorshipper, or as Paul Holzhausen phrases, the "Carrier of the Napoleonic Cult"2,
harmonizes the fragmented Myth.

It is, therefore, not superfluous to examine this mystified imagery in the task of
untangling Heine's Napoleon Complex, even though existing studies of Heine and
Napoleon have already shed light on this subject, such as the 1903 thesis by Holzhausen,
in which he brilliantly sketches a changing literal representation of the emperor relating
to Heine's different biographical as well as ideological stages3. Indeed, the literal gaze of
a Romantic author like Heine cannot be separated from his iris that vividly reflects all the
worldly matters that could largely influence the depth of such gaze, and in this case of
Napoleon Bonaparte, it is of not much worth to dispute against the impact of Heine's
Jewish identity that was being favored under Napoleon's reign or his despise against the
Bourbons 4 on his initial Hero-worship. The polemic lies no longer in the causes of this
Complex, as our obsessive nature of "reasoning" a phenomena dictates, but the Complex
itself -- the literal formation of the Napoleon Myth based on Heine's poetics.

Barbara Belich, "Erlesener und erinnerter Held der Kindheit: Heines dopperlter Blick auf
Napoleon als Freiheitsbringer und Sensuchtschiffre," in Der deutsche Napoleon-Mythos,
(Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2007), 225-245.
2
Paul Holzhausen, Heinrich Heine und Napoleon. (Frankfurt am Main: Verlag von Moritz
Diesterweg, 1903), 1.
3
Holzhausen, 227.
4
Holzhausen, 62.

This Myth, if construed as Heine's blinded obstinacy to the ideals of French Revolution
or his political naivety as a young Poet, would be detrimental to the reading of Heine, for
not only Heine's reputation as a skillful ironist but also his fundamental poetical merits
would be vaporized. Influenced by Hegelian philosophy, Heine regards Napoleon as a
"synthesis" of revolutionary and counter-revolutionary ideals5, leaving little doubt that he
would not treat Napoleon-Myth as a starting point of dialectical reflection. Heine's
construction of the Napoleonic myth and to some degree its reconstruction -- considering
that he actively comments and even attacks on other Romantic writers' poetical and
biographical depictions of Napoleon -- involves an acknowledgement on the poetical
objectivity of his Hero, apart from the very consciousness of himself constructing the
"myth". While this conscious acknowledgment could be made evident by directly
quoting a few lines of Heine's, this essay shall be devoted to analyzing the poetics of such
ironic construction. With ambiguous aesthetic sincerity, humorous exaggeration, satirical
sentiments, and profuse metaphors, Heine mystifies the already mystical Image of
Napoleon, but at the same time gradually tears down this ongoing myth through the same
poetical devises. Dissociating himself from his own Hero-enchantment, Heine ironizes
the self-constructed Myth of Napoleon, and as his later prose further on intensifies this
disassociation, he completes the destruction of Napoleon-Myth precisely in the projection
of his own Napoleon-mystification. This proposed process of demystification, albeit
paradoxical, will be presented in a sequential anatomy of Heine's poetical representation
of Napoleon, which includes one famously "Bonaparte" poem "Die Grenadiere" and a
range of prose works from 1820 to 1830 -- the first decade after Napoleon's death and the
birth of his Myth.

Heinrich Heine,"Die Nordsee," in Reiserbilder (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1827), 97.

2. Heine's Construction and Reconstruction of the Napoleon-Myth

2.1 Lyrical Hero-Worship: "Die Grenadiere"

It was around 1819 when the young German Poet composed one of his first lyrical
adorations of Napoleon Bonaparte, who was spending the last two miserable years of his
life in Exile on the island of Saint Helena. Roughly four years ago, Napoleon, having
suffered from a sequential military loss in Russia and Central Europe that led to his first
Exile to the island of Elba, made his heroic return to Paris in company of the loyal French
soldiers and enthusiastic cries of Vive l'Empereur6. The Hundred Days rule in Paris
immediately reinforced the quivering Napoleon Myth, attracting another wave of poetical
interests on the Hero who returns. Les deux Grenadiers, a Ballad composed even before
the Emperor's return by Pierre Jean de Branger, began to circulate among people, with
an unfaltering confidence in Napoleon and vehement call on loyalty to him:
"vieux grenadiers, suivons un vieux soldat, suivon un viex soldat"7

There is little doubt that Heine's almost corresponding Poem Die Grenadiere four years
later aims to exemplify the same sentiments, when the Poet cunningly adopts the same
form of Ballad and the same protagonists. Two French grenadiers who were captured in
Russia made their way to the German quarter, where they heard about the Emperor's
imprisonment. Although both of them lament, one grenadier quickly thinks of his familial
obligations and admits his reluctance to a martyrdom, while the narrator immediately
hands the main voice to the second grenadier, who expresses his unshakable veneration to
his Emperor:
Was schert mich Weib, was schert mich Kind,
Ich trage weit besseres Verlangen;
Lass sie betteln gehn, wenn sie hungrig sind Mein Kaiser, mein Kaiser gefangen! 8

Alan Forrest, Napoleon (London: Quercus, 2011), 282.

Pierre Jean de Branger, "Les deux Grenadiers(1814)," in Oeuvres de P.J. de Branger:
Nouvelle dition (Paris: Perrotin, Librarire, 1867), 160.
7

Heinrich Heine, "Die Grenadiere," in Buch der Lieder (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1827),
59.

With a slight touch of irony on the grenadier's exaggerated loyalty that makes him
indifferent to his wife and child's starvation, Heine folds the grenadier's withering
sentiments about the old Emperor into an almost schizophrenic worship. The Grenadier
continues to talk about his somehow delirious wish to be buried in France just to lie
underground and wait for Napoleon's come back, and it is not difficult to sense his
unsealed proudness as well as the inexplicable conviction on Napoleon's rise:
Dann reitet mein Kaiser wohl ber mein Grab,
Viel Schwerter klirren und blitzen;
Dann steig ich gewaffnet hervor aus dem Grab Den Kaiser, den Kaiser zu schtzen9

This last stanza following the folklore metrics expands the personal narration in future
tense to a military Call, while author himself smoothly exits out of the poem -- Indeed, if
we insist that Heine keeps his distance to the Napoleon-zeal presented by the second
Grenadier from the beginning, we would be ignoring the vacillation of his poetical
distance in general. The narrator became more and more entangled in his character as the
poem goes on, and in spite of the hyperbolic depictions, Heine's own sentiments became
intertwined by adopting the first person narration solely of the loyal Grenadier. Yet, the
last highly imagery stanza cancels out the possibility of welding author and narrator,
because of its clear reference to the French people around that time, who were yearning
for another return of their Emperor. "Den in Frankreich unter Volk und Soldaten
weitverbreiteten Glauben an eine nochmalige Rckkehr des Gefangenen von St. Helena,
den auch Branger mehrfach dicterich verwertet, hat Heine zu einer khnen Vision
benutzt, durch welche das seinem Stoff nach aus der unmittelbaren Wirklichkeit
geschpfte Gedicht in eine Welt des Traumes hinberschwebt."10 This "bold vision" of
the poem in Holzhausen's comment encompasses a crafting function of transferring the
political actuality into the purely poetical world of "dreams". In other words, Heine
cunningly plays with the de facto sentiments of the political world, while leaving his own
emotion towards Napoleon hovering above the poetics. Recognizing Napoleon and his
"possible" return as a myth from his literary precursor like Branger and the French

Heine, "Die Grenadiere," 59.

Holzhausen, 104.

10

society during Napoleon's last exile, Heine further mythologizes the contemporary
sentiments, while infringing on those of his own.

2.2 Aesthetical Re-presentation in "Die Nordsee"

Heine's lyrical presentation of Napoleon as a mystified poetical Object could be further

understood under an elaboration of Hero-perception in an 1827 essay "Die Nordsee",
where he speaks of Napoleon as a "living literature"11. Recognizing the strong
mythological potential of Napoleon by remarking on the "re-presenting" nature of his as
an object of people's memory or that of the artists, Heine relegates the process of Hero
mystification to an inevitable sequence of history in which the Great Men could merely
be viewed in this way.

"Diese Memoiren von Staatsleuten, Soldaten und edlen Frauen, wie sie in
Frankreich tglich erscheinen, bilden einen Sagenkreis, woran die Nachwelt
genug zu denken und zu singen hat, und worin, als dessen Mittelpunkt, das Leben
des groen Kaisers, wie ein Riesenbaum, emporragt." 12

With these lines could the lyrical Heine who has played with the hero sentiment of the
crowed defend himself against the accusations of being a blinded Napoleonist. All the
more strongly would he continue on mythologizing the Emperor who was elucidated as
an aesthetical subject by artists, upon whom the task of presentation and re-presentation
falls. Heine is aware of the difference between Napoleon the man and Napoleon the
imagery presented by a variety of people: the crowd, the soldiers, the poets, the
intellectuals, and the historians. Being a mere observer who only has access to seeing the
Hero from representations of the others, Heine chooses to condense the image by adding
on more poetical imageries. While Heine conjures up the immortal idea of Napoleon in
"Die Grenadiere" through the voice of the nostalgic French people, he makes a specific
selection of the Myth contributors in "Die Nordsee", namely those who employ written
words to represent the image like he himself. Commenting on some of the most

11
"eine erlebte Literatur", Heine, Reisebilder,98.
12
Heine, Reisebilder, 99.

prominent Napoleon writers like Lord Byron, Walt Scott, Sgur, and the famous
Napoleon biographer Germaine de Stel, who has, to Heine's dismay, distilled her
wholehearted resentment towards Napoleon which was proved to be of some personal
origin, in her political works13, Heine reflects and reconstructs the Napoleonic myth that
was shaped by his literal contemporaries. Just as Barbara Belich concludes in a chapter
of her Study on Napoleon Myth in German literature, Napoleon's image in "Nordsee" is
grounded on the written memories of the others14. It clarifies the impossibility of
representing an authentic Napoleon image, not to mention the authentic persona of
Napoleon, leaving out the only wise way out of the vicious circle of simulacrum: to
present again, to re-present with the mere intention of representing. No believing, and no
criticizing as Germaine de Stel did, for the more one denounces him, the more powerful
his myth will be:

"Wir sehen wie das verschttelte Gtterbild langsam ausgegraben wird, und mit
jeder Schaufel Erdschlamm, die man von ihm abnimmt, wchst unser freudiges
Erstaunen ber das Ebenma und die Pracht der edlen Formen, die da
hervortreten, und die Geistblitze der Feinde, die das groe Bild zerschmettern
wolen, dienen nur dazu, es desto glanzvoller zu beleuchten. Solches geschieht
namentlich durch die uerung der Frau von Stel, die in all ihrer Herbheit doch
nichts anders sagt, als da der Kaiser kein mensch war wie die andern, und da
sein Geist mit keinen vorhandenen Mastab gemessen werden kann." 15

Once again, Heine demonstrates his conscious, if not completely rational, sense of
observing Napoleon as a constructed myth, an image, a phenomenon along with his
nevertheless indisputable fascination of the Emperor, and more so than in his poem, he
keeps his poetical distance and henceforth hiding his personal sentiments by offering real
solutions to look at the Napoleonic image. Describing Napoleon's spirit by using the
Kantian terminology of "synthetische Allgemeine", Heine concludes on the correct way
of understanding the Great Man: "Daher sein Talent die Zeit, die Gegenwart zu
verstehen,ihren Geist zu kajolieren, ihn nie zu beleidigen, und immer zu benutzen."16

13

Forrest, Napoleon, 317.

cf. Belich. Der deutsche Napoleon-Mythos, 227. "Das Napoleon-Bild in der Nordsee entsteht
so wesentlich in Auseinandersetzung mit verschriftlichten."
15
Heine, Reisebilder, 94.
16
Heine, Reisebilder, 94.
14

This sentence, despite its peculiar utilitarian hints, might unfold the first shield of Heine's
Napoleon Complex. Heine's adoration of Napoleon is not merely a Hero-worship, but
more of a respectful exploration of the Hero chosen by fate. Like other writers who he
has quoted or paid tribute to, Heine's re-presentation of Napoleon stratifies his myth into
layers of aesthetical compounds. Only in this way could the real image reveal itself. Only
in this way could the Napoleon myth dissolve without enlarging itself through the mouths
of those who speak against him. What Heine advocates are to demystify through remystification, the first rule of which has already been elaborated with the last two phrases
of the above quote: "ihn nie zu beleidigen, und immer zu benutzen". The Hero, like his
spirit, is likewise the subject of the poetics that shall never be insulted, but always to be
used.

2.3. Comments on Walt Scott's Napoleon Biography

Even though Heine prioritizes the poetical function of Napoleon's image over the
political one, he is certainly not free from Napoleon's appeal for his personal sentiment. It
is not surprising that Heine draws the limits of an adequate "using" of the Hero-image, as
he mockingly attacks on Walter Scott's 1827 Work The life of Napoleon Bonaparte, in
which Scott's "use" of the Emperor's spirit unforgivably crosses the boundary. Already in
Nordsee, Heine has noted the Scottish writer's mistake of representing the Emperor solely
in the Scottish national context: Scott adopts a tone of his own nation that distorts the
image of Napoleon, whose revolutionary and heroic side is completely ignored. This
criticism goes further when he accuses Scott of "selling" Napoleon in his 1828 band of
prose work Englische Fragmente. "Die Englnder haben den Kaiser blo ermordet, aber
Walter Scott hat ihn verkauft. Es ist ein rechtes Schottenstck, ein echt schottisches
Nationalstckchen, und man sieht, da schottischer Geiz noch immer der alte, schmutige
Geiz ist ."17
To Scott's somehow poetical but more political usage of the Emperor is Heine most
intolerant, in spite of his sarcastic wording of "forgive". "Bin ich aber tolerant gegen

17

Heine, "Englische Fragmente," in Heines Werke in fnf Bnden, Band 3 (Berlin: AufbauVerlag, 1974), 98.

Walter Scott und verzeihe ich ihm die Gehaltlosigkeit, Irrtmer, Lsterungen und
Dummheiten seines Buches, verzeih ich ihm sogar die Langweile, die es mir verursacht so darf ich ihm doch nimmermehr die Tendenz desselben verzeihen."18 This tendency is
caused by Scott's pact with the English ministry, who according to Heine the literary
accuser, bribed the author into delivering a diabolic, weak and above all false image of
Napoleon to his readers. For Heine, Walter Scott betrays the principles of the poetics, the
"Dichtung", which deprives him of the right to use the Napoleon image. As matter of fact,
it deprives him even of the right to be called a writer:
"Mit Hlfsmitteln solcher Art und erbrmlichen Suggestionen behandelt Walter
Scott die Gefangenschaftsgeschichte Napoleons und bemht sich, uns zu
berzeugen, dass die Exkaiser - so nennt ihn der Exdichter - nichts Klgeres tun
konnte, als sich den Englndern zu bergeben, obgleich er seine Abfhrung nach
St. Helena vorauswissen musste, dass er dort ganz scharmant behandelt worden,
indem er vollauf zu essen und zu trinken hatte, und dass er endlich frisch und
gesund und als ein guter Christ an einem Magenkrebse gestorben."19

Scott's dictum of Napoleon dying of cancer instead of being poisoned by the English
authority as well as his distrust on Napoleon's memoir written on St. Helena angers Heine,
who is no longer able to leave aside his personal affection and starts to gild his poetical
mystification of Napoleon with emotions from his Complex. Through a literal parallelism
between Napoleon and Lemuel Gulliver, the protagonist of Jonathan Swift's novel, in
which Gulliver travels to the island of midget who wish him dead but fear his bigness.
Belittling the island British people to dwarfs, Heine virtually execrated Britain
responsible for Napoleon's unjustified suffering and death, while giving Napoleon a
Romantic glow of the Great Man living among small men who couldn't appreciate or
even tolerate his greatness.
"Wahrlich, berall ist Liliput,wo ein groer Mensch unter kleine Menschen gert,
die unermdlich und auf die kleinlichste Weise ihn abqulen, und die wieder
durch ihn genug Qual und Not ausstehen; aber htte Dechant Swift in unserer
Zeit sein Buch geschrieben, so wrde man in dessen scharfgeschliffenem Spiegel
nur die Gefangenschaftsgeschichte des Kaisers erblicken und bis auf die Farbe
des Rocks und des Gesichts die Zwerge erkennen, die ihn geqult haben." 20

18

Heine, Werke Band 3, 96.

Heine, Werke Band 3, 99.
20
Heine, Werke Band 3, 100.
19

Here, Heine molds his mystification of Napoleon at a new poetical level, where his
aesthetical distance is shortened by his apparent political bias and romantic ardency. The
Poet's Complex starts to twist and complicate along with the impassioned mystification,
until Heine reminds his reader of the primarily poetic nature of the praise at the end of
this chapter, where he mentions again the functional aspects of Napoleon image as the
"Muse" and hands the role of narrating this myth to the rocks and cliffs on St. Helena,
whose voices are sure to be more truthful and sincere than that of any human being,
including Heine himself.

3. Irony and Metaphor: Das Buch le Grand

3.1 Double and Simple Irony

So far, three traits of Heine's Napoleon mystification have been shown: Heine employs
the Napoleon image as well as sentimental public responses to this image as poetical raw
material; keeping an aesthetical objectivity as well as poetical distance, he criticizes the
unfaithful representation by other writers; Meanwhile, he diligently re-builds the myth in
order to enervate the previous myth. In this way, Heine constructs and reconstructs the
cult of Napoleon, which has actually reached its apex, according to Holzhausen, as early
as 1821 when he published his successful half-fictional memoir Ideen: Das Buch le
Grand. Considering Le Grand to be the "monument" in Heine's Napoleon Complex,
Holzhausen regards this work primarily as an ostentatious Emperor- glorification which
most likely results from the young author's reading of Napoleon story immediately after
his death and his grudge against the German-Prussian coalition21. Although Holzhausen
recognizes that Heine's Napoleon portrayal contains some objectivity when he suggests
his narration to be an "observation"22, he understates Heine's ironical craft in composition,
leading to his mistaken trust on the narrator who neither equals Heine himself nor could

21

Holzhausen, 109.
cf. Holzhausen, 115," Trotz der Temperaturhhe der Begeisterung sind es aber doch nicht die
Phrasen eines Schwrmers, was wir da hren, sondern Beobachtungen, die bis auf einen gewissen
Grad sogar die exakteste Forschung mit ihrem Stempel beglaubigt hat."

22

be counted as reliable. Even though the book's clear association to the biographical Heine
allures readers to assume the roughly twenty chapter prose to be the young author's
autobiographical confession, there is no substantial reason to ignore the abundant
dreamlike and highly fictional elements that Heine disperses throughout this work - if not
the fundamental poetical details on which the work is based. Heine's intention of writing
cannot be merely reminiscent, but above all poetical. As an ironist at the dbut of his
literary career23, Heine writes with his stylistic humor, completing a prosaic equivalent of
his recent lyrical success in order to achieve "an aesthetic whole"24. It is for this reason
that the following analysis of this work, the "apex" of Heine's Napoleon worship, shall
focus on the aesthetics instead of the content, starting from the most conspicuous one, the
irony.
Das Buch Le Grand starts with six chapters of thoughts on melancholic love and
confessions with ironic twists addressing to a typified figure of "Madame", presented
with an ambiguous identity of the narrator, which first becomes clear at the end of the
sixth chapter, where his love and sentiments brings him back to his childhood in
Dsseldorf. Heine weaves his memory into the narrator's voice in the next six chapters, in
which his childhood wonder of Napoleon brings out a nostalgic simulation of genuine
admiration. The child in Dsseldorf experiences the change of city electorate, while
innocently perceiving the political changes resulting from Napoleon's triumph in Europe
without true understanding. If the picture of a naive boy who weeps beside a Man, asking
him the reason they weep is merely comical, the same boy's naive cheering about not
having to go to class thanks to the new elector, the brother-in-law of Napoleon, is surely
of Heine's deliberate ironic intention25. This naivety is expressed by the adult narrator,
who builds up a dreamlike world of ironic nostalgia on his innocent pretense26. After the
electorate, the boy's dolorous school life comes back, leaving the only joy to be his
acquaintance with the French drummer Monsieur Le Grand, whose limited German

23

Heine published his first lyrical band "Buch der Lieder"in1821

Hermann Weigand argues that Heine's intention of writing Le Grand primarily concerns the
production of a Romantic comedy, represented by pure humor and elements of both tragedy and
comedy. In The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Vol. 18, No. 1 (Jan., 1919): 133.
25
Heine, Ideen: Das Buch le Grand (Hildesheim: Verlag Jugend und Volk, 1826), 27-30.
26
D.C. Muecke, Compass of Irony (London: Methuen and Co Ltd, 1969), 30.

24

10

necessitates a communication solely through drumming. The young narrator learns about
the heroic deeds of the Emperor from Monsieur Le Grand's drumbeats, making little
effort to conceal his utter fascination of Napoleon. While the metaphorical structure of
this drumming will be further elaborated in the next section of this essay, the next chapter
of the book is devoted to the first and only virtual encounter of real Napoleon, and not
surprisingly, starting with an irony of simple incongruity constructed again with help of
fake naivety. When the Emperor and his fellow men march on the avenue, the boy cannot
help but think of the police who would issue a penal fine of five German coins to anyone
riding in middle of the avenue. The displacement of the great Emperor with the
somewhat egalitarian idea of him having to pay five Thalers to the police for breaking a
trivial city rule contrives an incongruity that directly formulates irony. To this,
Holzhausen gives a literal interpretation of paradox that intensifies the godly
mystification of Napoleon. "Napoleon erscheint als ein vllig apartes Wesen, dem sich
alles beugt, vor dessen Wimperzucken alles sich in Nichts verflchtigt."27 Although
having recognized its paradox, Holzhausen fails to follow Heine's logic of employing
irony, and hence misses out its ingenious effect against the Hero-mystification, which
was recognized but only minorly touched on by Belich:
"Dieses rhetorische Aufgebot, das dazu dient, Napoleon zu vergttliche, wird
gleichzeitig in seltsamer, aber typisch Heinescher Manier ironisch gebrochen,
wenn berichtet wird, dass der kleine Junge sich wundert, da der Kaiser keine
fnf Taler Strafe zahlen muss fr seinen ordnungswidrigen Ritt mitten durch die
Allee. ... Die Ironie illustiert lediglich den Hiat zwischen der auerordentlichen
Erscheinung des Kaisers und der realistischen Umgebung, die von
Polizeiverordnungen bestimmt ist."28

This irony of incongruity falls into the category of the second variant of Double Irony,
which Muecke famously defines as the situation "when there is a single victim to whom
both terms though contradictory seem equally valid"29. Playing the victim of irony
through the persona of his younger "self", Heine states the two contradictory but valid
terms of Napoleon being a great Emperor and Napoleon riding in middle of Dsseldorf
city Avenue hence having to pay a fine of five Thalers. This kind of irony however, as
Muecke remarks further, does not function as simple correctives, which are only effective

27

Holzhausen, 114.
Belich, 232.
29
Muecke, 25.
28

11

when "we pass from an apprehension of the ironic incongruity to a more or less
immediate recognition of the invalidity of the ironist's pretended or the victim's
confidently held view." Instead, the ironic contradiction does not offer a resolution since
"the ironist or the ironical observer remains, to some extent, involved in the irony."30 It is
not hard to see that Heine's young protagonist does remain involved in this irony, as he
speaks again of the penalty at the end of the chapter. "Der Kaiser ritt ruhig mitten durch
die Allee, kein Polizei diener widersetzte sich ihm".31 The ridiculous thought of the boy
is therefore not to be immediately invalidated, as Holzhausen does in his study, but to be
elevated to a dialectic exposition, where no one is certain about which object the ironist
intends to disparage. Is it the absurd idea that Napoleon could actually be subjected to
Dsseldorf city law? Or could it actually be the image of Napoleon being the highest
authority of Europe as well as the inarguable hero of the young protagonist that Heine is
really trying to invalidate? Heine's use of Double Irony renders an ambiguity that
contains and annuls the sense of both statements at the same time, which initiates the
Hero-demystification with a possible ridicule of the Emperor's authority. Once again,
glimpsing on Muecke's theory, this kind of Double Irony is largely used by the German
Romantics, which Heine certainly would not be unaware of. The simplicity in
Holzhausen's interpretation results from his mistaking the actually deployed Double
Irony for Simple Irony, when Heine's real intention of demystifying the Napoleon Myth
through these ironic insinuations that are hidden inside his clamant mystification is
falsely dismissed.
On the other hand, the passionate clamors of "Es lebe der Kaiser" marking the end of this
chapter, does establish a Simple Irony, together with the beginning of the following
chapter: "Der Kaiser ist tot".32 Although Heine structures this short chapter in a form of
lamentation with somewhat genuine grief of bereavement, the Napoleon Myth is, this
time more overtly, dismantled by the Simple Irony, which requires simply a valid
assumption corrected by what actually happens33. The assumption of the Emperor's
immortality is ostensibly nullified by his factual death. The two incongruous statements

30

Muecke, 26.
Heine, Le Grand, 44
32
Le Grand, 44-45.
33
Muecke, 23.
31

12

are placed together not only to evoke mourning sentiments, but also to negate the myth of
the Great Man. The smart poet, however, does not squander his potentials of expanding
the poetical stage. Ironizing by no means satiates his poetical appetite since it neither
totally destroys the Napoleon Cult nor stops himself from further mystifying the
narrator's Childhood Hero. The Myth is still being constructed just as he deploys
variations of Irony to deteriorate it - since he is aware that Napoleon's death is once again,
merely the beginning of his myth: "Es steht keine Inschrift auf seinem Leichensteine;
aber Klio mit dem eisernen Griffel schrieb unsichtbare Worte darauf, die wie Geistertne
durch die Jahrtausende klingen werden"34.

3.2 The Drumming

The narrator's childhood ends at Napoleon's death. The following chapter commences
with a switch to the third person narration of a young student strolling along the same
avenue in Dsseldorf years ago where the Emperor and his army marched on, stepping on
the foliage that stirs up an easily emotionalized heart, until the first person narrator
appears again with nostalgic pain - "es war mein Herz"35.
It is last chapter of the little memoir -like narration in Le Grand, and certainly the most
sentimental one. The grown up boy returns to his hometown Dsseldorf, feeling himself
as a foreigner in the oneiric wandering in the city, where his sentiments arise as he
realizes little by little that what he carefully preserves as "memory" is merely a dreamlike
utopia - he can no longer return, or if the readers are willing to go further, nor does it ever
exists. "Trume sind Schume", so quotes the narrator with a torn of loss that collaborates
with the romantic enjoyment of the sensitivity36.
Napoleon Bonaparte belongs to this utopian land of nostalgia, and while Heine's ironybreaks of mystification in previous chapters considerably weakens the Napoleon myth, it
is narrator's final acknowledgement of the hero as a mere image of foaming dreams, a

34

Le Grand, 45.
Le Grand, 48.
36
Le Grand, 50. "Ich war nicht mde, aber ich bekam doch Lust, mich noch einmal auf die
hlzerne Bank zu setzen, in die ich einst den Namen meines Mdchens eingeschnitten"
35

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"Sehensuchts-chiffre"37 above political concretes, that demolishes the myth. Again,

Napoleon's image emerges at the center of Heine's poetical methodology, yet dissolving
itself to a pure literary topos. The previous simple humorous anecdote of the child's
friendship with the drummer Monsieur Le Grand metamorphoses into a meticulously
erected metaphorical entirety, in which the drumming of Monsier Le Grand
metaphorically represents the Napoleon Myth.
This conclusion is not easily made, and the following examination of Heine's poetics of
the metaphor might prove some of its truthfulness.
Monsieur Le Grand enters the last episode of narrator's wander in his childhood city with
the same drumming - the narrative mood quickly arises to its boiling point, for like the
city, the man and his drum appear as if nothing has changed, while the narrator never
fails to insinuate the permanent disappearance of their essence. "Er war noch immer die
wohlbekannte alte Trommel. und ich konnte mich nicht genug wundern, wie er sie vor
russischer Habsucht geschtzt hatte. Er trommelte jetzt wieder wie sonst, jedoch ohne
dabei zu sprechen.... aber allmhlich schlich sich ein trber Ton in jene freudigsten
Wirbel, aus der Trommel drangen Laute, worin das wildeste Jauchzen und das
entsetzlichste Trauern unheimlich gemischt waren." 38 It is no longer a heroic paean, but
a street requiem of someone who was denounced by the Christian church and only has
drummers left for his funeral, that Monsieur Le Grand plays on his drum. His drumming
becomes an "echo" of his helpless sigh, when this central mediator of Napoleon's myth at least to the younger narrator who learns to know the Napoleonic history from the
drumming - cannot survive without the Myth. Understanding this, the narrator stabs his
sword in Monsieur Le Grand's drum.
It is not of much dispute that this final scene shall be read metaphorically, and
interpretation like stabbing the drum symbolizing Heine's determination not to serve the
enemies of Napoleon by Holzhausen39 is certainly a good possibility, since the narrator
explicably notes that the Drum shall neither give out any voices nor serve the Bourbons
who came back after Napoleon's reign: " sie sollte keinen Feinde der Freiheit zu einem

37

Belich, 235.
Le Grand, 53.
39
Holzhausen,109.
38

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servilen Zapfenstreich dienen"40. Yet, this interpretation does not trace Heine's
metaphorical use of the "drumming", which Holzenhausen later admits to be a question
of the aesthetics that is of no interest in his study41. The aesthetical answer to this
question is nevertheless here of high concern, as the drumming could also be seen as a
metaphor for the Napoleonic myth, and when the narrator, or the poetical Heine destroys
the drum, he also completes the final, determining strike of tearing down the Hero-Myth.

The construction of this metaphor follows the classical analogy form of Aristotelian
metaphor, which is defined as "the application of a strange term either transferred from
the genus and applied to the species or from the species and applied to the genus, or from
one species to another or else by analogy "42. The analogy could be counted as the basis
for such metaphor where two terms are related in the same way the other two ones are,
and as Aristotle exemplifies: the word "evening" is related to the word "day" as the term
"old age" is to the term "life", and the metaphorical expression could be automatically
generated, by calling evening the "old age of life". The same formulation could be
transferred to this part of Le Grand, in which drumming expresses the essence of
language while words only construct the myth - the superficial appearance. When
Monsieur Le Grand drums about the fall of Napoleon, the drumming becomes more
effective than any language on earth: "als sei die Trommel selber ein lebendiges Wesen,
das sich freute, seine innere Lust aussprechen zu knnen"43. As the school-boy-narrator
recognizes in Chapter VII, the drumming reveals the "spirit of language", while linguistic
expressions, as he critically speaks of his by no means pleasant learning experience of
Latin, Greek, Hebrew, German and finally French at school, merely formulates the
surface of language, the empty words that do not necessarily incorporate meanings.

"Ja, im Caf Royal zu Berlin hrte ich einmal den Monsieur Hans Michel
Martens franzsisch parlieren und verstand jedes Wort, obgleich kein Verstand

40

Le Grand, 54.
Holzhausen,120.
42
Aristoteles, Poetics, in Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vol. 23, translated by W.H. Fyfe (Cambridge,
MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1932), 1457b
43
Le Grand, 53.
41

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darin war. Man mu den Geist der Sprache kennen, und diesen lernt man am
besten durch Trommel."44

Even if there is no substantial implication of the language signification that actually

belongs to the era of modernists a century after Heine, the metaphorical opposition
between drumming and words can be concluded. "Drumming" is related to "essence" as
"word" is related to "Myth". And as far as the Aristotelian metaphor concerns, the
metaphorical "drumming" would be the "word of essence", and the "word" the
"drumming of myth". The first metaphor is confirmed as the boy who learns the essence
of French through Monsieur Le Grand's drumming, while the second is hinted as Heine
constructs the Napoleon's image and myth through the all the most enthusiastic, arousing,
and praising words of the narrator. Here, the author steps out of the text and in a
nonchalant pose of objectivity, when he ironizes his own writing, as it is certainly merely
composed of "words", or the drumbeats of a Napoleonic myth. The result of this irony,
as it is again the familiar form of Simple Irony, corrects and invalidates the narrator's
emotional attachment to Napoleon, as well as the author's mystification of the Hero
through his words. All the more ironically, when Heine leads his reader to the emotional
climax of his "Hero-worship" by having the fully miserable Monsieur Le Grand
drumming in front of the fully nostalgic narrator, he stops the "drumming of the Myth", a
metaphor for his own writing or his Napoleon mystification once and for all, which is
nonetheless not genuinely meant. For Heine does not need a drum to perform the melody
of the Myth. Poetical genius and aesthetic sensitivity allows him to hum or silence the
Hero's Paean without touching a drum, or its metaphor, "the word of essence".

3.3 Imagery and Idea

Another paragraph in a later Chapter might further prove this point, as it also strengthens
Heine's metaphorical association of words and myth. After chapters of philosophical

44
Le Grand, 37.

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discussion on Folly and Reason, Heine cites the words of Joseph Fouch, the French
politician who betrayed Napoleon after his fall:
" Sie haben gehrt, ein bekannter falscher Mann, der es in der Falschheit so weit
gebracht hatte, da er am Ende sogar falsche Memoiren schrieb, nmlich Fouch,
habe mal geuert: Les paroles sont faites pour cacher nos penses; und nun
machen sie viele Worte, um zu verbergen, da sie berhaupt keine Gedanken
haben, und halten langen Reden, und schreiben dicke Bcher, und wenn man sie
hrt, so preisen sie die alleinseligmachende Quelle der Gedanken, nmlich der
Vernunft, ... und wie der Affe umso lcherlicher wird, je mehr er sich dem
Menschen hnlich zeigt, so werden auch jede Narren desto lcherlicher, je
vernnftiger sie sich gebrden."45

Like the other enemy of Napoleon Germaine de Stel, Fouch writes his memoir with
critical depictions of Napoleon, notwithstanding his old political alignment thereto. And
like his objection to Germaine de Stel's Napoleon Representation in Nordsee, Heine
speaks against Fouch by relegating his writing to the same category of "nonsense"
words by the ignorant French speaker Monsieur Hans Michel Martens in the drumming
chapters. The essentially Hegelian writer calls for the only truthful way of representing to
be the words which would include his poetics of ironic pretention, analogical metaphor,
and dialectical demystification. In this light, Heine's appeal for the fools, the "Narren",
could be understood, for the rational men, "die Vernnftigen" represented by Fouch, are
those who deserve to be derided for using empty words to hide themselves and to hide the
lack of meaning or essence behind these words. Their ridiculous act of hiding makes
them the real "Narren" and to Heine, they are the ones who blindly mystify the Great
Man - regardless of his title as the Hero or the Tyrant - with all their senseless words.
It is, then perhaps, not a coincidence that this book is entitled "Ideas". Heine's objectives
are not merely to ironize and to symbolize, but to throw out ideas that might not require
thousands of pages of narration but drumming-like words that point to the essence.
Heine's mystification of Napoleon is hence not only the mystification of his image, but
also his idea - the idea of a hero. Just as after he idolizes Napoleon against Wellington in
"Englische Fragmente" and describes his image as timeless, "als ob sein Bild, losgerissen
aus dem kleinen Rahmen der Gegenwart, immer stolzer und herrischer zurckweiche in
vergangenheitliche Dmmerung", he elevates Napoleon's name as an idea of Hero, a

45

Le Grand, 78.

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myth in the form of "Losungswort"46. Only in this "gefrbten Schatten"47of the Hero
image can he search for the meaning behind the idea, which initiates his crafty poetical
demystification. Heine's demystification works hand in hand with his construction of the
Hero image and idea, with a distrust of language and words that will result in a
destruction of both.

4. Conclusion

In a modern essay concerning Heine's political mind, Hayens defends Heine's republican
position that was more or less contradicted by his abundant glorifying writings on
Napoleon by attributing his hero-worship primarily to the "romantic halo" of the word
"hero". This romantic halo, or more precisely, the halo of a perfect romantic poetical
subject, lures Heine into his conscious literary mystification of Napoleon Bonaparte,
when he applies some most effectual mystification-methods of Romanticism. The epical
exaggeration in "Die Grenadiere" represents and further arises the Hero-nostalgia of the
people, while the blatant hero-worship in Das Buch Le Grand two years later partially
builds itself on the nostalgia of Heine himself. The later Heine, criticizing and satirizing
tother romantic mystifications of the Emperor in "Nordsee" and "Englische Fragmente",
uses Napoleon as a muse for his re-mystification. His Poetics of literal mystification,
however, is not devoid of its shimmering potential to decompose the newly built or
rebuilt myth, as he never forgets to keep his poetical distance, to retreat in the position of
an observer, to acknowledge the mystifying nature of his work, to assert the functionality
of Napoleon-image as well as the sentiments of the public or himself, to ironize, and to
build up metaphors that wordily negates the myth. Heine's Napoleon Complex is filtered
with a poetical complexity that compels him to destruct the myth of the Great Man, when

46
47

Englische Framente,142-143.
Le Grand, 44.

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he chooses to go around by building up the same myth in its "romantic halo". Hid
poetical virtuoso not only ensures his prominence of being an ironist, but also credits him
as a satirist, whose task also includes solving the mysteries of an "unfailingly grotesque
universe"48 - although it might be an exaggeration to describe Heine's political milieu as
unfailingly grotesque. Nonetheless, Heine does take an unusual crusade against
mythologizing a Hero, whose genius only remains in history through his wavering
mystification and demystification by the literates - as the later Heine begs his readers for
their understanding: "Ich bitte Dich, lieber Leser, halte mich nicht fr einen unbedingten
Bonapartisten; meine Huldigung gilt nicht den Handlungen, sondern nur dem Genius des
Mannes...Ich preise nie die Tat, sondern nur den menschlichen Geist, die Tat ist nur
dessen Gewand, und die Geschichte ist nichts anders als die alte Garderobe des
menschlichen Geistes."49 Heine's dialectical Hero-mystification serves its demystification,
while the spirit of the Hero remains at the essence of world history, echoing the
drumbeats from a green summer day.

48
49

Muecke, 27.
Heine, "Reise von Mnchen nach Genua," in Heines Werke (1974), 224.

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Bibliography

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Cambridge: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1932.
Branger, Pierre Jean de. "Les deux Grenadiers(1814)." In Oeuvres de P.J. de Branger,
Nouvelle dition. Paris: Perrotin, Librarire, 1867.
Belich, Barbara. "Erlesener und erinnerter Held der Kindheit: Heines dopperlter Blick
auf Napoleon als Freiheitsbringer und Sensuchtschiffre." In Der deutsche NapoleonMythos, 225-245. Darmstadt: WBG(Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft) ,2007.
Forrest, Alan. Napoleon. London: Quercus, 2011.
Hayens, Kenneth C. "Heine's Political Position." In The Journal of English and Germanic
Philology, Vol. 28, No. 4 (Oct., 1929): 482-488.

Heine, Heinrich. "Die Grenadiere." In Buch der Lieder. Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe,
1827.

Heine, Heinrich. "Die Nordsee." In Reiserbilder Zweiter Teil. Hamburg: Hoffmann und
Campe, 1827.

Heine, Heinrich. "Englische Fragmente" and "Reise von Mnchen nach Genua." In
Heines Werke in fnf Bnden, Band 3. Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1974.

Heine, Heinrich. Ideen: Das Buch le Grand. Hildesheim: Verlag Jugend und Volk, 1826.
Holzhausen, Paul. Heinrich Heine und Napoleon. Frankfurt am Main: Verlag von Moritz
Diesterweg, 1903.

Muecke, D.C.. The Compass of Irony. London: Methuen and Co Ltd, 1969.

Weigand, Hermann J.. "Heine's 'Buch le Grand'." In The Journal of English and
Germanic Philology, Vol. 18, No. 1(Jan., 1919): 102-136.

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Authentizittserklrung

Hiermit erklre ich, dass ich diese hier vorgelegte Arbeit mit dem Titel Heine's
Napoleon Complex: The Poetics of Demystifying through Mystification selbststndig,
ohne fremde Hilfe und ohne Benutzung anderer als der angegebenen Hilfsmittel
angefertigt habe. Alle Stellen, die wrtlich oder sinngem aus Verffentlichungen oder
anderen Quellen, insbesondere dem Internet, entnommen sind, sind als solche eindeutig
und wieder auffindbar kenntlich gemacht. Alle diese Quellen sind in einem
Literaturverzeichnis angegeben. Die vorliegende Arbeit ist in gleicher oder hnlicher
Form noch nicht verffentlicht.

Autor: Wenyan Gu

Ort: Gttingen, Deutschland

Datum: 31.07.2013

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