Carolus
Magnus at Aix-la-Chapelle
Lies entombed in the minster hoary.
You must not confound him with Charles Mayer,
Of poetic and Swabian glory.
dt
text .
•
Carolus Magnus: the fabled Charlemagne, or Charles
(Karl) the Great. Caroligian ruler (768-814), crowned
Holy Roman Emperor in 800. Aix-la-Chapelle
and Aachen are, respectively, the French and
German names for the city in which his court was located.
•
minster: cathedral (as in Westminster)
•
Charles Mayer: Karl Mayer (1786-1870), minor
poet from Swabia. As on an earlier occasion, Heine makes
the most of the fact that Mayer's name, Latinized (Mayer=major)
can be construed as equivalent to Charlemagne's.
• Swabian glory: Heine, as will become apparent
later in the poem, was engaged in a feud with poets
of the so-called Swabian School, named after their region
in southwestern Germany. His contempt was fully reciprocated.
2
Oh,
sooner than lie in the minster at Aix,
A Kaiser dead for ever,
The poorest of poets at Stukkert I'd live,
Beside the Neckar river.
dt
text .
•
Stukkert: Heine's imitation of dialecti pronunciation
for Stuttgart, capital of Württemberg, in Swabia.
3
At
Aix the very dogs are sick
Of the general air of inaction.
"Come, tramp on us, stranger," they seem to
say,
"'Twould serve as a slight distraction.".
dt
text .
•
x
4
I
strolled for an hour in this wearisome hole,
And managed to bore myself greatly;
Had a look at the Prussian soldiers again:
They have altered but little lately.
dt
text .
•
x
5
They
are wearing still the old grey cloak;
The high red collar I noted.
(The red betokens the blood of France—
Körner's the poet quoted.)
dt
text .
•
blood/Körner: Theodor Körner (1791-1813;
son of one of the best friends of the poet Schiller) was
among the many youthful, well-educated volunteers in the
so-called Wars of Liberation against Napoleon. He fell
in battle, leaving behind a collection of patriotic and
militaristic poetry, Leyer und Schwert (Lyre and
Sword) that became part of the popular canon in the nineteenth
century and fell from favor by the middle of the twentieth,
for very understandable reasons in both cases. Among the
more famous or notorious lines was the identification
of the red on the German uniform with the blood of the
French in the "Lied der schwarzen Jäger").
6
They're
the same old wooden pedantic folk,
With none of your airy graces;
Rectangular, rigid at every turn,
With frozen, gloomy faces.
dt
text .
•
x
7
Decked
out, and stiff on the same old stilts,
And bolt upright, you meet them;
Exactly as if they had swallowed the cane
That once was used to beat them .
dt
text .
•
cane: Heine here shows his characteristic sensitivity
to both ideas and language. A comparable, more colloquial
expression in English would be "to have a broomstick
up one's ass," but it has a more limited range of
connotations. The reference to the cane raises the issue
to a higher psychological and sociological plane: Discipline
is most effective when internalized, and the victim of
brutal socialization in turn brutalizes others.
8
The
ferule has never quite passed away;
They carry it now inside them;
The " thou " of the present recalls the "
he,"
When their masters used to chide them.
dt
text .
• ferule:
strictly speaking, a metal ring at the end of a staff
or stick, to keep it from splitting. The translator, however,
is presumably referring to the French "férule,"
meaning cane or rod (see Stanza 7), and figuratively,
harshness and discipline (as in "spare the rod...").
The German term used by Heine, "Fucthel," has
the same meaning and connotations, as well as the more
specific definition as a short, wide-bladed practice sword,
used for administering discipline in the Prussian army,
• "thou"/"he": nothing
to do with the dialogical principles of Martin Buber.
Rather, down through the eighteenth century at least,
it was customary for social superiors to address supplicants,
and officers their men, in the third person.
9
Their
moustache is also but one of the modes
Which time, while it keeps, transposes:
The pigtail which formerly hung at their back
Now hangs in front from their noses.
dt
text .
•
The pigtail was part of the dress code for soldiers
in the Prussian army from 1713 through the Napoleonic
wars.
• The moustache, by contrast, is a matter
of fashion. (Such facial hair was also part of the typical
appearance of the French Revolutionary soldier, from the
moustaches républicaines of the early years
to the veterans of the Napoleonic Wars.) Once again, Heine's
point is that it shedding the effects of years of discipline
is harder than one thinks.
