When
I reached Cologne and heard the Rhine,
The dark was already falling.
I felt the effect of the German air—
In an appetite appalling.
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text .
•
x.
•
•
2
On
omelettes and ham I gladly supped,
And, seeing the ham so salt was,
I was driven of course to drink Rhine wine;
The bacon alone at fault was.
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text .
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3
The
Rhine wine sparkles golden still, ~
In the green, familiar rummer;
But, drink in excess, and your nose will flame
To the flaunting hue of summer,
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text .
•
rummer (Ger.: Römer): round-bodied wine glass
on a ringed tapering stem, derived from the models of
Antiquity when the region was part of the Roman Empire;
still the prevalent wine glass in Germany.
4
And
will tickle and prickle, and tease you so,
'Twill provoke your nails to malice;
I was forced to go out and stroll in the dusk
Through the echoing streets and alleys.
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text .
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x
5
The
stone-built houses looked down as if fain
To tell me the vanished story
Of old Cologne, the sacred town—
Its annals and legends hoary.
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text .
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x
6
Once
a pious priesthood spent its days,
To godly living schooled, here,
And, according to Ulrich von Hutten's tale,
The viri obscuri ruled here.
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text .
•
Ulrich von Hutten/viri obscuri: one of
the great intellectual battles of the early modern period.
The Jewish apostate Johannes Pfefferkorn (1455-1522)
urged his new Catholic coreligionists to ban and destroy
postbiblical Jewish writings, an effort that won the
enthusiastic support of the Dominican order of Cologne,
led by Jakob von Hochstraaten (c. 1460-1527). In response,
the Humanist Johannes Reuchlin (1455-1522) defended
the need to preserve and study Hebrew language and ideas.
The
humanists Crotus Rubeanus and Ulrich von Hutten (the
latter, [1488-1523] also an Imperial Knight), anonymously
published their Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum
(Letters of Obscure—that is dark or benighted—
Men) as a wicked satire of priestly obscurantism.
7
Mediaeval
monks and nuns here danced
Through their cancan's lewd gyrations.
Hoogstraten, Cologne's grim Menzel, in gall
Here wrote his denunciations.
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text .
•
Here Heine wreaks further revenge on one of his worst
enemies, Wolfgang
Menzel (1798-1873), influential literary reviewer
(another Swabian, alas) and implacable opponent of Young
Germany and any progressive idea or text. The logical
and simple step would have been to call Menzel the Hoogstraaten
of the nineteenth century. By reversing the comparison,
Heine commands our attention and in the process makes
Menzel appear to be the worst of the two and all the more
regressive.
• cancan: an "immoral" dance of
the mid- and late nineteenth century
8
Round
books and men the devouring flames
Of the pyre here leapt and panted,
While the loud and solemn bell was tolled,
And the Kyrie Eleison chanted.
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text .
•
Kyrie Eleison: Greek, "Lord, have mercy,"
the beginning of the Catholic mass.
9
Stupidity
here, in the open street,
Like a dog with malice mated;
Religious intolerance still is the mark
Of its brood, and wrath unsated.
dt
text .
•
religious intolerance (): Heine originally wrote,
"Jew-hatred" (), but on the advice of a friend,
softened the expression.
