I was glad to get home, for I had been all the time tormented8 by my old malady9 of homesickness. But otherwise the situation was not cheerful for me, and I now began trying to write something for publication that I could sell. I sent off poems and they came back; I offered little translations from the Spanish that nobody wanted. At the same time I took up the study of German, which I must have already played with, at such odd times as I could find. My father knew something of it, and that friend of mine among the printers was already reading it and trying to speak it. I had their help with the first steps so far as the recitations from Ollendorff were concerned, but I was impatient to read German, or rather to read one German poet who had seized my fancy from the first line of his I had seen.
This poet was Heinrich Heine, who dominated me longer than any one author that I have known. Where or when I first acquainted myself with his most fascinating genius, I cannot be sure, but I think it was in some article of the Westminster Review, where several poems of his were given in English and German; and their singular beauty and grace at once possessed10 my soul. I was in a fever to know more of him, and it was my great good luck to fall in with a German in the village who had his books. He was a bookbinder, one of those educated artisans whom the revolutions of 1848 sent to us in great numbers. He was a Hanoverian, and his accent was then, I believe, the standard, though the Berlinese is now the accepted pronunciation. But I cared very little for accent; my wish was to get at Heine with as little delay as possible; and I began to cultivate the friendship of that bookbinder in every way. I dare say he was glad of mine, for he was otherwise quite alone in the village, or had no companionship outside of his own family. I clothed him in all the romantic interest I began to feel for his race and language, which new took the place of the Spaniards and Spanish in my affections. He was a very quick and gay intelligence, with more sympathy for my love of our author’s humor than for my love of his sentiment, and I can remember very well the twinkle of his little sharp black eyes, with their Tartar slant11, and the twitching12 of his keenly pointed13, sensitive nose, when we came to some passage of biting satire14, or some phrase in which the bitter Jew had unpacked15 all the insult of his soul.
We began to read Heine together when my vocabulary had to be dug almost word by word out of the dictionary, for the bookbinder’s English was rather scanty16 at the best, and was not literary. As for the grammar, I was getting that up as fast as I could from Ollendorff, and from other sources, but I was enjoying Heine before I well knew a declension or a conjugation. As soon as my task was done at the office, I went home to the books, and worked away at them until supper. Then my bookbinder and I met in my father’s editorial room, and with a couple of candles on the table between us, and our Heine and the dictionary before us, we read till we were both tired out.
The candles were tallow, and they lopped at different angles in the flat candlesticks heavily loaded with lead, which compositors once used. It seems to have been summer when our readings began, and they are associated in my memory with the smell of the neighboring gardens, which came in at the open doors and windows, and with the fluttering of moths17, and the bumbling of the dorbugs, that stole in along with the odors. I can see the perspiration18 on the shining forehead of the bookbinder as he looks up from some brilliant passage, to exchange a smile of triumph with me at having made out the meaning with the meagre facilities we had for the purpose; he had beautiful red pouting19 lips, and a stiff little branching mustache above them, that went to the making of his smile. Sometimes, in the truce20 we made with the text, he told a little story of his life at home, or some anecdote21 relevant to our reading, or quoted a passage from some other author. It seemed to me the make of a high intellectual banquet, and I should be glad if I could enjoy anything as much now.
We walked home as far as his house, or rather his apartment over one of the village stores; and as he mounted to it by an outside staircase, we exchanged a joyous22 “Gute Nacht,” and I kept on homeward through the dark and silent village street, which was really not that street, but some other, where Heine had been, some street out of the Reisebilder, of his knowledge, or of his dream. When I reached home it was useless to go to bed. I shut myself into my little study, and went over what we had read, till my brain was so full of it that when I crept up to my room at last, it was to lie down to slumbers23 which were often a mere24 phantasmagory of those witching Pictures of Travel.
I was awake at my father’s call in the morning, and before my mother had breakfast ready I had recited my lesson in Ollendorff to him. To tell the truth, I hated those grammatical studies, and nothing but the love of literature, and the hope of getting at it, could ever have made me go through them. Naturally, I never got any scholarly use of the languages I was worrying at, and though I could once write a passable literary German, it has all gone from me now, except for the purposes of reading. It cost me so much trouble, however, to dig the sense out of the grammar and lexicon25, as I went on with the authors I was impatient to read, that I remember the words very well in all their forms and inflections, and I have still what I think I may call a fair German vocabulary.
The German of Heine, when once you are in the joke of his capricious genius, is very simple, and in his poetry it is simple from the first, so that he was, perhaps, the best author I could have fallen in with if I wanted to go fast rather than far. I found this out later, when I attempted other German authors without the glitter of his wit or the lambent glow of his fancy to light me on my hard way. I should find it hard to say just why his peculiar26 genius had such an absolute fascination27 for me from the very first, and perhaps I had better content myself with saying simply that my literary liberation began with almost the earliest word from him; for if he chained me to himself he freed me from all other bondage28. I had been at infinite pains from time to time, now upon one model and now upon another, to literarify myself, if I may make a word which does not quite say the thing for me. What I mean is that I had supposed, with the sense at times that I was all wrong, that the expression of literature must be different from the expression of life; that it must be an attitude, a pose, with something of state or at least of formality in it; that it must be this style, and not that; that it must be like that sort of acting29 which you know is acting when you see it and never mistake for reality. There are a great many children, apparently30 grown-up, and largely accepted as critical authorities, who are still of this youthful opinion of mine. But Heine at once showed me that this ideal of literature was false; that the life of literature was from the springs of the best common speech and that the nearer it could be made to conform, in voice, look and gait, to graceful31, easy, picturesque32 and humorous or impassioned talk, the better it was.
He did not impart these truths without imparting certain tricks with them, which I was careful to imitate as soon as I began to write in his manner, that is to say instantly. His tricks he had mostly at second-hand33, and mainly from Sterne, whom I did not know well enough then to know their origin. But in all essentials he was himself, and my final lesson from him, or the final effect of all my lessons from him, was to find myself, and to be for good or evil whatsoever34 I really was.
I kept on writing as much like Heine as I could for several years, though, and for a much longer time than I should have done if I had ever become equally impassioned of any other author.
Some traces of his method lingered so long in my work that nearly ten years afterwards Mr. Lowell wrote me about something of mine that he had been reading: “You must sweat the Heine out of your bones as men do mercury,” and his kindness for me would not be content with less than the entire expulsion of the poison that had in its good time saved my life. I dare say it was all well enough not to have it in my bones after it had done its office, but it did do its office.
It was in some prose sketch35 of mine that his keen analysis had found the Heine, but the foreign property had been so prevalent in my earlier work in verse that he kept the first contribution he accepted from me for the Atlantic Monthly a long time, or long enough to make sure that it was not a translation of Heine. Then he printed it, and I am bound to say that the poem now justifies36 his doubt to me, in so much that I do not see why Heine should not have had the name of writing it if he had wanted. His potent37 spirit became immediately so wholly my “control,” as the mediums say, that my poems might as well have been communications from him so far as any authority of my own was concerned; and they were quite like other inspirations from the other world in being so inferior to the work of the spirit before it had the misfortune to be disembodied and obliged to use a medium. But I do not think that either Heine or I had much lasting38 harm from it, and I am sure that the good, in my case at least, was one that can only end with me. He undid39 my hands, which had taken so much pains to tie behind my back, and he forever persuaded me that though it may be ingenious and surprising to dance in chains, it is neither pretty nor useful.
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1
legislative
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| n.立法机构，立法权；adj.立法的，有立法权的 | |
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acquitted
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| 宣判…无罪( acquit的过去式和过去分词 )； 使（自己）作出某种表现 | |
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3
supremely
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| adv.无上地，崇高地 | |
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humiliation
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| n.羞辱 | |
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anguish
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| n.(尤指心灵上的)极度痛苦，烦恼 | |
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labors
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| v.努力争取(for)( labor的第三人称单数 )；苦干；详细分析；（指引擎）缓慢而困难地运转 | |
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7
proprietor
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| n.所有人；业主；经营者 | |
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8
tormented
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| 饱受折磨的 | |
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malady
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| n.病，疾病(通常做比喻) | |
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10
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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11
slant
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| v.倾斜，倾向性地编写或报道；n.斜面，倾向 | |
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12
twitching
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| n.颤搐 | |
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13
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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14
satire
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| n.讽刺，讽刺文学，讽刺作品 | |
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15
unpacked
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| v.从（包裹等）中取出（所装的东西），打开行李取出( unpack的过去式和过去分词 )；拆包；解除…的负担；吐露（心事等） | |
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16
scanty
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| adj.缺乏的，仅有的，节省的，狭小的，不够的 | |
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17
moths
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| n.蛾( moth的名词复数 ) | |
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18
perspiration
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| n.汗水；出汗 | |
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pouting
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| v.撅（嘴）( pout的现在分词 ) | |
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20
truce
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| n.休战，(争执，烦恼等的)缓和；v.以停战结束 | |
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21
anecdote
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| n.轶事，趣闻，短故事 | |
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22
joyous
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| adj.充满快乐的；令人高兴的 | |
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slumbers
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| 睡眠，安眠( slumber的名词复数 ) | |
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24
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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lexicon
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| n.字典，专门词汇 | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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fascination
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| n.令人着迷的事物，魅力，迷恋 | |
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28
bondage
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| n.奴役，束缚 | |
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29
acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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30
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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31
graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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32
picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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33
second-hand
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| adj.用过的，旧的，二手的 | |
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34
whatsoever
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| adv.（用于否定句中以加强语气）任何；pron.无论什么 | |
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35
sketch
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| n.草图；梗概；素描；v.素描；概述 | |
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36
justifies
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| 证明…有理( justify的第三人称单数 )； 为…辩护； 对…作出解释； 为…辩解（或辩护） | |
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37
potent
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| adj.强有力的，有权势的；有效力的 | |
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38
lasting
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| adj.永久的，永恒的；vbl.持续，维持 | |
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39
Undid
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| v. 解开, 复原 | |
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