Robert Schumann describes his meeting with Heinrich Heine
From a letter to Heinrich von Kurrer, Leipzig, June 9, 1828: In Munich I did not feel at home or at ease, and I took note of the cold and cutting atmosphere of the Residence [home to Munich's titled nobility] only too soon. The Glypthotek [a museum built by Ludwig I to house his collection of antiquities], so magnificently constructed, is not yet complete and leaves one unsatisfied, and only making the acquaintance of Heine, for which I have Herr Krahe to thank, made my stay somewhat interesting and pleasing. I imagined him to be, after the sketch of Herr Krahe, a crochety, misanthropic man, who would be more likely to stand, as if too sublime, above mankind, than to huddle against it. But how different I found him and how different he was, than I had conceived him to be. He engaged me in a friendly fashion, like a humane Greek Anacreon, shook my hand cordially, and took me around Munich for several hours -- none of which I would have expected from a man that had described the Reisebilder; there lay only upon his mouth a bitter, ironic smile, but a lofty smile over the trivialities of life and a scorn for the petty person; yet that bitter satire, that one so often perceives in his Reisebilder, that deep, innermost resentment at life that penetrates to one's very marrow, made his conversation very pleasing to me. |
Send
us Mail