Günther Stark

Life's Downy Dawn Günther Stark

One of Heinrich Heine's most puzzling poems is "Der Asra" And the slave replied: "My name is Móhamet, I am from Yemen, And my people are the Asra, They who perish when they love." Who perish when they love? This can only be understood through the author's life. "Day and night I deal with my big book, the novel of my life," he writes, "and only now do I feel the full value of what I have lost in papers due to the fire in my mother's house." The present novel is not historical. A novel true to history could not penetrate, since we know too little about him, the hindmost dwellings of his blood. Man does not only live in reality, and certainly not a poet. Man also lives in imagination, and Heine's imagination is predominently erotic. Since the fantasies are always left out, there are no true biographies. Hence, narrative gaps have been filled here with how it could have been. "My most important work are my memoirs, which won't be published so soon; I'd prefer them to be printed only after my death!" They reveal what's going on behind the scenes, while his poems and works are just like the actors appearing on the foreground stage. "I've been working on them for years. The book will have three volumes, at least three volumes. Nobody feels more than me how difficult it is to give something literary that hasn't been there yet, and how unsatisfactory it must be for any deeper spirit, just to please the idle rabble. Few have the courage to say everything." This courage won't be missed here!