From the Humanym archive

Heinrich Heine to J. H. Detmold, 1835

Living in political exile in Paris, Heine tells a friend in Germany how overwhelming his life there has become and asks him to write often with news from home.

PARIS, March 22, 1835.

You can have no idea how many distracting apparitions are about me, how much trouble, sickness of mind, struggle for life, love, hatred and all roaring in my ears. Whatever you may hear of me in Germany is only a faint echo of the sword-blows here. Please write to me much and often: and later when things are quieter, I promise that I will return like for like. How would it be if you were to write me every six weeks and very long letters about political and literary events in North Germany, which I could translate into French and publish in a series in the Revue des deux mondes — I have often thought of you and I have always reckoned you one of the very few people to whom my work and writing has always been clear, and who know and understand the ultimate idea of everything that I do.

Why this letter

Heinrich Heine, the German poet, had moved to Paris in 1831 rather than live under censorship in Germany, and remained there in a self-imposed exile for the rest of his life; within months of this letter, the German Bundestag would ban all his writings outright. J. H. Detmold was a friend and correspondent back in Germany. Heine describes the noise and turmoil of Parisian life as a kind of battle he is caught up in, and proposes that Detmold send him long letters of German political and literary news that he could adapt for a French magazine.

Provenance

Author: Heinrich Heine (1797–1856)
To: J. H. Detmold
Written: 22 March 1835, Paris
Source: Heinrich Heine's Memoirs, from His Works, Letters, and Conversations, ed. Gustav Karpeles, tr. Gilbert Cannan (1910), Vol. II, via Internet Archive
Rights: Public domain — Heinrich Heine died in 1856; the text follows Gilbert Cannan's 1910 English translation of his letters.
Translation: From German by Gilbert Cannan, 1910

From Heinrich Heine's Memoirs, from His Works, Letters, and Conversations, edited by Gustav Karpeles, translated by Gilbert Cannan (1910); this text follows that translation as reproduced by the Internet Archive. This is the first of five letters printed together in the source; the editor's recipient heading, 'TO J. H. DETMOLD.', is not reproduced.