Continuing the series that celebrates the centenary of Nosferatu with an overview of German vampire literature.
Amongst the work of the German poet Heinrich Heine is an eight-line piece that must surely be one of the most succinct treatments of the vampire theme in all verse.
The poem in question opens with a stark pronouncement: “Du hast mich beschworen aus dem Grab/Durch Deinen Zauberwillen” (“You summoned me from the grave through your magic will”). The tone then becomes markedly erotic. “Belebtest mich mit Wollustglut”, says the narrator. “Jetzt kannst Du die Glut nicht stillen” (“you revive me with burning lust, and now you cannot quench the embers”). The next verse continues the theme, as the speaker demands physical contact: “Preß deinen Mund an meinen Mund/Der Menschen Odem ist göttlich!” (“Press your mouth to my mouth, the breath of man is divine!”)
With its final lines, the poem makes its connection to the vampire motif entirely clear: “Ich trinke Deine Seele aus/Die Toten sind unersättlich” (“I drink your soul, the dead are insatiable”).
Although the poem has sometimes been republished as a self-contained piece entitled “Helena”, Heine originally composed it as the epigraph to the text for a stage production. An observer might guess that the work in question was one of the various German theatrical versions of John Polidori’s “The Vampyre”, but it was in fact Heine’s 1851 variation on the Faust legend entitled Der Doktor Faust: Ein Tanzpoem, Nebst Kuriosen Berichten Über Teufel, Hexen und Dichtkunst (“Doctor Faust, a Dance Poem, with Curious Information as to Devils, Witches, and the Art of Poetry”). Azade Seyhan outlines the history of the work in his book Heinrich Heine and the World Literary Map:
This work was commissioned as a libretto by [Benjamin] Lumley, who was the director of the opera house, Her Majesty’s Theatre in London. The work requested was a text or scenario for a ballet. Heine’s Erläuterungen (explanations), which were attached to the German version, constitute an essential part of the scenario, since they are, in effect, very detailed stage directions […] Like most commissioned works, Heine’s Faust had to meet a deadline, and the poet felt worn down under the time pressure as well as the mandate to produce a play in competition with the most famous version of the Faust legend [Goethe’s play]. In the end, he managed, and felt that although his “poem” wore the form of a ballet, it was one of his greatest and most poetic productions.
The story begins with Faust conducting a ritual to summon the demon Mephistopheles; to his surprise, the spirit manifests in the form of a female ballet dancer. Mephistophela (as Heine refers to her) proceeds to dance around performing various weird transformations and conjurations, after which Faust signs a contract in blood and accompanies her on a hellish ballet. The pair conjure up a farcically comical apparition of King David before a Duke and Duchess – the latter of whom turns out to be the Domina, the witch-bride of Satan; next, they visit a witches’ sabbat with the Duchess and sundry weird human-animal hybrids. But Faust yearns to use his new abilities to visit ancient Greece; and this is where the Helena narrative comes into play.
Mephistophela grants Faust’s wish and transports him to a pastoral vision of old Greece, where nymphs and cupids dance while Helen of Troy – or Helena von Sparta, as she is identified here – awaits the magician with open arms. But the scene is interrupted by the Duchess, who desires Faust for herself and is furious that he has left her sabbat. With a wave of her wand, she transforms the Grecian surroundings into a ruin; the nymphs are replaced with hideous lamiae, cadaverous yet still dancing; and Helena becomes a near-skeletal corpse wrapped in a white sheet that sits at Faust’s feet. Faust responds by stabbing the Duchess with his sword. Then comes the final act, where Faust takes his place in hell.
Heine was clearly influenced by Christopher Marlowe’s 1604 version of the Faust legend, which likewise had the magician calling up the shade of Helen. But while Helen is a minor player in the story, Heine appears to have been sufficiently captivated by the character to use her as a basis for the poetic epigraph, which expands upon her portrayal by giving her the attributes of a soul-draining vampire.
Doktor Faust is not the only work by Heine to feature the motif of the deathly temptress. His 1824 poem “Die Loreley” (“The Lorelei”) describes a sailor seeing a golden-haired and golden-jewelled woman, whose beautiful appearance and alluring song cause him to crash into a reef and drown (the title refers to a prominent rock on the banks of the river Rhine, which had served as the basis of a vaguely similar narrative in Clements Brentano’s 1801 ballad “Zu Bacharach am Rheine”). Indeed, even without being personified as a femme fatale, death is a repeated source of temptation in Heine’s work.
His 1827 piece “Die Wallfahrt nach Kevlaar” (“The Pilgrimage to Kevlaar”) is a remarkably morbid piece of religious poetry: the protagonist is a young man who mourns his dead lover, and asks the Virgin Mary to heal his injured heart. While he sleeps, the figure of Mary appears and places her hand upon his chest – causing him to die. The final line has the young man’s mother, who saw the event as a dream, expressing her gratitude to Mary. “Morphine”, which was written by Heine shortly before hsi death and published posthumously in 1863, describes two beautiful figures who are personifications of death and sleep, and ends with the lines “Gut ist der Schlaf, der Tod ist besser – freilich/Das beste wäre, nie geboren sein” (“Sleep is good, death is better — but of course, the best would be never to have been born”).
Another poem by Heine, “Die Bergstimme” (“The Mountain Voice”) from 1827, has the distinction of inspiring a short piece by Arthur Conan Doyle entitled “The Echo”, first published in 1911. Doyle’s version is as follows:
Through the lonely mountain land
There rode a cavalier.
“Oh ride I to my darling’s arms,
Or to the grave so drear?”
The Echo answered clear,
“The grave so drear.”So onward rode the cavalier
And clouded was his brow.
“If now my hour be truly come,
Ah well, it must be now!”
The Echo answered low,
“It must be now.”
Heine’s original follows the same essential narrative, but is just a little longer – allowing just a little more time to dwell upon the rider’s deathly desire. The third verse, left out by Doyle, has the horseman declare – a tear rolling down his cheek – that only in the grave will he find comfort and peace; naturally, the echo reaffirms his position. Where Doyle’s truncated version comes across as a black joke, Heine’s poem has the feel of coming from a much deeper place.
So, as an embodiment of the longing for death that runs through Heine’s poetry, Helena is far from alone. She is, however, unusual in just how close she brings this theme to the motif of the vampire. Unusual, but not quite unique: Heine’s 1844 poem “Die Beschwörung” (“The Incantation”) is also relevant to the vampire genre.
The poem opens with a Franciscan monk reading a book of dark magic (“der Zwang der Hölle” – “The Compulsion of Hell” – a reference to a volume purportedly written by Faust). When midnight strikes, he calls upon the spirits of the underworld to “holt mir aus dem Grab/Die Leiche der schönsten Frauen” (“fetch me from the grave the corpse of the most beautiful of women”). He then states his motive, in case it were not clear enough: “Ich will mich dran erbauen” (“I want to edify himself”).
His wish is then granted: “Die arme verstorbene Schönheit kommt,/In weißen Laken gehüllet“ (“The pitiful, deceased beauty appears, wrapped in white sheets”). We never learn exactly who this woman is, although given that the monk requested the most beautiful woman in history, there is room to speculate that she may once again be Helen of Troy. The poem’s final verse can be read either as eerie and downbeat, or as a humorous anticlmax: “Ihr Blick ist traurig. Aus kalter Brust/Die schmerzlichen Seufzer steigen./Die Tote setzt sich zu dem Mönch,/Sie schauen sich an und schweigen” (“Her look is sad. From a cold breast Painful sighs rise. The dead woman sits down next to the monk, they look at each other and are silent.”)
Although the deathly woman in this narrative is not a vampire – unlike the poem of Helena, there is no indication that she shall feed upon the man who resurrected her – it scarcely needs pointing out how “Die Beschwörung” evokes the cadaverous beauties that have haunted vampire literature before and since.
As a final note, an English version of Heine’s Doktor Faust, translated by Charles Godfrey Leland, was published in 1892. It includes a rendition of the “Helena” poem:
Thou hast evoked me from the grave,
All by thy magic will;
Brought me to life by passion’s glow,
And that glow thou canst not still.Oh, press thy mouth unto my mouth,
Divine is human breath;
I drink thy very soul from thee,
Insatiable in death.
Next: Into the twentieth century…
