“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Harry Heine HDT WHAT? INDEX

HARRY HEINE HEINRICH HEINE

1797

December 13, Wednesday: Heinrich Heine was born in Düsseldorf (as Christian Johann Harry Heine). His father was a tradesman who had benefitted during the French occupation by the new prospects this opened for German Jews. His father's business would fail, however, and Harry would be sent to , where a rich banker uncle named Salomon would attempt without success to inject him into a commercial trajectory. He would study at the universities of Bonn, Berlin, and Göttingen but would develop more interest in literature than in law.

NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT

Harry Heine “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

HEINRICH HEINE HARRY HEINE

1821

December 20, Thursday: Michael Martin, who had robbed Major John Bray in Medford, was hanged at Boston’s and Cambridge’s Lechmere Point. (An accomplice known as “Captain Lightfoot” had been able to escape, and would reside for many years incognito in Brattleboro, Vermont, not dying until 1835.)

H. Heine (the “H” at this point still stood for “Harry” rather than “Heinrich”) made his debut as a poet with GEDICHTE VON H. HEINE (Berlin: in der Maurerfchen Buchhandlung, 1822; this included one of his most famous poems “Zwei Grenadiere” which reflected his admiration for Napoléon Bonaparte).

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 20th of 12th M / Our Meeting was a pretty solid one & silent - life seemed rather low in my own particular, but being favor’d with an evidence that favour was not withheld I desire to be thankful. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Harry Heine HDT WHAT? INDEX

HARRY HEINE HEINRICH HEINE

1823

Heinrich Heine’s TRAGÖDIEN, NEBST EINEM LYRISCHEN . HDT WHAT? INDEX

HEINRICH HEINE HARRY HEINE

1825

Overwhelmed by the student enthusiasm for Professor G.W.F. Hegel, the lecturer at the University of Berlin with whom he had been in competition for the past five years, who was lecturing at the same hour – and unwilling to change the hour of his lecture in order to cope with this– Herr Professor Arthur Schopenhauer withdrew from the academy to pursue other cultural interests.

Harry Heine graduated from college. His professor in Berlin had been Hegel. Both he and his Professor were admirers of Napoleon Bonaparte. In order to explore the possibility of a government civil service career, he took the steps necessary to convert to Protestantism, steps such as baptism, and changed his name to Heinrich. ANTISEMITISM

THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

February 18, Friday: The Mendelssohn family purchased a new mansion in Berlin, at 3 Leipzigerstrasse. This would become a meeting place for the Mendelssohn circle, including Heinrich Heine, Professor G.W.F. Hegel, and Alexander von Humboldt.

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Harry Heine HDT WHAT? INDEX

HARRY HEINE HEINRICH HEINE

1826

Heinrich Heine’s (THE JOURNEY).

The 2d American edition of Edward Everett’s English translation of Professor Philip Karl Buttmann’s GRIECHISCHE SCHUL-GRAMMATIK, titled GREEK GRAMMAR FOR THE USE OF SCHOOLS, FROM THE GERMAN OF PHILIP BUTTMANN (Boston: Cummings, Hilliard, and Company), prepared by George Bancroft and George Henry Bode at the Round Hill School in Northampton.

Harvard College student Cornelius Conway Felton was at least in part supporting himself during his education by teaching one winter in Bolton and another winter in Concord, and at the Round Hill School in Northampton. During the two years 1827 to 1829 he would have charge of the high school in Livingston County, New York. He must have been an exceedingly disciplined scholar for also, in this his senior year, he was serving as one of the conductors of a student periodical, the Harvard Register.

(At the Concord Free Public Library, under Accession # 10443, is Henry Thoreau’s personal copy, presented to the library by Sophia Elizabeth Thoreau in 1874. On the front free endpaper is inscribed “D.H. Thoreau / Cambridge / Mass 1833.”)1 AS STUDIED BY THOREAU

1. During this year Professor Buttmann was issuing his ÜBER DIE ENTSTEHUNG DER STERNBILDER AUF DER GRIECHISCHEN SFÄRE. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HEINRICH HEINE HARRY HEINE

1827

Heinrich Heine’s BUCH DER LIEDER, his first comprehensive collection of verse. In this year he visited England, but was put off by that nation’s formality of behavior and by its bourgeois materialism. He engaged in a one-sided infatuation with his cousins Amalie and Therese. The following is from “Du Bist Wie eine Blume,” written for Therese:

Du bist wie eine Blume so hold und schön und rein; ich schau’ dich an, und Wehmut schleicht mir ins Herz hinein. Mir ist, als ob ich die Hände aufs Haupt dir legen sollt’, betend, dass Grott dich erhalte so rein und schön und hold. “You’re so lovely as a flower, So pure and fair to see; I look at you, and sadness Comes stealing over me.”

DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.

Harry Heine “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

HARRY HEINE HEINRICH HEINE

1829

March 11, Wednesday: Frances Jane Shattuck was born in Concord, 4th child of Daniel Shattuck and Betsey Miles Shattuck.

The Reverend Waldo Emerson was ordained as a junior pastor at the 2d Congregational (Unitarian) Church on Hanover Street in Boston.2 (His father had been pastor of the First Unitarian Church in Boston but had died early after suffering from a respiratory problem.) Finally Waldo would be able to move out of his lodgings at Divinity Hall in Cambridge, and in with George Sampson on North Allen Street in Boston (he would later board with Abel Adams on Chardon Street, nearer his church).

At 6PM Felix Mendelssohn conducted, from the piano, using for the first time a baton, the first performance of Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. Matthew Passion in nearly a century. In the alto section of the chorus was Fanny Mendelssohn. This performance, in the Berlin Singakademie, was much more successful than the original. There was a standing-room-only audience, and in attendance were the King of Prussia, Professor G.W.F. Hegel, Gaspare Spontini, Alexander von Humboldt, and Heinrich Heine.

THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Harry Heine 2. Note that “Unitarian” is a subspecies of “Congregational.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

HEINRICH HEINE HARRY HEINE

1831

The study of paradigms of bridge failure by Louis Joseph Vicat, RAPPORT SUR LES PONTS EN FIL DU FER SUR LE RHONE, was necessitated by the collapse of a number of France’s suspension bridges.

The French removed one of the massive obelisks of red granite still surviving at Luxor in Egypt (after its temples had been plundered by the Persians in 520BCE), and this would be set up in the Place de la Concorde in Paris in 1836 (what’s the point? — Oh, you know).

The phrenologist Dr. George Combe’s OBSERVATIONS ON MENTAL DERANGEMENT. The Phrenological Society of Paris was established.

Heinrich Heine went to Paris as a journalist, and there would write newspaper articles about the development of democracy and capitalism in France.

Jean-Baptiste Say became Professor of Political Economy at the College de France. A chair of Egyptian antiquities was created there, especially for Jean-François Champollion. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HARRY HEINE HEINRICH HEINE

1832

January 22, Sunday: Molly Pitcher, who had distinguished herself in the battle of Monmouth during the Revolutionary War, died.

French police arrested leaders of the St. Simonians, an egalitarian religious-political group that numbered among its affiliates many top artists. Ferdinand Hiller and Heinrich Heine witnessed some of the arrests. Among their effects was Mendelssohn’s Piano Quartet in b minor. Although Felix Mendelssohn was present in Paris, he was never himself associated with this group.

In Providence, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 22 of 1st M 1832 / Silent & hard meeting in the Morning - In the Afternoon Wm Almy was here & preached about the Devil. & it is astonishing to me that some do not believe there is a Devil when his works are so conspicuously seen — It was an Admirable Sermon & I was very thankful we had such a preacher as Wm Almy. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT

Harry Heine “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

HEINRICH HEINE HARRY HEINE

1833

Henry Jacob Bigelow would be David Henry Thoreau’s classmate at Harvard College, until first receiving a “public admonition” and finally being dismissed from the college on April 24, 1837, the Saturday prior to the commencement in that year, for having been in possession of firearms and ammunition in his dormitory room and repeatedly discharging a firearm inside the room (MH-Ar Faculty Records UAIII 5.5.2.IX, 311). Evidently he was able to resume his studies, at Dartmouth College.

In 1795 a Conservatoire des Artes et Métiers had been established for France, and in this year that system of trade museums was introduced into Germany (the 1st efforts to accomplish anything of the kind in England would not come until 1837 with the Museum of Economic Geology, in 1848 with the Museum of Economic HDT WHAT? INDEX

HARRY HEINE HEINRICH HEINE

Botany at Kew, and in 1851 with the Museum of Practical Geology and the School of Mines).

At Harvard, under instructor Hermann Bokum (who was filling the place left vacant by the departure of Charles Follen), Thoreau began four terms of study of the German language. Bokum had just come to Harvard from the University of Pennsylvania, where he had just prepared a new edition of BERNAYS’ COMPENDIOUS GERMAN GRAMMAR, WITH A DICTIONARY OF PREFIXES AND AFFIXES, AND WITH ALTERNATIONS, ADDITIONS, AND REFERENCES TO AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF THE GERMAN LANGUAGE (60 pages; Philadelphia: Hogan and Thompson, 139½ Market Street, 1832). This, presumably, would have been used in Thoreau’s classroom.3 COMPENDIOUS GERMAN

Heinrich Heine’s ZUR GESCHICHTE DER NEUREN SCHÖNEN LITERATUR IN DEUTSCHLAND (PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE IN GERMANY). Also in this year, his FRANZÖSISCHE ZUSTÄNDE (FRENCH AFFAIRS).

Twelve year-old future philologist George Adler was brought to the USA from Leipzig, Germany.

A projected uprising in the Piedmont was betrayed before it had begun, and a number of its idealistic and ruthless ringleaders committed suicide or were executed. The Italian government put a dead-or-alive price on Giuseppe Mazzini’s head, and he had to move to Switzerland to get out of the jurisdiction of the French police. In Switzerland he tried to raise an army to invade Savoy, but not enough young men were willing to die, so instead he founded organizations named Young Germany, Young Switzerland, Young Poland, and Young Europe.

October 3, Thursday: Hector Berlioz got married with Harriet Constance Smithson, an actress, in the chapel of the British embassy in Paris. Franz Liszt was a witness as were Ferdinand Hiller and Heinrich Heine. The service was in both English and French to accommodate the happy couple, who lacked fluency in each other’s languages.

3. Interestingly, both Charles Follen and Hermann Bokum would be instrumental in bringing the Christmas Tree tradition to America. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HEINRICH HEINE HARRY HEINE

1834

Thomas Campbell visited Paris and Algiers. He was in the process of creating his LETTERS FROM THE SOUTH, which would be printed in 1837.

Heinrich Heine fell in love with an illiterate salesgirl, Crecence Eugénie Mirat (in his poems, “Mathilde”). Seven years into their relationship, they would marry. Although Mathilde would prove to be something of a spendthrift, during her husband’s eight long years of illness she would tend to him faithfully and tenderly. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HARRY HEINE HEINRICH HEINE

1835

December 7, Monday: Opening of the 1st session of the 24th US Congress, with 141 Democrats and 95 Whigs. James Knox Polk (Democrat of Tennessee) became Speaker of the House of Representatives.

Elijah Hinsdale Burritt was elected as moderator of the New Britain Ecclesiastical Society.

Opening of the 1st steam railway in Germany, the line between Nürnberg and Fürth.

At the end of the year the Federal German Diet attempted to force a nationwide ban on all works by Heinrich Heine. In Paris he would find himself surrounded by police spies, and what had begun as a voluntary exile would become a forced one. ANTISEMITISM HDT WHAT? INDEX

HEINRICH HEINE HARRY HEINE

1836

Heinrich Heine’s DIE ROMANTISCHE SCHULE. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HARRY HEINE HEINRICH HEINE

After November 17, Thursday: David Henry Thoreau supplemented his borrowings from the Harvard Library by checking out, from the library of the “Institute of 1770,” Volume 92 of the North American Review — the volume which contains Harvard Professor Charles Beck (1798-1866)’s “Heine’s Letters on German Literature,” a review of LETTERS AUXILIARY, a review “Travellers in America” of the just-published first part of Alexis de Tocqueville’s ONTHE DEMOCRACY OF AMERICA, and critical notices of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s LETTERS, CONVERSATIONS AND RECOLLECTIONS, the Reverend Convers Francis’s LIFE OF JOHN ELIOT, THE APOSTLE TO THE INDIANS (in the 5th of the ten volumes of the 1st Series of the Reverend Jared Sparks’s THE LIBRARY OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY), LIBRARY OF AM. BIOG. V

and Thomas K. Fessenden’s TERRIBLE TRACTORATION!! A POETICAL PETITION AGAINST GALVANISING TRUMPERY, AND THE PERKINISTIC INSTITUTION. IN FOUR CANTOS (BY CHRISTOPHER CAUSTIC) (London: Printed for T. Hurst, 1803). HDT WHAT? INDEX

HEINRICH HEINE HARRY HEINE

November 19, Saturday: David Henry Thoreau supplemented his borrowings from the Harvard Library by checking out, from the library of the “Institute of 1770,” George W. Haven’s translation of Heinrich Heine’s LETTERS AUXILIARY TO THE HISTORY OF MODERN POLITE LITERATURE IN GERMANY (Boston: J. Munroe, 1836).

MODERN POLITE GERMAN ... At the Teatro San Carlo of Naples, Gaetano Donizetti’s dramma lirico L’assedio di Calais to words of Cammarano after DuBelloy was performed for the initial time. The work, produced for the nameday of the Neapolitan queen mother, was well received.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: HDT WHAT? INDEX

HARRY HEINE HEINRICH HEINE

7th day 19th of 11 M / More than a week ago I heard transiently that Elisha Bates had been Baptized in Water — today it is confirmed - Dr Tobey having sent me a copy of a letter from him to some person in England wherein he acknowledges the fact & undertakes an explanation of his conduct - but had he have been a thorough Quaker & stable minded man he would never have resorted to the beggarly elements, which was never designed for any thing but a Sign & to fulfill the Law for all righteousness — all which we hold & I do most assuredly believe was fulfilled in the coming of Christ & who by his appearance in the flesh put an end to all Shadows & introduced the Gospel in a more spiritual manner than it was before known, & it is also my unshaken faith that Jesus Christ is still known in spirit & that we, of this day know nothing more of him that will be of saving virtue — We read of him in The Scriptures, & it is a great favour, that record is preserved to us, but we may read them, & read them again, & know nothing of him that will save us, & it is by & thro’ him, by the opperation of his spirit in our hearts that we are saved with an everlasting Salvation. Our young friend Gilbert Congdon from Providence called & set the evening with us — he gave us much information of our friends in Providence, & his visit to us was pleasant & interesting — he seems to be a young man well engaged & I hope will be of use in Society - & greatly do I desire there were a great many More such than there is. — HDT WHAT? INDEX

HEINRICH HEINE HARRY HEINE

1837

Joseph Seligman arrived in America at the age of 17 and would ask his ten brothers to join him. During the US Civil War he would become the major underwriter of Union bonds. JUDAISM

A poem by Heinrich Heine was set to music by Friedrich Silcher (as a song this would become so extraordinarily popular, that the best the Nazis would be able do to suppress the German Jewish origin of the author would be to register the lyric as of “unknown” origin). ANTISEMITISM “I do not know what haunts me, What saddened my mind all day; An age-old tale confounds me, A spell I cannot allay.” PERFORMANCE ON YOUTUBE

WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF

Harry Heine “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

HARRY HEINE HEINRICH HEINE

1838

February 1, Thursday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day Attended the Qry Meeting at large the weight of the Service was on Moses H Beede & it seemed to me Truth was over all tho’ under oppression — Buinsess was well conducted in the last Meeting, tho’ we had a trying case in the appeal of a female from Swanzey Moy [Monthly] Meeting — took tea & spent the evening at Dr Tobeys in intersting conversation 6th day Attended the School committee & the Trustees of O Browns Fund — In the Afternoon the committee Visited the Schools & had good opportunites in both Male & female departments. — In the evening met with the Yearly Meetings committee at Wm Jenkins in which some distressing disclosures were made respecting the State of Society at Lynn, & after labouring after the council of best Wisdom it seemed most advisable to wait a few weeks before the committee visited them to see if some adjustment could not be had amongst themselves — This Morning again took the Stage & came home, having a cold ride, but do not find I have taken Much cold by the exposure RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

February 4, Sunday: In this day’s issue of Revue et Gazette Musicale, Heinrich Heine termed Frédéric François Chopin “a poet of sound.”

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 4th of 2nd M 1838 / Attended Meetings, in the forenoon Father Rodman was there & had satisfactory offerings — Silent in the Afternoon Mother Rodman seems very low this evening - & it looks as if the time of her probation is nearly closed — She seems nearly worn out, tho’ she may last some time longer — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

HEINRICH HEINE HARRY HEINE

1840

Heinrich Heine’s ÜBER LUDWIG BÖRNE.

December 25, Christmas: The newlywed Clara Schumann created, as a Christmas present for her husband Robert Schumann, the compositions Am Strande on a translation of a Burns poem, and Volkslied and Ihr Bildnis on two texts by Heinrich Heine.

Henry Thoreau incorporated some thoughts on George Washington that obviously derive from a perusal of François Pierre Guillaume Guizot’s ESSAY ON THE CHARACTER AND INFLUENCE OF WASHINGTON IN THE REVOLUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, which had been published in this year by J. Munroe and Company in Boston, a volume which we have found in his personal library:

GUIZOT ON G. WASHINGTON HDT WHAT? INDEX

HARRY HEINE HEINRICH HEINE

Dec 25th 1840. The character of Washington has, after all, been undervalued, because not valued correctly. He was a proper Puritan hero. It is his erectness and persistency which attract me. A few simple deeds with a dignified silence for background, and that is all. He never fluctuated, nor lingered, nor stooped, nor swerved, but was nobly silent and assured. He was not the darling of the people, as no man of integrity can ever be, but was as much respected as loved. His instructions to his steward, his refusal of a crown, his interview with his officers at the termination of the war, his thoughts after his retirement, as expressed in a letter to La Fayette, his remarks to another correspondent on his being chosen president, his last words to Congress, and the unparalleled respect which his most distinguished contemporaries, as Fox and Erskine, expressed for him, are refreshing to read in these unheroic days. His behavior in the field and in council and his dignified and contented withdrawal to private life were great. He could advance and he could withdraw. But we are not sorry he is dead. The thought there is in a sentence is its solid part, which will wear to the latest times. When the above would be published by H.G.O. Blake in his “Winter” volume of extracts from Thoreau’s journal in 1887, H.G.O. BLAKE’S “WINTER”

it would be redacted by the suppression of the final two sentences! The general remark about thoughts and sentences would be elided and one can understand the appropriateness of such an elision, since that sentence is a standalone entity that has nothing whatever to do with the topic of the day’s entry. However, the shattering remark about the memory of DWM George Washington, “But we are not sorry he is dead,” which concluded Thoreau’s story about the memory of Washington and tied a knot in its tale, was very much on topic — and it also was elided by Blake. It is almost as if Thoreau was uttering more truth than Blake considered that the general American public could be able to bear!

For what is it, to point out that in fact we are not sorry that General, then President, George Washington is dead? –It is to point out that our usage of these “founding father” figures has little to do with them as actual human beings, having instead to do with them in abstraction, as functioning cogs in a public process. While he was still alive this human being might begin to misbehave, and sadly embarrass us. Only when one of these actual human beings has been safely interred, do we dare thus to iconize him — reduce him to a functionality as a cultural artifact. Thus it comes about that –although of course we do not face this unsentimental fact– we’re not at all sorry he died.

We may well note that Professor Guizot was the exact person to assist Thoreau in this manner, for as prime minister of France during the most intense revolutionary period of Europe in 1848, the Year of Anarchy, political opposition groups had been masking their meetings by a pretense of the celebration of the birthday of George Washington. These continental oppositionists in fact had no interest whatever in our DWM (they probably didn’t even know when his birthday was) but this was their conceit, this was their pretense — they were assembling “to celebrate HDT WHAT? INDEX

HEINRICH HEINE HARRY HEINE

Washington’s birthday.” They were not sorry he had died –they were not glad he had lived –they were merely using him as their convenient cover story. Thoreau picked up on this and attempted to tell us about it (but then his friend H.G.O. Blake wouldn’t let that happen). HDT WHAT? INDEX

HARRY HEINE HEINRICH HEINE

1841

April 26, Monday:Frédéric François Chopin was the featured artist at the Salle Pleyel, Paris performing mostly his own music including the Mazurkas op.41, the Ballade op.38, the Scherzo op.39, and the Polonaise op.40/ 1. The evening was an unequalled triumph. Eugene Delacroix had stayed in bed the last two days to get over a sore throat just so he could attend. Also present were Hector Belioz, Franz Liszt, Heinrich Heine, and, of course, George Sand.

After having put $10.00 down on the 16 acres of orchard known as the Hollowell Farm and then being handed back his deposit when Mr. Hollowell changed his mind and attempted to excuse himself by blaming it on his absent wife,

WALDEN: My imagination carried me so far that I even had the refusal of PEOPLE OF several farms, –the refusal was all I wanted,– but I never got my fingers WALDEN burned by actual possession. The nearest that I came to actual possession was when I bought the Hollowell Place, and had begun to sort my seeds, and collected materials with which to make a wheelbarrow to carry it on or off with; but before the owner gave me a deed of it, his wife –every man has such a wife– changed her mind and wished to keep it, and he offered me ten dollars to release him. Now, to speak the truth, I had but ten cents in the world, and it surpassed my arithmetic to tell, if I was that man who had ten cents, or who had a farm, or ten dollars, or all together. However, I let him keep the ten dollars and the farm too, for I had carried it far enough; or rather, to be generous, I sold him the farm for just what I gave for it, and, as he was not a rich man, made him a present of ten dollars, and still had my ten cents, and seeds, and materials for a wheelbarrow left. I found thus that I had been a rich man without any damage to my poverty. But I retained the landscape, and I have since annually carried off what it yielded without a wheelbarrow. With respect to landscapes,– “I am monarch of all I survey, My right there is none to dispute.”

ALEXANDER SELKIRK WILLIAM COWPER

and after earning $0.75 one day shoveling manure (for comparison, eggs cost a cent and a half each at this point), Henry Thoreau replaced Alex McCaffery as Waldo Emerson’s “handyman” and went to live in the Emerson home, working without salary for room and board and of course for the association with Mr. Emerson, which Thoreau treasured. “Went to R.W.E.’s in spring of 1841 and stayed there to summer [May] of 1843.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

HEINRICH HEINE HARRY HEINE

WALDEN: I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in. Who made them serfs of the soil? Why should they eat their sixty acres, when man is condemned to eat only his peck of dirt? Why should they begin digging their graves as soon as they are born? They have got to live a man’s life, pushing all these things before them, and get on as well as they can. How many a poor immortal soul have I met well nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it a barn seventy-five feet by forty, its Augean stables never cleansed, and one hundred acres of land, tillage, mowing, pasture and wood-lot! The portionless, who struggle with no such unnecessary inherited encumbrances, find it labor enough to subdue and cultivate a few cubic feet of flesh.

April 26. Monday. At R.W.E.’s. The charm of the Indian to me is that he stands free and unconstrained in Nature, is her inhabitant and not her guest, and wears her easily and gracefully. But the civilized man has the habits of the house. His house is a prison, in which he finds himself oppressed and confined, not sheltered and protected. He walks as if he sustained the roof; he carries his arms as if the walls would fall in and crush him, and his feet remember the cellar beneath. His muscles are never relaxed. It is rare that he overcomes the house, and learns to sit at home in it, and roof and floor and walls support themselves, as the sky and trees and earth. It is a great art to saunter. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HARRY HEINE HEINRICH HEINE

December 27, Monday: Franz Liszt played his first concert in Berlin, before King Friedrich Wilhelm IV. It was here where “” first occurred (a word coined by Heinrich Heine). He was so successful that he would remain in Berlin for ten weeks playing 21 concerts. Liszt would receive the Ordre pour le Mérite from the King and be elected to the Prussian Academy of Fine Arts.

In protest of the racist Dorr constitution, Frederick Douglass spoke on this day and the following one at the Regional Anti-Slavery Convention in Providence, Rhode Island.

It seems unlikely that during this visit William J. Brown met Douglass, since if he had he surely would have mentioned it. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HEINRICH HEINE HARRY HEINE

1842

December 23, Friday: Thomas Harwood died. The body would be placed in the vault of his wife Maria Woodward Harwood, in Hammerwich church, Church of England Diocese of Lichfield.

The elite of artistic Paris gathered at the Hôtel L’Empire to bid farewell to Giacomo Meyerbeer the night before he departed for Berlin. Among those present were Frédéric François Chopin, Gaetano Donizetti, Adolphe Adam, and Heinrich Heine. Those sending messages include George Sand, Eugéne Scribe, and Daniel- François-Esprit Auber.

According to an article in the Chicago Western Citizen, a slave had escaped from the South to Oswego, New York but then, becoming ill, had returned to the South. Under torture, he revealed that he had learned about a “railroad under ground” that the abolitionists had built, but informed his torturers that when he had gotten there “the trap-door was shut.” UNDERGROUND RAILROAD HDT WHAT? INDEX

HARRY HEINE HEINRICH HEINE

1843

January 2, Monday: Der fliegende Holländer, a romantische Oper by Richard Wagner to his own words after Heinrich Heine, was performed for the first time, at the Dresden Hoftheater, directed by the composer. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HEINRICH HEINE HARRY HEINE

1844

In Paris, Karl Marx (1818-1883) met Friedrich Engels (1820-1895).

Here are Henry Thoreau and Karl Marx according to David Sprague Herreshoff (who very possibly has them confused with the Marx Brothers): [S]ince culture changes through time, WALDEN is in part a report on Thoreau’s experimental reenactment of transitional events in economic history. In the weight he gives to that history, Thoreau is more of a historical materialist than one might suppose a transcendentalist ought to be. Sometimes the line between transcendent idealism and materialism seems scarcely visible. On the importance of economic history the thoughts of Thoreau and Marx are close. In 1844, the year before Thoreau went to live at Walden Pond, Marx was thinking about the history of industry.

Heinrich Lehman arrived in America, and would be joined by his brothers Emanuel and Mayer. They would later become known as Lehman Brothers (world’s largest commodities brokers). JUDAISM

Heinrich Heine’s uncle died leaving him a small pension. He also accepted a pension from the French government.

After a visit to his home country, in defiance of the German censors he published a long verse attack on reactionary politics, DEUTCHLAND: EIN WINTERMÄRCHEN. Near the end of this poem the patron goddess of Hamburg reveals a vision of Germany’s future to the poet-narrator — at the bottom of a chamberpot.

When Silesian weavers protested violently against intolerable working conditions the poet sided with them. When Friedrich Engels would translate this from NEUE GEDICHTE into English, it would guarantee that Heine would eventually become one of the most studied in Communist countries: “Doomed be the fatherland, false name, / Where nothing thrives but disgrace and shame, / Where flowers are crushed before they unfold, / Where the worm is quickened by rot and mold — We weave, we weave” (Karl Marx also read Heine’s poems, and corresponded with him). HDT WHAT? INDEX

HARRY HEINE HEINRICH HEINE

1847

In response to Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s SYSTEM OF ECONOMIC CONTRADICTIONS; OR,THE PHILOSOPHY OF POVERTY, Karl Marx issued THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY.

Loeb Strauss left Germany for New York.4

Heinrich Heine’s ATTA TROLL.

4. Hint: He would change his first name here from “Loeb” to “Levi.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

HEINRICH HEINE HARRY HEINE

1848

January: Friedrich Engels visited Heinrich Heine and wrote “... Heine ist am Kaputtgehen. Vor vierzehn Tagen war ich bei ihm, da lag er im Bett und hatte einen Nervenanfall gehabt. Gestern war er auf, aber höchst elend. Er kann keine drei Schritte mehr gehen, er schleicht an den Mauern sich stützend von Fauteuil bis ans Bett und vice versa. Dazu Lärm in seinem Hause, der ihn verrückt macht.” Since 1844, the poet had suffered not only financial reversals and but also a general physical deterioration. According to some suppositions this may have been either congenital neuropathy or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s disease). From this year until his death he would lie paralyzed, partly blind, and heavily sedated on what he termed his “mattress grave” — but in this condition he would author one of his finest collection of verse, ROMANZERO.

The French Prime Minister François Pierre Guillaume Guizot refused permission for opposition political groups to stage political meetings in celebration of the birthday of George Washington (these had been being termed the “Paris Banquets”). HDT WHAT? INDEX

HARRY HEINE HEINRICH HEINE

Martin Johnson Heade was in Rome. (Probably, he then went on to Paris.) Thomas Hicks, his former associate under Edward Hicks, was also in Rome at this point. It was presumably in this year that Heade painted his surviving genre picture, “The Roman Newsboys,” as the torn posters on the wall behind the two newsboys reflect the political unrest of this year (one poster has to do with Vincenzo Gioberti of the Risorgimento movement, and the name of Pope Pius IX is scrawled in several locations), while the leaflets being handed out are antigovernmental in nature. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HEINRICH HEINE HARRY HEINE

1851

Heinrich Heine’s ROMANZERO and DER DOCTOR FAUST. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HARRY HEINE HEINRICH HEINE

1853

Heinrich Heine’s LES DIEUX EN EXIL and DIE HARZREISE. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HEINRICH HEINE HARRY HEINE

1854

Heinrich Heine’s LUTEZIA and VERMISCHTE SCHRIFTEN (VARIOUS WRITINGS).

December 24, Sunday: Joseph Joachim visited Robert Schumann at the insane asylum near Bonn. He was heartened by what he found and rushed to Düsseldorf to tell the good news to Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms.

Jules Massenet was awarded a troisième accessit in piano at the Paris Conservatoire.

At the second performance of Hector Berlioz’s L’enfance du Christ in the Salle Herz, the audience included Giuseppe Verdi, Heinrich Heine, and Cosima and Blandine Liszt. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HARRY HEINE HEINRICH HEINE

1856

February 17, Sunday: Heinrich Heine died in Paris at the age of 58.

Frederic Eugene Ives was born.

The Reverend Convers Francis preached in Concord. His prooftext for the morning service was Luke 7:57 and his topic was “Natural Power of Moral Judgment.” His prooftext for the afternoon service was Ecclesiastes 8:5 and his topic was “The Use of Opportunities.”

The Reverend Moncure Daniel Conway preached a sermon on “Spiritual Liberty” which was immediately published as a pamphlet, in which he took up a stance in opposition to the Sermon on the Mount’s “Resist not evil” injunction by declaring that in fact “Christ opposed evil” regardless of what anybody alleged he had said on the subject, and that it was therefore the solemn obligation of every Christian to imitate Christ by making his or her own assault on injustice.5

Why may the injustice of our ancestors to the Indians be freely denounced in the pulpit, whilst every whisper of injustice to the African must be silenced? ... The reason the soul is not gagged about the Indian is because we have got all the good we can by injustice to him, and villainy which does not pay is seen to be horrible at once.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY VOLUME II

5. Moncure Daniel Conway. SPIRITUAL LIBERTY: A DISCOURSE, DELIVERED IN THE UNITARIAN CHURCH, WASHINGTON DC, ON SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 1856, BY MONCURE D. CONWAY, MINISTER OF THE CHURCH. Pamphlet. Buell & Blanchard, Printers, Washington DC. READ THE FULL TEXT HDT WHAT? INDEX

HEINRICH HEINE HARRY HEINE

1858

February 20, Saturday: Giacomo Meyerbeer made a deal with Mathilde Heine, widow of Heinrich Heine who had died on February 17, 1856, in regard to four poems that cast the composer in an unfavorable light. The widow accepted 4,500 francs and would defer publication until after Meyerbeer’s death, in 1869. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HARRY HEINE HEINRICH HEINE

1861

December 16, Monday: Du bist wie eine blume for unaccompanied chorus by Anton Bruckner to words of Heinrich Heine, was performed for the first time, in Linz. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HEINRICH HEINE HARRY HEINE

1869

February 26, Friday: William Ratcliffe, an opera by Cesar Cui to his own words after Heinrich Heine (tr. Pleshcheyev), was performed for the first time, in the Mariinsky Theater, St. Petersburg. This was the first complete opera by one of the Balakirev circle to be produced. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HARRY HEINE HEINRICH HEINE

1878

April 8, Monday: Johannes Brahms began his long-postponed tour of Italy.

Three songs by Brahms were performed for the first time, in Vienna: Tambourliedchen op.69/5, to words of Candidus, Es liebt sich so lieblich im Lenze! op.71/1 to words of Heinrich Heine, and An den Mond, op.71/2 to words of Simrock.

Much to the dismay of his parents, Charles Villiers Stanford got married with a singer, Jennie Anna Maria Wetton, daughter of an adventurer and land speculator, at Ockley parish church in Surrey. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HEINRICH HEINE HARRY HEINE

1885

February 27, Friday: Two songs by Johannes Brahms were performed for the first time, in Vienna: Der Tod, das ist die kühle Nacht op. 96/1 to words of Heinrich Heine, and Wir wandelten, wir zwei zusammen op.96/2 to traditional words. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HARRY HEINE HEINRICH HEINE

1886

January 8, Friday: On a visit to the Villa Medici in Rome, Franz Liszt heard a piano duet version of his Faust Symphony played by Paul Vidal and Claude Debussy. Unfortunately, the maestro fell asleep during the performance.

Five songs by Johannes Brahms were performed for the first time, in Vienna: Meerfahrt op.96/4, to words of Heinrich Heine, Nachtigall op.97/1 to words of Reinhold, Dort in den Weiden op.97/4 to traditional words, Komm Bald, op.97/5 to words of Groth, and Trennung op.97/6, to traditional words. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HEINRICH HEINE HARRY HEINE

1895

February 16, Monday: Antonin Dvorák was made an honorary member of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde of Vienna.

Guglielmo Ratcliff, a tragedia by to words translated by Maffei after Heinrich Heine, was performed for the initial time, in the Teatro alla Scala of Milan, with the composer himself conducting. Press and public were favorable, although there was much criticism of the drama. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HARRY HEINE HEINRICH HEINE

1896

February 4, Tuesday: Sommerabend op.85/1, a song by Johannes Brahms to words of Heinrich Heine, was performed for the initial time, in Vienna.

Thaddeus Cahill applied for a US patent on a machine to produce “electrical music.” The intent was to create a device that would direct live music to various locations, simultaneously. This would be termed the Telharmonium. In the patent application Cahill first used the word “synthesizing,” to describe his machine’s creation of complex electronic sounds.

“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Harry Heine HDT WHAT? INDEX

HEINRICH HEINE HARRY HEINE

COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2015. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at .

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST

Prepared: January 10, 2015 HDT WHAT? INDEX

HARRY HEINE HEINRICH HEINE

ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button. HDT WHAT? INDEX

HARRY HEINE HEINRICH HEINE

Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with . Arrgh.