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But then, in the next stanza, Heine turns satirical and begins speaking about his need for some love life.
Various poems take up themes of loss, such as “Verlorne Wünsche” (“Lost Wishes”) and “Wiedersehen” (“Reunion”); the latter speaks of the desire to meet someone lost in the past. Also prominent are themes of exile, which would speak to Freud’s longings for Freiberg and Rome and to his permanent sense of exile in Vienna. We followed the corpse, the lovely boy. They have buried him under May flowers. For long years how often, oh little one, I have thought of you with envy and sadness. These lines could well have triggered Freud’s recollections of his response to the death of his little brother Julius, who, not long after his death on April 15 so many years ago, would have lain under May flowers. But Freud could also be mourning himself—his childhood, which died in late May. One of the later poems, “Frau Sorge” (“Woman of Sorrows”), is most intriguing. Heine speaks of her as a guardian who sits next to his bed in the winter night. Described as an “old and ugly woman nodding by his bed,” she is very reminiscent of Freud’s nanny as he depicted her. In the last section of this poem, Heine writes: Sometimes I dream that happiness and the new month of May have returned. The noise of the dozing one, whom God pities, breaks the soap bubble; the old woman sneezes. This figure of an old nanny-like woman sitting by the bed of a child at night, together with dreams of happiness in May and the loss of dreams—all of this would have spoken directly to Freud. It is likely that the reference to Frau Sorge would have been naturally associated in Freud’s mind both with his nanny and with the character by the same name who is a major figure at the end of Faust: It is she who brings Faust blindness, and who informs him that death is imminent. The next poems all represent religious or Freudian themes. They are: “An die Engel” (“To the Angel”); “Im Oktober 1849” about exile; “Böses Geträume” (“Evil Dreaming”); “Sie erlischt” (“My Soul Dies”); and “Vermächtnis” (“Testament”). The last poem is “Enfant perdu” (“Lost Child”), which ends with a death scene: The wounds are open—my blood streams out…. Yet, I am unconquered when I die and my weapons are not broken—only my heart is broken. Many aspects of these poems could have drawn Freud: The ambiguous Christian themes, and Heine’s situation as a converted Jew; the blend of hope with bitter irony and satire against his “Christian brothers”; and indeed the whole ambivalence of the poems about Christianity and |