Abstract
By comparing Heinrich Heine and Karl Marx, this essay examines the role of both in the genesis of the figure of the modern critic-Intellectual, the concept of revolution, philosophies of the history and the paradigm of essayism proposed by Heine and Marx. The essayism is defined as an essential factor in the philosophy of Marx and in the tradition of Marxism, and understood as an essentially non-dogmatic form of theoretical and critical approach, which—in a dialectical way—is not based on fixed, ahistorical principles, but is given to an open and secular exploration of the world. Taking as starting point an analysis of the intellectual circumstances of the European—and, in particular, French—Restoration and an examination of the debate provoked by the Börne book of Heinrich Heine, this essay delineates the figure of the critic-Intellectual on the basis of the Hegelian concept of “torn conscience”, understood as a specifically characteristic figure of Modernity. The method of Marx is presented as a particularly lucid way of concretizing this paradigm of thought and orientation towards the world, with the purpose of understanding and transforming it.
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Notes
- 1.
José Carlos Mariátegui, Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality, trans. Marjory Urquidi (Texas: Texas University Press, 1971), 12.
- 2.
Georges Sorel, Reflections on Violence, ed. Jeremy Jennings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 328.
- 3.
Hugo Friedrich, Montaigne, trans. Dawn Eng (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 328.
- 4.
Hans Magnus Enzensberger, “EditorischeNotiz,” in Ludwig Börne und Heinrich Heine. Ein deutsches Zerwürfnis, ed. H. M. Enzensberger (Leipzig: Reclam, 1989), 385; when not otherwise stated, the translations are mine.
- 5.
Karl Marx, Capital, vol. III, in MECW (New York: International Publishers, 1998), 38.
- 6.
Heinrich Heine, Pictures of Travel, trans. Charles Godfrey Leland, 8th revised ed. (Philadelphia: Schaefer & Koradi, 1879), 312.
- 7.
Gerhard Höhn, Heine-Handbuch. Zeit, Person, Werk (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1987), 67.
- 8.
“Without having had to do a change of place, but with a clear chronological postponement, Paris 1832 and not Paris 1898 can be identified as the authentic hour of birth of the modern intellectual—with the ‘contestation permanente’ of the old German society and with the radical criticism of French modern society; with, in short, the Preface and the French Conditions as documentary act” (Ibid., 31).
- 9.
According to Laube, Heine has made the following comment to him in the course of a conversation: “how can you expect […] that I should renounce to all that for the sake of the wisdom of your party! I do not belong to any party, or only- he finished with a laugh—to myparty” (H. M. Enzensberger, ed., Ludwig Börne und Heinrich Heine. Ein deutsches Zerwürfnis, 109).
- 10.
Heinrich Heine, Ludwig Börne: A Memorial, trans. Jeffrey L. Sammons (New York: Camden House, 2006), 53.
- 11.
Ibid., 73.
- 12.
Ibid., 8–9.
- 13.
Ibid., 13.
- 14.
Ibid., 25.
- 15.
Leo Löwenthal, Das bürgerliche Bewußtsein in der Literatur (Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 1990), 435.
- 16.
Peter Uwe Hohendahl, “Kosmopolitischer Patriotismus. Ludwig Börne und die Identität Deutschlands,” in ‘Die Kunst—eine Tochter der Zeit’. Neue Studien zu Ludwig Börne, ed. Inge Rippmann and Wolfgang Labuhn (Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 1988), 183.
- 17.
Heinrich Heine, “On Cervantes and the Don Quixote,” in Bloom’s Literary Themes: The Grotesque, ed. Blake Hobby (New York: Infobase Publishing, 2009), 51.
- 18.
Heine, Ludwig Börne, 103.
- 19.
Ibid., 104.
- 20.
Heinrich Heine, “Erster Entwurf zu Ludwig Börne. Eine Denkschrift,” in Ludwig Börne und Heinrich Heine. Ein deutsches Zerwürfnis, ed. H. M. Enzensberger (Leipzig: Reclam, 1989), 99.
- 21.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Phenomenology of the Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford, New York, Toronto, and Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1977), 316.
- 22.
Ibid.
- 23.
Jean Hyppolite, Genesis and Structure of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. Samuel Cherniak and John Heckman (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1974), 412.
- 24.
“The consciousness that is aware of its disruption and openly declares it, derides existence and the universal confusion, and derides its own self as well; it is at the same time the fading, but still audible, sound of all this confusion. This vanity of all reality and every definite Notion, vanity which knows itself to be such, is the double reflection of the real world into itself: once in this particular self of consciousness qua particular, and again in the pure universality of consciousness, or in thought” (Hegel, Phenomenology of the Spirit, 319–20).
- 25.
Ludovico Silva, El estilo literario de Marx, 2nd ed. (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1975), 6.
- 26.
Marx, Capital, vol. III, 149.
- 27.
György Lukács, “Balzac: Lost Illusions,” in Studies in European Realism, trans. Edith Bone (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1964), 58.
- 28.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, in MECW (New York: International Publishers, 1976), 6: 514.
- 29.
Karl Marx, “A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of Right’. Introduction,” in MECW (New York: International Publishers, 1975), 3: 178.
- 30.
Walter Benjamin, “On the Concept of History,” in Selected Writings. Vol. 4, trans. Edmund Jephcott et al. (Cambridge, MA and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002), 394.
- 31.
Michelangelo Buonarotti, The Sonnets, trans. S. Elizabeth Hall (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., Ltd., 1905), 99.
- 32.
György Lukács, Moskauer Schriften. Zur Literaturtheorie und Literaturpolitik 1934–1940, ed. Frank Benseler (Frankfurt/M: Sendler, 1981), 133.
- 33.
Karl Marx, “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844,” in MECW (New York: International Publishers, 1975), 3: 277.
- 34.
György Lukács, “The New Edition of Lassalle’s Letters,” in Tactics and Ethics. Political Writings 1919–1929, trans. Michael McColgan, ed. Rodney Livingstone (New York, etc.: Harper & Row, 1972), 161.
- 35.
Michel de Montaigne, Essays, trans. Peter Coste (London: C. Baldwin, 1981), 169–70.
- 36.
Silva, El estilo literario de Marx, 40.
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Vedda, M. (2019). Heinrich Heine and Marx As Essayists: On the Genesis and the Function of the Critic-Intellectuals. In: Gupta, S., Musto, M., Amini, B. (eds) Karl Marx’s Life, Ideas, and Influences. Marx, Engels, and Marxisms. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24815-4_1
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