Donna Clara (German)

Donna Clara (German)

Heine, Heinrich. ed. Karl Georg Wendriner

Leipzig: Hesse & Becker, 1827. Das buch der lieder, pp. 152-4

HathiTrust

1827

"Thursday. 9. Read Rosenkranz on the Faust Sage. Translated Spinoza. Dessoir came and staid more than an hour. Then we walked out and looked at the engravings in the Linden. At so' clock went to Varnhagen's and found a very pleasant little party: Fraulein Solmar, Frau Nimsch, Doctor Ring, Dr. Vehse, Grafin von Kalkreit, and Director Wilhelm Schadow, author of"Der moderne Vasari". We talked of Goethe; Varnhagen brought out autographs and portraits and read us an epigram ofhis own on the want ofliberality which Goethe's family shew about opening his house to the public. He showed us a portrait of Kleist who shot himselfin company with Frau Vogel near an inn on the way to Potsdam. There was no love affair between them: they were both thoroughly unhappy, he poor and hopeless for the future, and she suffering from an incurable disease. In the evening they both wrote on a single sheet of paper letters to their friends communicating their intention. (This sheet Varnhagen possesses.) Early in the morning they rose, took a cup of coffee, went to the brink of a piece of water in the neighbourhood of the inn and there shot themselves. We came away at 8. Fraulein Assing, Varnhagen's niece, lent me a volume of Heine's poems. I read aloud "Donna Clara'' and then Wilhelm Meister till 10." Diary 1854-1861 33

Heine, Heinrich. ed. Karl Georg Wendriner, Donna Clara (German), George Eliot's Reading, George Eliot Archive, edited by Beverley Park Rilett. https://GeorgeEliotArchive.org, Accessed September 7, 2026. https://www.georgeeliotarchive.org/items/show/57226

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