„Ich bin die Tat von deinen Gedanken“

Abstract

In Heine’s “Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen” (“Germany. A Winter’s Tale”), there is a scene with an unusual exchange between the poet and the executor of his thought that addresses what “writing revolution” means in a way that is itself a revolutionary act by how it stages the revolution it invokes. They are the nightly musings of a poet whose performative writing enacts what it describes. What is perplexing about the haunting scene is its aspect of apparent inaction and suspension of time, or more precisely, delayed, or deferred, action. Addressing the question: what is thought—and action—highlights the intimate nexus of thought, its expression and realization. The passage is worth closer examination for its critically subversive impulse that is in pointed opposition to Hegel (Heine’s teacher and often critical foil) and for its striking proximity to Marx but for the salient difference of denying action the final word. However, rather than reversing the order and thereby elevating thought over action, Heine shows how thought and action intertwine in a way that challenges the reader to view the relationship between thought and action, the word and its realization, differently.