Talk:Heinrich Heine

Burning books/people

"Where they burn books, they will also burn people."

I'm wondering why that version is listed first. I don't speak/read/write German, but Babel Fish translates the original (as listed here: "Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen.") as:

", Where one burns books, one burns also at the end humans."

InterTran gives:

"there , where one books deflagrates , deflagrates one also at the end beings."

The bolded variant listed here ("Where they burn books, at the end they also burn people.") seems more accurate (as it retains "at the end"), and should probably be listed first. Does anyone mind if I swap the two? Sysmsifa 08:01, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

In Bartlett's Quotations, 15th edition, the quote is translated as "Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings." In The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 3rd edition, it is "Wherever books are burned men also, in the end, are burned." Either or both of these variants would be preferable, I would say, to the Babel Fish or InterTran versions. For one thing, they would be more commonly known and therefore more likely to be used by someone seeking the quote. Secondly, these automated translators supply, as you can see, versions that rarely sound like idiomatic English (as in the unfortunate "deflagrates") and are sometimes quite unnatural or even grotesque. - InvisibleSun 08:30, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Clearly I wasn't advocating that we use the gibberish that the translators spat out, but that we take into account the fact that the original German apparently says the equivalent of "at the end," as your examples also do. Since we don't seem to disagree on that point, I'll go ahead and make the swap I suggested, and you can go ahead and swap the top version out for whichever of your examples you like, if you like. Sysmsifa 09:11, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Unsourced

Wikiquote no longer allows unsourced quotations, and they are in process of being removed from our pages (see Wikiquote:Limits on quotations); but if you can provide a reliable, precise and verifiable source for any quote on this list please move it to Heinrich Heine. --Antiquary 14:54, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

• I fell asleep reading a dull book and dreamed I kept on reading, so I awoke from sheer boredom.

• In earlier religions the spirit of the time was expressed through the individual and confirmed by miracles. In modern religions the spirit is expressed through the many and confirmed by reason.
  • In 1841 during his deportation from Germany and his final immigration to Paris

• In times of extreme darkness, where you don't know the road, even a local who is blind and deaf may be a good guide. But, when this dawn breaks, you may bid adieu to this guide, however decent he was to you when it was dark

Quote from Testamentary Will of Heinrich Heine (1856)

• Money bequeathed to my wife "on the express condition that she remarry. I want at least one person to be truly bereaved by my death."

While I do quite like this quote, the only German version of his last will that I could find is at http://www.zeno.org/Literatur/M/Heine,+Heinrich/Autobiographisches/Testament in which he expressly leaves all his possessions to his wife "without any condition or limitation" ("ohne jede Bedingung oder Beschränkung"). Unless there is another will that I have missed, this should probably therefore be removed. 07:50, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

I have now moved this into a "Disputed" section, with a note that no published source has been located. ~ ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 08:38, 15 January 2014 (UTC)