SOURCE: Pettey, John Carson. “Anticolonialism in Heine's ‘Vitzliputzli.’” Colloquia Germanica 26, no. 1 (1993): 37-47.

In the following essay, Pettey discusses Heine's poem “Vitzliputzli” in relation to colonialism, suggesting that the poem displays Heine's “contempt” for colonialism's greed and barbarism.

In «Vitzliputzli»,¹ the longest of the «Historien» in Romanzero (1851), Heine avoided sentimentalizing the Aztecs vis-à-vis their Spanish conquerors and colonizers. He was chiefly concerned with presenting his historical vision in a disturbingly vivid, nightmarish account of the clash between two diverse cultures. Following a major theme found in the «Historien,» «Vitzliputzli» illustrates the dominance of barbarity attended by a baffling lack of transcendent benevolence in human history.² As was always his wont, Heine sided overtly with the underdog, and yet he pulled no punches about the cruelty in Aztec rituals. Indeed, the historical problem addressed deals primarily with a conflict between religions. His poetic rendering of the Conquest of Mexico...