HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

and the fierce spirit of vindictive malice which prompted
Heine, six years later, to conclude his third and last volume
with his unseemly diatribe against Count Platen.
Notwithstanding their inequalities, the Reisebilder remain
one of the surest props of Heine's fame. So clear
and perfect an utterance is sufficiently rare in all languages;
but it becomes little short of a miracle when,
as in this case, the medium of its transmission is German
prose, a vehicle so bulky and unwieldy that no one
before Heine had dared to enlist it in the service of airy
fantasy, delicate humor and sparkling wit.
During the summer of 1830, while he was loitering
at Helgoland, he was roused to feverish excitement by
the news of the July Revolution. He inveighed against
the nobility in a preface to a pamphlet, called Kahldorf
on the Nobility, which largely increased the number of
his powerful enemies. The literary censorship had long
mutilated his prose writings, besides materially diminishing
his legitimate income by prohibiting the sale T)f
many of his works. He now began to fear that his personal
liberty would be restricted as summarily as his
literary activity; and in May, 1831, he took up his residence
in Paris. He perfected himself in the French language,
and by his brilliant essays on French art, German
philosophy, and the Romantic School, soon acquired
the reputation of one of the best prose writers of France,
and the "wittiest Frenchman since Voltaire." He became
deeply interested in the doctrine of St. Simonism,
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