HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

XX
SFntrobuctioit,
task of dissolution, of liberation of the
modern European from the old routine ?
He shall tell us himself. " Through me
the German poets have become aware
that, as man must live from within outwards,
so the artist must work from
within outwards, seeing that, make
what contortions he will, he can only
bring to light his own individuality. I
can clearly mark where this influence of
mine has made itself felt; there arises
out of it a kind of poetry of nature, and
only in this way is it possible to be
original."
My voice shall never be joined to
those which decry Goethe, and if it is
said that the foregoing is a lame and impotent
conclusion to Goethe's declaration
that he had been the liberator of
the Germans in general, and of the
young German poets in particular, I say
it is not. Goethe's profound, imperturbable
naturalism is absolutely fatal
to all routine thinking; he puts the
standard, once for all, inside every man
instead of outside him; when he is told,
such a thing must be so, there is immense
authority and custom in favor
of its being so, it has been held to be so
for a thousand years, he answers with
Olympian politeness, " But ts it so ? is
it so to me ? " Nothing could be more
really subversive of the foundations on
which the old European order rested;
and it may be remarked that no persons
are so radically detached from this