HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

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whose revolution had given to his race
the rights of citizenship, and whose rule
had been.as is well known, popular in the
Rhine provinces, where he passed his
youth ; with a passionate admiration for
the great French Emperor, with a passionate
contempt for the sovereigns who
had overthrown him, for their agents,
and for their policy, — Heinrich Heine
was in 1830 in no humor for any such
gradual process of liberation from the
old order of things as that which Goethe
had followed. His counsel was for
open war. Taking that terrible modern
weapon, the pen, in his hand, he passed
the remainder of his life in one fierce
battle. What was that battle ? the
reader will ask. It was a life and
death battle with Philistinism.
Philistinism ! — we have not the expression
in English. Perhaps we have
not the word because we have so much
of the thing. At Soli, I imagine, they
did not talk of solecisms; and here, at
the very head-quarters of Goliath, nobody
talks of Philistinism. The French
have adopted the term Spicier (grocer),
to designate the sort of being whom the
Germans designate by the term Philistine;
but the French term, — besides
that it casts a slur upon a respectable
class, composed of living and susceptible
members, while the original Philistines
are dead and buried long ago, —
is really, I think, in itself much less apt
and expressive than the German term.