HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

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those which Byron and Shelley have left.
But their works have this defect, — they
do not belong to that which is the main
current of the literature of modern
epochs, they do not apply modern ideas
to life ; they constitute, therefore, minor
currents, and all other literary work of
our day, however popular, which has the
same defect, also constitutes but a minor
current. Byron and Shelley will long
be remembered, long after the inadequacy
of their actual work is clearly
recognized for their passionate, their
Titanic effort to flow in the main stream
of modern literature; their names will
be greater than their writings; stat
magni nominis umbra.
Heine's literary good fortune was superior
to that of Byron and Shelley.
His theatre of operations was Germany,
whose Philistinism does not consist m
her want of ideas, or in her inaccessibility
to ideas, for she teems with them
and loves them, but, as I have said, in
her feeble and hesitating application of
modern ideas to life. Heine's intense
modernism, his absolute freedom, his
utter rejection of stock classicism and
stock romanticism, his bringing all
things under the point of view of the
nineteenth century, were understood and
laid to heart by Germany, through virtue
of her immense, tolerant intellectualism,
much as there was in all Heine
said to affront and wound Germany.
The wit and ardent modem spirit of