HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

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OCCIDENTAL
ORIENTALIZATION.
To the observant thinker it is a wonderful
spectacle to view the countries
where the Bible, since the Reformation,
has been exerting its elevating influence
on the inhabitants, and has impressed
on them the customs, modes of thought,
and temperaments which formerly prevailed
in Palestine, as portrayed both
in the Old and in the New Testament.
In the Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon
sections of Europe and America, especially
among the Germanic races, and
also to a certain extent in Celtic countries,
the customs of Palestine have been
reproduced in so marked degree that we
seem to be in the midst of the ancient
Judean life. Take, for example, the
Scotch Protestants: are not they
Hebrews, whose names even are biblical,
whose very cant smacks of the Phariseeism
of ancient Jerusalem, and Avhose religion
is naught else than a pork-eating
Judaism ? It is the same in Denmark
aud in certain provinces of North Germany,
not to mention the majority of the
new sects of the United States, among
whom the life depicted in the Old Testament
is pedantically aped. In the latter,
that life appears as if daguerreotyped :
the outlines are studiously correct, but
all is depicted in sad, sombre colors;
the golden tints and harmonising colors
of the promised land are lacking. But