HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

Blackguard and Apostate
land literary circles. It was discussed at length in
The North American Review and in The (American)
Monthly in 1836.^^
British journals, however, continued to berate
Heine throughout the Eighteen-Thirties. The Foreign
Quarterly Review in 1837 reprinted from
Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe the comment
of the Weimar sage that Heine possessed
many shining qualifications but that he lacked one
thing — love.^^ Goethe was quoted as prophesying
that Heine would be feared and might even be a
god to those who, without possessing his talent,
had the ambition to work in the same destructive
vein, but that all his gifts would avail him naught
because he was altogether destitute of love. In a
later issue of the same year, the quarterly accused
Heine of being defective in mental chastity:
"Henry Heine has no reverence either for himself
or for those of whom he writes, or for those
to whom he writes, — for gods above or for devils
below." '^
It is thus evident that the initial patronizing and
not entirely unfriendly attitude which English
journals assumed toward young Heine before his
removal to Paris in 1831 changed more and more
to violent hostility as the decade wore on. The
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