HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

Heinrich Heine
author of the Book of Songs and of the early
Travel Sketches was to some extent acceptable to
the English, but not the splenetic exile who sneered
at all existing religious, political, social, and moral
institutions. Critics continued throughout the decade
to focus attention upon him as poet, thinker,
and wit; but they stressed the perverse character
of his poetry, the malignity of his thought, and the
corrosiveness of his wit.
Small wonder, therefore, that Carlyle, who was
in the Eighteen-Thirties the chief English interpreter
of German letters, failed to rank Heine with
Jean Paul, Novalis, or other important representatives
of the Romantic School. Carlyle's gift of interpretation
did not include an appreciation of the
niceties of lyric poetry. He was, therefore, deaf
to Heine the lyricist, and only grudgingly accepted
the Lorelei as a genuine work of art. The English
critic was at his best in his dissection of the labyrinthine
profundities of German thought. The intellectual
approach of Heine was, however, wholly
ahen to him and he had no reason to take issue
with the English press that reviled the German
freethinker. On the contrary, throughout his long
life he berated visitors who dared to plead Heine's
cause. He remained the English champion of the
[28]