27.12.2013 Views

HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

Create successful ePaper yourself

Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.

Martyr of Montmartre<br />

from a form of sensualism; much of his wit too was<br />

wilful; a trick of the mind." '<br />

Another young Englishman who in the Eighteen-Forties<br />

succumbed to the spell of Heine's<br />

poetry was Juhan Fane, the son of Lord Burghersh.<br />

In 1844 at the age of seventeen, he was appointed<br />

attache at Berhn, where his father served as the<br />

British Minister to Prussia. In this home, frequented<br />

by Alexander von Humboldt, Giacomo<br />

Meyerbeer, Felix Mendelssohn, and other brilliant<br />

representatives of the poUtical and artistic elite,<br />

Heine must have been often a subject for conversation.<br />

The young attache became his most ardent<br />

worshipper. When Fane returned to England and<br />

entered Cambridge in 1847, he soon found himself<br />

the leader of a group of young intellectuals known<br />

as the "Cambridge Apostles" and he doubtless was<br />

influential in winning their affection for the much<br />

maligned German poet. His unflagging enthusiasm<br />

also infected his friend and later biographer,<br />

Robert Bulwer, Earl of Lytton, who is better<br />

known under the pseudonym of Owen Meredith<br />

and who afterwards wrote one of the finest essays<br />

on Heine. Both Julian Fane and Robert Lytton<br />

were on the British diplomatic staff in Vienna<br />

during the early Eighteen-Fifties. Since their of-<br />

[41]

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!