HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

Martyr of Montmartre
expectations, and sullen lethargy of the Germans:
"Into the province of Art the young Reformer
entered with an audacity which astounded its sober
and terrified guardians. Singing his wild 'Ca
Ira,' he proceeded with revolutionary zeal to overtum
the idols he there found enthroned. The romantic
school, with its nasal twang, must depart;
the maudlin worshipers of a canting sentimentalism
must be thrust out; senseless forms, from which
the spirit had long since fled, now get buried without
any rites of sepulture; exact propriety and
pompous gravity are dismissed with a laugh, and
pedantry with all its sickly shapes must be banished
from the national literature. Great was the
dismay, and great also the indignation, produced
by the feat of the adventurous writer. His countrymen
divided at once into two hostile parties,
one of which saw with alarm and shame the attack
made upon all that it had been taught to consider
venerable, while the other, gazing with rapture on
the havoc that had been done, hailed its author as
the chief of a happy revolution in the history of
literature and art." ^
Fane noted that this division of opinion yielded
to general acclamation after the appearance of the
Book of Songs, for here were lyrics with a fresh-
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