HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

Heinrich Heine
though o'erthrown is unconquered still, and the old
love, laughter, hate, and scorn, are sublimed by suffering
in the poet's heart, to such a degree, that we
shudder while we gaze, awe-struck, on this victory
of man over man's most terrible foes, sickness and
pain." ^«
The dying poet, who publicly renounced his
atheistic aberrations and who confessed his homecoming
to God as a necessary step which alleviated
his physical and spiritual suffering, found forgiveness
and sympathetic understanding among English
readers who had been revolted by his earher
cynicism and bitter irony. Elizabeth Barrett
Browning, who had long experienced the struggle
of a brilliant mind imprisoned in an aching body,
comforted herself and her friends in hours of pain
with the example of the martyr of Montmartre. In
a letter of September 4, 1854, she wrote to an ailing
friend: "You know how that brilliant, witty, true
poet Heine, who was an atheist (as much as a man
can pretend to be) has made a public profession of a
change of opinion which was pathetic to my eyes
and heart the other day as I read it. He has joined no
church, but simply (to use his own words) has 'returned
home to God Hke the prodigal son after a
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