HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

Heinrich Heine
Deep have embreathed at its core;
Made it a ray of thy thought.
Made it a beat of thy joy!"
The influence of Arnold's poem upon later portraits
of Heine, even until our own day, is evident
from the fact that two biographies, which appeared
generations later, still culled their titles from it.
They are Ludwig Diehl's volume of 1926, The Sardonic
Smile, and Henry Baerlein's biography of
1928, Heine, the Strange Guest.
Immediately after completing the poem in April,
1863, Arnold, who then occupied the chair of
poetry at Oxford, began to prepare a lecture on
Heine. By the middle of May he was so far advanced
in his writing that he refused an oflFer by
M. E. Grant-DufiF, who wished to place additional
Heine-material at his disposal.^^ The lecture was
delivered in June before an Oxford audience which
consisted chiefly of women. In a letter to his mother
on June 16, he informed her that, in composing
the lecture, he thought of the pubhc that would
read him and not of the dead bones that would
hear him. He added that, nevertheless, Heine's wit
was so eflFective that, when he did dehver the address,
even the wooden Oxford audience laughed
aloud.^^ Two reviews apphed for the right of pub-
[74]