HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

Hellenist and Cultural Pessimist
Here Heine wept! Here still he weeps anew.
Nor ever shall his shadow Uft or move
While mourns one ardent heart, one poet-brain.
For vanished Hellas and Hebraic pain.
The poem by Alexander Anderson appeared in
the Contemporary Review, in 1885.^^ It bore the
title Heine Before the Venus of Milo. Its mood was
reminiscent of Swinburne's Hymn to Proserpine.
In a long monologue, the dying German poet took
leave of the fairest of all his dreams, the perfect
woman, the embodiment of love and beauty and
joy. He looked back upon his embattled years, the
blows he struck and received in behalf of various
causes, the acceptance of exile as a necessary price
for his freedom to sing the songs of his heart. Yet,
as he reviewed his past, he confessed that his deepest
longing was ever for that Hellenic world of
beauty of which the white perfection of the Venus
of Milo was the ageless symbol. It was that world
which he most regretted leaving, as the darkness
of death settled like a pall between his adoring eyes
and the immortal Olympian.
The emphasis upon Heine's Hellenism added lustre
to his kaleidoscopic personality as re-interpreted
by the late Victorians. There was also emerging
in England, however, an equally important evalua-
[101]