HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

The Wandering Jew
garded as valid exceptions to the rule that the Jews
were a non-literary people.
Carlyle's outbursts against Heine were not uninfluenced
by the former's strong anti-Semitic
prejudices, which he never cared to conceal. When
he accused the Jews of a lack of humor, he refused
to make any exceptions, insisting that no Jewcreature
was gifted with a sense of the ridiculous
— "not even blackguard Heine." ^ A Jew never
laughed a hearty out-bursting laugh and even
Heine's so-called humor was "a storm, grim sort
of humor." ^ Carlyle spoke of Heine as a slimy and
greasy Jew, as a dirty and blaspheming Jew.^ Such
expressions were unusual in Victorian England and
more in accord with the German Romantic tradition
to which Carlyle paid homage.
The typical English reaction to Heine's Jewishness
was nearer to that of Richard Monckton
Milnes: calm, judicious, unaffected by love, unmarred
by mahce. Heine's coarse satire directed
against the land of his birth was explained by reference
to his hereditary background and to the
evil influences among which he grew up. His Jewish
descent necessarily ahenated him from the national
cause of Germany and gave him a vindictive
gratification in its discomfiture. "He enjoyed the
[107]