HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

The Wandering Jew
fellow-Jew, in Macmillan's Magazine of 1882, in
an article which she reprinted six years later in her
volume of Jewish Portraits. Lady Magnus depicted
the German poet as one of the bodyguards of Jehovah,
as a warrior who had allowed himself to be
bribed from his post and who, as a result, paid dearly
for his moral crime. Thirty years of anguish and
self-reproach were sufficient atonement, in her eyes,
for the blackguardism with which Thomas Carlyle
charged him. She therefore held that self-righteous
critics would do well to show more consideration
for the martyr of Montmartre a quarter of a century
after his death.
Emma Lazarus sought the key to Heine's character
in a fatal and irreconcilable dualism. He was
a Jew with the mind and eyes of a Greek. His was
a beauty-loving, myth-creating pagan soul imprisoned
in a sombre Hebrew frame. His lyrics
were unique in Germany and could not be explained
solely on the basis of German literary tradition.
It was necessary to go back to the Hebrew
poets of Palestine and of Spain in order to find a
parallel in literature for his magnificent imagery
and voluptuous orientalism. After a visit to Montmartre
Cemetery, the poetess, who was herself of
Sephardic or Hebrew-Spanish origin, wrote in
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