READING HEINRICH HEINE

The biographical imperative: Karl Kraus 19
contravene his own account of its intention. In response to criticism (from
predictable journalistic quarters) Kraus insisted in his ‘Afterword’ of August
1911 that he set out neither to be unjust nor to do full justice to Heine.
Kraus had not written a literary essay, he claimed – and in his view the
problem remained unexhausted. Whatever the value of Heine’s verse, in
the mirror of Heine’s style Kraus had recognized a ‘form of life’ – perhaps
the origins of a modern form of literary production.