HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

xviii
^Tntrotiuction,
Avhich of Goethe's linos of activity is
this 'i — His line of activity as " a
soldier in the war of liberation of humanity."
Heine himself would hardly have admitted
this affiliation, though he was
far too powerful-minded a man to decry,
with some of the vulgar German liberals,
Goethe's genius. " Tlie wind of
the Paris lievolution," he writes after
the three days of 1S3(), "blew about the
candles a little in the dark night of (rermany,
so that the red curtains of a German
throne or two caught fire ; but the
old watchmen, who do the police of the
German kingdoms, are already bringing
out the fire engines, and will keep the
candles closer snuffed for tlie future.
Poor, fast-bound German people, lose
not all heart in thy bonds! The
fashionable coating of ice melts off from
my heart, my soul (juivers and my eyes
burn, and that is a disadvantageous
state of things for a writer, who should
control his subject-matter and keep himself
beautifully objective, as the artistic
school would have us, and as Goethe has
done ; he has come to be eighty years old
doing this, and minister, and in good condition
:— poor (Jerman people! that is
thy greatest man !"
But hear Goethe himself: " If I
were to say what I had really been to
the Germans in general, and to the
young German poets in particular, I
should say I had been their liberator:^