HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

Heinrich Heine
that the early hostility towards the poet was waning.
The moral reasons, which once weighed so heavily
against the poet and which in 1834 prevented the
Athenaeum from opening its columns to him, no
longer seemed so important. Englishmen still did
not justify his apparent moral aberrations but they
sought to explain them and to discover mitigating
circumstances. Faults he undoubtedly had, but were
they not the faults of his time? Might not his sneers
and his scepticism be ascribed to his desire to wean
his countrymen from their pet failings?
The Revolution of 1848 accustomed the European
reading public to extreme boldness of utterance,
to pungency of style, and to a questioning of fundamental
social values. Compared with the communist
tracts of Marx, Engels, and Lassalle, Heine's satirical
essays seemed mild and entertaining. As a political
pamphleteer, Heine was losing caste. Retaining
pre-revolutionary slogans in post-revolutionary
years, he was gradually becoming obsolete and ineffective.
As a poet, on the other hand, he could now
reckon with universal admiration. His songs, once
considered as the frivolous ebullitions of a childish
fancy, were taking a firm hold of the English no less
than of the German mind. His Lorelei was on the
lips of millions.
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