HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

Heinrich Heine
through five editions between 1856 and 1866, an
unmistakable proof of Heine's vogue in this mid-
Victorian decade.
The vogue extended even to Heine's bitterest
opponents, the theologians on both sides of the Atlantic.
These too were becoming reconciled to him,
although they felt impelled to moralize about his
final suffering as just compensation for an unholy
hfe. The magazine Ecclesiastic and Theologian devoted
in 1859 eight pages to the Julian of poetry
and his rare mixture of beauty and moral poison.''
Theodore Parker, the Boston divine, wrote in a
letter dated September 21, 1857: "Heine has a deal
of the Devil in him, mixed with a deal of genius.
Nobody could write so well as he — surely none
since Goethe; that Hebrew nature has a world of
sensuous and devotional emotion in it, and immense
power of language also. But his genius is lyric, not
dramatic, not epic; no muse rises so high as the Hebrew,
but it cannot keep long on the wing. The
Psalms and Prophets of the Old Testament teach
us this; Oriental sensuousness attained their finest
expression in the Song of Solomon and in Heine's
Lieder." ^
Heine's death on February 17, 1856, evoked
much comment throughout Europe and was noted
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