HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

Heinrich Heine
there was in all Heine said to affront and wound
Germany. The wit and ardent modern spirit of
France Heine joined to the culture, the sentiment,
the thought of Germany. This is what makes him
so remarkable: his wonderful clearness, lightness,
and freedom, united with such power of feeling,
and width of range."^®
Arnold found Heine's greatness marred by but a
single fault: his deficiency in self-respect, in true
dignity of character. But the Enghsh critic did not
like to dwell upon this negative side of a genius
whom he proclaimed as the most important figure
in the European literature of that quarter of a
century which followed the death of Goethe. He
merely noted that Heine, who had all the culture
of Germany and in whose head fermented all the
ideas of modern Europe, failed to attain to the distinction
for which his natural gifts destined him,
that highest summit attained by Shakespeare and
Goethe, because he lacked moral balance and nobility
of character.
Arnold's essay aroused the wrath of Carlyle. To
call the blaspheming blackguard the continuator
of Goethe was a critical crime of enormous proportions
and Carlyle did not mince words in telling
Sir M. E. Grant-DufiF, an admurer of Heine and of
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