HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

Hellenist and Cultural Pessimist
example proved that paganism could not be resuscitated,
since he was never really joyous, never
really glad like the Greeks, never really an Apollo
or Dionysus descending from mountain heights to
our perplexed world and bringing with him gifts
of wine and music. A true Greek poet was just as
impossible in the nineteenth century as a second
Phidias again carving with religious earnestness an
Olympian Zeus or an Athena for a modern Acropolis.
The exotic paganism of Heine and of his English
disciples was not to be taken too seriously.
The London Quarterly Review, organ of conservative
British opinion, gave expression to the
above views in 1889, after Enghshmen had for
two decades flirted with Heine's neo-paganism.^ It
found his poetic paganism a mere affectation but
his revolt against Christianity a genuine phenomenon
— largely because he did not read the Christian
message aright. He saw in the dominant creed
a code of repression, consecrating established injustice,
condemning miUions to fruitless toil, giving
the substance of good things to the rich, and bidding
the poor be content with a shadow and a
promise. His erroneous view of Christianity was
shared by St. Simon, Auguste Comte, Ludwig
Feuerbach, and others of his generation. They
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