HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

Heinrich Heine
fore it, seeing that no other can succeed it; the
throne shall remain void forever, the royalty of
the Heavens be abolished. Fate, in the form of Science,
has decreed the extinction of the gods. Mary
and her babe must join Venus and Love, Isis and
Horns, living with them only in the world of art." ^
Thomson, a radical in religion and politics, admured
in Heine the very qualities that more respectable
writers were wont to decry or to explain
away. He was dehghted by Heine's propaganda of
atheism and brought extracts from the most audacious
passages of the German poet to the attention
of English readers. He found in Heine's Gods in
Exile the model for his own Satires and Profanities.
He paid tribute to the German hero because the
latter was no ascetic spirituahst, no self-torturing
eremite or hypochondriac monk but by nature a
joyous heathen of richest blood, a Greek, a Persian,
a lusty lover of this world, an enthusiastic apostle
of the rehabilitation of the flesh. He translated
many of Heine's lyrics for the Secularist during
1876 and 1877. These "attempts at translations,"
as he modestly called them, were reprinted in the
same volume that contained his masterpiece, The
City of Dreadful Night. Karl Marx described the
versions of Thomson as "no translation but a re-
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