HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

Heinrich Heine
intense and luminous spirit was enchained and constrained
to look down into the vast black void
which undermines our seemingly solid existence,
and in which he all the time was as near immersion
as a sailor alone on a leaking boat in a solitary
sea." ''
Since Thomson regarded Heine as the clearest
intelligence and the best European writer of the
century, he invoked the latter's authority on frequent
occasions, humorous and tragic. Writing in
the National Reformer, in 1867, while this paper
was engaged in a bitter feud with the Saturday Review,
Thomson informed the pubhc that Heine
departed from life in 1856, the year when the
Saturday Review came into being, for the world
of this organ was no world for him.
In a more solemn tone, however, Thomson composed
in 1870, a few days after Prussia defeated
France, a timely article, entitled How Heine Forewarned
France. Quoting extensively from Heine's
works, he pointed out that this clearest German intellect
after Goethe had loved France better than
did any other compatriot beyond the Rhine and
had therefore forewarned of catastrophic results
that would follow any conflict between the two
great Continental peoples. The French imperial
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