HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

Heinrich Heine
dom that was most essential for their needs, but the
seeds of this wisdom were implanted in his art,
ready to germinate in due season under a beneficent
sun. The English have garbed Heine in garments
"made in England" and from these there peer forth
the many masks or faces worn by him during his
earthly sojourn, the face of a lover weeping in the
excess of joy and laughing because of unbearable
pain, the strange face of a poet lonely amidst adulation,
the somber face of a dreamer too early disillusioned,
the grim face of a warrior battling for
a better world against overwhelming odds, the enigmatic
face of a modern soul complex beyond analysis
and hypersensitive to the point of morbidity.
For over a century the English have granted to
this poet and thinker the hospitality which his own
countrymen denied him both in hfe and after death.
May not the English, therefore, claim him also
as their own, for he was more than a German or a
Jew: he was a Citizen of the World and a sentinel
of the moral values for which they and their allies
waged two successful wars?
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