a genius such as Heine's
also a literary necessity, which lay in the development of our
literature in that epoch. It was the Indian Summer of romanticism, whose
cobwebs at this time flew over the stubble of our poetry. The vigorous
onset of the lyricists of the Wars of Liberation had again grown lame;
people reveled in the album sentiments of Tiedge and Mahlmann; the
spectres of Amadeus Hoffmann and the lovely high-born maidens of knight
Fouque were regarded then as the noblest creations of German fantasy.
Less chosen spirits, that is to say, the entire great reading public of
the German nation, which ever felt toward its immortals a certain
aversion, refreshed itself with the lukewarm water of the poetry of
Clauren, from out of which, instead of the Venus Anadyomene, appear a
Mimili and other maiden forms, pretty, but drawn with a stuffed-out
plasticism. On the stage reigned the "fate tragedies" upon whose lyre
the strings were wont to break even in the first scene, and whose ghosts
slipped silently over all the German boards. In a word, spirits
controlled the poetry of the time more than spirit.

Heine however was a genuine knight of the spirit, and even if he
conjured up his lyric spectres, he demanded no serious belief in
them--they were dissolving pictures of mist; and if he followed his
overflowing feelings, the mawkish sentiments of romanticism occurred to
him and disgusted him with the extravagant expression of his love pain,
and he mocked himself, the time, and the literature,--dissolved the
sweet accords in glaring dissonances, so that they should not be in tune
with the sentimental street songs of the poets of the day. In these
outer and inner reasons lie the justification and the success of the
lyric poetry of Heine. It designates an act of self-consciousness of the
German spirit, which courageously lifts itself up out of idle love
complainings and fantastic dream life, and at the same time mocks them
both. An original talent like Heine's was needed to give to the derided
sentiment such a transporting magic, to the derision itself such an
Attic grace, that the sphinx of his poetry, with the beautiful face and
the rending claws, always produced the impression of a work of art. The
signification in literary history of these songs of Heine is not to be
underestimated. They indicate the dissolution of romanticism, and with
them begins the era of modern German poetry.

Translated for 'A Library of the