The Prose Writings of Heinrich Heine, Including an introduction by Havelock Ellis and Atta Troll.
Throughout and above all Heine was a poet. From first to last he was led by three angels who danced for ever in his brain, and guided him, singly or together, always. They were the same as in Atta Troll he saw in the moonlight from the casement of Uraka's hut-the Greek Diana, grown wanton, but with the noble marble limbs of old; Abunde, the blond and gay fairy of France; Herodias, the dark Jewess, like a palm of the oasis, and with all the fragrance of the East between her breasts: "O, you dead Jewess, I love you most, more than the Greek goddess, more than that fairy of the North."
Those genii of three ideal lands danced for ever in his brain, and that is but another way of indicating the opposition that lay at the root of his nature. From one point of view, it may well be, he continued the work of Luther and Lessing, though he was less great-hearted, less sound at core, though he had not that element of sane Philistinism which marks the Shakespeares and Goethes of the world. But he was, more than anything else, a poet, an artist, a dreamer, a perpetual child.
Contents:
Heine, by Havelock Ellis
REISEBILDER
ENGLISH FRAGMENTS.
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY.
FLORENTINE NIGHTS.
DON QUIXOTE.
GODS IN EXILE.
CONFESSIONS.
ATTA TROLL.