Prose miscellanies from Heinrich Heine

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1876 Excerpt: ...a liver. On its belly was inscribed " =" We burlesqued cleverly the Fichtean "I," which claimed that the whole world of phenomena was produced merely by its thinking. A droll misunderstanding which arose and was widely circulated came timely to the aid of the mockers. The public at large believed that the Fichtean "I" meant "I, Johann Gottlieb Fichte," and that this individual "I" denied all other existences. "What impudence!" cried the good people; "this person does not believe that we exist!--we who are more corpulent than he, and who, as aldermen and state officials, are even his superiors I" The ladies asked, "Does he not even believe in the existence of his wife? No? And Madame Fichte permits that?" Pantheism had already in Fichte's time interpenetrated German art; even the Catholic Romanticists unconsciously followed this current, and Goethe expressed it most unmistakably. This he already does in "Werther." In "Faust" he seeks to establish an affinity between man and nature by a bold, direct, mystic method, and conjures the secret forces of nature through the magic formula of the powers of hell. But this Goethean pantheism is the most clearly and most charmingly disclosed in his short ballads. The early philosophy of Spinoza has shed its mathematical shell, and now flutters about us as Goethean poesy. Hence the wrath of our pietists, and of orthodoxy in general, against the Goethean ballads. With their pious bear-paws they clumsily strike at this butterfly, which is so daintily ethereal, so hazy and light of wing, that it always flits out of reach. These Goethean ballads have a tantalizing charm that is indescribable. The harmonious verses captivate the...