Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/128

 122 Heine's "Buck Le Grand ' ' In one word: His essay, 'die Nordsee.' This essay occupies a unique place among his 'Reisebilder.' Apart from details of minor consequence, the tone of the 'Nordsee' is serious and objective to a degree such as we would vainly seek in any other part of the 'Reise- bilder.' Quite contrary to his usual custom, Heine here seems to have limited the sallies of his subjective temperament to a mini- mum, in favor of a calm, constructively critical view of things. All the subjects touched upon in this essay give evidence of a serious attempt on Heine's part to avoid the eccentric and the extreme, and to acquire a genuinely sober and dispassionate point of view by the unprejudiced examination of phenomena and the philoso- phical mediation of uncompromising opposites. This striving for objectivity at once manifests itself as we read the opening paragraphs. Conditions he had observed at Norder- ney during the bathing season the rapid undermining of the sim- ple, primitive life of the islanders by the modernity of the guests evoke in Heine reflections on the contrast between the 'Kultur' of the mediaeval and that of the modern era, between the mental solidarity, the ''communal immediacy" of the middle ages, as he terms it, adopting the Hegelian phraseology, and the infinite dif- ferentiation, the spiritual isolation and 'Zerrissenheit' of the present day. This process of change which he sees being accomplished rapidly in a small compass on the island he finds typical of the transformation taking place with irresistible necessity thruout Europe. To be sure, being a modern himself, Heine can't help being in sympathy with the victorious principle; yet as soon as he catches himself indulging in a little too much Protestant zeal apropos of discussing the Catholic Church that chief pillar of mental solidarity and mediaevalism he checks himself with a superior smile and reverts to his pose of objectivity. "Auf einem gewissen Standpunkte ist alles gleich gross und gleich klein" (III, 93). Chiefly the same desire to count for more than a mere subjec- tivist must also have prompted Heine to devote such a prominent part of his essay to the praise of Goethe; for the sting left by Goethe's cool reception of Heine during the latter's visit to Weimar must still have been rankling in his breast. The keynote of his praise is Goethe's objectivity. We others see the world in a one- sided way, "while Goethe with his clear Greek eye sees everything,