Page:Works of Heinrich Heine 01.djvu/279

Rh, attains to self-consciousness, then every portion of the outer world of seeming is at once grasped by him in all its mutual relations, for he bears a likeness of the whole in his soul, he knows the deepest foundation of all phenomena which are riddles to common minds, and which, when investigated by the ordinary methods, are understood with difficulty, or not at all. And as the mathematician, when only the smallest portion of a circle is given, infallibly deduces from it the whole circle and the centre, so the poet, when only the merest fragments of the world of things which seem is presented, then to him appear clearly all that is connected with it; he knows at once the periphery and centre of all things, yea, he understands them in their widest comprehension and deepest central point. But some fragment of the outer world must always be given before the poet can develop that wonderful process of completing a world; and this perfect apprehension of a part of the world of perception is effected by sensation, and is simultaneously the external occurrence, the inner revelations of which are determined, and to which we owe the art-works of the poet. The greater these works, the more anxiously desirous are we to know those external occurrences which inspired the motive. We gladly investigate memoranda of the actual life of the poet. This curiosity is