Page:Works of Heinrich Heine 01.djvu/388

372 experience, and love, like every passion, is guided, though it may not be created, by culture, on which view Heine himself could have written congenially, genially, and ingeniously, had his heart been, like the Irish poet's, "in his pen." Shakespeare has shown in every utterance which he has given to lovers the fullest conviction that the greatest love occurs where highly cultivated intellect combines with passion and of this idea there is not a trace in the present remarks of Heine. Heine expresses astonishment that Shakespeare makes Romeo first feel a passion for Rosalind, because he had not learned that the poet wished to show that in a man "who is like Hamlet" passion and culture go hand in hand and advance. And though this is less the case with women, yet in Cleopatra love's strongest passion is its last.

incidentally remarked in the foregoing paper that the character of Romeo has in it something of Hamlet. In fact, a Northern serious earnestness casts its side-shadows on this glowing mind. And if we compare Julia with Desdemona, the same Northern element appears in all the power of her passion; she is always self-conscious,