Page 195 - The Track Of The Jew Through The Ages - Alfred Rosenberg

Alfred Rosenberg

instead of with the highest human interests". Further Heine opines
in a deep manner: "Goethe's aversion to yield to enthusiasm is as
repugnant as childish". From "Faust" he understands that Goethe
had perceived the insufficiency of spirit in that, in Faust, he placed
a desire for "material pleasures and the flesh", the "West-ostliche
Divan" is an embrace of sensualism, the last phase of Goethe's
poetical art, etc. So he goes on, with his hat devoutly in his hand.
A more distorting image could not have been thought out
by Goethe's fiercest enemy, and it is superfluous to contradict Heine.
Ifthe great Balzac had at the same time admired with respect,
if Carlyle had received Goethe with love, ifTaine had named Goethe
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the most cultivated mind that ever lived, and Dostoyevsky placed
a prayer in Goethe's mouth in which he expresses his great
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reverence, that is not the case with Heine and could not be.
Schiller had maintained: "According to my innermost
conviction no other poet approaches him (Goethe) even from afar
in depth and tenderness of feeling, in nature and truth, and at the
same time in artistic merit . But it is not the advantages of his
. .
mind that bind me to him. If he did not have for me the greatest
worth of all that I have personally encountered as a man, I would
admire his genius only in its form ... He had a high truth and honesty
in his nature and the greatest seriousness for justice and goodness,
that is why gossips and hypocrites and sophists always found
themselves ill at ease in his company".
To people ofthe last sort belonged Heine too, who carelessly
opens the channels of his superficiality too wide. One can vividly
imagine how Heine felt when he visited Goethe. To Goethe's
question about his activities, Heine replied importantly that he was
also writing a "Faust". Heine seems not to have got over Goethe's
icy reply, "Do you have nothing else to do in Weimar?", his whole

419
Taine, Voyage en Italie. [1866]. [Hippolyte Taine (1828-93) was a French
intellectual historian who highlighted the importance of "race, milieu et moment"
on the writings of any author].
420
The Diary of an Author [ 1 873 - 1 88 1 ] . [Fyodor Dostoyevsky ( 1 82 1 - 1 88 1 ), the
celebrated Russian novelist, was a Slavophile nationalist and monarchist. His Diary
of an Author was a collection of articles covering the years 1873-1881 which he
had originally published in a journal that he produced.]

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