Search -
The Life, Work, and Opinions of Heinrich Heine
The Life Work and Opinions of Heinrich Heine Author:William Stigand General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1880 Original Publisher: J. W. Bouton Subjects: Authors, German Literary Criticism / European / German Poetry / Continental European Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy ... more »the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: 27 CHAPTER II. YOUTHFUL MEMORIES. NAPOLEON AND HAMBURG. ' I First saw the light of the world on the banks of that fair stream, where folly grows on the green hills, and is gathered and foot-trodden, in autumn, then poured into casks, and exported. Truly, yesterday I heard somebody utter words of folly, which were imprisoned in a bunch of grapes in the year 1811, which I then saw growing on the Johannisberg. Much folly is consumed in the country itself, and the people there are just like others: they are born, eat, drink, sleep, laugh, cry, make slander, and are terribly anxious about the propagation of their species ; seek to appear what they are not, and to do what they are unable; they do not get shaved before they have a beard, and often get a beard before they get their reason; and if they get this, they drown it again in butts of white and red Folly. ' Man Dicn! if I had faith in me enough to remove mountains, the Johannisberg is precisely the mountain which I should like to have always coming after me. But since my faith is not strong enough, Fancy must help me out -- and Fancy sets me again on the banks of the beautiful Rhine. ' Oh, there is a fair land full of loveliness and sunshine. In the blue stream the rocky banks mirror themselves with their ruined castles and forests and quaint old towns. There before the house doors sit the good burghers in the summer evenings, and drink out of huge beakers, and babble, confidentially, how the wine, thank God ! is thrivi...« less