HEINE, HEINRICH

     "God's satire weighs on me. The great author of the universe, the Aristophanes of Heaven, was bent on demonstrating, with crushing force, to me, the little, earthly, German Aristophanes, how my wittiest sarcasm are only pitiful attempts at jesting in comparison with His, and how miserably I am beneath Him in humour, in colossal mockery."

(Pinney, 1963)

God has made our eyes a pair,

So we’d see clear everywhere

To believe all that we read

Just one eye would fill the need.

Two eyes did God give likewise

So we’d look and gape and stare

At the world He made so fair

As a feast for all man’s eyes;

(Draper, 1982, 799)

Faulting the Creator’s not a

Thing befitting, as if clay

Would be wiser than the potter!

(Ibid, 801)