A great deal of the attraction which the verse-epic holds today is grounded in this, that its message is not one-dimensional, but rather brings into expression the many-sided contradictions or contrasts in Heine’s thought. The poet shows himself as a man who loves his homeland and yet can only be a guest and visitor to it. In the same way that Antaeus needed contact with the Earth, so Heine drew his skill and the fullness of his thought only through intellectual contact with the homeland.
