Crying at the Feet of Venus: The Master Series

Author: Zhou Guoping
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-08-01
Features: "Crying at the Feet of Venus." The article discusses the poet Heinrich Heine's ideal of love and his romantic encounters throughout his life.
Heinrich Heine was passionate about love in his youth, so much so that he became an idealist of perfect love, writing many beautiful love poems in his lifetime. However, in reality, his romantic experiences were tragic—so tragic that he married a woman in Paris who couldn’t understand his poetry. Yet, he once declared that if she couldn’t appreciate his poetry, he would divorce her. What was even more tragic or cruel was not the absence of love in his marriage but the shattering of his perfect love ideal. In his later years, on his last visit to the Louvre to see his goddess of love, Venus, he collapsed and cried at her feet. At that moment, he desperately wished that the goddess before him could lift him up and carry his perfect love ideal high, so that it wouldn’t be mercilessly torn apart by reality. But in that instant when he looked up at the goddess towering above him, he finally understood something. The Venus of Milo had no arms—she was incomplete. Throughout the long history of culture and civilization, countless great works have nourished future generations. What do successful writers read? Zhou Guoping, with the sharpness of a philosopher, the etherealness of a poet, and the depth of a still stream, guides us closer to the masters.