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HEINRICH HEINE UND DIE ROMANTIK / HEINRICH HEINE AND ROMANTICISM: ERTRAGE EINES SYMPOSIUMS AN DER PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY (21.-23. SEPTEMBER 1995). Herausgegeben von Markus Winkler. Tubingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1997. Pp. xiii + 232. DM 86.
The thirteen conference papers (eight in German, five in English) collected here address a wide spectrum of issues regarding Heine's complicated relationship to the period that was in its waning years when he entered upon the literary scene in the 1820s. As the conference organizer and volume's editor Markus Winkler notes at the end of his brief, but nicely summarizing introduction (pp. v-xiii), the publication of these papers quite appropriately was accomplished in the year in which Heine's 200th birthday was being celebrated.
Heine's criticizing of, and distancing himself from, romanticism is directly analyzed in the first three essays, those by Jeffrey Sammons,Joseph Kruse, and Robert Holub. Sammons (pp. 1-14), in discussing inconsistencies in Heine's "Die romantische Schule," emphasizes that while Heine sought to create a more modern poetic literature he continued to identify the poetic with the romantic. Kruse (pp. 15-39) interestingly investigates the question of Heine's relationship to Fouque, arguing, with much documentation, that the latter was a crucial formative influence on the younger author. Holub (pp. 40-56) discusses the intriguing relative simultaneity of Heine's turning toward Judaism and away from romanticism in the early to mid-1820s.
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