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Heinrich Heine.
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Biography EssayFrom the generation following Johann Wolfgang von Goethe there is perhaps no writer more controversial than Heinrich Heine. Although best known now for his early lyrics—which have...
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The German author Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) is best known for his lyric poems, a number of which are considered among the best in German literature. His essays on German literary, political, and phil...
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From the generation following Johann Wolfgang von Goethe there is perhaps no writer more controversial than Heinrich Heine. Although best known now for his early lyrics--which have been set to music m...
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In the following essay, Kolb evaluates Heine's criticism of music, claiming that the poet was inexperienced and fairly uninterested in music itself, and that he used music, rather, as a touchst...
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In the following excerpt, Prawer discusses Heine's life, especially his relationship with Eduard Gans, focusing on his changing attitudes toward Judaism.
Heine's work is full of verbal s...
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In the following essay, Holub claims that Utopian concerns are not central to Heine's writings, despite claims to the contrary by many contemporary critics of Heine, and that Heine instead expr...
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In the following essay, first presented at a symposium in 1988, Berman compares the poetry and political agendas of Heine and the American poet Walt Whitman.
It was a tricky situation in which Thomas ...
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In the following essay, Atkins surveys critical opinion of Heine's relatively neglected Neue Gedichte.
One of the great curiosities of German literary history is the division of opinion which h...
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In the following essay, Rose examines Heine's use of pagan and Christian imagery in Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen—a poetic satire of volatile German politics in the 1840s.
It has...
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In the following excerpt, Spencer explores the popular lyric poems of Heine's Buch der Lieder.
The collection through which Heine's poems have achieved this world renown, entitled simply...
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In the following essay, Sammons studies the link between Heine's illness and his literary creativity.
The medical report on nineteenth-century German literature is quite varied and therefore pr...
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In the following essay, Kuehn offers his impressions of Heine and his poetry.
As with most of the German poems I still know by heart, nearly forty years after I had left Germany, it was my father�...
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In the following excerpt, Perraudin discusses imagery, theme, and style in two chronologically distinct poems of Buch der Lieder.
Two of the most complex, important and, given their importance, also m...
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In the following essay, Pettey investigates Heine's representation of the Spanish conquest of Mexico in his poem "Vitzliputzli" as primarily a violent clash of religions.
In �...
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In the following excerpt, Cook evaluates Heine's portrayal of sexual desire in his poem "Citronia."
Of all of Heine's posthumously published poems perhaps none has such a c...
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In the following essay, a foreword to an edition of translated works by Heine, Kazin explores Heine's problematic omission from the modernist canon and the possible reasons for this exclusion.
...
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In the following essay, Holub examines Heine's conversion to Protestantism as it relates to his Confessions.
Heine's Confessions [Geständnisse], one of the last works he published...
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In the following essay, Seeba credits Heine with a crucial role in developing the “urban gaze” that would emerge in later literature.
Few critics commenting on contested identities and t...
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In the following essay, Pizer discusses Heine's application of Goethe's theory of a “world literature.”
Transnational trends in the marketing, reception, and even writing o...
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In the following essay, Höhn traces Heine's changed worldview following the events of 1848 in Europe.
“Werden die Angelegenheiten dieser Welt wirklich gelenkt von einem vern...
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In the following essay, Pfau poses questions about Heine in relation to contemporary critics' definitions of Romanticism.
A persistent question about Romanticism centers on the continuity or di...
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In the following essay, Gilman traces parallels between Heine's work and the theories of Sigmund Freud.
Of all the creative writers whom Sigmund Freud read and quoted, none has quite as unique ...
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In the following essay, Holub discusses Heine's denunciation of the slave trade in his poem “Das Sklavenschiff.”
On 3 August 1492 Christopher Columbus, born Cristoforo Colombo, se...
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In the following essay, Sammons presents an overview of Heine's reception by American writers and critics.
The topic of Heine in America, like, I assume, several others to be discussed at this ...
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In the following essay, Pettey discusses Heine's poem “Vitzliputzli” in relation to colonialism, suggesting that the poem displays Heine's “contempt” for colo...
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In the following essay, Hoffmeister discusses Heine's marginalized place in German letters.
Like an inverted Don Quixote, Heine rode onto the stage of European letters and politics driven by hi...
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In the following essay, Cook discusses allusions to Goethe and Novalis in Heine's “Citronia,” and explores the poem's oblique use of metaphor.
“citronia”
Das ...
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In the following essay, Del Caro examines Heine's stances on some tenets of Romanticism.
Possessing what was arguably Europe's worst digestion and worst pair of eyes, the physical and so...
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In the following essay, Berman discusses how Heine's innovative “Night Thoughts” pushes the reader to abandon antiquated notions of self and society in favor of “a focus on...
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Heinrich Heine
Heinrich Heine
Critical Essay by Jocelyne Kolb
