Heine, Arnold, Flaubert and the Cross-Channel Link: Implicit Connections Textual and Technological

Abstract

ZusammenfassungHeinrich Heine, the German-Jewish poet and author of such works as the »Buch der Lieder«, his witty travel accounts »Reisebilder« (»Tableaux de voyage«), and much eise of renown, has been received at times as the icon of German romanticism, of populär fame for his »Loreley« song, ousted in the years of German fascism, and re-instated thereafter for his powerful literary and critical voice amongst contemporaries and posterity alike. He was born in 1797 in Düsseldorf, Duchy Berg, grew up during Napoleonic rule and the introduction of civic equality (1811) and Jewish emancipation (1812), and by governmental decree of 1814 aquired the right to live in France. He gained a PhD in jurisprudence, whilst publishing a great deal of poetry and prose, attempted unsuccessfully to set up a solicitor’s practice in Hamburg, then to acquire a chair at the universities of Munich and Berlin. He moved to Paris in 1831 and in 1835 his name was added to a list of forbidden German authors »Junges Deutschland«1 by Prussia and subsequently by the German confederation of states, Deutscher Bund. The wish to improve conditions in feudal German states remained his critical concern whilst living and writing in exile for the next 25 years, publishing his work in both German and French. During the last eight years of his life he was almost completely paralysed, carrying on writing and proof-reading from his »mattress grave«.2