»Jehuda ben Halevy« and the Restructuring of Memory within Poetic Discourse

Abstract

One of the creative tensions which generated the historical and poetic discourses within »Romanzero« is the interplay between German and Jewish nineteenth-century historicism. That the historical issue for the Jewish writer is also an artistic one is intimated in its opening sections, »Historien« and »Lamentazionen«.1 In »Historien« random historical events outside any ideological pattern reflect a reappraisal of Heine’s historical perspective: a perspective which had always moved in tension between pragmatism and theory.2 A progressive view of Weltgeschichte makes way for an illogical, unpredictable »Weltlauf« (DHA III, 105), a cacophony of unrelated historical moments. Neither the past nor the future relate meaningfully to the present. An equally fragmented image of the poet’s role emerges. In »Der Apollogott«, posing as the exiled Apollo of antiquity, the Jewish poet is unrecognised and misinterpreted by German Christian and Jew alike (DHA III, 32 ff.). Insecure within any particular cultural tradition, he is in danger of becoming a parody of himself. In »Waldeinsamkeit« a ghost of the former celebrated Romantic poet has no affiliation with past or future direction: »Doch seit der schone Kranz mir fehlt,/ Ist meine Seele wie entseelt.« (DHA III, 83)