Presenting the Rivals, Uhland and Heine

Abstract

Any sort of rivalry between Ludwig Uhland and Heinrich Heine, two poets as different in temperament, personality, and artistic purpose as it is possible for contemporaries to be, must strike us as curious. The initiated, of course, need not be reminded that rivalry between them could not possibly have been in matters pertaining to women. The only woman to whom these poets paid court in common was the muse, and even this literary rivalry was apparently a more or less unconscious one. Nevertheless, the large number of their poems that treat the same or similar subjects makes the idea of such a literary rivalry, unconscious or conscious, seem not altogether remote. These poems, furthermore, make possible a comparison of methods and attainment in their poetry, so revelatory as to be extremely rewarding. Such comparison, carefully carried out, would help considerably to clarify the position of these two writers of German verse who have been so variously and at times so incorrectly and unjustly appraised both in Germany and here. An objective reappraisal of their poetic contribution resulting from such comparison would finally clear away the unreasoning prejudice for or against either Uhland or Heine so that, hereafter, personal preference for one of these poets and praise or condemnation of one or the other of their poems may be justified by sober reason. In fact, the purpose of the following detailed examination of half a dozen poems of each of these two poets, may be defined as an attempt to arrive by the empirical method at a series of artistic principles governing poets in the production of their verses that will make possible the formulation of independent and sound critical judgments, the correctness of which can be readily demonstrated by the citation of concrete facts.