Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature - 6. Young Germany

Jeannette Wohl's portrait, which Börne declared to be a good one, shows us a woman with a longish face, regular, pleasing features, a high forehead, an expressive, beautifully f...

The pursuit of originality in her day was not without its accompanying danger. It is not the danger of affectation that I allude to. In all days and times there have been affect...

At the present day, out of Germany, only two of the philosophical writers of that day, Feuerbach and Schopenhauer, are still read, the former little, the latter much; but it was...

It is undoubtedly a strong proof of Börne's honesty that he allowed Jeannette to publish his letters as they came from his pen, unedited, without any suppression or modification...

In its construction, _Münchhausen_, following the general rule of the Romantic tales, was intentionally disorderly; the book begins, for example, with the eleventh chapter. The...

Rahel Antonie Friederike Varnhagen (family name originally Levin, afterwards Robert) was born in Berlin in 1771. She would thus seem to belong to quite another epoch than that o...

This bias, in combination with the philosophic lucidity due to the influence of Hegel and Feuerbach, is perhaps most remarkably observable in an author whose writings are, undes...

The mistake is colossal in its simplicity. But for our present purpose this is of no consequence. What interests us is the fact that Russian absolutism, thus understood by Heine...

The hero is a historic personage, Gabriel, afterwards Uriel Acosta, born in 1594, a religious philosopher of Jewish nationality. His parents were baptised Christians, but he him...

It was in this same month of December, 1834, that Stieglitz's disgust with life reached a sort of climax. His malady took the form of intellectual stagnation, of absolute incapa...

Börne was studying at Halle when the battle of Jena was fought. Shortly afterwards that university was suppressed by Napoleon, and he went to pursue his studies at Heidelberg, f...

"Ein guter Bürger willst du werden? Pfui Freund!--Ein guter, Bürger--Du? Das also war dein Ziel auf Erden, Dem stürmten deine Lieder zu? O nimm's zurück, das ekle Wort, Wer mag...

[13] They lie, they squabble, they hate one another with a deadly hatred; it is only want of courage that keeps them from robbing and murdering. They dare not do the things they...

In the summer of 1830 he was at the watering-place of Soden, near Frankfort-on-Main, recovering from a long bout of rheumatic fever and repeated attacks of hemorrhage. His _Jour...

The poet, even if he is a small-minded man, can only lose by pinning his faith to any narrow, political, party programme, to any social or religious theory. How is it possible t...

But on the whole it is harmless, stingless satire, fantastical banter alike of the clerical party and communists, misanthropes and revolutionists, cosmopolitans and patriots--fo...

In the case of Heine, as in the case of Goethe, he stood face to face with a genius he was unable to judge impartially, though he by no means wronged his restless contemporary t...

The earnest, impressive tone of the pamphlet, its appeal to the people's sense of justice and self-respect, aroused a keen desire to know the name of the anonymous author. He hi...

It cannot, however, be asserted that Börne was peculiarly sensitive on the subject of his Jewish extraction. He often declaimed with the greatest indignation against the oppress...

The programme he proposes for the new literature is alarming in its vagueness. Its conception of life is to be founded on a harmonious union of sensuality and spirituality. He p...

Prince Pückler had never had any serious thought of taking up the profession of author, but in 1830 he determined to publish anonymously the letters which he had written to Luci...

The _Buch der Lieder_ closes with the North Sea poems (_Die Nordsee_, 1825-1826), inspired by two visits to Norderney, and written in forcible, irregular rhythm. In them we obse...

For a moment we are taken aback. Other German poets, such as Platen and Prutz, have imitated the form of the Aristophanic comedy, its trimeters, choruses, parabases, the whole o...

During his absence, in consequence of an order given, no one knows by whom, though the embittered populace during the following days laid the blame of it on the Prince of Prussi...

Great expectations were formed of him, and he fulfilled them all. His insight was extraordinary; he seemed thoroughly to belong to his time, and yet to live as it were above it-...

Of these youthful poems, which for the most part are old-fashioned in form, the best are the famous epigrammatic quatrain beginning: "Anfangs wollt' ich fast verzagen" (I at fir...

To make the central objects stand out from the shadow or half-darkness in which they are concealed; to make light, natural light, produce a ghostly, supernatural effect by conju...

As regards literature, the generation of that day luxuriated in an idolisation of the octogenarian Goethe, which accepted everything that the aged master wrote or said as wisdom...

No one could observe that any promises were kept, but neither could any one name any particular promises that had been made by his Majesty. The new king and his government soon...

Of the many historical dramas which he produced, the most important--_Monaldeschi_ (1834), _Struensee_ (1844), and _Die Karlsschüler_ (1847)--are suggestive of the ideals of You...

Then the storm broke--first in Switzerland, where in November 1847 the Liberal cantons armed and suppressed the Jesuitical _Sonderbund_ (league of the Catholic cantons), then wi...

No one will deny that Cæsar's request is insane and its fulfilment ridiculous. But the intention of the scene was so chaste and its execution so inoffensive, that only positive...

I. THE POLITICAL BACKGROUND II. PHILOSOPHY AND REACTION III. SPIRIT OF THE OPPOSITION IV. INFLUENCE OF THE REVOLUTION OF JULY. V. INFLUENCE OF BYRON VI. VALUE OF THE NEW LITERAT...

In his periodical, _Deutsche Litteratur_, he began, in 1819, an attack upon Goethe, which he carried on with insane conceit and immovable faith in the justice of his cause. He f...

This is the expression of the healthiest, fullest, mutual sympathy, of love's gratitude, of perfect understanding. For such feeling Heine did not find expression until, with the...

[6] As your swords leap from their scabbards, let a song, O my brothers, come from your hearts! Let the song of songs resound through your rejoicing ranks--bright as burnished a...