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76-488: Christian Johann Heinrich Heine ( / ˈ h aɪ n ə / ; German: [ˈhaɪnʁɪç ˈhaɪnə] ; born Harry Heine ; 13 December 1797 – 17 February 1856) was a German poet, writer and literary critic . He is best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry , which was set to music in the form of Lieder (art songs) by composers such as Robert Schumann and Franz Schubert . Heine's later verse and prose are distinguished by their satirical wit and irony. He

152-452: A religious order who intended to build a hospital were asking wealthy Hamburg residents for donations. The order was then told to first contact the Jewish banker Heine, the people would donate the same amount as Heine plus one additional Thaler . The friars told Heine of the merchants' reaction and he let them name the price of the hospital's construction. Heine paid exactly one half, so

228-698: A German accent. He also acquired a lifelong love for Rhenish folklore. In 1814 Heine went to a business school in Düsseldorf where he learned to read English, the commercial language of the time. The most successful member of the Heine family was his uncle Salomon Heine , a millionaire banker in Hamburg . In 1816 Heine moved to Hamburg to become an apprentice at Heckscher & Co, his uncle's bank, but displayed little aptitude for business. He learned to hate Hamburg, with its commercial ethos, but it would become one of

304-584: A break and set off on a trip through the Harz mountains. On his return he started writing an account of it, Die Harzreise . On 28 June 1825 Heine was baptized as an Evangelical Lutheran Christian in Heiligenstadt . The Prussian government had been gradually restoring discrimination against Jews. In 1822 it introduced a law excluding Jews from academic posts and Heine had ambitions for a university career. As Heine said in self-justification, his conversion

380-465: A censored press. The opponents of the conservatives, the liberals, wanted to replace absolutism with representative, constitutional government, equality before the law and a free press. At the University of Bonn , liberal students were at war with the conservative authorities. Heine was a radical liberal and one of the first things he did after his arrival was to take part in a parade which violated

456-560: A cultural richness unavailable in the smaller cities of Germany. He made many famous acquaintances (the closest were Gérard de Nerval and Hector Berlioz ) but he always remained something of an outsider. He had little interest in French literature and wrote everything in German, subsequently translating it into French with the help of a collaborator. In Paris, Heine earned money working as the French correspondent for one of Cotta's newspapers,

532-546: A distance. His publisher was able to find some ways of getting around the censors and he was still free to publish in France. Heine's relationship with his fellow dissident Ludwig Börne was troubled. Since Börne did not attack religion or traditional morality like Heine, the German authorities hounded him less, although they still banned his books as soon as they appeared. Börne was the idol of German immigrant workers in Paris. He

608-489: A flesh wound in the hip. Before fighting, he decided to safeguard Mathilde's future in the event of his death by marrying her. Heine continued to write reports for Cotta's Allgemeine Zeitung , and, when Cotta died, for his son and successor. One event which really galvanised him was the 1840 Damascus Affair in which Jews in Damascus had been subject to blood libel and accused of murdering an old Catholic monk. This led to

684-537: A form of hermeneutics : knowledge via interpretation to understand the meaning of human texts and symbolic expressions – including the interpretation of texts which themselves interpret other texts. In the British and American literary establishment, the New Criticism was more or less dominant until the late 1960s. Around that time Anglo-American university literature departments began to witness

760-691: A leading salon. Another friend was the satirist Karl Immermann , who had praised Heine's first verse collection, Gedichte , when it appeared in December 1821. During his time in Berlin Heine also joined the Verein für Cultur und Wissenschaft der Juden , a society which attempted to achieve a balance between the Jewish faith and modernity. Since Heine was not very religious in outlook he soon lost interest, but he also began to investigate Jewish history . He

836-501: A more explosive force than the French Revolution. Heine had had few serious love affairs, but in late 1834 he made the acquaintance of a 19-year-old Paris shopgirl, Crescence Eugénie Mirat, whom he nicknamed "Mathilde". Heine reluctantly began a relationship with her. She was illiterate, knew no German, and had no interest in cultural or intellectual matters. Nevertheless, she moved in with Heine in 1836 and lived with him for

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912-423: A new social order in which meritocracy would replace hereditary distinctions in rank and wealth. There would also be female emancipation and an important role for artists and scientists. Heine frequented some Saint-Simonian meetings after his arrival in Paris but within a few years his enthusiasm for the ideology – and other forms of utopianism – had waned. Heine soon became a celebrity in France. Paris offered him

988-413: A new style of German travel-writing, mixing Romantic descriptions of nature with satire. Heine's Buch der Lieder  [ de ] followed in 1827. This was a collection of already published poems. No one expected it to become one of the most popular books of German verse ever published, and sales were slow to start with, picking up when composers began setting Heine's poems as Lieder . For example,

1064-640: A novel, Wally die Zweiflerin ("Wally the Sceptic"), which contained criticism of the institution of marriage and some mildly erotic passages. In November of that year, the German Diet consequently banned publication of works by the Young Germans in Germany and – on Metternich's insistence – Heine's name was added to their number. Heine, however, continued to comment on German politics and society from

1140-598: A physician in Saint Petersburg . Heine was a third cousin once removed of philosopher and economist Karl Marx , also born to a German Jewish family in the Rhineland , with whom he became a frequent correspondent in later life. Düsseldorf at the time was a town with a population of around 16,000. The French Revolution and subsequent Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars involving Germany complicated Düsseldorf's political history during Heine's childhood. It had been

1216-617: A rise of a more explicitly philosophical literary theory , influenced by structuralism , then post-structuralism , and other kinds of Continental philosophy . It continued until the mid-1980s, when interest in "theory" peaked. Many later critics, though undoubtedly still influenced by theoretical work, have been comfortable simply interpreting literature rather than writing explicitly about methodology and philosophical presumptions. Today, approaches based in literary theory and continental philosophy largely coexist in university literature departments, while conventional methods, some informed by

1292-766: A secret word, A garland of cypress for token. I wake; it is gone; the dream is blurred, And forgotten the word that was spoken. (Poetic translation by Hal Draper ) Starting from the mid-1820s, Heine distanced himself from Romanticism by adding irony, sarcasm, and satire into his poetry, and making fun of the sentimental-romantic awe of nature and of figures of speech in contemporary poetry and literature. An example are these lines: Das Fräulein stand am Meere Und seufzte lang und bang. Es rührte sie so sehre der Sonnenuntergang. Mein Fräulein! Sein sie munter, Das ist ein altes Stück; Hier vorne geht sie unter Und kehrt von hinten zurück. A mistress stood by

1368-522: A separate field of inquiry from literary theory is a matter of some controversy. For example, The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism draws no distinction between literary theory and literary criticism, and almost always uses the terms together to describe the same concept. Some critics consider literary criticism a practical application of literary theory, because criticism always deals directly with particular literary works, while theory may be more general or abstract. Literary criticism

1444-483: A sympathetic critic for his early verses. Heine began to acquire a reputation as a poet at Bonn. He also wrote two tragedies, Almansor and William Ratcliff , but they had little success in the theatre. After a year at Bonn, Heine left to continue his law studies at the University of Göttingen . Heine hated the town. It was part of Hanover , then also rulers of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland,

1520-688: A wave of anti-Semitic persecution. The French government, aiming at imperialism in the Middle East and not wanting to offend the Catholic party, had failed to condemn the outrage. In contrast, the Austrian consul in Damascus had assiduously exposed the blood libel as a fraud. For Heine, this was a reversal of values: reactionary Austria standing up for the Jews while France temporised. Heine responded by dusting off and publishing his unfinished novel about

1596-696: Is considered a member of the Young Germany movement. His radical political views led to many of his works being banned by German authorities —which, however, only added to his fame. He spent the last 25 years of his life as an expatriate in Paris. Heine was born on 13 December 1797, in Düsseldorf , in what was then the Duchy of Berg , into a Jewish family. He was called "Harry" in childhood but became known as "Heinrich" after his conversion to Lutheran Christianity in 1825. Despite his conversion, Heine

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1672-594: Is often published in essay or book form. Academic literary critics teach in literature departments and publish in academic journals , and more popular critics publish their reviews in broadly circulating periodicals such as The Times Literary Supplement , The New York Times Book Review , The New York Review of Books , the London Review of Books , the Dublin Review of Books , The Nation , Bookforum , and The New Yorker . Literary criticism

1748-686: Is thought to have existed as far back as the classical period. In the 4th century BC Aristotle wrote the Poetics , a typology and description of literary forms with many specific criticisms of contemporary works of art. Poetics developed for the first time the concepts of mimesis and catharsis , which are still crucial in literary studies. Plato 's attacks on poetry as imitative, secondary, and false were formative as well. The Sanskrit Natya Shastra includes literary criticism on ancient Indian literature and Sanskrit drama. Later classical and medieval criticism often focused on religious texts, and

1824-554: The Allgemeine Zeitung . The first event he covered was the Salon of 1831. His articles were eventually collected in a volume entitled Französische Zustände ("Conditions in France"). Heine saw himself as a mediator between Germany and France. If the two countries understood one another there would be progress. To further this aim he published De l'Allemagne ("On Germany") in French (begun 1833). In its later German version,

1900-546: The Carlsbad Decrees , a series of measures introduced by Metternich to suppress liberal political activity. Heine was more interested in studying history and literature than law. The university had engaged the famous literary critic and thinker August Wilhelm Schlegel as a lecturer and Heine heard him talk about the Nibelungenlied and Romanticism . Though he would later mock Schlegel, Heine found in him

1976-692: The Heckscher & Co. merchant bank. In 1818, now being the sole executive director, he changed the company's name to Bankhaus Salomon Heine . During the following years he rose to becoming one of Hamburg's most successful bankers of the time. Salomon Heine let young Heinrich Heine work and learn at his Hamburg bank Heckscher & Co. and eventually offered Heinrich a position with the cloth company Harry Heine & Comp. Heinrich though, who had fallen in love with Salomon's daughter Amalie, devoted himself chiefly to poetry and took very little interest in business. Soon he had to declare bankruptcy. Salomon Heine

2052-744: The New Critics , also remain active. Disagreements over the goals and methods of literary criticism, which characterized both sides taken by critics during the "rise" of theory, have declined. Some critics work largely with theoretical texts, while others read traditional literature; interest in the literary canon is still great, but many critics are also interested in nontraditional texts and women's literature , as elaborated on by certain academic journals such as Contemporary Women's Writing , while some critics influenced by cultural studies read popular texts like comic books or pulp / genre fiction . Ecocritics have drawn connections between literature and

2128-462: The history of the book is a field of interdisciplinary inquiry drawing on the methods of bibliography , cultural history , history of literature , and media theory . Principally concerned with the production, circulation, and reception of texts and their material forms, book history seeks to connect forms of textuality with their material aspects. Among the issues within the history of literature with which book history can be seen to intersect are:

2204-500: The 9th century, notably by Al-Jahiz in his al-Bayan wa-'l-tabyin and al-Hayawan , and by Abdullah ibn al-Mu'tazz in his Kitab al-Badi . The literary criticism of the Renaissance developed classical ideas of unity of form and content into literary neoclassicism , proclaiming literature as central to culture, entrusting the poet and the author with preservation of a long literary tradition. The birth of Renaissance criticism

2280-466: The Enlightenment theoreticians so that the business of Enlightenment became a business with the Enlightenment. This development – particularly of emergence of entertainment literature – was addressed through an intensification of criticism. Many works of Jonathan Swift , for instance, were criticized including his book Gulliver's Travels , which one critic described as "the detestable story of

2356-646: The French for introducing the Napoleonic Code and trial by jury. He glossed over the negative aspects of French rule in Berg: heavy taxation, conscription, and economic depression brought about by the Continental Blockade , which may have contributed to his father's bankruptcy. Heine greatly admired Napoleon as the promoter of revolutionary ideals of liberty and equality and loathed the political atmosphere in Germany after Napoleon's defeat, marked by

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2432-636: The Sanskritist Franz Bopp and the Homer critic F. A. Wolf , who inspired Heine's lifelong love of Aristophanes . Most important was the philosopher Hegel , whose influence on Heine is hard to gauge. He probably gave Heine and other young students the idea that history had a meaning which could be seen as progressive. Heine also made valuable acquaintances in Berlin, notably the liberal Karl August Varnhagen and his Jewish wife Rahel , who held

2508-548: The Yahoos". The British Romantic movement of the early nineteenth century introduced new aesthetic ideas to literary studies, including the idea that the object of literature need not always be beautiful, noble, or perfect, but that literature itself could elevate a common subject to the level of the sublime . German Romanticism , which followed closely after the late development of German classicism , emphasized an aesthetic of fragmentation that can appear startlingly modern to

2584-514: The author's psychology or biography, which became almost taboo subjects) or reader response : together known as Wimsatt and Beardsley's intentional fallacy and affective fallacy . This emphasis on form and precise attention to "the words themselves" has persisted, after the decline of these critical doctrines themselves. In 1957 Northrop Frye published the influential Anatomy of Criticism . In his works Frye noted that some critics tend to embrace an ideology, and to judge literary pieces on

2660-522: The basis of their adherence to such ideology. This has been a highly influential viewpoint among modern conservative thinkers. E. Michael Jones, for example, argues in his Degenerate Moderns that Stanley Fish was influenced by his own adulterous affairs to reject classic literature that condemned adultery. Jürgen Habermas , in Erkenntnis und Interesse [1968] ( Knowledge and Human Interests ), described literary critical theory in literary studies as

2736-577: The book is divided into two: Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland ("On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany") and Die romantische Schule ("The Romantic School"). Heine was deliberately attacking Madame de Staël 's book De l'Allemagne (1813) which he viewed as reactionary, Romantic and obscurantist. He felt de Staël had portrayed a Germany of "poets and thinkers", dreamy, religious, introverted and cut off from

2812-430: The book was published in 1840 it was universally disliked by the radicals and served to alienate Heine from his public. Even his enemies admitted that Börne was a man of integrity, so Heine's ad hominem attacks on him were viewed as being in poor taste. Heine had made personal attacks on Börne's closest friend Jeanette Wohl , so Jeannette's husband challenged Heine to a duel. It was the last Heine ever fought – he received

2888-649: The capital of the Duchy of Jülich-Berg , but was under French occupation at the time of his birth. It then passed to the Elector of Bavaria before being ceded to Napoleon in 1806, who turned it into the capital of the Grand Duchy of Berg , one of three French states he established in Germany. It was first ruled by Joachim Murat , then by Napoleon himself. Upon Napoleon's downfall in 1815 it became part of Prussia . Thus Heine's formative years were spent under French influence. The adult Heine would always be devoted to

2964-415: The conservative policies of Austrian chancellor Klemens von Metternich , who attempted to reverse the effects of the French Revolution. Heine's parents were not particularly devout. They sent him as a young child to a Jewish school where he learned a smattering of Hebrew , but thereafter he attended Catholic schools. Here he learned French, which became his second language – although he always spoke it with

3040-426: The cross-road will be buried He who killed himself; There grows a blue flower, Suicide’s flower. I stood at the cross-road and sighed The night was cold and mute. By the light of the moon moved slowly Suicide’s flower. Heine became increasingly critical of despotism and reactionary chauvinism in Germany, of nobility and clerics but also what he viewed as “narrow mindedness” of ordinary people and of

3116-496: The development of authorship as a profession, the formation of reading audiences, the constraints of censorship and copyright, and the economics of literary form. Salomon Heine Heine learned the trade of banking at Bankhaus Popert in Hamburg. Subsequently, he started his own business as a draft broker, cooperating closely with Emanuel Anton von Halle . In 1797, together with Marcus Abraham Heckscher (1770–1823), he founded

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3192-406: The first full-fledged crisis in modernity of the core critical-aesthetic principles inherited from classical antiquity , such as proportion, harmony, unity, decorum , that had long governed, guaranteed, and stabilized Western thinking about artworks. Although Classicism was very far from spent as a cultural force, it was to be gradually challenged by a rival movement, namely Baroque, that favoured

3268-406: The more controversial criteria of the author's religious beliefs. These critical reviews were published in many magazines, newspapers, and journals. The commercialization of literature and its mass production had its downside. The emergent literary market, which was expected to educate the public and keep them away from superstition and prejudice, increasingly diverged from the idealistic control of

3344-399: The natural sciences. Darwinian literary studies studies literature in the context of evolutionary influences on human nature. And postcritique has sought to develop new ways of reading and responding to literary texts that go beyond the interpretive methods of critique . Many literary critics also work in film criticism or media studies . Related to other forms of literary criticism,

3420-650: The new direction taken in the early twentieth century. Early in the century the school of criticism known as Russian Formalism , and slightly later the New Criticism in Britain and in the United States, came to dominate the study and discussion of literature in the English-speaking world. Both schools emphasized the close reading of texts, elevating it far above generalizing discussion and speculation about either authorial intention (to say nothing of

3496-636: The news that his cousin Amalie had become engaged. When Heine challenged another student, Wiebel, to a duel, the first of ten known incidents throughout his life, the authorities stepped in and he was suspended from the university for six months. His uncle then decided to send him to the University of Berlin . Heine arrived in Berlin in March 1821. It was the biggest, most cosmopolitan city he had ever visited, with its population of about 200,000. The university gave Heine access to notable cultural figures as lecturers:

3572-665: The newspaper congenial, and instead tried to obtain a professorship at Munich University, with no success. After a few months he took a trip to northern Italy, visiting Lucca , Florence and Venice, but was forced to return when he received news that his father had died. This Italian journey resulted in a series of new works: Die Reise von München nach Genua ( Journey from Munich to Genoa ), Die Bäder von Lucca ( The Baths of Lucca ) and Die Stadt Lucca ( The Town of Lucca ). Die Bäder von Lucca embroiled Heine in controversy. The aristocratic poet August von Platen had been annoyed by some epigrams by Immermann which Heine had included in

3648-495: The other businessmen, bound by their words, were obliged to finance the rest. Moreover, Heine worked in Hamburg for the rest of his life. After the disastrous Great Fire of Hamburg in 1842, he participated in the city's reconstruction with his private assets. Additionally, he founded the Israelite Hospital of Hamburg in remembrance of his wife Betty who had died in 1837. Heinrich Heine lauded his uncle's foundation in

3724-612: The persecution of Jews in the Middle Ages, Der Rabbi von Bacherach . Literary criticism A genre of arts criticism , literary criticism or literary studies is the study, evaluation , and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory , which is the philosophical analysis of literature's goals and methods. Although the two activities are closely related, literary critics are not always, and have not always been, theorists. Whether or not literary criticism should be considered

3800-902: The poem "Allnächtlich im Traume" was set to music by Robert Schumann and Felix Mendelssohn . It contains the ironic disillusionment typical of Heine: Allnächtlich im Traume seh ich dich, Und sehe dich freundlich grüßen, Und laut aufweinend stürz ich mich Zu deinen süßen Füßen. Du siehst mich an wehmütiglich, Und schüttelst das blonde Köpfchen; Aus deinen Augen schleichen sich Die Perlentränentröpfchen. Du sagst mir heimlich ein leises Wort, Und gibst mir den Strauß von Zypressen. Ich wache auf, und der Strauß ist fort, Und das Wort hab ich vergessen. Nightly I see you in dreams – you speak, With kindliness sincerest, I throw myself, weeping aloud and weak At your sweet feet, my dearest. You look at me with wistful woe, And shake your golden curls; And stealing from your eyes there flow The teardrops like to pearls. You breathe in my ear

3876-472: The poles of his life alongside Paris. When he was 18 Heine almost certainly had an unrequited love for his cousin Amalie, Salomon's daughter. Whether he then transferred his affections, equally unsuccessfully to her sister Therese is unknown. This period in Heine's life is not clear but it seems that his father's business deteriorated, making Samson Heine effectively the ward of his brother Salomon. Salomon realised that his nephew had no talent for trade, and it

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3952-469: The power Heine blamed for bringing Napoleon down. Here the poet experienced an aristocratic snobbery absent elsewhere. He hated law as the Historical School of law he had to study was used to bolster the reactionary form of government he opposed. Other events conspired to make Heine loathe this period of his life: he was expelled from a student fraternity due to anti-Semitism , and he heard

4028-564: The publication of this work. In London he cashed a cheque from his uncle for £ 200 (equal to £21,870 today), much to Salomon's chagrin. Heine was unimpressed by the English: he found them commercial and prosaic, and still blamed them for the defeat of Napoleon. On his return to Germany, Cotta , the liberal publisher of Goethe and Schiller , offered Heine a job co-editing a magazine, Politische Annalen , in Munich . Heine did not find work on

4104-447: The reader of English literature, and valued Witz – that is, "wit" or "humor" of a certain sort – more highly than the serious Anglophone Romanticism. The late nineteenth century brought renown to authors known more for their literary criticism than for their own literary work, such as Matthew Arnold . However important all of these aesthetic movements were as antecedents, current ideas about literary criticism derive almost entirely from

4180-596: The remainder of his life. His move was prompted by the July Revolution of 1830 that had made Louis-Philippe the "Citizen King" of the French. Heine shared liberal enthusiasm for the revolution, which he felt had the potential to overturn the conservative political order in Europe. Heine was also attracted by the prospect of freedom from German censorship and was interested in the new French utopian political doctrine of Saint-Simonianism . Saint-Simonianism preached

4256-423: The rest of his life. Their stormy relationship has been compared to a marriage. Campe was a liberal who published as many dissident authors as he could. He had developed various techniques for evading the authorities. The laws of the time stated that any book under 320 pages had to be submitted to censorship. The authorities thought long books would cause little trouble as they were unpopular. One way around censorship

4332-436: The rest of his life. They were married in 1841. Heine and his fellow radical exile in Paris, Ludwig Börne , had become the role models for a younger generation of writers who were given the name " Young Germany ". They included Karl Gutzkow , Heinrich Laube , Theodor Mundt and Ludolf Wienbarg . They were liberal, but not actively political. Nevertheless, they still fell foul of the authorities. In 1835, Gutzkow published

4408-533: The revolutionary currents of the modern world. Heine thought that such an image suited the oppressive German authorities. He also had an Enlightenment view of the past, seeing it as mired in superstition and atrocities. "Religion and Philosophy in Germany" describes the replacement of traditional "spiritualist" religion by a pantheism that pays attention to human material needs. According to Heine, pantheism had been repressed by Christianity and had survived in German folklore. He predicted that German thought would prove

4484-486: The rising German form of nationalism , especially in contrast to the French and the revolution . Nevertheless, he made a point of stressing his love for his Fatherland : Plant the black, red, gold banner at the summit of the German idea, make it the standard of free mankind, and I will shed my dear heart's blood for it. Rest assured, I love the Fatherland just as much as you do. The first volume of travel writings

4560-700: The sea sighing long and anxiously. She was so deeply stirred By the setting sun My Fräulein!, be gay, This is an old play; ahead of you it sets And from behind it returns. The blue flower of Novalis , "symbol for the Romantic movement ", also received withering treatment from Heine during this period, as illustrated by the following quatrains from Lyrisches Intermezzo : Am Kreuzweg wird begraben Wer selber brachte sich um; dort wächst eine blaue Blume, Die Armesünderblum'. Am Kreuzweg stand ich und seufzte; Die Nacht war kalt und stumm. Im Mondschein bewegte sich langsam Die Armesünderblum'. At

4636-519: The second volume of Reisebilder . He counter-attacked by writing a play, Der romantische Ödipus , which included anti-Semitic jibes about Heine. Heine was stung and responded by mocking Platen's homosexuality in Die Bäder von Lucca . This back-and-forth ad hominem literary polemic has become known as the Platen affair  [ de ] . Heine left Germany for France in 1831, settling in Paris for

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4712-416: The several long religious traditions of hermeneutics and textual exegesis have had a profound influence on the study of secular texts. This was particularly the case for the literary traditions of the three Abrahamic religions : Jewish literature , Christian literature and Islamic literature . Literary criticism was also employed in other forms of medieval Arabic literature and Arabic poetry from

4788-613: The transgressive and the extreme, without laying claim to the unity, harmony, or decorum that supposedly distinguished both nature and its greatest imitator, namely ancient art. The key concepts of the Baroque aesthetic, such as " conceit ' ( concetto ), " wit " ( acutezza , ingegno ), and " wonder " ( meraviglia ), were not fully developed in literary theory until the publication of Emanuele Tesauro 's Il Cannocchiale aristotelico (The Aristotelian Telescope) in 1654. This seminal treatise – inspired by Giambattista Marino 's epic Adone and

4864-535: The work of the Spanish Jesuit philosopher Baltasar Gracián – developed a theory of metaphor as a universal language of images and as a supreme intellectual act, at once an artifice and an epistemologically privileged mode of access to truth. In the Enlightenment period (1700s–1800s), literary criticism became more popular. During this time literacy rates started to rise in the public; no longer

4940-460: Was "the ticket of admission into European culture". In any event, Heine's conversion, which was reluctant, never brought him any benefits in his career. A quarter of a century later, he declared: "I make no secret of my Judaism, to which I have not returned, because I never left it." Heine now had to search for a job. He was only really suited to writing but it was extremely difficult to be a professional writer in Germany. The market for literary works

5016-404: Was a republican, while Heine was not. Heine regarded Börne, with his admiration for Robespierre , as a puritanical neo-Jacobin and remained aloof from him in Paris, which upset Börne, who began to criticise him, mostly semi-privately. In February 1837, Börne died. When Heine heard that Gutzkow was writing a biography of Börne, he began work on his own, severely critical "memorial" of the man. When

5092-562: Was angered by his nephew choosing poetry as a way of life, in which he himself saw no money. His disapproval became apparent in the dictum: " Hätt er gelernt was Rechtes, müsst er nicht schreiben Bücher (Had he learned something proper he needed not write books)." Nonetheless, Salomon paid for Heinrich's studies in Jurisprudence and until his death he regularly granted Heinrich financial aid. Salomon Heine's bounty and his position as benefactor are traded by an anecdote: emissaries from

5168-463: Was closed. Campe was reluctant to publish uncensored books as he had bad experiences with print runs being confiscated. Heine resisted all censorship; this issue became a bone of contention between the two. However, the relationship between author and publisher started well: Campe published the first volume of Reisebilder ("Travel Pictures") in May 1826. This volume included Die Harzreise , which marked

5244-589: Was decided that Heine should enter law. So, in 1819, Heine went to the University of Bonn , then in Prussia. Political life in Germany was divided between conservatives and liberals. The conservatives, who were in power, wanted to restore things to the way they were before the French Revolution . They were against German unification because they felt a united Germany might fall victim to revolutionary ideas. Most German states were absolutist monarchies with

5320-434: Was in 1498, with the recovery of classic texts, most notably, Giorgio Valla 's Latin translation of Aristotle 's Poetics . The work of Aristotle, especially Poetics , was the most important influence upon literary criticism until the late eighteenth century. Lodovico Castelvetro was one of the most influential Renaissance critics who wrote commentaries on Aristotle's Poetics in 1570. The seventeenth-century witnessed

5396-546: Was never a devout Lutheran Christian. Heine's father, Samson Heine (1764–1828), was a textile merchant. His mother Peira (known as "Betty"), née van Geldern (1771–1859), was the daughter of a physician. Heinrich was the eldest of four children. He had a sister, Charlotte (later Charlotte Embden  [ de ] ), and two brothers, Gustav , later Baron Heine-Geldern and publisher of the Viennese newspaper Fremden-Blatt  [ de ] , and Maximilian , who became

5472-549: Was particularly drawn to the Spanish Jews of the Middle Ages . In 1824 Heine began a historical novel, Der Rabbi von Bacherach , which he never finished. In May 1823 Heine left Berlin for good and joined his family at their new home in Lüneburg . Here he began to write the poems of the cycle Die Heimkehr ("The Homecoming"). He returned to Göttingen where he was again bored by the law. In September 1824 he decided to take

5548-407: Was reading exclusive for the wealthy or scholarly. With the rise of the literate public, the swiftness of printing and commercialization of literature, criticism arose too. Reading was no longer viewed solely as educational or as a sacred source of religion; it was a form of entertainment. Literary criticism was influenced by the values and stylistic writing, including clear, bold, precise writing and

5624-543: Was small and it was only possible to make a living by writing virtually non-stop. Heine was incapable of doing this so he never had enough money to cover his expenses. Before finding work, Heine visited the North Sea resort of Norderney which inspired the free verse poems of his cycle Die Nordsee . In Hamburg one evening in January 1826 Heine met Julius Campe  [ de ] , who would be his chief publisher for

5700-1299: Was such a success that Campe pressed Heine for another. Reisebilder II appeared in April 1827. It contains the second cycle of North Sea poems, a prose essay on the North Sea as well as a new work, Ideen: Das Buch Le Grand , which contains the following satire on German censorship: The German Censors  ——  ——  ——  ——  —— ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  —— ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  —— ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  —— ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  —— ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  —— ——  ——  ——  ——  ——    idiots    ——  —— ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  —— ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  —— ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  ——  —— ——  ——  ——  ——  —— Heine went to England to avoid what he predicted would be controversy over

5776-440: Was to publish dissident works in large print to increase the number of pages beyond 320. The censorship in Hamburg was relatively lax but Campe had to worry about Prussia, the largest German state and largest market for books. It was estimated that one-third of the German readership was Prussian. Initially, any book which had passed the censor in a German state was able to be sold in any of the other states, but in 1834 this loophole

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