Sämtliche Gedichte

by Heinrich Heine

Sämtliche Gedichte Heines werden in der Universalbibliothek in einer von Bernd Kortländer sorgfältig kommentierten Ausgabe vorgelegt: vom frühen und in vielen veränderten Auflagen immer wieder nachgedruckten Buch der Lieder über den mittleren Heine der Neuen Gedichte (zuerst 1844), die unter anderem den berühmten Zyklus der "Zeitgedichte" enthalten, und die Sammlungen "Romanzero" und "Gedichte. 1853 und 1854" bis zu den nachgelassenen Gedichten des 1856 verstorbenen Dichters.
Der ausführliche Anhang gibt Auskunft über die Entstehungs-, Druck- und Rezeptionsgeschichte dieser bedeutenden Lyrik, erläutert die zeitgeschichtlichen Hintergründe und Anspielungen und erschließt ein lyrisches Werk, das in seiner Vielfalt und in seiner Qualität im 19. Jahrhundert nicht seinesgleichen hat.

1117 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2006

About the author

Christian Johann Heinrich Heine was one of the most significant German poets of the 19th century. He was also a journalist, essayist, 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 is distinguished by its satirical wit and irony. His radical political views led to many of his works being banned by German authorities. Heine spent the last 25 years of his life as an expatriate in Paris.

Reviews

[Michael Haase · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heine's poetry is so rich in depth and diversity that it's difficult for me to accurately summarize it. His poems vary between some of the most evocative and eloquent verse I've ever seen in Romantic literature and the profound banality of love poems and Christian worship. Heine reaches his zenith in his opus, Die Heimkehr, a collection of poems that paints a world of fantastical landscapes and sundry lifestyles, connected by an overarching narrative of seaside travel but, sadly, devolving towards the end into a series of typical love poems.

Heine's Nordsee is great as well, but less than Die Heimkehr, as it doesn't have the melodic rhyme that Die Heimkehr does, and the constant referencing of Greek mythology gets tedious after a while. It does however exhibit Heine's talent for depicting amazing imagery in his poetry. It's precisely this which Heine excels at best.

Though Heine often returns to the themes of purehearted love and devotion in his writing, which is something I find overly sentimental and cliché, he also writes much about the ocean, storms, vast abodes, and wistful dreaming; it's these that he imbues with a mysticism that makes his poetry so
worthwhile.

Some of my favorite poems by him are: Shattenküsse, Shattenliebe, Ein Fichtenbaum, and Die Nachts am Strand.

Sometimes his poems strike a note of arrogance and racial bias, such as Wechsel, a poem about the superiority of Nordic blood. In Deutschland, Aus Zeitgedichte he creates a frighteningly foreshadowing comparison between Germany and Siegfried, the Nordic hero that sliced an anvil in two with his sword and slayed a dragon (the metaphor of a rising and heroic German state is distasteful given the modern context of overzealous national pride in the form of Nazism). It is also sadly ironic how Heine describes Germany in Zur Beruhigung as an easy-going land that would never fall to dictatorship.

Heine is perhaps most famous for his Lyrisches Intermezzo, which was put to music by Schumann, and Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen, both of which are beautifully written and worth reading.