Heinrich Heines Poetik der Stadt

Abstract

The aim of this interdisciplinary study is to trace the poetics of the city in the works of Heinrich Heine (1797-1856), and to explore how urbanisation relates to the development in literary history at that time. As theoretical framework on the subject serves sociological and philosophical literature preoccupied with the social life and the aesthetic nature of the city, such as by Walter Benjamin, Kevin Lynch, Richard Sennett and Georg Simmel. The contextualisation of Heine’s texts with other portraits of the relevant cities, e.g. E. T. A. Hoffmann’s (Berlin), Georg Christoph Lichtenberg’s (London), or Charles Baudelaire’s (Paris), happens en passant, whilst the main line of argumentation spans from Heine’s earlier writings to the latest, revealing how his writing gradually incorporates perception habits and patterns that are typically acquired in the big cities of his time. Alluding to Heine’s assertion, as a poet he would situate himself on the boundary towards literary modernism, the analytical parts examine recurring motives, stylistic devices, structural aspects, and the narrators’ voices. In doing so, the study follows Heine’s panoramatic view of Berlin’s main streets and tea table conversations to smaller German towns and to Italy; first and foremost, it shifts its attention towards his portrayal of the overwhelmed individual on Cheapside, a portrayal that culminates in the apodictic sentence “Don’t send a poet to London!” Paris, on the contrary, is finally described by a narrator who has become acquainted with city life, and has made this world of deception and splendour a home ground of poetry. This being the case, Heine could indeed be considered to be “the first poet who speaks essentially as a city dweller” (T. W. Adorno) – and his texts be read as a precursor of much later poetry and prose on the city, such as by Alfred Döblin or Rainer Maria Rilke.