Markus Winkler

Studying Heine's approach to myth and mythology can help to further ongoing discussion of the problem 'myth and modernity'. Heine's concern is with the view of the world describable as 'mythic thinking'. Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) himself was inspired to some extent by the 'new mythology' of early Romanticism and he also took an active part in the revaluation of popular lore identifiable in late-Romantic 'German mythology'. But Heine's brand of mythic thinking is bound up with resistance to any attempt to capitalise on it for political purposes and to this end to restore it as a (Teutonic) blueprint for society as a whole. It is this resistance that determines the form of Heine's treatment of myth and mythology and the changes it underwent. Heine presents no trace of a reconciliation between myth and modernity but both the otherness and the vitality of myth are very much alive in his work.

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