Anomalies in Translation: Heine’s reading of A. W. Schlegel’s Shakespeare

Seminar with Nicola Alessio Sarracco.

Heine’s engagement with A. W. Schlegel’s theory of translation, in its broad sense, can already be observed in his early years. While studying law at the University of Bonn, he also attended the lectures of Schlegel who started to support his formation as a poet. Interestingly, it is in this very same time that Heine worked at his first translations from Lord Byron, a work that he seemingly initiated under the suggestion of Schlegel. In his mature works, however, Heine’s attitude towards his teacher’s thoughts on translation is marked by an ambivalent tone. In Die romantische Schule (1836) and later in Shakespeares Mädchen und Frauen (1838), it is the approach to the translation of Shakespeare that becomes object of his critical remarks. On one side, Heine sets out to uncover the hidden polemical objectives (“polemischen Zwecken” [1836] 1976, 21) inspiring his Shakespeare’s translations, seen as the culmination of early German Romanticism’s cultural-political strategy. Far from being motivated by an interest in the dramatist, these pursued in his view the objective to diffuse an image of Shakespeare as model of romantic aesthetic ideals. On the other, Heine’s criticism of A. W. Schlegel rests on deeper divergences regarding the interpretation of Shakespeare’s language. Whereas in the romantic period it was mainly underlined and revaluated the art of Shakespeare’s plays, Heine places the emphasis on passages that emerge as fragmentary pieces that break with the development and structure of his works. The new task he assigns to the translator of Shakespeare is therefore to render those sudden moments (“Plötzlichkeiten” 1988, 154) in Shakespeare’s plays that have the capacity to unsettle the reader. Yet, what it also emerges from these remarks is that Heine characterises these passages as those in which the singularity of Shakespeare’s language becomes manifest – as anomalies when compared with the “Theatersprache” ([1838] 1978, 22) of his time. By deepening these two interconnected aspects of Heine’s remarks, the seminar will seek to explore also their broader implications for the relationship between the history of philology and literature in the 19th century.

Moderator: Christian Benne.

Bio

Nicola Alessio Sarracco completed his Ph.D. in Jewish Studies at Freie Universität Berlin. His main research interests lie in German Romantic literature and philosophy, German-Jewish culture, the history of philology, and translation theory. Since September 2025, he has been conducting a postdoctoral research project titled Transient Traditions: Philology and Translation from Friedrich Schlegel to Gershom Scholem within the framework of the Walter Benjamin Fellowship program (DFG). Based at the University of Copenhagen, his project investigates the evolution of German Romantic theories of philology and translation within the German-Jewish context between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Building on the specific dynamics that shape the interactions between these two epochs, the project seeks also to investigate broader cultural and theoretical questions tied to the transmission of literary, religious, and philosophical traditions in modernity.

Registration

The event will be followed by a pizza & wine reception, and we have a limited number of seats. Please register if you would like to stay for the reception (by email to christian.benne@hum.ku.dk).