ABSTRACT
The relationship between the Frühromantik 1 of the opening years of the nineteenth century and the French Symbolism of the 1880s and 1890s is in itself a counterpart to that between the Sturm und Drang and French Romanticism. The affinities that link this later pair as well as the time-lag separating the two movements seem to reiterate the earlier conjunction. Coming to this further set of counterparts is somewhat like hearing an echo. But just as an echo is not really a direct repetition, so the connections between the Frühromantik and Symbolism are no mere reduplication of the foregoing situation. To mention only one differentiating factor, the outer circumstances had changed in the course of the nineteenth century in so far as the French had a better acquaintance with German literature in 1890 than in 1830. Also, the analogy between the Frühromantik and Symbolism resides more in a community of underlying tendencies and problems than in the parallelism of individual works such as can be traced between the Sturm und Drang and French Romanticism. This mutation has its source in the character of the two later movements themselves, as we shall see. But since the term ‘counterpart’ includes in its meaning some contraposition alongside the reiteration, its use is fully justified in the present context. So a counterpart exists not only between the Sturm und Drang and French Romanticism and between the Frühromantik and French Symbolism respectively, but also between these pairs. Thus a coherent pattern begins to emerge of the structural dynamics of Franco—German literary relationships in the nineteenth century.
