Green Henry
Covers of the first edition
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| Author | Gottfried Keller |
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| Original title | Der grüne Heinrich |
| Country | Germany |
| Language | German |
| Genre | Bildungsroman |
| Publisher | Vieweg Verlag (1855) and Verlag Göschen (1879-1880) |
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Publication date
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1855 and 1880 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover & Paperback) |
Green Henry (German: Der grüne Heinrich) is a partially autobiographical novel by the Swiss author Gottfried Keller, first published in 1855, and extensively revised in 1879. Truth is freely mingled with fiction, and there is a generalizing purpose to exhibit the psychic disease that affected the whole generation of the transition from romanticism to realism in life and art. The work stands with Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and Adalbert Stifter's Der Nachsommer as one of the three most important examples of a Bildungsroman.
Green Henry details the life of Heinrich Lee from childhood through his first romantic encounters, his fledgling attempts at becoming a painter in Munich, and his eventual installation as a chancery clerk. The story gets its name from the color that Heinrich affected in dress.
Heinrich is a Swiss burgher's son, brought up too tenderly by a widowed mother. After youthful pranks and experiences, and a not altogether justified dismissal from school, he idles away some time in his mother's village in activities of which the description is far better worthwhile than was the reality. He determines to be a painter, and goes to Munich's artistic Bohemia. From there, he finds his way to a count's mansion, and then he returns home to his dying mother and an all-too-tardy and brief repentance.
The much revised second version has Heinrich abandoning art to enter the civil service. This experience affords occasion for extended political reflections. The tone of the reminiscences makes it clear that Keller would have the reader understand that Heinrich has lived through and risen out of his instability and irresolution and sees life steadily and cheerfully at last.
Green Henry was written from 1850 to 1855. It is the most personal of all of Keller's works, and is significantly influenced by Jean-Jacques Rousseau's doctrine of a return to nature. At first intended as a short narrative of the collapse of the life of a young artist, the book expanded as its composition progressed into a huge work that treats, in poetically transfigured manner, all the events in Keller's life up to his return to Zürich in 1842.
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Wikipedia