GROUP 5 (MEMBER NO.

1): Sheramae Isobel Silvano

TASKS:
I. TITLE:
A Young Man Loves a Maiden
II. AUTHOR:
Heinrich Heine

Biography:
Christian Johann Heinrich Heine
(original name until 1825), born on
December 13, 1797 and died on
February 17, 1856. Heinrich Heine was
a German poet whose international
literary reputation and influence were
established by the Buch derLieder
(1827; The Book of Songs), frequently
set to music, though the more sombre
poems of his last years are also highly
regarded. Heine was born of Jewish
parents. His father was a handsome but
an ineffectual merchant while his
mother was fairly educated and was
ambitious to her son. He had been
educated in Düsseldorf Lyceum by his
rich banker uncle. He never practiced
law, however, nor held a position in
government service; and his student
years had been primarily devoted not to
the studies for which his uncle had been paying but to poetry, literature, and history. The
steady growth of Heine’s fame in the 1820s was accelerated by a series of experiments in
prose. In the fall of 1824, in order to relax from his hated studies in Göttingen, he took a
walking tour through the Harz Mountains and wrote a little book about it, fictionalizing
his modest adventure and weaving into it elements both of his poetic imagination and of
sharp-eyed social comment. “Die Harzreise” (“The Harz Journey”) became the first piece
of what were to be four volumes of Reisebilder(1826–31; Pictures of Travel); the
whimsical amalgam of its fact and fiction, autobiography, social criticism, and literary
polemic was widely imitated by other writers in subsequent years. Some of the pieces
were drawn from a journey to England Heine made in 1827 and a trip to Italy in 1828,
but the finest of them, “Ideen. Das Buch Le Grand” (1827; “Ideas. The Book Le Grand”),
is a journey into the self, a wittily woven fabric of childhood memory, enthusiasm for
Napoleon, ironic sorrow at unhappy love, and political allusion. For many decades his
literary reputation was stronger abroad, especially in France, England, and America,
where his wit and ambivalence were better appreciated, than at home. In the second half
of the 20th century, the evaluation of Heine’s political role and its relationship to
Marxism supplied a bone of contention between East German and West German critics
before reunification. Deplorable as much of the history of Heine’s reputation has been, it
is testimony to the enduring impact of a genuinely European poet and writer.
III. NOTABLE WORKS:
• “The Book of Songs”
• “Lutezia”
• “Pictures of Travel”
• “Ideen. Das Buch Le Grand”
• “The Harz Journey”
• “Germany, a Winter’s Tale”
• “Romanzero”
• “Atta Troll, a Midsummer Night’s Dream”
• “French Affairs”
• “Poems 1853 and 1854”
IV. VOCABULARY:
none
GROUP 5 (MEMBER NO. 2): Jo Marchianne G. Pigar
TASKS:
“A Young Man Loves A Maiden”
Heinrich Heine

I. PARAPHRASE OR MEANING OF EACH STANZAS:

 Stanza No. 1:
Original:
A young man loves a maiden
Whose heart for another sighed;
This other love another
Who then becomes his bride.
Paraphrase or Meaning:
The first stanza is about a young man who is experiencing an unrequited love.
The maiden, he’s in love with, loves another guy who is happy with an
another maiden.
 Stanza No. 2:
Originial:
The maiden takes the first man
Who happens to come her way;
Just out of spite and anger;
The youth is left in dismay.
Paraphrase or Meaning:
The second stanza is about the maiden who is hurting because the guy she’s in
love with is already taken. The girl went to the young man, who is in love
with her, to forget the pain even though she doesn’t love the young man.
  Stanza No. 3:
Original:
It is an old story
And yet it’s always new;
And to whomever happens
‘Twill break his heart in two.

Paraphrase or Meaning:
This story is very common to the society. In the end, someone will eventually
get hurt if he or she was just used in order to forget the love he or she is
feeling for another person.

II. SUMMARY:
The poem is about a story that is always heard in the society especially nowadays. It
is about a person who is using someone that is in love with him or her in order to
forget the past love. This situation will always hurt the one who is getting
advantage of. But, of course, the person will endure it because he or she cherishes
someone and chose to become blind to the situation.
“A Young Man Loves A Maiden”
Heinrich Heine

GROUP 5 (MEMBER NO. 3): Steffie Jane C. Tan

TASKS:
I. MORAL LESSON:
The poem gave emphasis on the reality of love instead of focusing on its universal,
cliché interpretation. Love itself is not always a fairytale. It is not a mirror image of
the romance depicted in novels and fairytale stories. The essence of Heinrich Heine’s
“A Young Man Loves A Maiden” tells of the pain and heartbreak brought by
unrequited or one-sided love; a story that each one of us has gone through. Love, as
an emotion felt by us humans, must never control us; it must never lead us to hurt
another; it must not control our reasoning; and finally, we must never condone it no
matter how much pain we undergo because of it.