SOURCE: "Hamlet the German and Jules Laforgue," in Yale French Studies, No. 33, 1964, pp. 92-100.

In the following essay, Sonnenfeld maintains that Laforgue 's interpretation of William Shakespeare's fictional character Hamlet is highly influenced by German philosophy.

"Such was the case of Hamlet the Dane, that typical literary man. He knew what it meant to be called to knowledge without being born to it," Tonio Kröger explained to his confidante Lisabeta. And so the poet-hero of Thomas Mann's novella embarked on his pilgrimage to Denmark "to stand . . . where the ghost appeared to Hamlet, bringing despair and death to that noble-souled youth." It was a similarly Germanic conception of Hamlet as "that typical literary man" that prompted Jules Laforgue to bypass Hamburg, his stated destination, and to proceed to "Elsinore, Hamlet's country," where he spent in 1886 a "horrible New Year's Day, with a freezing wind, mud, sea gulls," as...