SOURCE: "Bread and Wine," in The Poetry of Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, University of Wisconsin Press, 1954, pp. 194-234.

In the following excerpt, Henel discusses the evolution of one of the central themes in Meyer's poetry of the seasons—the "conflict between pagan and Christian imagery. "

Conrad Ferdinand Meyer's poems on summer and fall provide an example of proliferation which is almost overwhelming in its complexity and complication. However, there would be little point in following their evolution if such a study provided merely additional proof of what has been amply demonstrated already. Interest is aroused, not so much by the fact that twelve poems in Gedichte and four in Huttens letzte Tage are based on a small number of related motifs and can be traced back to common origins, but rather by the great difference between the earlier and the later poems, and especially by the violent contrasts among...