«Ich steig' an's Land, nicht ohne Furcht und Zagen», ovvero l'arrivo a Venezia di August von Platen e l'inizio dei Sonetti Veneziani

In Italy, and in particular in Venice, August von Platen Hallermünde spent long periods and wrote a large number of works. In 1825 he published the "Sonette aus Venedig" ("Sonetti Veneziani") in Erlangen. The first part of the paper provides a general introduction to the relations between Platen and Italy and summarizes the «complicated» genesis of this poetical cycle. The second part focuses in more details on a linguistic and rhetorical analysis of the sequence’s first sonnet. Finally, the third part proposes a reflection on possible similarities between the narrative structure of Platen’s sonnets and Thomas Mann’s "Death in Venice".