The article focuses on the concept of time in human and global perspective in the poetry of two Swedish authors of the 19th century: Per Atterbom and Viktor Rydberg. These two poets belong to different branches of the Romantic movement. Atterbom represents the early mystic Romanticism and he is one of the first Romantic authors in Sweden. Rydberg is a post-Romantic poet: his poetic works contain features that are characteristic of the literature of Romanticism, but they were written in the last decades of the century. The theme of the power of time is one of the most important for both authors, it determines characters of lyrical heroes and poetics in many of their poems but in different ways. Atterbom represents the destructive power of time. Thus, the main characters of his fairy tale play “The Isle of Bliss”, Hyperborean king Astolf and nymph Felicia, live on a magical island and aspire to escape from Time, but Time overcomes them. Atterbom shows in his poetry that time hasn’t its limits in the world beyond. Rydberg represents the characters who try to apprehend the rules of time. The immortal mythological creatures in his poems (the Tomten, the elf of a river) cannot explain why time has such an influence on man and mankind. This theme corresponds with a philosophical matter of the meaning of human life. The humans in Rydberg’s lyrics do not try to overcome time as they perceive the nature and its rules throw their senses.
Using the methodology of the “Hoffmann complex” the article investigates the influence of the romantic tradition on Danish prose of the second half of the 20th century using the example of E. T. A. Hoffmann’s works and V. Sørensen’s short story “A Tale of Glass”. It is claimed that the work reveals a layer of Hoffmann’s intertext from the short stories “The Sandman” and “Little Zaches”. The concept of the “Sandman complex” is introduced, which is a stable interweaving of problems, motifs and images characteristic of the Hoffmann novel by the same name, namely: optical symbolism (eyes, glass, spectacles), the principle of doubleness (“party of glasses” — “party against glasses”) and the problem of duality (Gert — the leader of the revolution, the brothers-opticians), the motive of blindness, the deconstruction of the features of a romantic hero, the motive of choosing between a “false” and a “true” beloved, the problem of spiritual death of man and the mechanization of society (elements from the short story “Little Zaches”), as well as the image system (Coppelius, Coppola, Olympia, Clara, Nathaniel) from the novel by E. T. A. Hoffman. The transformation of the “Sandman complex” in the short story by Sørensen is analyzed. The authors conclude that in the “Story with Glass” elements of Hoffmann’s poetics are refracted in order to reflect the beginnings of socio-political and philosophical conflicts (materialism and idealism) of the 20th century, which originated in the confrontation of philistine (everyday) and romantic worldviews