Produced by Meredith Bach, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) ATTA TROLL _From the German of Heinrich Heine_ by _Herman Scheffauer_ with an introduction by _Dr Oscar Levy_ and some Pen-and-Ink sketches by _Willy Pogány_ Sidgwick & Jackson London 1913 [Illustration: Frontispiece] [Illustration: ATTA TROLL From the German of _Heinrich Heine_ by _Herman Scheffauer_ with some Pen-and-Ink sketches by _Willy Pogány _ Sidgwick & Jackson London 1913] [Illustration] CONTENTS page INTRODUCTION An Interpretation of Heinrich Heine's "Atta Troll," by Dr. Oscar Levy 3 PREFACE By Heine 25 ATTA TROLL 35 NOTES By Dr. Oscar Levy 165 ILLUSTRATIONS page FRONTISPIECE ii TITLE-PAGE iii ATTA TROLL iv INTRODUCTION (Half-Title) 1 ATTA TROLL (Half-Title) 33 _The headings and tail-pieces to the Cantos are by Horace Taylor_ [Illustration: INTRODUCTION] AN INTERPRETATION OF HEINRICH HEINE'S "ATTA TROLL" _HE who has visited the idyllic isle of Corfu must have seen, gleaming white amidst its surroundings of dark green under a sky of the deepest blue, the Greek villa which was erected there by Elizabeth, Empress of Austria. It is called the Achilleion. In its garden there is a small classic temple in which the Empress caused to be placed a marble statue of her most beloved of poets, Heinrich Heine. The statue represented the poet seated, his head bowed in profound melancholy, his cheeks thin and drawn and bearded, as in his last illness._ _Elizabeth, Empress of Austria, felt a sentimental affinity with the poet; his unhappiness, his_ Weltschmerz, _touched a responsive chord in her own unhappy heart. Intellectual sympathy with Heine's thought or tendencies there could have been little, for no woman has ever quite understood Heinrich Heine, who is still a riddle to most of the men of this age._ _After the assassination of the hapless Empress, the beautiful villa was bought by the German Emperor. He at once ordered Heine's statue to be removed--whither no one knows. Royal (as well as popular) spite has before this been vented on dead or inanimate things--one need only ask Englishmen to remember what happened to the body of Oliver Cromwell. The Kaiser's action, by the way, did not pass unchallenged. Not only in Germany but in several other countries indignant voices were raised at the time, protesting against an act so insulting to the memory of the great singer, upholding the fame of Heine as a poet and denouncing the new master of the Achilleion for his narrow and prejudiced views on art and literature._