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
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.