1428 Heinrich Heine: Paradox and Poet, by Louis Untermeyer (read 22 Dec 1976) How odd it is that I read what I do! Sometimes it is the merest chance--and chance brings gold. So it is now, that I have just finished this book. Heine was born Dec 17, 1797, and died Feb 17, 1856--the book, written in 1937, is really very, very good. I enjoyed it greatly, and interspersed with it I read much Heine poetry. Unfortunately, as I was told long ago by Bill Wilkie, unless the translator is as great a poet as the original poet, how can one know if what moves one is Heine or the translator? One cannot of course admire the many stupid things Heine did and said, but his life is better than fiction in its incredibility, and his poetry seems sublime:

From graves of time forgotten
Old visions come to me
Revealing what, when near you
My life once used to be.

By day I wandered dreaming
Through streets and alleys until
The people looked at me wondering
I was so gloomy and still.

By night it was somewhat better--
The streets were an empty rout;
And I and my shadow together
Went staggering blindly about. ( )