A cast of light

across a winter night,
and it seems so harsh.

This book is coming as a SURPRISE! to a great BC'er who truly holds the heart of the BC community in her hands!

You're always sharing your books and I like to see some come back to you! ;)

I've never read any Heinrich Heine. I know he's an important poet. This is a lovely bi-lingual edition, included in a wonderful box of books my sweet bookcrossing friend HI77 sent to wish me a Happy New Year. The box included two wishlist books. Thanks HI77. I wish you peace, prosperity, good health and lots of wonderful reads this 2018!

"The birds were singing their yearning song, while the men were hoping and thinking." (Page 37) The Winter Tale of America 2020 is coming to an end. The birds are yearning, making their nests for spring, and politicians are debating so this seemed the right time to take this up. Heinrich Heine, a politically radical German man of letters, who had lived in exile in France for the past 13 years, visited his mother and his publisher in late 1843 in Hamburg. This satirical verse epic, which is even funny in English, was the result. I have a great-great grandfather who left Hesse about this time, fleeing the revolutionary outbreaks of the era. Heine's work shows why so many left then and paints a vivid picture of Germany and the political movements of that time. This book has Heine's German on the left and Edgar Alfred Bowring's English translation on the right. I will never know German so I haven't attempted the original Heine. Still, Heine's satire is amusing. At the end, he admonishes the absurd politicians not to offend the poets. A friend who is in a religious community formed two generations ago by German expats has this on his wish list so it will wind up with him. This is an obscure book and I'm glad to have identified a place where it many be appreciated in Heine's German.