The statue of a poet

Second in a series of three

The Austrian Empress Elizabeth, known as Sisi, corresponded with Heine.  Bear in mind that Heine as a radical thinker wanting to dislodge the aristocracy of Europe, now received adulation from an aristrocrat.  She herself was eccentric, unpredictable and filled her noble role with difficulty.  Her letters to him border on eroticism.

To my master /  my soul weeps, she takes joy, she cries / this night she was one with your soul /  she was held intimately, passionately /  you held her against yours with fire / you fertilized her, filled her with felicity. /  She shudders, she shivers again, though she is calm.

Heine died in 1856 and was buried in Paris.  He was 59 years old.  In 1873, Sisi commissioned the Danish poet and sculptor, Hasselrüs, to make a statue of Heine.  Soon she discovered that the aldermen of Düsseldorf wanted nothing to do with the statue.  In fact, it was in danger of destruction.

Heine in 1851, old and sick

The statue was then transported in 1892 to the family chateau in Corfu, Greece, where it stood for many years.  At night Sisi would sit at the feet of the statue and believed that she was communing with Heine’s spirit.  She recited verses which made her think of her childhood in Germany:  “I used to have a fatherland.  The oaks, so high, the violets nodding.  It was a dream.  Kissed by German, said in German, the words ‘I love you’.  It was a dream.”

Tragically, she lost her life in 1898 in an assassination at the hands of an anarchist.

© Will van der Walt

www.willwilltravel.wordpress.com

Les Semboules, Antibes

May, 2019

 

Sources

La Statue du poète Heine « Réfugiée » à Toulon, by André Peyrègne. Nous, Nice-Matin. 16 February, 2019

Wikipedia Elizabeth Austrian empress

My translation of poem

 

Images

Wikipedia Elizabeth, Heinrich Heine