4 - John Bull's liberties

Summary

In October 1827, shortly after Heine's safe return from the British lion's den, there appeared a book which was to do more than any other to spread his fame and keep it alive. This was the Book of Songs (Buch der Lieder), from which so many composers were to draw inspiration. In this collection we find occasional reminiscences of Ossian or Scottish border ballads – witness, for instance, the eighth poem in the first North Sea cycle (Die Nordsee. Erster Teil), which has a tragically doomed woman sing her dark song, ‘ihr dunkles Lied’,

an schottischer Felsenküste,

Wo das graue Schlösslein hinausragt

Über die brandende See.

on the rocky Scottish coast

where the grey little castle juts out

over the surging sea.

Like most of the other poems in the Book of Songs, this one had already appeared in print; it was to be found in the first volume of Pictures of Travel, published in 1826. Heine did not choose to reprint his translations from Byron; but traces of his immersion in Byron's poetry remained visible and have been assiduously collected by many commentators, from Melchior and Ochsenbein to Pierre Grappin. Some of the verbal ‘echoes’ such scholars have pointed to seem to me somewhat dubious.