HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

Heinrich Heine
The nostalgia of the dying Heine for the vanished
beauty and the sinless joy of paganism came
to the fore most pathetically in his description of
his last walk, when, with ebbing strength, he
dragged himself to the Louvre and there collapsed
before the statue of Venus of Milo, the goddess of
love, whom he had worshipped throughout his life.
This scene of the sick poet before the eternally
young and eternally fair goddess stirred the imagination
of English and American lyricists. Emma
Lazams in 1884, Alexander Anderson in 1885, and
Louis Untermeyer, a generation later, treated this
subject in verse.
Emma Lazarus called her sonnet The Venus of
the Louvre.^^ In describing her own emotions at
the sight of the famous statue, she recalled Heine's
visit decades earlier:
Down the long hall she glistens Uke a star,
The foam-born mother of love, transfixed to stone.
Yet none the less immortal, breathing on;
Time's brutal hand maimed, but could not mar.
When first the enthralled enchantress from afar
Dazzled mine eyes, I saw not her alone,
Serenely poised on her world-worshiped throne.
As when she guided once her dove-drawn car, —
But at her feet a pale, death-stricken Jew,
Her Ufe-adorer, sobbed farewell to love.
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