Atta Troll is a dancing bear who breaks his chain and returns to the Pyrenees, where he lectures his cubs on equality and the rights of beasts while the poet goes hunting him. Heine’s mock-epic of the 1840s satirises political poets and earnest radicals, and this translation by Herman Scheffauer comes with Oscar Levy’s introduction and notes.
One of Heine’s wittiest and most fantastic long poems, in a lively English verse version. Download the free EPUB.