Praise
Heine possesses that divine malice without which I cannot imagine perfection… And how he employs German! It will one day be said that Heine and I have been by far the first artists of the German language.
This poet was Heinrich Heine, who dominated me longer than any one author that I have known.
Peter Wortsman's new translation of Travel Pictures, Heine's major early work, reveals a mercurial writer with a vitriolic streak, one whose comic voice is equal match to his lyricism.
Heine's short account of his journey through the Harz Mountains remains today, with Sterne's memories of France and Geothe's record of Italy, the greatest travel writing in literary history. Funny, biting, but always tender, his digressive rendering is inimitably pleasurable. Now Peter Wortsman's new translation brings to the English reader Heine's sumptuous syntax, verbal wit, and stylistic virtuosity.