Mouche

Offering a personal, poignant, more intimate look at the final seven months of Heinrich Heine’s life in Paris, Mouche which will surprise and enchant in equal measure all the admirers of the great German lyric poet and all music lovers. Presented for the first time to the English readers, this volume contains all the love letters that Heine wrote to Camille Selden, short biographies of the characters mentioned in the text, as well as appendixes containing, in parallel translation, all the poems that Heine wrote about Mouche and all those inspired by his love for Mathilde, his long-suffering wife.

Only edition in print

Bedridden and wracked with pain, the German poet Heinrich Heine was visited one day by an attractive young German woman, Elise Krinitz, who had come to Paris to give the poet a few sheets of music from an admirer of his poetry. Heine called her “Mouche”, because she wore a seal that was embellished with a fly. She visited him almost daily, read aloud to him, translated some of his poems into French and acted as his amanuensis. Mathilde, Heine’s wife, tolerated the relationship but avoided all contact with her. Mouche brightened his final days, inspired the most moving love poems he ever penned, and wrote down some of his late verse to Heine’s own dictation.

Offering a personal, poignant, more intimate look at the final seven months of Heine’s life in Paris, Mouche which will surprise and enchant in equal measure all the admirers of the great German lyric poet and all music lovers.