“Atta Troll” was written by Heinrich Heine and first appeared in Zeitung für die elegante Welt (1843). Heine (1797-1856) was a German poet, journalist, and critic. He is best-known for his lyric poetry.

“Atta Troll” is about Atta Troll, a dancing bear. He is a great dancer and is paired with his mate, the black bear Mumma. But Atta hates his servitude and escapes, making his way back to his home cave in the vale of Roncesvalles, in the Pyrenees, where the hero Roland fell in combat with the Moors. Atta finds his cubs there, four sons and six daughters. They are overjoyed to see him, and he is equally happy to see them. He tells them of his feats of dancing and how much fame he achieved in previous years. But he also tells them of the loathsomeness of humanity, of how mankind puts on airs and pretends to a nobility which it has not earned and which is not given to it, and of how they are the most unnatural of nature’s creations. Atta tells his children to always watch out for men and to never trust them, and then he begins planning an uprising against mankind by all animals. Humanity will be wiped out, and a Free State will be created in which all animals will be treated equally. (“Yes, yes, even Jews will likewise/Then enjoy full civic rights, and/Legally be made the equals/Of all mammals whatsoever.”)¹ But the villagers of the Pyrenees are none too happy to have a bear wandering through the mountains, and they organize hunts to track Atta Troll down. The nameless German narrator of “Atta Troll” is one of these hunters, and he is accompanied by the laconic Lascaro, who never speaks. Lascaro and the narrator trek across the Pyrenees until they reach the hut of Lascaro’s mother, the witch Uraka. The narrator and Lascaro stay in Uraka’s hut. That night the narrator has a vision of great hunters from the past, from King Arthur to Ogier the Dane, riding across the mountains outside Uraka’s hut. Other spirits ride past, but three different women stand out: the goddess Diana, who has foresworn her previous chastity (“Late, indeed, but all the stronger/Has she waked to lustful passion;/Deep within her eyes it blazes/Like the very brand of hell./She regrets the time she lost when/Men were fairer far to look on,/And perhaps she now makes up for/Quality with quantity”);² the Celtic Abunda; and Herodias, who carries with her the head of John the Baptist. It is Herodias who gazes longest on the narrator, and it is Herodias who the narrator falls in love with. The next morning Uraka accompanies Lascaro and the narrator on the hunt for Atta Troll. The narrator sees Uraka rubbing magic unguents on Lascaro every night and realizes that Lascaro looks so gaunt because he is dead, and that the oils Uraka rubs on him to allow him to continue to walk during the day. Eventually Lascaro, the narrator, and Uraka find Atta Troll’s cave. Uraka imitates Mumma’s voice, and Atta, who misses his mate, rushes out of the cave to greet her. Lascaro kills him with one shot and is celebrated across the Pyrenees for his heroic deed. Atta Troll is skinned and made into a rug, which ends up on the floor of the narrator’s wife.

“Atta Troll” is a rhymeless poem of four-line stanzas. Heine composed it as a satire of the liberals and radicals who were protesting against the absolute governments of Metternich of Austria and Frederick William IV of Prussia. It is the crude and slovenly Atta who voices the position of the radicals and fantasizes about a state in which all beings have the same rights and in which there is no nobility. Heine was himself liberal, but he had little tolerance for the vapid speeches and empty platitudes which are Atta Troll’s weaknesses. Heine also uses the poem to insult some of his contemporaries; a poet turned into a dog by Uraka will only be freed from her curse if a virgin can recite the poems of the poet and librettist Gustav Pfizer (1807-1890) without falling asleep, something which both the poet and the hunter doubt is possible.

Naturally much of “Atta Troll” is no longer relevant to the modern reader, but the poem is not without interest. The poem’s savagery is clearer in its original German, but modern English translations of the poem are generally good. Lines are often cramped and abbreviated despite considerable enjambment, but the poem’s language is clear and modern. Heine always gets his point across, and there are some vivid images and passages, as in the procession of ghosts past Uraka’s hut. Heine also includes some unexpected moments of humor, as in this description of Uraka:

Print: Heinrich Heine, Atta Troll: From the German of Heinrich Heine. New York: Palala Press, 2018.

Jefferson S. Chase, “Lying in Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and Heine’s Atta Troll,” Comparative Literature 45, no. 4 (Autumn 1993): 330-345.

¹ Heinrich Heine, “Atta Troll,” The Complete Poems of Heinrich Heine: A Modern English Version, transl. Hal Draper, (Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1982), 433.

² Heine, “Atta Troll,” 457.

³ Heine, “Atta Troll,” 452.