This famous poem by the German poet Heinrich Heine, dealing with the hopeless love of a slave for a sultan’s daughter, first appeared in print in 1846 and was subsequently included in his 1851 collection ‘Romanzero’. It draws its inspiration from a Persian story concerning a tribe for whom love between different social classes was strictly taboo, such that those involved were known for being driven to kill themselves. A growing interest in things oriental was characteristic of the time, and this particular theme, of dying for love, chimed in well with the preoccupations of the German romantic era (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s 1774 epistolary novel ‘Die Leiden des jungen Werthers’ has a lot to answer for).

The translation that follows is my own.

Der Asra

Täglich ging die wunderschöne
Sultanstochter auf und nieder
Um die Abendzeit am Springbrunn,
Wo die weissen Wässer plätschern.

Täglich stand der junge Sklave
Um die Abendzeit am Springbrunn,
Wo die weissen Wässer plätschern.
Täglich ward er bleich und bleicher.

Eines Abends trat die Fürstin
Auf ihn zu mit raschen Worten:
‘Deinen Namen will ich wissen,
Deine Heimat, deine Sippschaft!’

Und der Sklave sprach: ‘Ich heisse
Mohamed, ich bin aus Yemen,
Und mein Stamm sind jene Asra,
Welche sterben, wenn sie lieben.’

Heinrich Heine

The Asra

Daily walked the sultan’s daughter
In her beauty to and fro
By the fountain in the evening
Where the foam-white waters flow.

Daily watching stood the slave boy
Where the foam-white waters play
By the fountain in the evening,
Growing paler day by day.

Till one evening came the princess
With bold words and started in:
Saying ‘I would know your name,
The land you come from, and your kin!’

He answered: ‘I am called Mohammed,
I am a Yemeni, and I
Am of that tribe they call the Asra,
Those who, when they love, must die.’