Napoleon in Poetry – The Poet Dying:

Heine's Last Years in Paris is a posthumously published biography of Heinrich Heine that takes us into the last years of this German Romantic poet and into Paris between 1847 and 1856. Haussmann and the rise of Louis Napoleon figure in selections of his poetry, craftily and with humour. We are amazed by Heine's capacity to write regularly, under the pain of a progressive paralysis and near blindness. Pawel honours Heine with a prose that is lucid yet incredibly complex in its wealth of details, showing intimacy with his subject and revealing a powerful empathy for it.