The mythology of translation all too often compares the plight of the translator to that of Tantalus and Sisiphus, thus emphasizing the helplessness and powerlessness of his role. Heine made the same point when with a quaint image he defined the translator's attempt to recapture the ravishing and vanishing beauty of his model as "straw-plaiting sunbeams." Heine seemingly forgot that the poet tries to achieve the same miracle, and that he succeeds only rarely in doing so. How many mystics or symbolists have claimed that even original poetry is a form of translation, an attempt to rephrase the heavenly music that many can no longer hear in the noisy chaos of this world!