Romanticism was not just an era of great journeys, but also a period in which the journey, in both its structure and nature, underwent profound changes. For the Romantics, travel became a philosophical metaphor, a mythical odyssey through the world and a quest for one's identity. One fine spring morning, Heinrich Heine left behind his school days at Gottingen and set out on a trip through the Harz mountains. Taverns, the transient colors of an evening sky, raucous chatter heard by chance on the road coalesce in this travelogue, offering its young author an opportunity to observe the machinations of the universe.
Much attention was drawn to seemingly irrelevant details that appeared like fitful lightning flashes and brought sudden transparency to an otherwise inaccessible universality. Nature was perceived through dusty, erudite tomes, inn signs, Latin inscriptions, writing on the doors of taverns and churches, codicils of rules and regulations - the entire system of laws that sought to capture life and give it expression. In the wake of the Romantic fascination with the literary wayfarer motif that had inspired writers such as Sterne and Goethe, Heine's series of travel vignettes are poetic, immediate, and filled with random epiphanies. Much more than a mere exercise in lyrical reflection, The Harz Journey is an ironic critique of man and society rendered with the delicate brilliance of a prose poem.