Heinrich Heine beside a stream among boulders in the Harz Mountains

How a traveller hears the mountain’s heart

Heinrich Heine (1797–1856), the German poet from Düsseldorf, hears the steady heartbeat of a mountain in Die Harzreise. On the way up the Brocken his traveller has just passed fir trees whose roots cling to enormous stones. Then something catches his eye that he could easily have missed by walking on. Water runs beneath the moss. He can see it washing over the bare roots and the fibres through which a tree keeps its hold on the ground.

What comes into view when the traveller bends down

It is worth following the movement of his body. At first he has been going uphill on a natural staircase of tree roots. Now he stoops. At this distance the deep moss covering the stones looks soft as a cushion of green velvet. The movement of the water is quiet enough to turn a passing walker into an eavesdropper. A tree grows slowly. A single glance or sound could scarcely reveal the history of its formation. Yet Heine gives his traveller the feeling that for once he is being allowed to listen in as the tree grows.

When you bend down towards all this activity, it is almost as if you could overhear the hidden history of how plants grow and the quiet beating of the mountain’s heart.

– Heinrich Heine, Die Harzreise, 1907, p. 51–52.[1]

A pulse made audible by running water

The little German word gleichsam, meaning “as if”, lets us catch the moment at which a perception becomes an image. We can still hear the spring and understand why its sound suggests a pulse. A few steps on, the water wells up more strongly and forms small cascades. Soon the trees whisper and the mountain flowers turn their eyes on the traveller. At last his beloved appears and vanishes. All these encounters began with a gesture so small that it might have escaped our notice. On his way up a mountain, a walker found time to bend over a stone.