Novalis

Novalis; Georg Philipp Friedrich von Hardenberg (1772-1802)

It seems appropriate that Novalis, the most radical and visionary of the early Romantics, worked as an administrator in a salt mine. Having experienced the cutting edge of industrial modernity at close quarters, he was all the more determined to redeem it with his poetic vision. Novalis is the leading figure of early Romanticism, as a poet, philosopher and novelist. In this fragment he defines the operation of Romanticism:

Die Welt muß romantisiert werden. So findet man den ursprünglichen Sinn wieder. Romantisieren ist nichts als eine qualitative Potenzierung. Das niedre Selbst wird mit einem bessern Selbst in dieser Operation identifiziert. So wie wir selbst eine solche qualitative Potenzenreihe sind. Diese Operation ist noch ganz unbekannt. Indem ich dem Gemeinen einen hohen Sinn, dem Gewöhnlichen ein geheimnisvolles Ansehn, dem Bekannten die Würde des Unbekannten, dem Endlichen einen unendlichen Schein gebe, so romantisiere ich es.

https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/novalis/aphorism/chap006.html

The world must be romanticised. In this way its original meaning can be rediscovered. Romanticising is nothing but a qualitative intensification. Through this operation the lower self becomes identified with a better self. Just as we ourselves are a sequence of such qualitative powers. This operation is still completely unknown. By giving the everday a higher meaning, the habitual a mysterious appearance, the known the dignity of the unknown, the finite a semblance of the infinite, I romanticise it.

Here is another striking fragment:

Der Gegensatz von Leib und Geist ist Einer der aller merkwürdigsten und gefährlichsten. Große historische Rolle dieses Gegensatzes.

https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/novalis/aphorism/chap006.html

The opposition between body and spirit is one of the strangest and most dangerous. This opposition has played a great historical role.

Novalis wrote a cycle of six hymns, Hymnen an die Nacht; Hymns to Night (publ. 1800), after the death of his fiancée Sophie von Kuhn in 1797. The hymns combine poetry and prose; night is a symbol for death and reunion with the beloved. The final poem of this sequence is entitled ‘Sehnsucht nach dem Tode’; ‘Longing for Death’. For an analysis of this poem, see reading list below, Prawer (pp. 112-20). For an English translation of ‘Longing for Death’ by Novalis, click here.

He wrote two works of prose fiction:

Die Lehrlinge zu Sais; The Apprentices at Sais (written 1797-1800)

Heinrich von Ofterdingen (publ. 1800).

Chapter One of this novel introduces the famous blue flower, the symbol for the Romantic quest.

In 1799 Novalis published a political essay, Christenheit oder Europa; Christianity or Europe.

In 1798 Novalis published Blütenstaub; Flower Pollen, a collection of philosophical aphorisms and short prose fragments. Here are some examples:

14. Leben ist der Anfang des Todes. Das Leben ist um des Todes willen.

Life is the beginning of death. Life is there for the sake of death.

16. Die Phantasie setzt die künftige Welt entweder in die Höhe, oder in die Tiefe, oder in der Metempsychose zu uns. Wir träumen von Reisen durch das Weltall: ist denn das Weltall nicht in uns? Die Tiefen unseres Geistes kennen wir nicht. – Nach Innen geht der geheimnisvolle Weg. In uns, oder nirgends ist die Ewigkeit mit ihren Welten, die Vergangenheit und Zukunft.

The imagination places the world of the future either in the heights or in the depths, or in the migration of souls into us. We dream of travelling through the universe: is not the universe in us? We do not know the depths of our spirit. The mysterious path goes inwards. Eternity with its worlds, past and future, is in us or nowhere.

49. Das Volk ist eine Idee. Wir sollen ein Volk werden. Ein vollkommener Mensch ist ein kleines Volk. Echte Popularität ist das höchste Ziel des Menschen.

The people is an idea. We should become a people. A perfect person is a small people. True popularity is the highest goal for humans.

63. Menschheit ist eine humoristische Rolle.

Being human is a humorous role.

Source: https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/novalis/aphorism/chap001.html

Further Reading

Gordon Birell, The boundless present: space and time in the literary fairy tales of Novalis and Tieck (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979)

Paul Hamilton, Realpoetik: European Romanticism and Literary Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), Chapter 6 on ‘The Cosmopolitan Novalis’, pp. 145-64

James Hodkinson, ‘Genius Beyond Gender: Novalis, Women, and the Art of Shapeshifting’, Modern Language Review 96:1 (2001), 103-115

James R. Hodkinson, Women and Writing in the Works of Novalis: Transformation Beyond Measure? (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2007)

Jocelyn Holland, German Romanticism and Science: The Procreative Poetics of Goethe, Novalis, and Ritter (Rochester, NY: Routledge, 2009)

Clare Kennedy, Paradox, Aphorism and Desire in Novalis and Derrida (London: Maney/MHRA, 2008)

Alice A. Kuzniar, Delayed Endings: Nonclosure in Novalis and Hölderlin (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1987)

György Lukács, Soul & Form, trans. by Anna Bostock, ed. by John T. Sanders and Katie Terezakis (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), Chapter 4 on Novalis, pp. 59-72

Géza von Molnár, Novalis’s Fichte Studies: The Foundations of his Aesthetics (The Hague: Mouton, 1970)

Géza von Molnár, Romantic Vision, Ethical Context: Novalis and Artistic Autonomy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987)

John Neubauer, Novalis (New York: Twayne, 1980)

Irena Nikolova, Complementary Modes of Representation in Keats, Novalis and Shelley (New York: Peter Lang, 2001)

S. S. Prawer, German Lyric Poetry: A Critical Analysis of Selected Poems from Klopstock to Rilke (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965), pp. 112-20

Nicholas Saul, History and Poetry in Novalis and the Tradition of the German Enlightenment (London: IGS, 1984)

Gabriel Trop, Poetry as a Way of Life: Aesthetics and Askesis in the German Eighteenth Century (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2015)

Theodore Ziolkowski, German Romanticism and Its Institutions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990)

Further Reading on Heinrich von Ofterdingen

Eric A. Blackall, The Novels of the German Romantics (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1983), Chapter 5 on Heinrich von Ofterdingen

Matt Erlin, ‘Products of the Imagination: Mining, Luxury, and the Romantic Artist in Heinrich von Ofterdingen’, German Life and Letters 60:1 (2007), 40-58

Alice A. Kuzniar, ‘Hearing Women’s Voices in Heinrich von Ofterdingen’, PMLA 107 (1992), 1196-207

Dennis F. Mahoney, The Critical Fortunes of a Romantic Novel: Novalis’ ‘Heinrich von Ofterdingen’ (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1994)

Elena Pnevmonidou, ‘Veiled Narratives: Novalis’ Heinrich von Ofterdingen as a Staging of Orientalist Discourse’, The German Quarterly 84:1 (2011), 21-40

Debra N. Prager, Orienting the Self: The German Literary Encounter with the Eastern Other (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2014), Chapter 3 on Heinrich von Ofterdingen, pp. 119-188

Further Reading in German

Gerhard Schulz, Novalis. Leben und Werk Friedrich von Hardenbergs (Munich: Beck, 2011)

Web Link in German

http://novalis-gesellschaft.de/index.php/gesellschaft

International Novalis Society