Novalis: Philosophical, Literary, and Poetic Writings

by Novalis, James D. Reid (Translator)

Despite his short life, Friedrich von Hardenberg (otherwise known as Novalis, 1772-1801) was one of the most original and polymathic figures of the early Romantic movement in Germany. Philosophical, Literary, and Poetic Writings assembles, for the first time in English, translations of Novalis's published philosophical works, a large share of his surviving philosophical notes and fragments, his two unfinished novels ( The Disciples at Saïs and Heinrich von Ofterdingen ), and the Hymns to the Night .

Unlike some of his contemporaries, Novalis not only theorized about art and its place in both the world of everyday human life and the universe of philosophical discourse but was himself a consummate artist in his own right. This unique edition of Novalis's writings in English allows readers to track issues and themes throughout his short but productive career as a budding philosopher in the post-Kantian tradition, as a philosophical novelist, and as a poet of the first rank. Readers interested in Novalis's views on philosophy, art, morality, politics, and religion, and how positions in each of these areas might be unified in single, overarching vision of reality, will find the present translation an essential guide.

Genres: Philosophy, Poetry, Romanticism, Fiction, Anthologies

570 pages, Hardcover

Published May 7, 2024

About the author

Novalis was the pseudonym of Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg, an author and philosopher of early German Romanticism.

His poetry and writings were an influence on Hermann Hesse. Novalis was also a huge influence on George MacDonald, and so indirectly on C.S. Lewis, the Inklings, and the whole modern fantasy genre.

Reviews

[Milo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Who is Novalis? An easy question: Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg. And what is Novalis? He is often grafted to that least satisfying appendage: ‘thinker’. But is he not a novelist? Less than Kafka. He wrote, or rather failed to write, two novels, finishing one even less than the other. So be it. Is he a poet, of that first wave of Romantics? Certainly he is a poet, although how many of his poems are known? And is his masterpiece of poetry not, in its majority, prose? Very well – his novels and his poems orbit peculiar philosophical concerns, and he published a series of philosophical fragments: Novalis is a philosopher. But are his philosophical works ever more pronounced than a series of aphorisms, or notes? An aphorist, very well, but that doesn’t sound like so much. Could he be a natural scientist? A man who wrote about mining? How can we unite these various dabblings? We return to thinker; or we might take Wikipedia’s lead, a polymath. A youngster dead before he became a Goethe (if this was his future), or before he could become prolific in any one genre to outshadow the rest. But – crucially – he is a man of interesting thoughts, and better, a man of admirable spirit. It seems the spirit leads the idea (and this would be a Nietzschean criticism), a man who – transfixed by nature – cannot therefore concede to Fichte that nature has nothing to reveal. The within cannot be the altogether, and more than that, allowing the without, we cannot view the in and the out as incommensurable. In fact, in is the inner required to fully express the outer: that the outer is not defined or distinguished alone by empirical inquiry (though Novalis does not resent empirical inquiry), rather that the poetic instinct – some element of mind – is required in finding in nature some other, greater thing. And it must be poetry, posey, art, creativity. We see in Novalis glimpses of Blake, although not so world-denying – we therefore can combine his various activities into this single project. The novels and the poems are not riffs or expressions of his idea but the very form of his idea; in apprehending the blue flower through art, he is by that measure seizing the flower: the description of the thing becomes the thing. Aphorisms are more poetic than propositional philosophy, and more inviting (if less sturdy); they ask for a poetic response, they ask for poetic thinking. Novalis is attempting a rescue of realism from itself, in that he recognizes the substance of the world but denies its limit; denies that human fancy is merely human fancy. There is an exchange and a mutuality, the reality of magic is not to defy the laws and strictures of physical reality but the peel beyond them, to believe the human mind is a scoop designed to dig past the outer rind.

[mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is a great book to use a reference to understand the Germanic philosophical, literary readings during the romanticism period, I love immersing in these stories