Novalis
The world should be romanticised – the ordinary given a deeper meaning and the finite a glimpse of the infinite.
Placement
Poet of the blue flower: wanted to “romanticize” the world – to give the ordinary a higher meaning and the finite an infinite appearance.
Key ideas
- Magical idealism
- Romanticizing the world
- The blue flower
Influence
Influenced by 3
Baruch de Spinoza
influenced by
Novalis called Spinoza ‘a God-intoxicated man’ and in his notebooks (1798–1800) engaged with Spinoza’s identity of God and nature. Novalis, Das allgemeine Brouillon (1798–99); Fragmente und Studien (1799–1800); SEP “Novalis”
Evidence: AI draft
Baruch de Spinoza › 1632–1677
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
influenced by
In the Fichte Studies (1795–96) Novalis worked through the Wissenschaftslehre note by note and developed from it the reflections that later led to his ‘magical idealism’. Novalis, Fichte-Studien (1795–96); SEP “Novalis”
Evidence: AI draft
Johann Gottlieb Fichte › 1762–1814
Friedrich Schlegel
influenced by
Novalis developed his fragments in ‘symphilosophy’ with Friedrich Schlegel, who published Pollen (1798) in the Athenaeum, and took up Schlegel’s programme of a romantic poetry. Novalis, Blüthenstaub, in Athenaeum I (1798); F. Schlegel, Athenaeum fragments (1798); SEP “Novalis”
Evidence: AI draft
Friedrich Schlegel › 1772–1829
Works
- 1798Pollen
Fragments on the inward path: “The mysterious path leads inward.”
Position
Novalis worked his way through Fichte’s philosophy and turned it into what he called “magical idealism”: the mind can shape nature as an artist shapes a work, and the world is ultimately a poem of the spirit. To “romanticize” the world means giving the ordinary a higher meaning and the finite an infinite appearance. In the fragments of Pollen he wrote that the mysterious path leads inward. The Hymns to the Night turn grief into mystical longing, and his unfinished novel Heinrich von Ofterdingen made the blue flower the emblem of Romantic yearning. His essay Christendom or Europe dreamed of a new spiritual unity of Europe.
Life & context
Novalis, born Friedrich von Hardenberg in 1772 on the family estate of Oberwiederstedt, grew up in a Pietist noble household. He studied law in Jena, Leipzig and Wittenberg and later mining at the Freiberg academy, then worked in the administration of the Saxon salt works at Weißenfels. The death of his young fiancée Sophie von Kühn in 1797 marked his work deeply. He died of tuberculosis in 1801, aged twenty-eight.
Further main works
- Fichte Studies (1795–1796)
- Christendom or Europe (1799)
- Hymns to the Night (1800)
- Heinrich von Ofterdingen (1802)
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