As German Romanticism isn't my thing I know I'd struggle to read a longer piece by Novalis, so Hymns to the Night was perfect as it's relatively short and rounds off my recent The Blue Flower reading nicely (Novalis wrote this in his grief over his child-fiancée's death).

It's hard not feel for poor Sophie (Novali's muse), as not only did she die an early death at the age of 15, in life she seemed to be entirely vapid and lacking in anything remotely interesting to say. All the more bizarre that someone with Novalis' / von Hardenberg's brilliance should fall for this dull little child (and apparently her physical beauty was nothing to write home about either). Here's an extract from her diaries which give you an idea of Sophie's intellect:

March 1. Today Hartenberch visited again nothing happened.
March 11. We were alone today and nothing at all happened.
March 12. Today was like yesterday nothing at all happened.
March 13. Today was repentance day and Hartenb. was here.
March 14. Today Hartenber. was still here he got a letter from his brother.

Scintillating stuff. Anyone, beauty is in the eye of the beholder so they say, and Novalis obviously saw something in the young Sophie that eluded everyone else.

I was delighted to enjoy Hymns to the Night much more than I expected. Given how hard and inexplicably Novalis loved Sophie in life, it was unsurprising that his mourning of her should be nothing short of dramatic despair in the romantic tragedy of it. Yet this account of his pull to the night as he mourns her was nothing short of beautiful. A short mixture of prose and poetry, Novalis describes how in grief he is drawn to the night, when he feels much closer to Sophie through the mysterious spirituality of the darkness than he does in the cold light of day when his loss is most keenly felt. I expect that many who have lost someone close might argue that the night-time is the hardest part of the grieving day, when the sense of loss and isolation is at its most intense, but Novalis finds comfort in the single night-time dream that brought his Sophie once more 'to life', and the keenness of that spirituality which he feels only in the darkness.

Hymns to the Night mixes both religious spiritually with his spiritual sense of Sophie reaching out to him through the stars. It is fatalist writing, with Novalis comforted by his inevitable journey to his grave and the life beyond where love endures and pain is left behind. In the interim (which, bless him, wasn't long to wait), he writes of this heavenly comfort that the night-time brings:

Once when I was shedding bitter tears, when, dissolved in pain, my hope was melting away, and I stood alone by the barren mound which in its narrow dark bosom hid the vanished form of my Life, lonely as never yet was lonely man, driven by anxiety unspeakable, powerless, and no longer anything but a conscious misery;--as there I looked about me for help, unable to go on or to turn back, and clung to the fleeting, extinguished life with an endless longing: then, out of the blue distances -- from the hills of my ancient bliss, came a shiver of twilight -- and at once snapt the bond of birth, the chains of the Light. Away fled the glory of the world, and with it my mourning; the sadness flowed together into a new, unfathomable world.

4 stars - even for non-poetry lovers like myself, this is prose to romantically immerse oneself in. Indulgent reading out loud is mandatory. ( )

This is hardly a grown-up Review, but I'd like it on the record (A) that Novalis is tremendously rewarding reading, (B) that any introduction for the non-German reader is useful, but (C) that Dick Higgins' translation is well-intentioned but barely competent, thus putting Novalis in a pretty poor light for the seriously curious new reader. ( )

My German is not up to all the nuances of these great mystical poems - which is a shame.

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