Novalis. Die Poesie des Unendlichen: Dichtungen und Texte des Universalgeistes der Frühromantik ed. by Gabriele Rommel, and: Atlantis: Ein Märchen von Novalis ed. by Gabriele Rommel and Nicholas Saul

Abstract

Reviewed by: Novalis. Die Poesie des Unendlichen: Dichtungen und Texte des Universalgeistes der Frühromantik ed. by Gabriele Rommel, and: Atlantis: Ein Märchen von Novalis ed. by Gabriele Rommel and Nicholas Saul Dennis F. Mahoney Gabriele Rommel, ed. Novalis. Die Poesie des Unendlichen: Dichtungen und Texte des Universalgeistes der Frühromantik. Wiesbaden: S. Marix, 2022. 271 pp. Gabriele Rommel and Nicholas Saul, eds. Atlantis: Ein Märchen von Novalis. Halle: Coq-Art, 2022. 32 pp., 18 illustrations. Gabriele Rommel, the former director of the Research Center for Early Romanticism / Novalis-Museum at the birthplace of Friedrich von Hardenberg in Schloss Oberwiederstedt, has edited the first volume listed above within a series that hitherto has dealt largely with the writings of twentieth-century authors [End Page 204] such as Hans Fallada, Christian Morgenstern, and Stefan Zweig. Near the beginning of her well-organized introduction, Rommel provides a lengthy quote from Hermann Hesse's enthusiastic reaction to Ernst Heilborn's Novalis edition of 1901 for the hundredth anniversary of the poet's death, which rescued Novalis from decades of neglect. Clearly, Rommel hopes to make similar use of the 250th anniversary of the birth of Friedrich von Hardenberg on May 2, 2022, to encourage readers to (re)acquaint themselves with a writer and thinker who may be only a faint memory from secondary school. For this purpose, she provides an initial overview of Hardenberg's family background, education, and professional training as a lawyer and mining official in Saxony before situating him within the late eighteenth-century developments in politics, philosophy, and the natural sciences that he attempted to integrate and develop within his own writings. Rommel also provides concise introductions and overviews for each of the ensuing four sections: "Vorarbeiten zu verschiedenen Fragmentsammlungen," "Veröffentlichungen im Athenäum und in den Jahrbüchern der Preussischen Monarchie," "Zwei Roman-Projekte," and "Essay." A one-page list of primary and secondary sources concludes the volume. Given this volume's likely intended audience, it might have been better if its initial section, first published in Heilborn's edition from 1901, had either not been included or else listed in the otherwise chronological order of initial printed appearances of Novalis's writings: the Blütenstaub fragments and Glauben und Liebe oder Der König und die Königin in 1798, the Hymnen an die Nacht in 1800, the fragmentary novel projects Die Lehrlinge zu Sais and Heinrich von Ofterdingen in 1802, and the speech from November of 1799, now known as Die Christenheit oder Europa in 1826. First-time readers of Novalis may become discouraged upon encountering complete or partial use of (untranslated) French within roughly 10% of the 105 notes within the so-called "Teplitzer Fragmente" written during Hardenberg's stay at this spa in the summer of 1798 due to his already worsening health. Those readers who do persist in their efforts, however, will be rewarded by encountering Novalis's major poetic, philosophical, and rhetorical works in an attractively produced and reasonably priced paperback volume. For the scholarly community, moreover, Rommel's introduction to the "Vorarbeiten zu verschiedenen Fragmentsammlungen" clarifies their relation to the other works contained in this volume. For example, she quotes from Hardenberg's letter to Friedrich Schlegel on August 20, 1798, that "die Centralmonaden "of his meditations in Teplitz, have been "die Frauen, die xstliche Religion und das gewöhnliche Leben." These three topics make up the entire content of the ensuing "Ergänzungen zu den Teplitzer Fragmenten," which includes a first version of the fairy tale of Hyazinth and Rosenblütchen that plays a key role in Die Lehrlinge zu Sais included later in the volume. In addition, the "Studien zur bildenen Kunst" anticipate the significance of the relationship between antiquity and modernity in the fifth of the Hymnen an die Nacht, while the essay "Über Goethe"—also from the summer of 1798—documents the importance of Goethe for Hardenberg's own efforts to integrate art and science into his literary work. Chapters 1, 3, and 5 from Heinrich von Ofterdingen, Novalis's major attempt at a novel in response to Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1795–96), have the advantage of being self-enclosed units, but...