Hymns to the Night and Other Selected Writings

by Novalis, Charles E. Passage (Translator)

Contents:
Introduction
Note on the Text
-Hymns to the Night
-Klingsohr's Fairy Tale
-Christendom or Europe
-Selected Aphorisms

The Hymns to the Night display a universal religion with an intermediary. This concept is based on the idea that there is always a third party between a human and God. This intermediary can either be Jesus – as in Christian lore – or the dead beloved as in the hymns. These works consist of three times two hymns. These three components are each structured in this way: the first hymn shows, with the help of the Romantic triad, the development from an assumed happy life on earth through a painful era of alienation to salvation in the eternal night; the following hymn tells of the awakening from this vision and the longing for a return to it. With each pair of hymns, a higher level of experience and knowledge is shown.

Genres: Poetry, German Literature

95 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1960

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

[James Violand · Rating 1 out of 5]

Hoo boy. I’m sorry, but I cannot fathom how this progenitor of German Romanticism remains popular. His early death saved countless grammarians a similar fate. I have rarely encountered such glaring amateurish use of adjectives and adverbs in any writer. Novalis’s penchant is so overbearing that I skipped many passages littered with –ing and –ly word endings to prevent bursting a vein. His Hymns to the Night is so contrary to human experience (light is somehow inimical to happiness) and so confusing it is as if the poet was thinking, “What further confusion can I sow to further my notoriety?”