Novalis

Signs of Revolution
Wm. Arctander O'Brien
Duke University Press

Durham & London 1995

Prologue
From the Cleared Land

Between Revolution and Reaction

The fantasy of German Romanticism has long been a source of delight in the
tales of the Brothers Grimm and E. T. A. Hoffmann, and more broadly, of
Tieck, Fouqu, Arnim, Brentano, and Novalis. Yet there was more to
manticism than fairy tales and horror stories. The theoretical daring and

of the Early Romantics the

litical explosiveness

Schlegels,

Ro
po

Schleiermacher,

and again, Novalis have only recently begun to attract the attention they
deserve. Romanticism's innovations in philosophy, poetics, politics, and reli
gion have been obscured by

sentimentalized, even trivialized reception that

fiction of the English-speaking world, for it was, in

its

cannot be dismissed as a
beginnings,
product

of

all

of

philosophical
Romanticism itself, and later,
reactionary.
Tieck,
Schlegels
eventually
Fichte,
Idealism turned
and the
repudiated their early enthusiasm for the French Revolution, and fervently
is

If

in

German, the

Frh

Romanticism did not

it

to

be

it

as

through which Early Romanticism (or,

called
Germany and abroad.
romantik) came
read
exactly outlive itself, nonetheless buried itself.

in

embraced the Reaction. Late Romanticism and Idealism became the filters

of

of

its

The importance and not only contemporary interest of German Ro

aggravated discovery
manticism springs from
situation whose con
abiding tensions.
tradictions stake out the political and theoretical ground

it

of

We have not yet overcome Romanticism's ambivalence toward the Enlight

enment, whose elaboration
reason
criticized but could not renounce; its

it it

of

affirmed, but whose

Romanticism, and which were long submerged

tility, remain with
today.
us

of

these tensions, which define the project

of it

All

by

escape.

it

of

both welcomed and

literature, philosophy, politics, and religion, which
totality; and
rejection
Idealism, which
found
its

reduce

to
a

its

it

impossible

fusion

to

to

repressed;
refused

its

preoccupation with the Revolution, whose necessity

abhorred;
catastrophe, which
sense

brutality

their fragility and

Early

vola

PRO LOGUE

2.

Germany's proximity to the French Revolution from which it found

itself excluded, and ultimately opposed exacerbated
this tension. It was felt
sharply
by
generation
1770s,
most
the
born in the
which included Hegel,
Hlderlin,

Schelling, and the Romantics. Born into a culture steeped in

feudalism, and yet seething with the new ideas of Kant, Fichte, Lessing, and

Its

Schiller, this generation experienced the confrontation of old and new of

monarchy and democracy, of religion and secularism, of feudal and bour
geois economies, every day. In the 1790s, when the battlefields of Europe

to

exploded in war, this younger generation came of age.

Romanticism and
Idealism, like the Revolution itself, would quickly trace trajectories toward
Reaction, and falsify the very contradictions that had given rise
them.

Of this younger generation

of

to

by

of

German Romantics, Friedrich von Harden

berg better known
his pseudonym, Novalis never lived
see the Re
action, and his writings embody the contradictions
the 1790s theoretical

Today,

the name

Novalis" coincides with

and political contradictions more repressed than superseded in their most

exact form.
myth and both have their

histories.

February 1798,

In

Novalis/Hardenberg
twenty-five-year-old

Friedrich von Hardenberg sent his

August Schlegel with
special request.
the

If

it,

an

up

to

of

it

he

to

to

first major manuscript

Schlegels' new journal, the Athenaeum, were
publish
Hardenberg asked
explained, is
that appear under the signature Novalis," which,
old
family name
mine, and not quite inappropriate" (IV, 251). Prone
under
he

to

as

he

statement only when

had the most
his sleeve, Hardenberg had chosen
pseudonym that was not only not quite inappropriate,"
rather
disingenuously claimed, but cleverly suited
project
lay
the
that
before
him.

Novali

or

itself

as

the family had referred

to

at

by

as

The name was filled with playful revelations and concealments. Just
the
young baron claimed, Novalis" had indeed been used
his twelfth-century
ancestors their Hannover estate of Groenrode bei Nrten. This branch of
at

of At

in

to

In

no

de

von der Rode, "from the

pseudonym
all, and
cleared land."
this familial sense Novalis" was
Hardenberg was surreptitiously continuing
proper
write under his
name
reviving it. Novalis" was, though,
proper name with difference.

to

to

its

the moment when the Holy Roman Empire was issuing

final patents
nobility, enabling successful writers
append the aristocratic German von
their names as did Goethe and Schiller, the grand and petit bourgeois

From the Cleared Land

whose reactionary nobilitations certified their literary stardom Hardenberg

cleverly played with his mark of nobility by unobtrusively changing the de of
de Novali" into the modern possessive s of Novalis. The slight change
retained a quiet trace of Hardenberg's lineage, but avoided the conspicuous
aristocracy and awkward parechesis of von Novali.
Novalis" unobtru
sively announced a change, and a continuation, of the old order.
The link forged by Hardenberg's mellifluous pseudonym between his
writing and Germany's more medieval, romantic' past, was not simply
nominal or familial, but nationalistic and organic' as well: both the meaning
of the pseudonym and the title of the work to which it was appended (Pollen
or Blthenstaub) recalled the German soil from which they had grown. Yet
Hardenberg knew that neither Germany's past growths, nor the pending
dissemination of Pollen, bore any guarantee of fructification, and his com
bination of title and pseudonym, rather than express any easy confidence in
organic cycles, also hinted at the necessity of waste and destruction: before
So

be

first of

all

any grains of Pollen could germinate from

the cleared land," the land would

was genteel, even fashionable, for

it

an

the Terror, not everyone would

so

the wake

be

his work.

of

In

cality

of

in

of

on to

of

to

cleared.
while
bourgeois
adopt pseudonyms, Har
aristocratic and
writers
the period
politic discretion
denberg's choice reflected
his part. Prussia had
effective censor
the 1790s, and Hardenberg was well aware
the topi
need

in

to

it

is

of

it

so

enthusiastic about having their land cleared.

Ironically, the name Novalis" grew
popular that
has almost com
pletely occulted that
Hardenberg.
today,
Friedrich von
Even
still too
often forgotten that Hardenberg,
his brief lifetime, set the pseudonym
in

or

it

print only four times, and never once used otherwise. Novalis never signed
letter, held job,
fell
love. No one ever met Novalis. Yet once Friedrich

of

on

it

of

pseudonym has
unfortunate that the ascendancy
deepen the gloom that has
clouded Hardenberg's
so

is

it

to

solar eclipse. But

served primarily

Romantically" involved that they ironically

partial
happens, was born
the day

as

so

flair for ironies

contest themselves, and who,
possessed

an

be

its

he

it

as

though
von Hardenberg had died,
was
had never lived, for his
pseudonym certainly more catchy swiftly eclipsed
proper' antecedent
irony
may
nicely
from historical record. This
that
suits writer who

so

of

of

to

writings ever since his death, and obscured their bright references
the
heavily
Revolution. The life and works
few modern writers are
over
grown with the tangle
literary myth, and Hardenberg's pseudonym has

of

he

finally become his fate. Today,

too can only reappear from the cleared
land"; from biography and literary corpus disentangled from two hundred
years
morbid overgrowth.

PRO LO GUE

Precisely because the name "Novalis" has come to designate a myth, we

shall instead speak of Hardenberg, of the project announced in his pseudo
nym, and of his life in letters of myth, theory, and practice.

Myths

in

of

its

The myth of Novalis, which is both textual and biographical, began to assume
1802, Tieck and
contours only year after Hardenberg's death, when,
Schlegel issued their two-volume edition
the Novalis Writings (Novalis

A of

to

of

in

Schriften). Hardenberg had been controversial

his lifetime, and his posthu
shrewdly constructed canon that re
mous editors offered their public
sponded
the political climate
wartime Prussia, the exigencies
the

of

to

by

at

of

its

of

Berlin publishing business, and the demands

the Hardenberg family.
few
years later,
postwar
reaction,
myth
gave
the onset
Tieck
the Novalis
biographical contours
adding preface
the third edition
1815. Tieck
"a

he

gave them
knew exactly what his new, peacetime readership wanted, and
they
proudly
Novalis
could
call
true German" (ein echter Deutscher) a
dreamy, mystical youth, obsessed with his deceased fiance.

in

Although Tieck and Schlegel's Late Romantic myths

by

credited
augurated

have long been

their particulars, the textual and biographical prejudices

dis

in

of

to

them tend
dominate what we still call "Novalis criticism."
Throughout the twentieth century, Hardenberg's writings most
which

critical edition. Yet even this monumental edifice

increasingly reliable
scrupulous historical
research and annotation,
a

of in

of

all

appear
notebooks continued
editions, and now almost
them are available

in

to

are fragmentary

to

of

it.

to

rest,
which provides more than enough material
set the Novalis myth
curiously
caught
Having
often remains
within
retained Tieck and Schle
gel's title
Novalis Writings (Novalis Schriften), the historical-critical edi
as or

as

by

as

Hardenberg himself (such

well
titles never used
Heinrich
von Ofterdingen). Although one can find almost everything Hardenberg
ever wrote in the Writings, one must sometimes tease out authentic texts
by

as

Songs),

be

to

tion remains organized around the traditional canon, which includes works
Spiritual
now known
fabrications (such
the Geistliche Lieder,

of

its

of

from the underbrush cultivated

his nineteenth-century editors."
The biographical myth has proven equally stubborn. The factual errors
image
Tieck's biography were exposed years ago, but
Novalis remains

of

zu

of

fantastically free
decay. The two most recent biographies Gisela Kraft's
Prolog
Novalis and Margot Seidel's Novalis. Eine Biographie are fully
informed
the most recent developments and discoveries regarding Har
to

of

to

denberg's life, yet they turn almost desperately

the use
fictionalized
autobiography and fictionalized biography
maintain the Late Romantic

From the Cleared Land

Novalis myth. Both reanimate it with biographical discoveries that actually

contest it much as Ptolemaic cosmology sought to domesticate new evi
dence with increasingly convoluted cycles and epicycles. The accumulated

scholarship of the past ninety years has disproved almost every particular of
the biographical and textual myths of Novalis: the time has come finally to
put an end to Novalis criticism" as well.

Myths" the first section of our study-addresses the most famous

myths of Novalis. Chapter 1 analyzes Tieck and Schlegel's construction of
the Novalis canon, and Chapter 2 investigates Hardenberg's celebrated ro
mance with Sophie von Khn. Compared to these myths, Hardenberg's
writings and life were infinitely more varied, clever, and explosive.

Theory

at

its

Once the myths of Novalis have been put to rest, one can move to the area
where much recent international interest in Early or Jena Romanticism has
difficult, complex, and
focused:
times strikingly modern theory. Since

Art Criticism among

in of

Walter Benjamin's 1920 dissertation, The Concept

the German Romantics" (Der Begriff der Kunstkritik

der deutschen

Roman
as

to

in

its

to

which Romanticism problematizes

representational understanding
language,

of

its

have generally overlooked the extent

Idealism most specifically,

unswerving belief
and

of

in

to

of

its

it

an

tik), has been

interpretive commonplace
see German Romanticism
having received
impetus
early
philosophical Idealism.
theoretical
from
Unfortunately, Benjamin's inheritors have too often framed their analyses
influence, and
Kant and Fichte's importance
Romanticism
terms

the Subject.

Romanticism

especially

Early

it

in

Romanticism, and most especially Hardenberg's Romanticism not only set

philosophical Idealism into prose and verse;
also criticized, and,
crucial
by

respects, rejected Idealism.

on

of

in

by

of

its

of

of

is

an

on

an

interrogation
Idealistic philosophy that based
use
explicit, sophisticated theory
language, and
the sign. Hardenberg's

of

critiques

to

of

Hardenberg began his more mature career

investigating the relation
ship
philosophy
fiction, and
approaching them both
terms
common framework: semiotics. His Fichte Studies elaborate one of the first

of

the eighteenth century (Lessing,

Wolff,

the twentieth (Saussure,

aesthetic interpretations

Fichte

or

overstate Hardenberg's debts

to

have tended

to

Baumgarten, Herder, Fichte, Schiller) and those

Heidegger, Derrida). Traditionally philosophic

or of

berg's semiotics between those

of

in

no

of

of

semiotics extend various traditions

the eighteenth century, and often
uncannily anticipate those
the twentieth. Both sides
this development
have been discussed
recent years, but
one has yet positioned Harden

Schiller, and more

PR O L O GUE

adventurous ones his deconstructive tendencies. Yet Hardenberg's notebooks

are caught in a more difficult bind: they advance a semiotic critique of philos
ophy (which anticipates that of Derrida), but remain squarely within a phi
losophy of being (which underlies Hardenberg's later mysticism). On the
cusp of the Classical and Modern understandings of the sign, Hardenberg's
semiotic theory occupies a precarious position, in which he is often forced to
combine analyses from radically different orders.
The second section of our study, Theory," delineates this tension in Har
denberg's semiotics. Hardenberg's theory of the sign presents an obscure and
difficult chapter in the history of semiotics, one that provokes problems and
possibilities only recently rediscovered. In explicating Hardenberg's semi
on theory seeks to suggest sometimes obliquely, or in
ways
notes the
in which Hardenberg's notebooks engage some of the more
prominent trends of contemporary semiotics: the generalization of semi
otics, the section

otics within culture (Peirce, Saussure, Eco), the poststructuralist critique of

the signifier (Derrida, Barthes, Kristeva), the analysis of language as act
(Searle,

Austin), and the study of meaning within social institutions (Fish

and Foucault).

Practice
Hardenberg's brief career in letters spanned the transitional period in Euro
pean history between the French Revolution and the Wars of Liberation.

Unlike the Novalis constructed in the early years of the nineteenth century,
all

Hardenberg remained a strictly eighteenth-century writer, who neverthe

less produced
his mature writings after the Revolution. No morbid, Late

of

of

to

of

intervene into the theory and

of

in

of

in

to

to

of

of

of

all

social activity. Hardenberg never

watershed
world history. His writings are

in

the Revolution

as
a

signification,

in to

to

of

lost faith

in

or

more generally,

to In

he

to

to

understand and
affect the developments that
saw
underway
the scientific, religious, and political institutions
his day.
the three brief and exciting years before his death, Hardenberg sought
develop strategy
investigate and
language,
act upon the central role

in

century, sought

of

the wake
the Revolution.
Hardenberg's
The drama
career lies
the ambivalence
his deter
mined application
semiotic theory
social practice. The final section
our study, Practice, seeks
show how Hardenberg,
the final years
the

of

social institutions

in

practice

brief and brilliant attempt

of

1790s, display

or

an

Romantic daydreamer, Hardenberg was the quintessential Early German

Frhromantiker,
energetic and enthusiastic follower
Romantic
the
early
writings,
Revolution and
Idealism. His
meteoric shower
the late

From the Cleared Land

neither quite revolutionary, nor, as has often been claimed, apocalyptic. They
are postrevolutionary with a vengeance.

On Style, Translations,

and Notes

The issues raised by Hardenberg's writings concern readers and scholars, not
only in German letters, but in critical theory, philosophy, and intellectual

have accordingly sought to make this study accessible to people

with no or little German, while retaining

as well.

its

history.

utility for Romantik

specialists

to

of

German citations have been translated into English throughout the body
the text, many for the first time. All translations are my own, although
have often consulted those available with profit.
have tried
avoid the

of

so

is

or

or

of

simplifying
clarifying Hardenberg's prose, even where this
seduction
espe
entails presenting translations that remain peculiar
difficult. This
cially
Hardenberg's
polished
works,
notebooks,
with
which are not
nor

to

as

as at

to

in

paper,
conventional sense, but accumulated sheets
My
convey Hardenberg's
often filled with jottings.
translations seek
idiosyncratic
style,
spelling,
punctuation
accurately
grammar,
times
and
possible without confusion. Page references are keyed
the standard Ger
even notebooks

man editions (see Bibliography), and, where available, corresponding English

versions. Quotation marks throughout the book follow American usage:
double quotes indicate direct citation; single quotes indicate special emphasis

or usage.

Roman

within German citations

Hardenberg's published works

his handwritten manuscripts);
indicates

simple emphasis

in

Sperrdruck
(italics
and single underlining

in in

or

in

to

of

emphasis
Four type styles have been used
indicate the different kinds
Hardenberg's publications and notebooks:
found
Italics
within English translations indicates simple emphasis

Hardenberg's works;
ings

multiple underlin
Hardenberg's manuscript;
indicates

within German citations indicates multiple underlinings

Hardenberg's manuscript.
unusual script
in

or

Bold Roman

unusual script

in

within English translations

or

Bold Italics

in to

comment

on

Hardenberg, and

to

enable further research

on

meant

to

to

on

to

at

of

forgo
The notes
the back
the book, which some readers may wish
entirely, are meant
argument
document and extend the main
three
previous criticism
Hardenberg and the Roman
ways. First, they refer
tics. Intended primarily for readers equipped with German, these notes are
that

PRO LO GUE

research where

it

seems

fruitful

to do so. Second,

some notes describe the

material condition of Hardenberg's manuscripts where it bears upon my

interpretation. Third, a number of notes elaborate points of contact between
Hardenberg and contemporary theory. These notes are rarely intended to
exhaust the problems that they raise, but more often, to trace genealogies
and possibilities traversed by Hardenberg's theory.