NOVALIS HIS LIFE, THOUGHTS AND WORKS

NOVALIS: HIS LIFE, THOUGHTS AND WORKS Translated and edited by M.J Hope Edited by Carol Appleby This book explores the life and works of Novalis; it includes a biography of Novalis by August Coelestin Just, a full version of Novalis' unfinished novel Heinrich von Ofterdingen, all of his Hymns To the Night, and a collection of his amazing philosophical maxims and poetic thoughts. Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg, 1772-1801) is the most mystical and lyrical of the great German Romantic poets. He is at once the most typical and the most unusual of the German Romantic writers, indeed, of all Romantic poets. His influence on European literature is enormous, and is still being felt today. His best-known work, Hymns To the Night, was published in 1800. Novalis is supremely idealistic, far more so than Johann Wolfgang von Goethe or Heinrich Heine. He died young, which makes him, like Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats, something of a hero (or martyr). He did not write as much as Shelley, but his work, like that of Keats or Arthur Rimbaud, promised much. For Michael Hamburger, Novalis' poetry is almost totally idealistic. With bibliography and notes. Illustrated. 240 pages.