The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 04

NOVALIS (FRIEDRICH VON HARDENBERG)

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THE STORY OF HYACINTH AND ROSEBLOSSOM

From The Novices at Saïs (1798)

TRANSLATED BY LILLIE WINTER

Long ages ago there lived in the far west a guileless youth. He was very good, but at the same time peculiar beyond measure. He constantly grieved over nothing at all, always went about alone and silent, sat down by himself whenever the others played and were happy, and was always thinking about strange things. Woods and caves were his favorite haunts, and there he talked constantly with birds and animals, with rocks and trees—naturally not a word of sense, nothing but stuff silly enough to make one die a-laughing. Yet he continued to remain morose and grave in spite of the fact that the squirrel, the long-tailed monkey, the parrot, and the bullfinch took great pains to distract him and lead him into the right path. The goose would tell fairy-tales, and in the midst of them the brook would tinkle a ballad; a great heavy stone would caper about ludicrously; the rose stealing up affectionately behind him would creep through his locks, and the ivy stroke his careworn forehead. But his melancholy and his gravity were obstinate. His parents were greatly grieved; they did not know what to do. He was healthy and ate well. His parents had never hurt his feelings, nor until a few years since had any one been more cheerful and lively than he; always he had been at the head of every game, and was well liked by all the girls. He was very handsome indeed, looked like a picture, danced beautifully. Among the girls there was one sweet and very pretty child.

She looked as though she were of wax, with hair like silk spun of gold, lips as red as cherries, a figure like a little doll, eyes black as the raven. Such was her charm that whoever saw her might have pined away with love. At that time Roseblossom, that was her name, cherished a heart-felt affection for the handsome Hyacinth, that was his name, and he loved her with all his life. The other children did not know it. A little violet had been the first to tell them; the house-cats had noticed it, to be sure, for their parents' homes stood near each other. When, therefore, Hyacinth was standing at night at his window and Roseblossom at hers, and the pussies ran by on a mouse-hunt, they would see both standing, and would often laugh and titter so loudly that the children would hear them and grow angry. The violet had confided it to the strawberry, she told it to her friend, the gooseberry, and she never stopped taunting when Hyacinth passed; so that very soon the whole garden and the goods heard the news, and whenever Hyacinth went out they called on every side: "Little Roseblossom is my sweetheart!" Now Hyacinth was vexed, and again he could not help laughing from the bottom of his heart when the lizard would come sliding up, seat himself on a warm stone, wag his little tail, and sing

 
  Little Roseblossom, good and kind,
  Suddenly was stricken blind.
  Her mother Hyacinth she thought
  And to embrace him forthwith sought.
  But when she felt the face was strange,
  Just think, no terror made her change!
  But on his cheek pressed she her kiss,
  And she had noted naught amiss.
 

Alas, how soon did all this bliss pass away! There came along a man from foreign lands; he had traveled everywhere, had a long beard, deep-set eyes, terrible eyebrows, a strange cloak with many folds and queer figures woven in it. He seated himself in front of the house that belonged to Hyacinth's parents. Now Hyacinth was very curious and sat down beside him and fetched him bread and wine. Then the man parted his white beard and told stories until late at night and Hyacinth did not stir nor did he tire of listening. As far as one could learn afterward the man had related much about foreign lands, unknown regions, astonishingly wondrous things, staying there three days and creeping down into deep pits with Hyacinth. Roseblossom cursed the old sorcerer enough, for Hyacinth was all eagerness for his tales and cared for nothing, scarcely even eating a little food. Finally the man took his departure, not, however, without leaving Hyacinth a booklet that not a soul could read. The youth had even given him fruit, bread, and wine to take along and had accompanied him a long way. Then he came back melancholy and began an entirely new mode of life. Roseblossom grieved for him very pitifully, for from that time on he paid little attention to her and always kept to himself.

Now it came about that he returned home one day and was like one new-born. He fell on his parents' neck and wept. "I must depart for foreign lands," he said; "the strange old woman in the forest told me that I must get well again; she threw the book into the fire and urged me to come to you and ask for your blessing. Perhaps I shall be back soon, perhaps never more. Say good-bye to Roseblossom for me. I should have liked to speak to her, I do not know what is the matter, something drives me away; whenever I want to think of old times, mightier thoughts rush in immediately; my peace is gone, my courage and love with it, I must go in quest of them. I should like to tell you whither, but I do not know myself; thither where dwells the mother of all things, the veiled virgin. For her my heart burns. Farewell!"

He tore himself away and departed. His parents lamented and shed tears. Roseblossom kept in her chamber and wept bitterly. Hyacinth now hastened as fast as he could through valleys and wildernesses, across mountains and streams, toward the mysterious country. Everywhere he asked men and animals, rocks and trees, for the sacred goddess (Isis). Some laughed, some were silent, nowhere did he receive an answer. At first he passed through wild, uninhabited regions, mist and clouds obstructed his path, it was always storming; later he found unbounded deserts of glowing hot sand, and as he wandered his mood changed, time seemed to grow longer, and his inner unrest was calmed. He became more tranquil and the violent excitement within him was gradually transformed to a gentle but strong impulse, which took possession of his whole nature. It seemed as though many years lay behind him. Now, too, the region again became richer and more varied, the air warm and blue, the path more level; green bushes attracted him with their pleasant shade but he did not understand their language, nor did they seem to speak, and yet they filled his heart with verdant colors, with quiet and freshness. Mightier and mightier grew within him that sweet longing, broader and softer the leaves, noisier and happier the birds and animals, balmier the fruits, darker the heavens, warmer the air and more fiery his love; faster and faster passed the Time, as though it knew that it was approaching the goal.

One day he came upon a crystal spring and a bevy of flowers that were going down to a valley between black columns reaching to the sky. With familiar words they greeted him kindly. "My dear countrymen," he said, "pray, where am I to find the sacred abode of Isis? It must be somewhere in this vicinity, and you are probably better acquainted here than I." "We, too, are only passing through this region," the flowers answered; "a family of spirits is traveling and we are making ready the road and preparing lodgings for them; but we came through a region lately where we heard her name called. Just walk upward in the direction from which we are coming and you will be sure to learn more." The flowers and the spring smiled as they said this, offered him a drink of fresh water, and went on.

Hyacinth followed their advice, asked and asked, and finally reached that long-sought dwelling concealed behind palms and other choice plants. His heart beat with infinite longing and the most delicious yearning thrilled him in this abode of the eternal seasons. Amid heavenly fragrance he fell into slumber, since naught but dreams might lead him to the most sacred place. To the tune of charming melodies and in changing harmonies did his dream guide him mysteriously through endless apartments filled with curious things. Everything seemed so familiar to him and yet amid a splendor that he had never seen; then even the last tinge of earthliness vanished as though dissipated in the air, and he stood before the celestial virgin. He lifted the filmy, shimmering veil and Roseblossom fell into his arms. From afar a strain of music accompanied the mystery of the loving reunion, the outpourings of their longing, and excluded all that was alien from this delightful spot. After that Hyacinth lived many years with Roseblossom near his happy parents and comrades, and innumerable grandchildren thanked the mysterious old woman for her advice and her fire; for at that time people got as many children as they wanted.

APHORISMS³³

By NOVALIS

TRANSLATED BY FREDERIC H. HEDGE

Where no gods are, spectres rule.

The best thing that the French achieved by their Revolution, was a portion of Germanity.

Germanity is genuine popularity, and therefore an ideal.

Where children are, there is the golden age.

Spirit is now active here and there: when will Spirit be active in the whole? When will mankind, in the mass, begin to consider?

Nature is pure Past, foregone freedom; and therefore, throughout, the soil of history.

The antithesis of body and spirit is one of the most remarkable and dangerous of all antitheses. It has played an important part in history.

Only by comparing ourselves, as men, with other rational beings, could we know what we truly are, what position we occupy.

The history of Christ is as surely poetry as it is history. And, in general, only that history is history which might also be fable.

The Bible begins gloriously with Paradise, the symbol of youth, and ends with the everlasting kingdom, with the holy city. The history of every man should be a Bible.

Prayer is to religion what thinking is to philosophy. To pray is to make religion.

The more sinful man feels himself, the more Christian he is.

Christianity is opposed to science, to art, to enjoyment in the proper sense.

It goes forth from the common man. It inspires the great majority of the limited on earth.

It is the germ of all democracy, the highest fact in the domain of the popular.

Light is the symbol of genuine self-possession. Therefore light, according to analogy, is the action of the self-contact of matter. Accordingly, day is the consciousness of the planet, and while the sun, like a god, in eternal self-action, inspires the centre, one planet after another closes one eye for a longer or shorter time, and with cool sleep refreshes itself for new life and contemplation. Accordingly, here, too, there is religion. For is the life of the planets aught else but sun-worship?

The Holy Ghost is more than the Bible. This should be our teacher of religion, not the dead, earthly, equivocal letter.

All faith is miraculous, and worketh miracles.

Sin is indeed the real evil in the world. All calamity proceeds from that. He who understands sin, understands virtue and Christianity, himself and the world.

The greatest of miracles is a virtuous act.

If a man could suddenly believe, in sincerity, that he was moral, he would be so.

We need not fear to admit that man has a preponderating tendency to evil. So much the better is he by nature, for only the unlike attracts.

Everything distinguished (peculiar) deserves ostracism. Well for it if it ostracizes itself. Everything absolute must quit the world.

A time will come, and that soon, when all men will be convinced that there can be no king without a republic, and no republic without a king; that both are as inseparable as body and soul. The true king will be a republic, the true republic a king.

In cheerful souls there is no wit. Wit shows a disturbance of the equipoise.

Most people know not how interesting they are, what interesting things they really utter. A true representation of themselves, a record and estimate of their sayings, would make them astonished at themselves, would help them to discover in themselves an entirely new world.

Man is the Messiah of Nature.

The soul is the most powerful of all poisons. It is the most penetrating and diffusible stimulus.

Every sickness is a musical problem; the cure is the musical solution.

Inoculation with death, also, will not be wanting in some future universal therapy.

The idea of a perfect health is interesting only in a scientific point of view. Sickness is necessary to individualization.

If God could be man, he can also be stone, plant, animal, element, and perhaps, in this way, there is a continuous redemption in Nature.

Life is a disease of the spirit, a passionate activity. Rest is the peculiar property of the spirit. From the spirit comes gravitation.

As nothing can be free, so, too, nothing can be forced, but spirit.

A space-filling individual is a body; a time-filling individual is a soul.

It should be inquired whether Nature has not essentially changed with the progress of culture.

All activity ceases when knowledge comes. The state of knowing is eudæmonism, blest repose of contemplation, heavenly quietism.

Miracles, as contradictions of Nature, are amathematical. But there are no miracles in this sense. What we so term, is intelligible precisely by means of mathematics; for nothing is miraculous to mathematics.

In music, mathematics appears formally, as revelation, as creative idealism. All enjoyment is musical, consequently mathematical. The highest life is mathematics.

There may be mathematicians of the first magnitude who cannot cipher.

One can be a great cipherer without a conception of mathematics.

Instinct is genius in Paradise, before the period of self-abstraction (self-recognition).

The fate which oppresses us is the sluggishness of our spirit. By enlargement and cultivation of our activity, we change ourselves into fate. Everything appears to stream in upon us, because we do not stream out. We are negative, because we choose to be so; the more positive we become, the more negative will the world around us be, until, at last, there is no more negative, and we are all in all. God wills gods.

All power appears only in transition. Permanent power is stuff.

Every act of introversion—every glance into our interior—is at the same time ascension, going up to heaven, a glance at the veritable outward.

Only so far as a man is happily married to himself, is he fit for married life and family life, generally.

One must never confess that one loves one's self. The secret of this confession is the life-principle of the only true and eternal love.

We conceive God as personal, just as we conceive ourselves personal.

God is just as personal and as individual as we are; for what we call I is not our true I, but only its off glance.

HYMN TO NIGHT (1800)

By NOVALIS

TRANSLATED BY PAUL B. THOMAS

Who, that hath life and the gift of perception, loves not more than all the marvels seen far and wide in the space about him Light, the all-gladdening, with its colors, with its beams and its waves, its mild omnipresence as the arousing day? The giant world of restless stars breathes it, as were it the innermost soul of life, and lightly floats in its azure flood; the stone breathes it, sparkling and ever at rest, and the dreamy, drinking plant, and the savage, ardent, manifold-fashioned beast; but above all the glorious stranger with the thoughtful eyes, the airy step, and the lightly-closed, melodious lips. Like a king of terrestrial nature it calls every power to countless transformations, it forms and dissolves innumerable alliances and surrounds every earthly creature with its heavenly effulgence. Its presence alone reveals the marvelous splendor of the realms of the world.

Downward I turn my eyes to Night, the holy, ineffable, mysterious. Far below lies the world, sunk in a deep vault; void and lonely is its place. Deep melancholy is wafted through the chords of the breast. In drops of dew I'd fain sink down and mingle with the ashes. Far-off memories, desires of youth, dreams of childhood, long life's brief joys and vain hopes appear in gray garments like the evening mist after sunset. Light has pitched its gay tents in other regions. Will it perchance never return to its children, who are waiting for it with the faith of innocence?

What is it that suddenly wells up so forebodingly from beneath the heart and smothers the gentle breath of melancholy? Dark Night, dost thou also take pleasure in us? What hast thou beneath thy mantle which touches my soul with invisible force? Precious balsam drops from the bunch of poppies in thy hand. Thou raisest up the heavy wings of the soul; vaguely and inexpressibly we feel ourselves moved. Joyously fearful, I see an earnest face, which gently and reverently bends over me, and amid endlessly entangled locks shows the sweet youth of the mother. How poor and childish does Light seem to me now! How joyful and blessed the departure of day! Only for that reason, then, because Night turns thy servants from thee, didst thou scatter in the wide expanse of space the shining stars, to make known thine omnipotence and thy return, during the periods of thine absence? More heavenly than those twinkling stars seem to us the everlasting eyes which Night has opened within us. Farther they see than the palest of those numberless hosts; not needing light, they fathom the depths of a loving heart, filling a higher space with unspeakable delight.

Praise be to the queen of the world, to the high harbinger of holy worlds, to the fostress of blissful love! She sends thee to me, gentle sweetheart, lovely sun of the night. Now I am awake, for I am thine and mine; thou hast proclaimed to me that night is life and made a man of me. Consume my body with spiritual fire, that I may ethereally blend with thee, and then the bridal night may last forever.

"THOUGH NONE THY NAME SHOULD CHERISH"³⁴

 
  Though none Thy Name should cherish,
    My faith shall be the same,
  Lest gratitude should perish
    And earth be brought to shame.
  With meekness Thou did'st suffer
    The pangs of death for me,
  With joy then I would offer
    This heart for aye to Thee.
 
 
  I weep with strong emotion
    That death has been Thy lot,
  And yet that Thy devotion
    Thy people have forgot.
  The blessings of salvation
    Thy perfect love has won,
  Yet who in any nation
    Regards what Thou hast done 3
 
 
  With love Thou hast protected
    Each man his whole life through;
  Though all Thy care rejected,
    No less would'st Thou be true.
  Such love as Thine must vanquish
    The proudest soul at last,
  'Twill turn to Thee in anguish
    And to Thy knees cling fast.
 
 
  Thine influence hath bound me;
    Oh, if it be Thy will,
  Be evermore around me,
    Be present with me still!
  At length too shall the others
    Look up and long for rest,
  And all my loving brothers
    Shall sink upon Thy breast.
 

TO THE VIRGIN³⁵

 
  A thousand hands, devoutly tender,
    Have sought thy beauty to express,
  But none, oh Mary, none can render,
    As my soul sees, thy loveliness.
 
 
  I gaze till earth's confusion fadeth
    Like to a dream, and leaves behind
  A heaven of sweetness which pervadeth
    My whole rapt being—heart and mind.
 

FRIEDRICH HÖLDERLIN

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HYPERION'S SONG OF FATE³⁶ (1799)

 
  Ye wander there in the light
  On flower-soft fields, ye blest immortal Spirits.
  Radiant godlike zephyrs
  Touch you as gently
  As the hand of a master might
  Touch the awed lute-string.
  Free of fate as the slumbering
  Infant, breathe the divine ones.
  Guarded well
  In the firm-sheathed bud
  Blooms eternal
  Each happy soul;
  And their rapture-lit eyes
  Shine with a tranquil
  Unchanging lustre.
  But we, 'tis our portion,
  We never may be at rest.
  They stumble, they vanish,
  The suffering mortals,
  Hurtling from one hard
  Hour to another,
  Like waves that are driven
  From cliff-side to cliff-side,
  Endlessly down the uncertain abyss.
 

EVENING PHANTASIE[36] (1799)

Before his but reposes in restful shade The ploughman; wreaths of smoke from his hearth ascend. And sweet to wand'rers comes the tone of Evening bells from the peaceful village.

 
  The sailor too puts into the haven now,
  In distant cities cheerily dies away
    The busy tumult; in the arbor
      Gleams the festal repast of friendship.
 
 
  But whither I? In labor, for slight reward
  We mortals live; in alternate rest and toil
    Contentment dwells; but why then sleeps not
      Hid in my bosom the thorn unsparing?
 
 
  The ev'ning heaven blooms as with springtime's hue;
  Uncounted bloom the roses, the golden world
    Seems wrapt in peace; oh, bear me thither,
      Purple-wrought clouds! And may for me there
 
 
  Both love and grief dissolve in the joyous light!
  But see, as if dispelled by the foolish prayer,
    The wonder fades! 'Tis dark, and lonely
      Under the heaven I stand as erstwhile.
 
 
  Come then to me, soft Sleep. Overmuch requires
  The heart; and yet thou too at the last shalt fade,
    Oh youth, thou restless dream-pursuer!
      Peaceful and happy shall age then follow.