Friedrich von Hardenberg called the 'romantic fragments', which he published in 1798 under the title "Pollen" and with the pseudonym Novalis in the journal "Athenäum", "fragments of the ongoing self-talk in me".
Soliloquia, self-talk, often honest, not always truthful, have a long literary tradition. The genus was less suitable for criticism of the system. But this is exactly what Novalis and his early romantic comrades-in-arms had in mind when they advocated the idea of a diversity of everything individual.
The poet's interests were wide-ranging, which he pursued with breathtaking intensity in the few years of his short life, marked by strokes of fate and illness: mathematics, natural sciences, philosophy and, last but not least, poetry and poetics in exchange with the Schlegel brothers, with Tieck, Schelling and Fichte. In addition, he was actively active – the only early romantic who pursued a 'bourgeois' profession. The "mysterious way" inwards should be supplemented by the "effective view outwards".
Wisdom is not gained through rumination
He also wrote the small confessional and didactic poem outlining Novalis' central ideas in 1798, in which he began studying mining in Freiberg, Saxony. Here taught the respected Abraham Gottlob Werner, whose conviction of the unity of nature met with great approval among his students.
Novalis has often taken up alchemical notions of mixture and transformation; they became an image of self-exploration and self-discovery. In doing so, he plays, as in this poem, with traditional set pieces, speaks of "the mockery" and of the "deepest", of the seat of the gods as well as of the underworld, which certainly had tangible and realistic references for the mining expert. Psychologized, the antagonism of light and darkness returns in the "Hymns to the Night".
The "various names" under which the "one" "hidden" is not named. Nor could they have described more than approaches to something that was felt but "never" really "grasped". But apparently, as in the second verse, there was a "man" who "betrayed the children in friendly myths" the access to the hidden truth. Who is actually meant by this, remains open. The "castle" refers to fairy tales, but a Christological interpretation could also be obvious. Novalis, however, was not concerned with renewing a particular religion, as some contemporaries accused him; nor did he want to create a new myth. "Path and Key" are recurring fairytale-like symbols and guiding motifs in the novels "Die Lehrlinge zu Sais" and "Heinrich von Ofterdingen", the station narrative on the way from the blue flower to oneself.
But only a few, it is noted here, have correctly interpreted "the easy cipher of the solution". "One day it will easily detach; / The key has long since arrived," announces an occasional poem. Nevertheless, it took "long times" to realize the truth – and the "error" that sharpened the "meaning" helped. With this 'trial and error' Novalis is far from esoteric presumption of knowledge and mythological narratives. Science is in demand. Wisdom is not gained by pondering, but by fundamental questions to oneself. Only then, in a figurative sense, does the chemists' distillation vessel, the "sacred flask", unfold its royal effect. "We will understand the world if we understand ourselves," one aphorism says.
For the geologist Novalis, the 'philosopher's stone' is of course not a mineral object, but an image of reason and reason. "Only the rational man" is able to come to knowledge. "Enthusiasm without reason is useless and dangerous," says the poet Klingsohr in the "Ofterdingen" novel.
Novalis' understanding of the romantic is rational and rigorous. If you look relentlessly into yourself, you can – Novalis is more optimistic than later authors – find the sentence that solves everything and towards which the 'free' hexameters and pentameters, reminiscent of ancient gnomes, are heading towards it: the Delphic "Know / Know thyself" (gnothi seauton), which is based on a self-questioning, a consciously assumed strangeness towards oneself, which also enables respect for the other. "Of course, we understand everything foreign only through self-alienation – self-transformation – self-observation," Novalis wrote, pleading for openness to everything unknown and future.