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Novalis wrote two unfinished novel fragments, Heinrich von Ofterdingen and Die Lehrlinge zu Sais (The Novices at Sais), both of which were published posthumously by Tieck and Schlegel in 1802. The novels both aim to describe a universal world harmony with the help of poetry.
The novel is based on the life of Friedrich von Hardenberg (1772–1801) before he became famous under the name Novalis. [4] It covers the years from 1790 to 1797 when von Hardenberg was a student of history, philosophy and law at the universities of Jena, Leipzig and Wittenberg, and before he embarked on his professional life.
English writer Penelope Fitzgerald's historical novel The Blue Flower is based on Novalis's early life. [7] In John le Carré 's 1968 novel A Small Town in Germany , the character Bradfield says, "I used to think I was a Romantic, always looking for the blue flower" (Pan edition, p. 286 – chap. 17).
The Novalis novel also contained the symbol of the Blue Flower, which became a key symbol in Romanticism. In the early 20th century, nationalistic German writers portrayed Heinrich as a defender of veritable German poetry and even as author of the Nibelungenlied poem.
Novalis saw Europe at a possible transition from the intermediate to golden age at the time of his writing. The transformed Christianity that Novalis thought could herald this new epoch would replace beliefs in divine revelation with an inspired poetic spirit, and the new religion would have a strong emphasis on aesthetics .
Life and death are – according to Novalis – developed into entwined concepts. So in the end, death is the romantic principle of life. Influences from the literature of that time can be seen. The metaphors of the hymns are closely connected to the books Novalis had read at about the time of his writing of the hymns.
Fitzgerald's final novel, The Blue Flower (1995), centres on the 18th-century German poet and philosopher Novalis and his love for what is portrayed as an ordinary child. Other historical figures such as the poet Goethe and the philosopher Karl Wilhelm Friedrich von Schlegel , feature in the story.
Transcendental homelessness (German: transzendentale Obdachlosigkeit) is a philosophical term coined by George Lukács in his 1914–15 essay Theory of the Novel.Lukács quotes Novalis at the top of the essay, "Philosophy is really homesickness—the desire to be everywhere at home."