Novalis: Philosophical Writings

Novalis: Philosophical Writings is the first extensive scholarly translation in English from the philosophical work of the late eighteenth-century German Romantic writer Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg). His original and innovative thought explores many questions that are current today, such as truth and objectivity, reason and the imagination, language and mind, and revolution and the state. The translation includes two collections of fragments published by Novalis in 1798, Miscellaneous Observations and Faith and Love, and the controversial essay Christendom or Europe. In addition there are substantial selections from his unpublished notebooks, including Logological Fragments, the General Draft for an encyclopedia, the Monologue on language, and the essay on Goethe as scientist. "A reliable, faithful, and readable English translation of Novalis's influential philosophical and aesthetic writings has been a conspicuous desideratum in Anglo-Saxon scholarship on German Romanticism. Stoljar's book fills this gap in every respect and is, therefore, most welcome and timely. The translation is impeccable and reflects the often highly complex original texts most felicitously. Stoljar's introduction is a model of sound and up-to-date critical scholarship: it provides circumspect exposure to Novalis as an independent and imaginative thinker, situates and characterizes the individual texts in the overall context of Novalis's conceptual universe, and abounds in clearly formulated interpretive insights. "In Stoljar's lucid translation, Novalis's writings come across as fascinating and seminal as they are in the German original; the collection is a veritable eye-opener for anyone concerned with the wide-ranging impact of the best of German Romantic thought on subsequent developments in European literature, philosophy, history, science, psychology, music, the visual arts, etc., in other words, across the entire cultural landscape through the nineteenth century to the present." -- Steven Paul Scher, Dartmouth College