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Denise Levertov

Denise Levertov (24 October 1923 – 20 December 1997) was a British-American poet.

Quotes

 * I long for poems of an inner harmony in utter contrast to the chaos in which they exist. Insofar as poetry has a social function it is to awaken sleepers by other means than shock.
 * Statement on poetics in The New American Poetry (1960) edited by Donald Allen

 * To leave the open fields and enter the forest, that was the rite. Knowing there was mystery, they could go. Go back now! And he receded among the multitude of forms, the twists and shadows they saw now, listening to the hum of the world's wood.
 * "The Novices" (1960)

 * Praise the invisible sun burning beyond the white cold sky, giving us light and the chimney's shadow.
 * Mass for the Day of St. Thomas Didymus (1981); Online excerpt

 * Acknowledgement, and celebration, of mystery probably constitutes the most consistent theme of my poetry from its very beginnings. Because it is a matter of which I am conscious, it is possible, however imprecisely, to call it an intellectual position; but it is one which emphasizes the incapacity of reason alone (much though I delight in elegant logic) to comprehend experience, and considers Imagination the chief of human faculties. It must therefore be by the exercise of that faculty that one moves toward faith, and possibly by its failure that one rejects it as delusion. Poems present their testimony as circumstantial evidences, not as closing argument. Where Wallace Stevens says, "God and the imagination are one," I would say that the imagination, which synergizes intellect, emotion and instinct, is the perceptive organ through which it is possible, though not inevitable, to experience God.
 * A Poets View (1984)

With Eyes at the Back of Our Heads (1960)

 * I like to find what's not found at once, but lies within something of another nature, in repose, distinct.
 * Pleasures

 * I like the juicy stem of grass that grows within the coarser leaf folded round, and the butteryellow glow in the narrow flute from which the morning-glory opens blue and cool on a hot morning.
 * Pleasures

O Taste and See : New Poems (1964)

 * The world is not with us enough. O taste and see.
 * This a response to William Wordsworth's famous statement: "The world is too much with us late and soon."

The Secret

 * Full text online

 * Two girls discover the secret of life in a sudden line of poetry. I who don't know the secret wrote the line.

 * I love them for finding what I can't find, and for loving me for the line I wrote, and for forgetting it so that  a thousand times, till death finds them, they may discover it again, in other lines  in other happenings. And for wanting to know it, for  assuming there is such a secret, yes, for that most of all.

A Tree Telling of Orpheus (1968)

 * I was the first to see him, for I grew                   out on the pasture slope, beyond the forest. He was a man, it seemed. . .

 * Then as he sang it was no longer sounds only that made the music: he spoke, and as no tree listens I listened, and language                   came into my roots                                out of the earth,                     into my bark                                out of the air, into the pores of my greenest shoots            gently as dew and there was no word he sang but I knew its meaning.

 * He told of journeys,                    of where sun and moon go while we stand in dark,                     of an earth-journey he dreamed he would take some day deeper than roots ... He told of the dreams of man, wars, passions, griefs,                     and I, a tree, understood words – ah, it seemed my thick bark would split like a sapling's that                                                             grew too fast in the spring when a late frost wounds it.

 * Fire he sang, that trees fear, and I, a tree, rejoiced in its flames. New buds broke forth from me though it was full summer.                    As though his lyre (now I knew its name)                     were both frost and fire, its chords flamed up to the crown of me.                     I was seed again.                                         I was fern in the swamp.                                                                         I was coal.

 * And I       in terror                        but not in doubt of                                                             what I must do in anguish, in haste,                        wrenched from the earth root after root, the soil heaving and cracking, the moss tearing asunder — and behind me the others: my brothers forgotten since dawn. In the forest they too had heard, and were pulling their roots in pain out of a thousand years' layers of dead leaves,                 rolling the rocks away,                                            breaking themselves                                                                 out of                                                                        their depths.

 * The music reached us. Clumsily,            stumbling over our own roots,                                                         rustling our leaves                                                                            in answer, we moved, we followed.

 * By dawn he was gone.                                We have stood here since, in our new life.                        We have waited.                                                     He does not return.

 * It is said he made his earth-journey, and lost what he sought.                           It is said they felled him and cut up his limbs for firewood.                                                            And it is said his head still sang and was swept out to sea singing.

 * Perhaps he will not return.                                            But what we have lived comes back to us.                         We see more.                                                 We feel, as our rings increase, something that lifts our branches, that stretches our furthest                                                                                leaf-tips further.

 * The wind, the birds,                                                do not sound poorer but clearer, recalling our agony, and the way we danced.

Footprints (1972)

 * There is a fence around the garden but the gate stands open.
 * "Bill"

Conversation in Moscow

 * To me it seems perhaps Kropotkin understood half of what we need to know, and Lenin perhaps knew half, and true revolution … true revolution must put these two halves together?

 * To serve the people, one must write for the ideal reader. Only for the ideal reader. And who or what is that ideal reader? God. One must imagine, One must deeply imagine
 * that great Attention
 * Only so, In lonely dialog, can one reach the people.

 * I am not joking. I'm speaking of spirit. Not dogma but spirit. The Way.

 * The poet never must lose despair.

 * all of us know he means we mustn't, any of us, lose touch with the source, pretend it's not there, cover over the mineshaft of passion

Freedom

 * Leaps of nerve, heart — cries of communion: if there is bliss, it has been already and will be; out- reaching, utterly. Blind to itself, flooded with otherness.

The Freeing of the Dust

 * Let Ariel learn a blessing for Caliban and Caliban drink dew from the lotus open upon the waters.

 * pure dust that is all in all.   Bless, weightless Spirit. Drink Caliban, push your tongue heavy into the calyx.

The Wealth of the Destitute

 * I am tired of 'the fine art of unhappiness'.

Oblique Prayers (1984)

 * Delivered out of raw continual pain, smell of darkness, groans of those others to whom he was chained — unchained, and led past the sleepers, door after door silently opening — out!
 * St. Peter and the Angel

 * And not till he saw the angel had left him, alone and free to resume the ecstatic, dangerous, wearisome roads of what he had still to do, not till then did he recognize this was no dream.
 * St. Peter and the Angel

 * He himself must be the key, now, to the next door, the next terrors of freedom and joy.
 * St. Peter and the Angel

Flickering Mind

 * Lord, not you, it is I who am absent.

 * Not for one second will my self hold still, but wanders anywhere, everywhere it can turn. Not you, it is I am absent.

 * You are the stream, the fish, the light, the pulsing shadow. You the unchanging presence, in whom all moves and changes. How can I focus my flickering, perceive at the fountain's heart the sapphire I know is there?

Ikon: The Harrowing of Hell

 * Down through the tomb's inward arch He has shouldered out into Limbo to gather them, dazed, from dreamless slumber...

 * Didmas, neighbor in death, Golgotha dust still streaked on the dried sweat of his body no one had washed and anointed, is here, for sequence is not known in Limbo; the promise, given from cross to cross at noon, arches beyond sunset and dawn.

 * All these He will swiftly lead to the Paradise road: they are safe. That done, there must take place that struggle no human presumes to picture: living, dying, descending to rescue the just from shadow, were lesser travails than this: to break through earth and stone of the faithless world back to the cold sepulcher, tearstained stifling shroud; to break from them back into breath and heartbeat, and walk the world again, closed into days and weeks again, wounds of His anguish open, and Spirit streaming through every cell of flesh so that if mortal sight could bear to perceive it, it would be seen His mortal flesh was lit from within, now, and aching for home. He must return, first, in Divine patience, and know hunger again, and give to humble friends the joy of giving Him food — fish and a honeycomb.

Sands of the Well (1994)

 * Rain-diamonds, this winter morning, embellish the tangle of unpruned pear-tree twigs; each solitaire, placed, it appearrs, with considered judgement, bears the light beneath the rifted clouds — the indivisible shared out in endless abundance.
 * Bearing the Light

Quotes about Denise Levertov

 * Levertov was the first poet I ever saw read, and that was actually over twenty years ago. She was very important to me. Partly as a model, as a woman up there reading, partly because she knows how to end the poem more effectively than anybody I know.
 * Paula Gunn Allen Interview in Survival This Way: Interviews with American Indian Poets by Joseph Bruchac (1987)

 * Over many years (I am almost 72) so many poets have touched my imagination and opened paths for me—it hardly makes sense to list them. I have always read a great deal of poetry. Some poets—like Robert Lowell, Denise Levertov, Randall Jarrell, Jean Valentine, Audre Lorde, Hayden Carruth, Jane Cooper, June Jordan, Joy Harjo, Clayton Eshelman—have been my friends, we’ve been comrades in exchanging work and encouraging each other
 * Adrienne Rich, Interview (2001)

title: Denise Levertov


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Rainer Maria Rilke

René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke (4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926), better known as Rainer Maria Rilke, was a Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist, generally considered the German language's greatest poet of the 20th century. His writings include one novel, several collections of poetry and several volumes of correspondence in which he invokes images that focus on the difficulty of communion with the ineffable in an age of disbelief, solitude and anxiety. These themes position him as a transitional figure between traditional and modernist writers.

Quotes

 * Just as language has no longer anything in common with the thing it names, so the movements of most of the people who live in cities have lost their connexion with the earth; they hang, as it were, in the air, hover in all directions, and find no place where they can settle.
 * Worpswede (1903)

verlorne Geliebte, Nimmergekommene, nicht weiß ich, welche Töne dir lieb sind. Nicht mehr versuch ich, dich, wenn das Kommende wogt, zu erkennen.'' in my arms, Beloved, who were lost from the start, I don't even know what songs would please you. '''I have given up trying to recognize you in the surging wave of the next moment.
 * ''Du im Voraus
 * '''You who never arrived
 * You Who Never Arrived (as translated by Stephen Mitchell) (1913-1914)

ach, ich sah sie mit solcher Hoffnung. Ein offenes Fenster im Landhaus—, und du tratest beinahe mir nachdenklich heran. Gassen fand ich,— du warst sie gerade gegangen, und die spiegel manchmal der Läden der Händler waren noch schwindlich von dir und gaben erschrocken mein zu plötzliches Bild.—Wer weiß, ob derselbe Vogel nicht hinklang durch uns gestern, einzeln, im Abend?'' the gardens I have ever gazed at, longing.''' An open window in a country house —, and you almost stepped out, pensive, to meet me. Streets that I chanced upon,— you had just walked down them and vanished. And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors were still dizzy with your presence and, startled, gave back my too-sudden image. Who knows? perhaps the same bird echoed through both of us yesterday, separate, in the evening...
 * ''Ach, die Gärten bist du,
 * '''You, Beloved, who are all
 * You Who Never Arrived, as translated by Stephen Mitchell

dem Wege, den ich kaum begann, voran. So fasst uns das, was wir nicht fassen konnten, voller Erscheinung, aus der Ferne an— und wandelt uns, auch wenn wirs nicht erreichen, in jenes, das wir, kaum es ahnend, sind; ein Zeichen weht, erwidernd unserm Zeichen... Wir aber spüren nur den Gegenwind.'' at the end of the path which I've only just begun. So we are grasped, by that which we could not grasp, at such great distance, so fully manifest— and it changes us, even when we do not reach it, into something that, hardly sensing it, we already are; a sign appears, echoing our own sign... But what we sense is the falling winds. My eyes already touch the sunny hill, going far ahead of the road I have begun. So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp; it has its inner light, even from a distance— and changes us, even if we do not reach it, into something else, which, hardly sensing it, we already are; '''a gesture waves us on, answering our own wave. . . but what we feel is the wind in our faces.'''
 * ''Schon ist mein Blick am Hügel, dem besonnten,
 * Already my gaze is upon the hill, the sunny one,
 * Spaziergang (A Walk) (March 1924)
 * Alternate translation:
 * Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke as translated by Robert Bly (1981)

 * All the soarings of my mind begin in my blood.
 * Wartime Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke 1914-1921 (1940), translated by M.D. Herter Norton

Niemandes Schlaf zu sein unter soviel Lidern.'' To be no one's sleep under so many Lids.
 * ''Rose, oh reiner Widerspruch, Lust,
 * Translation: Rose, oh pure contradiction, desire,
 * Rilke wrote his own epitaph sometime before October 27, 1925. He requested that it be inscribed on his gravestone. This was fifteen months before his death. (Translation: John J.L.Mood)

 * The work of the eyes is done. Go now and do the heart-work on the images imprisoned within you.
 * Wendung (Turning Point), as translated by Stephen Mitchell

 * He was a poet and hated the approximate.
 * The Journal of My Other Self

 * Death is the side of life which is turned away from us.
 * Letter to W. von Hulewicz

 * Make your ego porous. Will is of little importance, complaining is nothing, fame is nothing. Openness, patience, receptivity, solitude is everything.
 * As quoted in Sunbeams : A Book of Quotations (1990) by Sy Safransky, p. 42

 * Everywhere I am folded, there I am a lie.
 * As quoted in News of the Universe : Poems of Twofold Consciousness (1995) by Robert Bly, p. 125

Rilke's Letters

 * Je weiter ich lebe, desto nötiger scheint es mir, auszuhalten, das ganze Diktat des Daseins bis zum Schluss nachzuschreiben; denn es möchte sein, dass erst der letzte Satz jenes kleine, vielleicht unscheinbare Wort enthält, durch welches alles mühsam Erlernte und Unbegriffene sich gegen einen herrlichen Sinn hinüberkehrt.
 * The longer I live, the more urgent it seems to me to endure and transcribe the whole dictation of existence up to its end, for it might just be the case that only the very last sentence contains that small and possibly inconspicuous word through which everything we had struggled to learn and everything we had failed to understand will be transformed suddenly into magnificent sense.
 * Letter to Ilse Erdmann, 21 December 1913, in Letters on Life, U. Baer, trans. (2007)

 * Surely all art is the result of one's having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, where no one can go any further.
 * Letter to his wife, reprinted in Rilke’s Letters on Cézanne (1952, trans. 1985). (June 24, 1907)

 * Ideally a painter (and, generally, an artist) should not become conscious of his insights: without taking the detour through his reflective processes, and incomprehensibly to himself, all his progress should enter so swiftly into the work that he is unable to recognise them in the moment of transition. Alas, the artist who waits in ambush there, watching, detaining them, will find them transformed like the beautiful gold in the fairy tale which cannot remain gold because some small detail was not taken care of.
 * Letter to his wife, reprinted in Rilke’s Letters on Cézanne (1952, trans. 1985). (October 21, 1907)

 * Painting is something that takes place among the colors, and ... one has to leave them alone completely, so that they can settle the matter among themselves. Their intercourse: this is the whole of painting. Whoever meddles, arranges, injects his human deliberation, his wit, his advocacy, his intellectual agility in any way, is already disturbing and clouding their activity.
 * Letter to his wife, reprinted in Rilke’s Letters on Cézanne (1952, trans. 1985). (October 21, 1907)

 * Just as the creative artist is not allowed to choose, neither is he permitted to turn his back on anything: a single refusal, and he is cast out of the state of grace and becomes sinful all the way through.
 * Letter to his wife, reprinted in Rilke’s Letters on Cézanne (1952, trans. 1985). (October 23, 1907)

 * He [Cézanne] reproduced himself with so much humble objectivity, with the unquestioning, matter of fact interest of a dog who sees himself in a mirror and thinks: there's another dog.
 * Letter to his wife, reprinted in Rilke’s Letters on Cézanne (1952, trans. 1985). (October 23, 1907)

 * Not since Moses has anyone seen a mountain so greatly.
 * Quoted in Rilke's Letters on Cézanne, foreword (1952, trans. 1985)

 * What is required of us is that we love the difficult and learn to deal with it. In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us. Right in the difficult we must have our joys, our happiness, our dreams: there against the depth of this background, they stand out, there for the first time we see how beautiful they are.
 * Selected Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke (1960)

Das Buch der Bilder (The Book of Images) (1902)
endliche Taten wie schwache Fontänen, die sich zeitig und zitternd neigen. Aber, die sich uns sonst verschweigen, unsere fröhlichen Kräfte—zeigen sich in diesen tanzenden Tränen.'' finite deeds like weak fountains, falling back just in time and trembling. And yet, what otherwise remains silent, our happy energies—show themselves in these dancing tears.
 * ''Aus unendlichen Sehnsüchten steigen
 * Out of infinite longings rise
 * Initiale (Initial) (as translated by Cliff Crego)

Leg deinen Schatten auf die Sonnenuhren, und auf den Fluren laß die Winde los.'' Let thine shadows upon the sundials fall, and unleash the winds upon the open fields.
 * ''Herr: es ist Zeit. Der Sommer war sehr groß.
 * Lord: it is time. The summer was immense.
 * Herbsttag (Autumn Day) (as translated by Cliff Crego)

die ihm ein Rand von alten Bäumen hält.'' held for it by a row of ancient trees.
 * ''Der Abend wechselt langsam die Gewänder,
 * Slowly the evening changes into the clothes
 * Abend (Evening) (as translated by Cliff Crego)

Das Stunden-Buch (The Book of Hours) (1905)
wirf mir die Ohren zu: ich kann dich hören, und ohne Füße kann ich zu dir gehn, und ohne Mund noch kann ich dich beschwören. Brich mir die Arme ab,ich fasse dich mit meinem Herzen wie mit einer Hand, halt mir das Herz zu, und mein Hirn wird schlagen, und wirfst du in mein Hirn den Brand, so werd ich dich auf meinem Blute tragen.''
 * ''Lösch mir die Augen aus: ich kann dich sehn,

plug up my ears, and I can still hear; even without feet I can walk toward you, and without mouth I can still implore. Break off my arms, and I will hold you with my heart as if it were a hand; strangle my heart, and my brain will still throb; and should you set fire to my brain, I still can carry you with my blood.
 * Extinguish my sight, and I can still see you;
 * Translated by Annemarie S. Kidder

um jede Stunde zu weihen. Ich bin auf der Welt zu gering und doch nicht klein genug, um vor dir zu sein wie ein Ding, dunkel und klug. Ich will meinen Willen und will meinen Willen begleiten die Wege zur Tat; und will in stillen, irgendwie zörgernden Zeiten, wenn etwas naht, unter den Wissenden sein oder allein.'' to make every hour holy. I am too small in the world, and yet not tiny enough just to stand before you like a thing, dark and shrewd. I want my will, and I want to be with my will as it moves towards deed; and in those quiet, somehow hesitating times, when something is approaching, I want to be with those who are wise or else alone. to truly consecrate the hour. I am much too small in this world, yet not small enough to be to you just object and thing, dark and smart. I want my free will and want it accompanying the path which leads to action; and want during times that beg questions, where something is up, to be among those in the know, or else be alone.
 * ''Ich bin auf der Welt zu allein und doch nicht allein genug,
 * I am too alone in the world, and yet not alone enough
 * Number 2 (as translated by Cliff Crego)
 * I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone enough
 * (as translated by Annemarie S. Kidder)

Neue Gedichte (New Poems) (1907)
sie nicht an deine rührt? Wie soll ich sie hinheben über dich zu andern Dingen? Ach gerne möchte ich sie bei irgendetwas Verlorenem im Dunkel unterbringen an einer fremden stillen Stelle, die nicht weiterschwingt, wenn diene Tiefen schwingen. Doch alles, was uns anrührt, dich und mich, nimmt uns zusammen wie ein Bogenstrich, die aus zwei Saiten eine Stimme zieht. Auf welches Instrument sind wir gespannt? Und welcher Geiger hat uns in der Hand? O süßes Lied.'' it does not touch yours? How shall I lift it gently up over you on to other things? I would so very much like to tuck it away among long lost objects in the dark, in some quiet, unknown place, somewhere which remains motionless when your depths resound. And yet everything which touches us, you and me, takes us together like a single bow, drawing out from two strings but one voice. On which instrument are we strung? And which violinist holds us in his hand? O sweetest of songs.
 * ''Wie soll ich meine Seele halten, daß
 * How shall I hold on to my soul, so that
 * Liebes-Lied (Love Song) (as translated by Cliff Crego)

schwer und wie gebunden hinzugehen, gleicht dem ungeschaffnen Gang des Schwanes. Und das Sterben, dieses Nichtmehrfassen jenes Grunds, auf dem wir täglich stehen, seinem ängstlichen Sich-Niederlassen—: in die Wasser, die ihn sanft empfangen und die sich, wie glücklich und vergangen, unter ihm zurückziehn, Flut um Flut; während er unendlich still und sicher immer mündiger und königlicher und gelassener zu ziehn geruht.'' moving through that which has been left undone, is like the not-quite-finished walk of the swan. And dying, this slipping away from the ground upon which we stand every day, is his anxious letting himself fall—: into the waters, which receive him gladly and which, as if happily already gone by, draw back under him, wave after wave; while the swan, infinitely calm and self-assured, opener and more magnificent and more serene, allows himself to be drawn on.
 * ''Diese Mühsal, durch noch Ungetanes
 * This difficult living, heavy and as if all tied up,
 * Der Schwan (The Swan) (as translated by Cliff Crego)

und alles wird auf allen Seiten gleich; die kleine Insel draußen aber hat die Augen zu; verwirrend kreist der Deich um ihre Wohner, die in einem Schlaf geboren werden, drin sie viele Welten verwechseln schweigend, denn sie reden selten, und jeder Satz ist wie ein Epitaph'' and everything will be again equal on all sides; but the small, far-out island already has its eyes closed; bewildered, the dike draws a circle around its inhabitants who were born into a sleep in which many worlds are silently confused, for they rarely speak, and every phrase is like an epitaph.
 * ''Die nächste Flut verwischt den Weg im Watt,
 * The next tide will erase the way through the mudflats,
 * Die Insel I (The Island I) (as translated by Cliff Crego)

Der Panther (The Panther) (1907)
so müd geworden, daß er nichts mehr hält. Ihm ist, als ob es tausend Stäbe gäbe und hinter tausend Stäben keine Welt. Der weiche Gang geschmeidig starker Schritte, der sich im allerkleinsten Kreise dreht, ist wie ein Tanz von Kraft um eine Mitte, in der betäubt ein großer Wille steht. Nur manchmal schiebt der Vorhang der Pupille sich lautlos auf—. Dann geht ein Bild hinein, geht durch der Glieder angespannte Stille— und hört im Herzen auf zu sein.'' has turned into a vacant stare which nothing holds. To him there seem to be a thousand bars, and out beyond these bars exists no world. His supple gait, the smoothness of strong strides that gently turn in ever smaller circles perform a dance of strength, centered deep within a will, stunned, but untamed, indomitable. But sometimes the curtains of his eyelids part, the pupils of his eyes dilate as images of past encounters enter while through his limbs a tension strains in silence only to cease to be, to die within his heart.
 * ''Sein Blick ist vom Vorübergehen der Stäbe
 * His tired gaze - from passing endless bars -
 * As translated by Albert Ernest Flemming

In Celebration of Me (1909)
They describe so distinctly everything: And this they call dog and that they call house, here the start and there the end. I worry about their mockery with words, they know everything, what will be, what was; no mountain is still miraculous; and their house and yard lead right up to God. I want to warn and object: Let the things be! I enjoy listening to the sound they are making. But you always touch: and they hush and stand still. That's how you kill.
 * I am so afraid of people's words.
 * Translated by Annemarie S. Kidder

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (1910)

 * Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge, as translated by Michael Hulse (2009)

 * Ist es möglich, daß es Leute giebt, welche 'Gott' sagen und meinen, das wäre etwas Gemeinsames?—Und sieh nur zwei Schulkinder: Es kauft sich der eine ein Messer, und sein Nachbar kauft sich ein ganz gleiches am selben Tag. Und sie zeigen einander nach einer Woche die beiden Messer, und es ergiebt sich, daß sie sich nur noch ganz entfernt ähnlich sehen,—so verschieden haben sie sich in verschiedenen Händen entwickelt. ... Ist es möglich, zu glauben, man könne einen Gott haben, ohne ihn zu gebrauchen?
 * Is it possible that there are people who say "God" and suppose they mean something shared by all? — Only consider two schoolboys: one of them buys a knife, and the other buys an identical one on the same day. And a week later, they show each other the two knives, and they turn out to be only remotely similar, so differently have they been shaped by different hands. ... Is it possible to believe we could have a god without making use of him?
 * p. 16

 * Mein Gott, fiel es mir mit Ungestüm ein, so bist du also. Es giebt Beweise für deine Existenz. Ich habe sie alle vergessen und habe keinen je verlangt, denn welche unge heuere Verpflichtung läge in deiner Gewißheit. Und doch, nun wird mirs gezeigt.
 * A thought struck me abruptly: My God, you do exist, then. There are proofs of Your existence. I had forgotten them all, and never demanded any either, for what an overwhelming obligation would come with this certainty. And yet that is what is now being shown to me.
 * p. 135

Duino Elegies (1922)
Ordnungen? und gesetzt selbst, es nähme einer mich plötzlich ans Herz: ich verginge von seinem stärkeren Dasein. Denn das Schöne ist nichts als des Schrecklichen Anfang, den wir noch grade ertragen, und wir bewundern es so, weil es gelassen verschmäht, uns zu zerstören. Ein jeder Engel ist schrecklich.'' hierarchies? and even if one of them pressed me against his heart: I would be consumed in that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure, and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying.'''
 * ''Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich denn aus der Engel
 * '''Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'
 * First Elegy (as translated by Stephen Mitchell)

Sterne dir zu, daß du sie spürtest. Es hob sich eine Woge heran im Vergangenen, oder da du vorüberkamst am geöffneten Fenster, gab eine Geige sich hin. Das alles war Auftrag. Aber bewältigtest du's? Warst du nicht immer noch von Erwartung zer streut, als kündigte alles eine Geliebte dir an? (Wo willst du sie bergen, da doch die großen fremden Gedanken bei dir aus und ein gehn und öfters bleiben bei Nacht.)'' was waiting for you to notice it. A wave rolled toward you out of the distant past, or as you walked under an open window, a violin yielded itself to your hearing. All this was mission. But could you accomplish it? Weren't you always distracted by expectation, as if every event announced a beloved? (Where can you find a place to keep her, with all the huge strange thoughts inside you going and coming and often staying all night.)'''
 * ''Ja, die Frühlinge brauchten dich wohl. Es muteten manche
 * '''Yes—the springtimes needed you. Often a star
 * First Elegy (as translated by Stephen Mitchell)

man entwöhnt sich des Irdischen sanft, wie man den Brüsten milde der Mutter entwächst. Aber wir, die so große Geheimnisse brauchen, denen aus Trauer so oft seliger Fortschritt entspringt –: könnten wir sein ohne sie?'' they are weaned from earth's sorrows and joys, and as gently as children outgrow the soft breasts of their mothers. But we, who do need such great mysteries, we for whom grief is so often the source of our spirit's growth — : could we exist without them?'''
 * ''Schließlich brauchen sie uns nicht mehr, die Früheentrückten,
 * '''In the end, those who were carried off early no longer need us:
 * First Elegy (as translated by Stephen Mitchell)

euch an den Mund hebt und ansetzt –: Getränk an Getränk: o wie entgeht dann der Trinkende seltsam der Handlung.'' your mouths together—drink upon drink: strange how each of you drinks your way past the other.
 * ''Liebende … [w]enn ihr einer dem andern
 * Lovers ... when you raise yourselves and press
 * Second Elegy (as translated by Lee Siegel)

Sonnets to Orpheus (1922)
Oh Orpheus sings! Oh tall tree in the ear! And all things hushed. Yet even in that silence a new beginning, beckoning, change appeared.
 * A tree ascended there. Oh pure transendence!
 * Translated by Stephen Mitchell

who have experience of the willow's roots.
 * They more adeptly bend the willow's branches
 * Sonnet 6 (as translated by Edward Snow)

on the table: it attracts the dead.
 * When you go to bed, don't leave bread or milk
 * Sonnet 6 (as translated by Edward Snow)

Imaginärer Lebenslauf (Imaginary Life Journey) (September 13, 1923)
Verzicht und Ziel. O unbewußte Lust. Auf einmal Schrecken, Schranke, Schule, Frohne und Absturtz in Versuchung und Verlust. Trotz. Der Gebogene wird selber Bieger und rächt an anderen, daß er erlag. Geliebt, gefürchtet, Retter, Ringer, Sieger und Überwinder, Schlag auf Schlag. Und dann allein im Weiten, Leichten, Kalten. Doch tief in der errichteten Gestalt ein Atemholen nach dem Ersten, Alten... Da stürzte Gott aus seinem Hinterhalt.'' renunciation or goals. O unselfconscious joy. Then suddenly terror, barriers, schools, drudgery, and collapse into temptation and loss. Defiance. The one bent becomes the bender, and thrusts upon others that which it suffered. Loved, feared, rescuer, fighter, winner and conqueror, blow by blow. And then alone in cold, light, open space, yet still deep within the mature erected form, a gasping for the clear air of the first one, the old one... Then God leaps out from behind his hiding place.
 * ''Erst eine Kindheit, grenzenlos und ohne
 * First a childhood, limitless and without
 * As translated by Cliff Crego

Letters to a Young Poet (1934)

 * Nothing touches a work of art so little as words of criticism : they always result in more or less fortunate misunderstandings. Things aren't all so tangible and sayable as people would usually have us believe; most experiences are unsayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered, and more unsayable than all other things are works of art, those mysterious existences, whose life endures beside our own small, transitory life.
 * Letter One (17 February 1903)

 * No one can advise or help you — no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.
 * Letter One (17 February 1903)

 * A work of art is good if it has grown out of necessity.
 * Letter One (17 February 1903)

 * I could give you no advice but this: to go into yourself and to explore the depths where your life wells forth.
 * Letter One (17 February 1903)

 * If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place.
 * Letter One (17 February 1903) as translated by M. D. Herter Norton (1993)

 * Irony: Do not let yourself be governed by it, especially not in unproductive moments. In productive ones try to make use of it as one more means of seizing life.
 * Letter Two (5 April 1903)

 * No experience has been too unimportant, and the smallest event unfolds like a fate, and fate itself is like a wonderful, wide fabric in which every thread is guided by an infinitely tender hand and laid alongside another thread and is held and supported by a hundred others.
 * Letter Three (23 April 1903)

 * Read as little as possible of literary criticism - such things are either partisan opinions, which have become petrified and meaningless, hardened and empty of life, or else they are just clever word-games, in which one view wins today, and tomorrow the opposite view. Works of art are of an infinite solitude, and no means of approach is so useless as criticism.
 * Letter Three (23 April 1903)

 * Sie sind so jung, so vor allem Anfang, und ich möchte Sie, so gut ich es kann, bitten, lieber Herr, Geduld zu haben gegen alles Ungelöste in Ihrem Herzen und zu versuchen, die Fragen selbst liebzuhaben wie verschlossene Stuben und wie Bücher, die in einer sehr fremden Sprache geschrieben sind. Forschen Sie jetzt nicht nach den Antworten, die Ihnen nicht gegeben werden können, weil Sie sie nicht leben könnten. Und es handelt sich darum, alles zu leben. Leben Sie jetzt die Fragen. Vielleicht leben Sie dann allmählich, ohne es zu merken, eines fernen Tages in die Antwort hinein.
 * Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.
 * Letter Four (16 July 1903)
 * Variant: Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. (Translation by Stephen Mitchell)

 * If you trust in Nature, in the small Things that hardly anyone sees and that can so suddenly become huge, immeasurable; if you have this love for what is humble and try very simply, as someone who serves, to win the confidence of what seems poor: then everything will become easier for you, more coherent and somehow more reconciling, not in your conscious mind perhaps, which stays behind, astonished, but in your innermost awareness, awakeness, and knowledge.
 * Letter Four (16 July 1903)

 * Sex is difficult; yes. But those tasks that have been entrusted to us are difficult; almost everything serious is difficult; and everything is serious. If you just recognize this and manage, out of yourself, out of your own talent and nature, out of your own experience and childhood and strength, to achieve a wholly individual relation to sex (one that is not influenced by convention and custom), then you will no longer have to be afraid of losing yourself and becoming unworthy of your dearest possession.
 * Letter Four (16 July 1903)

 * Physical pleasure is a sensual experience no different from pure seeing or the pure sensation with which a fine fruit fills the tongue; it is a great unending experience, which is given us, a knowing of the world, the fullness and the glory of all knowing. And not our acceptance of it is bad; the bad thing is that most people misuse and squander this experience and apply it as a stimulant at the tired spots of their lives and as distraction instead of a rallying toward exalted moments.
 * Letter Four (16 July 1903)

 * The great renewal of the world will perhaps consist in this, that man and maid, freed of all false feelings and reluctances, will seek each other not as opposites, but as brother and sister, as neighbors, and will come together as human beings.
 * Letter Four (16 July 1903)

 * Through such impressions one gathers oneself, wins oneself back from the exacting multiplicity, which speaks and chatters there (and how talkative it is!), and one slowly learns to recognize the very few Things in which something eternal endures that one can love and something solitary that one can gently take part in.
 * About Rome.
 * Letter Five (29 October 1903)

 * As bees gather honey, so we collect what is sweetest out of all things and build Him. Even with the trivial, with the insignificant (as long as it is done out of love) we begin, with work and with the repose that comes afterward, with a silence or with a small solitary joy, with everything that we do alone, without anyone to join or help us, we start Him whom we will not live to see, just as our ancestors could not live to see us. And yet they, who passed away long ago, still exist in us, as predisposition, as burden upon our fate, as murmuring blood, and as gesture that rises up from the depths of time. Is there anything that can deprive you of the hope that in this way you will someday exist in Him, who is the farthest, the outermost limit?
 * Letter Six (23 December 1903)

 * Love is something difficult and it is more difficult than other things because in other conflicts nature herself enjoins men to collect themselves, to take themselves firmly in the hand with all their strength, while in the heightening of love the impulse is to give oneself wholly away.
 * Letter Seven (14 May 1904)

To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.
 * People have (with the help of conventions) oriented all their solutions toward the easy and toward the easiest side of the easy; but it is clear that we must hold to what is difficult; everything alive holds to it, everything in Nature grows and defends itself in its own way and is characteristically and spontaneously itself, seeks at all costs to be so and against all opposition. We know little, but that we must hold to what is difficult is a certainty that will not forsake us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be a reason the more for us to do it.
 * Letter Seven (14 May 1904)

 * Young people, who are beginners in everything, cannot yet know love: they have to learn it.
 * Letter Seven (14 May 1904)

 * Love is at first not anything that means merging, giving over and uniting with another (for what would a union be of something unclarified and unfinished, still subordinate?), it is a high inducement to the individual to ripen, to become world, to become world for himself for another's sake. It is a great exacting claim upon him, something that chooses him out and calls him to vast things.
 * Letter Seven (14 May 1904)

 * The demands which the difficult work of love makes upon our development are more than life-size, and as beginners we are not up to them. But if we nevertheless hold out and take this love upon us as burden and apprenticeship, instead of losing ourselves in all the light and frivolous play, behind which people have hidden from the most earnest earnestness of their existence — then a little progress and alleviation will perhaps be perceptible to those who come long after us; that would be much.
 * Letter Seven (14 May 1904)

 * Young people -it is obvious -cannot achieve such a relationship, but they can, if they understand their life properly, grow up slowly to such happiness and prepare themselves for it. They must not forget, when they love, that they are beginners, bunglers of life, apprentices in love- must learn love, and that like all learning wants peace, patience, and composure.
 * On young couples who have not yet matured enough to recognize and respect each other's solitude
 * Letter Seven (14 May 1904)

 * Someday there will be girls and women whose name will no longer mean the mere opposite of the male, but something in itself, something that makes one think not of any complement and limit, but only life and reality: the female human being.
 * Letter Seven (14 May 1904)

 * It seems to me that almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension, which we feel as paralysis because we no longer hear our astonished emotions living. Because we are alone with the unfamiliar presence that has entered us; because everything we trust and are used to is for a moment taken away from us; because we stand in the midst of a transition where we cannot remain standing. That is why the sadness passes: the new presence inside us, the presence that has been added, has entered our heart, has gone into its innermost chamber and is no longer even there, - is already in our bloodstream. And we don't know what it was. We could easily be made to believe that nothing happened, and yet we have changed, as a house that a guest has entered changes. We can't say who has come, perhaps we will never know, but many signs indicate that the future enters us in this way in order to be transformed in us, long before it happens. And that is why it is so important to be solitary and attentive when one is sad: because the seemingly uneventful and motionless moment when our future steps into us is so much closer to life than that other loud and accidental point of time when it happens to us as if from outside. The quieter we are, the more patient and open we are in our sadnesses, the more deeply and serenely the new presence can enter us, and the more we can make it our own, the more it becomes our fate.
 * Letter Eight (12 August 1904)

 * If only we arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us that we must hold to the difficult, then that which now still seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faithful.
 * Letter Eight (12 August 1904)

 * There is probably no point in my going into your questions now; for what I could say about your tendency to doubt or about your inability to bring your outer and inner lives into harmony or about all the other thing that oppress you - : is just what I have already said: just the wish that you may find in yourself enough patience to endure and enough simplicity to have faith; that you may gain more and more confidence in what is difficult and in your solitude among other people. And as for the rest, let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.
 * Letter Nine (4 November 1904)

 * All feelings that concentrate you and lift you up are pure; only that feeling is impure which grasps just one side of your being and thus distorts you. Everything you can think of as you face your childhood, is good. Everything that makes more of you than you have ever been, even in your best hours, is right. Every intensification is good, if it is in your entire blood, if it isn't intoxication or muddiness, but joy which you can see into, clear to the bottom.
 * Letter Nine (4 November 1904)

 * It must be immense, this silence, in which sounds and movements have room, and if one thinks that along with all this the presence of the distant sea also resounds, perhaps as the innermost note in this prehistoric harmony, then one can only wish that you are trustingly and patiently letting the magnificent solitude work upon you, this solitude which can no longer be erased from your life; which, in everything that is in store for you to experience and to do, will act as an anonymous influence, continuously and gently decisive, rather as the blood of our ancestors incessantly moves in us and combines with our own to form the unique, unrepeatable being that we are at every turning of our life.
 * Letter Ten (26 December 1908)

 * Art too is just a way of living, and however one lives, one can, without knowing, prepare for it; in everything real one is closer to it, more its neighbor, than in the unreal half-artistic professions, which, while they pretend to be close to art, in practice deny and attack the existence of all art - as, for example, all of journalism does and almost all criticism and three quarters of what is called (and wants to be called) literature.
 * Letter Ten (26 December 1908)

Quotes about Rilke

 * Juxtaposing different stories is very exciting. Putting all that Rilke, that beautiful, elegant translated Rilkean language next to this Chinese American language calls all kinds of things into question, such as what is beautiful, and what is understandable, and what do you aspire to.
 * 1989 interview in Conversations with Maxine Hong Kingston (1998)

 * I guess as a minority person in America, and with a lot of perceptions that English is not my language, there is a lot of leaving me out of this culture. So a lot of my work is appropriation. I'm going to appropriate this job and these books and this language-the American language. I'm going to appropriate this country. So a lot of the allusions are to say that the Joycean soul, this Rilkean romantic poetic soul, is mine. But the way that you're all talking, it seems like I put those allusions out there to give you pain and trouble. I meant them to be fun; that was my whole point.
 * 1989 interview in Conversations with Maxine Hong Kingston (1998)

 * Anna Margolin was greatly influenced by Baudelaire, Verlaine, and Rimbaud; among the Germans, by Else Lasker-Schüler and Rainer Maria Rilke; and among the Yiddish poets, by Itsik Manger and Avrom Sutzkever.
 * Drunk from the Bitter Truth: The Poems of Anna Margolin by Shirley Kumove (2005)

 * As I wrote draft translations, I often felt that Anna Margolin was speaking through me and sometimes even for me. During this process, when the meaning of a particularly troubling phrase or image suddenly revealed itself to me, I would experience a sense of "joyous rapture." Rilke used this term to describe the heightened state he found himself in when translating the poetry of Paul Valéry.
 * Shirley Kumove, Drunk from the Bitter Truth: The Poems of Anna Margolin (2005)

 * True myth may serve for thousands of years as an inexhaustible source of intellectual speculation, religious joy, ethical inquiry, and artistic renewal. The real mystery is not destroyed by reason. The fake one is. You look at it and it vanishes. You look at the Blond Hero — really look — and he turns into a gerbil. But you look at Apollo, and he looks back at you. The poet Rilke looked at a statue of Apollo about fifty years ago, and Apollo spoke to him. “You must change your life,” he said. When true myth rises into consciousness, that is always its message. You must change your life.
 * Ursula Le Guin, "Myth and Archetype in Science Fiction" (1976)

 * (What’s your go-to classic? And your favorite book no one else has heard of?)...Rilke’s “Duino Elegies,” which I go back to again and again with a sense that they’re both unfathomable and inexhaustible.
 * Rebecca Solnit interview (2018)

 * Rilke learned to trust his own feelings, his longing to do something good. He teaches us to be patient as beginners in our necessary pursuit of some kind of excellence. He awakens us to the seriousness of living deeply, working steadily, feeling joy in our labor and self-expression, and being patient—the four cornerstones of a creative life. “Almost everything serious is difficult, and everything is serious.”
 * Alexandra Stoddard in Roxanne J. Coady and Joy Johannessen (eds.) The Book That Changed My Life (2006), ISBN 1-592-40210-0, p. 166

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Rainer Maria Rilke


text:
User:LarryGilbert

 My Personal Wikiverse

Wikimedia: Wikipedia – Wikisource en (main) – Wikibooks – Wikiquote – Wiktionary – Commons – Meta Other: Wikilivres — Uncyclopedia

Fred Rogers

title: User:LarryGilbert


text:
User:Araisyohei

& I'm the first grade of junior high-school of a Japanese birth. English can be spoken only a little.

 * Wiktionary(ウィクショナリー)
 * Wikibooks(ウィキブックス)
 * Wikisource(ウィキソース)
 * Japanese(日本語)
 * SIMPLE ENGLISH(簡単な英語)
 * ENGLISH(英語)

title: User:Araisyohei


text:
User talk:Saltykov-Shchedrin

So.... um.... does anyone like Goethe? I do.

 * Certainly. I delight in many forms of expressive genius. You might not have noticed but I used one of the quotes of Hegel that you provided for a Quote of the Day. — Kalki 05:56, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

title: User talk:Saltykov-Shchedrin


text:
Friedrich Hölderlin

Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin (20 March 1770 – 6 June 1843) was a major German lyric poet, whose work bridges the Classical and Romantic schools.

Quotes

 * Wir sind nichts; was wir suchen, ist alles. - Fragment von Hyperion, aus: Neue Thalia, Vierter Band, Hrsg. Friedrich Schiller, Georg Joachim Göschen, Leipzig 1793, S. 220
 * We are nothing; what we search for is everything.
 * Wo aber Gefahr ist, wächst // das Rettende auch. - Patmos, 1803, Vers 3f. in: Gedichte von Friedrich Hölderlin, Druck und Verlag von Philipp Reclam jun., Leipzig 1873, S. 133
 * Wherein lies the danger, grows also the saving power.

 * Being at one is god-like and good, but human, too human, the mania Which insists there is only the One, one country, one truth, and one way.
 * "The Root of All Evil" as translated by Michael Hamburger

 * You seek life, and a godly fire Gushes and gleams for you out of the earth, As, with shuddering long, you Hurl yourself down to the flames of the Etna. So by a queen's wanton whim Pearls were dissolved in wine- heed her not! What folly, poet, to cast your riches Into that bright and bubbling cup! Yet still are you holy to me, as the might of the earth That bore you away, audaciously perishing! And I would follow the hero into the depths Did love not hold me.
 * "Empedokles"

 * The earth with yellow pears And overgrown with roses wild Upon the pond is bent, And swans divine, With kisses drunk You drop your heads In the sublimely sobering water. But where, with winter come, am I To find, alas, the floweres, and where The sunshine And the shadow of the world? Cold the walls stand And the wordless, in the wind The weathercocks are rattling.
 * "Halves of Life"

 * Wer das Tiefste gedacht, liebt das Lebendigste.
 * He who has thought most deeply loves what is most alive.
 * “Sokrates und Alcibiades”

Hyperion

 * Immerhin hat das den Staat zur Hölle gemacht, daß ihn der Mensch zu seinem Himmel machen wollte.
 * What has always made the state a hell on earth has been precisely that man has tried to make it heaven.

 * As translated by Michael Hamburger

 * Now we were standing close to the summit's rim, gazing out into the endless East.

 * What is all that men have done and thought over thousands of years, compared with one moment of love. But in all Nature, too, it is what is nearest to perfection, what is most divinely beautiful! There all stairs lead from the threshold of life. From there we come, to there we go.

 * What is the wisdom of a book compared with the wisdom of an angel?

 * I call on Fate to give me back my soul.

 * It was not delight, not wonder that arose among us, it was the peace of heaven. A thousand times have I said it to her and to myself: the most beautiful is also the most sacred. And such was everything in her. Like her singing, even so was her life.

 * Before either of us knew it, we belonged to each other.

Quotes about Friedrich Hölderlin

 * History has a way of reducing individuals to flat, two-dimensional portraits. it is the enemy of subjectivity, which is why Stephen Dedalus called it "a nightmare from which I am trying to awake". If we think of Kierkegaard, of Nietzsche, of Hölderlin, we see them standing alone, outside of history. They are spotlighted by their intensity, and the background is all darkness. They intersect history, but are not a part of it. There is something anti-history about such men; they are not subject to time, accident and death, but their intensity is a protest against it. I have elsewhere called such men "Outsiders" because they attempt to stand outside history. which defines humanity on terms of limitation, not of possibility.
 * Colin Wilson in Rasputin and the Fall of the Romanovs, p. 13-14 (1964)

title: Friedrich Hölderlin


text:
Novalis

Baron Georg Philipp Friedrich von Hardenberg (2 May 1772 – 25 March 1801) was an author, philosopher and poet of early German Romanticism. He is most commonly known by the pseudonym Novalis (denoting a "clearer of new land" — derived from a tradition of his ancestors, who had called themselves de Novali).

Quotes

 * Unser Leben ist kein Traum, aber es soll und wird vielleicht einer werden.
 * Our life is no dream, but it should and perhaps will become one.
 * Fragmente I, Magische Philosophie
 * Variant: "Our life is no dream; but it ought to become one, and perhaps will."
 * George MacDonald, Phantastes, epigraph to Chapter XXV

 * There are ideal series of events which run parallel with the real ones. They rarely coincide. Men and circumstances generally modify the ideal train of events, so that it seems imperfect, and its consequences are equally imperfect. Thus with the Reformation; instead of Protestantism came Lutheranism.
 * Epigraph, "The Mystery Of Marie Rogêt" (1842) by Edgar Allan Poe, adapted from Fragments from German Prose Writers (1841) by Sarah Austin

 * Fate and temperament are the names of a concept.
 * As quoted in Demian (1972) by Hermann Hesse, trans. W.J. Strachan

 * Fate and temperament are two words for one and the same concept.
 * As quoted in Demian (1965) by Hermann Hesse, trans. Michael Roloff and Michael Lebeck

Throughout my being's limitless expanse''', Nothing had yet drawn close, only at distant stages  I found myself, a mere suggestion sensed in past and future ages.
 * '''I was still blind, but twinkling stars did dance
 * As quoted in Romantic Vision, Ethical Context: Novalis and Artistic Autonomy (1987) by Géza von Molnár, p. 2

 * Wahrhafte Anarchie ist das Zeugungselement der Religion. Aus der Vernichtung alles Positiven hebt sie ihr glorreiches Haupt als neue Weltstifterin empor...
 * True anarchy is the generative element of religion. Out of the annihilation of all existing institutions she raises her glorious head, as the new foundress of the world.
 * English translation as quoted in The Dublin Review Vol. III (July-October 1837); The original German is quoted from the Fourth Leaflet of the White Rose (1942)
 * Variant translation: True anarchy is the generative element of religion. Out of the annihilation of every positive element she lifts her gloriously radiant countenance as the founder of a new world.

 * Blood will stream over Europe until the nations become aware of the frightful madness which drives them in circles. And then, struck by celestial music and made gentle, they approach their former altars all together, hear about the works of peace, and hold a great celebration of peace with fervent tears before the smoking altars.
 * As quoted in the Fourth Leaflet of the White Rose (1942)

 * Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.
 * As quoted in Quote, Unquote (1989) by Jonathan Williams, p. 136

 * The world must be romanticized. In this way the originary meaning may be found again.
 * As quoted in The Experience of the Foreign : Culture and Translation in Romantic Germany (1992) by Antoine Berman
 * Variant translation: Romanticize the world.

 * To romanticize the world is to make us aware of the magic, mystery and wonder of the world; it is to educate the senses to see the ordinary as extraordinary, the familiar as strange, the mundane as sacred, the finite as infinite.
 * As quoted in "Bildung in Early German Romanticism" by Frederick C. Beiser, in Philosophers on Education : Historical Perspectives (1998) by Amélie Rorty, p. 294

 * To get to know a truth properly, one must polemicize it.
 * Quoted in The Viking Book of Aphorisms by Wystan Hugh Auden (1962) p. 323

 * Morality must be the heart of our existence, if it is to be what it wants to be for us. ... The highest form of philosophy is ethics. Thus all philosophy begins with “I am.” The highest statement of cognition must be an expression of that fact which is the means and ground for all cognition, namely, the goal of the I.
 * Fichte Studies § 556

 * Only the most perfect human being can design the most perfect philosophy.
 * Fichte Studies § 651

 * Every stage of education begins with childhood. That is why the most educated person on earth so much resembles a child.
 * “Miscellaneous Observations,” Philosophical Writings, M. Stolijar, trans. (Albany: 1997) #48

 * Philosophy ... bears witness to the deepest love of reflection, to absolute delight in wisdom.
 * “Logological Fragments,” Philosophical Writings, M. Stolijar, trans. (Albany: 1997) #12

 * The poem of the understanding is philosophy.
 * “Logological Fragments,” Philosophical Writings, M. Stolijar, trans. (Albany: 1997) #24

 * Die Möglichkeit aller Philosophie ... dass sich die Intelligenz durch Selbstberührung eine Selbstgesezmäßige Bewegung - d.i. eine eigne Form der Tätigkeit gibt.
 * The possibility of all philosophy ... namely, that the intelligence, by affecting itself, gives itself a movement in accordance with its own law — that is, gives itself a form of activity all its own.
 * Schriften, p. 63, as translated in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings: Volume 1, 1913-1926 (1996), p. 133

Blüthenstaub (1798)

 * Quotations sourced to Blüthenstaub [Pollen] or Blüthenstaub-Fragmente [Pollen and Fragments]
 * Full text in German

 * Friends, the soil is poor, we must sow seeds in plenty for us to garner even modest harvests.
 * Motto

 * Everywhere we seek the Absolute, and always we find only things.
 * Fragment No. 1; Variant: We seek the absolute everywhere and only ever find things.

 * Denotation by means of sounds and markings is a remarkable abstraction. Three letters designate God for me; several lines a million things. How easy becomes the manipulation of the universe here, how evident the concentration of the intellectual world! Language is the dynamics of the spiritual realm. One word of command moves armies; the word Liberty entire nations.
 * Fragment No. 2

 * Imagination places the future world for us either above or below or in reincarnation. We dream of travels throughout the universe: is not the universe within us? We do not know the depths of our spirit. The mysterious path leads within. In us, or nowhere, lies eternity with its worlds, the past and the future.
 * Fragment No. 16
 * Variant translations:
 * We dream of a journey through the universe. But is the universe then not in us? We do not know the depths of our spirit. Inward goes the secret path. Eternity with its worlds, the past and the future, is in us or nowhere.
 * As translated in "Bildung in Early German Romanticism" by Frederick C. Beiser, in Philosophers on Education : Historical Perspectives (1998) by Amélie Rorty, p. 294
 * We dream of journeys through the cosmos — Is the cosmos not then in us? We do not know the depths of our own spirit. — The mysterious path leads within. In us, or nowhere, is eternity with its worlds — the past and the future.

 * Self-alienation is the source of all degradation as well as, on the contrary, the basis of all true elevation. The first step will be a look inward, an isolating contemplation of our self. Whoever remains standing here proceeds only halfway. The second step must be an active look outward, an autonomous, determined observation of the outer world.
 * Fragment No. 24 Variant translation: The first step is to look within, the discriminating contemplation of the self. He who remains at this point only half develops. The second step must be a telling look without, independent, sustained contemplation of the external world.

We are on a mission.We are called to educate the earth.
 * We are on a mission: we are called to the cultivation of the earth.
 * Fragment No. 32; Variant translations: We are on a mission.We are called to form the earth.

 * Every beloved object is the center point of a paradise.
 * Fragment No. 51; Jeder geliebte Gegenstand ist der Mittelpunkt eines Paradieses.
 * Variant translations:
 * Every beloved object is the centre of a Paradise.
 * As quoted by Thomas Carlyle in "Novalis" (1829)
 * Every beloved object is the midpoint to paradise.

 * The best thing about the sciences is their philosophical ingredient, like life for an organic body. If one dephilosophizes the sciences, what remains left? Earth, air, and water.
 * Fragment No. 62

 * Poets and priests were one in the beginning, and they only separated in later times. But the real poet is always a priest, just as the real priest always remains a poet.
 * Fragment No. 71

 * Nothing is more indispensable to true religiosity than a mediator that links us with divinity.
 * Fragment No. 74

 * Tools arm the man. One can well say that man is capable of bringing forth a world; he lacks only the necessary apparatus, the corresponding armature of his sensory tools. The beginning is there. Thus the principle of a warship lies in the idea of the shipbuilder, who is able to incorporate this thought by making himself into a gigantic machine, as it were, through a mass of men and appropriate tools and materials. Thus the idea of a moment often required monstrous organs, monstrous masses of materials, and man is therefore a potential, if not an actual creator.
 * Fragment No. 88

 * Building worlds is not enough for the deeper urging mind; but a loving heart sates the striving spirit.
 * Fragment No. 91

 * Before abstraction everything is one, but one like chaos; after abstraction everything is united again, but this union is a free binding of autonomous, self-determined beings. Out of a mob a society has developed, chaos has been transformed into a manifold world.
 * Fragment No. 95

 * If the world is a precipitation of human nature, so to speak, then the divine world is a sublimation of the same. Both occur in one act. No precipitation without sublimation. What goes lost there in agility, is won here.
 * Fragment No. 96

 * Where children are, there is a golden age.
 * Fragment No. 97

 * Many counterrevolutionary books have been written in favor of the Revolution. But Burke has written a revolutionary book against the Revolution.
 * Fragment No. 104; on Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790).

 * Most observers of the French Revolution, especially the clever and noble ones, have explained it as a life-threatening and contagious illness. They have remained standing with the symptoms and have interpreted these in manifold and contrary ways. Some have regarded it as a merely local ill. The most ingenious opponents have pressed for castration. They well noticed that this alleged illness is nothing other than the crisis of beginning puberty.
 * Fragment No. 105

 * The normal present connects the past and the future through limitation. Contiguity results, crystallization by means of solidification. There also exists, however, a spiritual present that identifies past and future through dissolution, and this mixture is the element, the atmosphere of the poet.
 * Fragment No. 109

 * The art of writing books is not yet invented. But it is at the point of being invented. Fragments of this nature are literary seeds. There may be many an infertile grain among them: nevertheless, if only some come up!
 * Fragment No. 114

Unsequenced

 * These have been cited as being from Blütenstaub or Blüthenstaub-Fragmente or from Fragments but the "fragment" number is needed:

Sie ist der Endzweck der Weltgeschichte, das Amen des Universums.'' It is the final purpose Of the world story, The Amen of the universe.''' Love causes magic...
 * ''Die Liebe wirkt magisch.
 * '''Love works magic.
 * Variant translations:
 * Love is the final end of the world's history, the Amen of the universe.
 * As translated by W. Hastie in Thoughts on Religion, Pt. 1, "Hymns and Thoughts on Religion" (1888), edited by W. Hastie
 * Love is the final purpose of world history — the Amen of the universe.
 * Love works magically...

 * ''Das höchste Leben ist Mathematik.
 * The highest life is mathematics.

 * Reine Mathematik ist Religion.
 * Pure mathematics is religion.

 * Man is a sun and his senses are the planets.

 * The seat of the soul is where the inner world and the outer world meet. Where they overlap, it is in every point of the overlap.

Pupils at Sais (1799)

 * Die Lehrlinge zu Sais [also translated as The Apprentices at Sais, The Novices at Sais] mostly as quoted by Thomas Carlyle in "Novalis" (1829)

 * I. The Pupil. — Men travel in manifold paths: whoso traces and compares these, will find strange Figures come to light; Figures which seem as if they belonged to that great Cipher-writing which one meets with everywhere, on wings of birds, shells of eggs, in clouds, in the snow, in crystals, in forms of rocks, in freezing waters, in the interior and exterior of mountains, of plants, animals, men, in the lights of the sky, in plates of glass and pitch when touched and struck on, in the filings round the magnet, and the singular conjunctures of Chance. In such Figures one anticipates the key to that wondrous Writing, the grammar of it; but this Anticipation will not fix itself into shape, and appears as if, after all, it would not become such a key for us. An Alcahest seems poured out over the senses of men. Only for a moment will their wishes, their thoughts thicken into form. Thus do their Anticipations arise; but after short whiles, all is again swimming vaguely before them, even as it did.

 * No explanation is required for Holy Writing. Whoso speaks truly is full of eternal life, and wonderfully related to genuine mysteries does his Writing appear to us, for it is a Concord from the Symphony of the Universe.

 * Surely this voice meant our Teacher; for it is he that can collect the indications which lie scattered on all sides. A singular light kindles in his looks, when at length the high Rune lies before us, and he watches in our eyes whether the star has yet risen upon us, which is to make the Figure visible and intelligible.

 * Over his own heart and his own thoughts he watched attentively. He knew not whither his longing was carrying him. As he grew up, he wandered far and wide; viewed other lands, other seas, new atmospheres, new rocks, unknown plants, animals, men; descended into caverns, saw how in courses and varying strata the edifice of the Earth was completed, and fashioned clay into strange figures of rocks. By and by, he came to find everywhere objects already known, but wonderfully mingled, united; and thus often extraordinary things came to shape in him. He soon became aware of combinations in all, of conjunctures, concurrences. Erelong, he no more saw anything alone. — In great variegated images, the perceptions of his senses crowded round him; he heard, saw, touched and thought at once. He rejoiced to bring strangers together. Now the stars were men, now men were stars, the stones animals, the clouds plants; he sported with powers and appearances; he knew where and how this and that was to be found, to be brought into action; and so himself struck over the strings, for tones and touches of his own.

 * What has passed with him since then he does not disclose to us. He tells us that we ourselves, led on by him and our own desire, will discover what has passed with him. Many of us have withdrawn from him. They returned to their parents, and learned trades. Some have been sent out by him, we know not whither; he selected them. Of these, some have been but a short time there, others longer. One was still a child; scarcely was he come, when our Teacher was for passing him any more instruction. This child had large dark eyes with azure ground, his skin shone like lilies, and his locks like light little clouds when it is growing evening. His voice pierced through all our hearts; willingly would we have given him our flowers, stones, pens, all we had. He smiled with an infinite earnestness; and we had a strange delight beside him. One day he will come again, said our Teacher, and then our lessons end. — Along with him he sent one, for whom we had often been sorry. Always sad he looked; he had been long years here; nothing would succeed with him; when we sought crystals or flowers, he seldom found. He saw dimly at a distance; to lay down variegated rows skilfully he had no power. He was so apt to break everything. Yet none had such eagerness, such pleasure in hearing and listening. At last, — it was before that Child came into our circle, — he all at once grew cheerful and expert. One day he had gone out sad; he did not return, and the night came on. We were very anxious for him; suddenly, as the morning dawned, we heard his voice in a neighbouring grove. He was singing a high, joyful song; we were all surprised; the Teacher looked to the East, such a look as I shall never see in him again. The singer soon came forth to us, and brought, with unspeakable blessedness on his face, a simple-looking little stone, of singular shape. The Teacher took it in his hand, and kissed him long; then looked at us with wet eyes, and laid this little stone on an empty space, which lay in the midst of other stones, just where, like radii, many rows of them met together.

 * I shall in no time forget that moment. We felt as if we had had in our souls a clear passing glimpse into this wondrous World.

 * No one, of a surety, wanders farther from the mark than he who fancies to himself that he already understands this marvellous Kingdom, and can, in few words, fathom its constitution, and everywhere find the right path. To no one, who has broken off, and made himself an Island, will insight rise of itself, nor even without toilsome effort. Only to children, or childlike men, who know not what they do, can this happen. Long, unwearied intercourse, free and wise Contemplation, attention to faint tokens and indications; an inward poet-life, practised senses, a simple and devout spirit: these are the essential requisites of a true Friend of Nature; without these no one can attain his wish.

 * Not wise does it seem to attempt comprehending and understanding a Human World without full perfected Humanity. No talent must sleep; and if all are not alike active, all must be alert, and not oppressed and enervated. As we see a future Painter in the boy who fills every wall with sketches and variedly adds colour to figure; so we see a future Philosopher in him who restlessly traces and questions all natural things, pays heed to all, brings together whatever is remarkable, and rejoices when he has become master and possessor of a new phenomenon, of a new power and piece of knowledge.

 * Now to Some it appears not at all worth while to follow out the endless divisions of Nature; and moreover a dangerous undertaking, without fruit and issue. As we can never reach, say they, the absolutely smallest grain of material bodies, never find their simplest compartments, since all magnitude loses itself, forwards and backwards, in infinitude; so likewise is it with the species of bodies and powers; here too one comes on new species, new combinations, new appearances, even to infinitude. These seem only to stop, continue they, when our diligence tires; and so it is spending precious time with idle contemplations and tedious enumerations; and this becomes at last a true delirium, a real vertigo over the horrid Deep

 * Nature too remains, so far as we have yet come, ever a frightful Machine of Death: everywhere monstrous revolution, inexplicable vortices of movement; a kingdom of Devouring, of the maddest tyranny; a baleful Immense: the few light-points disclose but a so much the more appalling Night, and terrors of all sorts must palsy every observer.

 * The waking man looks without fear at this offspring of his lawless Imagination; for he knows that they are but vain Spectres of his weakness. He feels himself lord of the world: his me hovers victorious over the Abyss; and will through Eternities hover aloft above that endless Vicissitude. Harmony is what his spirit strives to promulgate, to extend. He will even to infinitude grow more and more harmonious with himself and with his Creation; and at every step behold the all-efficiency of a high moral Order in the Universe, and what is purest of his Me come forth into brighter and brighter clearness. This significance of the World is Reason; for her sake is the World here; and when it is grown to be the arena of a childlike, expanding Reason, it will one day become the divine Image of her Activity, the scene of a genuine Church. Till then let man honour Nature as the Emblem of his own Spirit; the Emblem ennobling itself, along with him, to unlimited degrees. Let him, therefore, who would arrive at knowledge of Nature, train his moral sense, let him act and conceive in accordance with the noble Essence of his Soul; and as if of herself Nature will become open to him. Moral Action is that great and only Experiment, in which all riddles of the most manifold appearances explain themselves. Whoso understands it, and in rigid sequence of Thought can lay it open, is forever master of Nature.

 * Common Logic is the Grammar of the higher Speech, that is, of Thought; it examines merely the relations of ideas to one another, the Mechanics of Thought, the pure Physiology of ideas. Now logical ideas stand related to one another, like words without thoughts. Logic occupies itself with the mere dead Body of the Science of Thinking. — Metaphysics, again, is the Dynamics of Thought; treats of the primary Powers of Thought; occupies itself with the mere Soul of the Science of Thinking. Metaphysical ideas stand related to one another, like thoughts without words. Men often wondered at the stubborn Incompletibility of these two Sciences; each followed its own business by itself; there was a want everywhere, nothing would suit rightly with either. From the very first, attempts were made to unite them, as everything about them indicated relationship; but every attempt failed; the one or the other Science still suffered in these attempts, and lost its essential character. We had to abide by metaphysical Logic, and logical Metaphysic, but neither of them was as it should be.

 * The rude, discursive Thinker is the Scholastic (Schoolman Logician). The true Scholastic is a mystical Subtlist; out of logical Atoms he builds his Universe; he annihilates all living Nature, to put an Artifice of Thoughts (Gedankenkunststuck, literally Conjuror's-trick of Thoughts) in its room. His aim is an infinite Automaton. Opposite to him is the rude, intuitive Poet: this is a mystical Macrologist: he hates rules and fixed form; a wild, violent life reigns instead of it in Nature; all is animate, no law; wilfulness and wonder everywhere. He is merely dynamical. Thus does the Philosophic Spirit arise at first, in altogether separate masses. In the second stage of culture these masses begin to come in contact, multifariously enough; and, as in the union of infinite Extremes, the Finite, the Limited arises, so here also arise "Eclectic Philosophers" without number; the time of misunderstanding begins. The most limited is, in this stage, the most important, the purest Philosopher of the second stage. This class occupies itself wholly with the actual, present world, in the strictest sense. The Philosophers of the first class look down with contempt on those of the second; say, they are a little of everything, and so nothing; hold their views as the results of weakness, as Inconsequentism. On the contrary, the second class, in their turn, pity the first; lay the blame on their visionary enthusiasm, which they say is absurd, even to insanity.

 * If on the one hand the Scholastics and Alchemists seem to be utterly at variance, and the Eclectics on the other hand quite at one, yet, strictly examined, it is altogether the reverse. The former, in essentials, are indirectly of one opinion; namely, as regards the non-dependence, and infinite character of Meditation, they both set out from the Absolute: whilst the Eclectic and limited sort are essentially at variance; and agree only in what is deduced. The former are infinite but uniform, the latter bounded but multiform; the former have genius, the latter talent; those have Ideas, these have knacks (Handgriffe); those are heads without hands, these are hands without heads. The third stage is for the Artist, who can be at once implement and genius. He finds that that primitive Separation in the absolute Philosophical Activities' (between the Scholastic, and the "rude, intuitive Poet") 'is a deeper-lying Separation in his own Nature; which Separation indicates, by its existence as such, the possibility of being adjusted, of being joined: he finds that, heterogeneous as these Activities are, there is yet a faculty in him of passing from the one to the other, of changing his polarity at will. He discovers in them, therefore, necessary members of his spirit; he observes that both must be united in some common Principle. He infers that Eclecticism is nothing but the imperfect defective employment of this principle.

 * Someone arrived there — who lifted the veil of the goddess, at Sais. — But what did he see? He saw — wonder of wonders — himself.
 * Novalis here alludes to Plutarch's account of the shrine of the goddess Minerva, identified with Isis, at Sais, which he reports had the inscription "I am all that hath been, and is, and shall be; and my veil no mortal has hitherto raised."

Novalis (1829)

 * Statements of Novalis as quoted in the essay "Novalis" by Thomas Carlyle

 * Philosophy can bake no bread; but she can procure for us God, Freedom, Immortality. Which, then, is more practical, Philosophy or Economy?
 * The first sentence of this was used by William Torrey Harris for the motto of the Journal of Speculative Philosophy

 * Philosophie ist eigentlich Heimweh - Trieb überall zu Hause zu sein.
 * Philosophy is properly Home-sickness; the wish to be everywhere at home.

 * We are near awakening when we dream that we dream.
 * Variants:
 * We are near waking when we dream that we dream.
 * As quoted by Edgar Allan Poe in "A Tale of the Ragged Mountains" (1844), adapted from Fragments from German Prose Writers (1841) by Sarah Austin
 * We are near waking when we dream we are dreaming.

 * The true philosophical Act is annihilation of self (Selbsttodtung); this is the real beginning of all Philosophy; all requisites for being a Disciple of Philosophy point hither. This Act alone corresponds to all the conditions and characteristics of transcendental conduct.

 * To become properly acquainted with a truth, we must first have disbelieved it, and disputed against it.

 * Man is the higher Sense of our Planet; the star which connects it with the upper world; the eye which it turns towards Heaven.

 * Life is a disease of the spirit; a working incited by Passion. Rest is peculiar to the spirit.

 * What is Nature? An encyclopedical, systematic Index or Plan of our Spirit. Why will we content us with the mere catalogue of our Treasures? Let us contemplate them ourselves, and in all ways elaborate and use them.

 * If our Bodily Life is a burning, our Spiritual Life is a being burnt, a Combustion (or, is precisely the inverse the case?); Death, therefore, perhaps a Change of Capacity.

 * Sleep is for the inhabitants of Planets only. In another time, Man will sleep and wake continually at once. The greater part of our Body, of our Humanity itself, yet sleeps a deep sleep.

 * There is but one Temple in the World; and that is the Body of Man. Nothing is holier than this high form. Bending before men is a reverence done to this Revelation in the Flesh. We touch Heaven, when we lay our hand on a human body.
 * Variant translation: There is but one temple in the Universe and that is the Body of Man.
 * As inscribed on the Library of Congress, quoted in Handbook of the New Library of Congress (1897) by Herbert Small, p. 53

 * Man is a Sun; his Senses are the Planets.

 * Man has ever expressed some symbolical Philosophy of his Being in his Works and Conduct; he announces himself and his Gospel of Nature; he is the Messiah of Nature.

 * Plants are Children of the Earth; we are Children of the Æther. Our Lungs are properly our Root; we live, when we breathe; we begin our life with breathing.

 * Nature is an Æolian Harp, a musical instrument; whose tones again are keys to higher strings in us.

 * The first Man is the first Spirit-seer; all appears to him as Spirit. What are children, but first men? The fresh gaze of the Child is richer in significance than the forecasting of the most indubitable Seer.

 * It depends only on the weakness of our organs and of our self-excitement (Selbstberuhrung), that we do not see ourselves in a Fairy-world. All Fabulous Tales (Mahrchen) are merely dreams of that home world, which is everywhere and nowhere. The higher powers in us, which one day as Genies, shall fulfil our will, are, for the present, Muses, which refresh us on our toilsome course with sweet remembrances.

 * Man consists in Truth. If he exposes Truth, he exposes himself. If he betrays Truth, he betrays himself. We speak not here of lies, but of acting against Conviction.

 * A character is a completely fashioned will. (vollkommen gebildeter Wille'').

 * There is, properly speaking, no Misfortune in the world. Happiness and Misfortune stand in continual balance. Every Misfortune is, as it were, the obstruction of a stream, which, after overcoming this obstruction, but bursts through with the greater force.

 * The ideal of Morality has no more dangerous rival than the ideal of highest Strength, of most powerful life; which also has been named (very falsely as it was there meant) the ideal of poetic greatness. It is the maximum of the savage; and has, in these times, gained, precisely among the greatest weaklings, very many proselytes. By this ideal, man becomes a Beast-Spirit, a Mixture; whose brutal wit has, for weaklings, a brutal power of attraction.

 * The spirit of Poesy is the morning light, which makes the Statue of Memnon sound.

 * The division of Philosopher and Poet is only apparent, and to the disadvantage of both. It is a sign of disease, and of a sickly constitution.

 * The true Poet is all-knowing; he is an actual world in miniature.
 * Goethe is an altogether practical Poet. He is in his works what the English are in their wares: highly simple, neat, convenient and durable. He has done in German Literature what Wedgwood did in English Manufacture. He has, like the English, a natural turn for Economy, and a noble Taste acquired by Understanding. Both these are very compatible, and have a near affinity in the chemical sense.

 * Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship may be called throughout prosaic and modern. The Romantic sinks to ruin, the Poesy of Nature, the Wonderful. The Book treats merely of common worldly things: Nature and Mysticism are altogether forgotten. It is a poetised civic and household History; the Marvellous is expressly treated therein as imagination and enthusiasm. Artistic Atheism is the spirit of the Book. ... It is properly a Candide, directed against Poetry: the Book is highly unpoetical in respect of spirit, poetical as the dress and body of it are.
 * Ralph Waldo Emerson in "Goethe; or, the Writer" writes of this passage, and quotes a slightly different translation: The ardent and holy Novalis characterized the book as "thoroughly modern and prosaic; the romantic is completely levelled in it; so is the poetry of nature; the wonderful. The book treats only of the ordinary affairs of men: it is a poeticized civic and domestic story. The wonderful in it is expressly treated as fiction and enthusiastic dreaming:" — and yet, what is also characteristic, Novalis soon returned to this book, and it remained his favorite reading to the end of his life.

 * When we speak of the aim and Art observable in Shakespeare's works, we must not forget that Art belongs to Nature; that it is, so to speak, self-viewing, self-imitating, self-fashioning Nature. The Art of a well-developed genius is far different from the Artfulness of the Understanding, of the merely reasoning mind. Shakspeare was no calculator, no learned thinker; he was a mighty, many-gifted soul, whose feelings and works, like products of Nature, bear the stamp of the same spirit; and in which the last and deepest of observers will still find new harmonies with the infinite structure of the Universe; concurrences with later ideas, affinities with the higher powers and senses of man. They are emblematic, have many meanings, are simple and inexhaustible, like products of Nature; and nothing more unsuitable could be said of them than that they are works of Art, in that narrow mechanical acceptation of the word.

Quotes about Novalis

 * Alphabetized by author or source

 * Novalis has been, and remains, one of the most vital influences in German literature; the modern mystics: Maeterlinck, Herman Hesse and Rilke (often considered the greatest poet of the twentieth century) admit a great debt to him. ... Novalis expresses himself in a unique, personal style, almost as if he has discovered language by himself. ... Novalis himself wrote that he felt it necessary to develop a symbolic philosophical language for the purpose of protecting his deepest insights from those incapable of respecting them. In this he has not been alone — if we look at the words of the Sufis we often find mystical concepts veiled in poetic terms. ... The principle mode of concealment is the use of imagery. Images are used to veil meaning, but for those who share Novalis' love of symbolic imagery and subtle metaphor his language is a veil that enhances, rather than conceals, the beauty of his art. This use of concrete, palpable images overcame, to some extent, what he described as the “poverty of words”; and avoided the use of philosophical terms to express abstract concepts. In some instances spiritual qualities are personified as characters, human or divine, as they are in Hindu mythology... Novalis is known as the originator of the central symbol of the German Romanticism, The Blue Flower; he shared in the movement's deification of Nature, the demand for the Absolute, the idea of spiritual rebirth. ... Novalis, like other poets of the period, wanted to return to the sense of the Sacred found in the humbler Medieval tradition with its great mystics such as Hildegard von Bingen and Meister Eckhart.
 * Graham Brown in "Novalis' Spiral Path"

 * Novalis is a figure of such importance in German Literature, that no student of it can pass him by without attention.
 * Thomas Carlyle in "Novalis" (1829)

 * Novalis's ideas, on what has been called the 'perfectibility of man,' ground themselves on his peculiar views of the constitution of material and spiritual Nature, and are of the most original and extraordinary character. With our utmost effort, we should despair of communicating other than a quite false notion of them. He asks, for instance, with scientific gravity: Whether any one, that recollects the first kind glance of her he loved, can doubt the possibility of Magic?
 * Thomas Carlyle in "Novalis" (1829)

 * As a Poet, Novalis is no less Idealistic than as a Philosopher. His poems are breathings of a high devout soul, feeling always that here he has no home, but looking, as in clear vision, to a 'city that hath foundations.' He loves external Nature with a singular depth; nay, we might say, he reverences her, and holds unspeakable communings with her: for Nature is no longer dead, hostile Matter, but the veil and mysterious Garment of the Unseen; as it were, the Voice with which the Deity proclaims himself to man. These two qualities, -- his pure religious temper, and heartfelt love of Nature, — bring him into true poetic relation both with the spiritual and the material World, and perhaps constitute his chief worth as a Poet; for which art he seems to have originally a genuine, but no exclusive or even very decided endowment.
 * Thomas Carlyle in "Novalis" (1829)

 * The ardent and holy Novalis...
 * Ralph Waldo Emerson describing Novalis, as prelude to quoting his views on Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship (1795) in "Goethe; or, the Writer".

 * For Novalis the poetic in the world was the only genuine reality, even as the poetic spirit in man was the proof of man's divine origin. All of his poetry is concerned ultimately with revealing and celebrating the poetic spirit.
 * Bruce Haywood, in Novalis, the Veil of Imagery: A Study of the Poetic Works of Friedrich Von Hardenberg, 1772-1801 (1959), p. 2

 * In this season, Novalis lived only to his sorrow; it was natural for him to regard the visible and the invisible world as one; and to distinguish Life and Death only by his longing for the latter. At the same time too, Life became for him a glorified Life; and his whole being melted away as into a bright, conscious vision of a higher Existence. ... He remained many weeks in Thuringia; and came back comforted and truly purified, to his engagements; which he pursued more zealously than ever, though he now regarded himself as a stranger on the earth.
 * Ludwig Tieck, on the moods of Novalis after the death of his fiancée Sophie von Kühn, as quoted in "Novalis" (1829) by Thomas Carlyle

 * Never was he seen languid or exhausted, never out of spirits or out of humor.
 * Ludwig Tieck, as quoted in Fragments from German Prose Writers (1841) translated by Sarah Austin, p. 305

title: Novalis