This book deals with an issue of ongoing controversy among critics and more general readers alike: the autobiographical, theoretical, and literary-aesthetic portrayal of women, or in a more abstract sense the “feminine,” in the writing of Friedrich von Hardenberg (1772–1801). Better known by his chosen pen name “Novalis,” this prolific lyrical poet, novelist, philosopher, and scientist of German Romanticism wrote texts that appear to be shot through both with representations of women and with encounters and dialogues with them, imaginary and fictional. So, too, did he often appear to imbue many of those universal concepts to which writers around...

Literary scholars continue to return to the Romantic period, considering it from new perspectives and reopening older debates. There is a debate on the relationship, both intellectual-historical and aesthetic, between the Romantic “macro-epoch” and the earlier Enlightenment, with both continuities and discontinuities between the two being mooted. There is also a debate on the structure of Romanticism itself, such that traditional distinctions between the movement’s micro-epochs, between the revolutionary project of the Early Romantics and the skeptical, “reactionary” tendencies of the Late Romantics, have been in dispute.¹

Such diversity of opinion also characterizes assessments of the Romantic treatment of gender...

It was the philosophy he read, especially Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre, that formed the theoretical basis of Hardenberg’s mature work. Hardenberg met Fichte personally for the first time in early summer 1795 in the house of Immanuel Niethammer in Jena. By then Fichte had already won his reputation as a philosopher, having published several treatises in the early 1790s, followed by the first full version of the Wissenschaftslehre between 1794 and 1795, and having been awarded a chair at the university of Jena in the same year. By the time of their meeting, Hardenberg had read Kant closely and was...

In writing about women, Hardenberg was not merely concerned with the creation of models of femininity in his autobiographical, scientific, and literary texts. He also pursued the practice of communicating with women through written language, in a form that we can still reflect upon today: he wrote them letters. This chapter looks at Hardenberg’s epistolary exchanges with women. The rationale behind this survey is to perform a further test as to whether or not Hardenberg developed strategies in writing for dealing with women as literary individuals in their own right. We will begin by looking at the cultural-historical significance of...

If, in his letters to women, Hardenberg began to express his innermost thoughts, then could it be the case that he sought to give the female subjects of his literary works the space and ability to express themselves? If so, is there at the theoretical level a particular model of communication that serves as a template for this ideal of poetic discourse? As we have seen from our discussion of existing scholarship on gender in Novalis, it is not merely Hardenberg’s allegedly reductive presentation of women as lifeless ideals that has earned him criticism. Also counting against him, it has...

Like the Lehrlinge, Ofterdingen was incomplete when Hardenberg died. Posterity was left with the novel’s apparently complete first half, an incomplete second half, a declaration of the intent to rewrite both, reported at second hand, and a score of drafts, jottings, and plans for its continuation. Begun toward the end of November 1799, the novel was continued in two main bursts during 1800, initially through the year’s first quarter with the first half finished in early April, then again over the summer months between July and September. During the latter half of 1800, Hardenberg’s tuberculosis developed apace; by January 1801...

Hardenberg never really escaped the presence of death after 1797. Sophie’s death was followed in April of the same year by that of his brother Erasmus. In 1798, Jeannette Danscour died, and when Hardenberg took his convalescence in Teplitz, he did so most likely because he had himself been diagnosed with tuberculosis — a fatal disease in the eighteenth century. Then there was his desire to die. During his mourning for Sophie, he often expressed in speech or writing the idea that he no longer belonged in the world of the living, that his destiny lay “elsewhere” and simply that, while...

In discussing Glauben und Liebe in his address Von deutscher Republik, Thomas Mann referred to Novalis as a conservative figure who nevertheless served future progress.¹ Here Mann aptly characterizes Hardenberg’s own optimistic view of his ability to synthesize tradition and progression through poetry, though he also points to the fascinating and complex tensions that are present in the poet’s work. Certainly such contradictory impulses are present in Hardenberg’s treatment of gender. His model of Poësie demonstrates remarkably modern insights into the nature of identity as a thing constructed in language and, therefore, also alterable through the use of language. And...