The Rudolf Steiner Archive

28. Novalis’s poem “Heinrich von Ofterdingen”

[ 1 ] Let us take a look at the short life of Friedrich von Hardenberg, known as Novalis. Novalis is more a memory of a former life than a life in itself—a refined personality, an individual who, from the very beginning, possessed within himself the seeds of the deepest spirituality. One is constantly amazed at how Novalis combines the highest intellectuality and the sharpest thinking with a wonderful spirituality.

[ 2 ] He was a trained mining engineer who had a thorough command of mathematics and the physical sciences, who combined mathematical thinking with a refined, delicate, yet fiery, ethereal spirituality, and who expressed this harmoniously in a way for which there is perhaps no second example in life. One must be able to sense what is contained in Novalis’s sayings and fragments to realize how deeply he penetrated the inner structure of the world. One must also be able to sense his enthusiasm for mathematics. To him, it is a great poem that introduces one to the mysteries of the universe. Human beings reflect on the interrelationships of space and time. When they can fill themselves with the harmony of the stars, which orbit the sun according to eternal laws, and with the formative forces at work within the earth in ore veins, crystal formations, and so on, then they can perceive the living essence of the world.

[ 3 ] Novalis is filled with a genuine enthusiasm for mathematics. He calls mathematics—which can point the way to such paths of understanding—a sublime religion. It is marvelous how he is able to embrace this seemingly dry science with fervent reverence. For him, the sensory world existed only as a reflection of eternally living spiritual realities, which reveal themselves to earthly perception through the laws of nature.

[ 4 ] Novalis developed a deep love for a thirteen-year-old girl who died shortly after their engagement. The shock he experienced was immense. It opened the gates to the spiritual world for him. Novalis speaks to the deceased as if she were alive; he called the rest of his own life a “death after hers.” She is always present to him. [The friendship that later binds him to another girl can be called supernatural. To him, she is like a symbol of the spiritual being that hovers above them and with whom he merges completely.]

[ 5 ] There was a spiritual power within him that is unparalleled in modern times.

[ 6 ] Novalis had undergone profound initiations in previous lives. Thus, he entered this life with the capacity for a true, real grasp of world events. Like a [meteor], he appeared in the spiritual heavens, scattering spirit everywhere in a way that is rarely found in the manifestations of more recent spirits.

[ 7 ] Two poles defined Novalis’s fresh, youthful nature: great intellectuality and deep spirituality. The full richness of his multifaceted, creative thinking coalesced into a comprehensive sense of the universe, which drew its source of life from a divine primal source. He perceived this primal source as the Spirit everywhere. Novalis called this awareness “magic.” The creative, imaginative power and the soul’s sensibility were, for him, a reflection of the great sensibility of the world; they became for him “magical idealism.” He experienced his self as connected to the self of all other beings, and he perceived all beings as interconnected. Thus, Novalis merged with the spiritual weaving and life of nature.

[ 8 ] In *The Apprentices of Sais*, we find the story of the young man “Hyacinth,” who has a deep connection with the beings of nature. A warm bond of friendship exists between him and the girl “Roseblossom.” The animals of the forest and the flowers of the field are his confidants. The story recounts how he encounters a man with a long beard who carries a book from which Hyazinth learns a great deal. He is now driven to seek out what constitutes the innermost essence of a human being. Novalis called this thing that humans must seek “the blue flower.” It is the search for the higher self within the human being.

[ 9 ] We also find this significant symbol in Eastern mysticism as the lotus flower. It is a symbol of the higher self, of chaste, purified humanity, within which the self can unfold. For now, it is still enclosed as if by flower petals—later it will bear fruit and seeds. Novalis had brought such knowledge with him from his earlier incarnations.

[ 10 ] We are now told how Hyacinth wanders through the Land of Secrets, searching endlessly, until he finds a veiled figure. When he lifts the veil, he sees little rose petals.

[ 11 ] In Novalis’s *Hymns to the Night*, his experience of the unity between the cosmos and humanity is expressed in the Iyric language. The same is true of the *Spiritual Songs*, this deeply moving account of his union with Christ.

[ 12 ] Novalis set out to convey everything he wanted to say to the world in the novel *Heinrich von Ofterdingen*. However, he died before he could finish it. Let us keep in mind what he intended to convey.

[ 13 ] We are transported back to the time of the Wartburg Singers’ War, when Heinrich was young. Yet the course of events leads us from the present world into a fairy-tale world. We must go back to the time when the region of the Atlantic Ocean was still land. There was once a vibrant life there, with people whose activities would indeed seem like a fairy tale to people today. It was a land where rain and sunshine were not distributed as they are now. The sun was veiled by mists, and the air was watery. It is no coincidence that the Norse sagas called Atlantis “Niflheim,” meaning “Land of Mist.” There was no distinction between rain and sunshine there, but only a gradual transition from water to air. A rainbow would not have been possible there. The events of those ancient times are preserved in the legends of the Flood, the Ark, and the rainbow, and one stands in awe before the infinitely profound truths contained in the ancient religious texts. At first glance, the biblical account of the rainbow appears to be a symbol. But we are faced here with a fact: A rainbow would not yet have been possible in ancient Atlantis. It is one of those sacred moments that overwhelm the occult researcher when, in contemplation, he is transported back to those earlier times.

[ 14 ] Novalis gazed into this ancient realm with the eye of a seer—a realm that can truly be described as a fairy-tale realm. At that time, human beings had not yet developed their rational intellect; they lived in harmony with nature. They built their homes in such a way that they seemed to grow out of the rocks and plants. There were no myths back then. What, then, are the myths that our peoples tell one another? The gift of shaping worlds through poetry is unique to our post-Atlantean race; the Atlanteans did not possess it. But the Atlanteans still had the gift of transforming plants—and even animals and humans. Circe’s arts of transformation in the *Odyssey* point to such transformative powers in human beings. Everything that human beings bring forth from within themselves as myth, the people of Atlantis had experienced and seen with their own eyes. The great poets of our time have drawn the imagery for their works from what they themselves had seen on Atlantis.

[ 15 ] Novalis interweaves his own memories with the story of “Heinrich von Ofterdingen” and brings ancient Atlantis to life in his narratives. He then leads us into more recent times, the era of city-building. This era brings with it the rise of the bourgeoisie and material culture. External, material culture is linked to the emergence of the bourgeoisie. As a result, what was previously poetry becomes something else.

[ 16 ] The origins of our poetry point to the mysteries. We must transport ourselves back to the time when sacred mysteries were the source of inspiration for the poetry of Homer, Aeschylus, and Sophocles, when ancient culture laid the foundation for what worked as a spiritual force in Homer and Aeschylus. There, those who had been purified were admitted to the higher mysteries—the primordial mysteries that took place in the supersensible, in the astral world—only after long trials. But there was a reflection of this in later times, for example in the Eleusinian Mysteries. There, the so-called primordial drama was performed. It depicted how God, the World Soul, descended into matter and how the descending, suffering, and resurrected God points the way to salvation. It was the chorus that, in the ancient Greek mystery drama, echoed the language of cosmic events.

[ 17 ] In Aeschylus, we witness the transition from the ancient, sacred primordial drama to secular drama. It blossoms from a branch that grew out of the world of the Mysteries. The other branch was philosophy, and the third branch was religion.

[ 18 ] In the mystery schools, the ancients possessed the unity of religion, poetry, and science. Science was vividly demonstrated there. Like three branches springing from a single root, these fields worked alongside and within one another. It was only later that they diverged. This separation of the three fields was necessary so that each could become perfect in its own way. Thus, for a time, they had to follow divergent paths. Great minds seek to reunite what had to be separated in this way. That is why we find the striving for the unification of the arts in phenomena such as, for example, the musical drama of Bayreuth. The aim is to create a total work of art that once again encompasses the three realms of spiritual life on earth.

[ 19 ] Poetry sprang from truth. Originally, poetry was nothing other than the garment of truth. Novalis looks back to primal times, when poets sought to give expression to the highest truth in their works. If we turn our gaze to the primordial poetry of humanity, we do indeed find this expression within it. In Atlantis, human beings were still connected to nature, to their God, and the mysteries provided representations of the reality experienced in this way. Later, memories of these times were revived in myths. For Novalis, these memories were something sacred and real. He told himself: In the future, what people still carry within themselves as hidden memories will once again become reality. What we create as poets from our imagination—and thereby bring into consciousness—will one day become fact. The present world is growing into a new spiritual reality. As people carry the seeds of poetry into material life, something very special also emerges from material life itself. For him, the guide on the path to this new reality is “Sophia,” Wisdom.

[ 20 ] Novalis sets the events of his story in the era of burgeoning urban culture—that time when external life begins to take on a material form, when it transitions into the bourgeois element of the physical realm. For him, the poets are the bearers of the future. The seed of poetry is sown within material culture. Novalis portrays Heinrich von Ofterdingen as a kind of seer. He dreams of the blue flower—dreams that are not like other dreams, but rather a reflection of spiritual reality. He has him experience a variety of things: legends and historical events come to life; for example, the era of the Crusades shines through, and the spiritual influence that flowed from the Orient into Europe is evident in the description of the prisoners at the castle.

[ 21 ] The most important thing for Heinrich is his encounter with a miner who has spent almost his entire life underground. The text describes what it feels like to work in the shafts deep beneath the earth. The stars in the sky shine down on him like the future. In the depths of the earth, he finds, as it were, his past. Metals are wondrously related to human beings. What has developed down there over the course of millennia—the mystery of the divine world order—is brought forth by the miner and imposes itself upon him. The selflessness of the work is brought home to us when the story describes how the gold is brought to light. The miner is interested only in how the gold emerges from the earth: in this he recognizes the creative deity. It is a beautiful, moral depiction of selfless interest in that which otherwise inflames human selfishness. The miner, who always works in darkness, has the truest conception of the grandeur of light.

[ 22 ] Heinrich then meets the old hermit in the cave. The hermit has a wealth of life experience and is recording it in a book. He says that only the one who sees in all that is transitory a parable of the eternal is a true historian. This encounter further deepens Heinrich’s experiences.

[ 23 ] Then, in Augsburg, Heinrich meets Master Klingsor, who is a seer. In a fairy tale, he tells us what the future of all humanity will be: A higher world will be born out of this world. There is a poetic magic in the tale of the young man’s love for Mathilde, who later turns out to be Cyane—a hint that the transitory is a symbol of the eternal. He knows that from what is now the harsh, stony reality of the present, a different world will emerge in the future.

[ 24 ] Then the immersion in the astral world is described: The land of Astralis symbolizes evolution and development for us. Poetry becomes a magical force that transforms people. Novalis believes in the magical power of the imagination—not when it flows unchecked, but when it places itself under the guidance of Sophia and permeates the entire world with the power of creative Eros.

[ 25 ] We may see Novalis as a reincarnated Pythagorean.