( These translations could naturally be seen as pure translations and
be read and appreciated in their own right, and they are such, - but they
could also be of some use and inspiration - like they were for me - to those
who are
reading my paper on monologues ( Monologue on the monologue )
and my essay Irony or existence .)
K. Genell 2007.
The world must become romanticized. ( Novalis, around 1897)
"The world must become romanticized That way it is possible for Man to
find the original sense again. Romanticizing is nothing else than a qualitative
potentialization. The lower Self will be identified with a better Self in this
operation. Like we are ourselves such a qualitative row of potency . This operation
is not wholly unknown. While I am giving the common a more supreme sense, the
trivial an air of secrecy, the known the value of the unknown, the finite the
looks of the infinite, I am romanticizing it. - The reverse will be the operation
for the higher, unknown, mystical, infinite - these will by this acquaintance
be logarithmiziert - it gets a handy concept. Romantic philosophy. Lingua romana.
Changes upwards and downwards."
( Novalis , transl. mine.)
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Novalis on Philosophy.....
"Philosophy.The unknown, full of secrets is the result and the source of
everything. ( We actually only know that, which knows itself.) Hereby follows:
What cannot be understood, is in an incomplete state - it should in general
be made conceivable. The concept or the knowledge is the prose - the indifferent.
On both sides there is plus and minus. Knowledge is a means to retain to not-knowing.
( Empty instinct.) Nature is inconceivable per se. Calm and developed inconceivability.
Philosophy is prose. It's components. Distant philosophy sounds like poetry
- since every cry becomes the distant vowel. On both sides or all around there
is plus- and minus poetry. And all of it becomes in the distinction poetry -
Poem. Actio in distans. Distant mountains, distant people, distant events and
so on …, it all becomes romantic, quod idem est - that is where our prime-poetic
nature comes from. Poetry of night and twilight.
The useful is per se prosaic. Every determined reason is a canonized
- hindered reason all in all. Distant reasons."
( Novalis. About 1800. transl.mine.)
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Progressive universal poetry.
By Friedrich Schlegel ( written between 1788-1800 in the famous cultural journal
Athenaeum.),
- Fr.Schl., the younger of the two brothers Schlegel. The other was the almost
quite
as excellent critic Augus Schlegel.
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"The romantic poetry is a progressive universal poetry. It is determined
to rewrite all diverse directions of poetry and furthermore to put poetry in
connection with philosophy and rhetoric. It will and it should also very soon
merge together poetry and prose, geniality and criticism, art-poetry and poetry
about nature into one, to make alive poetry and life and society and general
intercourse, and make it poetic, to poeticise the joke , and to fill the different
kinds of art with solid educated cultural refinement in every way, and through
turns of humour animate it. It contains all that is poetic, all from the most
elaborate systems of art , with systems inside themselves, to the sighing, the
kiss, that is breathed by the poeticizing child in it's inartificial song.
It can completely go astray in the performed, so that one could think that to
characterize poetic individualities of every sort is the one and only thing;
and yet there is no form that is so excellently fit for this, to express completely
the soul of the author; thus many an artist, who only wants to write a novel
has about described himself in it.
It can like the epos become a mirror of the whole surrounding world, become
a picture of the present age. And yet it can at best hover between the expression
and the expressed object, free from all real and ideal interest on the wings
of reflection in the midst of all, to ever and ever again make this reflection
stronger and to multiply it like that which happens in an endless row of mirrors.
It is capable of the most eloquent and widespread knowledge; not only from inside
out, but also from outside in, so that all that should be a whole in it's product
organizes all of the parts in a like manner, through which the view opens up
towards an unlimitedly growing classicism.
The romantic poetry is amongst the arts what the joke is to philosophy and what
society, human intercourse, friendship and love are in life. Other kinds of
writing are already manifest and could only be taken apart , diverge. The romantic
kind of writing is only in the making, yes, it is the real essence, that it
is eternally in the making, that it never can be fulfilled, be complete. It
can never become through theory, and only a clairvoyant critic would dare to
want to characterize it's ideal. It alone is without limits, just as it alone
is free and has set up this as it's law, that the condition of the writer is
to set no law above writing. The art of romantic writing is the only, which
more exists as art and at the same time just as the art of writing itself, because
in a certain sense is or should all poetry be romantic."
( Fr.Schlegel , - transl. mine.)
( I - myself - do not share these views, but they are fascinating to me. )
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Kaj Genell 2007.