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Novalis

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from Hymnen an die Nacht

     IV
I crave the other side,
Where every torment
Will become a stab
Of ecstasy.
Before long
I will be free,
And lie drunk
In the lap of love.
Eternal life
Surges powerfully through me,
I look down
Upon you from above.
At that barrow, you shed your splendour –
A shade carries
The chill wreath.
O! Succour me, beloved,
Seize me,
So that I may sleep
In adoration.
I feel the rejuvenating
Rush of Death
Transform my blood
To balm and ether.
By day I live
Filled with faith and courage,
By night I am consumed
With divine passion.

       V
You are the youth who for so long
Has stood in contemplation of our tombs:
A consoling symbol in the darkness –
The joyful new beginning of mankind.
What sunk us deep into despair
Now raises us up with sweet longing.
In death is known eternal life,
And you are the death who finally makes us complete.

Novalis, whose real name was Friedrich von Hardenberg, was born in 1772. A friend of Schiller and of Schlegel, he studied in Jena and Wittenberg, and was acquainted with Fichte and Hölderlin. In 1794 he met and fell in love with Sophie von Kühn, who was then twelve years old, and became unofficially engaged to her in the following year; her illness and early death in 1797 determined the mood and the themes of his subsequent poems. Later contacts with Schiller, Goethe, Jean Paul and Herder confirmed his Romanticism, which was expressed in philosophical essays as well as in his best-known Novelle, Heinrich von Ofterdingen, and in the Hymnen an die Nacht. He died in 1801.

Stuart Flynn has published poems and translations in Acumen, Outposts, Agenda, Envoi and other magazines. He lives in London.

Translated by Stuart Flynn

Page(s) 17-18

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