\u201cNow I begin to intuit what makes Shakespeare so unique. It may awaken in me divinatory powers . . .\u201d <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n \u2013 Novalis<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n At the local group\u2019s meeting on November 28, 2020, I presented a brief summary of an essay that originally appeared in the 2001 issue of Das Goetheanum in commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the death of Novalis. A revised version of the essay also appeared in a 2016 edition of the Section Newsletter when our local Section group was studying the late plays or \u201cromances\u201d of William Shakespeare. I updated the essay for the recent meeting in 2020, and I present it here because it is part of our local group\u2019s study of Novalis.<\/strong><\/p>\n “Blue Flower” \/ watercolor by Hermann Hesse<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/div>\n Persons unfamiliar with German literature may not appreciate the revolutionary impact that the Bard of Avon had on German literary sensibilities. Germans throughout the eighteenth-century lauded Shakespeare as a poet-magus. Goethe\u2019s words spoken in 1771 are typical.<\/p>\n The first page I read made me a slave to Shakespeare for life. And when I had finished reading the first drama, I stood there like a man blind from birth whom a magic hand has all at once given light. I realized and felt intensely that my life was infinitely expanded. Everything seemed new to me, unfamiliar, and the unaccustomed light hurt my eyes. Gradually I learned to see, and, thanks to my awakened spirit, I still feel intensely what I have gained. (Shakespeare, A Tribute, 163)<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Goethe describes his experience in language very much suited to an initiation. \u201cWe cannot talk about Shakespeare; everything is inadequate,\u201d a much older Goethe said to Eckermann.<\/p>\n Shakespeare also inspired Novalis.<\/p>\n As is well known, the crucial existential event in the life of Friedrich von Hardenberg, the poet Novalis,1<\/sup> was the death of his fianc\u00e9e Sophie von K\u00fchn in March 1797. We are fortunate to have a journal that Hardenberg kept, beginning on April 18, 1797 and ending July 6, 1797, which records a day-to-day account of Hardenberg\u2019s inner life in the weeks following Sophie\u2019s death. During these weeks, Hardenberg began a dramatic transformation of identity. Starting from a nadir of grief and despair, he slowly moved from thoughts of suicide to an acceptance of fate to a dawning awareness of his destiny as a poet. While much has been made of Goethe\u2019s literary influence on Hardenberg during this time of crisis, Shakespeare also influenced this transformation subtly yet precisely.<\/p>\n It is a well documented irony that on May 13, 1797\u2014about midway through the pages that constitute his journal of grieving\u2014Hardenberg received from his friend Friedrich Schlegel a new translation of Romeo and Juliet<\/em> done by Friedrich\u2019s brother August Wilhelm.2<\/sup> On that same day, May 13, he visited the grave of Sophie and underwent his famous Graberlebnis<\/em> (grave-side experience)\u2014an event that Rudolf Steiner compared to St. Paul\u2019s experience at the gates of Damascus.3<\/sup><\/p>\n Based on this assessment, one might expect the journal entry for May 13 to be especially noteworthy. But, in fact, the entry for that day is rather understated.<\/p>\n I got up early at 5 a.m. The weather was beautiful. The morning passed by without too much activity on my part. Captain Rockenthien, his wife and children stopped by. I received a letter from Schlegel with the first part of the new Shakespeare translation. After lunch I went for a walk\u2014then coffee\u2014the weather became a bit heavy\u2014first lightning, then cloudy and stormy\u2014very lively\u2014I began to read Shakespeare\u2014I became quite engrossed in him. Toward evening I went to Sophie. There I was indescribably joyful\u2014a lightninglike moment of enthusiasm\u2014the grave blew away in front of me like dust\u2014centuries were as moments\u2014her presence was palpable\u2014I believed that she would always be near\u2014How I came home\u2014had some touching conversations. Otherwise, I was very satisfied the entire day. Niebekker came by in the afternoon. In the evening I had a few good ideas. Shakespeare gave me much to think about. (IV, 35)<\/em>4<\/sup><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n Burial of Sophie<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n In an article entitled Novalis and Shakespeare<\/em>, Helmut Rehder examined the clear affinities between Hardenberg\u2019s experience at Sophie\u2019s grave, with its striking resemblance to the third hymn to the night, and the remarkable poetic affinities that this experience and hymn have to the famous tomb scene in Romeo and Juliet<\/em>. He noted how Romeo, much like Hardenberg, becomes aware \u201cof an absolute, the reality of an existence that is exclusive and irreplaceable\u201d (618).<\/p>\n Yet, while it is certainly true that the imagery and language of Shakespeare\u2019s play bear likeness to the language and imagery of the third hymn to the night, we find nonetheless very little of this language in Hardenberg\u2019s journal. If Shakespeare, via the decisive scene in Romeo and Juliet,<\/em> had influenced the experience on May 13, we might expect more evidence in the journal. Instead, one is struck by the journal\u2019s overall lack of dramatic language and emotion. True, as Rehder argues, the influence of Romeo no doubt slumbered for many months until it helped to inspire the poetry of the Hymns<\/em>. But is there a more immediate and crucial sense in which Shakespeare might have given Hardenberg\u2014the soon-to-become magical idealist poet Novalis\u2014\u201cmuch to think about\u201d in the spring of 1797?<\/p>\n Indeed, there is. Along with Romeo and Juliet,<\/em> another play and character of Shakespeare made decisive contact with Hardenberg at this time. That character is Hamlet. Hardenberg mentions Hamlet explicitly only once in the pages of his journal\u2014briefly toward the end in an entry dated June 29. In this passage, Hardenberg says simply \u201cin the evening I retired to bed to read Hamlet\u201d (II, 48). Not much to go on in itself, but in fact there are even more decisive, albeit implicit, references to Hamlet throughout the earlier entries of the journal.<\/p>\n Time and again, between the journal\u2019s beginning on April 18 and the decisive experience on May 13, Hardenberg states that he is busy reading and rereading Goethe\u2019s famous novel, Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre<\/em> (Wilhelm Meister\u2019s Apprenticeship). In the entries prior to May 13, he mentions Goethe\u2019s novel nineteen times. Significantly, a large part of this influential novel\u2019s plot and theme concerns Wilhelm Meister\u2019s contemplation of Hamlet<\/em>. The example of Hamlet, the play and character, has a decisively important formative influence on Wilhelm Meister\u2019s development. In a sense, Hamlet<\/em> is a lodestar for Goethe\u2019s hero, and much of Goethe\u2019s literary critical appraisal of Hamlet<\/em> is contained in this novel.<\/p>\n In a well known characterization of Prince Hamlet in Book IV of Wilhelm Meister<\/em> (which Rudolf Steiner echoed in his last lecture on Speech and Drama<\/em> given September 23, 1924),5<\/sup> Goethe characterized Hamlet as \u201cwavering.\u201d Hamlet, says Goethe, is a person between worlds, who cannot make up his mind or rise to the moral authority of the occasion. Goethe, behind the mask of his hero Wilhelm Meister, cites as Hamlet\u2019s most critical lines: \u201cThe time is out of joint: O cursed spite, \/ That ever I was born to set it right.\u201d Hamlet speaks this couplet after the appearance of his father\u2019s ghost, which is a moment of supersensible insight that shapes Hamlet\u2019s destiny decisively. Goethe then adds:<\/p>\n In these words, I imagine, will be found the key to Hamlet\u2019s whole procedure. To me it is clear that Shakespeare meant, in the present case, to represent the effects of a great action laid upon a soul unfit for the performance of it. . . . A lovely, pure, noble, and most moral nature, without the strength of nerve which forms a hero, sinks beneath a burden it cannot bear and must not cast away. All duties are holy for him: the present is too hard. Impossibilities have been required of him\u2014not in themselves impossibilities, but such for him. He winds and turns, torments himself; he advances and recoils; is ever put in mind, ever puts himself in mind; at last, does all but lose his purpose from his thoughts, yet still without recovering his peace of mind. (234)<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n The challenge, then, from Goethe\u2019s point of view, is for Hamlet to shoulder the burden laid on him by his experience of the supersensible\u2014as bodied forth by his father\u2019s ghost. And for Goethe, Hamlet fails.<\/p>\n But Goethe, or perhaps Wilhelm Meister, misreads Shakespeare\u2019s play and overlooks what has puzzled many readers (now and in the eighteenth century): the odd fifth act and the change that Hamlet undergoes during his sea voyage to England. We\u2019re not dealing with the same Hamlet at all in Act Five. On the contrary, Hamlet\u2019s character is immeasurably more complex and mysterious as a result of this final act, which begins in a cemetery with two clowns digging a grave for Hamlet\u2019s girlfriend.<\/p>\n Hamlet at Ophelia’s Grave<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n In Act Five, unlike our previous close observations of Hamlet, we observe that Hamlet has changed, but we do not know why. Something happened to him during the voyage to and from England. But it is something we haven\u2019t seen. We only hear the gist of this transformation in lines that are arguably the culminating lines of the entire drama. These occur in Act V, scene ii, just before Hamlet begins the duel with Laertes. He speaks to Horatio:<\/p>\n There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, \u2018tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all. Since no man has aught of what he leaves, what is\u2019t to leave betimes? Let be.<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n These lines\u2014spoken off-handedly and in prose\u2014give echo to the famous soliloquy in Act III (\u201cTo be or not to be\u201d) as well as to Hamlet\u2019s dilemma generally, which is how to deal with Claudius. In speaking them, Hamlet shows that he has \u201covercome Hamlet.\u201d Or rather, the wavering \u201cI\u201d who was the doubting individual, Prince Hamlet, has become one with his greater destiny, it would appear.<\/p>\n This mysterious, inner achievement parallels in many ways the achievement of Hardenberg in spring of 1797.<\/p>\n Friedrich von Hardenberg, at the beginning of his journal, poses for himself two contradictory goals: suicide or self-mastery. From April 18 until the journal concludes in early July, he \u201cwavers\u201d with indecision. Yet, he doesn\u2019t swallow poison or drown. He keeps on observing himself and he keeps on reading and writing. And throughout this period of observation and \u201cwavering,\u201d the figure of Hamlet is constantly in sight, via the theatrical stage of Goethe\u2019s novel Wilhelm Meister<\/em>. As Hardenberg\u2019s Journal<\/em> tells us, Hardenberg perused Goethe\u2019s novel often; he nearly knew it by heart (M\u00e4hl).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n Then, at what is arguably one of the most important days in Hardenberg\u2019s life, Goethe\u2019s literary critical presentation of Hamlet briefly recedes and in place of Goethe\u2019s Hamlet, William Shakespeare steps forward into the spotlight of Hardenberg\u2019s attention. This occurs on May 13, when Hardenberg received A.W. Schlegel\u2019s new translation of Romeo and Juliet<\/em> and a letter from Friedrich Schlegel admonishing him to reevaluate Shakespeare\u2019s genius. In other words, Hardenberg shifts his attention from a secondary text\u2014Goethe\u2019s literary critical interpretations of Shakespeare that we find in Wilhelm Meister<\/em>\u2014to a primary text, Shakespeare. From that moment until the journal\u2019s conclusion, we find only two more references to Goethe\u2019s Wilhelm Meister<\/em>. Goethe recedes, and Shakespeare and Shakespeare\u2019s Hamlet step forward. This is not, however, the \u201cwavering\u201d Hamlet of the first four acts of Shakespeare\u2019s play that Goethe describes in Wilhelm Meister<\/em>, but the mature Hamlet who has come to terms with karma, fate, and destiny.<\/p>\n We find evidence for this in the closing pages of the Journal that detail the events between June 16 – 29. In the days just prior, Hardenberg still showed the influence of his reading of Romeo and Juliet<\/em>, as on June 13, when he writes: \u201cShe is dead\u2014so die I also\u2014the world is barren\u201d (IV, 46). Events appear to be heading for a tragic or perhaps maudlin conclusion. But then suddenly, unexpectedly, the journal introduces changes of scene. The days June 16 – 29 pass in a flurry of visits, travel, and conversations with various acquaintances. These days are detailed in one long entry, written on June 29. Unlike the preceding entries, there are no outstanding references to suicide or despair in this entry.6<\/sup> Hardenberg says he spent time consulting his parents in regard to his career and life\u2019s direction and that he felt inspired by conversations with acquaintances and by a letter from Friedrich Schlegel, which set his \u201cphilosophical powers in motion again.\u201d He had begun, too, to reread Fichte, for whom activity and self activity are the hallmarks of enlightened responsibility and virtue.<\/p>\n And now we come to the climax of this entire process, such as the journal presents it.<\/p>\n Yesterday, [June 28] very early I wrote some philosophical thoughts of great value\u2014I read a bit in Schelling\u2019s Letters Concerning Dogmatism and Criticism<\/em>, traveled with my father to K\u00f6sen\u2014wrote to Karl in the afternoon\u2014went to Severin and in the evening retired to bed with Hamlet<\/em>. This morning, early, I read Schelling again and Schlegel on the Greeks\u2014went walking and fantasized what I well might see fit to do, were I the Count of Saxony. . . . the weather was lovely\u2014and I made many literary plans. Most especially I was pleased with the idea of a journal, which would bear the title: \u201cContributions toward a scientific history of humanity.\u201d . . . My head was very clear this evening. I feel I have advanced several steps. Also, my memory, my powers of observation, and my expression have improved. My presence of mind (Besonnenheit<\/em>) must, however, grow stronger. There are too many slips (Lacunen<\/em>). My decision [to die] remains steadfast. Since my journey to Rosstrapp I am again somewhat satisfied with myself \u2014 it must, however, always improve \u2014 presence of mind (Besonnenheit<\/em>) and serenity are the main things. (IV, 48)<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n It is this repeated reference to cultivating \u201cpresence of mind\u201d and \u201cserenity\u201d that makes this conclusion Hamletesque and shows that we are far from the mood of suicidal Romeo or the wavering Hamlet of Goethe\u2019s commentary. The character Hamlet, the archetype of spectator consciousness, is ennobled when the power of the consciousness soul becomes joined to conscience and authentic moral purpose. Hamlet achieves this breakthrough by the end of Shakespeare\u2019s play. And here, in the concluding pages of the journal, Hardenberg reaches toward such an achievement also. He is no longer \u201cwavering,\u201d in the manner that we find him discussed in Wilhelm Meister<\/em>. He is resolved and has learned to hover lightly with equanimity, one might argue. And like Hamlet at the end of Shakespeare\u2019s play, Hardenberg too has become an authentic \u201cprince.\u201d He has taken the first steps toward the identity Novalis and the works that will bear that name.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Original Title Page of Heinrich von Ofterdingen<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n In a poetic sense, the spirit of the \u201cmagus\u201d William Shakespeare oversees this transformation of the provincial law clerk Hardenberg into Novalis, poet of magical idealism. In a letter to Friedrich Schlegel (May 25, 1797), written after Hardenberg had read more of Shakespeare directly, Hardenberg wrote:<\/p>\n It is remarkable that you sent me Romeo<\/em> just now\u2014I\u2019ve read it often. There is a profound meaning in what you say, that here we find more than mere poetry. Now I begin to intuit what makes Shakespeare so unique. It may awaken in me divinatory powers. . . (IV, 227)<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n While one cannot insist too strongly on a direct, exoteric influence, esoterically one can speculate that in this inspirational meeting between Shakespeare and Hardenberg, something quite significant came to pass. Shakespeare, the Elizabethan \u201cmagus,\u201d touched the future poet of magical idealism inspirationally at a profoundly important moment of his destiny. He put before Hardenberg three figures: Romeo, Hamlet, and Shakespeare himself. From Romeo, Hardenberg glimpsed the poetry of night and love and death and transcendence; from Hamlet, the poetry of the awakening consciousness soul, an openness to doubt, hovering, and contradiction. But from Shakespeare the playwright, Hardenberg glimpsed an intimation of a life praxis that was \u201cmore than mere poetry.\u201d He called this playful praxis magical idealism and renamed himself \u201cNovalis.\u201d<\/p>\n Friedrich von Hardenberg; Novalis<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/div>\n ________<\/p>\n Works Cited and Consulted<\/strong><\/p>\n Bloom, Harold. Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human<\/em>. New York: Riverhead Books,1998. _______<\/p>\n Endnotes<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/theliteraryarts.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/image2-2.jpeg\")
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Shakespeare & Novalis: A Mysterious Friendship<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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\nGoethe, Johann Wolfgang von. \u2018Shakespeare: A Tribute.\u201d Goethe: Essays on Art and Literature in Goethes Collected Works,<\/em> Vol. 3. Ed. John Gearey. Trans. Ellen von Nardroff and Ernest H. von Nardroff. New York: Suhrkamp, 1986
\n—. Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre<\/em>. Frankfurt: Insel Verlag, 1980.
\n—. Wilhelm Meister\u2019s Apprenticeship<\/em>. Trans. Thomas Carlyle. New York: Heritage Press, 1959.
\nM\u00e4hl, Joachim. \u201cNovalis\u2019 WilhelmMeisterStudien des Jahres 1797.\u201d Neophilologus<\/em> 47 (1963): 286-305.
\nNovalis. Schriften<\/em>. Ed. Paul Kluckhohn and Richard Samuel. 5 Vols. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer Verlag, 1960.
\nRehder, Helmut. \u201cNovalis and Shakespeare.\u201d Proceedings of the Modern Language Association<\/em> 63, Nr. 2 (1948): 604-624.
\nShakespeare, William. Hamlet<\/em>.
\n—. Romeo and Juliet<\/em>.
\nSteiner, Rudolf. Occult History<\/em>. Trans. D.S. Osmond and Charles Davy. London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1982.
\n—. Speech and Drama<\/em>. Trans. Mary Adams. New York: Anthroposophic Press, 1986.
\n—. \u201cThe Last Address given by Rudolf Steiner at Dornach, on Michaelmas Eve, 1924.\u201d Karmic Relationships: Esoteric Studies<\/em>. Vol IV. Trans. George Adams with a preface by Alfred Heidenreich. London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1997.
\nWilliams, Simon. Shakespeare on the German Stage<\/em>. Vol I: 1586-1914. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1987.<\/p>\n