História, analogia e natureza em Novalis

Abstract

By determining the three stages of the historical fate of the West in Christendom or Europa, Novalis promises a future synthesis between the Middle Ages and the Enlightenment from the point of view of the German romantic savant. In this future, the scientific and philosophical enthusiasm converge with mystic and poetic rapture instead of countering it. It reconciles art and science, sensitivity and spirituality, nature and history, sacred and profane. However, in the novel The Novices of Sais there is a series of vertiginous correlations between nature, spirit, body and history that could not have been made by a scientist. They could have only been fashioned by a poet, the only one who comprehends the meaning of nature. This article describes how the concept of re-enchantment in both books is connected to the analogous renaissance understanding which, according to Hartmut Böhme, introduces a semiology of nature based on the connecting similarities of things. If, during the Renaissance, it is the natural philosopher who deciphers the meaning of things, in Novalis’s work it is the poet who uses language as the key to re-enchanting and freedom. This paper concludes by reflecting upon the conflict of illusion and reality in modern poetry.