Hymns to the Night is a set of six prose poems written by the German Romantic poet Novalis and published in 1800. The poems were written in response to the death of Novalis' fiance, Sophie von Kuehn, in 1797.
Overview
Hymns to the Night is a set of six poems written by the German Romantic poet Novalis between 1797 and 1800, often considered to be the climax of Novalis’ lyrical works and among the most important poetry of early German Romanticism. A revised version of the poems was published in the Athenaeum by Friedrich Schlegel in 1800.
Description
The six hymns contain many elements which can be understood as autobiographical. Even though a lyrical "I", rather than Novalis himself, is the speaker, there are many relationships between the hymns and Hardenberg's experiences from 1797 to 1800.
The topic is the romantic interpretation of life and death, the threshold of which is symbolised by the night. Life and death are – according to Novalis – developed into entwined concepts. So in the end, death is the romantic principle of life.
Influences from the literature of that time can be seen. The metaphors of the hymns are closely connected to the books Novalis had read at about the time of his writing of the hymns. These are prominently Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (in the translation by A. W. Schlegel, 1797) and Jean Paul's Unsichtbare Loge (1793).
