Novalis: Hymns to the Night

Detail of an engraving
by Edouard Eichens, 1845

Novalis was the pen name of Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr (Baron) von Hardenberg (1772-1801), called Friedrich von Hardenberg. The death in 1797 of his young fiancé, Sophie von Kühn, led him to write Hymnen an die Nacht (Hymns to the Night), a set of six prose and verse lyrics first published in 1800 in Athenaeum, a literary magazine edited by August Wilhelm Schlegel and his brother Friedrich Schlegel. Seven months after the publication of Hymns to the Night, Novalis died of tuberculosis, the same disease that had claimed his fiancé.

Although the cryptic diction and syntax of Hymns to the Night make it an extremely difficult work to try to translate, there have been a few attempts to render it in English. The text at this site is a revised version of a 1897 translation by the Scottish writer George MacDonald. A modern translation by Dick Higgins, with the original German text on facing pages, is available in an inexpensive edition from McPherson and Company.