Hymns to the Night (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Georg Philipp Friedrich von Hardenberg
- First Published: 1800
- Type of Work: Lyric
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric poetry
- Subjects: Mythology or myths, Love or romance, Religion, Spiritual life or spirituality, Christianity, Death or dying, Gods or goddesses, Jesus Christ, Joy or sorrow, Mary, Blessed Virgin, Saint, Night
The Poem
Hymns to the Night is a group of six organically related poems or hymns of praise and religious devotion. The hymns record the poet’s struggle to overcome his grief at the death of his young fiancée, Sophie von Kühn, in 1797, shortly after her fifteenth birthday and shortly before they were to be married. The death of Sophie, the inconsolable loss of an unspoiled and idealized love, becomes for Novalis the occasion of a spiritual awakening, the opening of a new religious vision. The spiritual world opened to Novalis is represented as the world of the...
[The entire page is 2136 words long]
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