Novalis's Hymns To The Night

I'm going to start with books from other classes only because The Odyssey is so long, and I really wanted to discuss other books first, before doing multiples posts on one.

As far as German Romantic Poetry goes I really enjoyed Novalis. His images are so beautiful "As life's inner soul it's breathed by the giant-world of restless stars, and swims dancing in its blue tide--the glittering, ever-peaceful stone breathes it, the sensuous sucking plant, the wild and burning so many formed beast--but above all that splendid stranger with sense-filled eyes, with gliding gait and gently-closed, rich-toned lips." The poems are mostly in paragraph form. This initially made them difficult to read because they're language is so rich and condensed, but in hindsight I really like the casualness of the form. It makes me think that they were written in a passion, like they were written with all disregard for rigidity. I also misunderstood his intentions for writing at first. His subject seemed to me to be god, but later I was told that it was his lost love Sophie which made more sense. The poems are rich with light and dark and celestial images. Novalis fixates on death, he describes his longing for it because of his desire to be with his love Sophie who's deceased. The poems are both sad and filled with words of glory. Novalis imagines a great deal of death and the peace that he believes it will bring him, as well as his belief in the immortality of love. The sentimentality of his poetry leaves and impression. He grieves with such loss and beauty. The Night is death in the poems and so it's seen as a friend or a realm that he desires to enter. And while Light (it's interesting that he contrasts night and light, instead of day) is praised for it's beauty it's also criticized for the absence of Sophie.