GERMAN ROMANTIC POETRY by Carol Appleby

A study of German Romantic poetry, focusing on four of the great poets of the modern era: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Holderlin, Heinrich Heine and Novalis.

The book includes lengthy extracts from the poetry of German Romanticism, with a selection of poems by Goethe, Novalis, Holderlin and Heine at the back. This new edition (the 4th) has been revised.

Illustrated. Notes, bibliography. SBN 9781861713584. 184 pages.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This book offers an introduction to four of the great German poets of the Romantic era aimed at first-time readers of poetry, students, but also readers familiar with their work. I have concentrated on the poetry, and have included many quotes. Some of the well-known poems by the writers are featured in the second half of the book.

EXTRACT FROM THE FRIEDRICH HOLDERLIN CHAPTER

Friedrich Holderlin believed in the notion of the poet as shaman, a vates, a prophet. As he wrote in 'An die Deutschen' ('To the Germans'), 'sweet it is to divine, but an affliction too'. And he believed in his poetic world, as poets have to: 'Holderlin's world was one in which he alone believed', wrote Alessandro Pelegrini. His poetry is marked by a movement towards bliss, the ecstasy of the shaman, which Holderlin does not hide. Rather, he cultivates it scrupulously. His lyrics are pure lyrics, set in the Orphic mode, that way of making poetry that comes from Orpheus, the ancient deity of shamanic poetry.

Friedrich Holderlin's poetry, especially his early lyrics, is powerfully shamanic; it is full of shamanic imagery, as is the early poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley or Francesco Petrarch. In Holderlin's art we find images of light, of bliss, of motion, of revelation, all shamanic/ religious motifs. Heinrich Heine's view of the poet as shaman was more political, aware of the role of the poet in societal revolutions: 'Our age is warmed by the idea of human equality, and the poets, who as high priests do homage to this divine sun, can be certain that thousands kneel down beside them, and that thousands weep and rejoice with them'.

NOVALIS: HYMNS TO THE NIGHT

A new edition of Novalis' Hymns To the Night, and Spiritual Songs, translated by George Macdonald, with an introduction and notes by Carol Appleby.

Includes the German text.

Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg, 1772-1801) is the most mystical of the German Romantic poets. He is at once the most typical and the most unusual of the German Romantic writers, indeed, of all Romantic poets. His best known work, Hymns To the Night, was published in 1800.

Novalis is supremely idealistic, far more so than Johann Wolfgang von Goethe or Heinrich Heine. He died young, which makes him, like Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats, something of a hero (or martyr). He did not write as much as Shelley, but his work, like that of Keats or Arthur Rimbaud, promised much. For Michael Hamburger, Novalis' poetry is almost totally idealistic:

Novalis's philosophy, then, is not mystical, but utopian. That is why his imaginative works are almost wholly lacking in conflict. They are a perpetual idyll.

It's true that Novalis' work is supremely idealistic, and utopian. But it is also mystical, because it points towards the invisible, unseen and unknown, and aims to reach that ecstatic realm. Novalis wrote:

The sense of poetry has much in common with that for mysticism. It is the sense of the peculiar, personal, unknown, mysterious, for what is to be revealed, the necessary-accidental. It represents the unrepresentable. It sees the invisible, feels the unfeelable, etc... The sense for poetry has a close relationship with the sense for augury and the religious sense, with the sense for prophecy in general.

Glyn Hughes remarks of Novalis: 'The sustaining interest in the reading of Novalis's works is the sense of contact with a mind of visionary intensity and total commitment. The poetic achievement is in the momentary glimpses of ideal reality: what, in other contexts, we should call epiphanies. (61)

The translator of Hymns To the Night, Scottish fantasist George Macdonald (1824-95), included Lewis Carroll and John Ruskin among his literary friends. His well-known works were Phantastes (1858), Lilith (1895), Bannerman's Boyhood and the Curdie children's stories: The Princess and the Goblin (1872) and The Princess and Curdie (1882). Macdonald's books were a significant in uence on both J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.

Illustrated. With bibliography and notes. 160 pages. ISBN 9781861713525.

www.crmoon.com

GERMAN ROMANTIC POETRY by Carol Appleby

A study of German Romantic poetry, focusing on four of the great poets of the modern era: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Holderlin, Heinrich Heine and Novalis.

The book includes lengthy extracts from the poetry of German Romanticism, with a selection of poems by Goethe, Novalis, Holderlin and Heine at the back. This new edition (the 4th) has been revised.

Illustrated. ISBN 9781861713254. 184 pages. www.crmoon.com

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This book offers an introduction to four of the great German poets of the Romantic era aimed at first-time readers of poetry, students, but also readers familiar with their work. I have concentrated on the poetry, and have included many quotes. Some of the well-known poems by the writers are featured in the second half of the book.

EXTRACT FROM THE FRIEDRICH HOLDERLIN CHAPTER

Friedrich Holderlin believed in the notion of the poet as shaman, a vates, a prophet. As he wrote in 'An die Deutschen' ('To the Germans'), 'sweet it is to divine, but an affliction too'. And he believed in his poetic world, as poets have to: 'Holderlin's world was one in which he alone believed', wrote Alessandro Pelegrini. His poetry is marked by a movement towards bliss, the ecstasy of the shaman, which Holderlin does not hide. Rather, he cultivates it scrupulously. His lyrics are pure lyrics, set in the Orphic mode, that way of making poetry that comes from Orpheus, the ancient deity of shamanic poetry.

Friedrich Holderlin's poetry, especially his early lyrics, is powerfully shamanic; it is full of shamanic imagery, as is the early poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley or Francesco Petrarch. In Holderlin's art we find images of light, of bliss, of motion, of revelation, all shamanic/ religious motifs. Heinrich Heine's view of the poet as shaman was more political, aware of the role of the poet in societal revolutions: 'Our age is warmed by the idea of human equality, and the poets, who as high priests do homage to this divine sun, can be certain that thousands kneel down beside them, and that thousands weep and rejoice with them'. 'Hyperion's Song of Fate' is one of the best examples of Friedrich Holderlin's lyricism, his Orphic/ shamanic voice, his Hellenism, and his triumphant use of the hymn or ode form:

You walk above in the light, weightless tread a soft floor, blessed genii radiant the gods' mild breezes gently play on you as the girl artist's fingers on holy strings. Fateless the Heavenly breathe like an unweaned infant asleep; chastely preserved in modest bud for ever their minds are in flower and their blissful eyes eternally tranquil glaze, eternally clear.]

A new edition of Novalis' Hymns To the Night, and Spiritual Songs, translated by George Macdonald, with an introduction and notes by Carol Appleby. Includes the German text.

NOVALIS: HYMNS TO THE NIGHT

A new edition of Novalis Hymns To the Night, and Spiritual Songs, translated by George Macdonald, with an introduction and notes by Carol Appleby. Includes the German text.

Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg, 1772-1801) is the most mystical of the German Romantic poets. He is at once the most typical and the most unusual of the German Romantic writers, indeed, of all Romantic poets. His best known work, Hymns To the Night, was published in 1800.

Novalis is supremely idealistic, far more so than Johann Wolfgang von Goethe or Heinrich Heine. He died young, which makes him, like Percy Shelley and John Keats, something of a hero (or martyr). He did not write as much as Shelley, but his work, like that of Keats or Arthur Rimbaud, promised much. For Michael Hamburger, Novalis work is almost totally idealistic:

Novalis s philosophy, then, is not mystical, but utopian. That is why his imaginative works are almost wholly lacking in conflict. They are a perpetual idyll.

It s true, Novalis work is supremely idealistic, and utopian. But it is also mystical, because it points towards the invisible, unseen and unknown, and aims to reach that ecstatic realm (Novalis is the most obviously mystical of the German Romantic poets, but Holderlin, Goethe and Heine are no less mystical). Novalis wrote:

The sense of poetry has much in common with that for mysticism. It is the sense of the peculiar, personal, unknown, mysterious, for what is to be revealed, the necessary-accidental. It represents the unrepresentable. It sees the invisible, feels the unfeelable, etc The sense for poetry has a close relationship with the sense for augury and the religious sense, with the sense for prophecy in general.

Glyn Hughes remarks of Novalis: The sustaining interest in the reading of Novalis s works is the sense of contact with a mind of visionary intensity and total commitment. The poetic achievement is in the momentary glimpses of ideal reality: what, in other contexts, we should call epiphanies. (61)

ELIZABETHAN LOVE POETRY

A selection of poetry from the golden age of British poetry, the Elizabethan era. All of the major Elizabethan poets are featured in this book, as well as many lesser-known poets.

The poets in this book include: Sir Walter Raleigh, Edmund Spenser, Sir Philip Sidney, Nicholas Breton, William Percy, Giles George, Samuel Daniel, Henry Constable, Michael Drayton, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, Thomas Campion, John Donne, Ben Jonson and Queen Elizabeth the First herself.

There are extracts from Elizabethan sonnet cycles by William Shakespeare (the Sonnets), Michael Drayton (Idea), Samuel Daniel (To Delia), Henry Constable (Diana), Edmund Spenser (Amoretti), and Sir Philip (Astrophil and Stella).

The full sonnet sequences are included in a companion volume, Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles.

The beloved (by convention, nearly always a woman) is at the centre of the Elizabethan love sonnet tradition. As Samuel Daniel puts it in his To Delia sonnet sequence: a]ll my lives sweet consists in her alone, a sentiment found in most Elizabethan sonnet sequences and love poems.