He
shares with Jacopone and other poets the yearning to grasp
transcendental things with the senses, to approach the Deity with a love
which cannot be called anything but sensuous. Novalis' _Hymns to the
Night_ are the most magnificent example of this perfect interpenetration
of sensuous and transcendental love, and at the same time represent a
complete fusion of the love he bore to his fiancee, who died young, and
the worship of Mary. Night has opened _infinite eyes_ in us, and we
behold the secret of love unfolding itself in the heart of this poet, at
once unique and pathetic, lofty and morbid. The whole universe he
conceives as a female being for whose embrace he is longing. It is a new
emotion: neither the chaste worship of the Madonna, nor the
sexually-mystic striving to embrace with the soul. The night gives birth
to a foreboding which excites and soothes all vague desires. The lover
thus soliloquises of the night:
In infinite space.
Thou'dst dissolve,
If it held thee not,
If it bound thee not,
And thrilled thee,
That afire
Thou begettest the world.
Pages:
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388