"The Blue Flower," Penelope Fitzgerald

 It may be age, but my sense is that this January has been colder and more wintery than recent ones. Fortunately, we have escaped the Flu and other cold-induced infections. My wife, however, has been battling Sciatica. And, while the latter has landed some punches, I suspect, given her will and good humor, she will win the bout.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Burrowing into Books

The Blue Flower, Penelope Fitzgerald

January 18, 2025

 

“I have no craving to be rich, but I long to see the blue flower. 

It lies incessantly at my heart, and I can imagine and think of nothing else.”

                                                                                                                          Friedrich von Hardenberg, reflecting

                                                                                                                          The Blue Flower, 1995

                                                                                                                           Penelope Fitzgerald (1916-2000)

 

Penelope Fitzgerald wrote nine novels and three biographies, publishing her first book at age 58. She was nominated for the Booker Prize three times. This historical novel – her last – won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1997.

 

The story is set in Germany in the late 18^th Century, a time when the French Revolution (1789-1799) convulsed Europe’s nobility, of which the von Hardenberg’s were a minor part. Fitzgerald tells the story of Friedrich (Fritz) von Hardenberg (1772-1801), covering four or five years of his life. He was a passionate young man and student of philosophy who attained fame as the Romantic poet Novalis. Von Hardenberg was the second oldest of a dozen children. Fitzgerald writes: “The children of large families hardly ever learn to talk to themselves aloud, that is one of the arts of solitude, but they often keep diaries.” In his, von Hardenberg wrote: “I have, I cannot deny it, a certain inexpressible sense of immortality.” Surprising his family, he fell in love with Sophie von Kuhn (1782-1797), a simple child of twelve. Betrothed to Friedrich, Sophie died of tuberculosis at fifteen.  

 

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), a writer, scientist and philosopher, was the intellectual leader of Germany at the time. He, along with philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814), was an inspiration to young students like Fritz. As Novalis, Hardenberg wrote one long poem, Hymns to the Night, written in response to Sophie’s death and published in 1800. The poem includes these lines, perhaps a premonition of his own early death:

 

“Blessed be the everlasting Night,

And blessed the endless slumber.

We are heated by the day too bright,

And withered up with care.

We’re weary of a life abroad,

And now we want our father’s home.” 

 

A blue flower is a symbol of love, pursuit of the infinite, the unreachable; it reflects a poet’s deep and sacred longings. Thus the title is fitting, for this is a story of love, its myriad variations, irrationalities, and the tragedies that too often accompany it. Von Hardenberg reads, first to his friend Karoline and then to Sophie, lines he wrote, and which serve as the epigraph to this essay. A short novel, The Blue Flower (281 pages) is told with wit, insight and humor. Not only does one get to know Friedrich von Hardenberg, one gains an appreciation for a unique period in German history.