"We shall never fully understand ourselves, yet we can and will far surpass mere understanding."

Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg, 1772-1801) conceived of the world as a poetic universe. That which we encounter externally in nature is profoundly related to us internally. For this reason, there is nothing in nature that is truly foreign to us. We must, though, approach nature lovingly - that is to say, poetically. "Only poets have sensed all that nature can be for humankind," writes Novalis. "Nature's soul is familiar to them alone." By this he means that it is only when we perceive nature poetically, artistically, that we are able to grasp its essence.

The Romantics spoke in this context of divination, which we might translate as "looking at something through the eyes of God". Through divination we become more tenderly connected with the poetic universe that is the world, and so it is art which leads alienated humanity back to the world, and in a deeper sense back to itself.

Along with Schiller, Novalis was one of the first to see that an artistic mode is perhaps the only possibility for halting humanity's ever-increasing homelessness within the world, its growing alienation from nature and culture, from work and human fellowship, its alienation from God. And so, already, in his "Vermischte Bemerkungen" ("Various Remarks") of 1797/98, he formulated a theory of the state which essentially defined the idea of social sculpture in terms of a vision for a poetic state.

"The poetic state is the true and perfect state (the ideal state). A wise state will automatically be poetic: the more spirit, and spiritual exchange there is in a state, the nearer it will come to the poetic; the happier all within it will be to willingly limit their own demands and make the necessary sacrifices, out of love for the great and beautiful 'individual' ('Individuo'), without being required to do so by the state; the more the spirit of the state will resemble the spirit of a single, exemplary individual, who has only ever pronounced one law: Be as good and as poetic as possible."

Text: Wolfgang Zumdick. Translation: Rachael Barham