Aversion for day and daylight was general among the Romanticists. I drew attention to it in William Lovell. Novalis simply gives expression to a heightened degree of the general feeling in his famous Hymns to Night. That he should love the night is easy to understand. By hiding the surrounding world from it, night drives the Ego in upon itself; hence the feeling of night, and self-consciousness, are one and the same thing. The rapture of the feeling of night lies in its terror; first comes the fear of the individual, when everything round him disappears in the darkness, that he will himself disappear from himself; then comes the pleasant shudder when, out of this fear, self-consciousness emerges stronger than before.
In one of his fragments Novalis calls death a bridal night, a sweet mystery, and adds:—
"Ist es nicht klug, für die Nacht ein geselliges Lager zu suchen? Darum ist klüglich gesinnt, wer auch Entschlummerte liebt."[2]
So completely is this idea incorporated in the Romantic philosophy of life, that in Werner's drama, Die Kreuzesbrüder, the hero, immediately before he is led to the stake, says:—
"Den Neid verzeih' ich,
Die Trauer nicht.—O unaussprechlich schwelg' ich
In der Verwandlung Wonn', in dem Gefühl
Des schönen Opfertodes!—O mein Bruder!
Nicht wahr? es kommt die Zeit, we alle Menschen
Den Tod erkennen—freudig ihn umarmen,
Und fühlen werden, dass dies Leben nur
Der Liebe Ahnung ist, der Tod ihr Brautkuss,
Und sie, die mit der Inbrunst eines Gatten,
Im Brautgemach, uns vom Gewand entkleidet—
Verwesung, Gluterguss der Liebe ist!"[3]
Life and death are to Novalis only "relative ideas." The dead are half alive, the living half dead. It is this thought which in his case first gives zest to existence. In the first of his Hymns to Night he writes: "I turn to thee, holy, ineffable, mysterious Night! Far off lies the world, as if it had sunk into a deep grave; deserted and lonely is its place. My heart-strings vibrate with sorrow.... Dost thou find pleasure in us as we in thee, dark Night?... Costly balsam drips from thy hand, from thy poppy-sheaf. Thou unfoldest the heavy wings of the soul.... How poor, how childish seems the day, how joyful and blessed its departing!... More heavenly than those sparkling stars are the myriad eyes which Night opens in us. They see farther than the palest of those countless hosts; without the aid of light, they see into the depths of a loving soul, and its high places are filled with unspeakable rapture. Praised be the Queen of the earth, the august revealer of holy worlds, the guardian of blessed love! She sends me thee, my beloved, sweet sun of the night. Now I wake, for I am thine and mine. Thou hast proclaimed to me the life-giving gospel of Night, hast made of me a human being. Consume my body with the glowing flame of the spirit, that I may mingle yet more ethereally, yet more closely with thee, and the bridal-night be eternal."
One feels the feverish desire of the consumptive in this outburst. The parallel passage in Lucinde is: "O infinite longing! But a time is coming when the fruitless desire and vain delusions of the day will die away and disappear, and the great night of love bring eternal peace." The thoughts of these two Romantic lovers of the night meet in this idea of an eternal embrace.
In this enthusiasm for night lies the germ of religious mysticism. In the case of Justinus Kerner (which recalls that of Jung Stilling), bias towards the mysterious becomes belief in apparitions and fear of spirits. In certain of the writings of the later Romanticists, for instance in Achim von Arnim's Die schöne Isabella von Ægypten, half the characters are spirits. Mysticism is a fundamental element in the art of Clemens Brentano, even when he is at his best, and it gives charm and colour to his descriptions.
Novalis himself describes mysticism as voluptuousness—"ein wollüstiges Wesen." To understand this expression aright, we must study his hymns:—
"Hinüber wall' ich
Und jede Pein
Wird einst ein Stachel
Der Wollust sein.
Noch wenig Zeiten
So bin ich los,
Und liege trunken
Der Lieb' im Schoss."[4]