The author advanced no farther in the composition of this second part, which he called "The Fulfilment," as he had called the first "The Expectation," because all that was left to anticipation in the latter was explained and fulfilled in the former. It was the design of the author to write, after the completion of Ofterdingen, six romances for the statement of his views of physical science, civil life, commerce, history, political science, and of love; as his views of poetry had been given in Ofterdingen. I need not remind the intelligent reader, that the author in this poem has not adhered very closely to the time or the person of that well known Minnesinger, though every part brings him and his time to remembrance. It is an irreparable loss, not only to the friends of the author, but to the art itself, that he could not have finished this romance, the originality and great design of which would have been better developed in the second than in the first part. For it was by no means his object to represent this or that occurrence, to embrace one side of poetry, and explain it by figures and narrative; but it was his intention, as is plain from the last chapter of the first part, to express the real essence of poetry and explain its inmost aim.
To this end nature, history, war, and civil life, with their usual events, are all transformed to poetry, as that is the spirit which animates all things.
I shall endeavor as far as possible, from my memory of conversations with my friend, and from what I can discover in the papers he has left, to give the reader some idea of the plan and subject-matter of the second part of this work.
To the poet, who has apprehended the essence of his art at its central point, nothing appears contradictory or strange; to him all riddles are solved. By the magic of fancy he can unite all ages and all worlds; wonders vanish, and all things change to wonders. So is this book written; and the reader will find the boldest combinations, particularly in the tale which closes the first part. Here are renewed all those differences by which ages seem separated, and hostile worlds meet each other. The poet wished particularly to make this tale the transition-point to the second part, in which the narrative soars from the common to the marvellous, and both are mutually explained and restored; the spirit of the prologue in verse should return at each chapter, and this state of mind, this wonderful view of things should be permanent. By this means the invisible world remains in eternal connexion with the visible. This speaking spirit is poetry itself; but at the same time the sidereal man who is born from the love of Henry and Matilda. In the following lines, which should have their place in Ofterdingen, the author has expressed in the simplest manner the interior spirit of his works:
When marks and figures cease to be
For every creature's thoughts the key,
When they will even kiss or sing
Beyond the sage's reckoning,
When life, to Freedom will attain,
And Freedom in creation reign,