Hymns to the Night

Novalis’ Hymns to the Night is not only one of the seminal documents of German Romanticism as well as of modern poetry and poetic experimentation, it is also one of the landmarks of Sophiology. The poem, which shifts from poetic forms to prose, from biography to the realm of the spirit, and from the historical to the transcendent, discloses to the reader a world ever new, as the poet plumbs the depths of poetic inspiration and touches divinity. 

Mabel Cotterell’s translation is sensitive both to Novalis’s poetics and to his mysticism, the ideal translator of his work. She captures the exquisite artistry and startling freshness of Novalis’s words in language filled with grace and light.