Translation:Writings of Novalis/Paralipomena of Pollen-From the Second Issue of the Athenaeum
Paralipomena of Pollen
1
From the second issue of the Athenaeum
115. When a person can get no further, he helps himself with an authoritative word or a authoritative action,—a quick decision.
116. One who seeks, will doubt. Genius states so boldly and certainly what it sees happening within itself because it not biased by its own representation and the representation does not bias it either, especially when the one contemplating and that which is being contemplated are freely attuned to one another, seeming to freely unite in one work.
When we speak of the outside world, when we truly describe objects, are proceeding like the genius.
Without ingeniousness we do not exist at all. Genius is necessary for everything. what one ordinarily calls genius, is but the genius of genius.
117. Spirit leads to eternal self-confidence.
118. The transcendental point of view for this life awaits us. Then will we first understand it truly.
119. The life of a truly canonical person must be continuously symbolic. If this were not so, every death would not be a death of atonement. More or less, this is understood; and doesn't this allow more remarkable conclusions to be drawn forth?
120. I can only show I have understood a writer, when I can act in his spirit; when I can interpret and transform him in a variety of ways without detracting from his individuality.
121. We are almost awake when we dream that we are dreaming.
122. Truly sociable wit is without wisecracks. There is a kind of wit that is only the magical play of colors in the higher spheres.
123. Fullness of spirit is that wherein the spirit unceasingly reveals itself, less often still when it reappears in a different form; not just once, as at the beginning, as with many philosophical systems.
124. There are Germans everywhere. Like being Roman, Greek, or British, being German has very little to do with being confined to a particular nation; it is a general human trait, that only here and there has become particularly common. Germanness is true popularity, and therefore an ideal.
125. Death is conquest of the self,— it, like all self-overcoming, provides a new, lighter existence.
126. Is that why perhaps we therefore require so much strength and effort for the ordinary and the common, while for the true person nothing is ordinary, nothing is common, except impoverished ordinariness.
127. Ingenious subtlety is the subtle application of subtlety.
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