Henry of Ofterdingen

Henry of Ofterdingen is a romance translated from the German of Novalis. The advertisement says that the present translation is made from the edition of Tieck and Schlegel. Novalis lived for a long time in a lonely place in the golden meadow of Thuringia, at the foot of the Kyffhauser mountain, and in this solitude wrote a great part of Henry of Ofterdingen.

In the year 1800, Novalis was again at Weissenfels, whence, on the 23d of February, he wrote to Tieck that his Romance is getting along finely and will consist of two parts. The Hermit says of a manuscript that, as far as he recollects, it is a romance relating the wonderful fortune of a poet's life, wherein the art of poesy is represented and extolled in all its various relations, and that the conclusion is wanting. German character and German history are explained, and Henry converses with the emperor concerning government and the empire, with obscure hints of America and the Indies.