WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Heimliche Hemlock: Fragments from Novalis: Pollen

Episode Date: March 19, 2025

Alexandra Comus and Ellia He discuss "Blüthenstaub" (Pollen), which are literary/philosophical fragments from Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenburg (AKA Novalis), one of the most well-known thinkers of the German Romantic movement. 

You're listening to Heimlicha Hemlock on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. Hello and welcome to the first episode of Heimlicha Hemlock, a podcast about romanticisms from different traditions, but mostly the German and the Greek ones. I'm your host, Alexandra Comis, and today I will be talking with Elie Aie He, a friend of mine, about Friedrich von Hardenberg, otherwise known as Novales's Blutenstab, which translates to pollen. So now I'm just going to go through some of these fragments. They read a lot like aphorisms, but just know that there are lots more of these little pieces of pollen, as it were. So we're only covering the top of the iceberg. Now, I want to direct us to the first little fragment.

It says we seek everywhere to the unconditioned and always find only the conditioned. Now, the footnote says the point of this aphorism rests upon an untranslatable German pun. So the German term, Das unbedincter, which is the unconditioned, means both what is not a thing

and was not conditioned. So it could be also translated as we seek everywhere, what is not a thing, and always find only things. So this is playing on the double meaning, and in doing this, Navares follows shelling.

So what do you think of this? I think it touches on that nature versus nurture question as well and that we can never fully be. Yeah, unnatural, I guess. Yeah, it's interesting. So we try to find things that are unconditionally true. And we just find phenomena in the world,

and I think that's what it means. So unbedincta, I should explain this word a bit better. It has the word within it ding, does ding. And that just means the thing. So we seek what is not just things and we find these things in the world, the phenomena. But in a way that's part of the romantic project, seeing things in the world and trying to extrapolate from that, what is meaningful. So I find that interesting. Now let's go to four.

It says an apprenticeship is for the poetical youth. A university education is for the film. education is for the philosophical. Universities should be completely philosophical institutions. There should only be one faculty, the whole establishment organized for the awakening and effective practice of a power to think. So I guess this gets at the question, what is meant by philosophy for the romantics? Because there's, he separates these two ideas of a university and an apprenticeship in terms of

education. and this education or outspildung is in the German tradition especially during this time a bit more than what we typically think of as what we learn in the education systems of today because the concept the Germans had back then was much more similar to the idea we have here at Hillsdale which is how to educate the whole human in a more hoistic manner rather than just learning a bunch of axioms. Yeah, so very liberally educated. Is this before like the German model of education came into being like the major...

The Prussian model? I think it's slightly before. That makes sense. I mean, it's even in the word universe, right? You want the unity of truth, right? And that makes a lot of sense that it's... The original intention is not to just train

people in perhaps technical skills, I guess, or technical occupations. It's a way of thinking. Yeah. I just find a very interesting, like, one faculty, and just focused on the power to think. Yeah, it's also very interesting because it would seem kind of antithetical to what I'd known previously about the romantics, thinking how they separate the apprenticeship from the university, because it would seem that in a lot of ways, the apprenticeship is more of a practical, you know, how do you live life, how do you have, how do you use certain skills that are

very goal-oriented, whereas it seems that philosophy for many romantics is something that is supposed to have practical applications and whatnot. But it seems that this does actually have a common thread with what is typically thought of as the romantic project. Because in these philosophies that are impractical, like in our recognition of what beautiful is, what it means for something to be beautiful, we're trying to find what is meaningful in what is typically deemed to be useless. Like for instance, you don't look at a rose and say, oh, I like that because I can use it for something. You just appreciate it aesthetically. Yeah. And almost trying to capture that beauty and like make it an acquisition, something that you can control and manipulate and use, almost

destroys the purpose of it. Absolutely. So yeah. Okay, what about six? We will never completely explain ourselves, but we will and can do more than explain ourselves. And the footnote says that Novalis is alluding here to Ficta's doctrine of intellectual intuition. So according to this doctrine, we have a direct intuition of ourselves as active intellectual beings, and this is a form of non-discursive knowledge that one can't explain. That is a very hopeful statement. Unpack that of it. What makes you say that? You know, I think in Alice and Wonderland, they're like, say what you mean and mean what you say. And you know, you can never fully do that.

But to have the idea that you can do more than explain yourself, like somehow get beyond that and get towards that goal, I guess that you're reaching towards in trying to completely explain yourself, but that you can kind of jump there and not be able fully to completely explain yourself. but you can get to a goal that is beyond that, that's very hopeful. Yeah, in life, sometimes it's astonishing that there's a beggaring of words that goes on whenever you experience something truly meaningful or impactful in some way. Yeah, and that's a very romantic idea.

It is. Although it is, it also is interesting to discuss that in terms of the Christian doctrine of what Logos is. Correct, yeah. And the Christian doctor, that the logos is made flesh and... Yeah. It becomes incarnated, which is like an experience past words. Yeah, because also, the words themselves live within time in a way, because they're conveyed, but there are sounds that are conveyed through a medium.

That is fascinating, right? Yeah, that even logos... I guess it depends if we're defining logos as strictly as the spoken word or thought rationality. Yeah. But I guess that's an interesting connection because like mortal flesh is like also finite in time. And so as words, like it's so dependent. So limited in a way, but also. Sometimes.

Yeah, it derives its being from this finite, transient. I guess. Yeah. So that there's something we should probably come back to eventually in a future iteration of this podcast. That is a fascinating student. They call that in the biz foreshadowing. Anyhow.

Yes. Ten caught my eye. Would you like to read it? Sure. Experience is the test of the rational, and conversely, the insufficiency of mirror theory in its application. about which the pragmatist frequently complains, has its counterpart in the rational application of mere experience.

This point has been observed clearly enough by genuine philosophers, though they are modest about the necessity of their success. The pragmatist rejects mere theory entirely without suspecting how problematic the answer will be to the question, is theory for the sake of its application or the application for the sake of the theory. Beautiful. So, yes, we have this two-sided coin here, experience and rationality. So I think what he's trying to say here is that theory is impotent without a testing in the real world. So for instance, you can have this perfect ideal of what a society should look like,

but then you try it and it ends up looking like the Soviet Union. Plato's Republic Yeah Or conversely you just go You know You decide You have a Calvin and Hobbs idea And decide to

Make yourself a little Toboggin And And you decide during the summer To go down a quiff on it May or may not work Yeah But then is theory

For the sake of its application Or the application for the second theory. Yeah, I guess we have this kind of dialectic here, where both and, I suppose, I'm not exactly sure, but it appears that way, because both are impotent without each other.

Exactly, and, yeah, there would be no reason to have an ideal if you didn't have, like, it's iterations in real time. All right, yeah. You're listening to Heimlike Hamlock on Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.7 FM. All right, let's go to 12. This one is really interesting, especially to talk about in terms of the Christian tradition.

Miracles alternate with natural effects. They limit one another reciprocally, and together form a whole. They are united in that they cancel one another. No miracle without a natural event, and conversely. So this made me think of the Eucharist and of the wedding in Canada as well because we have these spiritual realities

that are matching the physical so sometimes in the West especially we think of things that are either supernatural which by the word itself we can discern that this means that

it happens above the natural So like we don't, it's beyond it and we don't have a direct correlation between the two. And so you'll have one reality occurring without the other having any concordance with it. Whereas it seems that what Navalis is saying here is that you don't have this happening in a vacuum. You have the spiritual reality or the irrational. reality, I suppose. And then you have, what is in the physical world matching it. Yeah.

I find it a little puzzling odd in the statement, they are united in that to cancel one another. Yeah, that is really interesting. I don't view them typically as positive and negatives that cancel each other. It's like you have positive event and you have like a higher parallel. event that kind of transcends that. Yeah, definitely. That's a very, that's an apt thing to point out. Yeah, they limit one another reciprocally and together form a whole.

It's very almost eying and yang to me. Yeah, yeah. Orgelian, I suppose, were you, I mean, I was thinking, dualistic, maybe. Yeah, I was thinking with the last thing about experience and theory in the same way, where but in this case you have it even more starkly where the miracles and the natural effects kind of synthesize something that's not either of them

but it's a whole that is something I don't know would you say it's I'm not sure he would say it's better than the things in themselves but I suppose it's more the miracles and the natural effects aren't really intelligible without reference to this third thing they create. I think because living in the natural world, we're like, no, miracles are kind of like on a separate plane,

so it's not like we're on the same playing ground. They're like completely different worlds, but he's maybe saying that there is another world in which these are on the same playing ground and they are two parts of that larger hole. Yeah. That's interesting. Or perhaps he's speaking about this world

and saying that we see both things happening simultaneously. Right. Or we only see this side, but in our world it's actually both. Perhaps. Well, we do see both sides. We experience both, but we can only measure one empirically. Yeah. And I think Novalos talks about this elsewhere, where there's the Vistandlik, what you can study, and then there's the more spiritual realm or the religious, where we'll call it whatever you want. You experience things that are not necessarily. entirely rational, but they still affect you, like love or death or any number of things like that. Right. Yeah, and they are definitely not empirically measured.

Yeah, it also reminded me of a quote that romanticism has spilt religion. That's fascinating. I think it was meant as a bit of a dig at the Romantics. But it's not wrong. I agree, yeah. Awesome. All right, let's jump to 14. Life is the beginning of death.

Life is for the sake of death. Death is at the same time, an ending in a beginning, a parting in a closer reunion with the self. Through death, reduction is completed. Death is at the same time an ending in a beginning. This reminds me of a poem that does not quite come to me. mind right now. They will be kicking myself in 20 minutes. Through death, reduction is completed. So reduction, I think the footnote says from reduction, the processing of metal from ore,

purification. Interesting. I'm tempted to flip to the life and death. So death is the beginning of life. That is for the sake of life. Life is at the same time and ending in the end, the beginning, a party and closer reunion with the self. But he flips it and he says, life is the beginning of death. Exactly. Yeah, that interests me because both seem to be unintelligible without the other. If they're, I mean, we mean intelligibly, really. I wonder how he defines life, as in perhaps this mortal life.

Yes. As in a Christian worldview, we kind of view life as in the internal sense, perhaps. Yeah, you're right though in saying I mean this is so Heidegarian It seems that he flips it We certainly don't have time to unpack

How this is Heidegarian But I mean although you cannot comprehend One without the other And once again Intelligible Comprehensive Those are loose terms Because it doesn't seem that one can

Easily comprehend life or death really But But they definitely aid in, I guess, nuisance each other in some way. Yeah. Or capping each other, rather. It's weird because it's almost like, you can't get more black and white than that,

but at the same time, where they touch each other is a very pivotal moment. Yeah. All right. We have time for one more. 16. I had to do this one. Fantasy puts the future world

either in the heights or in the depths or in a med of psychosis to us. We dream, of a journey through the universe. But is the universe then not in us? We do not know the depths of our spirit. In word goes the secret path. Eternity with its worlds, the past and the future, is in us or nowhere. The eternal world is in the shadow world, casting its shadows into the world of light. Now it seems to us so dark within, so lonely and chaotic. But how different it will seem to us when this eclips is past and the shadow is removed.

We will enjoy ourselves more than ever, for our spirit has suffered such deprivation. Wow. Lovely. That is lovely. Yeah, I mean, it's just like written CS Lewis shadow lands all over. And this is a translation.

Wow, you've hit something golden with. When the translation is that beautiful. The German Romantics, man. We dream of a journey through the universe, but is the universe then not in us? Yeah. Yeah, that's so romantic. Such a romantic sentiment indeed.

Yeah, because through contemplating the universe, we find, they believe that we find the commonality between us and the outer world. Because we are intrinsically connected to this. We are both nature and spirit. And it's not like you can divorce the spirit from the nature in the romantics, really, because the spirit arises from nature for those of you who are interested that's there's a whole

strain of thought that happened in the 1790s called Natura philosophy that goes into this but anyway that's about all we have time for thank you you're listening to

I'm like a hemlock on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM