Page:Novalis Schriften - Volume 1.djvu/50

★ XL ★ to this edition

The work of Novalis lies here more complete than in previous editions and also in a new arrangement.

Hopefully, the latter will speak for itself at first glance. It should especially benefit the poetry, which is no longer a disorganized heap, too casually thrown together into ad-hoc groups. I have refrained from giving a special place to the juvenile poetry, as the content organizes itself periodically. One will want to keep in mind that the first three sections (Hymns, Spiritual Songs, Ofterdingen) are complete, but in the sections that follow only three or four of the last poems (which stand out so clearly from the preceding ones that pointing them out would be superfluous) belong to the time of his maturity. Caution is also advised wherever I wrote the heading "Paralipomena", as not only his thoughts, also his poetic motifs have migrated from one work to another.

Naturally, the text of the poem is not based on the concepts of the poet, especially the final versions. In general, the text of the current edition is not just the handwritten one, but also the printed tradition has been consulted more fully before. The two volumes of Ofterdingen are not just the Berlin paper, it especially benefits from the Weimar handwritten manuscript (a