Page:Novalis Schriften - Volume 2.djvu/148

★ 138 ★ 109. Nothing is more poetic than remembrance and the anticipation or imagination of the future. The ideas of the past draw us towards death, toward flying away. The ideas of the future drive us toward enlivenment, toward embodying, toward an assimilative activity. Hence all memory is melancholy, all anticipation joyful. The former moderates an excess of liveliness, the later vivacity, the latter enhances a too-feeble sense of life. The ordinary present integrates past and future through constraints. Contiguity emerges, crystallization through consolidation. There is however a a spiritual present, which brings both into an identity through dissolution, and this mixture is the element, the atmosphere of the poet.

110. The human world is the organ of social relationships for the gods. Poetry unites them, like us.

111. What appears absolutely peaceful is that which is absolutely immovable with respect to the external world. As diverse as its changes may be, it always remains peaceful in relation to the external world. This principle applies to all self-modifications. That is why the beautiful appears so peaceful. Everything beautiful is a self-enlightened, complete individual.

112. Every human personality brings to life a unique budding in the viewer. This makes this perception endless, it is connected with the feeling of an inexhaustible power, and that is why it so absolutely enlivening. By looking at ourselves, we enliven ourselves.