'Die poesie des unendlichen': Novalis and the mathematics of redemption

Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg) shared with other members of the German Romantic movement a "yearning for the infinite" in its various forms: a moralized nature and a naturalized morality, a golden age based on a new political order, and a restitution of all that time had taken away. Unlike most of his fellow writers, however, Novalis also had technical training in mathematics, which, at the time, was facing a crisis of foundations over such questions as whether an infinite series ever reached its sum or whether one could rigorously prove that parallel lines never meet. In his philosophical and literary works, Novalis brings together these humanistic and scientific concerns using contemporary mathematical discourse--precisely in its unsettled state--to create a poetics based upon the paradoxical notion of attaining the infinite.;Following an investigation of competing theories of the mathematical infinite in post-Kantian philosophy, I show that Novalis focuses on the fact that no one theory can rigorously derive all aspects of the infinite necessary for its use in calculus, and hence that all such theories are always dual and paradoxical. In the Allgemeine Brouillon, Novalis applies such a mathematical theory of the "curved line" to the structure of time. This theory of temporality appears in his historical investigations, autobiographical comments, and literary works as the motif of "turning," which represents the intrusion of a backwards temporality (of chance, teleology, or Nachtraglichkeit) into the forward flow of narrative or scientifically deterministic time. These turnings, according to the mathematical image of the infinite circle, which is at once an infinite journey away from and back to an origin, point to an inexplicable but necessary telos, which is poetically inscribed (in the form of a Marchen) as the theme of the "Aufhebung der Zeit." In opposition to claims made in recent "deconstructive" readings, I show that Novalis, anchored by his analysis of the contemporary situation of mathematics, insists upon the possibility of an end to an infinite progression, even if it is impossible to conceive of it rationally, and argues for the necessity of practical belief in such an ending.