Romantic “Nostalgia”

“Fragment” was the main method of Novalis’ philosophical thinking and analyzing.Novalis’ works of fragment were filled with his romantic poetics, philosophical thinking,religion meditation and even the universal concern for human beings, and all of these were rooted in the aesthetic keynote of his fragments: “nostalgia”.This thesis aims at completely analyzing the the cause of, the way of and the purpose for overcoming the romantic “nostalgia” in Novalis’ fragments, thus going further in analyzing the theme of Novalis’ fragments that human are faced with the tragic destiny to constantly seek for homeland and return to the original self but could never make it. And then, this thesis comes to the conclusion that Novalis’ romanticism means mysticism that includes a “personal God” or “romanticized Cosmos”, and for Novalis, as with Plato’s thought that the “Idea” referred to the “Real Substance”, the word“romantic” had the same meaning with those like “original”, “really substantial” and“existential”; and since Novalis thought that the careful study into beings made people romanticists, then his romanticism could be equated with existentialism, and the“nostalgia” in his fragments became a kind of aesthetics of existence, meaning to realize life harmony and unity through God.Novalis was a poet who placed God in his heart and sought for the way to return the homeland all his life, and the “nostalgia” expressed in his fragments refers to the spiritual pursuit of returning to God’s asylum and of the poetic co-existence of human and God.The pursuing after the universal spiritual homeland that transcends time and space, which is the instinct and foreordination of mankind, will always be a process and human could never ever make it. However, this does not mean that the pursuing make no sense at all,because, on the one hand, the pursuing itself can lead human come close their primordial and authentic nature little by little, and on the other hand, every being that pursues after the Ich is a constantly perfecting one, which is therefore the paradise and homeland of human soul.