Características técnicas del objeto a electrificar

The personal travails undergone by Novalis in the years immediately preceding the publication of “Hymns to the Night” are well-known and need little elaboration. In March, 1797, less than two months before the poet‟s twenty-sixth birthday, his young fiancée, Sophie von Kühn, tragically succumbed to tuberculosis. Sadly, the experience of losing her would not cease, for the remaining four years of his life, to haunt both him and his work. Several weeks after her death, whilst visiting Sophie‟s grave, we are told that Novalis underwent an epiphanic mystical experience in which “the immortal entelechy of his betrothed…became his guide in the supersensible worlds that were revealed to him.”100 From this point on, the physical world

apparently evinced little allure for him and the painful contingencies of everyday life found themselves overshadowed, literally, by the promise of an eternal reconciliation with his beloved. As Novalis writes, in the following excerpt, the vision of mystical transcendence coalesced around none other than the salvific and sanctifying image of the night:

99 The completed text of “Hymns to the Night” was published in the literary journal Athenaeum in August, 1800.

100 Sergei O. Prokofieff. Foreword. Hymns to the Night & Spiritual Songs. Translated by George MacDonald. London: Temple Lodge, 1992. 2.

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“Once when I was shedding bitter tears, when, dissolved in pain, my hope was melting away, and I stood alone by the barren hillock which in its narrow dark bosom hid the vanished form of my Life, lonely as never yet was lonely man, driven by anguish unspeakable [unsäglicher Angst], powerless [kraftlos], and immersed in conscious misery; there I looked about me for help, unable to go on or to turn back, and clung to the fleeting, extinguished life [verlöschten Leben] with an endless longing [unendlicher Sehnsucht]; then, out of the blue distances [Fernen], from the hills of my ancient bliss, came a shiver of twilight and at once snapt the bond of birth, the fetter of the Light. Away fled the glory of the world, and with it my mourning; the sadness flowed together into a new, unfathomable world. Thou, soul of the Night, heavenly Slumber, didst come upon me…and ever since I hold fast an eternal, unchangeable faith in the heaven of the Night, and its sun, the Beloved [die Geliebte].”101

Immediately discernable, within this passage, is the dramatic ascendency of a certain teleological principle which seeks to express itself through Novalis‟ explicit glorification of consummatory release.102 Powerless [kraftlos] in the face of a spatio-

temporal distance which extenuates itself indefinitely, and filled with endless longing

[unendlicher Sehnsucht] for an amorous object beyond his reach, the poetic speaker

suddenly finds himself fortuitously enveloped by twilight. In the midst of this “everlasting [zeitlos] and boundless [raumlos]… dominion of the Night,”103 the

scenography of distanciation is mercifully suspended. Here, in this saturating and immersive darkness, the lover and his domina are unified at last, brought together in the abiding restfulness of eternal, unmediated presence. Space and time, amidst this billowy darkness, lose all traction: the principium individuationis is overthrown.104

101 Novalis. Hymns to the Night & Spiritual Songs. Translated by George MacDonald. London: Temple Lodge, 1992. 12.

102 According to BruceHaywood, the “Hymns to the Night” evoke a “fervent longing for mystic union…expressed in boldly erotic imagery that suggests the vaporous commingling of the lovers in an eternity of passionate embrace…” Novalis: The Veil of Imagery. Gravenhage: Mouton, 1959. 57.

103 “Hymns to the Night.” 11.

104 To yearn for the ultimate is to yearn for noumenal. For a compelling account of Novalis‟ revaluation of Isis symbolism in “The Hymns to the Night,” see Chapter 7 of Kristin Pfefferkorn‟s Novalis: A Romantic’s Theory of Language and Poetry. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988.

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All that remains is the unending, consummatory bliss of two lovers finally intermingling as one within a domain where “light no more scares away Night and Love…”105

Having prioritised, in this manner, the notion of a redemptive and reconciliatory darkness, it is crucial to emphasise that Novalis, like Wagner‟s Tristan, increasingly finds himself adopting the rhetoric of an unmistakable asceticism and world- weariness. In the midst of the night, “the word is void [leer].”106 Indeed, nowhere is

this theme more prominent than in the section entitled “Sehnsucht nach dem Tode,” where Novalis writes: “I feel in me a celestial exhaustion [Müdigkeit]…Long [Weit] and weariful [ermüdend] was my pilgrimage to the holy grave, and crushing was the cross.”107 What, we might ask, is this arduous path which, having been traversed, has

exhausted the speaker of all his strength? It is, of course, none other than the Via Dolorosa of life itself, lived in forbearance and deprivation, punctuated by unbridgeable distances and inexorable deferrals. As long as the promise of consummatory release is continually forestalled, the grieving lover can do nothing to restrain his desperate cry: “Must the morning always return [wiederkommen]? Will the despotism of the earthly never cease…Will the time never come when Love‟s hidden sacrifice shall burn eternally?”108

The solution to this affliction, both for Novalis and Wagner‟s Tristan, lies within the incomparable succour of twilight, which banishes the world to oblivion, restoring the primordial unity of all things. It attenuates the everlasting return of insatiable longing, assuaging the agony of interminable postponement which characterises life within the world of daylight. Understood in these terms, the spirit of profound adulation with which Novalis addresses the night becomes understandable. “In this sorrow-laden life [Schattenleben], I desire only thee,” the poet writes, “in thee I hope for healing [genesen], in thee I expect true rest.”109 This account of reconciliation in

transcendence, with its emphasis upon the exoneration of life by the redeeming

105 “Hymns to the Night.” 13.

106 Ibid. 23.

107 “Hymns to the Night.” 13. 108 Ibid. 11.

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powers of death, dates back, with minor variations, to Anaximander,110 whilst

receiving undoubtedly its most comprehensive presentation (as we have already mentioned) in the works of Schopenhauer.111 It is symptomatic, according to

Nietzsche, of a passive nihilism which afflicts debilitated and despondent life-forms, seducing them with the promise of a consummate and enduring release from the torments of existence.

One can only imagine the immensity of sorrow which would have compelled Novalis, in the aftermath of Sophie‟s death, to seek, with such blind passion, this immersion within the nocturnal element. What is clear, however, is that the night constitutes, for Novalis, a symbol par excellence for all that is holy [heiligen], unspeakable [unaussprechlichen], and mysterious [geheimnisvollen]112 – it suggests the

overcoming of all metaphysical oppositions and the attenuation of yearning [Sehnsucht]. It evokes, in other words, the consummatory (or teleological) ideal‟s triumph over the cruel regimen of incessant deferral and distanciation which had characterised the relentless luminosity of the day. If human existence is commensurate with endless suffering and the impossibility of attaining ultimate release, then it is only through the salvific intervention of the night that an antidote to this torment may be found.

Returning to the Tristanian scenography, we now find ourselves in a position to appreciate more fully the preponderance of luminous and nocturnal imagery which Wagner elects to deploy. Insofar as the amorous couple are made to endure “the sun‟s scorching beams”113 and “the devouring heat of the glow,”114 they suffer the

torment of unbridgeable distances and inevitable postponements. They remain relegated, moreover, to the cruel irreducibility of their own spatio-temporal individuation within a world of mere semblances and signifiers. So many words, because I can’t touch you – goes the lovers‟ lament. And yet, in every case, the

110 For Anaximander, “existence becomes…a moral phenomenon…It is not justified, but expiates itself forever through its passing.” Friedrich Nietzsche. Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks. Translated by Marianne Cowan. Chicago: Regnery Gateway, 1962. 49.

111 Cf. “On the Doctrine of the Denial of the Will-to-Live” in The World as Will and Representation. In this chapter, Schopenhauer

writes that man‟s “original sin…is in fact the affirmation of the will-to-live; on the other hand, the denial of this will…is salvation.” Arthur Schopenhauer. The World as Will and Representation, Volume II. Translated by E.F.J. Payne. New York: Dover Publications, 1958. 608.

112 “Hymns to the Night.” 9. 113 Act III, Scene 1.

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inexorable persistence of the signifying chain (and the distance it presupposes) induces a malaise which can be attenuated only through the intervention of the signified and the re-emergence of the primordial whole.115 Not unlike the ancient

Romans who adorned their tombstones with the words “Securitati perpetuae” and “Bonae quieti,”116 Tristan and Isolde invariably end up seduced by the promise of

eternal repose and fulfilment, preferring to will even nothingness rather than endure the indefinite prolongation of what Proust will call the “incurable malady”117 of erotic

love.

As a result, we find Tristan, in each of the opera‟s three acts, “deliberately seeking death”118 as a means of gaining release from the atopia of despondency. “Sehnen!

Sehnen!” he exclaims in Act III, “To yearn! To yearn! What never dies [nie erstirbt] now calls, yearning, to the distant physician for the peace of death [sterbens Ruh].”119

This yearning for the peace of death profoundly echoes the spirit of adulation with which Novalis, in the following lines, had earlier apostrophised the night: “In this sorrow-laden life [Schattenleben], I desire only thee…in thee I hope for healing [genesen], in thee I expect true rest.”120 Indeed, within this semiotic of latent world-

weariness, the “long-awaited restoration [selige Rückkehr]”121 which is sought can

only be granted through the succour of twilight which banishes the world to oblivion, negating earthly existence once and for all. In this state of absolute Verklärung, the inexorable postponements and delays which characterise the courtly scenography are terminated at last.122 The consummatory fantasy par excellence may finally be

realised: two lovers, “heart to heart [Herz an Herz], lip to lip…bound together in a single breath.”123 _{A fantasy whose evocative force remains supreme.}

115 Consider Lacan‟s claim that “the subject…suffers from the signifier.” The Ethics of Psychoanalysis 1959-1960. 143.

116 The World as Will and Representation: Volume I. 492.

117 Marcel Proust. The Captive. Translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff & Terence Kilmartin. New York: Random House, 1997. 105.

118 “First when he accepts what he believes to be death in the cup Isolde proffers him, then when he lowers his own sword before the

thrust of Melot‟s, and finally at the end of the dramawhen he tears the bandages from his wounds and dies in her arms.” Wagner Nights. 248.

119 Act III, Scene 1.

120 “Hymns to the Night.” 20.

121 Ibid. 14.

122 It is important to remember that in the early sketches of Tristan and Isolde the lovers‟ death-scene, the so-called Liebestod, was

actually entitled Verklärung, or “Transfiguration.” Wagner Nights. 218.

123

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