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Review
‘An enchanting novel about heart, body and mind. The writing is ellipitical and witty… so that what could be a sad little love story is constantly funny and always absorbing. This novel is a jewel.’ Carmen Callil, Daily Telegraph
‘Her sense of time and place is marvellously deft, done in a few words. She knows how they all walked, eased their old joints. She knows the damp smell of decay of the ancient schlosses. In a bare little book she reveals a country and an age as lost as Tolstoy’s Russia and which we seem somehow always to have known.’ Jane Gardam, Spectator
‘Detail, expertly dabbed in, provides a substantial background for the story of a poet which, it is subtly suggested, is also the story of a remarkable moment in the history of civilisation… It is hard to see how the hopes and defeats of Romanticism, or the relation between inspiration and common life, between genius and mere worthiness, could be more deftly rendered than they are in this remarkable novel.’ Frank Kermode, LRB
‘A minor miracle of sympathy and crispness.’ Adam Mars-Jones, Guardian
‘An extraordinary imagining… An original masterpiece.’ Hermione Lee, Financial Times
‘A novel in which the unsaid speaks: it is a masterpiece.’ Candia McWilliam
‘A masterpiece. How does she do it?’ A.S. Byatt
‘A magical little book.’ Doris Lessing
Product Description
Penelope Fitzgerald’s final masterpiece.
Set in Germany at the very end of the eighteenth century, The Blue Flower is the story of the brilliant Fritz von Hardenberg, a graduate of the Universities of Jena, Leipzig and Wittenberg, learned in Dialectics and Mathematics, who later became the great romantic poet and philosopher Novalis. The passionate and idealistic Fritz needs his father’s permission to announce his engagement to his ‘heart’s heart’, his ‘true Philosophy’, twelve-year-old Sophie von Kuhn. It is a betrothal which amuses, astounds and disturbs his family and friends. How can it be so?
One of the most admired of all Penelope Fitzgerald’s books, The Blue Flower was chosen as Book of the Year more than any other in 1995. Her final book, it confirmed her reputation as one of the finest novelists of the century.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I read somewhere that this book was singled out by many on Booker Prize panels as one that got away. It shouldn't have.
The story is a fictionalized account of the romantic poet Novalis's (Friedrich von Hardenberg) early life. Set in Goethe's time, Friedrich is on the move between towns and opinions, a string of temporary moments which eventually hang together to delineate a young life. By this means he constructs a view of the world. It is also a quite beautiful love story. I wont give anything away, but suffice to say that knowing it is based on true lives increase its poignancy.
The sense of place and the realisation of her characters are extraordinary in that it's done by sleight of hand - it's magic. A few sentences and we have a complete sense about a person. Fitzgerald's economy must leave even the most experienced writers envious.
The writing is good, but it's the kind of writing which takes a while to seep in. She assembles words together, as one might gather clouds: suddenly one sees shape or rhythm, or senses hope and despair. Then they are gone again. But her workings seem invisible - the reader just goes along for the ride. Only when I put the book down, did I see how invisibly she had got me there.
Penelope Fitzgerald is a magician - not in a fantastical way, not by way of extraordinary imagination either, but by her arms-length directing and by the dainty writing which conjures out of old German soil a breathing geography and its people. Highly recommended.
The story is a fictionalized account of the romantic poet Novalis's (Friedrich von Hardenberg) early life. Set in Goethe's time, Friedrich is on the move between towns and opinions, a string of temporary moments which eventually hang together to delineate a young life. By this means he constructs a view of the world. It is also a quite beautiful love story. I wont give anything away, but suffice to say that knowing it is based on true lives increase its poignancy.
The sense of place and the realisation of her characters are extraordinary in that it's done by sleight of hand - it's magic. A few sentences and we have a complete sense about a person. Fitzgerald's economy must leave even the most experienced writers envious.
The writing is good, but it's the kind of writing which takes a while to seep in. She assembles words together, as one might gather clouds: suddenly one sees shape or rhythm, or senses hope and despair. Then they are gone again. But her workings seem invisible - the reader just goes along for the ride. Only when I put the book down, did I see how invisibly she had got me there.
Penelope Fitzgerald is a magician - not in a fantastical way, not by way of extraordinary imagination either, but by her arms-length directing and by the dainty writing which conjures out of old German soil a breathing geography and its people. Highly recommended.
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
How does she do it? asks A S Byatt in her review of this delightful work. Well, I for one don't know. Somehow Penelope Fitzgerald managed to take simple stories and deliver them so elegantly and intelligently, and with such unpretentious facility, that the reader becomes enchanted and captivated. These are the qualities of a modern day Jane Austen. In this concise historical novel she fictionalises the early life of the brilliant Friedrich von Hardenberg - before he becomes the renowned German Romantic poet/philosopher Novalis - and his inexplicable love for a rather silly twelve year old girl. It is a tale of deep and sincere love somehow portrayed without any sex scenes, without even a single kiss or description of physical contact. What novelist today could achieve that?
Unlike the novels of A S Byatt, for example, where the historical details are voluminous, in the Blue Flower they are present but unobtrusive and the reader effortlessly finds him/herself transported to eighteenth-century Saxony. This novel was selected as the `Book of the Year' more often that any other in 1995, including by A S Byatt herself and Doris Lessing; praise indeed. Sadly, Penelope Fitzgerald died in 2000, five years after its publication. I can safely recommend this book to anyone, whether they are literary minded or prefer populist works.
Unlike the novels of A S Byatt, for example, where the historical details are voluminous, in the Blue Flower they are present but unobtrusive and the reader effortlessly finds him/herself transported to eighteenth-century Saxony. This novel was selected as the `Book of the Year' more often that any other in 1995, including by A S Byatt herself and Doris Lessing; praise indeed. Sadly, Penelope Fitzgerald died in 2000, five years after its publication. I can safely recommend this book to anyone, whether they are literary minded or prefer populist works.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This has been my first Fitzgerald novel and the story's topic intrigued me more than anything else. Novalis, Friedrich von Hardenberg's pen name, under which he became famous for his poetic and philosophical work at the end of the eighteenth century, has been a household name since high school. Yet, I knew little about the man himself or the early German Romantic writers and thinkers at that time. With THE BLUE FLOWER Fitzgerald has made an important contribution to the literature on Novalis by creating a vivid portrait of the young von Hardenberg as he lived through a decisive period of his personal life which also saw him imagine "the blue flower" that became the central symbol of Romanticism from then on. *)
Central to the novel as well as to the man himself was his dramatic falling in love, at the age of twenty two with a twelve year old girl, Sophie von Kühn. Von Hardenberg, was already then a brilliant student of many subjects ranging from mathematics to biology, from literature and philosophy. Sophie, on the other hand, was a precocious child, "of ordinary looks", without interest or promise in any of these fields. The unlikely match between the two, in terms of age difference, personalities and social status is expertly described by Fitzgerald and the different modes of the young man's romantic obsession evoked. Livening the intimate and detailed, yet detached observations of the omniscient narrator with frequent lively dialog between the young hero and different close family members and other associates on all sides connected to either of the young lovers, the author also conveys a realistic sense their wider social circles.
Based on extensive research into von Hardenberg and his close family, using his writing, pertinent correspondence and diaries, official and private documents, Fitzgerald has not only realistically recreated his young adult years against a difficult family background, but also supplied us with glimpses into a politically and intellectually fascinating period of German (Prussian) history. At cultural centres such as Jena, young von Hardenberg encountered no lesser than Goethe, Schiller, Schlegel and other literary and philosophical greats of the time.
Fitzgerald makes THE BLUE FLOWER and interesting and intriguing book to read, in particular for readers with familiarity of the wider contexts, both in terms of philosophy and social politics or willing to explore these themes further. As a stand alone novel, without the reader's knowledge of the time, it is not totally successful in my opinion. To derive full satisfaction the many insinuations and oblique references would have to be either better developed into the background, or the novel completely built as fiction without any intention to veracity and authenticity. [Friederike Knabe]
*) Novalis died at the age of 29 in 1801.
Central to the novel as well as to the man himself was his dramatic falling in love, at the age of twenty two with a twelve year old girl, Sophie von Kühn. Von Hardenberg, was already then a brilliant student of many subjects ranging from mathematics to biology, from literature and philosophy. Sophie, on the other hand, was a precocious child, "of ordinary looks", without interest or promise in any of these fields. The unlikely match between the two, in terms of age difference, personalities and social status is expertly described by Fitzgerald and the different modes of the young man's romantic obsession evoked. Livening the intimate and detailed, yet detached observations of the omniscient narrator with frequent lively dialog between the young hero and different close family members and other associates on all sides connected to either of the young lovers, the author also conveys a realistic sense their wider social circles.
Based on extensive research into von Hardenberg and his close family, using his writing, pertinent correspondence and diaries, official and private documents, Fitzgerald has not only realistically recreated his young adult years against a difficult family background, but also supplied us with glimpses into a politically and intellectually fascinating period of German (Prussian) history. At cultural centres such as Jena, young von Hardenberg encountered no lesser than Goethe, Schiller, Schlegel and other literary and philosophical greats of the time.
Fitzgerald makes THE BLUE FLOWER and interesting and intriguing book to read, in particular for readers with familiarity of the wider contexts, both in terms of philosophy and social politics or willing to explore these themes further. As a stand alone novel, without the reader's knowledge of the time, it is not totally successful in my opinion. To derive full satisfaction the many insinuations and oblique references would have to be either better developed into the background, or the novel completely built as fiction without any intention to veracity and authenticity. [Friederike Knabe]
*) Novalis died at the age of 29 in 1801.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Beautiful and Haunting
A wonderful fictionalized account of the youth and the first love of Friedrich von Hardenburg (the visionary poet Novalis). Read more
Published 4 months ago by Kate Hopkins
Perfection
What an extraordinary novel this is. Fitzgerald's final, and possibly finest, work, though I have a serious soft spot for The Beginning of Spring (Flamingo). Read more
Published 6 months ago by Joe Mall
Underwhelming
I won't bore you with my interpretation of the plot, that's for a discussion group. Should you buy the novel? I hope my opinion helps you decide. Read more
Published 8 months ago by S. Pollard
A blooming gem
The Blue Flower is a small gem of a novel, based on the early life of the German poet Novalis. Symbolic of Inspiration, the blue flower stands for desire, love and romantic... Read more
Published 11 months ago by Heleneveready
The Blue Flower - a Review
Written in a gently comic style. Almost every character,and even the hero's horse,has a host of amusing characteristics. Read more
Published 19 months ago
The Blue Flower Penelope Fitzgerald
I ordered this novel as a friend had mentioned it to me as a possible title for our Reading Group. I had read other books by Penelope Fitzgerald and enjoyed them. Read more
Published 22 months ago by Dodie
She doesnt hand this one to you
"I have remained true to my deepest convictions, I mean to the courage of those who are born to be defeated, the weaknesses of the strong, and the tragedy of misunderstandings... Read more
Published on 28 Nov 2002 by taking a rest
A surprisingly enjoyable, thought-provoking read
Not the type of book I would normally read, I picked up Penelope Fitzgerald's The Blue Flower rather reluctantly, since it was recommended by my local book club. Read more
Published on 26 Jan 2001
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