THE WAY OF NOVALIS
O’Meara’s shift to his study on Novalis, published in 2014, marked a transition from the first half of his writing career to the second half. Shakespeare would remain very much in the picture as an associated author (as witness the publication of Remembering Shakespeare in 2016), but O’Meara’s direction from here would lead him, progressively, more deeply into the Sophia-theme, and also back to Modernity as witness his comprehensive study of Rilke which was eventually put out in 2023 (see the page for this book below). There is, in addition, the author’s deep focus in his Rilke study on the further extensive association of Rilke with Novalis whose inspiration Rilke found himself contending with through much of his life and work, if not explicitly at the level of the Sophia-theme (see the Rilke page for more on this.)
from The Bereaved Writer (see the page for this memoir below):
“As destiny would have it, I was able to find the imaginative space to produce, at last, the full-length study on Novalis that I had so hoped to get around to over so many years. My Novalis study was still more of an expression of my general preoccupation with the theme of the Mother. She makes a decidedly dramatic appearance in Novalis’s Hymns to the Night as the final justification of his own tragic experience.”
The author's comment:
“Here is the profound motif of immersion in the tragic death of the beloved perfected in one direction, just as Shakespeare had perfected this motif in another direction...”
O’Meara’s main concern from the first had always been “with what we can think possible as a form of breakthrough into a visionary otherworld, especially as regards an objectively particular revelation that may be bestowed from such a world or the prospect of an actual otherworldly justification of our human experience, and this in spite of the continued effects of human tragedy ...” (see “A Word from the Author” above).
downloadable at https://independent.academia.edu/JohnOMeara5
and on Google Books at
https://www.google.ca/books/edition/The_Way_of_Novalis/ARMDAwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0
“a studied, intellectually probing, soulfully queried endeavor to reveal for our time—through a new look into the life and works and poetic writings of the German Romantic poet, Novalis—a way forward … toward attaining a reconnection with the spiritual world”. {Lacquanna Paul, from the newsletter of the Sophia Foundation, Starlight, vol. 14, no. 1, Spring 2014}.
“this book is a wonderful deepening into the life, poetry, and being of Novalis … a great contribution to the English-speaking world, to the literature about Novalis and his poetry and literary works ...
... [Novalis's] devotion to Sophia comes to expression implicitly in his life and work ... As John O'Meara indicated to me in a private communication: 'of course the link through the tragic death of his beloved Sophie to the Mother, as Novalis calls the Sophia, is a climactic experience in the spiritual progress he was able to make.' ” {Robert Powell, author of The Most Holy Trinosophia, and co-founder of the Sophia Foundation}
[Also available at a University library near you, or through Interlibrary University loan.]
Endorsements:
“O'Meara is to be commended for his grasp of the philosophical questions that profoundly motivated Novalis and for his ability to integrate Novalis's life and thought into one narrative.” {Bernhard Radloff, from a book review in Studies in Romanticism, Vol.55, no.4, Winter 2016}
“A deeply personal, artistic and original meditation on that unique and living fusing of philosophy and poetry in the writings and biographical path of Friedrich von Hardenberg (Novalis).” {David W. Wood, editor and translator of Novalis: Notes for a Romantic Encyclopaedia}