from “A Word from the Author”
“[My] concern has to do with what we can think is 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 ...”
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.]
The author's comment:
“Here is the profound motif of the tragic death of the beloved perfected in one direction, just as Shakespeare had perfected this motif in another direction...”
[For Shakespeare, see Othello's Sacrifice, and Prospero's Powers, reprinted in Remembering Shakespeare.]
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}
from Chapter 9/Coming into the Visionary Life
(view with link below)
https://issuu.com/johnomeara1797/docs/pages_from_the_way_of_novalis
Addendum to the “Preface” to The Way of Novalis
On Friedrich Schlegel’s Lucinde and Novalis
(view with link below)
https://www.academia.edu/103804591/Novalis_and_Friedrich_Schlegels_Lucinde