The Blue Flower: A Novel

In The Blue Flower: A Novel Penelope Fitzgerald, winner of the Booker Prize for her novel Offshore, presents a richly detailed imagining of a brief period in the life of Friedrich (Fritz) von Hardenberg (1772-1801) better known by his pen name, Novalis. Drawing on literary and historical writings - correspondence, diaries and other documents - Fitzgerald depicts Hardenberg's family life and friendships during his university years and the start of his planned career, The position of mining inspector in the Harz Mountains has been chosen for him by his family as it will allow him to continue in his father's footsteps and keep the family landholdings together.


This period encompasses Fritz's "love at first sight" meeting with Sophie von Kuhn, the 12-year old step-daughter of a business associate of Hardenberg's mentor and teacher, Coelestin Just. Fitzgerald throws her readers into an unsettled historical period and an unsettling period for Fritz, given his tumultuous relationship with his father Sophie's age is less of an issue than modern readers are apt to expect, particularly once Friedrich agrees to wait until Sophie reaches an age specified by her family to formally announce their engagement. The bigger issue for the von Hardenberg family is Sophie's lower social status. Her father was a minor noble but following his death, her mother remarried ; her new husband is a one-time military officer who retired to the provinces with no particular distinction other than an outsize, booming personality.


Reading The Blue Flower, I was puzzled by Fitzgerald's use of "the" preceding certain names. Both Fritz's younger brother August Wilhem Bernhard ("the Bernhard") and Sophie's married older sister "the Mandelsloh" (the wife of an army lieutenant of that name and Sophie's companion and nurse) get this treatment. These two individuals were very important to Fritz and Sophie, respectively, so perhaps that's the reason for the emphasis.



According to the Afterword, Fritz informed his friends he would write under the name Novalis in Feb. 1798. Novalis was an old family name which translated as "clearer of new land." Three years later he was dead of the same disease which claimed his beloved and several of his brothers and sisters, pulmonary tuberculosis.

The Blue Flower is a delight to read, at turns tragic and comic, filled with unforgettable characters, set in a region torn by war, in 227 pages (including an illustration of the engagement ring), this novel also delineates the state of medicine in the late 18th century when it is beginning to emerge as a profession based on experimental science from its earlier wellsprings of observation, analogy and speculation.

Throughout Fitzgerald contrasts the protagonist's artistic aspirations with the practical demands of career and preparation for eventual inheritance and elevated social position in such a way that the plot is propelled forward at a gallop.

Published by Houghton Mifflin, Boston, c1995.