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Penelope Fitzgerald

The Blue Flower Hardcover – 1 November 1998

by Penelope Fitzgerald (Author)

185 ratings

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Product details

Publisher : Wheeler Pub Inc; Lrg edition (1 November 1998)
Language : English
Hardcover : 244 pages
ISBN-10 : 1568956703
ISBN-13 : 978-1568956701
Dimensions : 15.88 x 2.54 x 24.13 cm

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185 ratings

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helen o'mara

Two Stars

Reviewed in Australia on 22 March 2015

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disappointing

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Kris McCracken

I’m always game… Inspired by the life and love of poet and philosopher Novalis – a

Reviewed in Australia on 8 November 2014

Penelope Fitzgerald's The Blue Flower has been called her masterpiece by some critics (others have been less kind), but was a book I’d only know by reputation before picking it up. Of course, if I had have known that it was set in and around Jena during the turbulent events at the end of the eighteenth century, and featured glimpses of Goethe, Fichte, Schiller et. al., I would have read it far earlier! As long term readers should know by now, if there are German idealist philosophers around, I’m always game…

Inspired by the life and love of poet and philosopher Novalis – a.k.a. Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr (‘Fitz’) von Hardenberg, Fitzgerald enters a world of great tumult, with France under a revolutionary dictatorship and the beginning of German philosophical deviations into Romanticism and the nature of being.

The book really is a wonderful evocation of period of great interest to me, with the kind of political turmoil, intellectual voracity, and moral ambiguity that should feed a great yarn. Ostensibly an exploration of genius, The Blue Flower really excels as a fascinating and wry look at domestic life. I’m not sure the extent that it was deliberate, but the author manages to weave a lovely – and utterly unforced – mediation on gender within the broader historical context.

I’m sure it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but its structure of 55 brief vignettes keeps it lighter than you would imagine possible. Really worth the effort. Extremely highly recommended.

2 people found this helpful

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Sandradan1

The snowball on top of the iceberg

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 18 November 2017

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If ever there is a book to persevere with, to have patience with, and to go back and re-read again, it is ‘The Blue Flower’ by Penelope Fitzgerald. When I bought it, I didn’t realize it was the last novel by the Booker prize winner; published five years before her death in 2000 aged 83. For someone about to read it, it can seem a trifle intimidating. Set in 18th century Germany, Fitzgerald tells her imagining of the teenage story of real German poet and philosopher Fritz von Hardenberg, later called Novalis. He is a young man so self-contained, so absorbed in his thoughts, that I wondered where the drama would arise. But it does, because he falls in love.
‘The Blue Flower’ is a short novel, 223 pages. The chapters are concise [mostly only two or three pages each] and this encouraged me to ‘just read another’ and so, gradually, almost without realizing, I fell into the story. Fitzgerald recreates this particular time in German history with a delicacy that, despite the language and sometimes confusing names, makes the people become real.
It is 1794 and Fritz, an idealistic and passionate student of philosophy and writer of poems, stays with some family friends and meets their youngest daughter, Sophie von Kühn. Love is instant for Fritz and, despite a little bemusement on the part of Sophie, and astonishment by his siblings and friends, he proves himself constant.
It is the sort of novel that, when you are reading it you ‘get’ it but afterwards, when trying to describe it to someone else, you struggle to grasp it. I still do not really understand the meaning of the blue flower. But although the deeper meaning may elude me, there are passages I love. Particularly the opening chapter when a guest arrives at the Hardenberg house in Kloster Gasse; it is washday, the annual occasion for washing personal and household linen, and his arrival effects an introduction to the household. This starts a juxtaposition which runs throughout the novel, of the ordinary everyday mundanity of life alongside Fritz’s poetic sensibilities. He calls twelve-year old Sophie his Philosophy, his guardian spirit. Knowing he must wait for her, he trains as an official in the salt mines and Fitzgerald treats us to some of the practicalities and science of this industry.
This is not a lazy read. Be prepared to invest something into it yourself. Fitzgerald does not put it all onto the page, she expects the reader to think, to research, to work it out, as she did when writing. If each book is the visible bit of an iceberg above the waterline, with the research submerged, ‘The Blue Flower’ is the snowball on top of the iceberg.

12 people found this helpful

M. Dowden

Novalis

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 21 June 2020

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The last novel by Penelope Fitzgerald, despite the slimness of this you will probably be surprised to know that this took her about four years to write. Taking us back to the late 18th Century we are taken into the life of a certain provincial German, Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg, later to become better known to us as simply Novalis.

To be honest probably the more you know of Novalis the greater will be your appreciation of this novel, as otherwise you will probably not realise the importance of certain aspects here. We are thus shown the young man as he is growing up, his teaching and his own thoughts, and of course the love he had for Sophie, a girl he met when she was only twelve, and he was older. By all accounts the real life Sophie was no beauty, or as bright as her wannabe lover, but they did have an understanding of each other, and in some ways not only as a muse for Hardenberg, she was a perfect foil for him, and he did mourn her for the rest of his short life. Taking us through these years so we read of the beginning of the work known as The Blue Flower, which was never finished but became not only a symbol of the German Romantic movement, but also its emblem.

This is one of those tales that leaves perhaps too many things out for a lot of people to enjoy, mainly I suppose as the author did not want to lecture readers and bore them with things that may seem patronising, as I suppose as many would expect if you are going to read this book then you obviously already know about the main character and his history. Ultimately this is a tragic tale because of the death of the young Sophie, and after the story finishes you can clearly see in the afterword so many others, including Novalis himself, from tuberculosis, which has been making a bit more of a comeback in recent decades due to a few reasons, one of course being the anti-vaccination movement.

One person found this helpful

Norman Housley

A masterpiece

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 28 May 2017

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I am in awe of Penelope Fitzgerald. Her detailed recreations of historical milieus are outstanding and her grasp of human psychology piercingly insightful. It is laugh out loud funny at times and deeply moving at others. And all done with remarkable economy because she was such a mistress of allusion. A great talent.

I may as well add that the same applies to the other historical novels that she wrote at the end of her career, The Beginning of Spring and The Gate of Angels. They form a trilogy of masterpieces

8 people found this helpful

welshclaire

It helps to have an element of madness

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 8 January 2016

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This is an extraordinary book - one that was suggested by someone else in my book club - which I enjoyed exorbitantly and madly (an element of madness in one's own character is a necessary precursor to reading this book I would think). It has all the narrative coherence of a bolted rabbit - it weaves and staggers and seems to waver drunkenly at times; but it comes together at the end and unveils a host of absolutely charming characters, not least the future poet/philosopher, Novalis and his family of eccentric siblings. I was insanely frustrated by his devotion to his twelve-year old muse, who as acknowledged, has barely any attributes that attract devotion or friendship in modern terms, but I loved the minutiae of 18th century life in Germany, and once inculcated into the book's mysteries, found it totally enticing. This is a book that is irresistible; but not seductive. It doesn't go to town with it's humour, but it is artfully present at all times. Penelope Fitzgerald was obviously sailing splendidly in the wind with this book - comfortable in her position as an established and celebrated writer; aware of her own capacity for observation and passing on her many years' wisdom gently and meditatively. This book will reward you with fantastic riches; a pirate galleon's worth; but you have to dig deep to find the treasure.

8 people found this helpful

Lendrick

Didn't hold my attention

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 2 July 2018

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So half way through I have decided to put this aside, I may come back to it but I doubt it. It's not dreadful, the prose is good, but neither characters nor story engaged me. It's not helped by needless time shifting in the narrative, nor that the core story is about a 20 year old man falling 'in love' with a 13 year old girl. Perhaps if I knew more about German romantacisn I might have got more out of the book, but a novel should stand on its own.

2 people found this helpful

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