Penelope Fitzgerald wrote her first novel 20 years ago, at the age of 59. Since then, she's written eight more, three of which have been short-listed for England's prestigious Booker Prize, and one of which, Offshore, won. Now she's back with her tenth and best book so far, The Blue Flower. This is the story of Friedrich von Hardenberg--Fritz, to his intimates--a young man of the late 18th century who is destined to become one of Germany's great romantic poets. In just over 200 pages, Fitzgerald creates a complete world of family, friends and lovers, but also an exhilarating evocation of the romantic era in all its political turmoil, intellectual voracity, and moral ambiguity. A profound exploration of genius, The Blue Flower is also a charming, wry, and witty look at domestic life. Fritz's family--his eccentric father and high-strung mother; his loving sister, Sidonie; and brothers Erasmus, Karl, and the preternaturally intelligent baby of the family, referred to always as the Bernhard--are limned in deft, sure strokes, and it is in his interactions with them that the ephemeral quality of genius becomes most tangible. Even his unlikely love affair with young Sophie von Kühn makes perfect sense as Penelope Fitzgerald imagines it. The Blue Flower is a magical book--funny, sad, and deeply moving. In Fritz Fitzgerald has discovered a perfect character through whom to explore the meaning of love, poetry, life, and loss. In The Blue Flower readers will find a work of fine prose, fierce intelligence, and perceptive characterization.

From Library Journal
Fitzgerald never repeats herself, and her latest novel, named Book of the Year by 19 British newspapers in 1995, is her most original book yet. Here she reconstructs the life of 18th-century German romantic poet Novalis, focusing on his boisterous family, his struggle to articulate his longings, and, most tellingly, his passion for 12-year-old Sophie, a simple child he intends to marry despite the furious reservations of family and friends. Fitzgerald doesn't make it entirely clear what draws Friedrich von Hardenberg (Novalis's real name) to little Sophie?but that is precisely the point. Throughout, he is carried aloft by an inchoate desire for something beyond that is summed up in his little story of the blue flower: "I have no craving to be rich, but I long to see the blue flower....I can imagine and think about nothing else." As a counterpoint to her protagonist's beautifully captured romanticism, Fitzgerald successfully evokes the sights, sound, and smells?and the constant sorrows?of domestic life in 18th-century Germany. A little treasure; highly recommended.?Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The New York Times Book Review, Michael Hofmann
Good as the other books are, The Blue Flower is better. It is a quite astonishing book, a masterpiece, as a number of British critics have already said. . . . Set in provincial Saxony in the 1790s, this is, on the face of it, Ms. Fitzgerald's most recondite and challenging book. It is also her greatest triumph . . . Like the masterpiece it is, The Blue Flower ranges far beyond itself. It is an interrogation of life, love, purpose, experience and horizons which has found its perfect vehicle in a few years from the pitifully short life of a German youth about to become a great poet. . . .

From AudioFile
Donada Peters does her usual masterful job with this little gem, reading the text as beautifully and subtly as it is written. Penelope Fitzgerald's short novel of love and German intellectuals is subversive and humorous, and Peters captures all of it in her characterizations of the quirky von Hardenberg family and the lives that intersect theirs. It's as much character study as it is philosophy, and while one might question Fritz's obsessive and romanticized devotion to a young, unformed maiden that is the heart of the story, Peters makes getting there as pleasurable and intellectually stimulating as any philosophical debate. J.M.D. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Kirkus Reviews
The German poet Novalis (17721801) was really Friedrich Leopold von Hardenberg: and Fitzgerald (The Gates of Angels, 1992; Offshore, 1987, etc.) here re-creates him, his family, his doomed young lover Sophie von Kuhn, and Sophie's huge family--not to mention the era all of them lived in--in the most human-sized and yet intellectually capacious narrative a reader could wish for. Times were once better for the Hardenbergs, who've sold two estates, may have to sell another, and meanwhile live in a more manageable house in town. The pious and old (he's 56) father of the many-childrened family is Director of the Salt Mining Administration of Saxony, one of the few vocations (the military is another) not forbidden to members of the aristocracy, and the same calling the oldest Hardenberg son, Fritz, will follow upon conclusion of his studies at the universities of Jena, Leipzig, and Wittenberg. To say he's a salt inspector, though, is a little like saying Shakespeare was an actor. Not only have Fritz's studies brought him among faculty the likes of Fichte, Schiller, and Schlegel--but he himself is already a visionary poet helping bring the 18th century to its close (`` `The universe, after all, is within us. The way leads inwards, always inwards' ''). What transpires, then, in the inward universe, when Fritz first sees 12-year- old Sophie von Khn standing at a window looking out? Says he: `` `Something happened to me.' '' This cheerful, careless, laughing child-woman becomes Fritz's star, his guide, ``his Philosophy.'' Against all precedent (Sophie isn't of the real nobility), and in keeping with the changing times (there's been the revolution in France), he gets his father's permission to become engaged--but dreadful sorrow lies just ahead. A historical novel that's touching, funny, unflinchingly tragic, and at the same time uncompromising in its accuracy, learning, and detail: a book that brings its subject entirely alive, almost nothing seeming beyond its grasp. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Book Description
Set in the age of Goethe, in the small towns and great universities of late-eighteenth-century Germany, THE BLUE FLOWER tells the true story of a passionate, impetuous student of philosophy who will later gain fame as the Romantic poet Novalis, and of his curious obsession for his one "true philosophy" -- the plain and simple twelve-year-old Sophie. The irrationality of love and the clarity of purpose that come with knowing one's own fate -- these are the themes that Penelope Fitzgerald explores here with her trademark mix of wit, grace, and mischievous humor.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Set in the age of Goethe, in the small towns and great universities of late-eighteenth-century Germany, THE BLUE FLOWER tells the true story of a passionate, impetuous student of philosophy who will later gain fame as the Romantic poet Novalis, and of his curious obsession for his one "true philosophy" -- the plain and simple twelve-year-old Sophie. The irrationality of love and the clarity of purpose that come with knowing one's own fate -- these are the themes that Penelope Fitzgerald explores here with her trademark mix of wit, grace, and mischievous humor.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

In the introduction to his translation of Novalis's Henry von Ofterdingen, Palmer Hilty described Sophie von Khn as "a callow, undistinguished girl of Thuringia." Not a terribly inspiring subject, unless the writer is Fitzgerald, the author of the 1979 Booker Prize winner Offshore and a shortlist perennial for the prize. Fitzgerald presents a brilliant, subtly ironic portrayal of Friedrich von Hardenberg (aka Novalis) as an anti-Pygmalion who takes an unformed, all-too-human girl and fires her into an image of chaste muse. After a strict Saxon upbringing and an education at Jena that revolved around Fichte's idealism, Hardenberg meets the 12-year-old Sophie and falls immediately in love. Sophie is neither particularly pretty nor smart (her diary entries run to "We began pickling the raspberries" or "Today no-one came and nothing happened"), but she is optimistic, innocent, malleable. Their three-year courtship parallels her losing battle with tuberculosis; when she dies at 15, she is petrified as the vulnerable, ethereal and pure muse. There's scads of research here, into daily life in Enlightenment-era Saxony, German reactions to the French Revolution and Napoleon, early 19th-century German philosophy (by page two, a fellow Fichte devotee announces, "there is no such concept as a thing in itself!"). But history aside, this is a smart novel. Fitzgerald is alternately witty and poignant, especially in her portrayal of the intelligent, capable women who are too often taken for granted by the oblivious poets. Fitzgerald has created an alternately biting and touching exploration of the nature of Romanticismcapital "R" and small. (Apr.)

Library Journal

Fitzgerald never repeats herself, and her latest novel, named Book of the Year by 19 British newspapers in 1995, is her most original book yet. Here she reconstructs the life of 18th-century German romantic poet Novalis, focusing on his boisterous family, his struggle to articulate his longings, and, most tellingly, his passion for 12-year-old Sophie, a simple child he intends to marry despite the furious reservations of family and friends. Fitzgerald doesn't make it entirely clear what draws Friedrich von Hardenberg (Novalis's real name) to little Sophie-but that is precisely the point. Throughout, he is carried aloft by an inchoate desire for something beyond that is summed up in his little story of the blue flower: "I have no craving to be rich, but I long to see the blue flower....I can imagine and think about nothing else." As a counterpoint to her protagonist's beautifully captured romanticism, Fitzgerald successfully evokes the sights, sound, and smells-and the constant sorrows-of domestic life in 18th-century Germany. A little treasure; highly recommended.-Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"

AudioFile

Donada Peters does her usual masterful job with this little gem, reading the text as beautifully and subtly as it is written. Penelope Fitzgerald's short novel of love and German intellectuals is subversive and humorous, and Peters captures all of it in her characterizations of the quirky von Hardenberg family and the lives that intersect theirs. It's as much character study as it is philosophy, and while one might question Fritz's obsessive and romanticized devotion to a young, unformed maiden that is the heart of the story, Peters makes getting there as pleasurable and intellectually stimulating as any philosophical debate. J.M.D. (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine

AudioFile

One cannot find fault with Edmund Dehn's reading of this book. His approach to the German characters is deferential. He has respect for the aging, for men and women alike; and his delivery is so focused that the listener shares his attitudes. At the end of the eighteenth century, young and brilliant Fritz von Hardenberg, a graduate of three universities, falls in love with 12-year-old Sophie von Kuhn. His family is displeased. Much philosophical talk ensues. Our difficulty is trying to place the people in the novel. In the German manner, each person is given a name, a title and a familiar moniker. (Sophie is "Zofchen" and "Tsufel.") Dehn is serious and completely honest in his reading, but without knowledge of German, the listener has to scurry to place the difference between die Freiherr von Hardenberg and Fritz's father. J.P. ￯﾿ﾽ AudioFile, Portland, Maine

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