ews of poetry had
been given in Ofterdingen. I need not remind the intelligent reader,
that the author in this poem has not adhered very closely to the time
or the person of that well known Minnesinger, though every part brings
him and his time to remembrance. It is an irreparable loss, not only to
the friends of the author, but to the art itself, that he could not
have finished this romance, the originality and great design of which
would have been better developed in the second than in the first part.
For it was by no means his object to represent this or that occurrence,
to embrace one side of poetry, and explain it by figures and narrative;
but it was his intention, as is plain from the last chapter of the
first part, to express the real essence of poetry and explain its
inmost aim.

To this end nature, history, war, and civil life, with their usual
events, are all transformed to poetry, as that is the spirit which
animates all things.

I shall endeavor as far as possible, from my memory of conversations
with my friend, and from what I can discover in the papers he has left,
to give the reader some idea of the plan and subject-matter of the
second part of this work.

To the poet, who has apprehended the essence of his art at its central
point, nothing appears contradictory or strange; to him all riddles are
solved. By the magic of fancy he can unite all ages and all worlds;
wonders vanish, and all things change to wonders. So is this book
written; and the reader will find the boldest combinations,
particularly in the tale which closes the first part. Here are renewed
all those differences by which ages seem separated, and hostile worlds
meet each other. The poet wished particularly to make this tale the
transition-point to the second part, in which the narrative soars from
the common to the marvellous, and both are mutually explained and
restored; the spirit of the prologue in verse should return at each
chapter, and this state of mind, this wonderful view of things should
be permanent. By this means the invisible world remains in eternal
connexion with the visible. This speaking spirit is poetry itself; but
at the same time the sidereal man who is born from the love of Henry
and Matilda. In the following lines, which should have their place in
Ofterdingen, the author has expressed in the simplest manner the
interior spirit of his works:

When marks and figures cease to be
For every creature's thou