The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald

'As things are, we are the enemies of the world, and foreigners to this earth. Our grasp of it is a process of estrangement. Through estrangement itself I earn my living from day to day. I say, this is animate, but that is inanimate. I am Salt Inspector, that is rock salt. I go further than this, much further, and say this is waking, that is a dream, this belongs to the body, that to the spirit, this belongs to space and distance, that to time and duration. But space spills over into time, as the body into the soul, so that the one cannot be measured without the other. I want to exert myself to find a different kind of measurement.

'I love Sophie more because she is ill. Illness, helplessness, is in itself a claim on love. We could not feel love for God Himself if he did not need our help. -- But those who are well, and have to stand by and do nothing, also need help, perhaps even more than the sick.'

Approaching the end of the year I decided to return to a book I very much love: Penelope Fitzgerald's The Blue Flower. The first of her books I read and also the best, and what seems to me one of few very perfect novels, The Blue Flower seems to shine on every page. It's funny, sad, touching, clever. Reading it put me in the spirit of Fritz's mother, seeing her old home for the first time in years, the feeling of "coming home after having done one's best."

The question posed by The Blue Flower--or, perhaps, the earthly and practical question posed by it, because there are a number of philosophical and aesthetic questions--is, why does the brilliant philosopher-poet Fritz von Hardenberg, later known as Novalis, choose Sophie von Kuhn, a largely unremarkable young girl, to be his betrothed? Fritz calls her his "Philosophy," but she is largely unphilosophical, disinterested in writing, amused primarily by trinkets and dogs, touched but sort of befuddled by Fritz's interest. And yet, Fritz is not the only member of the family who ends up being captured by Sophie's charms: first his brother Erasmus, who had been against the match, and then his severe, businesslike father, follow Fritz. "It is quite unsuitable," Fritz's precocious six-year old brother the Bernhard repots: "It is our business to see the beauty of that."

In a way, Sophie is like philosophy: she is the generator of questions, rather than the solution to them; Fritz's undying ardor for her is the given that generates wonder. "A story that begins with finding," Fritz says, "must end with searching." That, perhaps, describes philosophy and Sophie both--and poetry, too, and all kinds of human endeavors that Sophie comes to stand in for. Perhaps what impresses me most about Fitzgerald's warmth and humanity is that the legitimacy of Fritz's love for Sophie is never in question; it's not played for irony or laughs. It's puzzling, sure, but Fitzgerald also suggests that there is something eminently reasonable in it, that there is a quality in Sophie that is worth admiration but eludes our narrow definitions of intelligence, of talent, of human worth. "I don't want to become," Sophie says to Fritz when they first meet, suggesting that a purity and immutability that eludes, but foreshadowing, too, Sophie's sudden and debilitating consumption.

Reading The Blue Flower for the second time, I was struck by just how immense and how vivid the cast of characters is. Sophie and Fritz are the stars, of course, but Fitzgerald manages to people the novel with a dozen memorable figures: the Bernhard, wise beyond his years, stands out, but also Sophie's pragmatic sister known as "the Mandelsloh," Sophie's jovial stepfather Herr Rockenthien, Fritz's sister Sidonie, his lovesick friend Karoline, Sophie's mischievous brother George, several other siblings, and even the insular and pretentious "Jena crowd" that includes well-known philosophers like Schiller and Schlegel. The Blue Flower transports you into the world of late 18th century Prussia, not because it's meticulously researched (although Fitzgerald is clearly knowledgeable), but because the world seems so recognizably human. 

Someone who knows more about Romanticism and German philosophy could probably tell you a lot about the subtext of The Blue Flower. I don't feel like I have anything particularly smart of knowledgeable to say about it. As heady as it may seem, The Blue Flower hits me in the purest pleasure zones of the brain, the places that light up after a really good story, well-told.