Myth and Trauma. Relations in the Dream Theories of Novalis and E. T. A. Hoffmann

Abstract

One of the greatest achievements of early German Romanticism was the discovery of the borderland between the conscious and the unconscious and its introduction into the discourse of the philosophy of art. Scientific-poetic works from the dark side of natural science and the hidden side of existence provided the initial impulses for the New Romantic School and Psychoanalysis at the turn of the last century. The ideas of Novalis and E. T. A. Hoffmann on dreams, though both derived from Romantic natural philosophy, differ in their conclusions. The paper will show how the Romantic imagination of the dream, which seeks to mobilise both cognition and imagination, moves away from the artist’s desire to create the self and the world towards the expression of their anxious and traumatic experiences. By comparing the two concepts of the dream, it becomes clear that Hoffmann is both the late Romantic heir and the critical mediator of Novalis’ ideas.