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Hymns to the Night

by Novalis
Translated by George MacDonald

“Hymns to the Night” is the last published work of Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg (1772-1801), the German philosopher and early Romantic poet whose pen name was simply “Novalis”. The work alternates poetry and prose, exploring a personal mythology of darkness and light, but it is also a free-associative chronicle of a young man rationalizing the untimely death of his fiancé. This version (1897) was translated by influential fantasy author and novelist George MacDonald, who cited it as a great – and early – inspiration. “Hymns to the Night” is also available to Librivox listeners in the original German. (Summary by Pete Williams)

CD booklet
Album Art

• E-text
• Wikipedia – Novalis
• LibriVox’s Hymns to the Night Internet Archive page
• A recording in the original German language is available here
• Zip file of the entire book (12.2MB)
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Total running time: 0:25:17
Read by Pete Williams, Pittsburgh, PA

mp3 and ogg files

• Hymns to the Night – 00:25:17
  [mp3@64kbps - 12.1MB]
  [mp3@128kbps - 24.2MB]
  [ogg vorbis - 14.2MB]

Cataloged on April 29, 2008