My thanks go to Jonathan for highlighting a rather excellent literary treatment of blue flowers.

I read this book as part of the 2019 Mookse Madness Tournament and out of intrigue. Penelope Fitzgerald, who began her literary career at 58, is an author I discovered at 48 and loved her works such as “Offshore”, “Gate of Angels” and “The Bookshop”. However, this particular book seems to divide opinions. It is generally praised by fellow authors and critics as one of the great historic novels and Fitzgerald’s masterpiece, but it generates dislike or indifference among most of the Fitzgerald fans I know on Goodreads.

Fitzgerald is an author I always look forward to spending time with. I can imagine her as a fascinating dinner party companion, and when reading her books, I feel like a guest in her writing.

This book is a biographical tale of the young German/Saxon poet and philosopher Friedrich von Hardenberg (“Fritz”) from ages 22 - 25 and his love for Sophie (von Kühn) from age 12 to her death at 15. It contains much of what I love about Fitzgerald’s writing, especially her ability to conjure up a place, a character, or a feeling with just a few words. In this book, which has 55 chapters in less than 300 pages, it is really a series of scenes/vignettes, and her economy of description shines through.

For example, take the description of a Christmas tree: “Inside the library, the myriad fiery shining points of light threw vast shadows of the fir branches onto the high walls and even across the ceiling. In the warmth the room breathed even more deeply, more resinously, more greenly.” Or the painter seeing his talent go to waste: “making a living by selling sepia drawings of distant prospects and bends in the river with reliably grazing cattle.” Or the capture of Fritz’s mother’s inner life in three brief paragraphs.

However, Fitzgerald has invited another guest, Fritz (who later adopted the pen name Novalis), and unfortunately, he dominates the dinner party. The actions, speeches, and misguided attempts of Fritz and the similar tone of the omniscient narrator rather spoil Fitzgerald’s dinner invitation.

Earlier in the book, the painter (who compares himself to a poet) joins Sophie’s family for a meal. He says, “I am glancing round the table and assessing the presence, or absence, of true soul in the countenance of everyone here.” And Sophie’s sister replies, “Ach.. I should not think you are often asked out to dinner twice.”

Ultimately, this is the failing of this novel. Normally, when reading a novel with biographical details of an artist, I am drawn to research the subject more. But I will not be inviting Novalis to my reading table twice.

**The Dream of the Blue Flower**

The Blue Flower is a remarkable novel that offers a rich and multi-layered reading experience. As the excellent reviews elucidate, it reveals various angles and sides, making it a novel that rewards multiple readings. One can engage with it through its delightful cast of characters, revel in the resplendent descriptions, explore the philosophical ideas of German Romanticism, muse over the aphoristic wisdom, or pore over the symbolic meaning of the blue flower.

This was my second encounter with Penelope Fitzgerald's work, and once again, I was impressed by her dainty and brilliant writing. While historical novels can sometimes be a struggle for me, The Blue Flower drew me in effortlessly. Fitzgerald takes the reader on a journey through a time capsule, painting a vivid atmosphere and creating a realistic material and intellectual landscape.

At first, I was skeptical of the unlikely infatuation between Fritz von Hardenberg and Sophie von Kühn, but gradually, Fitzgerald's writing won me over. Her novel epitomizes Novalis' take on imagination, showing how it can change and elevate both the self and the other.

The tale is emotionally affecting, and although I managed to hold back my tears until the afterword, the brevity of the characters' lives left a lasting impression. In hindsight, The Blue Flower was a highlight of my reading year, and I look forward to revisiting it after reading more about Romanticism and Novalis' works. Julian Barnes' tribute to Fitzgerald is also a wonderful read and a pleasure to return to after experiencing her writing again.

The Blue Flower is a novel that truly captivates the reader and offers a unique exploration of love, imagination, and the power of art.

I have had Penelope Fitzgerald’s 1995 The Blue Flower on my to-read list for a long time. It's about Friedrich von Hardenberg, the German late 18th/early 19th century poet and philosopher Novalis, his life and how he became a key figure in German Romanticism.

However, I was really hesitant to start reading it because many of my Goodreads friends, who have similar tastes in historical fiction as I do, didn't enjoy it at all. And now I know my hesitations were well-founded. After about one hundred pages, I was so frustrated with Fitzgerald's stilted writing that I had to stop. It was almost unreadable for me, and any potential joy of reading was completely erased.

Furthermore, I'm wondering if Fitzgerald was trying to emulate Novalis' writing style. The annoying cadence and rhythm in The Blue Flower remind me of Novalis' Heinrich von Ofterdingen, which I hated when I had to read it for an exam. Fortunately, I have the option to stop reading The Blue Flower, and I'm taking full advantage of it. I'm rating it one star and letting my friends know they were right.

Finally, I noticed that Fitzgerald seems to think it's acceptable for Friedrich von Hardenberg to fall in love with his twelve-year-old cousin Sophie von Kühn. I've always found Novalis' relationship with Sophie to be pedophilic, and the fact that The Blue Flower portrays it as natural, positive, and beautiful is another reason for me to give it a low rating and label it a DNF.

I strained so hard to "get" this book that I nearly popped a joint.

No, not that kind. Although at times this book felt so stupefyingly plodding that reading it may have approximated the same effect.

Why, I wondered, did it land the plum spot on 19 separate end-of-the-year book lists in 1995, as its back cover so modestly relates?

After pondering the issue for a bit, I have come to the conclusion that I am either braindead or a ninny or, possibly, that it just isn't that good.

(BUT HOW COULD A.S. BYATT AND A PHALANX OF THE MOST PRE-EMINENT BOOK CRITICS IN ENGLAND BE WRONG.)

(YES, THESE ARE THE THINGS THAT KEEP ME UP AT NIGHT.)

There are things to commend The Blue Flower, to be sure: the economy of language usage, which is startlingly elegant and a pleasure to read; the aphorisms peppered throughout the story; the adorable mop-haired children; and the understated humor, so ticklish to the funny bone.

But ultimately, the writing is so minimalist as to convey almost nothing.

I like this review's take on things:

"And finally this novel is like your elderly female relative who has a superstitious horror of naming anything directly, and will use every last possible circumlocution, and whose conversation, I'm sorry to report, revolves dispiritingly around and about and in and through the dozen people she's ever known in her long life, and the five places she's ever been.

Poor Penelope

We still hear her late at night

Whirring helplessly"

Hahaha. A damnably unfair dismissal in the eyes of fans, I'm sure, but I'm also sure that's how Fitzgerald neophytes feel after reading this novel and failing to find it "gorgeous", "miraculous", "devastating", "extraordinary", or a "masterpiece".

My favorite novel, in my opinion, is truly a remarkable piece of work.

Somehow, it manages to inundate the senses with the time and place, or perhaps it's her masterful rendering of it.

It vividly reminds me of hyldeblomstsaft, that concentrated elderflower syrup which they utilize to create a drink in Denmark.

This drink has the magical ability to conjure up the essence of summer even in the midst of January.

I hold a deep affection for it (and her) precisely because of this enchanting quality.

All of her writing shares this charm, but this particular novel stands out as the absolute best.

It has a unique allure that keeps drawing me back, making it a literary gem that I cherish dearly.

Revisited for the 2019 Mookse Madness after originally reading in 2013.

Despite winning the Booker Prize and being shortlisted three more times, the brilliant Penelope Fitzgerald was, for much of her career, treated condescendingly by (mostly male) literary critics.

Indeed her Booker win, for Offshore, was greeted with some critical bemusement, even by the jury themselves who had argued long and hard between two other books. As one judge later admitted:

We'd spent the entire afternoon at loggerheads, settling at the last minute by a single vote for William Golding's Darkness Visible, by which time the atmosphere had grown so heated that I said I'd sooner resign than have any part in a panel that picked a minor Golding over a major imaginative breakthrough by Naipaul. So we compromised by giving the prize to everybody's second choice.

So when Fitzgerald, with The Blue Flower, produced a book of more obvious literary pretension, it was an excuse for critics who had previously disdained her work to finally, reluctantly, admit her brilliance by acclaiming this one (although, showing unusual good taste, the Booker judges overlooked it). It also brought her belated fame in the US, where her previous novels had been overlooked.

Which perhaps explains why this, my least favourite of her novels, is also oddly her most critically acclaimed work.

To me Fitzgerald at her best is distinguished by her wonderfully compact prose and her brilliant use of the one line description of character and place (the church had, in fact, been carelessly burnt down during the celebrations of 1925, when the Sugar Beet Subsidy Act had been passed to describe the rural Suffolk locale of Offshore is perhaps my favourite line in literary history). In her earlier novels, in typically only around 150 pages she manages to sketch a story, create an evocative sense of place, introduce us to some memorably baffling characters and explore a number of powerful themes. Against that, her novels can suffers from, to the reader at least, oblique developments, but ultimately even that is a function of Fitzgerald's brevity and an integral part of her charm.

Blue Flower is a more expansive novel (280 pages in my edition) and much the weaker for it.

Fitzgerald herself divided her novels into two. The first 5 novels were based on her personal experiences:

The Golden Child (1977)
The Bookshop (1978)
Offshore (1979)
Human Voices (1980)
At Freddie's (1982)

and the last four novels had more historic settings:

Innocence (1986)
The Beginning of Spring (1988)
The Gate of Angels (1990)
The Blue Flower (1995)

As Fitzgerald herself noted (after writing the first two of these later works):

I have tried, in describing these books of mine, to say something about my life. In my last two novels I have taken a journey outside of myself. Innocence takes place in Italy in the late 1950s. The Beginning of Spring in Moscow in 1913. Most writers, including the greatest, feel the need to do something like this sooner or later. The temptation comes to take what seems almost like a vacation in another country and above all in another time. V. S. Prichett, however, has pointed out that “a professional writer who spends his time becoming other people and places, real or imaginary, finds he has written his life away and become almost nothing.” This is a warning that has to be taken seriously. I can only say that however close I’ve come, by this time, to nothingness, I have remained true to my deepest convictions—I mean to the courage of those who are born to be defeated, the weaknesses of the strong, and the tragedy of misunderstandings and missed opportunities, which I have done my best to treat as a comedy, for otherwise how can we manage to bear it?

I have yet to read Innocence, but The Gate of Angels and The Beginning of Spring, meet her benchmark and while wonderfully evocative of the time and place where they are set, are not adversely burdened by historic fidelity.

With The Blue Flower, based not just on a setting but on a historical, and famous, figure, this lightness of touch is missing with rather too much by the way of replication of the actual biography of the poet Novalis and his circle. As she told AS Byatt she had even \\"read the records of the salt mines from cover to cover in German.”

My other issue with The Blue Flower, one more of personal taste, is the voice. Her subject is a young romantic poet and the novel’s narration is in what I can only hope is a satire of poetic pretentiousness (the concept of the Blue Flower included), a voice that soon grates. If historical fiction succeeds when it incentivises the reader to seek out more, outside the novel, about the subject, then this one certainly failed on me.

However as redeeming features, the character of Karoline, a rather more suitable match to the poet, was more reminiscent of vintage Fitzgerald.

And The Blue Flower is a good example of what Javier Cercas calls a blind spot novel (The Blind Spot: An Essay on the Novel). The historical question at the heart of the novel is what attracted Novalis to a, by all accounts not particularly beautiful and certainly intellectually uninteresting, and under-age 12 year old girl. And it is a question the novel, quite deliberately, fails to answer, although it hints the truth lies in Novalis’s obsession with the symbolic and mysterious Blue Flower.

Overall I would certainly recommend readers to start with other Fitzgerald novels: this is for completists only. 2.5 stars - only 3 in tribute to the author.

As my final foray into Penelope Fitzgerald's novels, The Blue Flower was an unqualified success.

I approached it with absolute faith in Fitzgerald's writing prowess, having already witnessed her masterful handling of historical themes and settings in her other works.

True to my expectations, the 1790s German setting felt incredibly authentic.

The world of the story was so vivid that I could almost imagine reading it in German.

Perhaps it was the use of definite articles attached to people's titles and names, in the German style, like 'the Freiherr' or 'the Bernhard', that added to this authenticity.

Despite the large cast of characters, some of whom made only brief appearances in the short narrative, I was not fazed.

Fitzgerald's talent for sketching characters with a few deft strokes and making them entirely believable shone through.

The fifty-five short chapters were like a set of 18th-century engravings come to life, depicting detailed domestic scenes.

Women feeding babies while children played around, and men leaving the room hastily or flirting with the daughters of the house.

Although Fitzgerald contrasted the abilities of some women characters with the less practical male characters, it didn't feel polemical but rather a simple portrayal of life.

I wasn't surprised to find that there was something very subtle at the heart of the novel, almost impossible to see at first.

This elusive element, revealed in the title but hidden in the text, made me search for it.

At times, I doubted its existence, but eventually, I came to see the Blue Flower as a matter of faith.

When it comes to Penelope Fitzgerald, I am a believer, not a doubting Thomas.

This book is truly perfect, yet I am not entirely certain as to why.

From the very first words, it is absolutely captivating, holding my attention firmly and never allowing it to waver.

It progresses at a seamless pace, never bogging down or becoming tedious.

The length is just right, not too wordy to the point of overwhelming, nor too concise to leave one feeling shortchanged.

It creates a complete and immersive world that I find myself drawn into.

As soon as I finished reading it, I fell asleep and had a dream that I was terribly ill, so deeply was I still immersed in the book.

All day long, I have not been ready to pick up another book.

Finally, this evening, I have selected a housecleaning book, as I still want to savor this novel and I can do that while I clean.

The story lingers in my mind, and I am reluctant to let go of it just yet.

I look forward to the moments when I can return to that fictional world and continue to explore its depths.

The story is animated by the spirit, and yet my translator and editors have completely burned it. The actions in the story are exaggerated and its historicity has no color or flavor. We enter and explore it, and yet our knowledge of the poet Novalis has not increased much.

This tale, which was once filled with life and vigor, has now been reduced to ashes by the hands of those who were supposed to bring it to life. The excessive actions and lackluster historical details have made it a rather unappealing read. Despite our efforts to understand and engage with it, we find that our understanding of Novalis remains largely unchanged.

Perhaps there is something more to this story that we have missed. Maybe a closer examination of the text or a different approach to translation and editing could reveal the true essence of the work and its connection to the poet. Only time will tell if we can unlock the mysteries of this tale and gain a deeper appreciation for Novalis and his art.

A novel published in 1995, it tells a story set in the 18th century. It revolves around a young baron who is at the exact point to decide what to do with his life. Although from an aristocratic family with many properties, they lack money and means to think of not working. His father, the head of the family, is the head of some salt mines.

The first word that comes to my mind when thinking of describing this book is beautiful and innocent. I perceive the innocence on the first page when a friend of Fritz, the young baron, arrives at his friend's house and finds an atypical scene. All kinds of white clothes are flying in the air while servants with large baskets try to catch the different items that are still being thrown from the windows. It's the day of the laundry, which is only done once a year and shows the family's prestige for having enough clothes for so many days.

The beauty is given by moments like when Fritz arrives at the house of a friend of his current boss and observes a young woman with her back to him, sitting and staring fixedly at the windowpane, tapping with her fingers as if wanting to attract someone's attention. He is shocked and falls in love even though the young woman has not turned her head.

There is also a certain mysticism in the book given by Fritz's ideas. Although he is looking for experience to get a paid job, he doesn't stop writing and having a very particular vision of life. At some point, he talks about something he wrote that seems like material for a book, but he just leaves it there, like a magical thought that has a hidden meaning and seems vital to understand the world, which also involves a blue flower.

The mix of the daily life of these people from a century ago, with the delicacy with which certain moments are described, and two exceptional characters like Fritz and Sophie, the enigmatic young woman at the window who turns out to be a 12-year-old girl who with her candor, joy, and simplicity manages to give lightness to the most dramatic situations, makes the book go like on a wave that imprints a rhythm of comings and goings that completely captures the spirit of those times.

Penelope imprints in this, her last novel, all the experience and mastery to deliver a singular, funny, beautiful, but above all sensitive account of a bygone era.

“Valor is much more than resistance or endurance. It is the power to create your own life despite everything that men or God may impose on you, so that all days and all nights are as you want to imagine them. Valor makes us dreamers, poets.”

Fitzgerald's last novel, The Blue Flower, has received a fair amount of praise. However, it's often debatable whether this praise is truly due to the novel's own merits or rather a result of her untimely passing after writing it.

Described as 'strange,' 'magical,' and 'short,' the novel is indeed concise. But is it really strange? It faithfully depicts Novalis's rather unusual situation of falling in love with a 12-year-old. While that in itself is strange, it doesn't necessarily make the novel so. The claim of it being 'magical' might be a stretch, unless one considers psychotic episodes as enchanting.

That being said, the book does have its great merits. It is beautifully written, with a hysterical sense of humor that makes it particularly enjoyable, especially for those who like to pick out details and references. The catty Schlegels and the jokes at Fichte's expense are definite highlights.

My suspicion, and perhaps hope, is that Penelope Fitzgerald is looking down on us from somewhere, laughing at our human tendency to mistake irony for passion. In this novel, a silly yet highly intelligent young man falls in love with a 12-year-old girl, rather than the 27-year-old woman the reader might prefer. His brother then follows suit, falling for the (now) 13-year-old girl instead of the (now) 28-year-old woman he should be interested in. This forms the backdrop for one of the most famous symbols in romantic literature, the blue flower. But what exactly is it? And why would anyone want it?

In conclusion, the moral of this story seems to be twofold. Firstly, all men can be remarkably silly, whether they're romantics who spout nonsense and get rewarded for it, pietists who put their families through hell, or morons in other less obvious ways. Secondly, if you're a sensible, intelligent woman who thinks you've found a like-minded man, give it a year and he'll likely reveal himself to be rather silly, perhaps by falling in love with a child or misinterpreting your nervousness around him as hatred (and then running away from you). Oh, and by the way, you'll all probably die of consumption.

Rest in peace, Ms. Fitzgerald. May your ghost continue to inspire others to write with such beauty and grace.

I picked up this book mainly because it had a rather pretty cover. As I examined it further, I noticed a blurb on the front from A.S. Byatt, an author I quite like. Additionally, it was noted that the author, Fitzgerald, was a winner of the prestigious Booker Prize. This piqued my interest even more. So, I turned to the back cover and discovered that it was a historical novel about the early life of the German Romantic poet Novalis. What a coincidence it was, as just that month I had been reading about Novalis and looking at some of his poetry online. Naturally, I decided to grab it.

However, upon starting to read the book, I initially couldn't get into it. And as I delved deeper, it began to actively annoy me. Fitzgerald clearly did a great deal of research for this book. She read Novalis' letters, writings, and various documents from the late 18th-century time period.

Unfortunately, instead of seamlessly integrating these period details into the narrative, she simply inserts random facts into the text in a rather blunt manner. This is the case even when these facts don't really serve a purpose within the story. It is highly distracting and struck me as a rather poor writing technique.

Her personal, 20th-century opinion on everything also becomes very evident. In my view, the 'job' of historical fiction is to transport the reader into the time and place being described and make the reader see things from the characters' perspective. Instead, we learn that Penelope Fitzgerald believes that people in 18th-century Germany ate disgusting cuisine, were unhygienic, penurious, and for some reason, she seems to think they were always freezing cold, despite Germany having a mild climate and particularly nice summers. I'm sorry, but if the characters in the story would consider a pig's nostril a delicacy, I want to experience that sense of it being a delicacy while reading the book. I don't really care if the author personally finds it gross. By the end of the book, I found myself wondering why she even chose to write about these people, given that her opinion of not only their culture and lifestyle but also of them as individuals was so low.

Fritz (Novalis) is portrayed as faintly ridiculous and a cad, and his love interest, the young Sophie, as air-headed and ugly. Both of their families come across as caricatures. One family is of the ridiculously strict and religious variety, while the other is of the jolly yet greedy and grasping type. I can definitely appreciate books where the characters are all unlikable. However, I didn't get the impression that these people were truly that bad historically. It just seemed that Fitzgerald personally regards them with a kind of snide contempt. There is no one in the novel that the reader really gets to know or feel a connection with, due to the distancing style of the writing. Fitzgerald uses an odd style of referring to people using an article, such as "The Bernhard" and "The Mandelsloh". Even if this was a custom at the time (I'm not sure if it was, as it's not a modern German usage), such a construction should be reserved for dialogue rather than when the author is discussing her characters.

I simply couldn't believe the multiple pages of rave reviews printed inside the front of the book. I really didn't think it was impressive in any way.