Lukács reads Novalis: the notion of “destiny”

Abstract

This work traces the variations and concomitances in the ways in which György Lukács interpreted the romanticism, in general, and the work of Novalis, in particular, in his pre-Marxist and Marxist periods. The hypothesis is that, beyond some “superficial” changes, Lukács always reads, in Novalis, a failed critique of the degraded reality of the bourgeois world, to which the romantic poet, unwittingly, grants him the status of destiny. The ultimate intention is to contribute to the understanding of why, for Lukács, Goethe represents the positive pole against Novalis.