Der Magische Idealismus

The essence of Novalis’ Magical Idealism is this: that we can transform our reality through the power of imagination.  Imagination is often called the fourth power of the soul, alongside memory, understanding, and will.  Imagination is also called the mirror of reality, but the Magical Idealist believes that it is a mirror world we have the power to enter.  Who has not entered, through imagination, into the world of a book so completely that it drew real tears from our eyes, filled our heart with dread, or gave us hope that could not be extinguished?  How many houses in Balzac’s novels do I know as well as any I have lived in!  I’ve never seen Henry V performed on stage, but I have performed it in my head many times.  And beyond the visions of others in books, my imagination has taken me to so many places.  I have often visited new cities or landscapes that I had previously known only in my imagination and discovered that the imaginary visit matched the “real” one down to the smallest details.  How many stories have I created in my head that I felt I was actually living in time and space, in the here and now; how many stories have I written that consisted of taking everyday reality and rearranging it in my imagination--creating a new reality out of the very building blocks of reality itself.

     One might argue that equating the products of the imagination with reality is sheer escapism, a fleeing from life’s real difficulties and conflicts--that a hungry man may imagine he has a loaf of bread, but in reality, he is still hungry.  Aside from the fact that there are people who have suffered hunger in battles and concentration camps and other circumstances who claimed they were able to bear their hunger better when they daydreamed about food, it must be said that the purpose of imagination is not to escape the duty of providing one’s own body and that of others with necessary nutrition.  The imagination is not meant to feed the body, but the soul.  Novalis said, “Die Philosophie kann kein Brot backen, aber sie kann uns Gott, Freiheit und Unsterblichkeit verschaffen.”  (“Philosophy can bake no bread, but it may give us God, freedom, and immortality.”)  The imagination, too, bakes no bread, but it can give us insight, wonder, and beauty, it can give us peace, courage, and openness.  The bread (or perhaps madeleines) that we eat in imagination may not nourish our physical bodies, but it (or they), can still give us pleasure. 

     When we dream, what we experience at the moment of dreaming is indistinguishable from everyday reality, at least most of the time.  Novalis said, “Wir sind dem Aufwachen nah, wenn wir träumen, daß wir träumen.” (“We are closest to waking up when we dream that we are dreaming.”)  Sleep becomes a doorway to another world, the world of dreams.  Is not imagination also a door to another world?  And when we consciously construct a world of our own imagining, is that not when the imagined world is in fact most real?  This is the validation of the philosophy of Magical Idealism, of the power of the imagination to transform our reality. 

     In Heinrich von Ofterdingen, Novalis wrote: “Mich dünkt der Traum eine Schutzwehr gegen die Regelmäßigkeit und Gewöhnlichkeit des Lebens, eine freie Erholung der gebundenen Fantasie, wo sie alle Bilder des Lebens durcheinanderwirft, und die beständige Ernsthaftigkeit des erwachsenen Menschen durch ein fröhliches Kinderspiel unterbricht. Ohne die Träume würden wir gewiß früher alt, und so kann man den Traum, wenn auch nicht als unmittelbar von oben gegeben, doch als eine göttliche Mitgabe, einen freundlichen Begleiter auf der Wallfahrt zum heiligen Grabe betrachten.”  (“The dream seems to me to be a defense against the regularity and normality of life, a free recovery of bound fantasy, where it brings up all images of life, and interrupts the constant sincerity of the adult human being through a cheerful child's play. Without dreams, we would surely grow old earlier, and so the dream, though not as directly from above, may be regarded as a divine gift, a friendly companion on the pilgrimage to the holy grave.”)  What Novalis says of dreams is certainly true of imagination as well.