Abstract

This article is written to celebrate the birthday of Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg) who was born two hundred years ago. In the first part a translation into Dutch is given of a text of Novalis, entitled Monolog, which concerns the essence of language and of speech and writing. In addition an introduction to this text and a commentary is provided. The basic idea of this text is : language is concerned only with itself. It leads its own life. It is so to speak an immanent game and constitutes a world by itself. Language is marked by its own creativity and inventiveness. In order to speak or to write genuinely and truthfully man has to comply with the game of language and he must obey to that which the words are saying to him. Only he who will do this can be a prophet. The hatred for language, which shows itself in different ways, is, on the other hand, a source of error and foolishness. It is exactly he, who is too concerned with the deceptive aspect of language, who will be its victim. A writer, a poet, a prophet or someone who really has something to say is the one who allows language to play its role. In a second part the text provides the starting point for raising a number of problems concerning a possible philosophy of language. The main question is : who speaks when language is spoken ? Novalis will answer that language itself speaks. This answer is being compared with that which Freud, Nietzsche and Heidegger have said about this. Furthermore the relationship between philosophy and poetry is treated and also the problem of the truth of spoken language