Page talk:Novalis Schriften - Volume 2.djvu/175

Schrecken, Fasten, and Klosterzwang

As is typical with Novalis, he is also alluding to the medical model of his time: "Schocken, Fasten and Klistierzwang" (shocks, fasts, and force enemas)

Reize

Staying consistent with the medical model in these fragments, "Reize" is translated in the mored medical and scienitifc sense as stimulus

Inzitation

The word appears to continue Novalis's analogy to understanding politics in terms of medicine. Specifically, it refers back to Novalis's use of John Brown's medical system, where incitation is a medical term meaning excitation. However, the political sense of the word incitation also appears to be in play. See Fragments 8, 18 and 84 in Pollen for similar uses and references to "Inzitation" or "Inzitament".

Fragment 47

To translate Fragment 47, the word constitution had to be substituted for "sie", German's pronoun for she or it, if referring to a feminine-gendered inanimate noun. The reason for this is that constantly interleaves the various cases for the masculine pronoun "er", he or it to denote "Reize" (and indirectly Inzitation)" and "sie" to describe their "Konstitution".

In a related note on this fragment, Novalis appears to use sexual innuendo more than usual in that he uses "he"and "she" with Verbindung which denotes, interconnection, binding, together or coupling, along with "durchdrangen" which implies penetration and impregnation.