---
product_id: 7260131
title: "The Blue Flower: A Novel"
brand: "penelope fitzgerald"
price: "$104088"
currency: COP
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 8
url: https://www.desertcart.co/products/7260131-the-blue-flower-a-novel
store_origin: CO
region: Colombia
---

# The Blue Flower: A Novel

**Brand:** penelope fitzgerald
**Price:** $104088
**Availability:** ✅ In Stock

## Quick Answers

- **What is this?** The Blue Flower: A Novel by penelope fitzgerald
- **How much does it cost?** $104088 with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship
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- penelope fitzgerald enthusiasts

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## Description

The Blue Flower: A Novel

## Images

![The Blue Flower: A Novel - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61OjCMwZbKL.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4.0 out of 5 stars







  
  
    Towards the blue horizon
  

*by R***E on Reviewed in the United States on May 18, 2007*

This is a Bildungsroman about Friedrich von Hardenberg, son of an impoverished aristocrat, whose poetry, published under the name Novalis, would come to define the mystical side of German Romanticism, a quest for an ideal harmony of man and nature symbolized by the Blue Flower. But Fitzgerald merely hints at the poet's later (but short) life in this lean, succinct book. Instead she shows him at home with his strict religious father and many siblings, impressing his professors at Jena with his curiosity about the latest thinking in seemingly every field, living with the family of a regional magistrate to study administration, making friendships, and falling in love. This love for a girl who is only twelve when he meets her is so absolute on his part, so little motivated on hers, that it becomes the embodiment of his philosophy of the ideal: that the qualities of an object of desire depend more on the beliefs of the beholder than on what it may be in itself.Ultimately, the book is about that ideal, or about the notion of reaching towards a romantic ideal, the blue flower, the distant horizon. But the Blue Flower of the title is only mentioned two or three times, in a quotation from the opening of Novalis' unfinished novel HEINRICH VON OFTERDINGEN. Fitzgerald knows that to establish the horizon, one first has to map the ground at one's feet. (This is especially true of Novalis, whose romanticism was not an escape from the real world, but a belief that everything in it -- human beings, animals, plants, even the rocks -- might communicate with one another on an equal footing.) Much of the book is concerned with daily life and domestic details, but its first impression can be disorientating. Fitzgerald writes in a clean but curious style that seems at times like an awkward translation from German (the definite article before some people's names, for instance, or the use of "maiden" instead of "girl"); oblique references to Kant and other thinkers of the day are tossed in but never explained. The reader is plunged into life in full spate, a busy repetitive life where the details of daily routine serve as ballast to flights of intellectual enquiry. But the strangeness wears off, the writing simplifies, and the book's ultimate effect is to give the stamp of absolute authenticity to everything that the author describes.This is not a conventional love-story, or indeed a conventional novel in any sense, although it is filled with memorable people. Ideas are sketched in with a few deft strokes, then left suspended. The author assumes that readers have either a good knowledge of the political and intellectual history of those watershed times, or that they can pursue these things on their own. She does not use the novel as a means of explaining history, let alone an aesthetic, but attempts a much more daring task: making you experience it at first hand -- even without quite knowing what you are experiencing. Perhaps a bit disappointing at first, this turns out to be a depth-charge of a book that stirs the mind long after the ripples of reading it have disappeared.

### ⭐⭐⭐ 3.0 out of 5 stars







  
  
    Easy to read, a bit dense, and occasionally funny
  

*by C***Z on Reviewed in the United States on July 14, 2022*

The Blue Flower starts in 1794 as Frederich “Fritz” Hardenberg, the German poet and philosopher who in four years time will take the pen name Novalis, is twenty-two years old and has graduated from university. At his father’s urging, he undergoes an apprenticeship in tax collection and business management in order to work as a clerk in the salt mining industry. It is that year that he meets Sophie von Kühn, the young girl (girl being the active word) who will become his fiancée and will forever own his heart.The Blue Flower chronicles two years in the life of Fritz Hardenberg and his family (1794-1796), though it goes back in time to provide a picture of his parents and siblings up to the year 1794. Easy to read, though dense at times despite the small page count, The Blue Flower is occasionally funny courtesy of the family dynamics.Out of the three Fitzgerald novels I have read in quick succession, namely The Beginning of Spring, The Gate of Angels, and The Blue Flower, this one is my least favorite. It has good moments though; the depictions of Fritz and Sophie’s engagement soirée, for example, was very vivid. I could picture the lighting, feel the ambience and hear the music as if I had been present. The descriptions of the Hardenbergs, especially the Bernhard’s antics, and the lavish Rockenthien dinners were also crisply rendered, but aside from those moments, this novel didn’t manage to be memorable beyond the page.I suppose that me not being aware of Friedrich Hardenberg before reading The Blue Flower could have been a contributing factor for not engaging much with his character, but I have read other novels in which I didn’t know anything in advance about the main subject (or his ouvre) yet I ended up liking them; Thomas Mann in The Magician and Henry James in The Master, both written by Colm Toibin, are two very good examples.Overall, The Blue Flower has merits, but is my least favorite among the three Penelope Fitzgerald’s novels I have read thus far.

### ⭐⭐⭐ 3.0 out of 5 stars







  
  
    The Riddle of the Blue Flower is obvious
  

*by P***O on Reviewed in the United States on July 4, 2022*

Covering the 1790s in Germany, “The Blue Flower” is a fictional treatment of Friedrich von Hardenberg, known as Fritz, who later evolves to become the poet Novalis. The story focuses on twenty-two-year-old Fritz who becomes enchanted with the twelve-year-old Sophie von Kühn and asks for her hand in marriage. No one can understand the attraction. Fritz is educated and comes from a family of substance, whereas Sophie is termed a dullard without means or money. Fritz’s quest to finish writing a story about a sublime blue flower serves as a leitmotif. However, Fritz’s desire to write a story about the blue flower is never brought to fruition. The reader is left guessing as to what the blue flower signifies—its meaning is intentionally left an unfinished puzzle. And yet as a metaphor, the riddle of the blue flower is obvious. Fritz’s passion for Sophie reveals his true calling to become a man of letters and philosophy, the great German Romantic poet Novalis. There is always a place for a small book that tells a larger story, but this story suffers from a dearth of details, the lack of the rich tapestry that the reader needs to be transported to an epic time in history, when Goethe lived and exerted great influence. Author Penelope Fitzgerald leaves out overmuch, making if difficult for the reader to connect with the story’s historical context or with its huge cast of characters, some as flat as wallpaper. Even the appearance of the great man himself, Goethe is not fully fleshed-out or credible.

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*Product available on Desertcart Colombia*
*Store origin: CO*
*Last updated: 2026-02-20*