what is the meaning of novalis' blue flower? that it is the unattainable is clear. that it is a romantic symbol of all that is perfect and longed for, sought but never found, i gathered. but what else is it? what have others made of it? fritz von hardenberg, not yet novalis, asks all those who have heard his opening chapter the same question, what do you think the blue flower means? what is the blue flower, then? poetry? happiness? love? karoline just thinks it's none of these things, and bernhard thinks it's a mark of distinction or election. or is it that, being a symbol, an elusive one, i am not meant to glimpse its meaning either? i understand that novalis never completed his story, and that he had said on his deathbed that he wanted to alter it. but all that is no good, when i have not read henry von ofterdingen, and this necessitates a trip to the bottom of alderman again, a thing i can ill-afford in an unrelenting week ahead of quizzes and compositions, and a midterm which i am not remotely prepared for, and this time not even a literature exam where i can dream up something, but uncompromising learn-by-heart greek, two projects, with only the gres waiting at the end of it to make it worse. oh drat i forgot to stop at the greyhound station this morning to get a bus ticket when i was coming home from the market. i will have to go tomorrow. anyway, i was reading penelope fitzgerald's the blue flower, checked out on monday afternoon but only begun last night. when you read you are often sent from one author to another, the way, in looking a word up in the dictionary sometimes, you're sent, in turn, to other entries. of the german poets i know nothing whatsoever. when it comes to names like schlegel and schiller and goethe and novalis my mind draws a complete blank. names are all they are to me, what they stand for i do not know. nor, i think, even now, am i particularly interested in knowing, not enough at least, at this time. but novalis i am curious about. i first came across his name 2 years ago, in gianni rodari, who had taken his title "grammar of fantasy" from the "fragments" of novalis. rodari had quoted novalis on whether we can discover the art of invention if we can develop a logic or grammar of fantasy. rodari was delighted with the quote. i wasn't. but i was interested in what he might have to say on the subject. there's another famous name i haven't read, and should, i said then, and promptly forgot about him. having now read the opening chapter, of the young man tossing in his bed disturbed by the stranger's tale of the blue flower, i want to read the rest of it, as well as everything else important that novalis has said about writing, history or philosophy. although there isn't time now, there really isn't. not this weekend, no, nor anymore this semester. 25 pages of the thesis to be in by the end of november, and 6, 7, maybe as many as 8 grad school applications to send in by then.

i am beginning to think more and more i should take a year off instead of rushing to grad school. a person can't do everything at once. at least if they do some of it would have to be done in a hurry, and i would like not to have to do it in a hurry. i feel as if i don't know enough to go. oh i know, i'll learn some when i do go, but i need more before i'm ready to go, i think. i want a year off in order to read in peace. read dutch writers, czech writers, russian writers. read the roman and greek classics, the myths of the the norsemen, the chinese, the indians. contemporary british writers, all the plays of shakespeare, the rest of the faerie queene. read theorists and philosophers and poets on what literature, is. to discover the short stories of elsschot, davenport, akutagawa. to read the biography of thurber, novalis, graham greene. the diaries of thomas merton and the letters of c.s. lewis. but the idea of moving home for a year and then back here again scares me too, terribly. i am between places and worlds and a sudden move now can make me lose all orientation. and reading, writing at home, that's difficult too. at home i don't have a broadband connection and i run up the phone bill absurdly when i stay up all night. i don't have access to a real university library, especially not one where i can take out more than 8 books, and no access to used book networks for cheap fast shipping. and then how can i stay still in singapore? here of course, there's peace from meals and relatives, and all the books in the world are all available to me. but here too i am obliged to go to classes, do homework, but at home i can really read. a whole day can pass by waking up late, diving back into bed to read after a late breakfast, a trip to the library in the late afternoon to return books and take out more, and then disappearing back into my room. but even that must be a fantasy too. for a summer, yes, but for a year? people who can take a year off have wealth. the rest of us get on with the daily grind and read as best as we can. only being in school gives you no time. i know this because my parents are teachers and teachers are not bankers. they don't come home at five and say that it is over until tomorrow morning. there's alway paper grading and lesson preparation. at 9 i knew to read the compositions of 16 year olds and put them into piles of broadly "good" "okay" "horrible" before my mother set red pen to them. or adding up marks at the bottom of every page of a maths exam and putting a total into my father's record book. being a teacher is like being a perpetual student. all time outside of school is also school time. it doesn't seem fair, that at the end of it, the people who've had free time has enough for more freetime and the ones who didn't have, still don't - i mean, it's the bankers who've put aside more money while a teacher's pension never is enough for life of books in retirement.

but this wasn't why i started this entry. not to talk about all that i am worried about. it was novalis, and fitzgerald. and since i have exhausted what little i know about novalis, fitzgerald then. she was always good at creating characters, or letting you create them, but reading this it came to me why she must be a good biographer, why she was someone who could write about the knox brothers. she handles stories, lives, anecdotes very deftly, and would give narratologists headaches at how as a narrator she keeps out of and inside the story at once. six months ago i came to fitzgerald, and have read 7 books by her now, (this leaves me only 5, and as she passed away last year, 5 more is all i shall ever have. this is not a happy thought) but i had left the blue flower till this week, in part because poach didn't appear to have enjoyed it particularly, and i have good faith in poach's taste. also because the blue flower was lauded by so many, hailed by no less than 18 reviewers and critics (including doris lessing, a.s. byatt and frank kermode) as book of the year, and because, the subject of a german romantic poet didn't seem as intriguing as houseboats on the thames or the war-time going-ons inside bush house, london. i shrank from it, because it sounded weightier than her others, but that day, standing in front of the f shelf in the library, with a choice of books, brave from nohrnberg, i thought i'd tackle it. i began it last night, and comfortably into it, i was reminded that no fitzgerald was ever weighty. indeed, she was deliberately, deceptively "light" and "tackle" was a silly word to use with her. i was determined to finish it in one additional sitting, and this i did this morning, in the dining hall, perfect for this purpose. 8 cups of coffee and one fried egg later, i was in furious tears when sophie von kuhn dies and erasmus says to fritz, "best of brothers..." and the page turned over to the afterword, which hurt, all those lives falling apart. i suppose i shouldn't give it away by saying what it was, except that i liked all the von hardenberg children, erasmus, karl, sidonie, anton and the precocious bernhard, and i had learnt by the end not to judge sophie von kuhn harshly. karoline just too. the blue flower was good in a characteristic way, thought it didn't seem briliiant while i was reading it, or at least i thought it not as compelling as her other books, but now that i'm sitting here it is slowly coming upon me that i do think it's very good.

at some point i was angry as well, though, with goethe i think, novalis too. the romantic poets were male chauvinists. they didn't love women for their understanding, to use that word in an old-fashioned sense. novalis didn't love sophie for her intelligence, just her innocence and beauty and artlessness. which makes me angry. a woman wants to be beautiful and a writer. maybe a better way of putting what i mean is, how can a girl become woman and a writer? which answer, as i always saw it, was, the way a man becomes a writer. the way anyone becomes a writer, of course. i like being a woman. i have heard friends only recently on how they "hate being a girl" because the world is unfair, about prejudices and feminism, but words like that never interested me. glass ceilings don't bother you if you aren't interested in getting higher. i think that being here is good. you get there by being here, that is, really here. fame isn't interesting. it's not that sort of thing i mean. rather, the food books and sex sort of thing. i'm sure i'm feeling this way because i have been reading connie palmen's the laws. which is a sort of portrait of the artist as a young woman. learning to become a woman by seeing how men see you, and learning to be a writer by seeing how your mentors see you. i'm not resentful. it's just a stab of fear becoming aware of what palmen means. another book that on first reading i didn't feel was a good book, not one i could relate to. i always have difficulty understanding palmen's women. they are hard, intense, they don't like their femininity, other women, they're rebellious, and ill-adapted. they are too confident, and too arrogant. but this one makes more sense than the others.

incid why is it none of our friends know german. french not a single one of my girl friends hasn't had some, and so does choonping, spanish addy has, so too yisheng, and italian poach and su-lin have, latin and greek i can help myself, japanese practically every one of my girlfriends speak except me, but no one has german when i want help. hm. i want to learn german.