So he determines to write a novel which shall be the direct antithesis of _Wilhelm Meister_. He even takes thought of such small matters as type and size, and determines that in them _Heinrich von Ofterdingen_ shall be the exact counterpart of the book, the worldly philosophy of which it is to refute by its magic mysticism. He writes to Tieck: "My novel is in full swing; it is to be a deification of poetry. In the first part Heinrich von Ofterdingen ripens into a poet; in the second he is the glorified poet. The story will have many points of resemblance with your _Sternbald_ but will lack its lightness. This want, however, may not be a disadvantage, considering the subject." Goethe and _Wilhelm Meister_ Novalis criticises thus: "Goethe is an altogether practical poet. His works are what English wares are--simple, neat, suitable to their purpose, and durable.... He has, like the Englishman, a natural sense of order and economy, and an acquired sense of what is fine and noble.... _Wilhelm Meister's Lehrjahre_ is, in a way, altogether modern and prosaic. Romance perishes in it, and so does the poetry, the magic quality, of nature. The book only deals with everyday human affairs; nature, and the belief in her mysterious powers, are quite forgotten. It is a poetically written story of bourgeois domestic life, in which the marvellous is expressly treated as poetry and fancy. Artistic atheism is the spirit of the book. _Wilhelm Meister_ is a _Candide_ directed against poetry." Novalis's aim, then, is to produce a work exactly the opposite of this, one in which everything is finally resolved into poetry, in which "the world becomes soul." For everything is soul. "Nature is to the soul what a solid body is to light. The solid substance stops light, breaks it up into wonderful colours, &c., &c. Human beings are soul prisms." His novel is, then, an allegory, the key to which is contained in the fairy-tale introduced into the story. This fairy-tale is supposed to show how the true eternal world comes into existence; it is a description of the restoration of that kingdom of love and poetry in which the great "world-soul expands and blooms everlastingly." Novalis believes that, since the existing heaven and the existing earth are of a prosaic nature, and since our age is an age of utilitarianism, a poetical day of judgment must come, a spell must be broken, before the new life can blossom forth.--Arcturus and his daughter slumber, frozen in their palace of ice. They are released by Fable (i.e. Poetry) and her brother, Eros. Eros is the child of the restless father, Reason, and the faithful mother, the Heart. Fable owes her being to unfaithfulness on the part of Reason; she is born of Fancy, daughter of the Moon; her godmother is the guardian of the domestic altar, Sophia, Heavenly Wisdom.