 Novalis’s understanding of art in general and literature in particular is perhaps best articulated—or, rather, exemplified—in a novel such as Heinrich von Ofterdingen. Though unfinished, the novel, which includes ample meta-reflections on aesthetic matters, illustrates the dream-like atmosphere that has made Novalis’s work the prime example of magical idealism, the romantic prism through which nature itself occurs as a work of art, as being expressive of a deeper meaning and perfection that defuses the possible tension between necessity and freedom, sensuousness and understanding, and gives human beings a sense of belonging and being at home in the world.