“The Commune of Means: Naming and Magic in Novalis”

This talk explores Novalis’s conception to magic in relation to other key terms in his luminous Romantic lexicon. Taking a cue from Novalis’s definition of magic as “an art of using,” the lecture will offer commentary on his philosophy of language in relation both to later forms of critique and later theories of magic, attempting to find a point of indifference between the two that might be called, via a phrase from a poem by Jennifer Nelson, “critique without distance.”

Joseph Albernaz is an assistant professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, with interests that include Romanticism, literary theory, and contemporary poetry. He is the author of Common Measures: Romanticism and the Groundlessness of Community (2024).