Novalis’ Hymnen an die Nacht and the Prose Poem avant la lettre

To speak of a word as avant la lettre does not necessarily imply a fixed origin; it does imply a history of usage. In the case of the prose poem, a genre which should be of much interest to contemporary genre theory not only because of its current wide dis semination but also because it is a genre with a relatively short history, the term avant la lettre must have reference to Baudelaire, for it is his collection of Petits poèmes en prose, his naming of them as such, that establishes the currency of the prose poem within literature. It is not this chapter’s aim, however, to consider the emergence of the modern prose poem with Bertrand and Baudelaire in France, where it acquires currency as a literary genre for the fi rst time. Nor does it intend to argue that Novalis’ Hymnen an die Nacht constitutes the “real” or “true” origin of the prose poem. Rather, it hopes to show that the Hymnen an die Nacht provides an early framework within which to consider the emerging conflict between prose and poetry, a conflict that defines one of the prose poem’s principal concerns from Bertrand and Baudelaire to the present.