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He left behind some of the most bizarre and mysterious works in the history of German thought. Just as his seemingly idle and short life left an impression of incomparable richness, as if it had exhausted every sense and every wisdom, so the mysterious words he wrote, under their playful, gorgeous and moving appearance, show all the limits of the spirit, all the limits of the spirit that makes man a god and the despair of the spirit. Novalis endured his fate soberly and religiously, aware of his tragedy but taking it in stride because a creative piety enabled him to defy death.