Novalis (1772-1801)

Only what is incomplete can be comprehended—can take us further. What is complete is only enjoyed. If we want to comprehend nature we must postulate it as incomplete, to reach an unknown variable in this way.

Less is more!

Lydia Davis observes, “[w]e can’t think of fragment without thinking of whole. The word fragment implies the word whole. A fragment would seem to be part of a whole, a broken-off part of a whole.” Davis identifies the fragment as metonymic, as standing in for something outside of the work the fragment signals, even as it is unable to fully represent it.

Friedrich Schlegel (1772-1829)

“A fragment, like a miniature work of art, has to be entirely isolated from the surrounding world and be complete in itself like a hedgehog.”

Michael Bradshaw praises the “hedgehog analogy” for the way in which it promotes the fragment as both connected to the world and yet simultaneously isolated: “[It] is brilliantly chosen, capturing a mixture of independence, obstinacy and comedy in the fragment’s much-prized rejection of attempts to contain or absorb it: the fragment is a creature which possesses agency and mobility.”