poetic works. We must come to terms with the fact that the Germans took a full hundred years to bring Hölderlin’s work before us in a form that forces us to admit that we today are in no way equal to its greatness and futural power.
The purely material aspects of all this—life and works and the history of their treatment—that we have to take note of, learn, and work through, are readily accessible everywhere. However, the most industrious compiling and weighing up of circumstances, influences, precedents, and rules that contribute to the genesis of a poetic work are of no help to us unless we have first thoroughly comprehended the poetic work itself and the poetic Dasein of the poet within and for that work. And this is the point of our undertaking.
A word of Hölderlin’s concerning the essence of poetry may serve to conclude these preliminary remarks. We cite from the letter that he wrote to his brother on New Year’s day 1799, the last year of the eighteenth century that was then drawing to a close (III, 368ff.):
So much has already been said about the influence of the fine arts on the education of the human being, but it has always sounded as though no one took it seriously, and this was natural, for no one gave any thought to what art, and in particular poetry [Poësie], is according to its nature. One simply viewed it in terms of its undemanding exterior, which admittedly cannot be separated from its essence, but is taken to constitute nothing less than the entire character of poetry; it was regarded as play, because it appears in the modest guise of play, and thus, consequentially enough, no other effect could arise from it than that of play, namely, distraction—almost the very opposite of the effect that it has when it is present in its true nature. For then the human being gathers himself in its presence, and the poetry bestows a sense of repose—not some empty repose, but that living, vital repose in which all our forces are at work, and yet we do not take cognizance of them as active, simply on account of their intimate harmony. Poetry brings humans closer and brings them together, not like play, in which they are united only by each forgetting himself, so that the living peculiarity of no one comes to the fore.
Poetry [Dichtung] is not play, and our relationship to it is not one of playful relaxation that makes us forget ourselves, but rather the awakening and delineation of an individual’s ownmost essence, through which he reaches back into the ground of his Dasein. If each individual proceeds from there, then a true gathering of individuals into an original community has already occurred in advance. The crude regimentation of the all too many within a so-called organization is only a makeshift expedient, but not the essence.
If we now attempt to approach that domain in which Hölderlin’s poetry unfolds its power and indeed to expose ourselves to it, then we should know that in this endeavor neither swift intelligence, nor a blindly accumulated erudition, nor some contrived welling up of supposedly primal feelings, nor inflated rhetoric will help us, but only that lucid seriousness that is able to endure the momentousness of this task for a long time to come.
PART ONE
“GERMANIA”
We shall now read and listen to the poem “Germania.” The authoritative edition from which I shall cite is the six-volume edition of Norbert von Hellingrath and his friends.1 In von Hellingrath’s edition, Hölderlin’s entire work is distributed throughout the various volumes according to when the poems were composed. The letters are in each case ascribed to different periods and accordingly arranged throughout the various volumes. This is wholly appropriate to the character of Hölderlin’s letters, which belong entirely to his work. Perhaps the German youth will one day come to remember the creator of their Hölderlin edition, Norbert von Hellingrath, who, at the age of twenty-eight, was killed in action at Verdun in 1916—or perhaps they will not.
The other critical edition by Franz Zinkernagel, which we must also necessarily employ in our actual work, collects all of Hölderlin’s letters together in volume four.2 Unfortunately we do not have the volume with the different versions.
Germania3
| I | Nicht sie, die Seeligen, die erschienen sind, |
Die Götterbilder in dem alten Lande,
Sie darf ich ja nicht rufen mehr, wenn aber
Ihr heimatlichen Wasser! jezt mit euch
Des Herzens Liebe klagt, was will es anders
Das Heiligtrauernde? Denn voll Erwartung liegt
Das Land und als in heissen Tagen
Herabgesenkt, umschattet heut
Ihr Sehnenden! uns ahnungsvoll ein Himmel.
10
Voll ist er von Verheissungen und scheint
Mir drohend auch, doch will ich bei ihm bleiben,
Und rükwärts soll die Seele mir nicht fliehn
Zu euch, Vergangene! die zu lieb mir sind.
Denn euer schönes Angesicht zu sehn,
Als wärs, wie sonst, ich fürcht’ es, tödtlich ists
Und kaum erlaubt, Gestorbene zu weken.
| II | Entflohene Götter! auch ihr, ihr gegenwärtigen, damals |
Wahrhaftiger, ihr hattet eure Zeiten!
Nichts läugnen will ich hier und nichts erbitten.
20
Denn wenn es aus ist, und der Tag erloschen,
Wohl trifts den Priester erst, doch liebend folgt
Der Tempel und das Bild ihm auch und seine Sitte
Zum dunkeln Land und keines mag noch scheinen.
Nur als von Grabesflammen, ziehet dann
Ein goldner Rauch, die Sage drob hinüber,
Und dämmert jezt uns Zweifelnden um das Haupt,
Und keiner weiss, wie ihm geschieht. Er fühlt
Die Schatten derer, so gewesen sind,
Die Alten, so die Erde neubesuchen.
30
Denn die da kommen sollen, drängen uns,
Und länger säumt von Göttermenschen
Die heilige Schaar nicht mehr im blauen Himmel.
| III | Schon grünet ja, im Vorspiel rauherer Zeit |
Für sie erzogen das Feld, bereitet ist die Gaabe
Zum Opfermahl und Thal und Ströme sind
Weitoffen um prophetische Berge,
Dass schauen mag bis
