The present volume makes available in English the second of three lecture courses that Heidegger devoted to the poetry of Friedrich Hölderlin at the University of Freiburg. The first, on Hölderlin’s hymns “Germania” and “The Rhine,” was given in the winter semester of 1934–1935;1 the course on the hymn “Remembrance” was presented seven years later, in the winter of semester 1941–1942;2 and the third, on the hymn “The Ister,” took place the following semester, in the summer semester of 1942.3 The special significance of this particular lecture course on “Remembrance” for Heidegger is indicated by a number of considerations. In the fall of 1941, Heidegger’s plan was to provide interpretations (more precisely, a series of “pointers” or “remarks,” as he preferred to call them) of five of Hölderlin’s poems, which he listed in order as “Remembrance,” “The Ister,” “The Titans,” “Mnemosyne,” and “Ripe, bathed in fire . . .”4 In a note from September 1941, reproduced as the appendix to this volume, he explicitly noted that “The interpretation of ‘Remembrance’ provides the foundation and orientation, and the perspectives for all that follows.” While in fact Heidegger only managed to give detailed interpretations of the first two poems (the others being touched upon or referred to in passing, but without detailed exegesis), the foundational role of “Remembrance” for the interpretation of all the remaining hymns, including the extensive interpretation of “The Ister” in the following semester, is thereby indicated.5 Furthermore, of all four hymns that Heidegger lectured on in his three major lecture courses (“Germania,” “The Rhine,” “Remembrance,” and “The Ister”), “Remembrance” is the only one that he chose to publish a commentary on, albeit in abbreviated form, during his lifetime.6 It is also the poem that Heidegger felt most compelled to repeatedly revisit and reinterpret. In particular, it is of central importance for the final lecture course that Heidegger gave, the course “What Is Called Thinking?” delivered at the University of Freiburg in 1951–1952.7
As noted in our forewords to the translations of the other lecture courses, translating Heidegger’s interpretations of Hölderlin presents special challenges, not least that of rendering Hölderlin’s poetry into English. As with previous volumes, our translation cites the original German poetry alongside the English, and tries to adapt our translations of the poetry to the intricacies and nuances of Heidegger’s readings. Although the translations offered here are our own, we have consulted and benefited from the existing translations of Hölderlin by Michael Hamburger, adopting his solutions in particular instances. Readers may wish to examine Hamburger’s translations for alternative renditions of the poetry.8
As the lecture course explains, remembrance (in German, Andenken), is a particular kind of thinking (Denken), a “commemorative thinking” that “must remain unknown to every doctrine of thinking hitherto.”9 Its meaning is inseparable from the structure of greeting poetized in the hymn, from the nature of holidays (Feiertage, literally: days of celebration) and festivity, and from the essence of destiny and history and the task, for the Germans, of finding and appropriating what is their own in relation to the Greek beginning of Western thinking. This task would be taken up and further developed in Heidegger’s lecture course on “The Ister” that directly followed.
References to Hölderlin are to the von Hellingrath edition used by Heidegger. Translators’ notes are indicated in square brackets and provided at the end of the volume. The German text shows a number of inconsistencies of style and typography; generally, we have reproduced these in our translation, as it remains unclear whether they are found in Heidegger’s manuscript or were introduced inadvertently in the editing process. For example, the German word for memory appears in three different variations: In the first citing of the hymn, it appears as Gedächtniß (GA 52, 21); in section 63, as Gedächtniss (187); and in section 64 as Gedächtnis (192). For details of the original manuscript and principles of editing for the German volume, see the editor’s epilogue. German–English and English–German glossaries indicating the translation of key terms are also provided.
The translators would like to thank Ian Alexander Moore and Christopher Turner, graduate students at DePaul University, who reviewed early drafts of the translation and made numerous suggestions for improvement. Julia Ireland would like to thank Lara Mehling of Whitman College for her translation help in generating a first draft of the first sections of the lecture course. William McNeill would like to thank DePaul University for a University Research Council grant that funded the review of the translation, as well as the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences for a summer research grant that enabled the completion of this project. Julia Ireland would like to thank Whitman College for the the Louis B. Perry Research Grant that supported work on the translation, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation that enabled her to review Heidegger’s original manuscripts at the Deutsches Literaturarchiv in Marbach am Neckar, Germany.
1 Hölderlins Hymnen “Germanien” und “Der Rhein.” Gesamtausgabe Band 39. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1980. Third edition, 1999. Translated as Hölderlin’s Hymns “Germania” and “The Rhine” by William McNeill and Julia Ireland. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014.
2 Hölderlins Hymne “Andenken.” Gesamtausgabe Band 52. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1982. Second edition, 1992.
3 Hölderlins Hymne “Der Ister.” Gesamtausgabe Band 53. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1984. Second edition, 1993. Translated as Hölderlin’s Hymn “The Ister” by William McNeill and Julia Davis. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996.
4 See the Preliminary Considerations in the present volume.
5 Other important texts that indicate the pivotal role of “Remembrance” include the 1936 essay “Hölderlin und das Wesen der Dichtung” (“Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetry”), in Erläuterungen zu Hölderlins Dichtung. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1951, 31–45. Translated as Elucidations of Hölderlin’s Poetry by Keith Hoeller. Amherst, New York: Humanity Books, 2000, 51–65; and the 1939 reflections “Andenken” und “Mnemosyne,” in Zu Hölderlin. Griechenlandsreisen. Gesamtausgabe Band 75. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 2000, 3–32.
6 Heidegger’s essay “Andenken” was first published in the Tübinger Gedenkschrift zum hundersten Todestag Hölderlins [Tübingen Memorial Text on the Hundredth Anniversary of Hölderlin’s Death]. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1943. It was subsequently included in the collection of Heidegger’s essays on Hölderlin, Erläuterungen zu Hölderlins Dichtung. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1951, 75–143. Translated as Elucidations of Hölderlin’s Poetry by Keith Hoeller. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2000, 101–173. The published essay “Andenken” represents a substantially condensed and revised interpretation that occasionally borrows from the lecture course.
7 Was Heißt Denken? Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1954. Translated as What Is Called Thinking? by J. Glenn Gray. New York: Harper & Row, 1968.
8 See Michael Hamburger, Friedrich Hölderlin: Selected Poems and Fragments. Penguin Classics Edition. London: Penguin Books, 1998.
9 See §65. The Founding of the Coming Holy in the Word.