The Dialogue with the Friends as Fitting Preparation for the Festival
§52. “Dialogue” in the commonplace understanding and in Hölderlin’s poetic word usage
The task is to seek what is fitting for one’s destiny. Only what is fitting gives the suitability proper to one’s own. Only from out of one’s own, and directed toward it, can the human being truly receive what is coming. What, now, is that which is fitting in this sense? What is fitting, if unfitting is the absence of essentially human thinking in the poet’s waiting? What is good, if it is not good to neglect thinking and pondering thoughtfully that wherein the authentic being at home of mortals resides?
Doch gut
Ist ein Gespräch und zu sagen
Des Herzens Meinung, zu hören viel
Von Tagen der Lieb’,
Und Thaten, welche geschehen.
Yet good
Is a dialogue and to say
The heart’s opinion, to hear much
Of days of love,
And deeds that occur.
Good is “a dialogue.” What a “dialogue” is, we appear to know: individual and multiple human beings talking with one another. However, even in our everyday understanding, we place a certain emphasis on the word “dialogue.” Not every instance of talking with one another is already a dialogue. Dialogue counts for us as a particular kind of talking with one another. Sometimes we use it to refer to what we also call a “discussion,” in which a “matter” or a “case” is mutually clarified and brought into the clear. Sometimes “dialogue” signifies the bringing about of an encounter: “to enter into dialogue with one another”; this means: to assume relations, to negotiate. Even though in these cases already we always mean by the word dialogue a distinctive kind of talking with one another, nevertheless the equating of dialogue and discussion, dialogue and negotiation, dialogue and communication does not yet hit upon what Hölderlin names poetically with this word.
From the very intricate and far-reaching draft of a hymn that begins “Conciliator, you who never believed . . .” we know that “the dialogue” is the name for the encountering of humans and gods;3 this not in general, however, but rather for that coming festival that will be “on the evening of time.” “Dialogue” here does not refer to the mere form in which language is enacted. In keeping with its original essence, the dialogue is that which unites in the encountering, that through which humans and gods address their essence to one another. The dialogue, regarded in this way, is the “heavenly dialogue.”
Yet because for humans and for gods their essence is in each case the need of their essence, they admit to one another their essence in the dialogue. Such admittance is the sustaining ground for mutual understanding, that is, the possibility of listening to one another and of hearing from one another. The dialogue is festive in essence.
The dialogue, regarded in this way, is not a form of the use of language. Rather, language has its origin in the dialogue, and that means, in the festival, and thereby in that in which the festival itself is grounded. What a language is and whether the words of a language still speak within the realm of the essence of the word on a given occasion can never be discovered by a “grammar book” or decided by any linguistic science.
§53. The “opinion” of the “heart” in the dialogue: the holy
The meaning that the word “dialogue” fulfills in the poem “Remembrance” also belongs in the circle of the inceptual essence of language. It is a “festive” meaning, essentially related to the festival. How “dialogue” is to be clarified here, Hölderlin tells us himself:
Doch gut
Ist ein Gespräch und zu sagen
. . . . . . . . . . zu hören . . .
Yet good
Is a dialogue and to say
. . . . . . . . . . to hear . . .
The “and” does not add something further, but elucidates: “and” here means so much as “and that means.”—“Dialogue” means “to say / The heart’s opinion, to hear much / Of days of love / And deeds that occur.” Dialogue is “to say and to hear.” Yet this is only how we designate the component parts of any reciprocal discourse. The “dialogue” is distinctive by virtue of what is said and what is heard there. What is essential is what attunes the saying and heard voice. From here the manner of saying and hearing is at the same time determined.
To be said is “the heart’s opinion.” If we were to equate opinion with “view” here, then we would not hit upon the truth of this turn of phrase. “Saying the opinion” does not here mean expressing one’s own view about something. A connection has been made, presumably correctly, between the word Meinung and Minne [courtly love]. What is opined is here that toward which our intent is directed. Whence “the heart’s opinion”—that which the heart, namely, the “holy mourning” one, “wants.” Such is that to which the heart is resolved in its very ground, that without which it is not, and cannot be, what it is. What is here opined in the heart is the holy, which itself only ever is historically in the encountering of humans and gods. What is thus opined is that toward which the heart thinks in advance and steadfastly. What is thus thought is that wherein the heart clings and which it “wants” from its very ground.
What is thought, opined, and “wanted” in this sense is then that wherein all wishing gathers itself. “Wishing” in this essential sense is different from mere desiring, which in each case wants what it desires only for itself, and in so doing wants only itself: the unleashed vanity of one’s own “ego” that avoids all that is fitting. Such wishing, admittedly, is itself vain and empty, without correct thinking and therefore without understanding. Concerning this “wishing,” Hölderlin says in the third strophe of the hymn “The Rhine” (IV, 173):
Doch unverständig ist
Das Wünschen vor dem Schiksaal.
Yet uncomprehending is
Wishing in the face of destiny.
By contrast, wishing in the sense of the “willing” that wants what the heart opines, and as the heart opines it, is comprehending, and is the manner of correctly understanding, and that means, of thinking, what mortals think when they think essentially in the direction of their essence. What the heart’s opinion wants, concerns destiny and the festival. Hölderlin tells of this essential “wishing” in the fragmentary and most mysterious elegy already mentioned, “The Passage to Land” (IV, 112ff.). The second strophe begins:
Denn nicht Mächtiges ists, zum Leben aber gehört es,
Was wir wollen, und scheint schiklich und freudig zugleich.
For it is not something mighty, yet to life it belongs,
What we want, and appears fitting and joyous at once.
“Not something mighty”—that is, not something magnificent or effective in making an impression, or something that exercises dominion and thereby first secures a validity for itself. Yet the not mighty is indeed by no means something paltry and inessential, but that which belongs to “life” and makes life, life. That which is wanted and opined is that which is fitting and related to destiny. This is why it also stands in the radiance of the joyous, even if the latter must from time to time be said “in mourning.”
In the dialogue there is said what inceptually and pervasively attunes the heart, that into which it has fittingly destined itself. Through what is thus spoken, the dialogue itself first becomes fitting and, that is, good. What is spoken in the dialogue is, however, not exhausted in what is said. What is spoken in the dialogue is at the same time that which is heard. That which is said and that which is heard are the Same, which is why genuine hearing is indeed also an originary resaying, and not a mere repeating. Likewise, genuine saying and being able to say is in itself already a hearing. It is only because we assign saying and hearing to the mouth and ear, and because these instruments are different in appearance, that we seldom recognize that saying and hearing not only belong together but are in an essential sense the Same. Because they are such, that which is said and that which is heard must also be the Same. From this there arises the rare miracle that those who are in the dialogue have, again and again, everything to say to one another, and at the same time always nothing.
What is to be “said” in the dialogue is “the heart’s opinion.” What is to be “heard” in the dialogue is “much / Of days of love, / And deeds that occur.” What is heard is the days of love that once were and deeds that have occurred. The hearing hears “much.” The “much” in no way signifies the mere quantity of diverse things but the fullness of One. The hearing apprehends something that once was, something that occurred. What is heard, however, is not a proclamation about something past; rather, hearing hears that which once was as that which once was. Hearing becomes initiated into what once was and intimately familiar with its essence. Hearing is a being reminded of the magnanimity [Großmut] and gentleness [Sanftmut] and forbearance [Langmut] of the love that has found its way into its essence and that first prevails in its essence as something that once has been in such a manner. Hearing in the dialogue is a being reminded of the frankness [Freimut] and self-sacrifice [Opfermut] of the deed, which as something that occurred is always a consummation, and as such grounds something essential.
Love and deed fulfill the cheerfulness [Hochgemut] of that cheer [Mut] from which alone the Gemüt of mortals may summon from itself [sich zumuten] the readiness for what is its own. From the right to such summoning, freedom receives its measure, in which human beings can on each occasion historically be themselves. For only out of the freedom for what is their own and within their own can they come to be at home on the soil that is to bear their history and be the locale for their festival.
Love attunes our cheer for the festival, which is the “bridal festival.” The deeds, however, are not exhausted and do not in the first instance exhaust themselves, in success or in what is effected, for they are in themselves the freeing of cheer to inhabit destiny. Love and deed in the realm of mortals are the celebration through which the festival is grounded in advance and in a certain way is poetized. Love and deeds are the poetic of the time-space in which mortals are authentically “there.” This is why the poets liked to hear of love and deeds. This is why the poets themselves must also be named together with love and deeds. Hölderlin therefore speaks on occasion of “generals in times of old” and “beautiful women” and “poets” and “many men.” To be reminded of such is hearing in the dialogue. And saying in the dialogue is a reminding of the Same.
For “the heart’s opinion,” too, is in each case the opining of what is fitting, and is reminding, is the saying of that which already prevailed in essence. As the reciprocal relation of saying and hearing, the dialogue is the reciprocal play of recalling and being reminded. The dialogue is recollection. Its play is never frivolously playful, because this play lets resonate the unity of that accord in whose realm those saying and those hearing encounter one another.
Recollection, correctly understood, is here a becoming intimately entrusted with the essential, as that which always once already prevailed in essence. That which thus prevails in essence must entrust itself to mortals of its own accord. That is its way of becoming manifest. Yet because that which entrusts itself already prevailed and prevails in essence, it always shelters within it something earlier to which it points back, yet without letting it appear. What is recollected is filled with something that at the same time withdraws and anchors recollection in that which is concealed. Becoming manifest in self-withdrawal, however, is the way in which the destiny that is historically in the festival prevails in essence, the festival whose celebration is entrusted to mortals in the form of love and deed. We can therefore say: the dialogue that says the heart’s opinion and hears of love and deeds is the preparation granted to mortals for the heavenly dialogue into which mortals must already be drawn. Only from out of this recollective being entrusted with that which has been entrusted to them can those who say and hear in the dialogue trust one another and, as trusting, be those entrusted, be friends. Entrustedness in what has thus been entrusted is, however, the sole measure of the intimate trust of the dialogue of friends. Nevertheless, the friends do not first “make” their dialogue; for what is spoken in such dialogue is what it is, that which is recollected, only if those speaking—that is, saying and hearing—are themselves already spoken to by that which, in the dialogue, is being spoken and yet never spoken out. The dialogue first “makes” the friends, brings them into their authentic essence, which they do not satisfy by themselves, and never directly. Those who speak in saying and hearing are therefore not always purely spoken to by that which, in and for recollection, has entrusted itself to them.
§55. The endangering of the poetic dialogue of love and deeds by chatter
Good, indeed, that is, fitting, is a dialogue of the kind of saying and hearing outlined. Yet such dialogue cannot always succeed. For what accomplishes itself in it in each case is the thinking of those “thoughts” of mortals through which their cheer is a cheerful one and thus suited to fulfilling, through such thinking, the peace of that gathering with which learning the free use of one’s own is to begin. This, however, is after all what is most difficult. Yet if what is most difficult is that which is least secure from any attack, then the dialogue, which is recollection of the poetic as love and deeds, must be threatened by the corruption of its essence. The constant endangering of the dialogue is chatter, which always chatters in an indiscrimate manner about everything, the high and the low, and thereby would like to seize the highest and the heavens for itself, thus everywhere missing the poetic.
Let us not forget here that Hölderlin truly knows the dialogue and its recollective poetic essence, because he knows at the same time the corrupted essence of the dialogue, and thus the constantly threatened rareness and difficulty of the essential dialogue. Among the fragments of his hymnal poetizing, we find a word that attests for us Hölderlin’s knowing of the corrupted essence of the dialogue (IV, 257):
offen die Fenster des Himmels
Und freigelassen der Nachtgeist
Der himmelstürmende, der hat unser Land
Beschwäzet, mit Sprachen viel, undichtrischen, und
Den Schutt gewälzet
Bis diese Stunde.
Doch kommt das, was ich will.
opened the windows of the heavens
And the spirit of night set free
Storming the heavens, he reduced our land
To chatter, with many tongues, unpoetic, and
Tossed the rubble
To this very hour.
Yet there comes what I want.
What the poet wants is the fitting. This comes. Yet its coming must find an appropriate arrival. For this, according to the word of the elegy “The Walk in the Country,” “the soil must be consecrated with good talk.” The “many” tongues of chatter, however, toss the rubble, and instead of consecrating the soil, they lay waste to the land.
The chatter is “unpoetic.” In the draft of the fragment that has been preserved, the poet attempted to clarify this word. Von Hellingrath notes the following in this regard (IV, 392, top): “over ‘unpoetic’ are stacked, like a tower, the variants: ‘unending,’ ‘unpeaceful,’ ‘unbounded,’ ‘unbridled.’”
From this remark of von Hellingrath’s we may surmise: the poetic is not something endless and without banks, but rather that which fits itself into what is fitting; the poetic is the peacefulness of lucid peace. The poetic is the bounded, that which binds itself and, as bound, is binding. The poetic is the measureful that remains under bridle and measure. All this, however, said of language, insofar as it is not chatter but dialogue.
As opposed to the unpoetic language of chatter, the dialogue is poetic. This essence of the dialogue alone also corresponds to the inner coherence of the third strophe, which deals with the necessity of the dialogue for the poet who gathers himself for learning the free use of one’s own.
Only now has it become clear that we are not here dealing with “dialogue” in some general manner. Yet it is also superfluous to demonstrate at length that, because poetizing is not some esoteric business but the founding of what remains, this essence of the dialogue also determines in advance every genuine dialogue in its own way. The dialogue is poetic.
§56. The poetic dialogue as “remembrance”
We say the Same while specifying: the dialogue is remembrance. It places us into an entrustedness with that which already prevails in essence and, through its saying of love and hearing of deeds, makes manifest the intimacy of destiny. The dialogue is, as this entrustedness, the essential middle of the friendship of friends. Those entrusting themselves to one another, however, are those entrusted only if they are addressed by the intimacy that has entrusted itself to their recollection. We find here the same relations that showed themselves to us in the essence of the greeting and of those who greet. Those who greet are able to greet only if, and insofar as, they are themselves those who are greeted.
In the dialogue, there is a finding oneself, in such a way that those who say and hear distance themselves from one another, insofar as they are in each case directed back toward their own essence in being spoken to and heard. This distancing is not separation but is rather that freeing of oneself through which a free and open realm emerges between those speaking, a leeway in whose play-space one’s own is allowed to appear, and upon whose soil those speaking are alone able to be homely and are homely too, if they find their way into the truth of what is fitting. The form of this truth is friendship. In its essence it prevails more primordially than the friends, just as the dialogue is more primordial than those speaking. It awaits the latter, who in each case only ever let themselves enter the dialogue. The dialogue, therefore, does not only speak out the soulful thoughts, as though it were merely the belated making known of what is thought. Rather, what is thought is first thought in the dialogue. The dialogue is itself the thinking of what is fitting. And because the dialogue is recollection, this thinking [Denken] is therefore a “remembrance” [“Andenken”]. Because this thinking thinks in the manner of remembrance and never merely represents something at hand, it must at the same time think in the direction of that which is coming; it can, and on occasion even must, first prepare itself within the gathered peacefulness of those individuals who are poets and who, as poets, know of love and of deeds.
The poet awaits the coming festival, the encountering of humans and gods, an encountering in which the heavenly ones need human beings. This is why there must be those who help the heavenly ones. Only the poet, who knows what is fitting, is capable of recognizing those who are suited to be of help to the heavenly ones. This is why Hölderlin, in the hymn “The Titans,” says (IV, 208ff., lines 43ff.):
Manche helfen
Dem Himmel. Diese siehet
Der Dichter. Gut ist es, an andern sich
Zu halten. Denn keiner trägt das Leben allein.
Some help
The heavens. These the poet
Sees. It is good to keep
To others. For no one bears life alone.
“It is good to keep / To others.” We may now think this word more clearly if we hear the other word: “Yet good / Is a dialogue . . .”
§57. The question of where the friends are, and the essence of future friendship
Presumably a dialogue is good. Yet is it also always? Can it ever be brought about forcibly and instituted? No. It must be given. Even the individual’s, and especially the poet’s preparation for the dialogue, commemorative thinking, is always a bestowal, something the poet can only request. This “requesting” does not beg for a donation that replaces the festival and relieves one of preparing for it. This requesting is for the excessive demand of that which is fitting, for the hours of celebration, for the times that first precede the festival. The beginning of the hymn “The Titans” includes a sequence of lines that corresponds to the third strophe of “Remembrance,” and that means at the same time, to the transition from the third to the fourth strophe:
Indessen, gieb in Feierstunden
Und dass ich ruhen möge, der Todten
Zu denken. Viele sind gestorben
Feldherrn in alter Zeit
Und schöne Frauen und Dichter
Und in neuer
Der Männer viel.
Ich aber bin allein.
Still, in hours of celebration
And that I might rest, give thought
To the dead. Many have died
Generals in ancient times
And beautiful women and poets
And in recent times
Many men.
But I am alone.
This last line “But I am alone” names the ground for the question with which the fourth strophe of “Remembrance” begins. Because the poet is alone, he asks:
Wo aber sind die Freunde? Bellarmin
Mit dem Gefährten? . . .
. . . . . .
Yet where are the friends? Bellarmine
And companion? . . .
. . . . . .
This question is the sole question in the poem, and is perhaps even the question of the poem. The question concerning the friends is asked directly in this way, as though the friends had hitherto always been thought of already. Indeed they have been thought of, too, even though nothing has been said explicitly of them. For what is thought of in the naming of the dialogue and naming of the fact that it is good, is the friendship of friends. The friends are thought of already in greeting the land of Greece. The friendship already exists, but it remains to be asked where the friends are.
However, the same strophe surely makes known at the same time where they are, in saying who they are, what they do, and how they comport themselves. Then the question “Yet where are the friends?” would not, therefore, be a serious question at all, but more just the linguistic form of ascertaining that the friends are not there, which indeed is why the poet is “alone.”
Yet is the poet alone only because the friends are not there, or are the friends not yet “there” because the poet is alone? The latter hits upon the essential. The poet is the only one who has already come home into his own, in such a way that, in greeting, he thinks of that which once was. With this “remembrance,” however, the dialogue has in essence already begun. The friends are not “there,” that is to say, they are not at that place to which the poet has gone over and from which he is greeting. The friends are not in the realm of the homely and of one’s own; more precisely, they are not on the path of learning, in which the free use of one’s own is to be appropriated. That the friends are friends does not yet guarantee that they are able to freely use the homely and, out of original friendship, measure up to what constituted the need of their native homeland. Thus, the friends have remained behind outside of the realm of the homely, in the foreign. By his transition to the homely, the poet has left them behind in the foreign land, where he himself was previously, and where he sought what is “properly authentic” in the foreign, without giving thought to his own.
Back then he was a young Greek named Hyperion in the land of Greece. Back then there was already a dialogue in the form of letters that he wrote to his friend. Hölderlin’s poetic work Hyperion; or, The Hermit in Greece is presented in the form of letters. The one who receives the majority of the letters is called “Bellarmine.”
Wo aber sind die Freunde? Bellarmin
Mit dem Gefährten?
Yet where are the friends? Bellarmine
And companion?
The naming of this name points back to the poet’s previous journey. At the same time, it betrays the fact that the poet surely knows where the friends are. So why, then, still raise the question of where they are? If the question “Yet where are . . .” were merely supposed to inquire into the locale where the friends reside, then the question would indeed be superfluous. The linguistic turn of phrase would merely be a sham question expressing an answer that had already been decided. The question, however, is a genuine question. How so? We merely fail to give sufficient thought to what is being asked about.
“Yet where are the friends . . .?” The question, as a genuine one, surely presupposes that the friends are not there. Where not there? Not in the neighborhood of Hölderlin who stays at home, not in the Swabian homeland? No and yes. The question is ambiguous. Where are they not there? Not there, where now a dialogue is good, not there, where now, following the transition over the footbridge, a dialogue is necessary and possible. The dialogue in the sense named here accomplishes the beginning of the gathering of thought in the direction of learning the free use of one’s own. For this, it is not enough that those who are to talk with one another are indeed present in general. They must, if this expression is allowed here, “take their post,” that is, be ready for that which the locale demands of them. Ready for the locale: that is to say, open and inclined toward its essence. The essence of the present stay is not simply the homeland as a landscape present before us, but coming to be at home as the passage to one’s own.
The question “Yet where are the friends?” asks whether the friends are themselves already underway on the passage to what is their own, or whether their path goes in a different direction. The interrogative “where?” is not simply asking about a geographical locale, but about the essential manner of their stay and, that is, about the way in which the friends are “there.” Insofar as the poet must still ask this, however, this tells us that the friends have not yet attained the essential manner in which a peaceful dialogue is to be accomplished. More than that, the essence of the stay required for the dialogue, and thereby the essence of the dialogue, remains worthy of questioning.
The question “Yet where are the friends?” is accordingly meant to assist in determining more originarily what the essence of this dialogue of the friends is that is supposed to prepare a future “heavenly dialogue.” This dialogue of the friends is “remembrance,” but remembrance as the beginning of learning, as the passage to appropriating one’s own.
The question of the friends is the question of the essence of future friendship. Within the realm of this friendship, the poet is himself also a friend. What the fourth strophe asks indeed deals with the friends, yet also surely concerns the poet, indeed him first of all. This is what we must thoughtfully heed in order not to misinterpret what ensues as something the poet is teaching us about others, from whom he could be excluded. Precisely because the question concerning the friends stands so decisively and singularly within the poem as a whole, the danger lies near that we may choose an inappropriate level for determining the different essential locales of the friends and of the poet.
§58. The friends’ being shy to go to the source
The question “Yet where are the friends?” does not appear to be followed directly by an answer, but initially by an observation concerning the comportment of the friends:
Mancher
Trägt Scheue, an die Quelle zu gehn;
Many a one
Is shy of going to the source;
Is that just a word concerning the comportment of the friends? Is it not, rather, the authentic, therefore poetic, response to the question? There is a veiled bearing witness to the fact that the friends are not “there”; thus, there is unveiled what the essence of the locale is where the friends are not, yet to which the poet is underway. “Many a one / Is shy of going to the source”; this says the Same as the word from the hymn “The Titans”:
Ich aber bin allein.
But I am alone.
Yet this does not mean: I am the only one who has comprehended the passage to the homely and the necessity of such passage. The “I” does not puff itself up here into an exception among the poets, as though to point out to those remaining the superiority of being the “only one” and at the same time to impute to the others a lack of courage [Mut] and insight. The word means nothing whatsoever of the kind. Rather, it unveils the difficulty of conceding that one stands oneself at the beginning of what is most difficult. The word is neither accusation nor disparagement. It wants neither to reproach nor to insist on one’s own “poetic achievement.” The word betrays nothing of the presumption of being the self-assured exception that often erupts in Nietzsche. The word attests to the awe of the first sacrificed before the sacrifice.
“Many a one / Is shy . . .” To these “many” there belongs in the first instance, and even now following his transition to the other side, the poet who says this word. It seals the friendship of the friends, who are friends to one another on the grounds of their belonging to the same vocation: to be the poets of the transition. The word that seals friendship within the domain of future poets must, as the word of a friend, be at once severe and mild:
Mancher
Trägt Scheue, an die Quelle zu gehn;
Many a one
Is shy of going to the source;
“Many a one”: this does not merely mean “lots,” yet nor does it mean “a few,” but rather someone on occasion, and always again someone on some occasion. These “many” are “sometimes.” Their “time” corresponds to the while of destiny that has been equalized. “Many a one” does not refer to a “number,” but to being chosen by destiny. “Many a one”—these are the ones called upon, whose passage is sealed by awe. “Many a one,” that is to say, including the one that I myself am. These, whose essence receives such a seal, carry within themselves, in the middle of their heart, the center of gravity that is shyness.
What is that—shyness? Presumably something other than timidity. The latter, in everything it encounters, only ever remains apprehensive and uncertain everywhere. Shyness, by contrast, is magnetized by the unequivocally singular thing in the face of which it is shy. Shyness is not in any way uncertain, and yet keeps to itself. Yet this keeping to itself on the part of shyness does not become entangled in worry about itself, unlike fearfulness. The keeping to itself that pertains to shyness, however, also never knows reservation. Shyness, as an originarily steadfast keeping to oneself in the face of that before which one is shy, is at the same time the most intimate inclining toward the latter. That which attunes us to shyness lets us hesitate. Yet the hesitation belonging to shyness does not know apprehensiveness or despair. The hesitation belonging to shyness is a waitful resolve to patience; hesitation is the long-since-decided, long-drawn-out courage [lange Mut] for what is long and slow; hesitation is forbearance [Langmut]. Yet shyness does not exhaust its essence in such hesitation, but is more originary than this.
For what essentially prevails in shyness before all else is an inclining toward that before which one is shy, an inclining whose intimate familiarity veils itself in remaining distant and that holds whatever is distant near to it in casting its astonishment over toward it. Shyness is a thinking that keeps to itself, fulfilling itself and inclined with forbearance in the direction of that which is near, in a nearness that is singularly taken up with keeping distant something distant in its fullness and thereby keeping it constantly ready in its springing forth. Essential shyness is the attunement of a far-seeing thinking of the origin. Shyness is the center of gravity in which the heart of those poets must repose who in this way bring the course of history belonging to a particular humankind into what is homely for it. Shyness does not inhibit, but it sets the long and slow upon its path and is thus the attunement for the footbridges. It attunes the going and directs it toward the passage into what is originary.
Shyness emerges and awakens only where something distant appears as the sole thing to which those who are distanced in an inceptual manner authentically belong. What is thus distant initially shows itself as the foreign. The foreign is strange and disconcerting. Yet shyness is not shyness in the face of that which disconcerts, but in the face of what is one’s own and intimately entrusted from afar, that which begins to light up within the foreign as the foreign.
§59. “Source” and “river.” The wealth of the origin
Of what are those friends shy who are marked by shyness? Of the passage to the source. Therein lies: seen in relation to the most distant thing of which it is shy, that is, in relation to what is nearest and authentic for it, shyness is shyness before the source itself. What does “source” mean here?
Source means many things. The poet leaves the word vague and indeterminate. So it may seem, so long as we hear only this isolated line and fail to ponder thoughtfully the whole poem in terms of the ground of that which it poetizes. What it poetizes is the one thing for which the entire hymnal poetizing seeks the word.
“Source” is the origin from which there springs the flowing and coursing waters. These waters are the rivers. Of them it is said:
Umsonst nicht gehn
Im Troknen die Ströme. Aber wie? Sie sollen nemlich
Zur Sprache seyn.
Not in vain do
Rivers run in the dry. Yet how? Namely, they are
To be to language.
This word concerning the rivers is found in a hymn, namely, in the hymn “The Ister” (“The Danube”) (IV, 221).
A second hymn with this name has been preserved for us: “At the Source of the Danube.” The two Danube hymns and the Rhine hymn bring into the word the language of the “waters of the homeland” of “Germania.” More than all other rivers, the Danube is the river of the poet’s homeland. (However, one scarcely needs a lengthy discussion, presumably, to fend off the misunderstanding that Hölderlin is here a “poet of the Swabian homeland.” This worthy vocation has its own enjoyment and legitimacy.) The Danube hymn “At the Source of the Danube” names in its title the more local area of the Upper Swabian homeland of the poet. “At the Source of the Danube” is a naming of the river whose source is “to language” for the essential dialogue in which the event of the encountering of humans and gods will in the future be decided and come to pass:
Mancher
Trägt Scheue, an die Quelle zu gehn;
Many a one
Is shy of going to the source;
“The source”—that is the origin of the waters of the homeland, whose course speaks of the homeland as the soil that is to be consecrated for the festival. The source, however, names that which is originarily indigenous to the homeland, that which is authentically one’s own. To find one’s way there and to take up free residence in the free realm of the homeland is what is most difficult. “Many a one / is shy” of going to the origin. Yet what if someone were once to make this passage and henceforth dwelled in nearness to the source? Then what is most difficult would be overcome. Certainly, insofar as it refers to the difficulty of the free use of one’s own. And yet, one’s ownmost and the origin retain difficulty within them; only it now appears transformed, insofar as now, for one who has once gone to the source, it is abandoning the homely locale that is, by converse, difficult, if it does not indeed become impossible. This is why Hölderlin also says a counterword to “Many a one / Is shy to go to the source.” It is found in the hymn “The Journey” and reads (IV, 167):
Schwer verlässt
Was nahe dem Ursprung wohnet, den Ort.
With difficulty that
Which dwells near the origin abandons the locale.
“At the source” means the locale in the neighborhood of the origin. To dwell here means to be a good neighbor to the ownmost of one’s own. One’s ownmost is never a possession—it is one’s ownmost only as sought in a seeking. Seeking is now more precisely: the passage to the source. It is because many a one is shy of this that the friends are not there, not homely in the homeland. On account of this shyness, however, the poet too is himself not yet homely, even though he has gone over the footbridge.
With the return home, authentic becoming homely first begins, for one’s ownmost is the origin, and the origin is the inexhaustible. From the source there indeed flows the pure fullness of one’s ownmost. Yet is this fullness therefore also already found directly “at the source”? Can someone in general ever directly be “at” the source? What if the source initially were to point precisely away from itself, in the direction of the river flowing from it? Then going to the source would be almost counter to its sense. This is why it is also the most difficult thing to approach the source in accordance with its realm.
The source closes off one’s own. Everything genuinely owned, however, that is, that for whose “possession” we are properly suited, is in itself wealth. Why is the finding and appropriating of this wealth what is most difficult? Surely we already possess what is our own. It is, after all, our authentic and singular wealth. Certainly—but it is difficult, and the most difficult thing, to be wealthy in this wealth. For only one who has first become poor, in the sense of a poverty that is not deprivation, can be wealthy and use such wealth. Deprivation always remains a not-having that would like to “have” everything directly, just as directly as it does not have, yet without being properly suited for it. Such deprivation does not arise from the courage [Mut] of poverty [Armut]. The deprivation that wants to have is a wretchedness that is unceasingly fixated on wealth, without being able to know or wanting to take on its genuine essence and the conditions for appropriating it. Essential, originary poverty is the courage for the simple and originary that does not need to be fixated on something. This poverty catches sight of the essence of wealth and therefore knows its law and the manner in which it offers itself. In this, the essence of wealth conceals itself. Such wealth does not, therefore, let itself be appropriated directly.
Being wealthy must be learned. Only the essential poverty knows that genuine wealth wants to be learned. The learning must begin where the wealth shows itself most readily. Initially, however, the wealth shows itself where it is spread out. For in being spread out it initially offers itself, because this offering demands only a mere accepting and drawing from it, at first relieving us of all appropriating or even seeking. The wealth of the source is spread out where the river itself that has sprung from it has spread itself out, and where, as river, it “spreads” “into the ocean.” Here the wealth begins:
Es beginnet nemlich der Reichtum
Im Meere.
For wealth indeed begins
In the ocean.
The river has gone out into the ocean. The river itself “is” the source in such a manner, namely, the water that is “propelled from its very origin” (V, 273). In the ocean, into which the river has flowed and spread out, the source conceals itself and yet spreads itself out in it and extends itself. The sea is therefore of a peculiar ambiguity for the commemorative passage to one’s own. The ocean is the beginning of the offering of wealth. This beginning, however, is not the commencement. To commence from the commencement, that is, the origin, is what comes last. Only in what comes last in this way does that which is first and singular authentically prevail.
The initial task, therefore, is to go away from the source, downstream, in the direction of the river’s flowing out, to set out upon the ocean. Away from the source, that is, away from the homeland into the foreign.
§60. The initial appropriation of “wealth” on the poets’ voyage across the ocean into the foreign
The stay in the foreign and alienation in the foreign must be, in order for one’s own to begin to light up in relation to the foreign. This distant lighting up awakens a remote inclining toward one’s own. Hesitation begins. Forbearance becomes strong. Shyness attunes and permeates all comportment. The seeking of one’s own has found its essential ground. It is not some self-centered, unfettered groping around. Through shyness, the seeking of one’s own is in advance delivered over to the remoteness of one’s own. The voyage across the ocean thus stands under the concealed law of the return home to one’s own.
Who are these mariners who initially appropriate the wealth of the originary for themselves on their voyage across the ocean? Who are the companions from the poetic period when Hyperion is poetized?
Sie,
Wie Maler, bringen zusammen
Das Schöne der Erd’ . . .
They,
Like painters, bring together
The beautiful of the Earth . . .
The ocean voyagers are of the nature of painters; they “bring together,” in Greek: συνάγ∊ιν; in Latin: componere. They do not simply copy what is beautiful on Earth. The beautiful never lets itself be copied at all; it must be “composed.” The ocean voyagers are like painters in their bringing together. They are not themselves painters, for those who are being referred to are the companions of the poet, therefore themselves poets. What is the beautiful that these poets “bring together” and, that is, gather back to the unity of the One?
The beautiful is here not some pleasing or charming thing that is collected. “The beautiful of the Earth” is the Earth in its beauty; it refers to beauty itself. For Hölderlin, during the period when Hyperion is poetized, this is the name for “beyng.” In place of many pieces of evidence, we cite one excerpt from a draft, first discovered in 1920, of a preface to Hyperion (II, 546):
To end that eternal conflict between our self and the world, to restore the peace of all peace, which is higher than all reason, to unite ourselves with nature, into One infinite whole: that is the goal of all our striving, whether we agree about it or not.
Yet neither our knowledge nor our action at any period of existence attains that point where all conflict ceases, where All is One; a determinate line can be united with an indeterminate one only in infinite approximation.
We would also have no intimation of that infinite peace, of that beyng, in the singular sense of the word, we would not strive at all to unite nature with ourselves, we would not think and would not act, there would be nothing at all, (for us) we ourselves would think nothing, (for us) unless through that infinite unification, that beyng, in the singular sense of the word, were present for us. It is present—as beauty; to speak with Hyperion, a new kingdom awaits us, where beauty will be queen.—
I believe in the end we shall all say: holy Plato, forgive! one has [originally: “we have”] sinned against you mightily.
The Editor.
Beauty, as beyng, can be brought into view only by συναγωγή—by bringing together into One, not by a random copying of facts. Bringing together does not first bring about the One, but rather already has this One in view as that which unifies and brings it to appear in its unifying. The One is that which rests in itself, that which is regal in “queen” “beauty.” The analogy with the painters is meant to indicate that in this bringing together, the projection of the One and what underlies it, ὑπόθ∊σις, remains what is essential. The poets, as it is put in the same preface, are not “reporters,” those who run after the mere alternation of ever new “facts.”
The analogy between the poets and painters by no means wants to speak in favor of “descriptive poesy.” That Hölderlin clearly rejects the latter is shown by a distich that was composed immediately after Hyperion, and that still points back to this period (III, 6):
Wisst! Apoll ist der Gott der Zeitungsschreiber geworden,
Und sein Mann ist wer ihm treulich das Faktum erzählt.
Know this! Apollo has become the god of journalists,
And his man is whoever faithfully narrates him the facts.
The poets do not report, they project the image, and in it bring into view the visage that constitutes the outward look, the ἰδέα of beings. They must, however, experience this on their voyage, out of the manifold of appearances on Earth. They must ascend from the totality of beings toward being.
(That the poets are here thought “like painters” contains the concealed truth about the essence of the poetic vocation of the poets who have not yet transitioned over to the other side. They are poets within the essential realm of “metaphysics.”)
For this, it is necessary that they experience much, and in coming to know the foreign, withstand its perils and through confrontation with it test their own ability:
und verschmähn
Den geflügelten Krieg nicht,
and do not spurn
The winged war,
Their war is called winged after “the ship’s wings,” the word that Hölderlin uses in the elegy “The Archipelago” to name the sails (IV, 91, line 81). The “winged war” is the struggle with the adversity of the winds and unfavorable weather. Such struggle discloses for the first time the wealth that begins in the ocean. During this struggle the poets do not dwell near to the origin but rather are resolved:
Zu wohnen einsam, jahrlang, unter
Dem entlaubten Mast . . .
To dwell in solitude, year long, beneath
The defoliate mast . . .
§61. The “year long” learning of the foreign on the ocean voyage of a long time without festival
They are to learn to use the foreign, but they are not permitted to become homely in it. Neither in the foreign nor in what is their own are they at home. The ocean voyage and their stay in the foreign do not pass quickly by, as though all this were merely an episode that could be taken lightly: the beginning of learning the foreign, a learning that must first precede the authentic learning of one’s own, lasts “year long.” Here, nothing can be rushed, and nothing can be forcibly brought about at the unpropitious time.
The time of the voyage beneath the mast is like a long winter, in which the trees are left without foliage and the forces and juices of growth hold back. The mast, with its woodwork and rigging, sways in the storm like a tree without its leaves in winter. The poet knows that preparing for the passage to the source and for the appropriation of one’s own origin is a time of far-reaching decisions. The transition and the footbridges are slow; the time is a time of night. The night is the time before the day, which as holiday yet itself remains the day before the festival. During this time that far precedes the festival, the companions voyage:
wo nicht die Nacht durchglänzen
Die Feiertage der Stadt,
Und Saitenspiel und eingeborener Tanz nicht.
where there gleam not through the night
The holidays of the town,
Nor the music of strings nor native dance.
(cf. p. 60 above)
Yet must not the voyage in such nighttime be an errant one, after all? What possibilities still remain here, other than sheer adventure? The adventurer has placed “his stake on nothing,” which here means, on his sole pleasure. To him, the foreign is the alien, the exotic, which in his desire for intoxication he samples fleetingly, so as to perhaps thereby experience the shock of the surprising and unusual, which he then equates with the wonderful. Yet the ocean voyage of the companions of the poet, who has made the transition to the other side, is of a different gravity than the adventure: it is noble and sober. The sea voyage of the companions knows the foreign not as the excitement of the exotic, but as the first glimmer of one’s own. The night is a “holy night” because it already requires staying awake in awaiting the holy.
The figure of the adventurer is possible only within the historical space of the humankind of modernity and its “subjectivity.” Odysseus was not yet an adventurer. The seafarers referred to, that is, poetized by Hölderlin are no longer adventurers. The “adventurous heart”4 belongs in the realm of the metaphysics of the will to power. Not so the heart of Hölderlin’s companions. Their heart bears shyness. This ocean voyage is the clear crossing of a long time without festival. The length of time contains the guarantee that the true comes to pass. This long time is the time-space of a concealed history. No modern thinking, indeed no metaphysics in general, suffices to experience, let alone to know this history. Because, however, our own thought and action is everywhere metaphysical, we cannot yet find our way into the historical space of this history. We ourselves must first learn something still more provisional, waiting for the favor of being able to await authentically the long time. Such waiting, certainly, does not consist in the empty waiting for some stroke of fortune that will supposedly throw salvation our way, toward those of us who are entirely unprepared. Waiting for the favor of being able to await the long time is reflection. Reflection is readiness for knowing.
Only one path leads to Hölderlin’s knowing of the historicality of history; that is the path whose signpost Hölderlin himself placed in his poetizing at distant intervals. The unfinished hymn “Mnemosyne” contains the word (IV, 225):
Lang ist
Die Zeit, es ereignet sich aber
Das Wahre.
Long is
The time, yet what is true
Comes to pass.
The mariners must wait through this “long time,” in which for an extended time and ever again anew it “is not yet time,” and must practice forbearance. (Forbearance [Langmut] is not empty and impassive waiting, but the courage for what is long [der Mut zum Langen], for that which reaches over into the coming festival.) Even the poet, who has returned home from the voyage, cannot cast off forbearance. He remains a companion to his companions and waits for the dialogue and for the ability to say, even when and precisely when, from time to time, he is cheered by musical strings from his homeland that “play something loving.” Indeed, for him forbearance first becomes manifest in its essence as that which lets the long time of waiting and the retaining of what once was truly endure and prevail in their essence. This steadfast insistence within the originary historical time of essential history is care.
(The adventurous human being can comprehend care only as weakness and worry, since he thinks only subjectively, that is, metaphysically, and supposedly loves severity. If the latter fails, he takes refuge in some kind of intoxication, if only that of frenzy.)
To be “there” in the essential ground of care is the concealed calling of the few—or at first only that of a single human being.
The elegy “Homecoming” closes thus (IV, 107ff.):
Schweigen müssen wir oft; es fehlen heilige Nahmen,
Herzen schlagen und doch bleibet die Rede zurük?
Aber ein Saitenspiel leiht jeder Stunde die Töne,
Und erfreuet vieleicht Himmlische, welche sich nahn.
Das bereitet und so ist auch beinahe die Sorge
Schon befriediget, die unter das Freudige kam.
Sorgen, wie diese, muss, gern oder nicht, in der Seele
Tragen ein Sänger und oft, aber die anderen nicht.
We must often be silent; holy names are lacking,
Hearts beat, yet still our talk holds back?
But a playing of musical strings lends each hour its tones,
And perhaps cheers heavenly ones, who draw near.
That prepares and thus is care also almost
Already put at ease, as it came under the cheerful.
Cares such as these, willingly or not, a singer must bear
In his soul and often, but others not.
Long is the time in which what is fitting must be sought. What is fitting is one’s own, to which a humankind that belongs historically to destiny must be delivered over.
(Long and varied for individuals is the voyage. Time and again, however, the knowledge is needed of where those seeking are in their voyage, of what the essence of the locale is, to which they have gone; for each time the passage to one’s own is a coming from the remoteness of the foreign, and even in the homeland itself the homely remains difficult to find after the foreign has been learned and withstood in its essence. Always, and here too, there remains a shyness to go to the source and to freely appropriate that free comportment that is appropriate to the source.)
What is their own for the Germans is the clarity of presentation. What is meant is poetizing. Yet “clarity of presentation” is not equivalent to the superficially considered feature of the understandability of what a statement is communicating. “Clarity of presentation” is the luminous and light, and that means, the open, in which the poetizing word attains and sets up that which is to be said.
§62. The singular remembrance of the locale of the friends and of the fitting that is to be poetized
“Clarity of presentation” here signifies the essence of the truth of the poetic. The poetic, however, is the essential ground for the way in which the human being dwells upon this Earth, in order that he may be at home in what is his own. “Free use” therefore also refers to something other than merely the unconstrained employment of a tool. “Free use” means to stand openly in the open realm of the essence of poetizing and its truth, and thereby to know what it is that is to be poetized.
Learning to freely use one’s own is in the first instance the task given to the poets. They must find that which is fitting in their saying and be resolute in the essence of this saying. What, therefore, is the fundamental trait of presenting as setting forth, and from where is its clarity determined?
The poets who are still on their ocean voyage and on foreign coasts bring together the beautiful (beyng) like painters. Manifestly, however, the poets who have come home, who are to sing the holy of the fatherland, can no longer poetize in such a way. Yet nor can they arbitrarily invent the way that is proper to the homely; the presentation must be appropriate to that which is to be presented. One’s own must be found and “experienced” as measure. The passage to the source must begin with the voyage across the ocean. Those who have come home, therefore, cannot simply put their previous voyage behind them. The voyage must carry to full term its own essence, so that it returns as a voyage to the foreign, returning to the source and to arrival in the homeland, and to becoming homely in this homeland.
This is why the question “Yet where are the friends?” must always also be asked as the question “Where am I myself as their friend?” This one, unified question is now more unequivocally the question of the passage to the source, and that means at the same time the question of where the friends and the questioning poet himself are underway to, and where they have gone, where they are headed on their passage.
Thinking of the friends, where they have gone to, and thinking of what is first to be attained in all this, thinking of one’s own, thus coalesce in the thinking of a singular “remembrance.” This “remembrance” is at once a thinking back and a thinking ahead, and always a thinking on the passage to one’s own and its free use:
Nun aber sind zu Indiern
Die Männer gegangen,
Dort an der luftigen Spiz’
An Traubenbergen, wo herab
Die Dordogne kommt
Und zusammen mit der prächt’gen
Garonne meerbreit
Ausgehet der Strom . . .
But now to Indians
The men have gone,
There on the breezy headland
On vineyard slopes, where down
Comes the Dordogne
And together with the magnificent
Garonne the river
Spreads into the ocean . . .
The land that was greeted in the first and second strophes appears once more. “The beautiful Garonne” is again named. This southern land and its fire stands for the land of Greece.
Is that not an arbitrary interpretation? To ward off this suspicion, we must repeatedly recall the letter to Böhlendorff of December 2, 1802. Yet also the letter of December 4, 1801, prior to the journey to southern France, speaks of the land of Greece as the “Apollonian kingdom.” That is the kingdom of the heavenly fire, for which Homer had to appropriate sobriety for himself as something foreign to the Greeks. After his return from France, Hölderlin speaks of the “powerful element,” of the “fire from the heavens,” and of his being “struck by Apollo” there.
In the poem “Remembrance,” southern France stands poetically for the land of Greece. Yet in the meantime, the poet himself has gone from there to the source. Yet where have the friends gone?
Nun aber sind zu Indiern
Die Männer gegangen,
But now to Indians
The men have gone,
To “Indians”? To the Indus? Thus still further away from what, for the poet, is the land of his home. Still further away, if we measure the remoteness numerically in terms of distance. Nonetheless nearer, if we ponder the essential, the passage to the source, the arrival in Germania. It is already enigmatic enough that in Hyperion, the young Greek of this name is suddenly abandoned by his older male friend Adamas, after the latter has “initiated” the younger one “now . . . into Plutarch’s world of heroes, now into the magic land of the Greek gods” (II, 98). Hyperion writes to his friend Bellarmine about it (II, 102):
It looks as though I was angry with my Adamas for abandoning me, but I am not angry with him. Oh, he indeed wanted to come again! In the depths of Asia there is supposedly hidden a people of rare excellence; to them his hope drove him onward.
To the Indians by the Indus? As if the distant provenance of Germania were at the Indus and the parents of our native homeland had come from there. In the fragment of a hymn that von Hellingrath has given the title “The Eagle” we read (IV, 223):
Anfänglich aber sind
Aus Wäldern des Indus
Starkduftenden
Die Eltern gekommen.
Yet in the beginning
From forests of the Indus
Strongly fragrant ones
Our parents have come.
“Indus,” in the realm of the hymnal poetry, is the poetic name for the primordial homeland, which, however, nonetheless remains remote. It is only for those who are homely and for those who seek what is their own, in such a way that they have gone there, yet at the same time returned from the Indus. Those who have returned home are who they are as those arrived from afar. However, just as the voyage of departure away from the source into the foreign and remote requires the river that spreads out into the ocean, so, too, the river, in which the source streams inexhaustibly and conceals itself, must be the sign and the path for the return.
This can be only the properly homely river of this poet: the Danube, the Ister. This is why we read in the first strophe of the hymn “The Ister” (IV, 220):
Wir singen aber vom Indus her
Fernangekommen . . .
We, however, sing from the Indus
Arrived from afar . . .
The arrival of those who have arrived from afar, from the most distant yet authentic remoteness of the distant origin, must follow that river which has its source in the native homeland. If those arriving from afar who are going to the source thus follow the river, then the river will carry them back to the source. The river itself goes backwards, as it were. The third strophe of the same hymn that speaks of the Indus, “The Ister,” says the following regarding the water of the homeland, the river called the Danube:
Der scheinet aber fast
Rükwärts zu gehen und
Ich mein, er müsse kommen
Von Osten.
He appears, however, almost
To go backwards and
I presume he must come
From the East.
In this mysterious word concerning the backwards flowing river of the homeland there lies concealed everything that the poet knows and thinks regarding the grounding and appropriation of one’s own. Only the most distant remoteness corresponds to the nearness to one’s ownmost. The source streams and is the source as the river that spreads out into the ocean and thus is the ocean. The ocean itself is the source in its most distant removal. The river is the source and is the ocean.
The word regarding the river’s going backwards is not a mere illusion or an image. The river in truth goes backwards—but this truth is the truth of the essential, which runs contrary to everything merely correct and ascertainable, just like the river, which, considered correctly, surely only flows away from the source, after all. The word regarding the backwards flowing river is the shy intimation of the concealed essence of the commencement and of history. The latter has its essence in destiny, which, equalized in the festival, tarries a while. Destiny presents itself only in that which is fitting; the latter must be sought. This seeking must wait it out in the time that is long, and must take the course of the mysterious course of the river that is the river of the homeland:
Wir singen aber vom Indus her
Fernangekommen und
Vom Alpheus, lange haben
Das Schikliche wir gesucht,
We, however, sing from the Indus
Arrived from afar and
From Alpheus, long have
We sought what is fitting,
Because this seeking and taking the course of the backwards flowing river is the secret of history, the wealth of this mystery cannot be comprehended in a single thought or a single word in the manner of some clever artifice and enunciated like the solution to a puzzle. This is why Hölderlin adds to that word concerning the “river” the equally mysterious word that recurs in different variations during the “hymnal period,” and that here reads:
Vieles wäre
Zu sagen davon.
There would be
Much to tell of this.
In the Donau hymn “The Ister,” the lines connected to this that tell of the river going backwards read:
Der scheinet aber fast
Rükwärts zu gehen und
Ich mein, er müsse kommen
Von Osten.
Vieles wäre
Zu sagen davon.
He appears, however, almost
To go backwards and
I presume he must come
From the East.
There would be
Much to tell of this.
When Hölderlin in the concluding strophe of “Remembrance” thinks of the men who have gone to the Indians, then this remembrance is a thinking of that which is “inceptual,” from which, arriving from there and solely in the manner of arrival, those seeking can ask concerning what is homely in their homeland and find it in its essence. That, for the Germans, is what is fitting in their destiny. The same concluding strophe of the poem “Remembrance,” the strophe that at its beginning thinks still further over beyond the southern land to the supreme remoteness of the Indus, therefore tells in its last lines of one’s own and of the sole way in which it may be found and preserved:
Es nehmet aber
Und giebt Gedächtniss die See,
Und die Lieb’ auch heftet fleissig die Augen.
Was bleibet aber, stiften die Dichter.
Yet what takes
And gives memory is the sea,
And love too fixes with intensity our eyes.
Yet what remains, the poets found.
Even if, following all of this, we are capable of thoughtfully reflecting on Hölderlin’s knowledge of the essence of history only in its vague outlines, we must meanwhile intimate in the essence of historicality caught sight of by Hölderlin a fundamental trait whose mystery gives us to think anew everything noted thus far.
History essentially prevails in destiny. Destiny tarries a while, equalized in the festival. This is prepared in the holidays. In the form that they take, the homely flourishes. The festival is the bridal festival in the manner of the encountering of humans and gods (cf. Review, p. 68). The attuning fundamental attunement of the festive is love. Yet it is not the only one.
For the most part, however, destiny remains unequalized. Gods and humans are not homely within what is homely for them, and because they are not homely [unheimisch], they are therefore also uncanny [unheimlich]. To those who are unhomely, it remains undecided what is foreign and what is one’s own. Neither the one nor the other has been found. For not just one’s own, but the foreign too must be learnt. If the free use of one’s own is indeed what is most difficult, then this entails that withstanding the test of the foreign also remains difficult and has its own exigency. This is why Hölderlin says in his letter to Böhlendorff (December 4, 1801): “Yet one’s own must be learned just as well as the foreign” (V, 320). To finding one’s own there belongs the sea voyage. The attuning fundamental attunement for the festival is just as much the voyage and the deed, only in another manner than love.
§64. The passage to the foreign, “bold forgetting” of one’s own, and the return home
That destiny is for the most part unequalized entails the essential need to prepare the equalization. To this there belongs the care for the mediate, within which alone the immediate appears, which is given immediately neither to gods nor to humans. The unequalized, unhomely, is not a defective state, but rather belongs to the essential state of gods and humans. This entails that human beings are historically precisely not at home at the commencement, but that their thinking and reflecting, because it seeks the homely, is before that directed precisely toward the foreign.
“Spirit loves colony.” With this relation we touch upon the mystery of history and of the commencement. The commencement does not commence with the commencement. The human being too is historically not immediately in the center of his being.
The human being “traverses” an “excentric orbit.” The first version of Hyperion already begins with this thought (II, 53). In the first draft of the Preface to the final version, we read: “We all traverse an excentric orbit, and there is no other way possible from childhood to consummation” (II, 545). This thought of the excentricity of the human essence is admittedly not the same as the more originary thinking through of the essence of history that gives the hymnal poetizing its substratum.
The knowledge among poets and thinkers concerning this mystery, like all knowledge of what is supremely concealed, is spoken only seldom, and when it is, then for the most part only in passing, in an interim remark, or in a rough draft that is then not at all taken up into what is explicitly said or crafted. Thus a draft has been preserved for us that belongs to Hölderlin’s elegy “Bread and Wine,” specifically for its concluding strophe, a draft that even von Hellingrath failed to register.5 Above lines 152–156 of the said elegy are found the words:
nemlich zu Hauß ist der Geist
Nicht im Anfang, nicht an der Quell. Ihn zehret die Heimat.
Kolonie liebt, und tapfer Vergessen der Geist.
Unsere Blumen erfreun und die Schatten unserer Wälder
Den Verschmachteten. Fast wär der Beseeler verbrandt.
namely at home is spirit
Not at the commencement, not at the source. The home consumes it.
Colony, and bold forgetting spirit loves.
Our flowers and the shades of our woods gladden
The one who languishes. The besouler would almost be scorched.
What is said here spans all relations of the essence of history of which Hölderlin knows. Yet what is said lets us clearly recognize only a few things, and this in a disconnected way. Taken at face value, it cannot be understood. Yet in the meantime we are no longer entirely unprepared. Here we must be content to highlight what relates to the concluding strophe of “Remembrance.”
Spirit is “not at home” “at the source.” This is why there is the need for the passage to the source. Why, namely at the beginning of history, is spirit not homely in the homeland? Because the latter “consumes.” “Consuming” is a slow destruction and laying waste; something that uses up our energies, that is, withdraws them from their authentic use through mere expenditure, which is in itself inappropriate. In being expended, which from the outside always remains a being applied, our abilities are not freely determined from out of their essence and not released for the freedom of being authentically used. Their free use, by contrast, does not use up our ability but brings it rather into the streaming wealth of evolved usage. Consuming and consumption are found where the ability is not free to exercise that for which it is an ability.
In the beginning, the homeland is still closed off within itself, uncleared and unfree, and thus has not yet come to itself. This coming to “itself” demands a coming from something other. Going away to an other is the initial, as yet unappropriated distancing of the ability in relation to that for which it is an ability and within which it is to become free usage. Because the homeland demands a becoming homely, yet the latter, as a coming to oneself, must be a coming home, for this reason the spirit of the homeland itself demands the foreign from which alone a homecoming can proceed in any instance:
Kolonie liebt, und tapfer Vergessen der Geist.
Colony, and bold forgetting spirit loves.
The stay in the foreign and the learning of the foreign, not for the sake of the foreign, but for the sake of one’s own, demands that enduring waiting that no longer thinks of one’s own. Such absence of remembrance is not the forgetting that stems from indifference, but rather from the boldness of heart, which likewise remains certain of one’s own that is coming.
The line “Colony, and bold forgetting spirit loves” is followed by:
Unsere Blumen erfreun und die Schatten unserer Wälder
Den Verschmachteten. Fast wäre der Beseeler verbrandt.
Our flowers and the shades of our woods gladden
The one who languishes. The besouler would almost be scorched.
Previously, the thought has been that spirit still resides in the foreign. In the meantime, without this being explicitly stated here, it has found the homeland again: it, the one who languishes, “the besouler,” who would “almost be scorched.” “The besouler” is the poet, the one in whose soul the thoughts of spirit quietly end, so as from the soul to be born to the word. The naming of the “besouler” says unequivocally that these lines everywhere refer to the being at home and not being at home, the going into the foreign and returning home of the poet.
In the foreign land, the heavenly fire is the element that is one’s own. This threatens to scorch the poet, who has a different homeland that he seeks, so that he is entirely unable to learn the use of what is his own. For such learning cannot be accomplished in the realm of the indeterminate, as though it were merely the acquisition of an empty technique. Free use needs an inner relation to what is to be presented, that is, to the holy, for which the soil of the homeland must be consecrated.
Yet what the poet wants is “nothing mighty.” “What” is summoned for the protection of what is “wanted” requires no extravagance: “Our flowers and the shades of our woods gladden”—nothing else. These are the gifts that help by virtue of simply blossoming and standing there, and that grant the favor for what is most difficult: to commence poetically with the commencement from out of the commencement, and that means, to ready the holidays for the festival.
For this, the attunement of the festive ground must remain awake; that which prevails in essence and once was, which attunes this fundamental attunement, must hold sway throughout the saying and hearing in the commemorative dialogue. The poet who has come home has not reproached the poets and companions of the foreign land; only it has now become clear and decided how everything inceptual has separated the own of the foreign and the own of the homely.
In the other Danube hymn, “At the Source of the Danube,” Hölderlin says (IV, 160):
Ein unaufhörlich Lieben wars und ists.
Und wohl geschieden, aber darum denken
Wir aneinander doch, . . .
An unceasing loving it was and is.
And well separated, yet therefore we think
Of each other after all, . . .
Remembrance remains, and is itself attuned to “think” that which remains, if only this thinking, as the poet’s thinking, has found its way into its own essence and has come into the free use of its own, that is, into the clarity of presentation.
Meanwhile the passage to one’s own has begun. Unnoticed by the many, the poet has come home. His companions, however, have gone still further into the distance, sooner to find their way back. At such a time, when there is both sea voyage and unceasing loving and one’s own seeking for one’s own on the native soil of the homeland, there must also be found there for the first time “the clarity of presentation” for poetizing, that is, it must be poetized. What “remembrance” is in the articulated fullness of its essence becomes word:
Es nehmet aber
Und giebt Gedächtnis die See,
Und die Lieb’ auch heftet fleissig die Augen.
Was bleibet aber, stiften die Dichter.
Yet what takes
And gives memory is the sea,
And love too fixes with intensity our eyes.
Yet what remains, the poets found.
The sea voyage leads off into the foreign. The sea “sublates” thinking of the homeland, because the colony-loving spirit loves “bold forgetting.” However, as the sea takes our thinking back to the abandoned and at the same time still unappropriated homeland, it indeed first gives, within the foreign to which it leads as something foreign, a thinking ahead to the other of the foreign. That is one’s own.
§65. The founding of the coming holy in the word
Likewise, love releases our view from the bonds of the contingent and transforms it into a view of the essence, one that “with intensity,” that is, intentionally, is directed only toward the essential. That is the encountering of humans and gods: the bridal festival.
Yet even though the sea voyage and love, in their remembrance of what once was, already think ahead into that which is coming, still, taken by themselves and despite all effort and all intensity, they never satisfy what is entrusted to care. They prepare the while of equalized destiny, and yet do not ready for it the open realm within which it can be historical and grant a dwelling site to humans. The human being, however, “dwells poetically upon this Earth.” The while is first readied when that which tarries in the while can become openly manifest and find the open realm for presentation.
In its inceptual coming, the holy must be said, become grounded in the word, bestowed as the word to the sons of the Earth, thus bringing their language back to the dialogue. Only in the word do love and deeds attain the ground of their essence. That which is coming inceptually, however, does not let itself be “brought together” in the manner of painters. The grounding bestowal of the inceptual is founding. Only the poets who have gone over the footbridge to the source are able to found. Because, however, at the source everything is inceptual, the essence of this poetizing must also first be poetized. Hölderlin has poetized the essence of the coming poets and enclosed everything in this one word:
Was bleibet aber, stiften die Dichter.
Yet what remains, the poets found.
What is poetized in the poem “Remembrance” is the essence and the essential time-space of a thinking that must remain unknown to every doctrine of thinking hitherto. Commemorative thinking thinks in the direction of the festival that once was, in thinking ahead to the coming festival. This remembrance that thinks back and thinks ahead, however, prior to both of these, thinks in the direction of what is fitting. Thinking directed toward what is fitting belongs to destiny. Such “thinking” belonging is the inceptual essence of remembrance.
To be able to found what remains, the poet himself must be one who remains; he must be capable of this one thing: to remain amid the many things that remain to be borne in the long time and to be said in song.
The Danube hymn “At the Source of the Danube” concludes as follows (IV, 161):
Darum, ihr Gütigen! umgebet mich leicht,
Damit ich bleiben möge, denn noch ist manches zu singen,
Jezt aber endiget, seeligweinend,
Wie eine Sage der Liebe,
Mir der Gesang, und so auch ist er
Mir, mit Erröthen, Erblassen,
Von Anfang her gegangen. Doch Alles geht so.
And so, you gracious ones! embrace me gently,
That I may remain, for much is still to be sung,
But now ends, in tears of bliss,
Like a saga of love,
For me the song, and so too has it
Gone for me, blushing, growing pale,
From the commencement. But everything goes that way.
3 Cf. “Hölderlin und das Wesen der Dichtung,” 1936, in Erläuterungen zu Hölderlins Dichtung, fourth edition (Frankfurt am Main, 1971), 33–48. Translated by Keith Hoeller as “Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetry,” in Elucidations of Hölderlin’s Poetry (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2000), 51–65. Gesamtausgabe Band 4 (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1981), 79–151.
4 Ernst Jünger, Das abenteuerliche Herz. Aufzeichnungen bei Tag und Nacht (Berlin, 1929); second version, Das abenteuerliche Herz. Figuren und Capriccios (1938). Translated by Thomas Friese as The Adventurous Heart: Figures and Capriccios (Candor, NY: Telos Press, 2012).
5 Cf. Friedrich Beißner, Hölderlins Übersetzungen aus dem Griechischen (1933), 147.