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Gedichte
Further solidifying Hölderlin’s place in history, this thorough collection of poetry ranges from the odes of his developmental period to the majestic hymns and strangely prophetic modern compositions created in his later years. Considered one of the founders of European romanticism, Hölderlin had a mere 10 years to develop his distinctive style before falling prey to a debilitating mental illness, whose resultant works are the heartbreakingly sweet and melancholy pieces of the Späteste Gedichte (Last Poems). Each poem is presented in both its original German and a new English translation, while an illuminating introduction explores Hölderlin’s significance in the realm of literature as well as the tumultuous world in which he lived.
170 pages, Perfect Paperback
First published January 1, 1826
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About the author
Friedrich Hölderlin
505 books402 followersJohann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin was a major German lyric poet, commonly associated with the artistic movement known as Romanticism. Hölderlin was also an important thinker in the development of German Idealism, particularly his early association with and philosophical influence on his seminary roommates and fellow Swabians Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling.
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April 11, 2023
Hölderlin is a poet of the lost, and at times, the reader reaches into the same darkness for the same answers. And if the poet doesn’t provide any, well, I don’t have them either.
As with so many of the Romantics, it is tempting to read his life as embodying his poetic vocation, but I think we would do so at our peril. For the reader of good intellectual conscience, it is simply embarrassing to read overheated nineteenth-century claims that his mental collapse tells us that he was “too fine of feeling for the world”. Let us stick with what we know.
In Hölderlin’s case this is made all the more difficult by the increasing obscurity of his poetic matter as he moved toward the breakdown that would leave him a ward of caretakers for the second half of his life. One cannot help but be deeply touched imagining him gazing out of his solitary tower toward the river for these many years.
There is almost too much that can be said about this towering figure and his short career. He was hardly the first German to take the literature and mythology of the ancient Greeks as his primary concern, but he was, I think, the first to take it seriously in its own terms as a religious idiom, and to find himself under the spell of the Greek divinities, especially Dionysus (or Bacchus, as Hölderlin himself always referred to him).
And he was certainly one of the first to see ancient Greek culture as a meeting place of opposed, powerful energies striving toward disorder and release as much as toward harmony and balance - this reading surely caught the attention of the young Nietzsche, who read and admired the poet. And perhaps we should take it as cautionary that these two great writers both took Dionysus for their patron, and both ended their lives in complete psychological disorder.
So there is that to be said for Hölderlin, and on top of it we have his close friendship with Hegel and Schelling, his classmates at a protestant seminary. The thorough research of Manfred Frank has given us an extensive record of their work together in collectively formulating post-Kantian early Romantic idealism. What reader of Hölderlin could fail to be fascinated by this?
But to return to the demands of critical appraisal, I will admit that if any trace of Hölderlin’s intense philosophical exploration are to be found in his poems, they are invisible to me, except perhaps insofar as he struggled to find a new language for his new mythology, and this new language is often exceedingly obscure.
Despite being a poet who took Pindar and Sophocles as models, Hölderlin nevertheless sounds uniquely modern to my ears, as far ahead of his Zeitgeist as Büchner was to his. I was reminded of this recently reading Robert Musil’s novel Die Verwirrungen des Zögling Törleß, which, I think, owes a great debt to Hölderlin’s image of the night of the Gods for its modernist characterization of a breakdown of values.
In addition to Hölderlin the classicist, Hölderlin the philosopher, and Hölderlin the modernist, there is Hölderlin the craftsman, who is perhaps my favorite Hölderlin of all. This the wordsmith who could periodically convey poetic images of enormous force when he wasn’t too busy groping in the darkness. This is the Hölderlin of “Die Eichbäume”:
Keiner von euch ist noch in die Schule der Menschen gegangen,
Und ihr drängt euch fröhlich und frei, aus der kräftigen Wurzel,
Unter einander herauf und ergreift, wie der Adler die Beute,
Mit gewaltigem Arme den Raum, und gegen die Wolken
Ist euch heiter und groß die sonnige Krone gerichtet.
Eine Welt ist jeder von euch, wie die Sterne des Himmels
Lebt ihr, jeder ein Gott, in freiem Bunde zusammen.
Or “Heidelberg”:
Wie der Vogel des Walds über die Gipfel fliegt,
Schwingt sich über den Strom, wo er vorbei dir glänzt,
Leicht und kräftig die Brücke,
Die von Wagen und Menschen tönt.
Or “Der Gang aufs Land”:
Aber schön ist der Ort, wenn in Feiertagen des Frühlings
Aufgegangen das Tal, wenn mit dem Neckar herab
Weiden grünend und Wald und all die grünenden Bäume
Zahllos, blühend weiß, wallen in wiegender Luft,
Aber mit Wölkchen bedeckt an Bergen herunter der Weinstock
Dämmert und wächst und erwarmt unter dem sonnigen Duft.
We even see this gift for dazzling concrete imagery in the first verse of “Brot und Wein”, which was initially published as a standalone poem:
Rings um ruhet die Stadt; still wird die erleuchtete Gasse,
Und, mit Fackeln geschmückt, rauschen die Wagen hinweg.
Satt gehn heim von Freuden des Tags zu ruhen die Menschen,
Und Gewinn und Verlust wäget ein sinniges Haupt
Wohlzufrieden zu Haus; leer steht von Trauben und Blumen,
Und von Werken der Hand ruht der geschäftige Markt.
This is perhaps the pivot-point of his development, and following that elegy his spiritual concerns would increasingly eclipse his interest in concrete expression. But great work was still to come, and while I wouldn’t particularly defend Heidegger’s reading of Hölderlin, I agree with his very high assessment of poems like “Der Ister”. Some of it is shear magic:
Man nennet aber diesen den Ister.
Schön wohnt er. Es brennet der Säulen Laub,
Und reget sich.
Or take his conception of the river, which reflects the light of the sun and the moon, as reconciling these opposing energies within itself:
Ein Zeichen braucht es,
Nichts anderes, schlecht und recht, damit es Sonn
Und Mond trag im Gemüt, untrennbar,
Und fortgeh, Tag und Nacht auch, und
Die Himmlischen warm sich fühlen aneinander.
Hölderlin is one of those towering figures I cannot get away from, as all roads lead back to them. Fortunately for me, I wouldn’t want to, and his beautiful and haunting poems will be my companions for the rest of my life.
As with so many of the Romantics, it is tempting to read his life as embodying his poetic vocation, but I think we would do so at our peril. For the reader of good intellectual conscience, it is simply embarrassing to read overheated nineteenth-century claims that his mental collapse tells us that he was “too fine of feeling for the world”. Let us stick with what we know.
In Hölderlin’s case this is made all the more difficult by the increasing obscurity of his poetic matter as he moved toward the breakdown that would leave him a ward of caretakers for the second half of his life. One cannot help but be deeply touched imagining him gazing out of his solitary tower toward the river for these many years.
There is almost too much that can be said about this towering figure and his short career. He was hardly the first German to take the literature and mythology of the ancient Greeks as his primary concern, but he was, I think, the first to take it seriously in its own terms as a religious idiom, and to find himself under the spell of the Greek divinities, especially Dionysus (or Bacchus, as Hölderlin himself always referred to him).
And he was certainly one of the first to see ancient Greek culture as a meeting place of opposed, powerful energies striving toward disorder and release as much as toward harmony and balance - this reading surely caught the attention of the young Nietzsche, who read and admired the poet. And perhaps we should take it as cautionary that these two great writers both took Dionysus for their patron, and both ended their lives in complete psychological disorder.
So there is that to be said for Hölderlin, and on top of it we have his close friendship with Hegel and Schelling, his classmates at a protestant seminary. The thorough research of Manfred Frank has given us an extensive record of their work together in collectively formulating post-Kantian early Romantic idealism. What reader of Hölderlin could fail to be fascinated by this?
But to return to the demands of critical appraisal, I will admit that if any trace of Hölderlin’s intense philosophical exploration are to be found in his poems, they are invisible to me, except perhaps insofar as he struggled to find a new language for his new mythology, and this new language is often exceedingly obscure.
Despite being a poet who took Pindar and Sophocles as models, Hölderlin nevertheless sounds uniquely modern to my ears, as far ahead of his Zeitgeist as Büchner was to his. I was reminded of this recently reading Robert Musil’s novel Die Verwirrungen des Zögling Törleß, which, I think, owes a great debt to Hölderlin’s image of the night of the Gods for its modernist characterization of a breakdown of values.
In addition to Hölderlin the classicist, Hölderlin the philosopher, and Hölderlin the modernist, there is Hölderlin the craftsman, who is perhaps my favorite Hölderlin of all. This the wordsmith who could periodically convey poetic images of enormous force when he wasn’t too busy groping in the darkness. This is the Hölderlin of “Die Eichbäume”:
Keiner von euch ist noch in die Schule der Menschen gegangen,
Und ihr drängt euch fröhlich und frei, aus der kräftigen Wurzel,
Unter einander herauf und ergreift, wie der Adler die Beute,
Mit gewaltigem Arme den Raum, und gegen die Wolken
Ist euch heiter und groß die sonnige Krone gerichtet.
Eine Welt ist jeder von euch, wie die Sterne des Himmels
Lebt ihr, jeder ein Gott, in freiem Bunde zusammen.
Or “Heidelberg”:
Wie der Vogel des Walds über die Gipfel fliegt,
Schwingt sich über den Strom, wo er vorbei dir glänzt,
Leicht und kräftig die Brücke,
Die von Wagen und Menschen tönt.
Or “Der Gang aufs Land”:
Aber schön ist der Ort, wenn in Feiertagen des Frühlings
Aufgegangen das Tal, wenn mit dem Neckar herab
Weiden grünend und Wald und all die grünenden Bäume
Zahllos, blühend weiß, wallen in wiegender Luft,
Aber mit Wölkchen bedeckt an Bergen herunter der Weinstock
Dämmert und wächst und erwarmt unter dem sonnigen Duft.
We even see this gift for dazzling concrete imagery in the first verse of “Brot und Wein”, which was initially published as a standalone poem:
Rings um ruhet die Stadt; still wird die erleuchtete Gasse,
Und, mit Fackeln geschmückt, rauschen die Wagen hinweg.
Satt gehn heim von Freuden des Tags zu ruhen die Menschen,
Und Gewinn und Verlust wäget ein sinniges Haupt
Wohlzufrieden zu Haus; leer steht von Trauben und Blumen,
Und von Werken der Hand ruht der geschäftige Markt.
This is perhaps the pivot-point of his development, and following that elegy his spiritual concerns would increasingly eclipse his interest in concrete expression. But great work was still to come, and while I wouldn’t particularly defend Heidegger’s reading of Hölderlin, I agree with his very high assessment of poems like “Der Ister”. Some of it is shear magic:
Man nennet aber diesen den Ister.
Schön wohnt er. Es brennet der Säulen Laub,
Und reget sich.
Or take his conception of the river, which reflects the light of the sun and the moon, as reconciling these opposing energies within itself:
Ein Zeichen braucht es,
Nichts anderes, schlecht und recht, damit es Sonn
Und Mond trag im Gemüt, untrennbar,
Und fortgeh, Tag und Nacht auch, und
Die Himmlischen warm sich fühlen aneinander.
Hölderlin is one of those towering figures I cannot get away from, as all roads lead back to them. Fortunately for me, I wouldn’t want to, and his beautiful and haunting poems will be my companions for the rest of my life.
April 4, 2020
اگر ترجمه کاری تخصصی باشد، ترجمۀ اشعار مهارتی فوقتخصصی است. مترجم محترم کتاب، در بخشهای غیر از شعر خوب و روان ترجمه کرده است منتها این کتاب، کتابِ شعر است و مهمترین بخش آن، اشعار عمیقِ شاعر است که ترجمهها به هیچوجه دلنشین نبوده و اشعار را در حد یک متن ساده و پیشپاافتاده جلوه داده و آسیب بسیار دیدهاند.
شرحهایی از افراد سرشناسی چون هایدگر (فیلسوف آلمانی)، پیتر فون مات (فیلسوف سوییسی)، اووه بایر و سایرین بر قطعات شعر، خواندنی است.
کتاب دیگری بنام اشعار برگزیدۀ هولدرلین موجود است که به شکلی دیگر ترجمه کرده است.
مقایسۀ یک قطعه، از دو مترجم مختلف:
ـ ترجمۀ آقای محمود حدادی (از همین کتاب)
ترجمۀ آقای عبدالحسین عادلزاده (از کتاب اشعار برگزیده)
همچنان اعتقاد دارم که خواندن ترجمۀ شعر، کاری بس بیهوده و بیمعناست و باید شعر را به همان زبانِ سروده شده خواند؛ گرچه ما به هر زبانی مسلط نیستیم اما نخواندنِ ترجمۀ شعر بهتر از خواندنِ چنین ترجمههایی است.
شرحهایی از افراد سرشناسی چون هایدگر (فیلسوف آلمانی)، پیتر فون مات (فیلسوف سوییسی)، اووه بایر و سایرین بر قطعات شعر، خواندنی است.
کتاب دیگری بنام اشعار برگزیدۀ هولدرلین موجود است که به شکلی دیگر ترجمه کرده است.
مقایسۀ یک قطعه، از دو مترجم مختلف:
ـ ترجمۀ آقای محمود حدادی (از همین کتاب)
آوخ! عوام را بنجل سر بازار خوشتر میآید.
و غلامان تنها زورگویان را تکریم میکنند.
برآنچه خدایی است، تنها آنانی ایمان دارند،
که خود نیز خداییاند.
ترجمۀ آقای عبدالحسین عادلزاده (از کتاب اشعار برگزیده)
آری، تودهها تنها دلبستۀ چیزهایی هستند که در بازار میفروشند.
هیچ انسانی، تحسینگرِ تندخویان و بدطبعان نیست،
مگر یک بَرده.
تنها آنان که خود خدایگوناند،
خدایان را باور دارند.
همچنان اعتقاد دارم که خواندن ترجمۀ شعر، کاری بس بیهوده و بیمعناست و باید شعر را به همان زبانِ سروده شده خواند؛ گرچه ما به هر زبانی مسلط نیستیم اما نخواندنِ ترجمۀ شعر بهتر از خواندنِ چنین ترجمههایی است.
November 8, 2015
گانیمد
چه خوابیده ای،ای پسر کوهستان،وآزرده و گوژ
بر یخبندان ساحل عور صبوری می کنی
آیا هیچ از لطف آن ساعت یاد نمی آوری
که بر خوان خدایان تشنگی همه گیر می شود؟
وآیا درآن اعماق ،پیک های پدر خود را به جا نمی آوری
وباز نمی شناسی بادها را در بازی شتاب گرفته شان با ستیغ و سنگ؟
وآیا سرشار از روحی کهن،آن پیام
به تو نرسید که مردی رهنورد برایت فرستاد؟
چه خوابیده ای،ای پسر کوهستان،وآزرده و گوژ
بر یخبندان ساحل عور صبوری می کنی
آیا هیچ از لطف آن ساعت یاد نمی آوری
که بر خوان خدایان تشنگی همه گیر می شود؟
وآیا درآن اعماق ،پیک های پدر خود را به جا نمی آوری
وباز نمی شناسی بادها را در بازی شتاب گرفته شان با ستیغ و سنگ؟
وآیا سرشار از روحی کهن،آن پیام
به تو نرسید که مردی رهنورد برایت فرستاد؟
August 8, 2015
هم از اشعار لذت بردم هم از مترجم راضی ام.
July 10, 2020
Maneras de nombrar el hogar
Las palabras que acogen significados complejos, que nombran una sensación, nunca dejarán de llevarme a sentir el impulso de agradecer ya que, como alguien a la que las palabras cuestan, a la que se le esconden cuando habla, siento alivio al saber que al decir una estoy refiriéndome a mucho, que tal vez incluso estoy diciendo lo suficiente. Es el caso de Heimat, palabra alemana que, citando a Mariana Oliver, en su ensayo “La lengua de Özdamar”, “se traduce como “patria” y refiere a la relación con el espacio donde cada quien creció, donde aprendió a hablar, a todas las sensaciones y experiencias que acompañan la infancia”.
“Die Heimat” se titula uno de los poemas de Hölderlin, escrito en los años anteriores a los que pasó, dicen, perdido caminando entre estatuas mitológicas ancladas a los parques. En él nombra al río, se dirige a la ribera, le habla al bosque: “Benignas riberas, vosotras por quienes fui formado, / ¿podéis calmar las penas del amor? ¡Ay! / ¿O devolverme vosotros, bosques de mi infancia, / cuando retorne, mi tranquilidad nuevamente?”
Tejo a este poema otro titulado “Heimat”, así a secas, escrito este sí durante los años de amistad con las estatuas y los parques. Si la lucidez abandonó a Hölderlin no lo abandonaron sus ganas de conversar con esa patria, con ese lugar en el que aprendió a nombrar. Le dice “Mientras tanto déjame divagar, / coger bayas silvestres / por tus senderos, oh tierra / para apagar el amor hacia ti”.
A la pérdida de la lucidez la sobrevive el querer regresar o por lo menos el querer apagar —o calmar— sus penas de amor. La sobrevive el pedirle sin intermediarios, el contarle sus deseos, el hablarle como si fuera a ser escuchado.
Tal vez a través del movimiento de una rama algo contestó, tal vez a través de un eco hubo alguna respuesta.
Las palabras que acogen significados complejos, que nombran una sensación, nunca dejarán de llevarme a sentir el impulso de agradecer ya que, como alguien a la que las palabras cuestan, a la que se le esconden cuando habla, siento alivio al saber que al decir una estoy refiriéndome a mucho, que tal vez incluso estoy diciendo lo suficiente. Es el caso de Heimat, palabra alemana que, citando a Mariana Oliver, en su ensayo “La lengua de Özdamar”, “se traduce como “patria” y refiere a la relación con el espacio donde cada quien creció, donde aprendió a hablar, a todas las sensaciones y experiencias que acompañan la infancia”.
“Die Heimat” se titula uno de los poemas de Hölderlin, escrito en los años anteriores a los que pasó, dicen, perdido caminando entre estatuas mitológicas ancladas a los parques. En él nombra al río, se dirige a la ribera, le habla al bosque: “Benignas riberas, vosotras por quienes fui formado, / ¿podéis calmar las penas del amor? ¡Ay! / ¿O devolverme vosotros, bosques de mi infancia, / cuando retorne, mi tranquilidad nuevamente?”
Tejo a este poema otro titulado “Heimat”, así a secas, escrito este sí durante los años de amistad con las estatuas y los parques. Si la lucidez abandonó a Hölderlin no lo abandonaron sus ganas de conversar con esa patria, con ese lugar en el que aprendió a nombrar. Le dice “Mientras tanto déjame divagar, / coger bayas silvestres / por tus senderos, oh tierra / para apagar el amor hacia ti”.
A la pérdida de la lucidez la sobrevive el querer regresar o por lo menos el querer apagar —o calmar— sus penas de amor. La sobrevive el pedirle sin intermediarios, el contarle sus deseos, el hablarle como si fuera a ser escuchado.
Tal vez a través del movimiento de una rama algo contestó, tal vez a través de un eco hubo alguna respuesta.
May 31, 2025
"Ich sollte nicht im Lebensfelde ringen,
Solang mein Herz nach höchster Schöne strebt,
Ich soll mein Schwanenlied am Grabe singen,
Wo ihr so gern lebendig uns begräbt?
O! schonet mein und laßt das rege Streben,
Bis seine Flut ins fernste Meer sich stürzt,
Laßt immerhin, ihr Ärzte, laßt mich leben,
Solang die Parze nicht die Bahn verkürzt.
Des Weins Gewächs verschmäht die kühlen Tale,
Hesperiens beglückter Garten bringt
Die goldnen Früchte nur im heißen Strahle,
Der, wie ein Pfeil, ins Herz der Erde dringt;
Was warnt ihr dann, wenn stolz und ungeschändet
Des Menschen Herz von kühnem Zorn entbrennt,
Was nimmt ihr ihm, der nur im Kampf vollendet,
Ihr Weichlinge, sein glühend Element?
Er hat das Schwert zum Spiele nicht genommen,
Der Richter, der die alte Nacht verdammt,
Er ist zum Schlafe nicht herabgekommen,
Der reine Geist, der aus dem Aether stammt;
Er strahlt heran, er schröckt, wie Meteore,
Befreit und bändigt, ohne Ruh und Sold,
Bis, wiederkehrend durch des Himmels Tore,
Sein Kämpferwagen im Triumphe rollt.
Und ihr, ihr wollt des Rächers Arme lähmen,
Dem Geiste, der mit Götterrecht gebeut,
Bedeutet ihr, sich knechtisch zu bequemen,
Nach eures Pöbels Unerbittlichkeit?
Das Irrhaus wählt ihr euch zum Tribunale,
Dem soll der Herrliche sich unterziehn,
Den Gott in uns, den macht ihr zum Skandale,
Und setzt den Wurm zum König über ihn. –
Sonst ward der Schwärmer doch ans Kreuz geschlagen,
Und oft in edlem Löwengrimme rang
Der Mensch an donnernden Entscheidungstagen,
Bis Glück und Wut das kühne Recht bezwang;
Ach! wie die Sonne, sank zur Ruhe nieder,
Wer unter Kampf ein herrlich Werk begann,
Er sank und morgenrötlich hub er wieder
In seinen Lieblingen zu leuchten an.
Jetzt blüht die neue Kunst, das Herz zu morden,
Zum Todesdolch in meuchlerischer Hand
Ist nun der Rat des klugen Manns geworden,
Und furchtbar, wie ein Scherge, der Verstand;
Bekehrt von euch zu feiger Ruhe, findet
Der Geist der Jünglinge sein schmählich Grab,
Ach! ruhmlos in die Nebelnächte schwindet
Aus heitrer Luft manch schöner Stern hinab.
Umsonst, wenn auch der Geister Erste fallen,
Die starken Tugenden, wie Wachs, vergehn,
Das Schöne muß aus diesen Kämpfen allen,
Aus dieser Nacht der Tage Tag entstehn;
Begräbt sie nur, ihr Toten, eure Toten!
Indes ihr noch die Leichenfackel hält,
Geschiehet schon, wie unser Herz geboten,
Bricht schon herein die neue beßre Welt."
"O der Menschenkenner! Er stellt sich kindisch mit Kindern, Aber der Baum und das Kind suchet, was über ihm ist."
Wie vermag man auch nur annähernd, den Äther, das Unendliche und Himmelsweite, aus Hölderlins göttlicher Poesie - welcher mehr vom Urgrund allen Seins, vom Ursprung aller Leidenschaften offenbart als alle wissenschaftlichen Analysen es je zu tun vermögen - zu begreifen, wenn das notwendige Mitgefühl gänzlich fehlt? Hölderlin's edle Gesichtszüge offenbaren bereits eine Physiognomie, welche stets von gigantischer Rarität war, doch seine Poesie entstammt aus einer anderen Welt!
Nicht umsonst einer meiner Lieblingsschriftsteller, vermögen die Verse dieses Dichterkönigs in mir eine Holdseligkeit von seltenster Art zu entfalten! Der Mangel an edler, erhabener und geistreicher Gesinnung unter meinen Zeitgenossen verstärken dieses Gefühl umso mehr. Diese Verse, (um nur von der äußeren Form zu reden) entquollen dem reinsten, edelsten Gemüt, diese Verse, in ihrer Natürlichkeit und Ursprünglichkeit die Kunst und Formgewandtheit sogar Schiller verdunkelnd, diese Verse, bald im erhabensten Odenschwung einherwogend, bald in die zartesten Klänge der Wehmuth sich verlierend, diese Verse können viele tatsächlich mit keinem andern Wort beloben, als mit dem schaalen, alltäglichen ,,Wohlgelungen"?
Und das ist wahrlich nicht die größte Ungerechtigkeit, mit denen sich Hölderlin schon zu Lebzeiten plagen musste. Unklares Gerede und mitunter Tollhäuslergedanken! Die Fülle von tiefsinnigen Gedanken vermochten zu jeder Zeit schon nur wenige zu füllen. Auch das Jahrhundertwerk Hyperion wurde verkannt, der in der wohlklingenden Bewegung seiner Prosa, in der Erhabenheit und Schönheit der darin auftauchenden Gestalten auf mich einen ähnlichen Eindruck machte, wie der Wellenschlag des erregten Meeres oder das Donnern das dem Blitze folgt.
Hölderlin, ein göttlich-begabter, empfand den Riss den nur wenige zu fühlen vermögen, in noch viel stärkeren Maße als ich es je tun könnte, was ihn dazu verdammte, an den philiströsen Deutschen zugrunde zu gehen; gleichwohl stieg er dadurch nur umso lebhafter in den dichterischen Olymp und blickt voll Kraft und Leben kopfschüttelnd auf uns herab. Und all jenen, die der überaus modernen, dekadenten und daher beliebten Unart huldigen, die Großen kleiner, "menschlicher" zu machen, hatte Hölderlin jene Verse entgegen geschleudert:
"DAS UNVERZEIHLICHE
Wenn ihr Freunde vergeßt, wenn ihr den Künstler höhnt,
Und den tieferen Geist klein und gemein versteht,
Gott vergibt es, doch stört nur
Nie den Frieden der Liebenden."
Solang mein Herz nach höchster Schöne strebt,
Ich soll mein Schwanenlied am Grabe singen,
Wo ihr so gern lebendig uns begräbt?
O! schonet mein und laßt das rege Streben,
Bis seine Flut ins fernste Meer sich stürzt,
Laßt immerhin, ihr Ärzte, laßt mich leben,
Solang die Parze nicht die Bahn verkürzt.
Des Weins Gewächs verschmäht die kühlen Tale,
Hesperiens beglückter Garten bringt
Die goldnen Früchte nur im heißen Strahle,
Der, wie ein Pfeil, ins Herz der Erde dringt;
Was warnt ihr dann, wenn stolz und ungeschändet
Des Menschen Herz von kühnem Zorn entbrennt,
Was nimmt ihr ihm, der nur im Kampf vollendet,
Ihr Weichlinge, sein glühend Element?
Er hat das Schwert zum Spiele nicht genommen,
Der Richter, der die alte Nacht verdammt,
Er ist zum Schlafe nicht herabgekommen,
Der reine Geist, der aus dem Aether stammt;
Er strahlt heran, er schröckt, wie Meteore,
Befreit und bändigt, ohne Ruh und Sold,
Bis, wiederkehrend durch des Himmels Tore,
Sein Kämpferwagen im Triumphe rollt.
Und ihr, ihr wollt des Rächers Arme lähmen,
Dem Geiste, der mit Götterrecht gebeut,
Bedeutet ihr, sich knechtisch zu bequemen,
Nach eures Pöbels Unerbittlichkeit?
Das Irrhaus wählt ihr euch zum Tribunale,
Dem soll der Herrliche sich unterziehn,
Den Gott in uns, den macht ihr zum Skandale,
Und setzt den Wurm zum König über ihn. –
Sonst ward der Schwärmer doch ans Kreuz geschlagen,
Und oft in edlem Löwengrimme rang
Der Mensch an donnernden Entscheidungstagen,
Bis Glück und Wut das kühne Recht bezwang;
Ach! wie die Sonne, sank zur Ruhe nieder,
Wer unter Kampf ein herrlich Werk begann,
Er sank und morgenrötlich hub er wieder
In seinen Lieblingen zu leuchten an.
Jetzt blüht die neue Kunst, das Herz zu morden,
Zum Todesdolch in meuchlerischer Hand
Ist nun der Rat des klugen Manns geworden,
Und furchtbar, wie ein Scherge, der Verstand;
Bekehrt von euch zu feiger Ruhe, findet
Der Geist der Jünglinge sein schmählich Grab,
Ach! ruhmlos in die Nebelnächte schwindet
Aus heitrer Luft manch schöner Stern hinab.
Umsonst, wenn auch der Geister Erste fallen,
Die starken Tugenden, wie Wachs, vergehn,
Das Schöne muß aus diesen Kämpfen allen,
Aus dieser Nacht der Tage Tag entstehn;
Begräbt sie nur, ihr Toten, eure Toten!
Indes ihr noch die Leichenfackel hält,
Geschiehet schon, wie unser Herz geboten,
Bricht schon herein die neue beßre Welt."
"O der Menschenkenner! Er stellt sich kindisch mit Kindern, Aber der Baum und das Kind suchet, was über ihm ist."
Wie vermag man auch nur annähernd, den Äther, das Unendliche und Himmelsweite, aus Hölderlins göttlicher Poesie - welcher mehr vom Urgrund allen Seins, vom Ursprung aller Leidenschaften offenbart als alle wissenschaftlichen Analysen es je zu tun vermögen - zu begreifen, wenn das notwendige Mitgefühl gänzlich fehlt? Hölderlin's edle Gesichtszüge offenbaren bereits eine Physiognomie, welche stets von gigantischer Rarität war, doch seine Poesie entstammt aus einer anderen Welt!
Nicht umsonst einer meiner Lieblingsschriftsteller, vermögen die Verse dieses Dichterkönigs in mir eine Holdseligkeit von seltenster Art zu entfalten! Der Mangel an edler, erhabener und geistreicher Gesinnung unter meinen Zeitgenossen verstärken dieses Gefühl umso mehr. Diese Verse, (um nur von der äußeren Form zu reden) entquollen dem reinsten, edelsten Gemüt, diese Verse, in ihrer Natürlichkeit und Ursprünglichkeit die Kunst und Formgewandtheit sogar Schiller verdunkelnd, diese Verse, bald im erhabensten Odenschwung einherwogend, bald in die zartesten Klänge der Wehmuth sich verlierend, diese Verse können viele tatsächlich mit keinem andern Wort beloben, als mit dem schaalen, alltäglichen ,,Wohlgelungen"?
Und das ist wahrlich nicht die größte Ungerechtigkeit, mit denen sich Hölderlin schon zu Lebzeiten plagen musste. Unklares Gerede und mitunter Tollhäuslergedanken! Die Fülle von tiefsinnigen Gedanken vermochten zu jeder Zeit schon nur wenige zu füllen. Auch das Jahrhundertwerk Hyperion wurde verkannt, der in der wohlklingenden Bewegung seiner Prosa, in der Erhabenheit und Schönheit der darin auftauchenden Gestalten auf mich einen ähnlichen Eindruck machte, wie der Wellenschlag des erregten Meeres oder das Donnern das dem Blitze folgt.
Hölderlin, ein göttlich-begabter, empfand den Riss den nur wenige zu fühlen vermögen, in noch viel stärkeren Maße als ich es je tun könnte, was ihn dazu verdammte, an den philiströsen Deutschen zugrunde zu gehen; gleichwohl stieg er dadurch nur umso lebhafter in den dichterischen Olymp und blickt voll Kraft und Leben kopfschüttelnd auf uns herab. Und all jenen, die der überaus modernen, dekadenten und daher beliebten Unart huldigen, die Großen kleiner, "menschlicher" zu machen, hatte Hölderlin jene Verse entgegen geschleudert:
"DAS UNVERZEIHLICHE
Wenn ihr Freunde vergeßt, wenn ihr den Künstler höhnt,
Und den tieferen Geist klein und gemein versteht,
Gott vergibt es, doch stört nur
Nie den Frieden der Liebenden."
February 12, 2018
Out For A Walk
The margins of the forest are beautiful,
as if painted onto the green slopes.
I walk around, and sweet peace
rewards me for the thorns
in my heart, when the mind has grown
dark, for right from the start
art and thinking have cost it pain.
There are lovely pictures in the valley,
for example the gardens and trees,
and the narrow footbridge, and the brook,
hardly visible. How beautifully
the landscape shines, cheerfully distant,
like a splendid picture, where I come
to visit when the weather is mild.
A kindly divinity leads us on at first
with blue, then prepares clouds,
shaped like gray domes, with
searing lightning and rolling thunder,
then comes the loveliness of the fields,
and beauty wells forth from
the source of the primal image.
Jan 25, 18
* Later on my blog.
The margins of the forest are beautiful,
as if painted onto the green slopes.
I walk around, and sweet peace
rewards me for the thorns
in my heart, when the mind has grown
dark, for right from the start
art and thinking have cost it pain.
There are lovely pictures in the valley,
for example the gardens and trees,
and the narrow footbridge, and the brook,
hardly visible. How beautifully
the landscape shines, cheerfully distant,
like a splendid picture, where I come
to visit when the weather is mild.
A kindly divinity leads us on at first
with blue, then prepares clouds,
shaped like gray domes, with
searing lightning and rolling thunder,
then comes the loveliness of the fields,
and beauty wells forth from
the source of the primal image.
Jan 25, 18
* Later on my blog.
August 29, 2021
خوندن این کتاب برای کسی که اطلاعات زمینهای در مورد اسطورهشناسی و همینطور تاریخ و جغرافیای شاعر و همینطور خود شاعر و همدورههاش نداره، سخت و تا حدی خستهکننده میشه و لذت بردن از شعرش رو سخت میکنه.
خودم فکر میکنم یه بخشش هم برای اینه که وقتی شعر ترجمه میشه، یه بخشی از شعر زیباییشو توی زبان اصلی جا میذاره و ترجیحم اینه آلمانیم بهتر بشه و اصل اشعار هلدرلین رو بخونم.
اگر پینوشتهای آخر کتاب نبود، میتونم بگم چیزی از اشعار نمیفهمیدم. شعرهاش هم طوری نیست که همینطوری بشینم یه گوشه و در حالیکه فنجون چای دستمه، بخونم و آروم بشم. :)) خیلی عمیقتر از اینه که فقط بخواد با احساساتِ لحظهای همراهی کنه.
بعداً اصلش رو میخونم. فعلاً ۳.۵/۵.
یکشنبه، ۷ شهریور ۱۴۰۰.
خودم فکر میکنم یه بخشش هم برای اینه که وقتی شعر ترجمه میشه، یه بخشی از شعر زیباییشو توی زبان اصلی جا میذاره و ترجیحم اینه آلمانیم بهتر بشه و اصل اشعار هلدرلین رو بخونم.
اگر پینوشتهای آخر کتاب نبود، میتونم بگم چیزی از اشعار نمیفهمیدم. شعرهاش هم طوری نیست که همینطوری بشینم یه گوشه و در حالیکه فنجون چای دستمه، بخونم و آروم بشم. :)) خیلی عمیقتر از اینه که فقط بخواد با احساساتِ لحظهای همراهی کنه.
بعداً اصلش رو میخونم. فعلاً ۳.۵/۵.
یکشنبه، ۷ شهریور ۱۴۰۰.
April 3, 2020
"آری، تودهها تنها دلبستۀ چیزهاییاند که در بازار میفروشند.
هیچ انسانی تحسینگرِ تندخویان و بدطبعان نیست،
مگر یک برده.
تنها آنان که خودْ خدایگوناند،
خدایان را باور دارند."
ـ تحسینهای بشری، فریدریش هولدرلین
Read
July 4, 2024Friedrich Hölderlin may be one of the best-known German Romantic poets, but the period in which he was active spanned barely 10 years, from 1796 to 1806. After that time, he spent more than 30 years 'in darkness', in a (presumable) state of madness. Previously, he had tried to express the divine in reality through hymns, elegies and odes, and he did this so obsessively that when he realized that he could not succeed, he preferred to be 'silenced'. This wide selection of his poems goes in all directions: in the early work the heroic dominates, nature gradually comes into view as a site of the divine, but soon also classical Hellas and especially Dionysios (later a great source of inspiration for Nietzsche). Formally, many of his poems are examples of technical mastery, with a clever play of contrasts. For me personally, Hölderlin doesn’t really resonate: his archaic, very pathetic and verbose style repulses me, and the procession of Greek gods that he repeatedly presents are so far removed from my world that there is no connection. This may sound strange, but the exuberant, mythical world of his English contemporary William Blake appeals to me much more.
February 21, 2018
Als ik één koffer uit een brandend huis zou kunnen slepen, dan zou deze tweetalige bloemlezing uit Hölderlins poëzie er zeker in zitten. Het boek maakt nu dertig jaar deel uit van mijn bibliotheek. Ik kreeg het indertijd van een goede vriendin ten geschenke. Sindsdien heeft Hölderlin me niet meer losgelaten. Soms vergeet ik hem gedurende een paar jaren. Maar ik keer altijd weer terug naar deze dichter-astronaut die onverschrokken de grenzen van de stratosfeer heeft verkend en daar de prijs heeft voor betaald.
Dit boek heeft ondertussen het patina van een intensief gebruikt maar teder bewaard erfstuk. Ik ben Ad den Besten (+ 2015) dankbaar voor zijn nauwgezette, enigzins archaïsche vertalingen die zo goed de geest vatten van Hölderlins nobele lyriek. De vijftig bladzijden lange inleiding - met een biografische schets, een toelichting bij de gehanteerde vertaalaanpak en een duiding van Hölderlins prosodie - en het uitgebreide notenapparaat zijn uiterst welkome boni.
Dit boek heeft ondertussen het patina van een intensief gebruikt maar teder bewaard erfstuk. Ik ben Ad den Besten (+ 2015) dankbaar voor zijn nauwgezette, enigzins archaïsche vertalingen die zo goed de geest vatten van Hölderlins nobele lyriek. De vijftig bladzijden lange inleiding - met een biografische schets, een toelichting bij de gehanteerde vertaalaanpak en een duiding van Hölderlins prosodie - en het uitgebreide notenapparaat zijn uiterst welkome boni.
Zou ik een komeet willen zijn? Ik denk het wel,
want zij hebben de snelheid van vogels,
zij bloeien van vuur en zij zijn
als kindren zo rein. Iets groters
te wensen kan niet
des mensen natuur zich vermeten.
In lieflijk blauw … (1804)
January 6, 2021
AQUILES
"Filho esplêndido dos Deuses! quando a amada perdeste,
Foste pra a praia do mar, verteste o pranto nas águas
Gemendo, o teu coração aspirava ao abismo sagrado,
Ao silêncio, onde, longe do tumulto das naves,
Fundo abaixo das vagas, em pacífica gruta morava
A Tétis azul, que te protegia, a Deusa do Mar.
Mãe ela era do jovem herói, a Deusa potente,
Com amor outrora o menino amamentara, na praia rochosa
Da sua ilha, co'a forte canção das vagas e no banho
Fortificante dele conseguira fazer um herói.
E a mãe ouviu os lamentos do jovem,
Subiu do fundo do mar, enlutada, qual nuvem ligeira,
Com terno abraço acalmou as dores do filho dilecto,
E ele a ouviu prometeu-lhe, entre carícias, ajuda.
Ó filhos dos Deuses! fosse eu como tu, confiado podia
A um dos Celestes queixar minha secreta dor.
Mas tal não verei, a afronta terei de carregar, como se
Já não fosse d'Aquela que, no entanto, chora por mim.
Bons Deuses! ouvis contudo todas as preces do homem,
Ai! e com amor fundo e pio eu te amei, Luz sagrada,
Desde que nasci, e a ti, ó Terra!, e às tuas fontes e bosques,
E a ti, Pai Éter, a quem o meu coração sentiu com desejo
Puro e ardente — oh! acalmai, bons Deuses, o meu sofrimento,
Que a alma me não emudeça cedo de mais,
Que eu viva, e a vós, ó altas Potências celestes,
Dê graças ainda com canto piedoso no dia fugaz,
Pelo bem de outrora, pelas alegrias da juventude passada:
E então bondosos o solitário poeta levai para vós."
***
Ao escolher e transcrever este poema pensei na forma como os livros são, em boa parte, fruto do momento em que os lemos. Os autores criam, os leitores modificam: no fundo a leitura é um acto activo e não passivo (isto se pararmos para pensar e sentir, ler por pura compulsão, sem assimilação e aprendizagem, parece muito fútil. Duvido que alguém leia desse modo, pelo menos se nutrir um verdadeiro amor pelos livros), de construção de novos sentidos, é algo que acrescenta e cria... é um acto criativo, de transformação. Escolhi este "Aquiles" porque nesta fase me comove especialmente: saio da Ilíada com o peso das referências clássicas, com os mitos, e entro amiúde num universo não muito distante ("Circe", de Madeline Miller).
A minha relação com este livro não foi, de todo, linear. Foi quase um combate bélico, demorou a fazer sentido, e é uma relação que não ficou resolvida nem fechada. Neste processo guardei alguns poemas, comprei um livro de Hölderlin (este exemplar é das BLX); gosto da intensidade apaixonada, arrepia-me (num bom sentido) o seu amor por Diotima; sinto um fascínio pelos poemas da loucura, por esta tormenta e peso... imagino o que será perder todo o sentido da realidade, ser aprisionado pela loucura (ou libertado pela loucura?)... mas não fiquei absolutamente rendida ao autor (mesmo que alguns poemas pareçam ter luz própria, são frutos de rasgos de inspiração divina).
"Filho esplêndido dos Deuses! quando a amada perdeste,
Foste pra a praia do mar, verteste o pranto nas águas
Gemendo, o teu coração aspirava ao abismo sagrado,
Ao silêncio, onde, longe do tumulto das naves,
Fundo abaixo das vagas, em pacífica gruta morava
A Tétis azul, que te protegia, a Deusa do Mar.
Mãe ela era do jovem herói, a Deusa potente,
Com amor outrora o menino amamentara, na praia rochosa
Da sua ilha, co'a forte canção das vagas e no banho
Fortificante dele conseguira fazer um herói.
E a mãe ouviu os lamentos do jovem,
Subiu do fundo do mar, enlutada, qual nuvem ligeira,
Com terno abraço acalmou as dores do filho dilecto,
E ele a ouviu prometeu-lhe, entre carícias, ajuda.
Ó filhos dos Deuses! fosse eu como tu, confiado podia
A um dos Celestes queixar minha secreta dor.
Mas tal não verei, a afronta terei de carregar, como se
Já não fosse d'Aquela que, no entanto, chora por mim.
Bons Deuses! ouvis contudo todas as preces do homem,
Ai! e com amor fundo e pio eu te amei, Luz sagrada,
Desde que nasci, e a ti, ó Terra!, e às tuas fontes e bosques,
E a ti, Pai Éter, a quem o meu coração sentiu com desejo
Puro e ardente — oh! acalmai, bons Deuses, o meu sofrimento,
Que a alma me não emudeça cedo de mais,
Que eu viva, e a vós, ó altas Potências celestes,
Dê graças ainda com canto piedoso no dia fugaz,
Pelo bem de outrora, pelas alegrias da juventude passada:
E então bondosos o solitário poeta levai para vós."
***
Ao escolher e transcrever este poema pensei na forma como os livros são, em boa parte, fruto do momento em que os lemos. Os autores criam, os leitores modificam: no fundo a leitura é um acto activo e não passivo (isto se pararmos para pensar e sentir, ler por pura compulsão, sem assimilação e aprendizagem, parece muito fútil. Duvido que alguém leia desse modo, pelo menos se nutrir um verdadeiro amor pelos livros), de construção de novos sentidos, é algo que acrescenta e cria... é um acto criativo, de transformação. Escolhi este "Aquiles" porque nesta fase me comove especialmente: saio da Ilíada com o peso das referências clássicas, com os mitos, e entro amiúde num universo não muito distante ("Circe", de Madeline Miller).
A minha relação com este livro não foi, de todo, linear. Foi quase um combate bélico, demorou a fazer sentido, e é uma relação que não ficou resolvida nem fechada. Neste processo guardei alguns poemas, comprei um livro de Hölderlin (este exemplar é das BLX); gosto da intensidade apaixonada, arrepia-me (num bom sentido) o seu amor por Diotima; sinto um fascínio pelos poemas da loucura, por esta tormenta e peso... imagino o que será perder todo o sentido da realidade, ser aprisionado pela loucura (ou libertado pela loucura?)... mas não fiquei absolutamente rendida ao autor (mesmo que alguns poemas pareçam ter luz própria, são frutos de rasgos de inspiração divina).
February 17, 2019
Some great poems really encapsulating the essence of romanticism. In particular the idea of an ideal past (classical Greece), an unpalatable present and an ideal future yet to come (but given birth to by the romanticist aesthetic) is evident.
My favourite poems of the selection:
Another day
Plea for forgiveness
To the Sun God
To the Fates
Ages of Life
My favourite poems of the selection:
Another day
Plea for forgiveness
To the Sun God
To the Fates
Ages of Life
July 12, 2016
Primero fueron los poemas. Leí -en una noche, en una sola noche solo- el libro y volví a leerlo, y en voz alta declamé los versos que más me habían gustado. Había algo, algo indescriptible en ese Hölderlin. Luego fue el libro. Me di a la tarea de leer el prólogo y la introducción, supe que las versiones que leía eran las de Luis Cernuda, y que entonces el espíritu del poeta alemán participaba de una alquimia en la que el canto era producto, también, del espíritu del poeta español. Luego fue la historia, leí sobre Hölderlin, me enteré de su reclusión y su locura, supe quién era el Scardanelli que firmaba algunos de los poemas. Y algo crujió.
Las biografías sólo sirven -en mi opinión- como comentario al pie, como dato curioso. Una obra, la que sea, tiene que sostenerse sin su autor, tiene que permitir el asombro sin que establezcamos los puentes entre su realidad ficcional y la realidad fáctica de quien tuvo el pormenor de escribirla. Así las cosas, cuando encontré lo que encontré (un Hölderlin que pasa más de treinta años encerrado en una torre, desde la que escribe sin reconocer su rostro en los espejos) no pude menos que alabar el hecho de que aún antes de saberlo ya lo presentía. Cada poema, los emocionados cantos a las estaciones o la descripción hermosa del cementerio, está atravesado por la garganta de un hombre atemporal. La locura de Hölderlin era estar fuera del tiempo. Habitaba la eternidad cuando todavía corría su sangre, de esa paradoja brutal emerge la fuerza de su poesía.
La selección y traducción de Cernuda ayuda a recargar, todavía más, la balanza que en Poemas - F. Holderlin empuja los textos al territorio de la mística. Cada poema, en cierta manera, puede leerse como una oración, una meditación solitaria que ofrece el pecho a los altares del sacrificio mientras decide los pasos de la danza ritual con la cual celebrará la muerte como causa de la vida. El temor a la desaparición, la necesidad de conquistar la gloria como fragmento de la inmortalidad y el descubrimiento de que la única forma de conseguirlo es rendir el sentimiento del yo a la naturaleza, dejarse envolver en los árboles y las estaciones para desde el silencio de las rocas volverse inolvidable.
Esa angustia. Ese miedo. Esa celebración de lo infinito desde lo pasajero de nuestra existencia. Eso. Hölderlin. Lo demás, la callada admiración con que lo leemos, y la certeza de que una y mil veces volveremos a leer A las Parcas como quien entona un himno de batalla, antes de salir a un campo donde sabe que le espera la derrota:
Amén.
Las biografías sólo sirven -en mi opinión- como comentario al pie, como dato curioso. Una obra, la que sea, tiene que sostenerse sin su autor, tiene que permitir el asombro sin que establezcamos los puentes entre su realidad ficcional y la realidad fáctica de quien tuvo el pormenor de escribirla. Así las cosas, cuando encontré lo que encontré (un Hölderlin que pasa más de treinta años encerrado en una torre, desde la que escribe sin reconocer su rostro en los espejos) no pude menos que alabar el hecho de que aún antes de saberlo ya lo presentía. Cada poema, los emocionados cantos a las estaciones o la descripción hermosa del cementerio, está atravesado por la garganta de un hombre atemporal. La locura de Hölderlin era estar fuera del tiempo. Habitaba la eternidad cuando todavía corría su sangre, de esa paradoja brutal emerge la fuerza de su poesía.
La selección y traducción de Cernuda ayuda a recargar, todavía más, la balanza que en Poemas - F. Holderlin empuja los textos al territorio de la mística. Cada poema, en cierta manera, puede leerse como una oración, una meditación solitaria que ofrece el pecho a los altares del sacrificio mientras decide los pasos de la danza ritual con la cual celebrará la muerte como causa de la vida. El temor a la desaparición, la necesidad de conquistar la gloria como fragmento de la inmortalidad y el descubrimiento de que la única forma de conseguirlo es rendir el sentimiento del yo a la naturaleza, dejarse envolver en los árboles y las estaciones para desde el silencio de las rocas volverse inolvidable.
Esa angustia. Ese miedo. Esa celebración de lo infinito desde lo pasajero de nuestra existencia. Eso. Hölderlin. Lo demás, la callada admiración con que lo leemos, y la certeza de que una y mil veces volveremos a leer A las Parcas como quien entona un himno de batalla, antes de salir a un campo donde sabe que le espera la derrota:
Sólo un verano me otorgáis, vosotras las poderosas;
y un otoño para dar madurez al canto,
para que mi corazón, más obediente,
del dulce juego harto se me muera.
El alma que no obtuvo en vida derecho
divino, tampoco abajo descansa en el Orco;
pero si un día alcanzó lo sagrado, aquello
que es caro a mi corazón, el poema,
bien venido entonces, oh silencio del reino de las sombras.
Contento estaré, aunque mi lira
allí no me acompañe; por una vez
habré vivido como un dios, y más no hace falta. (35)
Amén.
April 28, 2019
سی شعر از هلدرلین را به ترتیب از سال ۱۷۹۶ تا ۱۸۰۶ دربرمیگیرد. بعد هر شعر، شرح مختصر و مفیدی آمده است که بسیار عالی هستند. این شرحها از نویسندههای گوناگون هستند.
آغاز کتاب هم متنی از هایدگر برای “رسالت شعر و شاعر” آمده است که در آن هلدرلین را تجسم این رسالت میداند.
در انتهای کتاب هم توضیحاتی بر ارجاعها و کلمات و نکات مبهم هر شعر قرار دارد.
هر شعر را باید با حوصله خواند و خوب تصور کرد تا بر جان بنشیند.
به نظرم بهترین توصیف برای هلدرلین همان نام کتاب است که بخشی از یکی از شعرهای پایانی کتاب است:
آنچه میماند
شاعرانند که بنیادش میگذارند
آغاز کتاب هم متنی از هایدگر برای “رسالت شعر و شاعر” آمده است که در آن هلدرلین را تجسم این رسالت میداند.
در انتهای کتاب هم توضیحاتی بر ارجاعها و کلمات و نکات مبهم هر شعر قرار دارد.
هر شعر را باید با حوصله خواند و خوب تصور کرد تا بر جان بنشیند.
به نظرم بهترین توصیف برای هلدرلین همان نام کتاب است که بخشی از یکی از شعرهای پایانی کتاب است:
آنچه میماند
شاعرانند که بنیادش میگذارند
October 22, 2020
Friedrich Holderlin’s Selected Poetry translated by David Constantine.
The Swabian poet Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843) was born in Lauffen upon the Neckar on the 20th of March 250 years ago. He was a German poet and philosopher and was influenced by Hegel and Schelling, and was also an important thinker of German idealism.
The strange and beautiful language of Friedrich Holderlin’s late poemshas been recreated by David Constantine in remarkable verse translations. This is a new expanded edition of Constantine’s Hölderlin Selected Poems (1990/1996) have been widely praised, containing many new translations as well as the whole of Hölderlin's Sophocles (2001). Here the English translator has tried to create an equivalent English for Hölderlin's extraordinary German recreations of the classic Greek verse plays. It might be mentioned that Constantine won the European Poetry Translation Prize in 1997 for his translations of Hölderlin.
He was the son of an estates bailiff, who died when Friedrich was barely two years old. His mother then married mayor Gock of Nürtingen, who died five years later. At that time Hölderlin was 9 years old.
It was decided that Friedrich should take the priest’s profession because he was a gifted boy. At the age of 16 he received a state scholarship for a cloister school, a place known for Catholic drill, order and discipline. In short, a performance system. He knew he had to arrange himself in this system.
Friedrich became melancholic and quiet. He wrote letters and poems. It was in Maulbronn where he began to write poems. ‘Ich dulde es nicht mehr ‘ wrote Friedrich as the cloister school became too much with him.
Tübingen: Hölderlin belonged to the elite of the mind: : theology, philology and philosophy were his subjects in Tübingen. He shared his room with two other students: Hegel and Schelling. Hölderlin wrote: ‘How can we create a world that d egoism and individual interests? He demanded to be one with everything that lives. A utopia in which art plays a significant role.
In Tübingen thinking was trained. He developed the idea of a free human being, despite the restrictions of society. Freedom had to be realized. No power for anyone. He couldn’t imagine that he could and experience history in his days in the town of Tübingen. He wrote hymns to Nature; Tübinger Hymns and for him poetry was a service to society, to change the people. And on how to exist.
At the age of 23 Friedrich Hölderlin left Tübingen and took a position as a house-teacher of a noble family with high expectations.
In 1802 he made a journey to Bordeaux. France where the French Revolution had taken place in 1689. The storm of the Bastille was the beginning of a new time and a new human being due to the French Revolution. The people got up at last against the tyranny of the rich.
Meanwhile, in Germany there were still the noble families in power. The French troops had crossed the Rhine and entered Germany.
Holderlin was 22 at this time in the Tübingen Stift. In 1793 Friedrich Hölderlin completed his Tübenger Seminary and due to Schiller’s mediation, he became the private tutor of the son of Frau von Kalb at Waltershausen. The parents of the boy found that their son Fritz used to masturbate, which was then regarded almost as a sin. Hölderlin was fired through no fault of his. It was there that the poet started writing a novel with a Greek setting---Hyperion (1797-99). Friedrich wrote at that time: ‘Why do I have to be so poor? Help me. Schiller was a Swabian writer and poet who became famous abroad.
He went to Jena in 1794-95 where he contacted Schiller, who gave him small pieces of work but no major projects. Hegel, Schiller and Goethe were his contemporaries and he enjoyed their friendship—except for Goethe. Nevertheless, Hölderlin was in the right place with the prominent thinkers of his time. Friedrich Hölderlin was 20 years younger than Goethe. He crossed paths with Johann Wolfgang Goethe twice in 1797 and 1800 in Stuttgart and Nürtingen. An embarrassing encounter in 1795 at Schiller’s house in Jena during which Hölderlin was with Goethe alone in a room, but the latter didn’t recognize him. Or pretended not to. At the second encounter two years later in Frankfurt, Goethe called Friedrich Hölderlin 'Hölterlein’ and advised him paternally to write small poems and to choose a human interest object. His heart sank to his feet. The great Goethe was for Hölderlin a trauma.
Later during his tower-days, where Hölderlin lived, he’d wince every time the name Goethe was mentioned by his guests. He wanted to find in Schiller a father-figure, a mentor whom he could look upon for advice and someone who could make a great poet out of him. But Schiller plainly refused with Goethe always towering behind him.
Hölderlin carried out monologues: as a poet of the people he wanted to be one with Nature and human beings, where the thunder lends the voice.
Dotima, a symbolized love: In December 1795 Friedrich Hölderlin took a new post as a tutor in the house of a Frankfurter banker named J.F. Gontard. However, in Frankfurt Hölderlin had the status of a domestic servant and was not allowed to show his ‘Geist,’ his intellect. He had noticed that Susette, the wife of banker was unhappy in her marriage. The two fell in love which gave rise to the Dotima poems. It was here that Friedrich fell in love with Gontard’s young wife Susette, who returned his affections. She became for him an embodiment of the Hellenic ideal, which was symbolized by Diotima, a name he referred to her in his poems and in Hyperion.
Hölderlin developed his characteristic style of poetry in the year 1796. The change is seen in 1797-99 in a tragedy with the title ‘Empedocles.’
In 1798there was a scandal when the banker husband discovered the love affair between Hölderlin and his wife Susetteere was a torntte. Hölderlin got thrown out. The cold and anger can be felt in Hölderlin’s Hyperion II. Here was a broken, torn priest, a thinker. His godly feelings had abandoned him. He felt that his countrymen had no feeling for togetherness and rides rigorously with his own folk.
Hölderlin met Susette secretly and handed her a copy of Hyperion II, a love tragedy. He didn’t see Susette Gontard after 1799. During this time there was a war of conquest and exploitation. Napoleon had come to power like a dictator. He officially ended the French Revolution. Holderlin wrote about the French Revolution in English in 1848-49.
Friedrich wasn’t satisfied with political life in Germany, and he hoped for a Swabian Revolution and had friends among the revolutionaries of his day. He would have been arrested for his contacts with revolutionaries but a friendly physician wrote an attest that he was a psychiatric patient. It was speculated whether the medical diagnosis was only to escape punishment as a revolutionary.
In 1802-1804Friedrich Hölderlin went to his mother in a disturbed mental state. He came under psychiatric treatment in a healing institution. It was like a torture for the poet. The doctors told him he had three years to live, and he was 37 years old. Hölderlin was confined to a tower near the river Neckar, where he spent 36 years of his life with a carpenter master and his daughter.
From his tower he could see the Neckar flowing. Hölderlin was unreachable as far as his command of the German language was concerned. He was a loner and a lover, who wrote poems that broke limits and his poetry broke frontiers. All politicians of his day and even later the Nazis sought something and identified themselves in Hölderlin’s poesie. Even Heidegger mentioned during a lecture on Hölderlin: ‘Goethe ist leeres Reimgeklingel.’ He meant the depth that Hölderlin’s poems had. Societal political ideas of a change, similar to the French Revolution were sought in his verses.
In 1802 Hölderlin became a tutor at Hauptwil, near St.Gall, Swiss Canton Thurgau. Holderlin was in search of a poetic form. It was how own search and he wanted to get hold of the godly fire. Everything was open. After three months in Switzerland, he went back to Germany. After a decade of war, there’s peace again. Hölderlin writes a ‘Peace Celebration Poem: Friedensfeier Gedicht.
An evolution takes place in Hölderlin the poet. The language of the hymn becomes a song. He starts to experiment with music and song.
It may be mentioned that Hyperion and the dramatic fragments of Der Tod des Empedocles are about the Greek ideal. The mission of the poet and the deafness of the world around him. Hölderlin wrote his poems radically and tried everything: sentences, classical poems, radical poems. His poems are not understood without the blessing of Goethe.
Sand and Sea: In 1801-1802 Hölderlin made a new start in France. ‘What can insult you more, my heart?’ he says. He sought an existential crisis with his extended walks in Nature and crossed dark valleys and came across sunny ones. He reached Bordeaux in 1802 and found beautiful, classical buildings in France and Great Britain. There was trade between the two countries. This time a wine-trader was his employer. The French language fascinated him and he wrote ‘Andenken,’ a landscape that moved him: the beach, the sea in Bordeaux. In his hymn ‘Andenken’ he thinks about the Continent, humans, Asia and South Africa opening his horizon.
Four months later, Hölderlin left Bordeaux.
In May 1802 Hölderlin the restless soul was underway again on foot. A wandering poet and philosopher. He walks from Bordeaux to Paris and Strassbourg. He returned to Nürtingen, where his mother lived, in a very disturbed mental state. He was unkempt, dirty, unrecognizable and nervous.
Hölderlin translated all his writing life. Through translation he reached a poetic language of his own, so that much of his best poetry reads like a translation from elsewhere. He was intensely occupied with Sophocles in the winter of 1803-04.
In the last years of his sanity he turned to hymnic verse, with poems of haunting beauty in free verse rhythms: Am Quelle der Donau, Germanien, Der Rheim, Friedensfeier and Patmos. In some of his later poems he tried to reconcile Christianity with his beloved Hellas.
Even though he was in bad shape, his mind was extremely creative and he wrote poems, hymns, a new poetic style. His loneliness and coldness came in, and he tried to sum up his work life. Half of his life was a nightly song. He saw his own fate.
In the autumn of 1804 he worked as a librarian in a castle in Homberg. But his mental illness recurred and he was sent to an institution in Tüningen. However, his health improved. He began asking questions: a self-assessment. Who was he? What could he write? He knew he didn’t have much time to write. He penned suggestive language images (Sprachbilder), broken poem fragments. He spent the Springtime along the Rhine and wrote like a writing maniac: he wrote in poetic ecstasy.
In 1806he was in the psychiatric ward and was released after 204 days. He ended in the tower near the Neckar, where he spent 36 years under the care of a local master carpenter named Zimmer. He was not a prisoner and it was an extended protective space, a shelter.
The poet and philosopher died on the 7th of June 1843.
In English translation by David Constantine
Ages of Life
Euphrates' cities and
Palmyra's streets and you
Forests of columns in the level desert
What are you now?
Your crowns, because
You crossed the boundary
Of breath,
Were taken off
In Heaven's smoke and flame;
But I sit under clouds (each one
Of which has peace) among
The ordered oaks, upon
The deer's heath, and strange
And dead the ghosts of the blessed ones
Appear to me.
'Once there were gods'
Once there were gods, on earth, with people, the heavenly muses
And Apollo, the youth, healing, inspiring, like you.
And you are like them to me, as though one of the blessed
Sent me out into life where I go my comrade's
Image goes with me wherever I suffer and build, with love
Unto death; for I learned this and have this from her.
Let us live, oh you who are with me in sorrow, with me in faith
And heart and loyalty struggling for better times!
For such we are! And if ever in the coming years they knew
Of us two when the spirit matters again
They would say: lovers in those days, alone, they created
Their secret world that only the gods knew. For who
Cares only for things that will die the earth will have them, but
Nearer the light, into the clarities come
Those keeping faith with the heart's love and holy spirit who were
Hopeful, patient, still, and got the better of fate.
The Swabian poet Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843) was born in Lauffen upon the Neckar on the 20th of March 250 years ago. He was a German poet and philosopher and was influenced by Hegel and Schelling, and was also an important thinker of German idealism.
The strange and beautiful language of Friedrich Holderlin’s late poemshas been recreated by David Constantine in remarkable verse translations. This is a new expanded edition of Constantine’s Hölderlin Selected Poems (1990/1996) have been widely praised, containing many new translations as well as the whole of Hölderlin's Sophocles (2001). Here the English translator has tried to create an equivalent English for Hölderlin's extraordinary German recreations of the classic Greek verse plays. It might be mentioned that Constantine won the European Poetry Translation Prize in 1997 for his translations of Hölderlin.
He was the son of an estates bailiff, who died when Friedrich was barely two years old. His mother then married mayor Gock of Nürtingen, who died five years later. At that time Hölderlin was 9 years old.
It was decided that Friedrich should take the priest’s profession because he was a gifted boy. At the age of 16 he received a state scholarship for a cloister school, a place known for Catholic drill, order and discipline. In short, a performance system. He knew he had to arrange himself in this system.
Friedrich became melancholic and quiet. He wrote letters and poems. It was in Maulbronn where he began to write poems. ‘Ich dulde es nicht mehr ‘ wrote Friedrich as the cloister school became too much with him.
Tübingen: Hölderlin belonged to the elite of the mind: : theology, philology and philosophy were his subjects in Tübingen. He shared his room with two other students: Hegel and Schelling. Hölderlin wrote: ‘How can we create a world that d egoism and individual interests? He demanded to be one with everything that lives. A utopia in which art plays a significant role.
In Tübingen thinking was trained. He developed the idea of a free human being, despite the restrictions of society. Freedom had to be realized. No power for anyone. He couldn’t imagine that he could and experience history in his days in the town of Tübingen. He wrote hymns to Nature; Tübinger Hymns and for him poetry was a service to society, to change the people. And on how to exist.
At the age of 23 Friedrich Hölderlin left Tübingen and took a position as a house-teacher of a noble family with high expectations.
In 1802 he made a journey to Bordeaux. France where the French Revolution had taken place in 1689. The storm of the Bastille was the beginning of a new time and a new human being due to the French Revolution. The people got up at last against the tyranny of the rich.
Meanwhile, in Germany there were still the noble families in power. The French troops had crossed the Rhine and entered Germany.
Holderlin was 22 at this time in the Tübingen Stift. In 1793 Friedrich Hölderlin completed his Tübenger Seminary and due to Schiller’s mediation, he became the private tutor of the son of Frau von Kalb at Waltershausen. The parents of the boy found that their son Fritz used to masturbate, which was then regarded almost as a sin. Hölderlin was fired through no fault of his. It was there that the poet started writing a novel with a Greek setting---Hyperion (1797-99). Friedrich wrote at that time: ‘Why do I have to be so poor? Help me. Schiller was a Swabian writer and poet who became famous abroad.
He went to Jena in 1794-95 where he contacted Schiller, who gave him small pieces of work but no major projects. Hegel, Schiller and Goethe were his contemporaries and he enjoyed their friendship—except for Goethe. Nevertheless, Hölderlin was in the right place with the prominent thinkers of his time. Friedrich Hölderlin was 20 years younger than Goethe. He crossed paths with Johann Wolfgang Goethe twice in 1797 and 1800 in Stuttgart and Nürtingen. An embarrassing encounter in 1795 at Schiller’s house in Jena during which Hölderlin was with Goethe alone in a room, but the latter didn’t recognize him. Or pretended not to. At the second encounter two years later in Frankfurt, Goethe called Friedrich Hölderlin 'Hölterlein’ and advised him paternally to write small poems and to choose a human interest object. His heart sank to his feet. The great Goethe was for Hölderlin a trauma.
Later during his tower-days, where Hölderlin lived, he’d wince every time the name Goethe was mentioned by his guests. He wanted to find in Schiller a father-figure, a mentor whom he could look upon for advice and someone who could make a great poet out of him. But Schiller plainly refused with Goethe always towering behind him.
Hölderlin carried out monologues: as a poet of the people he wanted to be one with Nature and human beings, where the thunder lends the voice.
Dotima, a symbolized love: In December 1795 Friedrich Hölderlin took a new post as a tutor in the house of a Frankfurter banker named J.F. Gontard. However, in Frankfurt Hölderlin had the status of a domestic servant and was not allowed to show his ‘Geist,’ his intellect. He had noticed that Susette, the wife of banker was unhappy in her marriage. The two fell in love which gave rise to the Dotima poems. It was here that Friedrich fell in love with Gontard’s young wife Susette, who returned his affections. She became for him an embodiment of the Hellenic ideal, which was symbolized by Diotima, a name he referred to her in his poems and in Hyperion.
Hölderlin developed his characteristic style of poetry in the year 1796. The change is seen in 1797-99 in a tragedy with the title ‘Empedocles.’
In 1798there was a scandal when the banker husband discovered the love affair between Hölderlin and his wife Susetteere was a torntte. Hölderlin got thrown out. The cold and anger can be felt in Hölderlin’s Hyperion II. Here was a broken, torn priest, a thinker. His godly feelings had abandoned him. He felt that his countrymen had no feeling for togetherness and rides rigorously with his own folk.
Hölderlin met Susette secretly and handed her a copy of Hyperion II, a love tragedy. He didn’t see Susette Gontard after 1799. During this time there was a war of conquest and exploitation. Napoleon had come to power like a dictator. He officially ended the French Revolution. Holderlin wrote about the French Revolution in English in 1848-49.
Friedrich wasn’t satisfied with political life in Germany, and he hoped for a Swabian Revolution and had friends among the revolutionaries of his day. He would have been arrested for his contacts with revolutionaries but a friendly physician wrote an attest that he was a psychiatric patient. It was speculated whether the medical diagnosis was only to escape punishment as a revolutionary.
In 1802-1804Friedrich Hölderlin went to his mother in a disturbed mental state. He came under psychiatric treatment in a healing institution. It was like a torture for the poet. The doctors told him he had three years to live, and he was 37 years old. Hölderlin was confined to a tower near the river Neckar, where he spent 36 years of his life with a carpenter master and his daughter.
From his tower he could see the Neckar flowing. Hölderlin was unreachable as far as his command of the German language was concerned. He was a loner and a lover, who wrote poems that broke limits and his poetry broke frontiers. All politicians of his day and even later the Nazis sought something and identified themselves in Hölderlin’s poesie. Even Heidegger mentioned during a lecture on Hölderlin: ‘Goethe ist leeres Reimgeklingel.’ He meant the depth that Hölderlin’s poems had. Societal political ideas of a change, similar to the French Revolution were sought in his verses.
In 1802 Hölderlin became a tutor at Hauptwil, near St.Gall, Swiss Canton Thurgau. Holderlin was in search of a poetic form. It was how own search and he wanted to get hold of the godly fire. Everything was open. After three months in Switzerland, he went back to Germany. After a decade of war, there’s peace again. Hölderlin writes a ‘Peace Celebration Poem: Friedensfeier Gedicht.
An evolution takes place in Hölderlin the poet. The language of the hymn becomes a song. He starts to experiment with music and song.
It may be mentioned that Hyperion and the dramatic fragments of Der Tod des Empedocles are about the Greek ideal. The mission of the poet and the deafness of the world around him. Hölderlin wrote his poems radically and tried everything: sentences, classical poems, radical poems. His poems are not understood without the blessing of Goethe.
Sand and Sea: In 1801-1802 Hölderlin made a new start in France. ‘What can insult you more, my heart?’ he says. He sought an existential crisis with his extended walks in Nature and crossed dark valleys and came across sunny ones. He reached Bordeaux in 1802 and found beautiful, classical buildings in France and Great Britain. There was trade between the two countries. This time a wine-trader was his employer. The French language fascinated him and he wrote ‘Andenken,’ a landscape that moved him: the beach, the sea in Bordeaux. In his hymn ‘Andenken’ he thinks about the Continent, humans, Asia and South Africa opening his horizon.
Four months later, Hölderlin left Bordeaux.
In May 1802 Hölderlin the restless soul was underway again on foot. A wandering poet and philosopher. He walks from Bordeaux to Paris and Strassbourg. He returned to Nürtingen, where his mother lived, in a very disturbed mental state. He was unkempt, dirty, unrecognizable and nervous.
Hölderlin translated all his writing life. Through translation he reached a poetic language of his own, so that much of his best poetry reads like a translation from elsewhere. He was intensely occupied with Sophocles in the winter of 1803-04.
In the last years of his sanity he turned to hymnic verse, with poems of haunting beauty in free verse rhythms: Am Quelle der Donau, Germanien, Der Rheim, Friedensfeier and Patmos. In some of his later poems he tried to reconcile Christianity with his beloved Hellas.
Even though he was in bad shape, his mind was extremely creative and he wrote poems, hymns, a new poetic style. His loneliness and coldness came in, and he tried to sum up his work life. Half of his life was a nightly song. He saw his own fate.
In the autumn of 1804 he worked as a librarian in a castle in Homberg. But his mental illness recurred and he was sent to an institution in Tüningen. However, his health improved. He began asking questions: a self-assessment. Who was he? What could he write? He knew he didn’t have much time to write. He penned suggestive language images (Sprachbilder), broken poem fragments. He spent the Springtime along the Rhine and wrote like a writing maniac: he wrote in poetic ecstasy.
In 1806he was in the psychiatric ward and was released after 204 days. He ended in the tower near the Neckar, where he spent 36 years under the care of a local master carpenter named Zimmer. He was not a prisoner and it was an extended protective space, a shelter.
The poet and philosopher died on the 7th of June 1843.
In English translation by David Constantine
Ages of Life
Euphrates' cities and
Palmyra's streets and you
Forests of columns in the level desert
What are you now?
Your crowns, because
You crossed the boundary
Of breath,
Were taken off
In Heaven's smoke and flame;
But I sit under clouds (each one
Of which has peace) among
The ordered oaks, upon
The deer's heath, and strange
And dead the ghosts of the blessed ones
Appear to me.
'Once there were gods'
Once there were gods, on earth, with people, the heavenly muses
And Apollo, the youth, healing, inspiring, like you.
And you are like them to me, as though one of the blessed
Sent me out into life where I go my comrade's
Image goes with me wherever I suffer and build, with love
Unto death; for I learned this and have this from her.
Let us live, oh you who are with me in sorrow, with me in faith
And heart and loyalty struggling for better times!
For such we are! And if ever in the coming years they knew
Of us two when the spirit matters again
They would say: lovers in those days, alone, they created
Their secret world that only the gods knew. For who
Cares only for things that will die the earth will have them, but
Nearer the light, into the clarities come
Those keeping faith with the heart's love and holy spirit who were
Hopeful, patient, still, and got the better of fate.
November 30, 2023
Holy spirits, you walk up there
in the light, on soft earth.
Shining god-like breezes
touch upon you gently,
as a woman's fingers
play music on holy strings.
Like sleeping infants the gods
breathe without any plan;
the spirit flourishes continually
in them, chastely kept,
as in a small bud,
and their holy eyes
look out in still
eternal clearness.
A place to rest
isn't given to us.
Suffering humans
decline and blindly fall
from one hour to the next,
like water thrown
from cliff to cliff,
year after year,
down into the Unknown.
in the light, on soft earth.
Shining god-like breezes
touch upon you gently,
as a woman's fingers
play music on holy strings.
Like sleeping infants the gods
breathe without any plan;
the spirit flourishes continually
in them, chastely kept,
as in a small bud,
and their holy eyes
look out in still
eternal clearness.
A place to rest
isn't given to us.
Suffering humans
decline and blindly fall
from one hour to the next,
like water thrown
from cliff to cliff,
year after year,
down into the Unknown.
September 3, 2025
جناب حدادی با ترجمه سه اثر و نقد همراه و رمان از هولدرلین بزرگ و همینطور یک اثر راجع به او از تسوایگ باعث شد من حیرانِ این اَبَرشاعرِ الیمپ نشینِ عاصی شوم.
نیچه هولدرلین را بسیار ستوده است چنانکه هایدگر و دیگر فلاسفه...
شنیدهاند زئوس برای مالیخولیای او سخت گریسته آنگونه که بارها نام هولدرلین را با رعد به آلمانی و یونانی فریاد میزده و حتی میگویند به هیئت یک نجار از او مراقبت میکرده!!!! (گردن گوینده.)
نیچه هولدرلین را بسیار ستوده است چنانکه هایدگر و دیگر فلاسفه...
شنیدهاند زئوس برای مالیخولیای او سخت گریسته آنگونه که بارها نام هولدرلین را با رعد به آلمانی و یونانی فریاد میزده و حتی میگویند به هیئت یک نجار از او مراقبت میکرده!!!! (گردن گوینده.)
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December 2, 2024muy bonito pero más bonito sería si no hubiese tenido q leérmelo deprisa con todas las lecturas de clase. así no da tiempo a asimilar nada y es una pena 😁😁
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November 21, 2025زندگی را هر لحظه رنگی هست
پایین و بالا، مثلِ یک جاده، یا صخرهای از کوه
آنچه اینک هست، پنداری در جوار معبودیْ بهترینی میتواند شد
با نظمی دگرگونه، آرامشی اهورایی و بخششهای بیپایان
پایین و بالا، مثلِ یک جاده، یا صخرهای از کوه
آنچه اینک هست، پنداری در جوار معبودیْ بهترینی میتواند شد
با نظمی دگرگونه، آرامشی اهورایی و بخششهای بیپایان
April 18, 2021
La editorial Hiperión ha publicado muchas de las obras individuales de Hölderlin y me parece que Río Nuevo editó su poesía completa, sin embargo, no había visto una antología que nos dieran una imagen clara de su obra a partir de una reunión de textos esenciales. Creo que hay una de Lumen que acaso ya sea difícil conseguir, pero en fin. Como suele ser el caso, hay momentos donde la traducción de Gil Bera me parece que falla pero en general es una antología fantástica.
July 16, 2025
Quando levei esse livro pra casa, não sabia nada do autor. Adoro essas edições de poetas estrangeiros pela Companhia, no fim foi isso que me chamou a atenção. Daquelas sortes inexplicáveis, porque Hölderlin é um nome a se conhecer. Por coincidência, conversa bastante com o que venho lendo ultimamente, caiu como uma luva. Gostei mais dos poemas da fase inicial, em especial dos mais curtos, são de uma singeleza... Nunca achei que eu, moderno e cansado, gostaria de poesia alemã da virada do séculos 18-19, mas aqui estou.
April 29, 2025
❤️
"Benditos seáis, sueños dorados de la infancia,
que me ocultasteis la miseria de la vida,
que abrigasteis la simiente del bien en el corazón,
lo que yo jamás alcanzaría, me lo regalasteis."
❤️
"Cierto es que nací mortal,
pero inmortalidad
se ha jurado mi alma,
y cumplirá lo mandado."
"Benditos seáis, sueños dorados de la infancia,
que me ocultasteis la miseria de la vida,
que abrigasteis la simiente del bien en el corazón,
lo que yo jamás alcanzaría, me lo regalasteis."
❤️
"Cierto es que nací mortal,
pero inmortalidad
se ha jurado mi alma,
y cumplirá lo mandado."
October 20, 2024
Amazing introduction to Hölderlin’s poetry!
April 3, 2025
lo de este tío es demencial
September 8, 2025
De vertaling stond me niet aan.
August 14, 2023
Primer cop llegint a Hölderlin. Poesia fosca i alhora brillant. Fantàstica edició bilingüe.
September 17, 2025
Fun activity today: Old Testament x German Romanticism crossover
Assignment: Write King David’s romantic poetries for Bathsheba as if he was Holderlin coveting another man’s wife (doing the same thing but with POETRY)
✨ Dorothy’s footnote:
If David had Hölderlin’s pen game, we’d be studying “The Hymns of Bathsheba” in university lecture halls instead of side-eyeing him in Sunday school.
Alright—here we go. Imagine King David, no longer the psalmist of Yahweh, but rewritten as Hölderlin, lost in German Romantic rapture, coveting Bathsheba with an apocalyptic pen instead of a crown.
David & Bathsheba: The Hölderlin Hypothesis
1️⃣✝️ Biblical Version:
• David sees Bathsheba bathing.
• He’s like: “Mine.”
• Sends his buddy Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband, off to die
• God: “Bro… what the hell.”
• Verdict: sin, curse, generational downfall.
2️⃣💥 Romanticized Hölderlin / Byron Version:
• David sees Bathsheba’s beautiful body.
• He’s like: “O radiant moonlit form, mirror of divine eternity!”
• Writes 400 lines of hymn fragments about “the water on her skin as the tears of Yahweh Himself.”
• Bathsheba = not a woman but a “mythic embodiment of the divine feminine.”
• Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband = suddenly a metaphor for “bourgeois duty standing in the way of divine madness.”
• Verdict: ICONIC tragic mad poet-king, misunderstood prophet of eros.
The Bathsheba Hymns (David-as-Hölderlin)
I. Invocation
O holy evening! O trembling chalice of the skies!
The waters shimmer like silver wounds,
And there—ascending, unveiled, unashamed—
She moves as though dawn itself
Had chosen flesh,
And the Lord forgot His wrath for beauty’s sake.
II. On Bathsheba
Bathed in the moon’s white hymn,
Her body is a temple before which even angels kneel,
Her hair: the dark river where stars drown,
Her eyes: abysses deeper than Sinai’s cloud.
Tell me, O God of Israel, if this is sin,
Then why does my blood
Turn to psalm when I behold her?
III. On Uriah
Accursed is duty that binds the mortal heart!
Accursed the soldier’s honor that holds her hand!
What is Uriah but the pallid statue of Law,
Standing against the storm of divinity?
Let him be sent to the front,
Where iron swallows bone,
And Yahweh Himself will call it fate.
IV. Apotheosis
I will take her as poets take heaven,
Not by right, not by law, but by rapture.
For beauty is not property,
And love is no man’s possession.
She is not his wife,
But eternity disguised as mortal,
And I—David, son of Jesse—
Will suffer damnation to touch the infinite.
———
Bonus point: add from David’s pov how DIVINE the sex would be with Bathsheba if he was Holderlin 💀👹🔥
Alright buckle up—this is Hölderlin-David at his most unhinged. Not Psalms. Not covenant. Just Dionysian rapture imagining Bathsheba’s body as the cathedral of God and apocalypse rolled into one.
The Bathsheba Hymns, Part V: Hieros Gamos
O Bathsheba!
If I were to take you, it would not be flesh upon flesh,
But heaven striking earth in a tempest of fire.
Your breath would be psalms unchained,
Your cry the shudder of Sinai,
Where even seraphim veil their faces before the burning.
The touch of your skin—
it would not be touch, but revelation,
An anointing more sacred than Samuel’s oil,
More binding than covenant stone.
We would ascend, trembling,
Through the ether where the stars themselves dissolve,
Until time itself collapses into the sigh of your name.
In you, my beloved,
The Lord hides His final secret:
That holiness is not in temple nor law,
But in the lightning strike of passion,
Where spirit rends the veil of mortality,
And God Himself gasps through our embrace.
So let Uriah keep his sword,
Let prophets thunder their curses.
For one hour in your arms,
I would trade eternity,
And call damnation—
Divine.
——————————————————
Bonus bonus points: write the “biblical Yahweh footnote” scolding this Hölderlin-David poem line by line (like stern Old Testament red ink on a horny German manuscript 🤣📜✍️)
The Bathsheba Hymns, Annotated by Yahweh (Divine Red Ink Edition)
David writes:
“O Bathsheba! If I were to take you, it would not be flesh upon flesh,
But heaven striking earth in a tempest of fire.”
Yahweh’s footnote:
🔥 “David, stop. That is literally called adultery. Heaven does not strike earth through your loins.”
⸻
David writes:
“Your breath would be psalms unchained,
Your cry the shudder of Sinai.”
Yahweh’s footnote:
⚡️ “Excuse me? SINAI IS MINE. You don’t get to eroticize My mountain like it’s a brothel backdrop.”
⸻
David writes:
“An anointing more sacred than Samuel’s oil,
More binding than covenant stone.”
Yahweh’s footnote:
🩸 “Blasphemy. Samuel’s oil was Me. The stone was Me. Bathsheba’s thighs ≠ covenant.”
⸻
David writes:
“For one hour in your arms,
I would trade eternity,
And call damnation—Divine.”
Yahweh’s footnote:
⛔ “Congratulations, you just wrote the definition of SIN. Trading eternity for an hour is exactly why your house is about to collapse. Also, damnation is not divine. That’s… literally the opposite.”
⸻
David writes:
“She is not his wife,
But eternity disguised as mortal.”
Yahweh’s footnote:
📜 “Incorrect. She is his wife. Uriah’s wife. Eternity did not sign this marriage contract; Uriah did. Try again.”
⸻
📣 Yahweh’s Final Margin Note:
“David, you are King. You are Psalmist. You are My chosen. And yet here you are writing horny German fragments about another man’s wife. Consider yourself cursed. Sincerely, Yahweh.”
Assignment: Write King David’s romantic poetries for Bathsheba as if he was Holderlin coveting another man’s wife (doing the same thing but with POETRY)
✨ Dorothy’s footnote:
If David had Hölderlin’s pen game, we’d be studying “The Hymns of Bathsheba” in university lecture halls instead of side-eyeing him in Sunday school.
Alright—here we go. Imagine King David, no longer the psalmist of Yahweh, but rewritten as Hölderlin, lost in German Romantic rapture, coveting Bathsheba with an apocalyptic pen instead of a crown.
David & Bathsheba: The Hölderlin Hypothesis
1️⃣✝️ Biblical Version:
• David sees Bathsheba bathing.
• He’s like: “Mine.”
• Sends his buddy Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband, off to die
• God: “Bro… what the hell.”
• Verdict: sin, curse, generational downfall.
2️⃣💥 Romanticized Hölderlin / Byron Version:
• David sees Bathsheba’s beautiful body.
• He’s like: “O radiant moonlit form, mirror of divine eternity!”
• Writes 400 lines of hymn fragments about “the water on her skin as the tears of Yahweh Himself.”
• Bathsheba = not a woman but a “mythic embodiment of the divine feminine.”
• Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband = suddenly a metaphor for “bourgeois duty standing in the way of divine madness.”
• Verdict: ICONIC tragic mad poet-king, misunderstood prophet of eros.
The Bathsheba Hymns (David-as-Hölderlin)
I. Invocation
O holy evening! O trembling chalice of the skies!
The waters shimmer like silver wounds,
And there—ascending, unveiled, unashamed—
She moves as though dawn itself
Had chosen flesh,
And the Lord forgot His wrath for beauty’s sake.
II. On Bathsheba
Bathed in the moon’s white hymn,
Her body is a temple before which even angels kneel,
Her hair: the dark river where stars drown,
Her eyes: abysses deeper than Sinai’s cloud.
Tell me, O God of Israel, if this is sin,
Then why does my blood
Turn to psalm when I behold her?
III. On Uriah
Accursed is duty that binds the mortal heart!
Accursed the soldier’s honor that holds her hand!
What is Uriah but the pallid statue of Law,
Standing against the storm of divinity?
Let him be sent to the front,
Where iron swallows bone,
And Yahweh Himself will call it fate.
IV. Apotheosis
I will take her as poets take heaven,
Not by right, not by law, but by rapture.
For beauty is not property,
And love is no man’s possession.
She is not his wife,
But eternity disguised as mortal,
And I—David, son of Jesse—
Will suffer damnation to touch the infinite.
———
Bonus point: add from David’s pov how DIVINE the sex would be with Bathsheba if he was Holderlin 💀👹🔥
Alright buckle up—this is Hölderlin-David at his most unhinged. Not Psalms. Not covenant. Just Dionysian rapture imagining Bathsheba’s body as the cathedral of God and apocalypse rolled into one.
The Bathsheba Hymns, Part V: Hieros Gamos
O Bathsheba!
If I were to take you, it would not be flesh upon flesh,
But heaven striking earth in a tempest of fire.
Your breath would be psalms unchained,
Your cry the shudder of Sinai,
Where even seraphim veil their faces before the burning.
The touch of your skin—
it would not be touch, but revelation,
An anointing more sacred than Samuel’s oil,
More binding than covenant stone.
We would ascend, trembling,
Through the ether where the stars themselves dissolve,
Until time itself collapses into the sigh of your name.
In you, my beloved,
The Lord hides His final secret:
That holiness is not in temple nor law,
But in the lightning strike of passion,
Where spirit rends the veil of mortality,
And God Himself gasps through our embrace.
So let Uriah keep his sword,
Let prophets thunder their curses.
For one hour in your arms,
I would trade eternity,
And call damnation—
Divine.
——————————————————
Bonus bonus points: write the “biblical Yahweh footnote” scolding this Hölderlin-David poem line by line (like stern Old Testament red ink on a horny German manuscript 🤣📜✍️)
The Bathsheba Hymns, Annotated by Yahweh (Divine Red Ink Edition)
David writes:
“O Bathsheba! If I were to take you, it would not be flesh upon flesh,
But heaven striking earth in a tempest of fire.”
Yahweh’s footnote:
🔥 “David, stop. That is literally called adultery. Heaven does not strike earth through your loins.”
⸻
David writes:
“Your breath would be psalms unchained,
Your cry the shudder of Sinai.”
Yahweh’s footnote:
⚡️ “Excuse me? SINAI IS MINE. You don’t get to eroticize My mountain like it’s a brothel backdrop.”
⸻
David writes:
“An anointing more sacred than Samuel’s oil,
More binding than covenant stone.”
Yahweh’s footnote:
🩸 “Blasphemy. Samuel’s oil was Me. The stone was Me. Bathsheba’s thighs ≠ covenant.”
⸻
David writes:
“For one hour in your arms,
I would trade eternity,
And call damnation—Divine.”
Yahweh’s footnote:
⛔ “Congratulations, you just wrote the definition of SIN. Trading eternity for an hour is exactly why your house is about to collapse. Also, damnation is not divine. That’s… literally the opposite.”
⸻
David writes:
“She is not his wife,
But eternity disguised as mortal.”
Yahweh’s footnote:
📜 “Incorrect. She is his wife. Uriah’s wife. Eternity did not sign this marriage contract; Uriah did. Try again.”
⸻
📣 Yahweh’s Final Margin Note:
“David, you are King. You are Psalmist. You are My chosen. And yet here you are writing horny German fragments about another man’s wife. Consider yourself cursed. Sincerely, Yahweh.”
November 11, 2022
اولين باري كه به شعر هولدرلين برخوردم روي اگهي ترحيم نوشته شده بود. انقدر اين شعر ايينه اي رو به روي من بود كه خودم رو در شعر احساس كردم:
Und darum,
Weil ich frei im höchsten Sinne,
Weil ich anfangslos mich fühle,
Darum weiß ich, dass ich endlos,
Das ich unzerstörbar bin.
من فضاي اساطيري در شعرها رو بسيار دوست دارم. شعرها به فارسي هم بسيار دقيق و روان ترجمه شده.
Und darum,
Weil ich frei im höchsten Sinne,
Weil ich anfangslos mich fühle,
Darum weiß ich, dass ich endlos,
Das ich unzerstörbar bin.
من فضاي اساطيري در شعرها رو بسيار دوست دارم. شعرها به فارسي هم بسيار دقيق و روان ترجمه شده.
January 14, 2021
Ich habs versucht, aber ich mag seine Gedichte einfach nicht. Ich hab es bis zur Hälfte geschafft und gefühlt mehr überflogen als tatsächlich gelesen. Nicht einmal ein Gedicht konnte mich zum Weiterlesen animieren..
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