Hölderlin's Madness: Chronicle of a Dwelling Life 1806–1843

by Giorgio Agamben, Alta L. Price (Translator)

One of Europe’s greatest living philosophers, Giorgio Agamben, analyzes the life and work of one of Europe’s greatest poets, Friedrich Hölderlin.

What does it mean to inhabit a place or a self? What is a habit? And, for human beings, doesn’t living mean—first and foremost—inhabiting? Pairing a detailed chronology of German poet Friedrich Hölderlin’s years of purported madness with a new examination of texts often considered unreadable, Giorgio Agamben's new book aims to describe and comprehend a life that the poet himself called habitual and inhabited.
 
Hölderlin’s life was split neatly in two: his first 36 years, from 1770 to 1806; and the 36 years from 1807 to 1843, which he spent as a madman holed up in the home of Ernst Zimmer, a carpenter. The poet lived the first half of his existence out and about in the broader world, relatively engaged with current events, only to then spend the second half entirely cut off from the outside world. Despite occasional visitors, it was as if a wall separated him from all external events and relationships. For reasons that may well eventually become clear, Hölderlin chose to expunge all character—historical, social, or otherwise—from the actions and gestures of his daily life. According to his earliest biographer, he often stubbornly repeated, “nothing happens to me.” Such a life can only be the subject of a chronology—not a biography, much less a clinical or psychological analysis. Nevertheless, this book suggests that this is precisely how Hölderlin offers humanity an entirely other notion of what it means to live. Although we have yet to grasp the political significance of his unprecedented way of life, it now clearly speaks directly to our own.
 

Genres: Philosophy, Poetry, Biography, Theory, Nonfiction, Literature, Romanticism

280 pages, Hardcover

First published January 12, 2021

About the author

Giorgio Agamben is one of the leading figures in Italian and contemporary continental philosophy. He is the author of Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life; Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive; Profanations; The Signature of All Things: On Method, and other books. Through the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s he treated a wide range of topics, including aesthetics, literature, language, ontology, nihilism, and radical political thought.

In recent years, his work has had a deep impact on contemporary scholarship in a number of disciplines in the Anglo-American intellectual world. Born in Rome in 1942, Agamben completed studies in Law and Philosophy with a doctoral thesis on the political thought of Simone Weil, and participated in Martin Heidegger’s seminars on Hegel and Heraclitus as a postdoctoral scholar.

He rose to international prominence after the publication of Homo Sacer in 1995. Translated into English in 1998, the book’s analyses of law, life, and state power appeared uncannily prescient after the attacks on New York City and Washington, DC in September 2001, and the resultant shifts in the geopolitical landscape. Provoking a wave of scholarly interest in the philosopher’s work, the book also marked the beginning of a 20-year research project, which represents Agamben’s most important contribution to political philosophy.

Reviews

[Alex Obrigewitsch · Rating 1 out of 5]

Please do not buy this book - read it if you wish, but don't purchase it. This is one of the most worthless works on "Hölderlin" I have ever read, and is little more than Agamben fluffing up his CV by resting on his laurels (which are withered at best).

Agamben's book doesn't really add anything new in terms of Hölderlin scholarship - merely compiling accounts from various sources. This "book" is a chronical of worthless information (providing nothing to the study of Hölderlin's thought) sandwiched between two lackluster essays by Agamben. The former provides an all-too-brief overview of Hölderlin's complicated and nuanced thought, providing nothing novel and mearly collecting sources and citations; the latter speaking more to Agamben's thought than to Hölderlin's, with the attempt to bring together the two faltering badly. Agamben's interpretations of Hölderlin are either non- explicatory (merely repeating Hölderlin's often obscure phrasing, without any explanation), or else incorrect in his interpretation (such as his (mis)understanding of Hölderlin on tragedy, and the relation to the (absence of the) comic). For example, Agamben's ideas of the so called "antitragic" in Hölderlin are completely misguided - the impossibility of the tragic does not dialectically give way to the antitragic, but instead, in the caesural turning, movement in suspension, affirms the tragic (qua impossible) by means of this fault or failure, by means of this impossibility - the impossibility of the tragic paradoxically affirms the tragic as impossible, in the turning of caesural suspension.

And why the insistence on Hölderlin feigning his "madness"? Agamben provides no argument or evidence for his dogmatic assertion. What grounds for this "irony" that Agamben assumes as at play (to support his unstable claim to comedy)? It is all very strange...

Are Hölderlin's later years a "dwelling," a "living" or "inhabiting" of life, as Agamben claims? Is it not rather marked by a break, a rupture, and its turn(ing) - the mark of suspension, the aftereffects (après coup) of the tragic? Agamben's detour through Latin into Italian to find resonances of 'habit' and 'having' is completely wrong-headed, and contrary to the language "itself" - for Hölderlin had nothing, possessed nothing, and his only "habit" was of displacent, deferral and deference to the other. Hölderlin had not any proper, not even that of a name any longer. And all of Agamben's sketchy interpetation stemming from the opening line of one of the late poems - but Agamben does not account for the full line, that this "dwelling life" distances itself (from itself) - in that 'Ferne' also bears the sense of the distant future or past, the immemorial which marks the anterior displacement of identity - that such a "life" is marked by the double movement of suspension, of the binding of two in difference, by means of distance and proximity, Ent-furnung.

As a work this book is weak, and as a work on Hölderlin it is at best superfluous, at worst absolutely worthless. Those looking for a rigorous and worthwhile engagement with Hölderlin would be better off looking to Lacoue-Labarthe.

[Matthias · Rating 5 out of 5]

For almost a year now I’ve been living with Hölderlin, day in and day out—over recent months in an isolation I never could’ve imagined I’d find myself. As I take my leave of him now, his madness strikes me as rather innocent compared with the madness into which an entire society has fallen without even realizing it. If I try to spell out the political lesson I seem to have gleaned from the dwelling life of the poet in his tower on the Neckar, for the time being I can perhaps ‘only babble and babble’. There are no readers. There are only words with no addressee. The question ‘what does it mean to dwell poetically?’ still awaits an answer. Pallaksh. Pallaksh.

[Aline · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fazer uso de uma loucura inventada. Habitá-la.
Assim Hölderlin passou os últimos 36 anos de sua vida. Uma tragédia ou um ato de escárnio sublime?
É sobre este tema que Giorgio Agamben se debruça neste livro fascinante.

[Tintarella]

وقایع‌نگاری جنون؛ شرحی بر زندگی فردریش هلدرلین در فاصله‌ی سال‌های 1806-1843/ جورجو آگامبن/ فرهاد محرابی/ نشر ققنوس
.
هلدرلین در جایی از ترجمه‌ی آژاکسِ سوفوکل می‌نویسد: جنون الهی منزلگاه اوست
.
او هیچ اندیشه‌ی ثابتی ندارد؛ چه بسا قوه‌ی تخیل خود را به بهای از دست رفتن عقلش غنا بخشیده باشد.

[Tarek Alali · Rating 2 out of 5]

يبتديء أغامبين بحثه في سيرة الشاعر الألماني هولدرلين - انشطارها إلى نصفين: الصحو والجنون، الوجود في العالم/ الوجود في الشعر— بتبرير اعتماده في هذا على "مدونات الأخبار التاريخية "
chronicle
ومن الاشارة إلى إن أي مؤرخ -بحسب فالتر بنيامين- لا بد له من ضم الأحداث والوقائع التاريخية بتفسير أو شرح أو تعليق، وإن ذلك ينسحب على مؤرخي العصور الوسطى كذلك، من مدوني الأخبار والوقائع والحوليات. لا يكمن الفرق هنا بين المؤرخين، أي في القسر والإلحاح الذي يصيب المؤرخ من حيث هو كذلك ويدفعه لتفسير أو ربط الأحداث بسلسلة سببية أو جغرافية أو شخصية أو زمنية، فما كان يفعله مؤرخو الأخبار والوقائع القرسطيون هو استبدال التفسير والتحليل الاجتماعي والاقتصادي والمناخي بالعناية الإلهية وتصريف الإقدار. الفرق فقط، أو الفرق الحقيقي، هو إن مدوني الأخبار والوقائع والحوليات، لم يكونوا مهتمين بتوثيق المصدر أو الوثيقة التاريخي، حيث يتطابق عندهم تقريبا التاريخ كما حدث مع التاريخ المحكي، أو لا فرق بين افعال الناس وأقوالهم. لذلك لا أحد ينتظر من "حكواتي التاريخ" هذا أن يدلل على صدق أو كذب أخباره، لأن الوثيقة الوحيدة التي يملكونها هو (التاريخ المحكي)، هو نقل ما سمعوه أو شاهدوه أو عاشوه، دون اي ضمانة إضافية.

لكن لماذا يعتمد أغامبين على مراجع حولية بتسلسل زمني تغطي نهاية القرن الثامن عشر وبداية القرن التاسع عشر، حيث نابليون في كل مكان وزمان في أوربا؛ للاقتراب من هولدرلين، بنصفي حياته عاقلا ومجنونا؟

هنا ثمة طرفة يوردها عن حياة شاعرنا هذا، بإنه بعد عودته إلى ألمانيا قادما من فرنسا، وقد ظهر على سحنته وسلوكه وكلامه علامات تجعل من يلتقونه يشكون بإنه قد جن، إنه كان يكثر أن يقول ردا على تحية كيف الحال: لا شيء يحدث لي أبدا.
Es geschieht mir nichts

لقد عاش هولدرلين حياته في نصفين: الأولى متفاعلا مع الأحداث التاريخية، والثانية مبتعدا عنها إلى (كوخ الكينونة) الشعرية، منفصلا عن تاريخه وما يجري فيه من انتصارات وهزائم نابليونية على وقع كونية قيم الصورة الفرنسية في عالم يتعولم رأسماليا، إلا من بعض الاستثناءات لتلبسه في الشؤون العامة. من هنا كان منظور الأخبار والأحداث التاريخية التي تعصف بزمنه هو ما يمكن أن يلقي الضوء على قصة جنون الشاعر، فالجنون في معناه الأول هو انفصال عن (العقل التاريخي).

لم يثبت إن هولدرلين قد جن بالمعنى الفعلي أو العقلي للكلمة، وخلاصة القول إنه بعد عودته من فرنسا إلى ألمانيا مطلع ١٨٠٠، كانت ظهرت عليه علامات انسحاب من العالم تلقي على كلماته وتصرفاته مسحة جنون تصوفية، ذهول عن زمانه وما يجري فيه، عن فتنه تتلاطم، فكان حاله حال من ابتعد عن العقل العام لتاريخه. والحال إن إنتاجه الغزير وترجمته لأعمال شعرية إغريقية قد تثبت بما لا يترك مجالا للشك بإنه كان بصحة وصحوة عقلية جيدة.

إن جنون الشاعر هو من هذا المنظور، من منظور مدوني الأخبار والأحداث حيث التأريخ هائج مائج مثل بحر العاصفة، ما هو إلا التعبير السيكولوجي عن الموقف الوجودي للغته وإنتاجه الشعري الفلسفي، حيث إن لغة الشعر والفلسفة هي بالضرورة (لغة ميتة)، أو (لغة غريبة)، أو (لغة مجنونة)، (لغة متصوفة)، (لغة انطوائية)، بعيدة عن حركة هذا العالم وهيجان هذا التاريخ.

لقد كان الصراع الشعري والفلسفي في جنون هولدرلين هو صراع بين الأصالة والكونية، بين المميز الثقافي والعمومي العالمي، بين الخصوصية القومية والكونية الكولونيالية والرأسمالية، على ذلك المنعرج التاريخي. عقب الثورة الفرنسية والإمبراطورية النابليونية. كان هولدرلين وهو يبحث في جنونه ذلك عن (الكلمة بالروح الألمانية) يستدعي الإغريقي بين خصوصيته الثقافية وكونيته العالمية.

[Giada🦋 · Rating 4 out of 5]

che paura i filosofi

[骆驼 · Rating 4 out of 5]

This review is written to refute Alex’s 1-star review, which, in my view, misrepresents the intentions and content of the book. If Alex had read the book with more care, he might have appreciated what it sets out to do.

Agamben’s text does not pretend to offer a systematic scholarly “history” of Hölderlin, nor a comprehensive biography. Rather, as is made explicit early on, it adopts the form of a chronicle - a term Agamben distinguishes from history - with reference to Walter Benjamin. This is a crucial framing choice: the chronicle presents fragments, correspondences, and oblique entries not in order to master Hölderlin’s thought, but to dwell alongside it.

To criticize the work for being “merely a compilation” of quotations is to miss the very method it embraces. The “middle” portion, what Alex derides as a collection of citations, functions as a constellation of references, allowing readers to perceive resonances, repetitions, and disjunctions between those around Hölderlin and Hölderlin himself. It is not a survey; it is an arrangement, a typology, a contemplative terrain.

Furthermore, the final essay, which Alex fails to engage meaningfully, is a profound philosophical reflection. It moves beyond citation into Agamben’s signature meditative mode, exploring ideas of habit, dwelling, habituality, and inhabitation. These are central not just to Hölderlin but to Heidegger and the broader German philosophical tradition. To dismiss this as “fluffing up his CV” is to overlook the patient work of philosophical listening that Agamben undertakes.

Finally, on the question of the “antitragic” and comic in Hölderlin: while one may certainly disagree with Agamben’s interpretations, Alex’s takedown refuses the generosity a philosophical reading requires. The tragic, for Agamben, is not negated by the comic but entangled with it in a complex relation of suspension and possibility - just as Hölderlin’s caesura suspends, rather than negates, poetic movement.

This book is best approached slowly, meditatively, as one might dwell in a ruin or among ghosts. If one wants a linear, argumentative treatise, this is not it. But for those interested in dwelling in thought and its traces, this slim volume offers quiet rewards.

[Paul Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

A FRIEND'S RECOMMENDATION of this book is what led me last fall to a rabbit hole that turned into an immense underground cavern. If I am going to read a book about Hölderlin, I thought, I should read some poems by Hölderlin, and that led to reading commentaries on Hölderlin by Heidegger, Benjamin, Adorno, Lacoue-Labarthe, and I am no longer sure who else in the following months, until I finally felt as ready as I was going to be to pick up the Agamben book.

As the subtitle indicates, the larger part of the book--216 of 329 pages--is a year-by-year account of the time when Hölderlin, accounted by his friends and family to be insane and provided with a caretaker, was living a very quiet, retired life in a small town. The chronology includes a few of the poems he wrote in that time, lots of letters and journal entries by people who visited him, and even a few invoices from the caretaker about routine expenses like shoe repair and wine.

The book also has a prologue (70-some pages) and an epilogue (30-some pages) which sketch out a thesis, of sorts--although calling it a "thesis" implies some rigorous argument is being made, when Agamben is more floating a possibility, making a suggestion.

The suggestion is that Hölderlin's madness might have been more a so-called "madness," that is, not a descent into unreason or delusion or catatonia but a kind of withdrawal, abdication, renunciation, a stepping away, a letting go. Not that Agaimben is saying Hölderlin was putting on an act or trying to pass for something he wasn't; he wasn't feigning madness á la Hamlet (if Hamlet was feigning). Rather, he had found a way of radically simplifying his life.

As Agamben sees it, Hölderlin was dropping the tragic mode for the comic one, relinquishing the ambition to be a prophet, a soothsayer--to utter Germany into being the way (the Romantics thought) Homer had uttered Greece into being. Instead, he was writing short, unfussy poems about the turning of the seasons and improvising on the piano.

He could be right. Agamben's version of Hölderlin's last three decades reminds me of the Bob Dylan of 1968-1973. A whole generation was hanging on Dylan's every word, scrutinizing his songs for clues about the secrets of existence, but it's as if Dylan decided, "fuck it, I'm going to cross everyone up and just write country songs until people get over this obsession with me." Hölderlin made the same move and then stuck with it, played it out.

[Molsa Roja(s) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sentía una mezcla de extrañeza y fascinación ante Hölderlin el poeta loco, Hölderlin, el romántico alemán; no habiendo leído nada suyo, estaba a oscuras y en la oscuridad crecía una sombra que era luminosa, la del pensamiento sobrepasado por la belleza del mundo. Agamben se pregunta si este es el caso, y propone sucintamente la conveniencia de obtener el certificado médico de "loco"; la locura es para Hölderlin una vía de escape de un mundo en guerra, un territorio hostil, una opinión pública contraria; la locura, acompañada por el espacio de cuidados que le proporciona Zimmer, es una renuncia a la existencia contemporánea. Mi intuición es que Hölderlin siente, profundamente, un gran hastío, una gran decepción respecto la humanidad; su refugio será una torre y sus vistas, un piano y una pequeña familia honesta.

Si bien los ensayos de Agamben no me han gustado en absoluto -me han parecido incomprensibles, sin un planteamiento, conclusión o tesis claras-, pongo en valor el libro como introducción a esta figura que es Hölderlin, y la forma-crónica es, en su sencillez desprovista de juicio moral, suficiente para hacerse una idea mínima de quién fue Hölderlin. Las decenas de testimonios de emoción ante su mirada se convierten rápidamente en afectos que atraviesan cuerpos, que trascienden espacio y tiempo, y en el vacío que acecha tras una ventana cualquiera una puede imaginar al poeta, con sus ojos grises, observando pacientemente el mundo y haciéndose uno con él. Una se conmueve ante este cuerpo sufriente, quizás demasiado humano, y desearía abrazarlo.

[Durakov · Rating 3 out of 5]

The description really doesn't tell you much about the formal structure of the book. This is better described as two medium-length essays about Hölderlin's madness, and a large middle section that describes, in short passages, what happened in the course of his madness in the years referred to in the title. Occasionally, Agamben colors these passages with a remark or two of his own.

I imagine this would be a goldmine for someone writing a book about Hölderlin's madness, which is weird because I thought that's basically what this was going to be. Agamben is a strange public thinker. I used to admire him deeply. Over the last few years, I think he's become much more impulsive, reactive, and frankly somewhat embarrassing: he more often than not misses the mark, passing over grave political issues in silence, while over-emphasizing surface events. I found myself wishing he would slow down, think for a while, and be reflective before writing his blogs or talking to right-wing newspapers. That's all not entirely beside the point here, because the issue with this book is that Agamben's attempt to read Hölderlin's madness in terms of his theories of habitus and dwelling are mostly about Agamben (and his favorite thinkers) rather than the facts of the Hölderlin case. Even so, I found Agamben's treatment intriguing and sometimes illuminating. It's better suited to this than contemporary politics and I support Agamben focusing on poetry for a while.

[AlexVicious · Rating 1 out of 5]

Es, con diferencia, el peor libro que he leído este año. No aporta absolutamente nada, no tiene ninguna conclusión interesante, es un ladrillazo de datos, referencias y citas que no llevan a ningún sitio. Es como si Agamben se hubiera enchufado una bibliografía extensísima sobre el poeta y la hubiera vomitado sin ningún tipo de filtro o trabajo de elaboración. El apartado de crónica también es totalmente absurdo, a veces sentía que estaba leyendo unos testimonios sobre Goethe, Napoleón o Hegel más que del propio Hölderlin.

Mira que me gusta Agamben pero este libro es horrible. Hay cientos de libros mejores sobre Hölderlin.

[Dilem · Rating 3 out of 5]

bir kronik kitabi oldugunun bilincinde olmakla birlikte, kitaptan hicbir ictenlik, hicbir samimiyet izlenmihor. sirasiyla okunan ansiklopedik bir bilgiymiscesine bahsediliyor horderlinin deliliginden. bir "delilik"in ne denli kronik sekilde aciklanmasi dogrudur, o da bambaska bir konu. soguk ve heyecansiz bir sekilde okuyarak bitirdim ve acikcasi son sayfalari beni fazlasiyla bunaltti, okumadan gectigimi uzulerek soyluyorum. belki baska bir zaman donup bakabilirim ama simdilik ilgimi hic cekmiyor. buyuk beklentilerle baslamistim.

[Rosenna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Çok değerli bir kitap. Hölderlin'in deliliği adım adım ispatlanıyor bu kitapda. Bazı şeyleri bilmiyor insan. Açıklaması çok güzel. Hatta Goethe'in günlük kitabından alıntılar var. Çevirmene teşekkürlerimi sunarım.

[Sinem · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dichterisch wohnet der Mensch auf dieser Erde. Der Wert Hölderlins liegt in seinem poetischen Wahnsinn.

[Adriana Valdes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read it eagerly to find out more about Hölderlin. About five of his poems inspired Heidegger to write on the nature of poetry. The book is fascinating, mostly containing historical accounts and documents on the poet's "madness" and the efforts of a superior mind to live with heavy social difficulties and handicaps. The strength of his poetic self shows through, his fictionalizing of himself and his withdrawal from his circle are worthy of thought. So is his beautiful connection to nature and the simpler life. I highly recommend the book.

Agamben has written even better ones, in which his own philosophical thinking shows through. Here he has chosen to let documents speak mainly for themselves, and they are quite astonishing.

[Eden · Rating 2 out of 5]

I happen to agree with Alex Obrigewitsch's opinions on this book.