Articulate Precision and Ineffable Meaning in Hölderlin: A Commentary

German literary culture has at least two not unappealing idiosyncrasies. First, few cultures, if any, are as energetic as Germany's in publishing critical editions. In American bookstores, one doesn't see anything like the range of collected works one finds in Germany. There is even a joke related to the phenomenon: "Ein Geschäftsmann geht in die Buchhandlung," and says, "Drei Meter Goethe, bitte."—to which the bookseller replies: "Hmmm, was für eine Ausgabe?!" (A German businessman walks into a bookstore and says, "Three meters of Goethe, please" to which the bookseller replies: "Hmmm, which edition?!")¹

To invest in critical editions is not to be free of controversy, as the critical editions of Hölderlin make clear. The edition of Norbert Hellingrath, which James McFarland discusses, made the poet both known and accessible to early twentieth-century readers. Friedrich Beißner's Stuttgarter Ausgabe was a model of philological complexity and exactitude, only to be countered by D. E. Sattler's Frankfurter Ausgabe, which emphasized the fluidity of Hölderlin's poems, with their constant revisions. Affordable editions with superb commentary and selective philological innovations also exist, such as Jochen Schmidt's three-volume collection.² A reliable text is of course a necessary condition of good interpretation, even if certain hermeneutic principles are also essential. Heidegger's reading of "Andenken" (Remembrance), for example, was developed without access to the full poem. Moreover, Heidegger lifted lines without weighing their meaning within the whole. Although Adorno's critique of Heidegger was justified, his own elevation of parataxis, while fitting for "Hälfte des Lebens" (Half of Life), hardly seems to capture the complex, interwoven hypotaxis that dominates the mature Hölderlin's odes, elegies, and hymns.³

A second distinctive feature of the German landscape is the extraordinary attention given to anniversaries. In 2020 we celebrated the 250-year anniversaries of Hölderlin, Hegel, and Beethoven, the ambitions for which were of course more extensive than could be realized. I don't recall quite such an impressive array of events planned for Wordsworth, who was also born in 1770. But even if one wanted to argue that Wordsworth's anniversary would have been celebrated on the level of these Germans, were it not for the pandemic, I am not familiar with any other country that celebrates the anniversaries of not only major but also minor figures as thoroughly as Germany does. The German phenomenon is appealing, for it keeps the link between the past and the present vibrant in the public consciousness. The questions in such contexts involve not simply what we can learn about the past but also what we can learn from the past.

The guiding concepts of this section, "reading and exhibiting," reflect these two features of German literary culture. The four essays on Hölderlin in this section share certain similarities, including the universal recognition that the poet remains a fascinating figure for us today. Further, all essays note that his works present an intriguing combination of opposites. Other common, if not universal, dimensions include an attentiveness to Hölderlin's integration of philosophy and his reception among philosophers; the combination of sobriety and ineffability in his works, his engagement with ancient Greece as a way of developing a distinctive compass for modernity; and his ability to cross borders, both literal and metaphorical. Finally, all the essays in this section are attentive to the singularity of Hölderlin, namely his capacity to convey elusive and inexhaustible meaning from a space of linguistic brilliance and beauty and to do so with a combination of wonder and vulnerability. Heike Gfrereis hints at Hölderlin's distinctive voice when she speaks of "ein dunkles, nicht ganz verständliches, aber schönes und berührendes Sprechen eines Ichs im Ausnahmezustand" (a dark, not fully understandable, but beautiful and moving expression of an I in an exceptional state). McFarland writes: "The experience of reading Hölderlin is baffling and breathtaking, an encounter with an edge of language that seems to exceed the human without surrendering to the divine."

The essays all speak...