In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

I must underline, however, that only “hyperbologic” is without a doubt equal to giving an account of this schema of “double return” on which Hölderlin’s late thought rests, and according to which the very excess of the speculative is exchanged for the very excess of submission to finitude . . . In sum, tragedy is the catharsis of the speculative. Given the loss of the manuscripts of Hölderlin’s translations of Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannos and Antigone and the fact that his epistolary discussion or mention of the translations is limited to six letters, most of them addressed to his publisher Friedrich Wilmans and written between late September 1803 and April 1804,1 it is not possible to date the inception of the work or to follow its progress chronologically. The translations were published in the spring of 1804 in two volumes, under the general title Die Trauerspiele des Sophokles (The Tragedies of Sophocles), suggesting a vaster translation project, which Hölderlin was unable to accomplish, though fragments survive.2 Given his deteriorating mental health, he was also unable to write the general Introduction to “the tragedies” that he had promised Wilmans and had hoped to finish, first in the fall of 1803, then the following spring, or “otherwise at an appropriate time,” and finally as a text to be printed separately in the fall of 1804. Therefore, apart from what can be gleaned from the translations themselves, the extraordinarily rich but hermetic “Anmerkungen ” (“Remarks,” or “Annotations”) that he appended to both tragedies,3 65 FIVE The Faithless Turning: Hölderlin’s Reading of Oedipus Tyrannos along with two late letters to Böhlendorff,4 constitute the small but significant textual base from which to glean his late philosophy and poetics of tragedy. Hölderlin’s chief textual source (particularly for Antigone) was the socalled Brubachiana edition,5 which was riddled with distortions and corruptions of the Sophoclean texts. These are reflected in the translations and further compounded by mistranslations, as well as by deliberate alterations, on Hölderlin’s part.6 As Jochen Schmidt points out, Hölderlin’s concern, as a translator of Greek texts, was not for linguistic accuracy, but for “the essential representations and structures,”7 that is to say, for the very spirit of the language and the work. Moreover, he sought to make the ancient drama speak a language congenial to a contemporary German audience. Unfortunately , the idiosyncracies of his Sophocles translations, which resulted from these combined factors, made for their uncomprehending and sharply negative critical reception by his contemporaries. Hölderlin’s hopes to secure his place among the literary elite with these translations (a place already promised to him by his Hyperion), and to have Goethe see to their staging in Weimar, were also bitterly disappointed by the near-betrayal of both Schiller and Schelling, who considered the idiosyncracies of his translations to be evidence of his mental derangement. A philological study of the translations is a labor which cannot be undertaken here; furthermore, as Bernhard Böschenstein has pointed out, one cannot hope today to present a full synthetic overview of Hölderlin’s recreations of Sophoclean tragedy, but only specific analyses.8 The literality or nonliterality of the translations will therefore be considered here only where relevant to the philosophical thought-structures which are the concern of this book. Given that—their unassuming titles notwithstanding—Hölderlin’s difficult “Remarks” on the two tragedies offer the theoretical framework for understanding his translations, while also carrying forward the philosophy of tragedy first articulated in certain of the essays of the Empedocles complex, the “Remarks” will here provide the chief basis for interpretation. ‫ﱩ‬ The “Remarks on Oedipus” open with a discussion of the “calculable law” (das gesetzliche Kalkul) of poetic composition that, in Hölderlin’s view, should form the basis of evaluative judgment, outweighing mere subjective response. This method of creating “what is beautiful” can be learned from the art of classical antiquity, as well as analyzed and perfected by practice, contrary to the prevalent emphasis of eighteenth-century aesthetics on the transgressive role of sheer “genius.”9 Hölderlin, indeed, clung to the “firm letter” even to the point of expressing to Wilmans his preference for the rough, still uncorrected print of his manuscript, on the basis that here, symbolically at least, “the letters that indicate what is firm” maintain their own in the typography and attest to the work’s character.10 EPOCHAL DISCORDANCE 66 [3.143.244.83] Project...

Share