On rooms

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On Zimmer is the title of two poems by Friedrich Hölderlin . With the family of the master carpenter Ernst Friedrich Zimmer (1772–1838) - with his wife Marie Elisabetha (1774–1849) and their daughter Lotte (1813–1879) - Hölderlin lived in the Tübingen Hölderlin Tower from 1807 to 1843, after his release from Tübingen Hospital as incurable until his death. Both poems have been preserved by Zimmer's copies.

Hölderlin (around 1825) in Mörike's essay in Freya 1863
  • The first poem, “The lines of life are different ...”, wrote Zimmer in 1812 without a heading in a letter to Hölderlin's mother Johanna Christiana nee Heyn (1748–1828) in Nürtingen . It was first printed in 1846 in the comprehensive works of Hölderlin published by Christoph Theodor Schwab (1821-1883) , in the second volume in a section entitled “Poems from the time of madness”.
  • The second poem "I say of a person if he is good ..." wrote Zimmer on a piece of paper around 1825, on the other side of which Holderlin himself wrote his hymn-like draft What is God? had written. Here Zimmer put the poem title “To Zimmer” over his copy. Eduard Mörike copied the second poem several times and first published it in print in Freya, Illustrirte Blätter for the educated world in 1863 .

Texts

The texts are taken from the historical-critical Stuttgart edition published by Fredrich Beissner , Adolf Beck and Ute Oelmann (* 1949) . The "reading editions" by Michael Knaupp and Jochen Schmidt offer slightly different texts.

  • The first poem in Volume 7, 2 of the Stuttgart edition in the context of Zimmer's letter of April 19, 1812 reads :

"Honored Ms. Chamber Councilor!

A very important change has occurred in your dear Hölderle <...>. His poetic spirit is still active, so he saw a drawing of a temple by me.He told me I should make one out of wood like that, I insist that I have to work for bread, I am not so happy as I rest in Philosofischer to live like Him, He will immediately move, Oh, I am a poor person, and in the present minute He wrote me the following verse in pencil on a board

The lines of life are different
How are roads, and how the mountains border.
What we are, a god can complete there
With harmonies and eternal reward and peace.

<...> You can rest assured of his food.

<...> Your obedient dinner Ernst Zimmer. "

In volume 2, 1 of the Stuttgart edition , the poem from Zimmer's writing has been transferred to Hölderlin's orthography.

  • Mörike prefers the second poem in the Freya with an introduction:

“[The poem] is addressed to the brave carpenter Zimmer zu Tübingen, in whose house Holderlin spent so many years in a state of insanity.

The poet sought these verses to please the man to whom they are dedicated, to give as individual a stamp as possible by alluding to his agricultural property, the loving care of his vineyard on the one hand, and his craftsmanship on the other. Touching impression to see how he, who is known to live and weave in the ancient Greek world, also solemnly undertook this task with the involvement of Daedalus, that famous mythical artist, to whom the invention of the saw and the drill is attributed, among other things treated in an ideal way.

On rooms
I say of a person if he is good
And wise, what does he need? Is any one
That pleases a soul? is a stalk, is
A most ripened vine on earth
Grown to nourish him? The meaning is this
So. A friend is often the mistress, a lot
Art. O dearer, I tell you the truth.
Daedalus' spirit and the forest is yours. "

Mörike's version in Freya differs slightly from the one reproduced here in volume 2, 1 of the Stuttgart edition .

comment

The poems from Hölderlin's years with the Zimmer family are usually summarized as "Latest Poems" or "Tower Poems". In the Stuttgart edition there are forty-eight. In the 19th and first half of the 20th century - with the exception of Gustav Schwab - they were only considered products of a mentally ill person, at best medically and psychiatrically interesting and without any artistic character. Mörike wrote in 1838: “These days I have received a hype of Hölderlin papers, mostly illegible, extremely dull stuff.” This attitude changed with an essay by Bernhard Böschenstein in the Hölderlin yearbook 1965/1966. Böschenstein and the research after him distinguish an earlier group from a later group from 1838 onwards.

The 27 poems of the later group, starting with Spring (There comes a new day from distant Hoehn down ...) are often with a fictitious date (poem called "d: 3 th March 1648") and the fictitious name "Scardanelli “Signed. They are strangely lifeless, with stereotypical titles, seven times The Spring , six times "The Winter" or "Winter". The ancient world has disappeared from them, the words "God" and "I" no longer appear. The ability to dwell on concrete human life is lost. Man and nature are, poem by poem, in tension-free harmony. “But if anything in these poems indicates illness, it is the constant recurrence of such confirmation. It is a sign of extreme self-alienation. "

The earlier group is different, as exemplified by the two poems To Zimmer . An "I" speaks. With Daedalus the ancient world is quoted. “God” stands opposite the I. Human feelings are prominently present. Hölderlin dwells on concrete human life.

  • The first poem, famous, poignant verses in five - footed iambs with an embracing rhyme , gives an empathetic response to Ernst Zimmer's objection that he, Zimmer, does not live in such happy philosophical calm as Holderlin. Hölderlin wrote the four lines, typical of these years, in a very short time. In a letter to an unknown person dated December 22, 1835, Zimmer reports: “He wrote down the poem that followed in 12 minutes, I asked him to write something on me too, he just opened the window, took a look inside I'm happy, and in 12 minutes it was ready. "
  • Mörike interpreted the poet's response to the vineyard owner and scribe Zimmer in the second poem, in alkaean meter with excess syllables in the third lines. After Cyrus Atabay , Holderlin asks what could be enough for the soul on its journey. In an attempt to answer the most volatile earthly plant, the grass ( Ps 90.5  EU ), the vine is contrasted as a characteristic of advanced human culture. Love and friendship are great, as is art. “Until his death, for more than three decades, Hölderlin lived in the company of the master carpenter Zimmer and his family, a get-together in which tolerance and silence certainly played a part: there Daedalus, the craftsman who worked with wood and planes , and here the poet who found his asylum in song. "

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ To the Zimmer family, Stuttgart edition, Volume 7, 2, pp. 376–377.
  2. ↑ Christoph Theodor Schwab (Ed.): Friedrich Hölderlin's all works. Second volume. JG Cotta'scher Verlag , Stuttgart / Tübingen 1846.
  3. ↑ Stuttgart edition, Volume 2, p. 210.
  4. ^ Eduard Mörike: Memory of Friedrich Hölderlin. In: Freya, Illustrirte Blätter for the educated world 3, pp. 337–338, 1863.
  5. ↑ See literature.
  6. ↑ Stuttgart edition Volume 7, 2, pp. 422-425.
  7. ↑ Stuttgart edition, Volume 2, 1, p. 268.
  8. ↑ Stuttgart edition, Volume 2, 1, p. 271.
  9. ↑ Stuttgart edition, Volume 2, 2, p. 897.
  10. ↑ Böschenstein 1965/1966, p. 49.
  11. ↑ Stuttgart edition, Volume 7, 3, p. 137.
  12. ↑ Stuttgart edition, Volume 7, 3, p. 134.