To the Madonna

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To the Madonna is Friedrich Hölderlin's draft for a hymn . Hölderlin wrote it partly (verses 1 to 74) on sheets of the Homburg folio , partly (verses 75 to 164) on a separate double sheet. As in the simultaneous “hymns of Christ” such as Patmos , Holderlin shaped his view of the influence of the divine - Christ, the ancient Greek gods, here the Madonna - in history.

Origin and tradition

The time of creation is that of the Homburg folio, between 1802, the year of Hölderlin's four-month stay as a private tutor in Bordeaux, and 1807, the year the patient was accepted into the household of the master carpenter Ernst Zimmer in the Tübingen Hölderlin Tower . The manuscripts are available in digital form from the Württemberg State Library . The draft was only printed in the 20th century, first in Volume 4 (1916) of the historical-critical edition of the works of Hölderlin by Norbert von Hellingrath , Friedrich Seebaß (1887–1963) and Ludwig von Pigenot (1891–1976), where the beginning, The middle and end of the text are listed separately (“Draft of a hymn to the Madonna”, “From the motif of the Madonna hymn” and “One more thing to say”). Franz Zinkernagel (1878-1935) made the connection in Volume 5 (1926) of his incomplete historical-critical edition.

More recent prints are included in:

  • Volume 2 “Poems after 1800” (1951; Volume 2, 1 text volume; Volume 2, 2 commentary volume) of the historical-critical Stuttgart edition by Friedrich Beissner , Adolf Beck and Ute Oelmann (* 1949), namely in the section “Hymnal Drafts "; here the poem, which has no title in the manuscript and in Zinkernagel, is for the first time entitled “To the Madonna”;
  • Volumes 7 and 8 “Gesänge” (2000) of the historical-critical Frankfurt edition by Dietrich Sattler ;
  • Volume 1 (text) and 2 (commentary) of the poetry edition by Detlev Lüders (1970);
  • the poetry edition by Jochen Schmidt (1992);
  • Volume 1 (texts) and volume 3 (comments) of the edition by Michael Knaupp (1992–1993).

The character of Hölderlin's late manuscripts - the finished product, drafts, small fragments and corrections often written on top of each other - makes the development of a text intended by Hölderlin difficult and uncertain as a result. This is why the prints mentioned differ from one another. In this article the mostly accepted version of the Stuttgart edition is cited, with which Lüders and Schmidt agree except for “modernizations” of the orthography.

Text and interpretation

According to Renate Böschenstein-Schäfer , “with a syncretistic poet like Hölderlin who strives to uncover fundamental principles, it makes sense to define the subject of this poem as a general feminine principle.” The idea of ​​nature likes to be found in the Madonna have flowed in; the memory of Susette Gontard , Hölderlin's “ Diotima ”, about whose “Madonna's Head” he wrote to his friend Christian Ludwig Neuffer in 1997; the Germanic “mother earth” Nerthus , whom he called “Hertha” in the hymn Der Ister, which was simultaneous with An die Madonna ; and, most importantly, the Greek "mother earth" Gaia . Nonetheless, the poem is primarily a reflection on the Lutheran character of his childhood, on Mary as the mother of Jesus, whom he even calls "Queen", catholising (verse 53). The poem inscribes itself in a “re-Christianization” of Hölderlin's thinking.

Verses 1-8
Verses 9-30

        To the Madonna

        I have         suffered a lot
        because of your and your son
, O Madonna,
        Since I heard from him
   5 In sweet youth;
        Because not the seer alone,         The servants are also
        under a fate room
. Because because I was         sympathetic  to the Father

        and many a song that I
sing to the highest,         melancholy consumed me.         But celestial ones, but I want to         celebrate you and not one of them  15         To the beauty of speech I         reproach the native,         Because I go alone to the field, where the         lily grows wild , fearless,  20 To the inaccessible,         ancient vault of the         forest,                 the west,                                 and ruled over  25 Man has, instead of other deity, the         all-forgetting love.

















Because of the suffering of the Madonna and her son, the unpopular upbringing to become a Protestant pastor brought about Holderlin. The suffering reported in the poem in the past tense, however, resulted mainly from the difficulty of reconciling the beloved Christian religion with the decline of his belief in a personal, transcendent God and with the beloved Greek gods. This suffering coincides with the “sadness” (verse 12) that prevented him from “singing”. Holderlin finally detached the figure of Christ from traditional religion and placed it in a row with the Greek gods as the last of them, for example in bread and wine . Since then they have all belonged to him with nature and the cosmos of the pantheistic divine, for which Baruch de Spinoza had coined the formula “deus sive natura - God or also nature” and which Holderlin calls “father” (verse 10). Bennholdt-Thomsen and Guzzoni write that the poem shows a “repaganization” rather than a re-Christianization, insofar as Christianity is “translated back” into the natural sphere. In glorious antiquity, people lived in a loving bond with their father . Since then this harmony had disappeared, Christianity had supplanted the other gods (verse 25). "But woe! it walks in night, it dwells like in orcus, / without divine our race. "

With “Yes” (verse 13) the tense changes to the present tense. Despite the suffering, the poem wants to celebrate the Madonna . Nobody should "accuse him of" speech beauty ", as if it were the familiar, improperly native (verse 16) praise of Mary. The Madonna belongs to an alien, mysterious sphere. Instead, the inaccessible grotto is far from civilization, where the Mary symbol "lily" grows (verse 19). According to Jochen Schmidt, the scenery could have been inspired by Leonardo da Vinci's Rock Grotto Madonna , who (the first version of which) Hölderlin could have seen in the Louvre when he returned from Bordeaux at the end of May 1802. At the same time, the stay in the "inaccessible, ancient vault" (verses 20-21) and the naturally "wild" growing lily approach the Madonna of "Mother Earth". Bennholdt-Thomsen and Guzzoni point to another possible visual stimulus for Hölderlin, the copper engraving The Night with Her Children Sleep and Death by Asmus Jakob Carstens in Karl Philipp Moritz 's theory of gods or mythological poems of the ancients . Moritz writes that the night is “the fertile bearer of all things”.

“Instead of another deity” in the “Occident” (verse 23), on the night of the distance from the gods, “<d> he all-forgetting love” took on the Madonna of men. Love is “all-forgetting” insofar as it on the one hand forgives people's guilt, on the other hand it has made the other deities forgotten, in whose place it rules. The next section works out the figure of the Madonna .

Verses 31-53

        For then it should begin
        as

        Born to you in your womb,
 30 The divine boy and around him
        The friend's son, called John
        From the dumb father, the bold one
        To him was given the
        power of the tongue,
 35 To interpret

        and the fear of the peoples and
        the thunders and those who
        fall Water of the lord.

        For sazungen are good, but
 40 they cut like dragon's teeth
        And kill life when
        a lesser or a king sharpens them in anger .
        But equanimity is given to
        God's dearest ones. So then those died.
 45 The two of them, also
        you saw them dying , mourning the divine in the strong soul.
        And live because of that

                                          and when on holy night  someone remembers the
        future and
cares for 50 The carefree sleeping bears
        The freshly blossoming children
        You come smiling, and ask what he
        fears , where you are The Queen.

Like Mary Jesus, her relative Elizabeth ( Lk 1.36  EU ) gave birth to John the Baptist . His father Zacharias did not believe the archangel Gabriel , who announced a son for him, and was punished with silence ( Lk 1,19-20  EU ). But John became one of the interpreting "seers" (verse 6), to whom the poet knows himself to be one of the "servants" (verse 8). The catastrophes that John interprets, the "fear of the peoples and / The thunders and / The falling waters of the Lord" (verses 36–38), signs of God's wrath ( Ps 18 : 14–16  EU ), lead to the passion, to the death of John and Jesus. The "dragon teeth" (verse 40) also remind us of anger. The literary inspiration for this was the myth of Kadmos . The Romanesque dragon sculptures on the north portal of St. Jakob in Regensburg, where Hölderlin stayed in the autumn of 1802, were suggested as a suggestion for the picture . Kings who abused good statutes could be Creon , who drove Antigone to death, or Herod Antipas , who had John beheaded ( Mt 14 : 1–12  EU ).

The “equanimity” (verse 43) with which Jesus and John died contrasts with anger. Mary took part in her fate “mourning the divine in the strong soul” (verse 46). "Here is the pivotal point of the first part of the poem, dedicated to the Christian mother goddess: that it is possible to endure the Passion, establishes the confidence that it can now radiate as guardian over the fate of the children on the 'holy night'," the present night the distance from gods.

The motif of caring and protective motherly love is played out in the following, always implicating Mary, using the example of Gaia, of whom Hesiod tells in the theogony .

Verses 54-74
Verses 75-102

        For you will never be able
 to envy it. 55 The budding days,
        For it is dear to you, from ever,
        When the sons are greater,
        For their mother. And you never like it
        when looking backwards
 60 An older man mocks the younger .
        Who does
        not like to think of the dear fathers and tell of
        their deeds,

                                          but when something daring happened,
 65 And the ungrateful have
        given the
        scandal Too gladly
        then to
        look shyly
 70 Infinite repentance and it hates the old the children.

        Therefore
        you heavenly protect them
        The young plants and when
        the north comes or poisonous dew blows or
 75 The drought lasts too long
        And when they sink profusely
        under the scythe
        that is all too sharp, give renewed growth.
        And that only never not
 80 Diverse, in weak branches
        The strength I try hard Scatter
        the fresh sex, but be strong
        To choose from many things is the best.

Gaia took the side of the titans against Uranus , their children of Uranos, then on the side of Zeus against his father, the titan Kronos , both times on the side of the "budding days". "Maternal protection is necessary because the divine as negative power <...> is able to discharge itself in an excess of violence that announces envy, hatred and ridicule of younger stages of development." According to Beissner, the verses speak of "salvation a friendly relationship between the generations <...>, from the older to the younger and vice versa ”, which is only disturbed when“ something bad happened ”(v. 64). “Verwegnes chooses” in the hymn The Rhine , who “sought to become equal to the gods”, for example the titans who rose up against the Olympic gods .

Gaia, "mother earth" more than Mary is also the "heavenly one" (verse 72), who is supposed to protect the "young plants". With the “scythe” (verse 76), Hesiod's theogony reappears , where Gaia gives Kronos the sickle to emasculate the father Uranus. “Out of many things, the best” (v. 83) is to choose “the fresh generation” (v. 82) under the protection of Mary and Gaia, the “freshly blossoming children” (v. 51) are to choose. The ode CV also warns of this : "Man test everything, say the heavenly ones."

Verses 103-123

        Nothing is bad. That should
 85 As the eagle
        understand the robbery of one thing.
        The others with it. So that she doesn't         confuse the
        wet nurse who
gives birth to the day, sticking it
 wrongly
        The home and the gravity mocking
        the mother's forever sitting
        in the lap. Because great is
        the wealth from whom they inherit.
 95 The

        First of all, that protect
        the wilderness divinely built
        in pure Geseze where
        there are children
100 Des Gotts, strolling among
        the rocks and Haiden purple bloom
        and dark sources
        Thee, O Madonna and
        The Son, but the others also
105 that was not As from servants,         The gods
        take theirs by force
.

        At the borders, however, where the mountain of
        bones stands , it is called         today
, but in the old language it is called
Ossa, Teutoburg is there
        also and full of spiritual water.
        Around the land, where
        the heavenly ones all
115 themselves temple

        A craftsman.

What the "new generation", what the "freshly blossoming children" - everyone, "one" and "<d> the others" (verses 86 and 87) - when choosing the best (verse 83) like an "eagle" ... The basic insight is: "There is nothing that is evil" (v. 84). It is the negative formulation of “Because everything is good” in the hymn Patmos - theodicy formulas which, following on from Platonism, say that evil does not have an independent existence; it is just a lack of good. With this knowledge the boys should set out, not “shy of action” (verse 69) “<d> he mother sit forever / in the schoose” (verse 92–93). Those who want to set out can expect “wealth” as their inheritance.

The unnamed testator is the father who wants "that one should be beautiful / The wilderness is divinely built / In the pure law" (verses 91-93). Conservation needs "the earth <...> as the place where people live and <...> where the gods come to visit, in the time and for the time of preparation and expectation". Stroll around there (verse 100) “the children / of the god” (verse 99-100), the people who have internalized the saying “nothing is evil” and have set out to experience the true nature of the divine. The purple blooming heaths resemble the Nordic "heath of the deer" from the poem Age . The heathens bloom and the springs run down "<d> ir, o Madonna and / To the Son, but the others too". The emphatic invocation underlines that the realities of nature worship the Madonna , Christ and also the other gods. The same is befitting for people, "<d> amit, as not taking theirs from servants / by force / the gods". "Here, as in other hymns <...>, Hölderlin opposes the Christian claim to exclusivity by including the 'other' divine figures."

The landscape remains north German. The "Bone Mountain" (verse 109) is a mountain near Bad Driburg , where Hölderlin spent a month in the summer of 1796. Nearby is the Grotenburg mountain called "Teutoburg" (verse 111) by Hölderlin . "Here Holderlin gives in to his desire to bring the times together <...> by relating the Thessalian mountain Ossa , which the giants piled on top of one another in the battle against the gods with Pelion and Olympus <...>, to the Bone mountain, who was also the scene of important patriotic decisions in a transitional period and at the same time lets the name Golgotha ('skull') echo from afar . It does not matter that the name Ossa etymologically has just as little to do with Latin os, ossis (bone, bone) than the name of the mountain bones. ”The passage“ full of spiritual water ”is also allusive.

In any case, in this German landscape, which Hölderlin likes to call “Hesperian”, the gods (verse 107), “<d> he heavenly all / themselves temples” (verses 114–115) want to be built, “then if at the end of the Christianity, the return of the gods to earth takes place, whose powers meanwhile the Madonna represents ”. The “craftsman” (verse 116) may help build the temple.

Verse 124-140

        Us but we
        That

        And too much to not fear the fear!
120 For you are not, dear,

                                            but there is
        a dark generation that neither
        hears a demigod with pleasure, or when
        something heavenly or In Woogen appears with people , formless, or
honors the face 125 of the pure, the near
        omnipresent God.

        But when unholy         ones are already
                                   in abundance
                                                  and cheeky

130 What do you care
O singing to the pure, I
        am dying, but you
        take a different path, in vain something
        envious may hinder you.

135 If then in the time to come
        you meet someone who is good, say hello to
        him and he thinks,
        As our days have been
        full of happiness and suffering.
140 Go from one to the other

In the beginning the ego called itself “fearless” (verse 19). In this the Madonna had confirmed it, and in this she confirms it now, in the last address in the poem: "For you not, dear one" (verse 120). The object of the averted fear is called "<e> in dark sex" (verse 122), which rejects the divine in all its manifestations: the "demigod", perhaps Christ, the pagan gods - in human form or "in woogen" .. .> gestaltlos "-, the" <a> llpresent " father . The dark sex could be the titans of Greek mythology, but more likely Holderlin's contemporaries. For Böschenstein-Schäfer it is the "modern atheists". “Of those who are blind to the Divine, 'Barrabam!' correspond to the screaming crowd of the persecutors of Christ threatens the poet of the divine death. "For Bennholdt-Thomsen and Guzzoni it is" Christianity in general in its blindness from the beginning, possibly especially the institutionalized clergy, whose understanding of the divine Hölderlin from youth to increasing Dimensions declined. The knowledge of the Christian doctrine and attitude brought him, as it is said at the beginning of the song in an autobiographical review, from an early age on suffering <...>. Much later he tried to withdraw Christ from the Christian religion and win him over to his own conception of the divine. The realization that the Hesperian culture can arise on the basis of the Christian one, but only by overcoming it, prompted him to make this attempt. The Madonna hymn is dedicated to this experiment. "

But how the dark sex, the unholy and cheeky "in abundance" (verses 127-129) may threaten, how certain the biographical ego is death (verse 131-132), at the "climax", "the poetic climax" of the poem, the I now addresses the poem itself, the "song to the pure" (v. 131). It should become a means to overcome death and transience; it should greet him “when <...> in the time to come / you meet someone who is good” (verse 135-136). The poet is not or no longer certain of the coming day of God, let alone that he expects to experience it. The message to those who are to come is modest, wistful: "How well our days were / full of happiness, full of suffering".

Verses 141-164

        But there is one more thing
        to say. Because it
        almost
        suddenly came to me The happiness,
145 The lonely, that I         turned to the shadows without understanding
        In
my property ,
        For because you gave
        mortals
150 Trying divine form,
        For what a word? so I mean, because it hates the speech who
        saves the light of life that which nourishes the heart.         The celestials, of their own
        accord, interpreted themselves from old age
, as they had
taken away the power of the gods.

        But we force
        the misfortune from and hang up the flags of
        the God of victory, the liberating, that's why
        you sent riddles . They are holy
160 The shining ones , but when everyday
        The heavenly and mean
        The miracle wants to appear, namely, when
        like robbery titan princes seize the gifts of
        the mother, a higher one helps her.

The poet continues to reflect on his song: “But there is one more thing to say” (verses 141-142). With “you” (verses 148 and 159) he now addresses the father . In the excess of happiness (verse 144 takes up verse 139) about the fact that the father has given the "mortal / tempting divine form", especially the Madonna , in the distant interval between gods , people might ask themselves "Why a word?" (Verse 151) and refrain from further intellectual and linguistic confrontation with the divine. "Productive alienation in song becomes impossible if man <...> tries to establish himself godlike in happiness." In the last stanza, the "we" of the community of the poet with all seekers who face the "unhappiness" of Far from God. They are trying to solve the "riddles" that the father sent. The riddles could mean the manifestations of the divine, in the context of the poem especially the Madonna and her son as well as “all persons, conditions and events of the Christian age, which are ultimately a mission of the Father of Gods (or the natural course), their enigmatic ones To understand character is the task of those who still or already suspect the divine ”. "Holy are they / The shining ones," the heavenly ones. If thinking about them threatens to flatten out in everyday life, to succumb to indifference, or to be destroyed by “titan princes”, the dark generation (verse 122), then - so the final hope - the father will intervene to help.

"For Christians <...> a particular attraction of reading may be to observe how a poet wrestled with the exclusive rights of religions over 200 years ago. Holderlin breaks the idea that salvation can only be found in Christianity. Nevertheless, he remains a devotee of God, Mary and Jesus Christ in his poems. "

literature

References and comments

  1. ↑ Philipsen 2002, p. 363.
  2. ↑ authority record of the German National Library: GND 117005134
  3. ↑ Detlev Lüders in: Munzinger Biographien. Retrieved March 26, 2014.
  4. ↑ Böschenstein 1988, p. 191.
  5. ↑ Stuttgart edition, Volume 6, 1, p. 235.
  6. ↑ Böschenstein 1988, p. 192.
  7. ↑ Bennholdt-Thomsen, Guzzoni 2007, p. 186.
  8. ↑ Der Archipelagus verse 241–242, Stuttgart edition, Volume 2, 1, p. 110.
  9. ↑ Bennholdt-Thomsen, Guzzoni 2007, p. 188.
  10. ↑ Böschenstein 1988, p. 198 and Lüders 1970 Volume 2, p. 365.
  11. ↑ Bennholdt-Thomsen, Guzzoni 2007, pp. 190–191.
  12. ↑ Böschenstein 1988, p. 200.
  13. ↑ Schmidt 1992, p. 1063.
  14. ↑ Luhnen 2002, p. 266.
  15. ↑ Stuttgart edition, Volume 2, 2, p. 847.
  16. ↑ Stuttgart edition, Volume 2, 1, p. 145.
  17. ↑ Stuttgart edition, Volume 2, 1, p. 22.
  18. ↑ Lüders 1970 Volume 2, p. 367, on the other hand, relates “<d> ie Andern” to “the other gods”.
  19. ↑ Stuttgart edition, Volume 2, 1, p. 167.
  20. ↑ Bennholdt-Thomsen, Guzzoni 2002, p. 197.
  21. ↑ Bennholdt-Thomsen, Guzzoni 2002, p. 197.
  22. ↑ Stuttgart edition, Volume 2, 1, p. 115.
  23. ↑ Schmidt 1982, p. 1064.
  24. ↑ Stuttgart edition, Volume 2, 2, p. 848.
  25. ↑ The word is derived from the Hesperides , who guarded a tree with golden apples in their garden in the far west. By this, Holderlin meant, for example, in Bread and Wine, verse 150 - “Look! it is us, it is us, fruit of Hesperia! ”- the non-Greek western world, especially Germany. For him Greece marked the past, Hesperia the future day of gods in the West. Stuttgart edition Volume 2, 2, pp. 619–620.
  26. ↑ Bennholdt-Thomsen, Guzzoni 2002, p. 2007.
  27. ↑ Böschenstein 1988, p. 206.
  28. ↑ Bennholdt-Thomsen, Guzzoni 2007, pp. 201-202.
  29. ↑ Böschenstein 1988, p. 206.
  30. ↑ Luhnen 2002, p. 270.
  31. ↑ Luhnen 2002, p. 270.
  32. ↑ Bennholdt-Thomsen, Guzzoni 2007, p. 210.
  33. ↑ Langenhorst 2012, p. 37.