Bread and wine
Brod und Wein is an elegy by Friedrich Hölderlin , written around 1800 and later revised. It is Hölderlin's most extensive elegy and at the same time is one of his most famous poems. The first 18 verses (1st stanza) were printed separately in 1807 under the title Die Nacht . The full text was first printed in 1884.
The poem is strictly composed. It consists of 3 × 3 stanzas, i.e. three stanzas triads , and each stanza in turn consists of 3 × 3 distiches . The 7th stanza only contains 8 distiches.
Thematic overview
The elegy is about the absence and making present of the divine in the world. It is a lament for the loss of any kind of fulfilled life in an alienated world and at the same time an anthemic celebration of “what towers above man, the sublime in nature, in community and love, ultimately it is the divine”.
The poem is pervaded by the contrast between day and night, which at first really relates to the change in the times of day. But then the day-night theme turns into the metaphorical and refers to the historical-philosophical contrast between god-filled and godless time: the night becomes the unfulfilled historical present and the day stands on the one hand for the glorious, fulfilled time of Greek antiquity and on the other hand for one Longed-for future time of fulfillment, in which the present and the past are dialectically connected and dissolved in a new unity. The elegy leads from the experience of the present night , which, however, already contains the possibility of memory, in the first stanza triad (stanza 1 - 3) to the visualization of the Greek day in the second stanza triad (stanza 4 - 6) and ends in the third stanza triad again in the night , this time as a time of expectation and inner preparation for the longed-for time of fulfillment.
The day-night imagery and its historical meaning are combined with two sensations: sadness and joy, which are also key concepts in the poem. These two types of sensation change frequently in the poem, i.e. also within the stanzas, depending on which historical-philosophical epoch it is about and which attitude the speaker is taking. Thus the elegy interweaves the elegiac tone in the narrower sense, the mourning, with the joy of the (at the same time imagined and experienced) presence of the divine, i.e. with the hymnic tone.
At the center of the poem is the figure of Dionysus, the god of wine in Greek mythology. The original title was The Wine God . Dionysus is also the god of night, of Dionysian enthusiasm, of inspired madness, the god of poets and the god of joy. He appears for the first time in the 3rd stanza as the "coming God" (v. 54). In the 2nd stanza triad (4th - 6th stanza) the view of the ancient Greek gods as a whole, who are named as heavenly (v. 55, 71, 81, 95) and blessed gods (v. 91), widens . At the end of the 6th stanza Christ is alluded to for the first time, later also in verses 129/130, and in the final stanza the figure of Dionysus merges with that of Christ (v. 155/156). This all-embracing God leaves people with the gifts of bread and wine as a comforting sign (v. 131) of his presence.
The terms bread and wine symbolize not only the components of the Lord's Supper in the Christian liturgy , but also the gifts of Demeter and Dionysus . Christian and ancient connotations are intertwined.
Commentary on the individual stanzas
1st verse
The city rests all around; The illuminated alley becomes silent,
And, adorned with torches, the cars rush away.
People go home full of the joys of the day to rest,
And gain and loss weighs a sensible head 5 Well-contented at home; stands empty of grapes and flowers, And the bustling market rests on works of the hand. But the string play sounds far from gardens; Perhaps that a lover is playing there, or that a lonely man remembers his friends and his youth; and the fountains 10 Always swelling and freshly rustling on the fragrant bed. Bells ringing silently in the dim air, And remembering the hours a guard calls the number. Now also comes a wind and stirs the top of the grove, look! and the shadow of our earth, the moon 15 Comes now also in secret; the enthusiastic, the night is coming, full of stars and probably not worried about us, the astonishing shines there, the stranger among the people, sad and splendid, up over the mountains.
The elegy begins at the end of the day, people return home from the business of the day and slowly come to rest. However, you remain mentally occupied with everyday business (v. 4/5). From afar but drowned out now stringed instruments from gardens (V. 7) and thus draws attention to another area. Now we are talking about a lover or a lonely man (v. 8) who does not think of day-to-day business, but of more essential things: he remembers his friends (v.9) who are distant and yet are close to him, remembers his Youth (v. 9) and is intimately connected with the surrounding nature. This man with his strings is a first allusion to the poet, who has also been portrayed as a singer since ancient times. The distance is brought closer by the poet's song, made present (dialectic of distance and proximity, the word distant appears twice!). Key words in this stanza are silent (v.1), which is also emphasized by the striking opening in the hexameter, and rest (vv. 1, 3, 6). Both terms refer to the distance from the noise of everyday life, to an inward turn.
After the evening ringing of the bells has faded away, which only deepens the silence (11), the moon rises and with it the night appears, which is represented as a divine figure: She is the enthusiastic one who amazes us , the people and how comes from another world ( the stranger among men , 17). She is certainly not worried about us (16) and yet she appears not only shiny and splendid , but also sad (18), as if she were not entirely indifferent to human fate. Even here the transition from night as a natural event to a mythical figure, to the sphere of the divine, takes place.
2nd stanza
Wonderful is the favor of Hocherhabnen and no
20 White whence and what a geschiehet from her. So she moves the world and the hoping soul of people, even no wise man understands what she's preparing, because that's how the supreme God wants it, who loves you very much, and that's why the prudent day is even dearer to you, like her. 25 But sometimes the clear eye also loves the shadow and tries to lust, before there is trouble, sleep, Or a faithful man also likes to look into the night, yes, it befits her to Christmas wreaths and singing, Because to the erring it is sanctified, and to the dead, 30 but it exists itself forever in the freest spirit. But it has to us that in the vacillating while That was in the dark for us some Durable, Us indulge oblivion and the Holy drunken, Treat, which, as the lovers, is the flowing word 35 sleepless and vollern Cup and bolder life , Holy memory too, to stay awake at night.
This divine sphere is further developed in the 2nd stanza. The night is now the noble one , whose favor is wonderful, who moves the world and the hoping soul of men and in which the supreme God appears, who loves you very much (23). The person addressed is initially Heinse, to whom the poem is dedicated, but in a broader sense it also means the reader and thus (in principle) all people. The faithful (27) have access to this heavenly sphere, they sense the divine and consecrate wreaths to the night (28). It gives them in the present epoch of the philosophy of history overnight stop (32) and begrudge them the forgotten and the Holy drunken (33), d. H. forgetting about everyday troubles and immersing yourself in the sacred Dionysian rapture. Above all , it also grants (grants ) the preservation of the memory (36), the memory of the past time of fulfillment, and thus also enables this fulfilled time to be visualized.
3rd stanza
Also, for free, hide the heart in the bosom, for free only
hold the courage, we, masters and boys, for who
would like to prevent it and who would like to forbid us from joy?
40 Divine fire also drives day and night to break out. So come that we see the open, that we are looking for something of our own, as far as it is. One remains firm; Be it at noon or until midnight, there is always a measure, 45 common to all, but each is also given its own , everyone goes and comes wherever he can. Drum! and exultant madness likes to scoff at mockery, When it suddenly seizes the singers on holy night. So come to the isthmos! to where the open sea rushes 50 On Parnassus and the snow shines around Delphic rocks, there into the land of Olympus, there up to the height of Kitharon, under the spruce trees there, under the grapes, from where Thebe below and Ismenus rustles in the land of Kadmos, That is where the coming God comes and points back.
The third stanza is still about us , the people, but we are now masters and boys (38), which already echoes Greek antiquity, in which boys come from masters through educational eros into the spiritual secrets of the world were inaugurated. The initiates, who have kept their hearts (37) and joy (39) within, cannot be prevented from carrying out and experiencing what is hidden within. The divine fire (40) drives them to do so. This departure is at the center of the 3rd stanza. But where should it go? So come That we look at the open / That we look for our own, as far as it is. (41/42) It is therefore a question of expanding one's perspective, of experiencing an openness that leads beyond the limitations and restrictions of the present epoch, and at the same time of searching for one's own , the innermost being that would like to become reality. However, the first request to leave is not enough, it requires three attempts: The come will be twice ! repeated, each initiated by an insistent drum! (47, 49). Only then does it become clear what the goal of “the imaginary journey” is: It is about ancient Greece, the home of Dionysus. Already the exultant madness (47) that seizes the singers (48) points to the god of orgiastic enthusiasm, in whose wake are the divinely inspired poets ( singers ). But now, after the third invocation, the mythical land is evoked in great breadth: the Isthmos (the isthmus near Corinth, the transition from the mainland to the Peloponnese peninsula) evokes the Isthmian Festival, which, like the Olympic Games, gathered all the peoples of Greece, and stands for the country as a whole. Then three holy mountains are mentioned: Parnassus with Delphi refers to Apollo, Olympus to the totality of the gods and finally the Kithäron (Kithairon), the forest mountains near Thebes, to Dionysus, whose cult was closely connected with this place. There those moved by Dionysus went to pay homage to him. Spruce and grapes are attributes of the god of wine. That is where the coming God comes and points back. (54) Dionysus is not mentioned by name, but referred to as the coming God . What is meant by this is not only that he will appear in the future, but also that he is essentially someone to come, "an allusion to the great wanderings of Dionysus from east to west, from India and Asia Minor to Greece", and in more depth Meaning that he is understood as a God of arrival, of Advent. Dionysus is a mythical metaphor for a hope that Hölderlin also developed in other poems ( Der Archipelagus, Am Quell der Donau, Germania ), namely that the fulfilled time, the arrival of the divine, is imminent and away from Hellas (the Greece of antiquity ) to Hesperia, the West, especially to Germany. In this respect is the God from Greece to Hesperia and indicated at the same time for the modern man of Hesperia to ancient Greece back (54), d. H. it becomes a medium of remembrance of the fulfilled time at that time.
4th stanza
55 Blessed Greece! you house of all heavenly ones,
So is it true what we once heard in our youth?
Festive hall! the ground is the sea! and table the mountains,
Truly built for an old age!
But the thrones where? the temples, and where the vessels,
60 Where filled with nectar, gods to delight the song? Where, where do they shine, the distant sayings? Delphi slumbers and where does the great fate sound? Where is the fast one? where does it burst, full of omnipresent happiness, thundering from the clear air over the eyes? 65 Father ether! so it called and flew from tongue to tongue a thousandfold, no one could endure life alone; Distributed such good and exchanged, with strangers, it becomes a jubilation, the word violence grows asleep father! bright! and echoes as far as it goes, the ancient 70 characters, inherited from parents, striking and creative. Because this is how the heavenly ones come in, their day comes deeply shattering from the shadows under the people.
With the 4th stanza the 2nd stanza triad begins, the middle part of the elegy, in which the fulfilled time is unfolded. First, the blessed Greece of antiquity is invoked unbroken and full of enthusiasm and celebrated as present (55-58) as if it had become reality. The ideal landscape, the House of Heavenly All (55), represents a natural space that is open to culture and combines with it to form a harmonious unit: a festive hall! The ground is the sea! And table the mountains (57). But after a few verses of the doubt sets in, the presence of the eagerly Expected is called into question: Beginning with a but is in itself enhancing sequence with eight times, which asked about the sign of divine time: according to the thrones, the temples, the nectar filled vessels, etc. (59-64). But the reader's expectation, the complaint that they are no longer there (which is already contained in the questions), is now expressed more clearly, is not fulfilled. The tense initially changes from the present tense to the past tense (65/66), but then it finds its way back into the present tense: the speaker immerses himself so deeply in the memory of the thousandfold jubilation that he can leave the doubt behind and the past time becomes the present again for him. He joins the cheering, he calls together with the others, the (then) people, the father ether (65, 69). With the cheerful (69) ether, the all-encompassing, god-filled air, the divine breath, which connects all beings in the world, pantheistic ideas can be connected. The natural-philosophical concept of the ether (also of the father's ether) goes back to ancient tradition; at the same time, he also refers to the biblical conception of God as the Father and to the Holy Spirit who unites all people. How important this term was for Holderlin is also shown by the fact that it plays a central role in several hymns ( An den Äther, Der Archipelagus ). One can understand the father ether as a counterbalance to the Dionysian overpowering: Because the unsteady and suddenly appearing Dionysus can be destructive, he drifts with consuming fire (40), he thunders in from the clear air (64) and therefore a counterweight is required , which “grants duration and stability” and “establishes togetherness” and strengthens it. Hölderlin's friend Heinse had praised the ether “as the real source of strength of Greek religiosity”, which is perhaps why Hölderlin dedicated his elegy to it.
5th stanza
They first come unfeeled,
the children strive towards them, happiness comes too bright, too dazzling,
75 And people shy away from them, hardly knows how to say a demigod,
who by name they are, who approach him with the gifts.
But the courage of them is great,
their joys fill his heart and he hardly knows how to use the goods,
creates, wasted and almost holy things have become holy to him,
80 which he touches foolishly and kindly with a blessing hand. The heavenly ones tolerate this as much as possible; but then in truth come they themselves and get used to the people of happiness and of the day and to gaze at the revealed ones, the faces of those who, already long called one and all, 85 deeply fill the secret breast with free sufficiency, and first and only happy all desire; So is man; when the good is there, and a God himself cares for him with gifts , he does not know and see it. He must wear it first; but now he calls his dearest one, 90 Well, now words like flowers must arise for it.
In the 5th stanza it is now described in more detail how the coming of the heavenly ones affects people. At first they come unperceived (73), i.e. H. people don't even notice it. Only the children seek them against (73/74), they alone are still so unspoiled and sentient, that they feel the presence of the divine and can accept joyfully. But then - in a next stage - man perceives the presence of the heavenly ones , but he shies away from them because happiness seems too bright , too dazzling to him (74/75). Here Holderlin addresses a motive for the first time, which he then takes up again in the 7th stanza (113/114): the thought that the experience of the divine is difficult for humans to endure, even unbearable. But since the heavenly ones give him courage (77, in the sense of courage to live, strength, Greek ϑυμός, thymós), he can accept their joys (78) and their gifts (76). However, he cannot deal with them appropriately, he does not know how to use them and he wastes them (78/79). But the heavenly ones tolerate this (81). And here - exactly in the middle of the entire elegy - they now appear in truth , manifestly, they become manifest and visible: people look at their faces (83). This means that they are only perceived in their being, which was previously veiled. The concept of truth is used here in the sense of the Greek word for truth (ἀλήϑεια, alétheia = unconcealment, revelation). But they were always known to the initiates, they were called one and all (84), i.e. with the central pantheistic formula that goes back to Heraclitus and the Neoplatonists (ἓν καὶ πᾶν, hen kai pan).
But people's inability to deal with happiness persists: that's how man is; if there is the good, and a God cares for him with gifts / himself, he does not know and see it. (87/88) Even here in the middle part of the poem, in which the presence of the divine is celebrated, Holderlin repeatedly points out that people are only partially ready and able to experience this presence in their lives. The presence of the heavenly ones dialectically turns again and again into absence, one does not happen without the other. These two verses also refer to the beginning of the Gospel of John, which is also about the fact that God (in Christ) came into the world, but the world did not recognize him and did not accept him: “That was the true light that enlightens all people [...] It was in the world, and the world is made by it, and the world did not recognize it. He came into his own, and his own did not receive him. "(John 1, 9-11)
6th stanza
And now he thinks seriously to honor the blessed gods,
Really and truly everything must proclaim their praise.
Nothing is allowed to see the light that does not please the high,
It is not due to the ether to try idly.
95 So to stand worthy in the presence of the heavenly,
peoples in glorious orders align themselves to one another
and build the beautiful temples and cities
solid and noble, they go up over the shores -
but where are they? where do the acquaintances flourish, the crowns of the festival?
100 Thebe withers and Athens; the weapons no longer rustle in Olympia, not the golden chariots of the fighting game, and are the ships of Corinth never wreathed? Why are they also silent, the ancient sacred theaters? Why isn't the consecrated dance happy?
105 Why, as usual, does a god not draw a man's forehead , does not stamp, as usual, on the person who is hit? Or he came himself and took man's shape and completed it and concluded the heavenly festival with consolation.
In the first part of the 6th stanza the presence of the divine in the world is celebrated again and at first the impression is created that it is (also) about the historical present, but in the course of the verses it becomes clear that it is (only) about antiquity goes to the height of Greek culture, with the construction of the temples and the "noble" cities of Thebes, Athens and Olympia. But already in the middle of the stanza the hymn-like tone, the certainty of the divine presence, changes again into the elegiac lament about the absence, the loss. And again, as in the 4th stanza, Holderlin depicts this mourning through the insistent repetition of questions that are actually more plaintive and almost accusatory exclamations: Why ... not ...? ((103-105) Nonetheless, this stanza does not end with the lament, but with a “surprising twist” (Safranski 211), which suddenly opens up a completely different space of thought, namely the Christian one: Or he himself came and took shape an / And completes and closes the heavenly feast with consolation . (107/108) Here for the first time there is a clear allusion to the incarnation of God in Christ and to his consoling farewell, with which the consolation speeches before his death and above all the promise of the "comforter" , of the Holy Spirit (Joh. 14-16). It is striking that Christ is not understood here as the beginning of a new time, but as the end of the old time, as the last appearance of the God-filled time. The heavenly festival (108 ), the brilliant day of the ancient era comes to an end with Christ.
7th stanza
But friend! we're late. It is true that the gods live,
110 But above the head above in another world. They work endlessly and seem to pay little attention to whether we live so much the heavenly ones spare us. Because a weak vessel is not always able to hold it, man only endures divine abundance at times.
115 dream of them is life on it. But the madness helps, like slumber and strength makes the need and the night, Until that heroes have grown enough in the iron cradle, hearts in strength, as usual, are like the heavenly ones. They thunder on it. Meanwhile own eyes? I often
120 to sleep better, how to be without companions, So to wait and what to do, however, and say, Do not Know and what poets in meager time. But they are, you say, like the priests of the god of wine, who went from land to land on holy night.
The third part of the elegy begins with the 7th stanza, in which the mourning for the lost, fulfilled time is expressed, but which also deals with the preserving memory of the day of gods. At first the speaker complains about the loss: But friend! We're late . (109) But an accusatory, defiant, even rebellious tone is mixed in with the complaint: the gods live, / But [...] in another world. They seem to care little / Whether we are alive. (109-112) But this accusation of the gods for their indifferent absence is immediately withdrawn by declaring that their removal is done out of consideration for the weakness of men: so much do the heavenly ones spare us. / Because a weak vessel is not always able to hold it, / Man only endures divine abundance at times. (114) And he adds the hope that in this present night of the gods, heroes (117) may grow up whose hearts become so strong through hardship (116) that they can endure the presence of the gods. But the speaker, the poet, who sees himself as the keeper of living memory, lives in the doubt as to whether his endeavors have any meaning at all. He feels lonely, he lacks the like-minded people ( without comrades , 120) and he sees himself, so to speak, as a shouter in the desert, as a futile warning: and what to do and what to say, / I don't know, and why a poet in poor time (121/122). But this stanza also closes with a comforting twist: The you, the friend Heinse mentioned, gives him hope by comparing him, the poet, with the priests of the god of wine Dionysus, who wandered around on holy night, praising the presence of the god and so on kept the memory of him alive.
8th verse
125 Namely, when some time ago, it seems long to us
, All those who make life happy rose upwards,
When the father turned his face from men,
And mourning rightly began over the earth,
As at last a quiet genius appeared 'Heavenly
130 Consoling, who proclaims the end of the day' and vanished, As a sign that once he was there and would come again , the heavenly choir returned some gifts , those who, humanly, as usual, we could rejoice, For to joy, with spirit, the greater became too great
135 Among men and still, the strong are still lacking for the highest joys, but some thanks still exist. Bread is the fruit of the earth, but it is blessed by the light, And from the thundering God comes the joy of wine. That is why we are thinking of the celestials, otherwise the
140 since been and the return to real time, why they sing earnestly the singers the god of wine and not devised vain the Old Tönet the praise.
The 8th stanza first takes up the theme of mourning over the absence of God and then speaks of the appearance of a silent genius (129) at the end of the day of gods, with which - a little more clearly than at the end of the 6th stanza - alludes to Christ . This genius left behind as a sign that once he was there and again / would come some gifts (131/132). Before they are mentioned, Hölderlin insists for four verses that they are there to bring joy to people. This word occurs three times in variations ( rejoicing 133, joy 134, joys 136) and is also taken up again in v. 138. Joy belongs on the one hand to Dionysus, the god of joy, on the other hand with Holderlin but also in a special way to Christ. Just the expression joy, with spirit (134) refers to the most important biblical writings for Holderlin, the Gospel of John and the epistles of Paul.
Only then are the “gifts” finally named: they are bread and wine (137/138). It is only here that the poem addresses what the title suggests. And here it becomes clear again what the joy motif already suggests: that the god from whom the gifts come, first and foremost (on the surface of the text, so to speak) is Dionysus, the wine god, here in connection with Demeter, the goddess of the fruits of the earth and especially of the grain, of the bread. But just as the addition joy, with spirit refers to the biblical scriptures, so here too is the further determination that adds light to the earth: Bread is the fruit of the earth, but it is blessed by light (137).
The gifts that God brings to man fill him with joy and remind him of the vanished gods ( this is why we also think of the heavenly ones , 139). And that is why the task of the poets to sing their praises is not vainly conceived , but with seriousness (141/142), in that they take existentially seriously what they write.
9th verse
Yes! They rightly say that he sons the day with the night,
leads the heavenly stars down and up,
145 always happy, like the leaves of the evergreen spruce,
which he loves, and the wreath that he has chosen of ivy,
Because he stay and even
bring the trail of the escaped gods godless down under the dark.
What the ancients hymn prophesied of God's children,
150 See! it is we, we; It is the fruit of hesperia! It is wonderful and accurate when it is fulfilled in people, believe whoever tests it! but so much happens, no one works, because we are heartless, shadows, until our father has recognized ether belongs to everyone and everyone.
155 Meanwhile, the Highest Son, the Syrian, comes down under the shadows as a torch- winger. Happy wise longing; a smile shines from the trapped soul, the light still thaws her eye. The Titan dreams and sleeps more gently in the arms of the earth,
160 Even the envious, even Cerberus, drinks and sleeps.
In the 9th stanza Dionysus appears as the ruler of the world (144), as the moving principle of the cosmos and as the force that balances out all opposites and reconciles them with one another (143). And he is the one who brings the trace of the escaped gods / godless ones down under the dark (147/148), who thus maintains the connection between gods and humans.
In the following it is now said that the ancients prophesied the singing of God's children (149). While the turn of the old singing is more reminiscent of ancient Greece, the phrase about the children of God refers to the biblical context. This sentence introduces the union of ancient and Christian religion in the last stanza, which was already indicated in the elegy (6th and 8th stanza). The prophecy that people would become children of God had first "proclaimed salvation in the Orient", but here it is now related to the West: Look! It is us, we; It is the fruit of hesperia! (150). This prophecy will be fulfilled wonderfully and very soon, at least for those who believe it after careful examination (believe whoever has examined it! 152).
But no sooner has this hopeful expectation been expressed than the lament about the distance from God in the present follows again, as so often introduced by a "but": but so much happens / none works, because we are heartless, shadow (152/153). People do not allow what is happening - namely that the gods approach them - to work , they do not see or recognize it. But it does not stop at the complaint, the turn to doubt is caught in a renewed upswing of hope: until our / Father Aether recognizes everyone and belongs to everyone. (153/154) In spite of everything, there is therefore confidence that all people - be it soon or one day - will be lifted up in God. And that confidence is sustained until the end of the elegy. Once again the coming of God is conjured up among the people: But meanwhile comes as torch-wielders of the Most High / Son, the Syrians, below the shadows (155/156), and this time this Son of God is clearly a fusion of Dionysus and Christ: All three designations (the torch-winger , the Supreme Son , the Syrian ) refer to both cultural spheres, to the ancient and the Christian, to Dionysus as well as to Christ.
The poem ends in very poetic images, which at the same time open up a wide cultural-historical space: Blessed ways see; a smile from the trapped / soul shines, the light still thaws her eye. (157/158) The eye here means spiritual seeing, it is the eye of the soul , of the heart. The soul is indeed trapped in the mundane world, but coming from above divine light it triggers their captivity, from their torpor (the eye thaws her on ), enabling it to detect the incoming God and him entgegenzulächeln.
The following verse, the Titan dreams more gently and sleeps in the arms of the earth (159) refers to the mythical figure of the Titan Typhon, a power hostile and destructive to gods and men, which is appeased and calmed by the arrival of the god. Even the last verse, Even the envious, even Cerberus drinks and sleeps (160), is about overcoming a hostile power: Cerberus, the hellhound guarding the entrance to the realm of the dead, evokes the myth that a god descends into the underworld, and so does the Redeemed the dead. According to the legend, Dionysus climbs into Hades, puts Cerberus to sleep with wine (Cerberus drinks ) and frees his mother Semele. Likewise, Christ descends into the kingdom of death (cf. the passage in the creed).
So the poem closes with the picture of an all-embracing reconciliation and harmony. The attitude of envy , which for Hölderlin is a characteristic of the torn present, is overcome and people open up to the divine beauty of the world.
The last two verses of the elegy not only outline a utopian vision of the future, they also allude to the current political situation at the time of its creation. After the Battle of Marengo in June 1800 Napoleon made an offer for peace, but Austria initially refused to accept it. There were peace negotiations, armistices and another battle, until the peace in Lunéville was finally signed in February 1801. In his letters, Hölderlin repeatedly refers to the development of peace and he placed enormously high hopes in this peace, as a letter to his brother shows: As a farewell, take the quiet but inexpressible joy of my heart [...] You ask me which? This dear soul, that our time is at hand, that the peace that is now in the making will bring us just what it and only it could bring. […] Not that any form, any opinion or assertion will win, this does not seem to me to be the most essential of his gifts. But that egoism in all its forms will bend under the holy rule of love and goodness, that common spirit will go over everything in all [...], this is what I mean, I see this and I believe [...]. The dreaming Titan and the sleeping Cerberus can therefore also point to the truce before the peace agreement as mythological symbols, even if, as the context in the elegy and the letter shows, in a sense that goes far beyond the concrete political.
literature
- Jochen Schmidt (Hrg :): Friedrich Hölderlin: Complete poems . Text and comment. Deutscher Klassiker Verlag , Frankfurt 1992, 2005 [quoted as Schmidt ]
- Johann Kreuzer (Ed.): Hölderlin Handbook. Life - work - effect . Metzler, Stuttgart and Weimar 2002
- Jochen Schmidt: Hölderlin's Elegy Brod and Wine . The development of the hymnic style in elegiac poetry, De Gruyter, Berlin 1968
- Wolfram Groddeck : Hölderlin's Elegy Brod and Wine or Die Nacht . Stroemfeld, Frankfurt 2012
- Uwe Beyer: Friedrich Hölderlin. 10 poems. Explanations and documents. Reclam, Stuttgart 2008
- Rüdiger Safranski : Holderlin . Come over! open, friend! Hanser, Munich 2019 (pp. 205 - 218)
- Manfred Frank : The coming God. Lectures on New Mythology. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a. M. 1982 (1st and 9th - 11th lecture)
Web link
- Brod und Wein at www.zeno.org , accessed on August 16, 2018
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jochen Schmidt is of the opinion that Hölderlin accidentally omitted the 9th distich, cf. Schmidt p. 723.
- ↑ Safranski p. 205
- ↑ Schmidt pp. 723/724
- ↑ Schmidt p. 724
- ↑ See Jochen Schmidt, Hölderlins Elegie Brod and Wein . The development of the hymnic style in elegiac poetry, De Gruyter, Berlin 1968
- ^ On the following, see Schmidt p. 724
- ↑ Cf. 7th stanza: Poets in needy time, v. 122.
- ↑ In the following I refer to the verses by numbers in parentheses.
- ↑ Schmidt p. 726
- ↑ Cf. to "in the hesitant while" Schmidt p. 726
- ↑ See Schmidt pp. 726 and 721
- ↑ Schmidt p. 730
- ↑ Schmidt p. 730
- ↑ Schmidt p. 731
- ↑ Safranski p. 210
- ↑ Schmidt p. 732
- ↑ See Schmidt p. 733
- ↑ On the following, see Safranski p. 210
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ Schmidt p. 734
- ↑ See Schmidt p. 736, Safranski p. 211
- ↑ Schmidt writes: "Only later does he (Hölderlin) see Christ as a figure of transition into another, new epoch in its own right: into an epoch of the spirit and the ever-advancing spiritualization after the ancient epoch of plastic formality." . 737)
- ↑ Schmidt p. 739
- ↑ Schmidt p. 741
- ↑ Schmidt speaks of "systematic syncretism, p. 741
- ↑ Schmidt p. 742
- ↑ At least that is how Schmidt interprets verse 151, p. 742
- ↑ See verse 88
- ↑ Schmidt S. 742/743, there many documents
- ↑ Schmidt unfolds the broad cultural-historical horizon of these images, which ranges from Plato through the Bible and early Christian literature to modern poetry, cf. 744
- ↑ Cf. Schmidt p. 744: "The idea goes back to Pindar's 1st Pythian Ode."
- ↑ Schmidt p. 745
- ↑ To the following Schmidt p. 745
- ^ Letter from Nürtingen, probably from New Year's Day 1801, quoted in Schmidt, p. 746
- ↑ Cf. also the hymn Peace Celebration , which also goes back to the Peace of Lunéville, and v. 79f. the elegy homecoming . Schmidt p. 746