Hyperion's Song of Destiny
Hyperion's Song of Destiny is the title of a famous poem by Friedrich Hölderlin . It appeared in the second volume of his letter novel Hyperion or The Hermit in Greece , published in 1799 .
The free rhythmic verses, in which the lyrical elements of the novel culminate, describe the great distance between two areas: the fateless calm and blissful serenity of the gods are contrasted with the suffering of human existence.
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The three stanzas are:
You walk in the light above
On soft ground, blessed geniuses!
Shining godly air
Stir lightly
Like the artist's fingers
Holy strings.
Fateless like the sleeping one
Suckling, breathe the heavenly;
Chaste kept
In a humble bud
Blooms forever
You the ghost
And the blessed eyes
Look in silence
Eternal clarity.
But it is given to us
To rest in no place,
It will fade, it will fall
The suffering people
Blinded by one
Hour after hour,
Like water from a cliff
Thrown to the cliff
Year down into the unknown.
background
In its dualistic structure, the poem separates the realm of divine ideality in the first two stanzas from the cruel reality of man in the final stanza. Even in the epics ascribed to Homer - above all the Odyssey - the fundamental differences between the serene, carefree and eternal life of the gods and the laborious and limited existence of people are repeatedly illuminated.
The Odyssey describes the painful and dangerous journey of the cunning Odysseus during his ten-year journey home to Ithaca. In the sixth song of the translation by Johann Heinrich Voss , which Friedrich Schiller praised, speaks of the "high Olympos, the gods eternal residence". This sphere is "never shaken by hurricanes, never flooded by rain / never rummaged by snow, the most cloudless cheer / wallet quietly around and covers it with shimmering shine: / there the host of the blessed gods rejoices forever."
particularities
It cannot be determined whether Holderlin wrote the poem, the title of which did not come from him, before the completion of the novel and then inserted it into Hyperion . As in his odes - such as the Abendphantasie or the short code An die Parzen - he also indented the verses here in a stepped manner.
The catchiness of the stanzas can lead one to regard them as the lyrical balance sheet and quintessence of Hyperion's existence. However, they only stand for a momentary, later overcome state of turmoil , the low point of his suffering, at which he experiences loss and impermanence in excess. Since his worldview is painfully polarized, he irreconcilably opposes the timeless sphere of the gods and the miserable existence of people.
Hölderlin lets his hero sing the song at a special point. After saying goodbye to Alabanda , who took the ship into the distance and left him on the shore, he has to wait until evening for the vehicle that is supposed to take him to Kalaurea . So he looks out to sea and sings the song to the play of the lute. As soon as it is over, a boat comes in with its servant who not only brings him Diotima's lyrical, profound farewell letter, heralding a silent willingness to die , but also the news of her death.
Holderlin himself, who, like Hegel , wanted to overcome the Kantian dualism , did not remain at this point of hopelessness: The letter-writing narrator has already overcome this level of despair by answering Bellarmin's question about his state of health with the words: “Best! I'm calm because I don't want anything better than the gods. Doesn't everything have to suffer? And the more excellent it is, the deeper! Doesn't sacred nature suffer? "
As the song is about to be reconciled, it shows the narrator's distance from his painful experiences, which he can now look back on in reflection.
Goethe's song of the Parzen has a similar meaning in his drama Iphigenie auf Tauris , which Iphigenie remembers shortly before she was saved and which depicts the distance between the worlds just as clearly. “The gods fear the human race / they hold dominion / in eternal hands ... But they, they remain / In eternal festivals / At golden tables / They step from the mountains / Over to mountains ... "
Shortly before the end of the novel is the bitter time criticism of his Scheltrede (“This is how I came under the Germans”). Hyperion recognizes artisans, thinkers and priests, "Lords and servants, boys and sedate people, but not people - isn't that like a battlefield where hands and arms and all limbs are dismembered one below the other, while the blood of life that has been shed melts away?"
Hyperion strives for a new community, the unity with the divine nature . The work does not end in despair or the turmoil of the song of fate. A new “bliss” dawns in the heart that has to endure the “midnight of grief” and can thus “like the song of the nightingale in the dark, divinely only hear the song of life of the world in deep suffering”. In this unity with the “blossoming trees” he hears the “clear streams whispering like the voices of gods” and feels how these sounds release him from the pain.
Settings
The verses have been set to music several times . In his Schicksalslied for mixed choir and orchestra op.54 from 1871, Johannes Brahms dramatically emphasizes the contrast between the worlds through rhythmic and dynamic means, even though he also lets his work end comfortably and thus seems to distance himself from the hopelessness of the last stanza. Die Grenzgänger interpreted the song of fate on their "Hölderlin" album (2020) as blues : the first two stanzas like a church chorale, with a rough, alienated voice in the style of Tom Waits and Howlin 'Wolf, followed by church bells that make up the first line to usher in the third stanza: "We have not been given to rest in any place".
literature
- Lawrence Ryan: Hyperion or The Hermit in Greece, Analysis and Interpretation, in: Hölderlin-Handbuch. Life Work Effect Metzler, Stuttgart and Weimar 202, pp. 191–192, ISBN 3-476-01704-4 (special edition 2011: ISBN 978-3-476-02402-2 )
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Lawrence Ryan: Hyperion or The Hermit in Greece, Analysis and Interpretation, in: Hölderlin-Handbuch. Life Work Effect , Metzler, Stuttgart and Weimar 2011, p. 191
- ↑ Friedrich Hölderlin, An die Parzen, in: All poems, Deutscher Klassiker Verlag im Taschenbuch, Volume 4, Frankfurt 2005, p. 197
- ↑ Overview commentary, in: Friedrich Hölderlin, Complete Poems, Deutscher Klassiker Verlag im Taschenbuch, Volume 4, Frankfurt 2005, p. 620
- ↑ Homer, Odyssey, VI. Gesang 42 - 46, in: Ilias / Odyssey in the transmission by Johann Heinrich Voß, Artemis & Winkler Verlag, Düsseldorf and Zurich 1996, p. 517
- ↑ Overview commentary, in: Friedrich Hölderlin, Complete Poems, Deutscher Klassiker Verlag im Taschenbuch, Volume 4, Frankfurt 2005, pp. 619–620.
- ↑ Lawrence Ryan: Hyperion or The Hermit in Greece, Analysis and Interpretation, in: Hölderlin-Handbuch. Life Work Effect Metzler, Stuttgart and Weimar, p. 191
- ↑ Friedrich Hölderlin, Hyperion or The Hermit in Greece, in: Complete Works and Letters, Second Volume, Ed. Günter Mieth , Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1995, p. 258
- ↑ Lawrence Ryan: Hyperion or The Hermit in Greece, Analysis and Interpretation, in: Hölderlin-Handbuch. Life Work Effect Metzler, Stuttgart and Weimar, p. 191
- ^ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Iphigenie auf Tauris, Fourth Act, Fifth Appearance, in: Goethes Werke, Volume 5, Hamburger Ausgabe, Beck, Munich 1998, pp. 54–55.
- ↑ Friedrich Hölderlin, Hyperion or The Hermit in Greece, in: Complete Works and Letters, Second Volume, Ed. Günter Mieth, Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1995, p. 261
- ^ Herbert A. and Elisabeth Frenzel , Dates of German Poetry , Classical, Friedrich Hölderlin, Hyperion or the Hermit in Greece, p. 271
- ↑ Friedrich Hölderlin, Hyperion or The Hermit in Greece, in: Complete Works and Letters, Second Volume, Ed. Günter Mieth, Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1995, p. 265