Night chants

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Page 75, title page of “Nachtgesänge”, in the “Paperback for the year 1805”.

Friedrich Hölderlin described nine poems as " night songs " , which he left in December 1803 or a little later to the publisher Friedrich Wilmans in Frankfurt am Main for his pocket book for the year 1805. Dedicated to love and friendship . They did not appear in the paperback under this title, but under the title “Poems. By Ms. Hölderlin ”. Today they are mostly treated as a cycle of poems "Night Songs".

Emergence

At the end of 1803 Wilmans prepared Holderlin's translation of the tragedies of Sophocles Oedipus der Tyrann und Antigonä for printing. They appeared in two volumes in 1804. In December 1803, Wilmans asked Hölderlin for contributions to his paperback and repeated the question when he sent him proofs of the Sophocles translations. Hölderlin also replied in December from Nürtingen , where he had lived mainly - with his mother and sister - since returning from Bordeaux in June 1802 and before moving to Homburg vor der Höhe in June 1804:

“Adorable!

I thank you for having endeavored to give me a sample of the print of the Sophoclean tragedies. <...>

I'm just reviewing some night chants for your almanac. But I wanted to answer you immediately so that no longing comes into our relationship.

It is a pleasure to sacrifice oneself to the reader and to place oneself with him in the narrow confines of our still child-like culture.

Incidentally, love songs are always weary of flight, because we are still so far, despite the difference in subject matter; the high and pure joyful locals of patriotic chants are different. "

After this letter, the poems were finished or almost finished at the time, but Holderlin may have revised them again for printing. It is not known whether the arrangement in the paperback can be traced back to him or the publisher.

The nine poems

Six poems are odes , five in alkaean , one in asclepiadic meter; three are written in free rhythms . No manuscript that corresponds to the printed version has survived. Manuscripts from drafts or earlier versions have been preserved for seven poems. They are available as digital copies from the Württemberg State Library in Stuttgart . Nothing handwritten is known about two poems, Age and Der Winkel von Hahrdt . For all nine including their prepresses, the paperback print is the first print. For age and the angle of Hahrdt is Paperback so the first text tools at all. The poems are ordered and numbered in the paperback as follows:

  • The "Night Songs" in the "Pocket Book for the Year 1805"

  • Page 77

  • Page 78

  • Page 79

  • Page 80

  • Page 81

  • Page 82

  • Page 83

  • Page 84

  • Page 85

  • Page 86

1. Chiron . Alkean meter. The ode was created by reworking the ode The blind singer from the Stuttgart folio book written between 1800 and 1801 .

2. tears . Alkean meter. Two drafts from around 1800, one entitled Sapphos Schwanengesang , are preserved in the Stuttgart folio book .

3. Of hope . Alkean meter. A version with the title Please , written before the turn of the century, which is hardly dismissive from the paperback , is preserved in Cod.poet.et.phil.fol.63, I, 30 of the Württemberg State Library.

4. volcano . Akaean meter. Two manuscripts on this ode are entitled Der Winter . The first, written before the turn of the century, is preserved in Cod.poet.et.phil.fol.63, I, 39 of the Württemberg State Library.

5. Stupidity . Asclepius meter. The Ode was created by reworking the Ode Dichtermuth , which in turn is available in two handwritten versions, the first of which, written before the turn of the century, is preserved in Cod.poet.et.phil.fol.63, I, 39 of the Württemberg State Library.

6. Ganymede . Alkean meter. The ode was created by reworking the ode Der gefesselte Strom or Der Eisgang, written from 1800 to 1801 in the Stuttgart folio book .

7th half of life . Free rhythm. The draft has been preserved in connection with the unfinished poem Wie Wenn am Ferien ... of the Stuttgart folio, which was begun before the turn of the century .

8. Age . Free rhythm. The paperback print is the first text witness.

9. The angle of Hahrdt . Free rhythm. Here, too, the paperback print is the first textual witness.

Another fate

The immediate reception was mostly malicious. One reviewer spoke of "the dark and extremely strange poems of Hölderlin". Another found the "nine versified <n> Radot days of Holderlin extremely ridiculous". A third wrote: "For the rare mortal who can rightly boast of understanding the nine poems by Holderlin, a handsome price should be offered <...> Nothing arouses more indignation than nonsense paired with pretension."

Understanding, on the other hand, comes from a comment that presumably comes from Karl Philipp Conz , a former teacher of Hölderlin at the Tübingen monastery : “The poems of Hölderlin <...> are creatures of their own kind and arouse very mixed feelings. The torn sounds of a disturbed, once beautiful bond between mind and heart seem to be. Hence the language clumsy, dark, often completely incomprehensible and the rhythm just as rough. How much better is that recently printed, if already too much tension, a poem from the Archipelagus that betrays ailments, touching longing and dating from an earlier period of the author. ” Joseph Görres passionately defended the poems. In it, "an eagle flaps convulsively with its bent wings, the bad boys chase and chase it in the streets, but whoever knows his time and has a heart in his bosom looks mournfully after it when it flutters past, and still looks towards the sun." want."

Dichtermuth , Der gefesselte Strom , An die Hoffnung and Der Winter included Ludwig Uhland and Gustav Schwab in the first collective edition of Hölderlin's "poems" in 1826. Under the heading To Hope , however, they printed the prepress request . The “Sämmlichen Werke”, published in 1846 by Gustav Schwab's son Christoph Theodor Schwab (1821–1883), included The Blind Singer , Dichtermuth , Der gefesselte Strom , An die Hoffnung and Der Winter in the first volume . The second volume contained in a section "Poems from the time of madness" Chiron , Tears , Stupidity , Ganymede , Half of Life , Age and The Angle of Hart (sic!). Schwab wrote: “As far as the poems from the period of mental confusion are concerned, one side, to whom I owe every consideration, made it my duty to give the samples from this period only a small space, insofar as they were biographical Interest was inevitably necessary. ”After all, all the“ night songs ”were gathered here, but An der Hoffnung again in the preliminary stage of the request and Vulkan in the preliminary stage of the winter .

It was not until the Propylaea edition by Norbert von Hellingrath , Friedrich Seebaß (1887–1963) and Ludwig von Pigenot (1891–1976) that Hölderlin's late work was freed from the stigma of the pathological. Volume 4 (1916) contains the “Nachtgesänge” and several preliminary stages mixed with other poems, including both Please and To the Hope (sic!), Vulkan , whose title does not appear, in the preliminary version of The Winter .

The historical-critical Stuttgart edition by Friedrich Beißner , Adolf Beck and Ute Oelmann (* 1949) surpasses the Propylaea edition in terms of scope and care in its readings and explanations. As in the Propylaea edition - in Volume 2 "Poems after 1800" (1951; Volume 2, 1 text volume; Volume 2 2 commentary volume) - the "Night Songs" are mixed with other poems, namely Chiron , Tears , An die Hofnung ( sic!), Vulkan , Stupidity and Ganymed and preliminary stages in the section “Oden”, Age , The Angle of Hahrdt and Half of Life in a section “Individual Forms”. Please and Winter are not printed separately.

Jochen Schmidt, on the other hand, prints the “Nachtgesänge” without interruption through preliminary stages or other poems and in the order of the paperback . The same applies to Michael Knaupp, who numbers the “Nachtgesänge” like the paperback and highlights with a page title “Nachtgesänge”. Schmidt opted for "orthographic modernization". Knaupp keeps the original orthography.

Question of the cycle

The publication history of “Nachtgesänge” reflects the attitude of literary scholars to Hölderlin's illness. If they were products of his psychosis , they were at best psychiatric or biographical. It was not until the beginning of the 20th century that they were recognized as art. Since then, individual poems have been interpreted several times, most often half of life . The cycle as a whole, however, as its dissolution in the Propyläen and the Stuttgart editions shows, was further neglected. Reception as a cycle was questionable because of the ignorance of the primary context from which Hölderlin had chosen the poems and of the originator of the order in the paperback . However, the American German scholar Wilfred L. Kling emphasized in 1979 that the secondary context in the paperback must be taken seriously, the poems must be edited in the paperback version, which has happened since then (see above). Besides him, Anke Bennholdt-Thomsen and Michael Gehrmann examined the cycle as a whole.

"Night songs" and "Patriotic songs"

In his letter to Wilmans, Hölderlin contrasts the tone of his “Nachtgesänge” with “the high and pure joy of patriotic chants”. In an earlier letter he had already announced Wilman's “individual lyrical larger poems”, the content of which “should directly concern the fatherland or the time”. Literary studies have adopted the term "Vaterländische Gesänge" for Hölderlin's great, often puzzling, free rhythmic poems influenced by Pindar's simultaneous translation . The unfinished poem Wie Wenn am Holidays , begun in 1799 and mentioned above in connection with Half of Life , is considered the original model . 1801 were designed at the source of the Danube , the migration and the Rhine , 1803 the Ister . The main theme is Hölderlin's view of history, according to which culture migrated from East to West, from Asia Minor via Greece to Rome and finally over the Alps. “So came / The word from the east to us, / And on Parnassos rock and at the Kithäron I hear / O Asia, the echo from you and it breaks / At the Capitol and suddenly down from the Alps / A stranger comes to her / To us, the awakening woman / The human-forming voice ”.

Hölderlin's philosophy of history also speaks from the “Night Songs”. But he does not present them in the high, solemn, enthusiastic tone of the "Patriotic Chants". The title "Nachtgesänge" refers to the night as a time of melancholy. This is how Edward Young saw the night in his poem The Complaint: or Night-Thoughts , well-known by Hölderlin , in German 1789 as nocturnal thoughts about life, death and immortality , as did Novalis in his 1800 published Hymns to the Night . The basic mood is not enthusiasm, but melancholy. Hölderlin personally feels abandoned, most clearly in half of his life and age , but also in Chiron's exclamation “Now I'll sit quietly alone”. In addition, he knows himself to be in the historical night of a negative time in which the “delicious springtime in Greece” has passed and a new life “full of divine meaning” is still far away, the poet is “a poet in needy time”. In view of “our still child-like culture” it is for him - according to the letter to Wilmans - “a pleasure to sacrifice himself to the reader” in poems similar to “love songs”, quiet, intimate, subjective. “The common denominator of these poems results from this state of the not-yet of modern culture and the no-longer of ancient culture. It is characterized by the predominance of self-restraint, the limitation of cultural possibilities and the experience of scarcity in the north. "

According to Anke Bennholdt-Thomsen, the addressees of the “Nachtgesänge” are the people of the poor times, the sober present, who are not yet able to cope with the enthusiasm for the “patriotic songs”. The lyric self laments the waiting state in every poem. In addition to the lawsuit, the request to prepare the desired new culture came.

Interpretation as a cycle

Chiron, the poet's alter ego , knows himself to be inhibited by “the astonishing night” and, like the wounded Centaur, waits for the redemption through death, which Heracles will announce to him . At the same time, in the last stanza, he calls his pupil to act, according to the legend Achilles . In tears the ego about the sinking of crying "feur'gen that of ashes are" Greek love "islands". At the same time, when it thinks of the “angry heroes” Achilles and Aias , it knows about the destructive nature of excessive emotion. In To Hope , Holderlin speaks of his personal world. Let “hope” not disdain the “house of mourning”. He wanted to look for her "In the green valley, where the fresh spring / vom Berge rustles daily, and the lovely / timeless one blossoms on the autumn day". In the draft of a “Patriotic Song” Der Ister , fire is enthusiastically called out, “Now come, fire!”; it should help to “see the day” of the cultural migration from east to west. In Vulkan the fire is appropriate to the presence of the poet “in the scanty north”, the warming hearth fire. It helps the ego to assert itself against Borea's ever angry north wind , which "attacks the land / infests the land overnight with the frost".

Stupidity - in the old meaning "despondency" - is in the middle of the cycle. The poet encourages himself in a self-talk, according to the title of the preliminary stage "Dichtermuth". He "walks on truth <...> like on carpets". He shouldn't worry about that. He is one of the “tongues of the people”. He is to "bring from the heavenly ones". To this end, he confides, “we will bring some dangerous hands”.

Ganymede evokes northern cold like volcano . The poet asks the frozen river, the “mountain son”: “Don't you think of grace when the heavenly ones are thirsty at the tables?” He is reminiscent of the Trojan prince and cupbearer of the gods Ganymede . “From <...> suffering from a poor wintry environment <the current> is awakened by the 'word' of the remembering poet, who gives the inhospitable, 'bare bank' of the earthly unfulfilled world the image of Ganymede 'at the tables juxtaposed with the heavenly '- the vision of a supreme fulfillment, almost called' grace '. ”This is followed by the three free rhythmic“ miniatures ”. Wolfgang Binder interpreted them as a group of three. In Half of Life , the first stanza represents summer fulfillment, the second winter emptiness. Nature itself is dissonant "in a poor time". In old age - “You cities of the Euphrates! Ye alleys of Palmyra! "- the lament about the downfall of Palmyra " is all the more shocking as it does not name the pain, but only lets it be heard in that 'you' and then closes it off in the sober conclusion 'alien and died'. " In Der Winkel von Hahrdt there is nominally no "I". But the ego is present in Hölderlin's memory of Hardt near Nürtingen, where, according to the legend, Duke Ulrich left the “kick” that “A big ballroom” ponders about. The autumn picture - "The forest is sinking downwards" - also contains spring - it "Blossoms down on a ground". "Just as autumn reminds us of spring and promises its return, so the great fate of someone else remembers before him and hopes for both of them to be fulfilled in a future fatherland."

Anke Bennholdt-Thomsen sees the cycle symmetrically built with shyness as a symmetry axis. He begins with the abdication of antiquity in Chiron and Tears and ends with expectations of German history in Age and Der Winkel von Hahrdt . The trees that disappeared in the second poem, Tears with the Islands, are contrasted by the “well-established oaks” in the penultimate age , under which the poet sits. The introduction of mythological figures that were missing in the preliminary stages was one of the determining factors for the cycle. They are "guests" who remind the addressees of the poems of the successful culture of the past. "Although not conceived as a cycle, the publication of the nine poems offers a cycle that can be attested to as having an independent concept in the entire work."

According to Michael Gehrmann, the cycle is divided into "triads". In the first three poems the ego is confronted with its mortality, "triad of mortality". In Volcano , bashfulness and Ganymede , but not in the other six poems become a genius or geniuses are mentioned, "triad of geniuses." The free rhythmic poems break with the strictness of form of the odes, hence the “triad of the local break”. The poems are an initiation into the mystical, an invitation to creative understanding. The reader can only approach the text if, like an ancient mystic, he ponders the Orphic mysteries. This interpretation, Gehrmann concedes, moves “necessarily at the limits of a scientific discourse and thus at the edge of what can be said in general”.

literature

References and comments

  1. ↑ Stuttgart edition, Volume 6, 1, p. 436.
  2. ^ Search page for digital copies of the Württemberg State Library in Stuttgart. Retrieved January 21, 2014.
  3. ↑ Stuttgart edition, Volume 7, 4, pp. 22-23.
  4. ↑ Radot days are silly speeches.
  5. ↑ Stuttgart edition, Volume 7, 4, p. 80.
  6. ^ The Uhland Schwab edition in the German Text Archive . Retrieved January 21, 2014.
  7. ↑ Christoph Theodor Schwab (Ed.): Friedrich Hölderlin's all works. JG Cotta'scher Verlag , Stuttgart and Tübingen 1846.
  8. ↑ Schwab left the “Translation of the Sophoclean Tragedies from the Same Time” unprinted because it had “too little value and general interest”.
  9. ↑ Compared to the paperback , the Stuttgart edition contains conjectures . For example, the title To Hope, as in the Propylaea edition, becomes To Hope .
  10. ↑ Schmidt 1992, p. 516.
  11. ↑ Like the Stuttgart edition , Knaupp's edition also contains conjectures compared to the paperback . Although she prints An die Hoffnung , in the last line of this poem, instead of “Schrupe with others, only my heart” - “Freak with others, only my heart”.
  12. ↑ Stuttgart edition, Volume 6, p. 435.
  13. ^ Bart Philipsen: Gesänge (Stuttgart, Homburg). In: Johann Kreuzer (Hrsg.): Hölderlin manual, life - work - effect ,. JB Metzler'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-476-01704-4 , pp. 347-378.
  14. ↑ From At the source of the Danube .
  15. ↑ Schmidt 1992, p. 795.
  16. ↑ From The Archipelagus .
  17. ↑ From bread and wine .
  18. ↑ Bennholdt-Thomsen 2002, p. 339.
  19. ↑ Schmidt 1992, pp. 1026-1027.
  20. ↑ From The Wanderer .
  21. ↑ Schmidt 1992, pp. 833-834.
  22. ↑ Gehrmann 2009, p. 25. Hölderlin wrote in July 1999 to his friend Christian Ludwig Neuffer : “Just as we treat any material that is just a little modern, I am convinced that we have to leave the old, classical forms are intimately adapted to their subject matter, so that they are not suitable for anyone else. ” Stuttgart edition, Volume 6, 2, p. 339.
  23. ↑ Binder 1961.
  24. ↑ means "the ancient world".
  25. ↑ Binder 1961.
  26. ↑ Bennholdt-Thomsen 2002, p. 346.
  27. ↑ Gehrmann 2009, p. 25.
  28. ↑ Gehrmann 2009, p. 145.
  29. ↑ German: Wilfred L. Kling: Reading (r) work. Hölderlin's Der Winkel von Hahrdt and the night songs. In: Le pauvre Holterling. No. 4/5, 1980, ISBN 3-87877-052-9 , pp. 77-87.