Like coastlines ...

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Like coastlines ... is a poem by Friedrich Hölderlin . It is usually included in the drafts, but on the other hand it is also interpreted as a self-contained work.

Origin and tradition

Hölderlin's writing is in the lower third of page 68 of the Homburg folio and was created at the time of writing it, between 1802 and 1807. Immediately above on page 68 is the draft hymn And sympathizing with life… . Wie Meeresküsten ... was first printed in 1916 in Volume 4 of the historical-critical edition of Hölderlin's works begun by Norbert von Hellingrath and Friedrich Seebaß (1887–1963) .

Homburg folio page 68

The character of the Homburg folio with completed poems, drafts and small fragments, often written on top of each other, makes the development of a text intended by Hölderlin difficult and uncertain as a result. This article reproduces the text of the historical-critical Stuttgart edition published by Fredrich Beissner , Adolf Beck and Ute Oelmann (* 1949) . It differs significantly from the Hellingrath-Seebaß edition, but is identical to the "reading edition" by Michael Knaupp. The text of Jochen Schmidt's "reading edition" has been orthographically "modernized" so that, for example, Hölderlin's "Woogen" become waves. Friedrich Beissner gave the title to the untitled draft in the Homburg folio. In the historical-critical Frankfurt edition by Dietrich Sattler , Wie Meeresküsten ... is understood as part of Tinian's draft hymn .

text

0000000000000000How seashores ...

0000 as seashores when to baun
0000the celestial and in Start
0000support vessel unstoppable, a splendor, the work
0000The Woogen, one after another, and the earth 5 yourself equips to the most joyful one with a good mood, rightly placing it so it strikes the song, with the wine god, promising the important and the darling of Greece 10 of the sea-born, foul-looking, the mighty estate on the shore.
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interpretation

Friedrich Beissner, Jochen Schmidt, Ludwig Harig , Bernhard Böschenstein , Gerhard Kurz and Anke Bennholdt-Thomsen gave interpretations together with Alfredo Guzzoni.

The poem, counted among the drafts, but closed in on itself, is a comparison: “How” (verse 1) it happens “seashore”, “so” (verse 6) it happens to the “song”. “The framework of the parable” was first explained by Friedrich Beissner, following him for example Jochen Schmidt: “Like <the> coasts of the sea <...> so it strikes | The singing <...> The immense property on the shore. ”“ Sea coasts ”is dative. The corresponding counterpart in comparison is "the song". Gerhard Kurz emphasizes the enjambements : “The enjambement gives the last and the following first word an emphasis. <…> The rhythmic and rhetorical function of the enjambement is particularly evident in the fragment Wie Meeresküsten… . In a grandiose recording of the old topos of poetry as shipping, the success of the 'work (s)' is portrayed: '... so it strikes / the song ... the huge property on the shore.' The poem consists of a single nested sentence period , the rhythmic tension of which is generated and carried by the enjambements. All but the last line end in enjambements. The jammed pauses in the enjambements <...> form the rhythmic axis of the poem. "

Ludwig Harig believes that the artistic structure is comparable to the impact of a sea wave . From a “fragmented grammar” - Holderlin's “hard fortune” - poetic song emerges as “the mighty good” that is thrown onto the coast in the game of waves. Hölderlin only saw the sea once, between about mid-January and mid-April 1802, as a private tutor to the wine merchant and Hamburg consul Daniel Christoph Meyer (1751–1818) in Bordeaux . Harig recalls the reflection of this experience in the poem Andenken : “There at the airy Spiz '/ On grape mountains, where down / The Dordogne comes / And together with the magnificent / Garonne sea-wide / The stream goes out.” “Nothing speaks on the other hand, that Hölderlin sought out the coast of the sea and, deeply impressed by the rhythmic play of the waves, kept this natural process firmly in memory. ”Hölderlin himself outlined his Bordeaux“ overall experience in one sentence: 'The mighty element, the fire of heaven and the silence of the people, their life in nature, ... has constantly moved me, and how one repeats heroes, I can say that Apollo defeated me. '"

What happens to the coasts of the sea in the if- subordinate clause , and what tremendous good is the song in the so- main clause hit on the shore?

The - conditional or temporal - if-subordinate clause extends to “rightly laying it” (verse 6). Böschenstein specifies that “the work / The Woogen” is the subject and that embarkation is used transitive: “The 'Work of the Woogen' ships 'one splendor', 'one by one', in, to the coasts." could be the products of commerce that the merchant ships in. Holderlin praises him in Der Archipelagus - “Look! then the far-sighted merchant loosed his ship, / Glad, because the inspiring air and the gods / loved ones blow him as well as the poet, him too ”- and praises his goods“ purple and wine and grain and fleece ”. What, ask Bennholdt-Thomsen and Guzzoni, “then should the building of the heavenly, which is also introduced here not only as present, but as straight lifting?” For them, the “work / The Woogen” is rather the design of the entire surface of the earth through the sea in the sense of Neptunism . "The basic idea is the geological concept of Neptunism, according to which the primordial sea, slowly retreating, gradually leaves behind what was deposited on its bottom, through sedimentation or crystallization, and thus the mainland (including the islands). This “work” is the building (verse 1) of the heavenly ones, as in the hymn The Rhine , where the Alpine mountains are called “the divinely built, / The castle of the heavenly ones” and the Father God “who built the mountains / And drawn the path of the rivers ”. By means of the waves, the heavenly ones bring everything that is needed for the construction of the earth, “one by one”, “with a good mood, rightly laying it”, so that “the earth / equips itself”.

Such an immense good “it” “also” (verse 6) beats the song to the shore. Who the "it" is remains undetermined - probably "the most joyful one" from the line above and thus one of the gods. Two gods are then named, both connected to the sea: the wine god Dionysus , son of Zeus and Semele , who was thrown into the sea together with his mother in a wooden box as a small child, and the "darling of Greece", the sea-born Aphrodite . "With their help <...> the supreme god <to singing> brings the mighty good." "You come with the 'mighty good' which grows over the song in fulfilled times in order to animate it and to organize it harmoniously." “Good” is everything that the waves have created, all of nature. “The poetic in the narrower sense, the formal side of design and implementation is not specifically addressed <...>. The whole comparison aims at the poetry with special consideration of the way in which its material component is brought about and processed. ”Böschenstein speaks of an almost encyclopedic conception of poetry and cites the many late key words of Hölderlin about never written hymns, for example from the beginnings to a revision of the hymn Patmos : "And now / I would like the journey of the nobles to / Jerusalem, and the suffering erring in Canossa, / And sing Heinrich."

Taking the performers together, one would paraphrase:

“As it is on the coasts of the sea - when the heavenly ones begin to build and the waves inexorably bring a splendor to the shore, one by one, when the earth equips itself and one of the heavenly ones prepares everything in a good mood - how the coasts of the sea are such a huge asset strikes the shore, so it strikes the song - with the participation of the wine god and the favorite in Greece, the sea-born, decent-looking Aphrodite - a huge asset on the shore. "

From this, Hölderlin formed a "structure of powerfully increasing and decreasing syllables, <...> comparable to the impact of a sea wave". Böschenstein asks whether Holderlin did not, after his Alkaean and Asclepian odes , his elegies and hymns based on Pindar , attempted to recreate a fourth “type of poem” handed down from antiquity, namely the self-contained, self-sufficient 'fragment' ”. Of course, antiquity did not produce such a type of poem, it was only to be blamed for the ruinous tradition. For Harig, in Wie Meeresküsten ... "the ocean wave, apotheosis of everything Greek, <...> has become its own song."

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ for example the Stuttgart edition , see literature
  2. ↑ Friedrich Hölderlin: Complete Works. Edited by Norbert von Hellingrath and Friedrich Seebaß, Volume 4. Propylaen Verlag , Berlin 1943, pp. 390–391.
  3. ↑ Stuttgart edition, Volume 2, 1, p. 205.
  4. ↑ Stuttgart edition, Volume 2, 2, p. 838.
  5. ↑ Schmidt 1992, p. 1060.
  6. ↑ Böschenstein 1996, p. 213.
  7. ↑ Kurz 1999, pp. 33-34.
  8. ↑ Norbert von Hellingrath coined the term "hard fortune", from singing ἁρμονία αὐστηρά. The style is characterized by the hardness of the joints between the linguistic elements, more irrational and less tied than in conventional prose. In the sentence structure there is anacoluthe , words placed without a predicate , soon sprawling periods that begin two or three times and then suddenly break off, always full of sudden changes in the construction. Friedrich Norbert von Hellingrath: Pindar transmissions from Hölderlin. Prolegomena to a first edition. Breitkopf & Härtel , Leipzig 1910.
  9. ↑ Stuttgart edition, Volume 2, 1, p. 189.
  10. ↑ Harig 1994.
  11. ↑ Beck and Raabe 1970, p. 64.
  12. ↑ Böschenstein 1996, p. 213.
  13. ↑ Stuttgart edition, Volume 2, 1, p. 105.
  14. ↑ Bennholdt-Thomsen, Guzzoni 2007, pp. 21-22.
  15. ^ Stuttgart edition, Volume 2, 1, pp. 142 and 147.
  16. ↑ Bennholdt-Thomsen, Guzzoni 2007, p. 27.
  17. ↑ Bennholdt-Thomsen, Guzzoni 2007, p. 27.
  18. ↑ Schmidt 1992, pp. 1060-1061.
  19. ↑ Bennholdt-Thomsen, Guzzoni 2007, p. 29.
  20. ↑ Böschenstein 1996, p. 218.
  21. ↑ Harig 1994.
  22. ↑ Böschenstein 1996, p. 219.
  23. ↑ Harig 1994.