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17526074 No.17526074 [Reply] [Original]

Can anyone help me identify the actual source where Neech discusses Hölderlin's poetry and his conception of Dionysus?

>> No.17526378

>>17526074
Wouldn't that be The Birth of Tragedy?

>> No.17526443

>>17526378
Genuinely planning reading that once my copy arrive, so I guess I'll find out soon if so.

>> No.17526470

>>17526443
Indeed, hope you do, I haven't read it myself but only a know a bit about it. I'd also recommend having a basic knowledge and familiarity of Schopenhauer (and the Greeks, but I'm sure you already do considering you're interested in Holderlin).

Good luck with it anon!

>> No.17527490

>>17526074
Dont think he really references him.

>> No.17527536

>>17526074
there's a letter where he explains to a friend of his why Hölderlin is his favorite poet. Don't know if it's available in English http://www.zeno.org/Philosophie/M/Nietzsche,+Friedrich/Autobiographisches+aus+den+Jahren+1856-1869/Mein+Lebenslauf+%5BIII%5D+-+%5BAus+dem+Jahre+1861%5D (the second one)

>> No.17527674

>>17527536
Thanks a lot, actually my best friend is German so I'll ask if he could do the favour of translating this

>> No.17527957

>>17527674
I'm translating it right now. It's quite beautifully written, so it would be a shame to pass on the opportunity

>> No.17528048

>>17526074
http://www.nietzschesource.org/#eKGWB
search 'Hölderlin' and 'Hölderlins'
(Mentioned mostly in fragments, and in Untimely Meditations and Human All too Human)

>> No.17528060

>>17527957
Damn bro pls post here when done

>> No.17528373

Dear friend!

Some of the statements about Hölderlin from your last letter have surprised me a lot, and I feel compelled to defend my favorite poet against you. I would once again like to make you aware of your hard, unjust words; maybe you have changed your opinion since then: "I cannot fathom how Hölderlin could be your favorite poet. On me at least these blurred, half-insane sounds of a split and broken mind have only made a sad, sometimes repulsive impression. Unclear chatter, at times delusional thoughts, violent outbreaks against Germany, deification of the Pagan world, at one point naturalism, then pantheism, even polytheism, randomly thrown about - all these mark his poems, but in well-formed, Greek metre." In well-formed, Greek metre! My God! That is everything you have to praise? These verses (to speak only of the outer form) emanated from the purest, softest mind, these verses, in their naturalness and originality they make Plato's art and form seem dim, these verses, at once they surge about with the sublime movement of an ode, then again lose themselves in the softest sounds of sadness, these verses you cannot praise with another word than with the shallow, everyday "well-formed"? And that surely is not the greatest injustice. Unclear chatter and sometimes delusional thoughts! From these arrogant words I can tell that you are, firstly, captured by an absurd prejudice against Hölderlin, and secondly, his works are nothing but unclear imaginations for you, since you neither read his poems, nor his other works. After all you seem to believe that he only wrote poems. So you don't know "Empedokles", this important dramatic fragment, in whose downtrodden sounds the future of the unhappy poet reveals itself, but not, like you say, in unclear chatter, but in the purest, Sophoclesian language and in an unending abundance of deep thought. Furthermore you don't know "Hyperion", that in the melodious movement of its prose, in the sublimeness and beauty of the appearing characters has made on me an impression similar to the crashing waves of the wild sea. Indeed, this prose is music, soft melting tones, disrupted by painful dissonances, finally dissolving in dark, mysterious funeral songs. - But what I said mostly concerned the outer form, allow me to add some words about the Hölderlin's breadth of thought, that you seem to call "confusion and obscurity". Even if your criticism really does seem fit for some of the poems from the days of his insanity, and even if in the earlier ones the deep thoughts sometimes struggle with the impending night of madness, the overwhelming majority of them still are pure, delightful perls of our whole poetic art. I just have to mention poems like "Rückkehr in die Heimat", "der gefesselte Strom", "Sonnenuntergang", "der blinde Sänger", and will now show you the last stanzas from "Abendphantasie", in which deepest melancholy and longing for calmness reveals itself.

>> No.17528389

(verses from Abendphantasie)

In other poems, especially in Andenken and Wanderung, the poet lifts us to the highest idealism, and we feel together with him, that this was his native element. Finally there's a whole series of remarkable poems in which he tells bitter truths to the German people, that are mostly justified, sadly enough. Even in Hyperion he throws sharp and cutting words against the German "barbarism". Even so, this disgust at the truth is compatible with the highest patriotism, which Hölderlin truely possessed in the highest order. But what he hated in his German countryman was the bare specialist, the philister. -
In the incomplete tragedy Empedokles the poet reveals to us his own nature. The death of Empedokles is a death out of divine pride, out of misanthropy, out of complecency towards the world (Erdensattheit) and pantheism. The whole play shocked me deeply when everytime I read it; there lives a divine majesty in this Empedokles. In Hyperion though, even if he was veiled in a transfiguring glow, everything is unsatisfying and unfulfilled; the character, that the poet conjures, are "images of air, that in sounds of nostalgia ring about us, delight us, but cause an unsatisfied yearning." And nowhere else longing for Greece reveals itself in purer tones than here; nowhere else Hölderlin's soul kinship with Schiller and Hegel (his trusted friend) can be seen clearer.
I could only touch on a few of his qualities, but now I must leave it to you, good friend, to put together an image of the unhappy poet with the implied traits. That I could not refute your complaints about his contradicting religious believes, is due to my unsatisfying knowledge of philosophy, that would require a further thorough inspection of the problem at hand. Maybe you will at some time take the effort to inspect this point a bit closer by throwing some light on the cause of his troubled mind, that will surely have its roots elsewhere. You must apologize if out of my enthusiasm I used harder words than necessary against you; I just wish - and this you can regard as the goal of my letter - that because of it you will be moved to pay attention and to acknowledge this poet without prejudice, whom most normies don't even know by name.

>> No.17528436

ignore the couple of errors I made

>> No.17528888

>>17528373
>>17528389
Thanks a lot for this, man!

>> No.17529199
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17529199

>>17528888
no problem