KATRIN PAHL University of Southern California A Reading of Love in Hölderlin’s “Andenken”1 At the heart of my reading of Hölderlin’s poem “Andenken,” lies the question of mutuality: how best to understand mutuality and how to realize it. Drawing on my unconventional rendition of Hegel’s theory of recognition, I will read the blowing of the wind presented by “Andenken” as a conversation between lovers—indeed as the intersection of two conversations, one between Friedrich Hölderlin and Susette Gontard, and one between the poet and the reader. Working with the lines “Doch gut / Ist ein Gespräch” and “Mancher / Trägt Scheue” as the main coordinates of this interpretation, I will develop a theory of reading that calls on the reader to contribute to the poem’s efforts to facilitate a love that is mutual. In a further multiplication of crossed couples, the human lovers are interlaced with the poem’s several pairs of trees until finally a Gespräch not so much in, but among, words emerges in the form of asymmetrical chiasms—that is, of unfinished, non-reciprocal but nevertheless mutual exchanges. Andenken Remembrance Der Nordost wehet, Der liebste unter den Winden Mir, weil er feurigen Geist Und gute Fahrt verheißet den Schiffern. Geh aber nun und grüße Die schöne Garonne, Und die Gärten von Bourdeaux Dort, wo am scharfen Ufer Hingehet der Steg und in den Strom Tief fällt der Bach, darüber aber Hinschauet ein edel Paar von Eichen und Silberpappeln; The north-easterly blows, Of winds the dearest to me Because a fiery spirit And happy voyage it promises mariners. But go now, go and greet The beautiful Garonne And the gardens of Bordeaux, To where on the rugged bank The path runs and into the river Deep falls the brook, but above them A noble pair of oaks And white poplars look out; Noch denket das mir wohl und wie The German Quarterly 78.2 (Spring 2005) 192 Still well I remember this, and how PAHL: Hölderlin 193 Die breiten Gipfel neiget Der Ulmwald, über die Mühl’, Im Hofe aber wächset ein Feigenbaum. An Feiertagen gehn Die braunen Frauen daselbst Auf seidnen Boden, Zur Märzenzeit, Wenn gleich ist Nacht und Tag, Und über langsamen Stegen, Von goldenen Träumen schwer, Einwiegende Lüfte ziehen. The elm wood with its great leafy tops Inclines, towards the mill, But in the courtyard a fig-tree grows. On holidays there too The brown women walk On silken ground, In the month of March, When night and day are equal And over slow footpaths, Heavy with golden dreams, Lulling breezes drift. Es reiche aber, Des dunkeln Lichtes voll, Mir einer den duftenden Becher, Damit ich ruhen möge; denn süß Wär’ unter Schatten der Schlummer. Nicht ist es gut, Seellos von sterblichen Gedanken zu seyn. Doch gut Ist ein Gespräch und zu sagen Des Herzens Meinung, zu hören viel Von Tagen der Lieb’, Und Thaten, welche geschehen. But someone pass me The fragrant cup Full of dark light, So that I may rest now; for sweet It would be to drowse amid shadows. It is not good To be soulless With mortal thoughts. But good Is converse, and to speak The heart’s opinion, to hear many tales About the days of love And deeds that have occurred. Wo aber sind die Freunde? Bellarmin Mit dem Gefährten? Mancher Trägt Scheue, an die Quelle zu gehn; Es beginnet nämlich der Reichtum Im Meere. Sie, Wie Mahler, bringen zusammen Das Schöne der Erd’ und verschmähn Den geflügelten Krieg nicht, und Zu wohnen einsam, jahrlang, unter Dem entlaubten Mast, wo nicht die Nacht durchglänzen Die Feiertage der Stadt, Und Saitenspiel und eingeborener Tanz nicht. But where are the friends? Where Bellarmine And his companion? Many a man Is shy of going to the source; For wealth begins in The sea. And they, Like painters, bring together The beautiful things of the earth And do not disdain winged war, and To live in solitude, for years, beneath the Defoliate mast, where through the night do not gleam The city’s holidays Nor music of strings, nor indigenous dancing. Nun aber sind zu Indiern Die Männer gegangen, Dort an der luftigen Spiz’ An Traubenbergen, wo herab Die Dordogne kommt, Und zusammen mit der prächt’gen But now to Indians Those men have gone, There on the airy peak On grape-covered hills, where down The Dordogne comes And together with the glorious 194 THE GERMAN QUARTERLY Garonne meerbreit Ausgehet der Strom. Es nehmet aber Und giebt Gedächtniß die See Und die Lieb’ auch heftet fleißig die Augen, Was bleibet aber, stiften die Dichter. (Friedrich Hölderlin, 1803–05)2 Spring 2005 Garonne as wide as the sea The current sweeps out. But it is the sea That takes and gives remembrance, And love no less keeps eyes attentively fixed, But what is lasting the poets provide. (trans. Michael Hamburger)3 “Andenken” is a wind poem. It initiates its own movement in the first line by saying “Der Nordost wehet.” Why Nordost? Why not any other wind? And precisely what direction does this northeasterly poem take? Most interpreters, among them most influentially Heidegger, take for granted that the act of ‘thinking-toward’ (“Andenken”) follows the blowing of the wind from northeast to southwest. Presuming that recollection is only possible from the perspective of home and presupposing that this home must be Germany, Heidegger emphasizes that the poem knows only one direction, that is, southwest: “Der Nordost zeigt und führt hinweg aus dem heimischen Land in die einzige Richtung des südwestlichen Himmels” (my emphasis).4 Beißner, in his edition of Hölderlin’s works, follows Heidegger and, with a surprising lack of critical sensibility, conflates empirical and poetic realities when commenting, “Der Nordost weht nach Südwesten, das bedeutet vom Ort des Dichters aus: nach Bourdeaux.”5 Dieter Henrich complicates this reading somewhat, by integrating a change in perspective. He argues that, after moving southwest to Bordeaux, the wind and with it the poem’s gesture of remembrance turns northwest and toward the sea.6 Nevertheless, Henrich’s interpretation still leaves untouched the presupposed directionality of the first stanza and thereby of the poem’s greeting, its original and self-originating address: “Geh aber nun und grüße.” Eberhard Baumann is, to my knowledge, the first to point out how counterintuitive these claims about the orientation of the poem really are. Reading the first line, “Der Nordost wehet,” he asks: Was für Gedanken löst denn diese Richtungsangabe im Hörer oder Leser aus? Nur die der Richtung, in die der Wind weht und damit den Blick nach Südwest, wie er im weiteren Gedicht angesprochen zu werden scheint, oder vielmehr die Blickrichtung nach Nordosten als dem Ursprung und dem Herkommen des Windes?7 Since the geographic coordinates included in the descriptor of a particular wind do not indicate into which direction the wind blows but rather from which direction it is blowing, the line “Der Nordost wehet,” locates its writer —and reader—in the southwest facing northeast and feeling the wind (of the poem) blow in his/her face. Even though the poem points in the north-easterly direction with its opening phrase, a slight fear blows most readers away from the source and turns PAHL: Hölderlin 195 them toward the south-west. “Mancher / Trägt Scheue, an die Quelle zu gehn.” Hölderlin tries to be among the few, a “mancher,” who carries the burden of moving against the wind instead of being carried away by it.8 Hölderlin travels northeast from Bordeaux back to Frankfurt; he does so in real life, but also with the lines of this poem. In May 1802, Hölderlin sets out on his walk from Bordeaux, where he had assumed a position as tutor, to Frankfurt, the home of Susette Gontard. Drawn toward the impossible reunion with the forbidden love, this journey is marked by several detours and delays (in Paris, Stuttgart, Nürtingen, and again Stuttgart) until Hölderlin is struck by the news of Gontard’s death. Written between one and three years after this agonizing (non-)experience, “Andenken” forms an attempt to re-enact the journey in a way that keeps Gontard alive for him. Admittedly, “Geh aber nun und grüße / Die schöne Garonne” seems at first to unequivocally address a greeting to the river Garonne, which flows through Bordeaux. This would affirm the idea that the poem’s “Andenken” turns from Germany to Bordeaux. But Baumann convincingly argues that the northeasterly is “der liebste unter den Winden” because it tells “von Tagen der Lieb” and reminds Hölderlin of Gontard. During his stay in Bordeaux, Hölderlin receives the northeasterly with special ardor. As this wind is a rare phenomenon in the region of Bordeaux, Hölderlin treasures it because, coming from the direction in which Gontard lives, it makes him hot with its promise of fiery spirit, “feurigen Geist … verheißet.”9 If one understands the wind as a medium of communication between the lovers, the “schöne Garonne,” with its initials S.G., is to be read as an encoded evocation of Susette Gontard. With the line “Geh aber nun und grüße / Die schöne Garonne,” Hölderlin invites the northeasterly to move northeast, from Bordeaux to Frankfurt, to greet S.G., Susette Gontard.10 He asks the wind to blow backwards. Such a reading brings out the reversal of the wind direction and has the advantage of conveying meaning to the “aber” in the fifth line.11 When understood as an appeal to blow from northeast to southwest, it makes little sense to say to the wind: “geh aber nun.” The “aber ” would indicate that the wind is not already blowing, but the first line says clearly “Der Nordost wehet.” We might want to read this “aber” as an empty filler not meant to correlate contradictory terms.12 But since the poem contains a series of “aber,” and since as Heidegger points out, this wording “gives the poem its hidden tone,” we would run the risk of affecting the rest of the poem with its emptiness.13 “Geh aber nun” unfolds its potential to signify only when we take the “aber” seriously as initiating a turn, that is, when we read the phrase as asking the wind to blow in the opposite direction. “Geh aber nun” then means something like: “You are the dearest among the winds to me because you give me fever, but now go back and greet S.G.; make her feel what I feel …” And, since Susette Gontard died of a pulmonary infection associated with the measles and, thus, literally had difficulties breathing, “geh aber nun” also suggests something 196 THE GERMAN QUARTERLY Spring 2005 like: “I love you because through you I get wind of the fever she suffers from, but now help her to get back her wind …” The movement of “Andenken” thus exceeds the word’s sense of remembrance or recollection. It combines this retrospective thought process with the forward-oriented and open-ended activity of thinking-of or of thinking-toward, i.e., denken an. The accumulation of f and s sounds in “liebste,” “feurigen,” “Geist,” “Fahrt,” “verheißet,” “Schiffern,” “grüße,” and “schöne” not only imitates the wind’s blowing, but also transmits the initials of the two lovers, Friedrich and Susette. With the wind, the lovers whisper each other ’s names across time and space. Nevertheless, it is an overstatement when Baumann writes that “der Nordost ist in Hölderlin’s Empfinden bereits Gespräch und geistiger Austausch, also Wechselwirkung” (Baumann 19). The north-easterly might be a medium for communication and a promise of mutuality between the lovers, but the realization of this Gespräch is far from being a given. It requires a constant battle against death. A Weh accompanies the wehen of “Andenken.” “Gespräch,” as the realization of mutuality in the back and forth movement of thinking-of, proves to be difficult and dangerous. It requires to be struggled for without relent. Even though it might be sweet to drowse amid shadows, this is not good as we can see in the fourth stanza: “süß / Wär’ unter Schatten der Schlummer / Nicht ist es gut.” One might tire of the constant labor and yearn for a rest, but “gut / Ist ein Gespräch.” With the contrast that the poem establishes in the middle stanza between the sweetness of “Schlummer” and the value of “Gespräch,” it acknowledges the difficulty of keeping the conversation mutual.14 The work of love includes the almost impossible task to send the wind in the other direction while the danger to lose the beloved lurks at the turn of every line. One-sidedness persistently threatens the conversation with arrest. Naturally, everything flows in one direction: the wind blows, the spirit is fiery, and the river Dordogne flows downward (“wo herab/ die Dordogne kommt”). Before long the movement is extinguished: “ausgehet der Strom.” Quickly, the poem gets effaced in its all too transparent message. When nothing is read between the lines, this nothing grinds the verses to sharp edges, “scharfe Ufer,“ that speed up the reading and rush the water into the abyss where deep falls the brook, “tief fällt der Bach.” But the words themselves fight against their death. “Darüber … / Hinschauet” stretches out its ambiguities allowing the “edel Paar” to overlook and look beyond the abyss, toward which the water races. “Der Steg” smoothes out the sharp edge when it nonchalantly “trails along” the bank (trans. Chadwick, “am scharfen Ufer / Hingehet”) distracting from the other, more gloomy meaning of “hingehet,” namely “to pass away.” The reader also contributes to the task of a loving conversation. She joins the lovers, thereby opening their potentially destructive tête-à-tête. The interpretation of the line “geh aber nun” is, thus, not merely a question of right PAHL: Hölderlin 197 or wrong. More is at stake. For us to invest this “aber” with negating power is to rescue the poem’s potential for love, its ability to move back and forth between the lovers.15 For us to understand this “aber” as initiating a turn of address between S.G. and F.H. means also to reverse the blowing of this wind poem that comes to us from the author, and to participate actively in the conversation that moves back and forth between author and reader. It amounts to giving the poem some of the meaning it offers—responding in kind to the love that it gives. Our difficulties with receiving the poem as a love letter and Friedrich’s difficulties with receiving Susette’s greetings are, in both cases, tied up with a frustration about the evasive character of the beloved. She is unreliable. I do not know what I have in her. I do not even know where she is, from where she sends her love, and if she will keep sending it. True, there is a promise: “Der Nordost verheißet feurigen Geist Mir.” Yet, how long can I wait for the promise to come true? Even if it is coming true right now I remain in the position of awaiting its realization since I cannot bear the thought of her love ever ending. Already, empty words are creeping up on me, habitual turns, without an individual address. But who am I to force her to speak to me? The poem might refuse to yield meaning in order to avoid the grasp of a reader who only pretends to be a lover. Yet, to accept the “aber”’s refusal to signify is barely an act of chivalry that preserves the other’s freedom. Instead, it infects the poem with the reader’s own helplessness. Abandoned by the reader, amidst the beauty of the Garonne, Friedrich feels a sharp pain of despair “am scharfen Ufer” and struggling not to slide into the abyss of solitude he tries to make sure that Susette will remember to greet him: “geh aber nun und grüße.” This might be an understandable desire, but the fact that he takes charge of the continuation of the loving discourse means that Friedrich stops to hear her voice in the wind. Susette disappears as an agent in the conversation. The imperative forms “geh” and “grüsse” neglect to acknowledge that the wind already blows, and fail to recognize that S.G. in fact sends her love. This redundant imperative spreads its impotence to overshadow the promise of the wind. It catches up with the wind by apostrophizing and enclosing it in a “nun” that interrupts the wind’s movement, breaks the promise of “verheisset,” and acts as a brake on the futural drift of the prophecy. The imperative transforms the love for the wind into a suffocating clasp. It thrusts its will into the open flesh of the future and forecloses the advening movement of futurity. In its final turn, this “aber” turns the loving conversation off. This reading melancholically re-enacts a loss of which the reader is barely aware: the immense and always frustrated desire to be overwhelmed by the other’s address. It projects onto the poem the reader’s own refusal to receive the poem in its precariousness and unreliability. The attempt at indifference is not motivated by the wish to preserve the beloved intact in her difference, but 198 THE GERMAN QUARTERLY Spring 2005 by the desire to protect the self from the beloved’s caprice. In the parameters of this reading, loving and respecting the integrity of the other turns into a holding on to the other and anticipating her moves. The beloved thus loses the very qualities for which one loves her: her liveliness, her unforeseeability, or, in Hegelian terms, her negativity. We are left with no future, nothing that comes to us from the other. Nothing can move us. The result is stagnation, an empty repetition of nothing, an accumulation of a habitual “aber” that does not turn or move anything, but pitches the poem in a melancholy tone. The insistence of a meaningless “aber” as a marker of indifference and distrust isolates the reader and encloses the poem in a circle of non-understanding and loneliness from which, at best, one cry emerges: “Wo aber sind die Freunde?” In a truly mutual relation, as Hegel conceives it, that is, in the process of mutual recognition between two equally free parties, killing the other is not an autonomous act. Its agency is shared and each party negates herself while negating the other. At the same time, self-negation—when it is not one-sided and therefore violent—is crucial to freedom. Hegel witnessed the love between Hölderlin and Gontard after he moved to Frankfurt in 1797. During the same time, he drafted a philosophy of love.16 After their forced separation (Gontard’s husband fired Hölderlin from his post as a tutor in his household), Gontard involved Hegel as a middleman in her communication with Hölderlin.17 Hegel, the future philosopher of Spirit, then played the role of the wind. Both in practice (delivering secret letters) and in his theoretical endeavors he was concerned with enabling mutuality. Hegel contends that the experience of love—or of the process of recognition, as he calls it in his Phänomenologie des Geistes—brings with it the realization that the other is not a passive object of mine, but a free subject who compromises my agency. In Hegel’s words: “Das erste [Selbstbewußtsein] hat den Gegenstand [i.e., das zweite Selbstbewußtsein] … vor sich … [als] einen für sich seienden selbstständigen, über welchen es darum nichts für sich vermag, wenn er nicht an sich selbst dies tut, was es an ihm tut.”18 Hegel is far from imagining mutual love as a peaceful and stable relationship: the two subjects move in a vertiginous struggle, ceaselessly negating each other and themselves. These negations can be blissful if they manage to realize a form of death that is moving without ending the encounter in definite destruction. As the most important safeguard against destruction, both parties need to recognize each other as the subject, that is, both the agent and the patient of their negativity. According to Hegel, “der Gegenstand des Selbstbewußtseins ist … selbstständig in dieser Negativität seiner selbst” (127). We encounter this negativity in Hölderlin’s poem. “Der Nordost wehet;” the poem speaks to us. But while Hölderlin writes this poem Susette is already dead, and when we read the poem the author is already dead. The wind may have come from the north-east, but by the time it hits Friedrich Susette is somewhere else. Once we read the poem, we no longer know in what sense it PAHL: Hölderlin 199 was written. Even though Susette’s death is a historical fact, “Andenken” demonstrates that Hölderlin did not experience this death as a fact, but struggled to stay in communication with Diotima Susette Gontard.19 Her death figures as a trope for the experience of the negativity of the other. Because her freedom consists in being the subject of and subject to her own self-differentiality, the lover is always already somewhere else as soon as she presents herself for identification. In the very act of sending a loving message the sender herself changes. The source is gone, and it does not make sense to search for it at the point of its departure unless one wants to arrest the greeting. If Friedrich wants to communicate his love to Susette it is, in fact, not enough to simply reverse the direction of the greeting, and to give back what he received. Reciprocity does not realize mutuality. The wind would not reach the source even if it blew in the opposite direction. Friedrich has to speak without knowing where exactly to direct his words. He has to approach someone who is gone, dead, so to speak. Likewise, we have to communicate with the poem without knowing from where exactly it addresses us. To bear the embarrassment — “die Scheue zu tragen” — of articulating words against the wind without any certainty as to where and how the other will receive the greeting is the only way to recognize the other’s negativity without killing her. The lack of orientation resulting from the inability to locate the position of the beloved combined with the strain of moving against the wind provoke a wish for quietness that has strong suicidal undertones: Es reiche aber, Des dunkeln Lichtes voll, Mir einer den duftenden Becher, damit ich ruhen möge; denn süß wär’ unter Schatten der Schlummer. The desire of the lover would be appeased, “es reiche,” if he could drink up her cup and rest in the beloved. Since it is impossible to find quietness in S. who is alive with negativity, constantly moving and moved, F. wishes to rest with Susette’s nonexistence. To put an end to their missed encounters—feeling that “es reiche aber nun”—he is ready to go where she is clearly not, if only to secure the certainty of her full absence. He is ready to die. Like the reader who is tempted to give in to the lure of nothingness that threatens to collapse the poem into the one meaning of non-communication, F. is tempted to give himself over to destruction. According to Baumann, the next line, “Nicht ist es gut,” forms the heart of the poem. Located at the exact mid-point of the poem, it marks its turning point: when Hölderlin resolves to tear himself away from the temptation of actively or passively dying.20 The struggle for recognition in Hegel’s Phä- 200 THE GERMAN QUARTERLY Spring 2005 nomenologie initiates a similar turn when its protagonists realize that a dead opponent will not provide the desired recognition.21 Death is not good; so much might safely be said. But on which side are we to locate death: here or there, in this world or hereafter? The central line of the poem is so insignificant in its transparency that we have to consult the neighboring verses to give it more substance. Like the other pivot with which we have been concerned, the potentially void “aber,” “Nicht ist es gut” reads like an empty heart until we widen our focus and analyze the blood that will have crossed in it: Wär’ unter Schatten der Schlummer. Nicht ist es gut, Seellos von sterblichen The preceding verse speaks of drowsing amid shadows. Shadows might refer to the underworld, the dominion of the dead and its shadowy inhabitants. Or, if we adhere to Platonic ideas, it might remind us of the fact that our empirical world consists of only shadows. Or the line might simply draw the picture of a nap in the shadows of the wooded homeland.22 The next line reads “Seellos von sterblichen.” To be soulless would mean to be dead. More precisely — since even the dead are considered to be souls, albeit nothing but souls—it means to dwell in a death that entertains no relation to life. Those who have a soul are mortal, they are able to die or to live, they are affected by death, divided between death and life. But to be soulless would mean to be without death or life, to rest in an absolute beyond or a total immediacy. The line break between “sterblichen” and “Gedanken,” isolates the adjective “sterblichen” from the term it is adjected to, so that it establishes its own substantiality and asks to be read as a substantive. Read on its own, as “Seellos von Sterblichen,” the line evokes a state of soullessness caused by mortals who never recognized F. as being with soul, or alive and affected by death, subject of and subject to his negativity. He walks around on earth like a dead man amid shadows. The central line pivots between the line before and the line after, which themselves are ambiguous in their relation to this world and the hereafter. “Nicht ist es gut” is itself a “sterblicher Gedanke,” impossible to pin down, crossing blood containing oxygen with blood that carries carbon dioxide, divided in itself between life and death. The first stanza of “Andenken” names a noble couple: “ein edel Paar / Von Eichen und Silberpappeln.” The lovers in this pair are quite different. White poplars are known to be fickle. They like to grow near the water so the liquid can flow in abundance through their supple stems. With the help of the water they grow silvery leaves that flicker in the wind. Oscillating between their two faces, these leaves enrapture with the music they sing in the breeze. The oak, on the other hand, is ancient and unfaltering. It was Jupiter’s tree and gave honey to the Golden Age.23 In the imagination of Hölderlin’s time, in PAHL: Hölderlin 201 texts of German Romanticism and Idealism, it figures as the German tree. Big and steady, oaks lend themselves to mediate between gods and humans or, as Hölderlin phrases it in another poem: “unter Gottes Gewittern … zu stehen / Des Vaters Stral … zu fassen und dem Volk’ ins Lied / Gehüllt die himmlische Gabe zu reichen. ”24 Solitary, free, and wild, they attract the lightning, like Semele, and are likely to be burnt for their love.25 The obvious difference between these trees as lovers could be a source for misunderstanding and death. But a certain shyness or shame earns the pair its attribute of ethical nobility (“ein edel Paar”).26 They do not address each other directly. Their gaze is twice diverted. Overseeing together the gardens of Bordeaux, the river Garonne with its sharp bank, the falling brook, and the footbridge, they glance at each other across the entire world of their surroundings. But even this world is not the direct object of their gaze, they “hinschauet darüber” with a squinting look that looks at and looks beyond at the same time.27 Recognizing negativity, their gaze is attentive without identifying its object. Hegel understands shame among lovers, quite counter-intuitively, as a force against separation. To him, “Scham” is not a feeling that leads lovers to restore propriety and property, but rather the expression of an aversion against the proper. In his 1797/98 fragment on love, Hegel writes: “Die Liebe ist unwillig über das noch Getrennte, über ein Eigentum; dieses Zürnen der Liebe über Individualität ist die Scham.”28 Reversing the common values of decency, he regards the messy fusion of two bodies in love as an example of purity, whereas lovers who resist their intimacy trying to preserve some proper independence present to him an image of indecency: “Ein reines Gemüt schämt sich der Liebe nicht, es schämt sich aber, daß diese nicht vollkommen ist” (247). Striving to overcome the obstacles that hinder love’s culmination, shame is thus an agent in the service of love. Hölderlin rephrases the role of “Scham” as “Scheue.” In his poem, shyness does the work of preserving dynamic differences within the pair. The stimulation of difference against the idea of an unqualified union is also part of Hegel’s account of shame. Werner Hamacher highlights the ambiguity of the work of shame in Hegel.29 He shows that shame splits up the unity that it has produced in order to work towards a more inclusive unity. Shame relentlessly takes offense in the results of its own efforts because no union is radical enough to be absolutely pure.30 The work of shame is limitless. Its infinity can be frustrating when merely numerical, that is, when we presume separate countable entities. If we presuppose a clear-cut distinction between identity and difference, every newly achieved unity opposes the difference which it resolved and therefore adds to the series of terms to be reconciled. But a different logic gives rise to a pleasurable infinity. This is the case when the lovers prevent their union from collapsing into an exclusive unity and make a love in which “das Getrennte noch [ist], aber nicht mehr als Getrenntes, [sondern] als 202 THE GERMAN QUARTERLY Spring 2005 Einiges” (Hegel 246).31 Then, like Hölderlin’s noble pair, those who are ashamed of the fact that they are separated also take pleasure in letting more and more obstacles come between them. Rubbing against these hurdles they actively enjoy their love: Diesen Reichtum des Lebens erwirbt die Liebe …, indem sie unendliche Unterschiede sucht und unendliche Vereinigungen sich ausfindet, an die ganze Mannigfaltigkeit der Natur sich wendet, um aus jedem ihrer Leben die Liebe zu trinken. (Hegel 248) The infinite work of shame opens the closed relationship between two individuals, their potentially violent tête-a-tête, and allows for more and more interference from the manifold riches of the outside world or, in Hölderlin’s words, of the gardens of Bordeaux. As Hamacher puts it: “Für die Scham gibt es Sein — ihr eigenes nicht ausgenommen — nur im Plural” (105). Indeed, the seemingly exclusive couple has always been a play of multiplicities in Hölderlin’s poem: the pair does not consist of one oak and one white poplar, but oaks and white poplars in the plural: “ein edel Paar / Von Eichen und Silberpappeln.” The poplar-oak couple has also always been interlaced with other pairs. Oaks and poplars are crossed with other trees. The poem abounds with exchange, with “Gespräch,” with care, with confusion, with mutation, and with mutuality. There is care in the elm wood that protectively “neiget die breiten Gipfel … über die Mühl’.” The house takes the fig tree “Feigenbaum,” into its courtyard and shelters it from storm and weather.32 Der feige Baum, the cowardly tree, needs protection. Yet, by its involvement in another pair, the fig gains a divine power to keep the house safe in return. When Hölderlin translates Euripides’ Bacchants, he confuses fig tree (Greek: sykon) with sanctum (Greek: saekon).33 The fig now offers protection precisely because it is der Feigen Baum, the holy tree of the cowards. In the context of love, cowardice turns into a special courage. It becomes the strength of not being afraid to let shyness show, “Scheue zu tragen.” Hegel asserts: “[Die Liebe] fürchtet ihre Furcht nicht, aber von ihr begleitet hebt sie Trennungen auf ” (248).34 The lover bears, or trägt the brave timorousness of the fig tree like she wears, or trägt a fig leaf. The fig leaf “hebt Trennungen auf ” by denying the difference between lovers. Since neither of them can be sure that their love can tolerate their separation they prefer to wear their shame. But the coy fig leaf also highlights the difference between them, if only as something that is impossible to pinpoint. The excessively shy love of the noble pair keeps differences moving.35 The second stanza presents this movement of differences across the multiple interlacing pairs that form a noble pair. It begins with “Die braunen Frauen daselbst / Auf seidnen Boden.” The adjective “seidnen” is here used in the plural and is thus grammatically aligned with “Frauen” rather than “Boden.” But it would not exactly make sense to exchange the adjectives and PAHL: Hölderlin 203 to say: “Die seidnen Frauen daselbst auf braunem Boden.” The exchange is not reversible; there is no identifiable point of origin. The “daselbst” functions as the eccentric pivot for an asymmetrically chiasmic exchange that never fully lines up and therefore never comes to rest.36 Both sides are imperfectly drawn into the other so that both can neither be separated nor unified. Around the disempowered identity, the Selbigkeit, of the “daselbst,” as the empty heart of the chiasm, the verses keep insisting on the plural. We find a similar structure in: “Und über langsamen Stegen, / Von goldenen Träumen schwer, / Einwiegende Lüfte ziehen.” Here, the converse explicitly engages more than two terms. The “Gespräch” moves in a round. Light and heavy at the same time, it is a slow dance over the abyss where deep down the river rages: “Über langsamen Stegen”? One is tempted to correct this peculiar expression into “über einwiegenden Stegen,” and this sets the dance in motion: “von goldenen Träumen schwer, Lüfte ziehen langsam, langsam einwiegende Stege, Träume ziehen schwer, schwer einwiegende Lüfte ziehen langsam Stege, wiegen ein in goldene Träume, träumen goldene Stege …” Would this be a “Gespräch,”das sagt des “Herzens Meinung?” Notes 1 The phrase “a reading of love” is borrowed from Werner Hamacher, Pleroma—Reading in Hegel, trans. Nicholas Walker and Simon Jarvis (Stanford UP, 1998) 89. Original: “eine Lektüre der Liebe.” Werner Hamacher, “Pleroma — zu Genesis und Struktur einer dialektischen Hermeneutik bei Hegel,” in G.W.F. Hegel, “Der Geist des Christentums”: Schriften 1796–1800, ed. Werner Hamacher (Frankfurt/M: Ullstein, 1978) 105. He uses the phrase to describe a mode of reading that seeks to keep going a movement of multiple differences within the unity of the text. 2 Text from Friedrich Hölderlin, Bevestigter Gesang: die neu zu entdeckende hymnische Spätdichtung bis 1806, ed. Dietrich Uffhausen (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1989) 164f. The exact date of the poem’s composition is uncertain. Uffhausen assumes 1805 (BG 261ff.). Beißner dates it spring 1803 between “Patmos” and “Der Ister,” see Friedrich Hölderlin, Sämtliche Werke, Große Stuttgarter Ausgabe, vols. 1–5, ed. Friedrich Beißner, vol. 6–7 ed. Adolf Beck (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, Cotta, 1943–1977) 2,2,800. Sattler dates it fall 1804 in the vicinity of “Germanien,” “Tinian,” “Der Ister,” “Der Adler,” and “Die Schlange” (“Mnemosyne”); see Friedrich Hölderlin, Sämtliche Werke, Frankfurter Ausgabe, ed. D.H. Sattler (Frankfurt/M.: Verlag Roter Stern, 1975) 15,11f. 3 Selected Poems and Fragments (London: Penguin, 1994) 251–53. Other translations: Vernon Chadwick in Anselm Haverkamp, Leaves of Mourning: Hölderlin’s Later Work (Albany: SUNY P, 1996) 58–59; Taylor Carman in Dieter Henrich, The Course of Remembrance and Other Essays on Hölderlin, ed. Eckart Förster (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1997) 253–55; Richard Sieburth, Hymns and Fragments (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1984) 106–09. 204 THE GERMAN QUARTERLY Spring 2005 4 Heidegger, “Andenken,” Erläuterungen zu Hölderlins Dichtung (Frankfurt/M: Klostermann, 1981) 84. 5 Sämtliche Werke, Große Stuttgarter Ausgabe 2, 2, 802. 6 Dieter Henrich, Der Gang des Andenkens (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1986), especially chapter II. 9. 7 Eberhard Baumann, Das Geheimnis wird Licht (Essen: Blaue Eule, 1997) 17. 8 “Mancher” can mean both “many” and “some.” Chadwick translates: “Some / are reluctant to go to the source.” 9 About the rarity of the north-easterly in the region of Bordeaux, see Baumann 17–18. 10 Baumann extends the cryptonym to D.S.G. (Die schöne Garonne). 11 While I focus here on the turn and the inverse movement because it is usually overlooked, the poem evokes both directions and perspectives as part of its attempt to realize mutuality (from the north-east to the south-west and from the south-west to the north-east, from Susette to Friedrich and from Friedrich to Susette, from author to reader and from reader to author). 12 Eric Santner, in his piece “Sober Recollections: Hölderlin’s De-idealizations of Memory in ‘Andenken’” (Germanic Review 60.1 [1985]: 16–22), affirms the non-adversative but rather additive use of the conjunction “aber” as liberating and as a sign of Hölderlin’s new, more relaxed style, see esp. 19. 13 Heidegger 151: “Diese Fuge des wandernden Heimischwerdens im Eigenen ist dichterisch gefügt in das aber, das dem Gedicht den verborgenen Ton gibt … ‘Andenken’ ist eine einzige in sich gefügte Fuge des aber.” Heidegger, despite these emphatic remarks, offers no interpretation of the use of “aber.” 14 Santner argues that the later Hölderlin breaks away from his idealization of a monological “Gesang,” toward embracing the mutuality of “Gespräch”: “In the poem Andenken the poet explores and seems to discover, if only very briefly, a positive aspect of such a disintoxication, the possibility of survival and perhaps even fulfillment, within the immanence of Gespräch” (21). 15 I do not want to argue here that all uses of “aber” in this poem should be read as adversative. The automatic repetition of the same “aber” brings to the fore that generalizing the procedure of reversal (what we usually identify with Hegelian dialectic) results in its erosion. But I think that this poem moves beyond staging the general impotence of the pivot toward a call for individual, local, and pro tem reading. I agree that some “aber”s are better read as additive. But I am concerned here with showing that the dialectic reversal can be used in less facile and more interesting ways than it commonly is, and that—especially if we resist its resolution in some higher synthesis—it can enable mutuality. 16 Preserved in fragmentary form and published under the title “Die Liebe” first by Nohl and now in Werke 1 (Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 1986) 244–50. 17 See The Recalcitrant Art. Diotima’s Letters to Hölderlin and Related Missives, ed. and trans. Douglas F. Kenney and Sabine Menner-Bettscheid (Albany: SUNY P, 2000) 22. 18 G.W.F. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1988) 128–29. 19 In his letter from June 30, 1802, informing Hölderlin of Gontard’s death, Sinclair tries to remind him that she survives her death: “Du glaubtest an Unsterblichkeit, da sie noch lebte, Du wirst gewiß itzt (sic!) mehr denn vorher glauben … Und was ist größer und edler, als ein Herz, das seine Welt überlebt” (StA 7,1,170). PAHL: Hölderlin 20 205 Baumann 38. See Phänomenologie 131. 22 See Heidegger 118: “Zwar ist der Dichter in das Erfreuende der Schatten der heimischen Wälder gekommen.” 24 See Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. Frank Justus Miller (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1984) 9–11: “And, men, content with food which came from no one’s seeking, gathered … acorns fallen from the spreading tree of Jove. … and yellow honey was distilled from the verdant oak.” Ovid’s “The Four Ages” is an important text for Hölderlin. He evokes Ovid’s description of the golden age, for example, in “Emilie vor ihrem Brauttag” (v 117–23). “Andenken” includes another reference to “The Four Ages” in the fourth stanza: “Zu wohnen einsam, jahrlang, unter / Dem entlaubten Mast” evokes the brazen age in which “Men … spread sails to the winds, though the sailor as yet scarce knew them; and keels of pine which earlier had stood upon high mountain-sides, now leaped insolently over unknown waves” (11). With the phrase “entlaubten Mast,” Hölderlin draws attention to the fact that the mast has a history, that it was once a living tree. 25 Hölderlin, ”Wie wenn am Feiertage …” 25 In “Die Eichbäume,” Hölderlin, mobilizing anti-French sentiments, describes oak trees as Titans who refuse to subject themselves to the cultivated garden of society (“gesellige Leben”). Hölderlin uses the Semele myth in the sixth stanza of “Wie wenn am Feiertage….” Semele, the mortal mother of Dionysos, asked her lover Zeus to show his true shape. When he appeared to her as the god of thunder, she was struck by lightning and died. 26 Hölderlin uses the word “Scheue” while Hegel opts for “Scham.” Hegel often prefers the more carnal term to the more ethereal connotation Hölderlin chooses. 27 “Darüber hinschauen” carries a similar ambiguity as “to overlook" in English meaning both “to survey” and “to fail to notice.” 28 G.W.F. Hegel, “Die Liebe,” Werke 1 (Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 1986) 247. 29 I am not as confident as Hamacher that we can neatly distinguish between Hegel’s intention (which is supposedly to identify shame as working in the service of unity) and his presentation (Darstellung—which Hamacher sees as undermining former intention). It is the presentation that counts, also and especially for Hegel. 30 See Hamacher 104–05. 31 In the same fragment, Hegel calls this identity of love that preserves its difference within, a “vollendete Einigkeit” as opposed to the “unentwickelte Einigkeit” which is only the seed of life but not life itself. The unity of love is mature precisely because it preserves difference between the lovers while eliminating “allen Charakter eines Fremden.” That love does not kill otherness in favor of an abstract identity is of foremost importance to Hegel already in the early writings. 32 Haverkamp, in “Secluded Laurel—Andenken,” pairs the fig tree with the laurel, the figure that is forgotten and excluded from this remembrance. He traces a rhetorical tradition from the New Testament through Augustine and Petrarch to Hölderlin that uses the fig tree as a figure for conversion. 33 Beißner notes: “In der Übersetzung aus den Bacchantinnen des Euripides steht er (der Feigenbaum) für saekon (Heiligtum), verwechselt mit sykon (Feige)” (StA 2,2, 803). 21 206 THE GERMAN QUARTERLY Spring 2005 34 As the figure of conversion (see Haverkamp), the fig tree also figures the vacillation and anxiety involved in such a turning, as well as the brave cowardice that is open to and endures this fear. 35 If some have interpreted the scene that is depicted in the first and second stanzas of the poem as paradisiacal, I would add that this paradise knows the fig leaf, knows shame, and knows death or negativity. It is Paradise after humans have eaten from the tree of knowledge. These stanzas, thus, work against the separation of knowledge and love. 36 While in the prose form of this phrase the word “daselbst” stands in the middle between the two terms “die braunen Frauen” and “auf seidnen Boden,” the layout of the poem invites the reader to draw the chiasmic exchange between the parallel structures braunen Frauen and seidnen Boden with “daselbst” standing off center in the upper right corner of this imaginary X.