O! I can cast myself on my knees and wring my hands and beg – but I do not know whom – for other thoughts. But I would not overcome it, the screaming truth. Have I not convinced myself two times over? When I gaze into life, what is the last of all? Nothing. When I rise in spirit, what is the highest of all? Nothing.
But be still, my heart! It is your last strength that you waste! Your last strength? and you, you will storm heaven? Where, then, are your hundred arms, Titan, where are your Pelion and Ossa, your stairs that you climb to the palace of the father of the gods, so as to hurl down the god and the table of the gods and all the immortal peaks of Olympus and preach to the mortals: Remain below, children of the moment! Do not strive upward into these heights, for there is nothing here above.
You, my heart, can cease to see what rules over others. Your new doctrine holds sway for you. It is undoubtedly empty and desolate above you and before you because it is empty and desolate within you.
Certainly, if you others are richer than I, you could help a little.
If your garden is so full of flowers, why does their breath not delight me too? – If you are so full of divinity, then offer it to me to drink. No one starves at feasts, not even the poorest. But only one has his feast among you; that is death.
Need and fear and night are your masters. They separate you, they drive you together with blows. You name hunger love, and where you see nothing more, there dwell your gods. Gods and love?
O the poets are right, there is nothing so small and meager that men could not be inspired by it.
So I thought. How all this came into me, I still do not grasp.
* It is hardly necessary to note that no one can rightfully be offended by such expressions, for they are merely manifestations of a human disposition. [Hölderlin]
SECOND BOOK
HYPERION TO BELLARMIN
I now live on the island of Ajax, dear Salamis.
I love all of this Greece. It bears the color of my heart. Wherever one looks, a joy lies buried.
And yet there is also so much loveliness and greatness about one.
On the promontory I have built a hut for myself of mastic branches, and planted moss and trees around it and thyme and all kinds of shrubs.
There I spend my favorite hours, there I sit evening after evening and gaze across toward Attica until finally my heart beats too rapidly; then I take my implements, go down to the bay and catch fish.
Or, up there upon my height, I read of the ancient, glorious sea war that once raged at Salamis in wild, shrewdly controlled tumult, and delight in the spirit that could guide and tame the furious chaos of friends and enemies as a rider does his horse, and feel deeply ashamed of my own military history.
Or I gaze out upon the sea and reflect on my life, its rising and sinking, its bliss and its mourning, and my past often resounds to me like a lyre on which the master plays through all tones and blends discord and harmony with hidden order.
Today it is triply beautiful up here. Two lovely rainy days have cooled the air and the life-weary earth.
The ground has grown greener, the countryside is more open. The golden wheat stands endlessly, mingled with the joyful cornflowers, and thousands of hopeful crowns rise brightly and cheerfully from the depths of the grove. Each line of the distances wanders faintly and vividly through space; like steps, one behind the other, the mountains rise unceasingly to the sun. The whole sky is pure. The white light is only breathed over the ether and, like a silver cloudlet, the shy moon passes across the bright day.
HYPERION TO BELLARMIN
I have not been as I am now for a long time.
As Jupiter’s eagle hearkens to the song of the Muses, so I hearken to the wondrous, infinite euphony within me. Untroubled in mind and soul, strong and joyful, with smiling seriousness, I play in spirit with destiny and with the three sisters, the holy Parcae. Full of divine youth, my whole being rejoices in itself, in everything. Like the starry heavens, I am serene and moved.
I have waited long for such a festive time to write to you once again. Now I am strong enough; now let me tell you.
In the midst of my dark days, an acquaintance from Calaurea invited me to his island. I should come to his mountains, he wrote to me; one lived there more freely than elsewhere, and also, amidst pine forests and rapid waters, there bloomed lemon groves and palms and lovely herbs and myrtles and the holy grapevine. He cultivated a garden high in the mountains, and built a house; dense trees shaded the back of the house, and cooling breezes softly played about it in the blazing summer days; like a bird from the summit of a cedar, one gazed down into the depths to the villages and green hills and contented hearths of the island, which all, like children, lay around the glorious mountain and nourished themselves from its foaming brooks.
That woke me a little after all. It was a clear, blue April day when I sailed across. The sea was unusually beautiful and pure, the air light, as in higher regions. In the floating ship, we left the earth lying behind us like a delicious meal when the holy wine is passed around.
The dark disposition resists in vain the influence of the sea and the air. I yielded, cared nothing for myself and others, sought nothing, reflected on nothing, let the boat rock me into a half-slumber, and imagined I lay in Charon’s bark. O it is sweet to drink thus from the cup of oblivion.
My joyful skipper would have liked to speak with me, but I was quite monosyllabic.
He pointed to the blue islands to the right and left, but I did not look long, and the next instant was again in my own lovely dreams.
Finally, as he pointed to the serene summits in the distance and said that we would soon be in Calaurea, I paid more heed, and my whole being opened up to the wondrous power that all at once sweetly and silently and inexplicably played with me. With wide eyes, astonished and joyful, I gazed out into the secrets of the distance, my heart trembled lightly, and my hand escaped me and grasped my skipper with friendly haste – so? I cried, this is Calaurea? And as he then looked at me, I did not myself know what I should make of myself. I greeted my friend with wonderful tenderness. My whole being was full of sweet unease.
That afternoon I wanted at once to wander through part of the island. The woods and secret valleys enticed me indescribably, and the friendly day lured everything out.
It was so visible how all living things desire more than their daily meal, how the bird, too, has its feast, and the beast.
It was enchanting to see! As when the mother affectionately asks where her dearest may be, and all the children rush into her lap, and even the smallest stretches its arms from the cradle, so every life flew and leapt and strove out into the divine air, and beetles and swallows and doves and storks frolicked together in rejoicing confusion in the depths and heights, and the steps of what the earth held fast became flight, the horse thundered over the ditches and the deer over the hedges and the fish came up from the sea floor and jumped over the surface. The motherly air penetrated to the hearts of all, and lifted all and drew them to herself.
And the men came out of their doors and wonderfully felt the spiritual breeze, how it softly moved the fine hairs over their brows, how it cooled the ray of light, and they amiably loosened their garments so as to receive it on their breast, breathed more sweetly, touched more tenderly the light, clear, caressing sea in which they lived and moved.
O sister of the spirit that reigns and lives in us with fiery power, O holy air! how beautiful it is that you accompany me wherever I wander, omnipresent, immortal one!
With the children, the high element played most beautifully. One hummed peacefully to himself; a little song, out of rhythm, slipped from another’s lips, an exultation from another’s open throat; one stretched, another leapt into the heights; another strolled about deep in thought.
And all this was the language of one sense of well-being, all one answer to the caresses of the enchanting breezes.
I was full of indescribable longing and peace. An alien power dominated me. Friendly
spirit, I said to myself, where do you call me? to Elysium, or where?
I walked in a forest, upward along trickling water to where it dripped down over cliffs, to where it glided innocently over pebbles; and gradually the valley narrowed and became an arcade, and the midday light played alone in the silent darkness –
Here – I would like to be able to speak, my Bellarmin! would like to write to you with calm.
Speak? O I am an amateur in joy, I want to speak!
Yet silence dwells in the land of the blessed, and above the stars, the heart forgets its need and its speech.
I have sacredly preserved it! I have borne it within me like a palladium, the divine that appeared to me! and if henceforth destiny seizes me and casts me from one abyss into the other, and drowns all powers in me and all thoughts, this unique spirit shall nonetheless outlive myself in me, and shine in me, and rule in eternal, indestructible clarity! –
Thus you lay poured out, sweet life, thus you looked up, rose, then stood in supple fullness, divinely calm, and your heavenly face still full of the serene enchantment in which I disturbed you!
O he who has gazed into the stillness of this eye, he for whom these sweet lips have opened, of what may he still speak?
Peace of beauty! divine peace! he who once soothes his raging life and doubting spirit in you, how can anything else help him?
I cannot speak of her, but there are hours in which the best and most beautiful appears as in clouds, and the heaven of perfection opens up before anticipating love; then, Bellarmin! then think of her being, then bend your knee with me and think of my bliss! but do not forget that I had what you only anticipate, that I saw with these eyes what only appears to you as in clouds.
That men sometimes would like to say that they rejoice! O believe this, you men, you have not yet even a suspicion of joy! To you the shadow of its shadow has not yet appeared! O leave, and speak not of the blue ether, you blind men!
That one can become as children are, that the golden time of innocence returns, the time of peace and freedom, that there is one joy, one place of repose on earth!
Has man not grown old and wilted, is he not like a fallen leaf that does not find its branch again and is driven about by the winds until the sand buries it?
And yet his spring returns!
Do not weep when the most excellent withers! soon it will rejuvenate itself! Do not mourn when the melody of your hearts falls silent! soon a hand will be there again to tune it!
How, then, was I? was I not like a broken lyre? I still sounded a little, but they were tones of death. I had sung myself a somber swan song! I would have gladly woven myself a death wreath, but I had only winter flowers.
And where, then, was it now, the deathly silence, the night and desolation of my life? the whole destitute mortality?
Certainly, life is poor and lonely. We dwell here below like the diamond in the mine. We ask in vain how we fell so as to find the way upward again.
We are like fire that sleeps in the dry branch or in flint; and in every moment we struggle and seek the end of our narrow confinement. But they come, they make up for eons of battle, the moments of liberation, when the divine bursts open the prison, when the flame frees itself from the wood and surges victoriously over the ashes, ha! when we feel as if, the sorrows and servitude forgotten, the unfettered spirit returned in triumph into the halls of the sun.
HYPERION TO BELLARMIN
I was once happy, Bellarmin! Am I not still? Would I not be even if the holy moment when I saw her for the first time had been the last?
I have seen it one time, the unique spirit that my soul sought, and the perfection that we project far upward above the stars, that we postpone until the end of time, I felt its presence. It was there, the highest, in this circle of human nature and of things, it was there!
I ask no more where it may be; it was in the world, it can return in the world, it is now only concealed in it. I ask no more what it may be; I have seen it, I have come to know it.
O you who seek the highest and the best in the depths of knowledge, in the tumult of action, in the darkness of the past, in the labyrinth of the future, in graves or above the stars! do you know its name? the name of that which is one and all?
Its name is beauty.
Did you know what you wanted? I do not yet know it, but I anticipate it, the new kingdom of the new divinity, and hasten toward it, and seize others and guide them along with me as the river the rivers into the ocean.
And you, you pointed me the way! With you I began. They are not worthy of words, the days when I did not yet know you –
O Diotima, Diotima, heavenly being!
HYPERION TO BELLARMIN
Let us forget that time exists, and not count the days of life!
What are centuries over against the instant in which two beings thus anticipate and near each other?
I can still see the evening when Notara brought me to her house for the first time.
She dwelled only a few hundred steps from us at the foot of the mountain.
Her mother was a thinking, tender being, her brother a simple, joyful youth, and both confessed lovingly in all that they did that Diotima was the queen of the house.
O! all was hallowed, beautified through her presence. Wherever I looked, whatever I touched, her carpet, her cushion, her little table, all were in secret union with her. And when she called me by name for the first time, when she even came so near to me that her innocent breath touched my hearkening being! –
We spoke very little together. We felt ashamed of speech, would have liked to become tones and unite in one song of heaven.
And of what should we have spoken? We saw only each other. We shied away from speaking of ourselves.
Finally we spoke of the life of the earth.
Never before has so fervent and childlike a hymn been sung to her.
It did us good to strew the abundance of our hearts in the lap of the good mother. We felt relieved thereby, like the trees when the summer wind shakes their fruitful branches, and pours their sweet apples into the grass.
We named the earth one of the flowers of heaven, and heaven we named the infinite garden of life. As the roses delight one another with golden dust, we said, so the heroic sunlight delights the earth with its rays; the earth is a glorious living being, we said, similar to the divine when raging fire or mild, clear water wells from her heart, always happy when she nourishes herself on dewdrops or on storm clouds that she prepares for her enjoyment with help from the heavens; she, the ever more faithfully loving half of the sungod, originally perhaps more intimately united with him, but then divided from him by an all-ruling destiny, so that she seeks him, nears him, recedes from him and, between pleasure and grief, ripens to the highest beauty.
So we spoke. I give you the content, the spirit of it. But what is that without the life?
Twilight fell, and we had to go. Good night, you angel’s eyes! I thought in my heart, and appear soon to me again, beautiful, divine spirit, with your calm and fullness!
HYPERION TO BELLARMIN
A few days later, she came up to us. We walked about in the garden together. Diotima and I strayed ahead, absorbed; tears of bliss often came to my eyes over the holy being who walked so unassumingly by my side.
We now stood on the edge of the mountain’s summit, and gazed out into the infinite east.
Diotima’s eyes opened wide; and softly, as a bud unfolds, her lovely little face opened before the airs of the heavens, became pure speech and soul, and, as if beginning to take flight into the clouds, her whole figure stood stretching gently upward in light majesty, and her feet barely touched the earth.
O I could have seized her under the arms, as the eagle his Ganymede, and flown away with her over the sea and its islands.
Now she stepped farther forward, and gazed down the precipitous rock face. She took pleasure in measuring the terrifying depths, and losing herself down in the night of the woods that stretched their brig
ht crowns upward from cliff fragments and foaming rain-fed streams below.
The railing on which she leaned was somewhat low. Thus I might hold this enticing creature briefly while she bent forward. O! hot, trembling bliss passed through my being, and fever and frenzy were in all my senses, and my hands burned like coals when I touched her.
And then the heartfelt pleasure of standing beside her so intimately, and the tender, childish worry that she might fall, and the joy in the enthusiasm of the glorious maiden!
What is all that men did and thought for millennia over against one instant of love! But it is also the greatest achievement and most divine beauty in nature! at the threshold of life, all stairs lead there. From there we come, to there we go.
HYPERION TO BELLARMIN
I should forget only her singing; only those tones of the soul should never return in my unceasing dreams.
One does not know the proudly sailing swan when it sits slumbering on the shore.
Only when she sang did one come to know the lovely silent being who was so loath to speak.
Then, only then did the heavenly, unforthcoming being emerge in her majesty and loveliness; then the song wafted, at times so imploringly and so cajolingly, at times like a divine command, from her tender, blooming lips. And how the heart stirred in that divine voice, how all greatness and humility, all pleasure and all grief of life appeared beautified in the nobility of those tones!
As the swallow snatches bees in flight, so she always seized us all.
It was not pleasure and not admiration, but the peace of heaven that came among us.
A thousand times I have said it to her and to myself: the most beautiful is also the most holy. And thus was everything in her. As her song, so her life.
Hyperion Page 5
