Hyperion

by Friedrich Holderlin

  There he sleeps, and smiles contentedly in the midst of our destiny. The good man! he does not know what I am doing. He would not tolerate it. You must write to Diotima, he commanded me, and must tell her to set out soon to flee with you to a more bearable land. But he does not know that a heart that has learned to despair as his and mine have is nothing more for the beloved. No! no! you would eternally find no peace with Hyperion, you would need to be unfaithful, and that I will spare you.

  And so farewell, you sweet maiden! farewell! I would like to say to you: Go here, go there; there the wellsprings of life rush. I would like to show you a freer land, a land full of beauty and full of soul, and say: Escape there! But O heaven! if I could do this, I would be another man, and then I would also not need to take leave – take leave? O! I do not know what I am doing. I imagined myself so composed, so collected. Now I reel, and my heart flings itself about like an impatient sick man. Woe to me! I am destroying my last joy. But it must be, and the O! of nature is here in vain. I owe it to you, and besides, I was born to be homeless and without a place of repose. O earth! O you stars! will I dwell nowhere in the end?

  Once more I would like to return to your bosom, wherever that might be! Ethereal eyes! Once more I would like to encounter myself in you! hang on your lips, you lovely, inexpressible being! and drink into myself your enchanting, holy, sweet life – but do not listen to this! I beg you, do not heed this! I would say that I was a seducer if you listened to it. You know me, you understand me. You fathom how deeply you respect me if you do not pity me, do not listen to me.

  I can, I may no more – how can the priest live when his god is no more? O genius of my people! O soul of Greece! I must descend, I must seek you in the realm of the dead.

  HYPERION TO DIOTIMA

  I have waited long, I will confess to you, I have fervently hoped for a word of parting from your heart, but you are silent. That, too, is a language of your beautiful soul, Diotima.

  Is it not true that the holier chords do not therefore cease? is it not true, Diotima, that even if love’s soft moonlight sets, the higher stars of its heaven still shine? O it is my last joy, that we are inseparable, even if no sound returns to me from you, no shadow of our lovely youthful days!

  I gaze out into the sunset-red sea, I stretch my arms out toward the distant region where you live, and my soul warms once again in all the joys of love and youth.

  O earth! my cradle! all bliss and all grief is in our leave-taking from you.

  You dear Ionian islands! and you, my Calaurea, and you, my Tina, you are all before my eyes, as distant as you may be, and my spirit flies with the breeze over the surging waters; and you that dawn for me there, you shores of Teos and Ephesus, where I once walked with Alabanda in the days of hope, you appear to me again as you did then, and I would like to sail across to the land and kiss the ground and warm the ground at my bosom, and stammer all sweet words of parting to the silent earth before I fly up into the open air.

  What a shame, what a shame that things are not going better now among men, or else I would gladly remain on this good star. But I can dispense with this earth; that is more than all that it can give.

  Let us, O child! bear servitude in the sunlight, Polyxena’s mother said to her, and her love of life could not have spoken more beautifully. But the sunlight that advises me against servitude does not let me remain on the degraded earth, and the holy rays attract me like paths leading home.

  For a long time, the majesty of the soul free of fate has been more present to me than all else; in glorious solitude I have at times lived within myself; I have grown accustomed to shaking off outward things like flakes of snow; how, then, should I shy from seeking so-called death? have I not liberated myself a thousand times in thoughts? how, then, should I hesitate to do it one time in reality? Are we then like serfs, fettered to the soil that we plow? are we like tame fowls that may not leave the barnyard because they are fed there?

  We are like the young eagles that the father drives out of the nest so that they may seek prey in the high ether.

  Tomorrow our fleet goes to battle, and the combat will be hot enough. I regard this battle as a bath to wash the dust off me; and I will probably find what I wish; wishes like mine are granted easily on the spot. And so in the end I would have attained something after all through my campaign, and see that no effort among men is in vain.

  Pious soul! I would like to say: Think of me when you come upon my grave. But they will probably cast me into the tide, and I will gladly see my remains sink down where all the wellsprings and rivers that I loved converge, and where the storm cloud rises and soaks the mountains and the valleys that I loved. And we? O Diotima! Diotima! when will we see each other again?

  It is impossible, and my innermost life rebels when I attempt to think as if we had lost each other. I would wander through the stars for millennia, clothe myself in all forms, in all languages of life, so as to encounter you one more time. But I think that what is alike soon comes together.

  Great soul! you will be able to reconcile yourself to this parting, and so let me wander! Greet your mother! Greet Notara and our other friends!

  Greet the trees, too, where I encountered you for the first time, and the joyful brooks where we walked, and the beautiful gardens of Angele, and, you dear maiden! let my image encounter you. Farewell.

  * In the year 1770. [Hölderlin]

  SECOND BOOK

  HYPERION TO BELLARMIN

  I was in a lovely dream when I transcribed for you the letters that I once exchanged. Now I write to you again, my Bellarmin! and lead you farther down, down into the deepest depths of my sorrows, and then, you last of my dear ones! come out with me to the place where a new day shines upon us.

  The battle of which I wrote to Diotima began. The ships of the Turks had taken refuge in the canal between the island of Chios and the Asiatic coast, and stood along firm land at Cesme. My admiral left the line with his ship, on which I was, and began the prelude with the first ship of the Turks. The furious pair was heated to frenzy at once with the first attack; it was a terrible tumult, intoxicated with revenge. The ships were soon fastened to each other by their rigging; the raging battle became more and more cramped.

  A deep feeling of life still permeated me. I felt warm and good in all my limbs. As one tenderly departing, my spirit felt itself for the last time in all its senses. And now, full of hot displeasure, because I knew no better than to let myself be slaughtered in a throng of barbarians, with raging tears in my eyes, I stormed to where death was certain for me.

  I met the enemies at close enough quarters, and in a few moments, of the Russians who fought at my side not even one remained. I stood there alone, full of pride, and threw my life like a beggar’s penny before the barbarians, but they did not want me. They looked at me as at someone against whom one fears to sin, and destiny appeared to respect me in my despair.

  In utmost self-defense, one of them finally aimed a blow at me and struck me so that I fell. From then on, I was aware of nothing more until I awakened again on Paros, to which I had been brought on a ship.

  From the servant who carried me out of the battle I heard afterward that the two ships that had begun the combat had blown up the instant after he and the surgeon had taken me away in a boat. The Russians had hurled fire into the Turkish ship, and because their own was fastened to the other, it, too, burned.

  How this dreadful battle came to an end is known to you. Thus one poison punishes the other, I cried, when I learned that the Russians had burned the entire Turkish fleet – thus the tyrants exterminate themselves.

  HYPERION TO BELLARMIN

  Six days after the battle I lay in a tortured, deathlike sleep. My life was like a night, interrupted by pains as by flashing lightning. The first thing that I recognized was Alabanda. He had, as I learned, not left my side for an instant, had attended to me almost single-handedly, with incredible tirelessness, with a thousand tender, domestic concerns of which he otherwise wo
uld never have thought in his life, and on his knees before my bed, he had been heard crying: O live, my dear one! so that I may live!

  It was a happy awakening, Bellarmin! when my eyes again opened to the light, and with tears of reunion, the glorious man stood before me.

  I held out my hand to him, and the proud man kissed it with all the delight of love. He lives, he cried, O savior! O nature! you good, all-healing one! you do not forsake your poor pair, the errant pair without a fatherland! O I will never forget it, Hyperion! how your ship went up in fire before my eyes, and, thundering, swept the sailors with it into the raging flames, and among the few who were saved was no Hyperion. I was out of my senses, and the furious clamor of battle did not calm me. Yet I soon heard word of you, and flew after you as soon as we were finished with the enemy. –

  And how he now watched over me! how he held me captive with loving care in the magic circle of his kindnesses! how he, without a word, taught me through his great calm to understand the free course of the world without envy and in a manly fashion!

  O you sons of the sun! you freer souls! much has been lost in this Alabanda. I sought in vain and implored life since he is gone; such a Roman nature I have never again found. The carefree, deeply intelligent, brave, noble man! Where is a man, if he was not one? And when he was friendly and pious, it was as when the light of evening plays in the dark of the majestic oak tree and its leaves drip from the storm of the day.

  HYPERION TO BELLARMIN

  It was in the beautiful days of autumn that, half-recovered from my wound, I walked to the window again for the first time. I returned to life with calmer senses, and my soul had become more attentive. With their softest magic the heavens wafted upon me, and mild as a rain of flowers the bright rays of the sun streamed down. There was a great, quiet, tender spirit in this season, and the peace of completion, the bliss of ripeness in the rustling branches surrounded me like the renewed youth for which the ancients hoped in their Elysium.

  For a long time, I had not enjoyed with a pure soul the childlike life of the world; now my eyes opened with all the joy of reunion, and blessed nature had remained changeless in her beauty. My tears flowed like an expiatory sacrifice before her, and shuddering, a fresh heart rose in me from the old discontent. O holy plant world! I cried, we strive and reflect and yet have you! we struggle with mortal powers to cultivate the beautiful, and yet it grows, carefree, beside us! is it not true, Alabanda? men are made to provide for the necessities, what remains presents itself. And yet – I cannot forget how much more I wanted.

  Let it suffice for you, dear one! that you are, cried Alabanda, and do not disturb your quiet workings anymore through mourning.

  I will rest, I said. O I will tear up all the projects, all the claims, like promissory notes. I will keep myself pure, as an artist keeps himself; you I will love, innocent life, life of the grove and the wellspring! you I will honor, O sunlight! I will soothe myself in you, beautiful ether that animates the stars, and here, too, breathes about these trees and here touches us deep within the breast! O obstinacy of men! like a beggar, I have bowed my neck, and the silent gods of nature gazed upon me with all their gifts! – you smile, Alabanda? O how often, in our earliest times, have you smiled thus when your boy chattered to you in intoxicated, youthful exuberance, while you, like a serene temple pillar, stood there in the rubble of the world and had to suffer the wild tendrils of my love growing about you – see! like a bandage, all falls from my eyes, and the old, golden days come alive and are here again.

  O! he cried, this seriousness in which we lived and this lust for life!

  When we hunted in the forest, I cried, when we bathed in the tide, when we sang and drank as the sun and the wine and our eyes and our lips shone through the laurel shade – it was a unique life, and our spirit illuminated our youthful happiness like a shining heaven. Therefore neither of us parts from the other, said Alabanda.

  O I have a grave confession to make to you, I said. Will you believe that I wanted to go away? from you! that I violently sought my death? was that not heartless? mad? O and my Diotima! she should leave me, I wrote to her, and thereafter another letter, the evening before the battle – and in it you wrote, he cried, that you sought your end in the battle? O Hyperion! But she probably does not yet have the last letter. You must hasten to write her that you live.

  Dearest Alabanda! I cried, that is a consolation! I will write at once, and send my servant forth with it. O I will offer him all that I have to hurry and arrive in Calaurea in time. –

  And the other letter, in which you wrote of renunciation, the good soul will understand, and forgive you easily, he added.

  Will she forgive? I cried; O all you hopes! yes! if I should still be happy with the angel!

  You will still be happy, cried Alabanda; the most beautiful time of life still remains for you. The youth is a hero, the man a god, if he can live to see it.

  Dawn broke wondrously in my soul as he spoke.

  The trees’ crowns shuddered softly; like flowers from the dark earth, stars sprouted from the womb of the night and the springtime of the heavens shone in holy joy upon me.

  HYPERION TO BELLARMIN

  A few moments later, as I was about to write to Diotima, Alabanda joyfully came into the room again. A letter, Hyperion! he cried; I started, and flew to it.

  How long, wrote Diotima, I had to live without a sign from you! You wrote to me of the fateful day in Mistra, and I replied swiftly; yet by all appearances, you did not receive my letter. You wrote to me again soon thereafter, briefly and gloomily, and told me you were disposed to join the Russian fleet; I replied again; yet you did not receive this letter either; now I, too, waited in vain, from May until now, the end of the summer, when, several days ago, the letter came that told me that I should renounce you, dear one!

  You reckoned on me, believed of me that this letter could not offend me. That brought joy to my heart in the midst of my sadness.

  Unhappy, exalted spirit! I have understood you only too well. O it is so utterly natural that you will never love because your greater wishes languish. Must you not scorn food when you are dying of thirst?

  I soon knew it; I could not be all to you. Could I loose the bonds of mortality for you? could I slake the flame in your breast, for which no wellspring flows and no grapevine grows? could I offer you the joys of a world in a cup?

  That is what you want. That is what you need, and you cannot do otherwise. The boundless impotence of your contemporaries has robbed you of your life.

  He who, like you, was affronted in his whole soul no longer reposes in an individual joy; he who, like you, has felt the insipid nothing is exhilarated only in the highest spirit; he who experienced death as you did recovers only among the gods.

  Fortunate are all those who do not understand you! Whoever understands you must share your greatness and your despair.

  I found you as you are. Life’s first curiosity drove me to this wondrous being. Inexpressibly, the tender soul attracted me; and childishly fearless, I played about your dangerous flame. – The beautiful joys of our love calmed you; but, bad man! only to make you wilder. They soothed, they consoled me, too, they made me forget that you were fundamentally inconsolable, and that I, too, was not far from becoming so ever since I looked into your beloved heart.

  In Athens, among the ruins of the Olympieion, it seized me anew. In a light-hearted hour, to be sure, I had still thought: the youth’s grief may perhaps not be so profound and inexorable after all. It is so rare that a man, with the first step into life, so suddenly, so minutely, so quickly, so deeply, felt the whole destiny of his time, and that it is so ineradicably embedded in him, this feeling, because he is not rough enough to drive it out and not weak enough to weep it out – this, my dear! is so rare that we think it almost unnatural.

  Now, in the rubble of serene Athens, now it struck me too deeply, that the tide has turned so that now the dead walk upon the earth above, and the living, the divine men, are un
der it; now I saw it too literally and too truly written on your face; now I conceded that you were eternally right. But at the same time, you appeared greater to me. A being full of secret power, full of deep, undeveloped significance, a uniquely promising youth – thus you seemed to me. He to whom destiny speaks so loudly may speak even more loudly to destiny, I said to myself; the more unfathomably he suffers, the more unfathomably powerful he is. From you, from you alone, I hoped for all recovery. I saw you travel. I saw you work. O the transformation! Founded by you, the Grove of Academe grew green again over hearkening pupils, and the plane tree of the Ilissus heard holy conversations again as in the past.

  In your school, the genius of our youths soon attained the seriousness of the ancients, and its transitory games became more immortal, for it felt ashamed, believed the butterfly’s flight to be imprisonment. –

  For it, to steer a horse would have sufficed; now it is a commander. All too contentedly would it have sung an idle little song; now it is an artist. For you had revealed the powers of the heroes, the powers of the world to them in open battle; you had given them the riddles of your heart to solve; thus the youths learned to unite what is great, learned to understand the play of nature, the soulful play, and forgot amusement. – Hyperion! Hyperion! did you not make me, the immature maiden, into a Muse? So it went, too, for the others.

  O! now men bound together in fellowship did not so lightly forsake one another; they no longer wandered adrift among one another like sand in the storm of the wilderness; nor did youth and age mock each other; nor did the stranger lack a host; and compatriots never again isolated themselves from one another; and lovers never again lost pleasure in each other; by your wellsprings, nature, they refreshed themselves, O! by the holy joys that well up mysteriously from your depths and renew the spirit; and the gods exhilarated again the withering soul of men; the heart-sustaining gods preserved every friendly bond among them. For you, Hyperion! had healed the eyes of your Greeks so that they saw the living, and you had ignited the enthusiasm that slept in them as fire sleeps in wood, so that they felt the silent, constant enthusiasm of nature and of her pure children. O! now men no longer took the beautiful world as laymen take the artist’s poem when they praise the words and seek profit in them. You became a magical example, O living nature! for the Greeks; and ignited by the happiness of the eternally young gods, all the deeds of men were, as in the past, a festival; and more beautiful than war music, Helios’s light guided the young heroes to deeds.