Friedrich Holderlin

is the poet who writes about poetry. He is the poet’s poet, or the poet of poetry itself.

The reason we focus on Hölderlin is because he is the poet who writes about poetry. He is the poet’s poet, or the poet of poetry itself. In what sense does Hölderlin write poetry about poetry? In this simple essay, Heidegger gives us five brief pointers on Hölderlin.

is a writer who, in a present that was null, companionless, having nothing to say and nothing to do except this very nothing, was deeply aware of existing only in waiting, in movement held above its nothingness.

in a present that was null, companionless, having nothing to say and nothing to do except this very nothing, [Hölderlin] was deeply aware of existing only in waiting, in movement held above its nothingness. (Blanchot 1982a: 117)

is a writer whose poetry is itself a mode of language that engages its nihilism by enacting the possibility of other nonappropriative ways of knowing.

The distinctiveness of Hölderlin for Heidegger is not, however, that he writes about such nihilism, but that his poetry is itself a mode of language that engages it by enacting the possibility of other nonappropriative ways of knowing.

is a writer whose poetry is a ‘poetry of poetry, engaged explicitly with disclosive power, with the power of revealing deep history (Geschichte), those most basic and unthought modes of being which are normally too close, or too obvious, for us to see.

Heidegger writes that Hölderlin’s is a ‘poetry of poetry’ (E: 52). He means by this not some vague notion of poetry which is about itself, becoming a sort of criticism, but poetry engaged explicitly with the very kind of disclosive power described in ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’, in other words with its power of revealing deep history (Geschichte), those most basic and unthought modes of being which are normally too close, or too obvious, for us to see.

is a writer whose poem ‘Homecoming’ is not a poem about homecoming; rather, the poetic activity which it is, is the homecoming itself, and still it comes to pass as long as its words ring like a bell in the language of the German people.

Homecoming is not a poem about homecoming; rather, the elegy, the poetic activity which it is, is the homecoming itself, and still it comes to pass as long as its words ring like a bell in the language of the German people. (E: 44)

is a writer of poetic intimacy, a ‘mystery of reserving nearness’ that brings nearer but by allowing distance, joins together by acknowledging separateness and ‘understands’ in yet holding a reserve of the non-intelligible.

The kind of poetic perception engaged in ‘Homecoming’ corresponds to Hölderlin’s own concept of a true ‘intimacy’ (Innigkeit) with things or people. This alternative notion of knowing is not, of course, just a matter of the subjective feelings of the returned traveller, though that may be provisionally helpful as an analogue: it involves Hölderlin’s deepest engagement with the unregarded assumptions and modes of perception of his age, with what would later be termed nihilism. This ‘intimacy’ is the notion (surely in debate with the model of knowledge being elaborated at this time by Hölderlin’s friend Hegel (GA 39: 129ff)) of a ‘poetic’ knowing that brings nearer but by allowing distance, joins together by acknowledging separateness and ‘understands’ in yet holding a reserve of the non-intelligible (see GA 39: 249–50). This is what Heidegger’s lecture calls the ‘mystery of the reserving nearness’ (E: 43, 47), or simply, the ‘sacred’ (E: 46).

is distinctive in his whole poetic mission, which is to make poems solely out of the essence of poetry.

This helps us understand why Hölderlin, for Heidegger, is so special. Heidegger does not deny that in Virgil, Shakespeare, Sophocles or Dante ‘the essence of poetry comes to rich expression’, more than in Hölderlin (E: 52). Hölderlin’s distinctiveness is ‘his whole poetic mission’, which is ‘to make poems solely out of the essence of poetry’.

is a writer in whose ‘poetry of poetry’, the disclosive, defamiliarizing power of the poetic loses its imperceptibility and becomes itself the issue.

In Hölderlin’s ‘poetry of poetry’, the disclosive, defamiliarizing power of the poetic loses its imperceptibility and becomes itself the issue.

Friedrich Holderlin, n.Definitions

Friedrich Holderlin