Hyperion

by Friedrich Holderlin

  He must, I thought, for these are his men, he must be conspiring with these men against you! What did he want from you? What could he have sought from you, the enthusiast? O if only he had gone his way! But they have their peculiar longing to consort with their opposite! To have such a strange beast in their stable pleases them well! –

  And yet I had been unutterably happy with him, had so often sunk into his embraces to awaken from them with invincibility in my breast, had so often been hardened and refined in his fire like steel!

  When I pointed out the Dioscuri to him on a clear midnight and Alabanda laid his hand upon my heart and said: These are only stars, Hyperion, only letters with which the name of the heroic brothers is written in the heavens; they are in us! living and true, with their courage and their divine love, and you, you are the son of the gods and share your immortality with your mortal Castor! –

  When I rambled through the woods of Ida with him and we descended into the valley to ask the silent grave mounds there after their dead, and I said to Alabanda that among the grave mounds one perhaps belonged to the spirit of Achilles and his beloved, and Alabanda confided in me how he often childishly thought that we would someday fall in one war-torn valley and repose together under one tree – who would have thought that then?

  I reflected with all the strength of spirit that remained to me, I accused him, defended him and accused him again all the more bitterly; I strove against my mind, sought to brighten my disposition and thereby only darkened it completely.

  O! My eye was sore from so many blows of the fist, had hardly begun to heal, how should it now gaze more healthily?

  Alabanda visited me the next day. My heart boiled when he entered, but I restrained myself, as much as his pride and his calm agitated and incensed me.

  The air is glorious, he finally said, and the evening will be very beautiful, let us climb the Acropolis together!

  I accepted. For a long time we spoke not a word. What do you want? I finally asked.

  You can ask that? replied the savage man with a melancholy that pierced my soul. I was dismayed, confused.

  What shall I think of you? I finally resumed.

  That which I am! he replied calmly.

  You need absolution, I said with a changed voice, and looked at him with pride. Absolve yourself! Purify yourself!

  That was too much for him.

  How does it happen, he cried indignantly, that this man shall bend me as he pleases? – It is true, I left school too early, I had dragged all chains and broken them all, only one was still lacking, only one was still to be broken, I was not yet castigated by a moody dreamer – grumble all you want! I have remained silent long enough.

  O Alabanda! Alabanda! I cried.

  Be silent, he replied, and do not use my name as a dagger against me!

  Now anger erupted fully from me, too. We did not rest until turning back was nearly impossible. With violence we destroyed the garden of our love. Often we stood silently and would have so gladly, so joyfully fallen into each other’s arms, but wretched pride stifled every sound of love that rose from the heart.

  Farewell! I cried finally, and rushed away. Involuntarily, I looked back; involuntarily, Alabanda had followed me.

  A strange beggar, is he not, Alabanda, I cried to him, he throws his last penny into the mire!

  If that is so, then may he starve, he cried, and departed.

  I staggered blindly onward, now stood by the sea and gazed at the waves – O! underneath them was where my heart strove to be, underneath them, and my arms flew toward the free tide; but soon, as if from the heavens, a gentler spirit came over me, and imposed order on my unruly, suffering heart with its calm staff; I reflected more serenely on my destiny, my faith in the world, my disconsolate experiences, I contemplated man as I had felt and known him from my early youth on, in his manifold upbringings, and found everywhere muffled or screaming discord; only in childishly simple confines did I still find the pure melodies – it is better, I said to myself, to become a bee and build one’s house in innocence than to rule with the masters of the world and howl with them as with wolves, than to dominate the peoples and besmirch one’s hands with impure material; I wanted to return to Tina and live for my gardens and fields.

  Smile all you want! For me, it was profoundly serious. If the life of the world consists in the alternation of opening and closing, in departure and in return to itself, why should the heart of man not also?

  Certainly, the new lesson was hard for me to accept; certainly, I was loath to part from the proud error of my youth – who gladly tears off his wings? – but it had to be so!

  I carried it through. I now truly embarked. A fresh mountain wind drove me out of the harbor of Smyrna. With a wondrous peace, just like a child that knows nothing of the next instant, I lay on my ship and gazed at the trees and mosques of this city, my green walks on the shore, my footpath up to the Acropolis, I gazed at all this and let it recede farther and ever farther; but now, as I came out onto the high sea, and all sank down little by little like a coffin into the grave, all at once it was as if my heart had broken – O heaven! I cried, and all the life in me awakened and struggled to hold the fleeing present, but it was gone, gone!

  Like a mist, it lay before me, the heavenly land where, like a deer on the open pasture, I had wandered far and wide through the valleys and the heights, and brought the echo of my heart to the wellsprings and the rivers, into the distances and the depths of the earth.

  Over there I had climbed the Tmolus in lonely innocence; down there where Ephesus once stood in its happy youth and Teos and Miletus, up there into the holy, mourning Troas, I had wandered with Alabanda, with Alabanda, and, like a god, I had ruled over him, and, like a child, tender and trusting, I had served his eye with joy of the soul, with profound, rejoicing pleasure in his being, always happy when I held his horse’s bridle or when, raised above myself, I encountered his soul in glorious resolutions, in bold thoughts, in the fire of oration!

  And now all this had gone away, now I was nothing more, was so irremediably deprived of everything, had become the poorest among men and did not myself know how.

  O eternal aberration! I thought, when will man break free from your chains?

  We speak of our hearts, our plans, as if they were ours, and yet there is an alien power that flings us about and lays us in the grave as it pleases, and of which we know neither whence it came nor where it is going.

  We want to grow upward and spread boughs and branches outward, and yet soil and weather bring us toward what lies ahead, and when lightning falls upon your crown and splits you down to the root, poor tree! what does it have to do with you?

  So I thought. Are you bothered by this, my Bellarmin! You will hear still more.

  Precisely this, dear friend! is what is so sad, that our spirit so gladly assumes the form of the errant heart, so gladly clings to fleeting mourning, that the thought which should heal pains itself falls sick, that the gardener who should plant rosebushes so often tears his hand on them, O! this has made a fool of many a man before others whom he would otherwise have ruled like an Orpheus, this has so often made a mockery of the noblest nature before such men as one finds on every street, this is the reef on which the darlings of heaven founder – that their love is powerful and tender like their spirit, that the waves of their hearts often move more strongly and swiftly than the trident with which the god of the sea dominates them, and thus, dear friend! let no one elevate himself too highly.

  HYPERION TO BELLARMIN

  Can you hear, will you comprehend, if I speak to you of my long, grieving sickness?

  Take me as I give myself, and contemplate that it is better to die because one lived than to live because one has never lived! Do not envy those who are free of suffering, the idols of wood for whom nothing is lacking because their souls are so poor, who care nothing about rain and sunshine because they have nothing that needs cultivation.

  Yes! yes! it is quite easy to be happ
y and calm with shallow heart and constricted spirit. One can grant it to them; who is perturbed that a wooden target does not wail when the arrow strikes it, or that a hollow pot makes such a dull sound when one hurls it against the wall?

  Only you must be content, dear people, you must wonder in silence if you do not comprehend that others are not also so happy, also so self-sufficient; you must be wary of making your wisdom into law, for it would be the end of the world if you were obeyed.

  I now lived very quietly, very unassumingly in Tina. I truly let the appearances of the world pass by like fog in autumn, laughed at times with moist eyes at my heart when it flew toward them for nourishment like a bird toward painted grapes, and I remained quiet and friendly.

  I now gladly permitted everyone his opinion, his vice. I was converted, I no longer wanted to convert anyone; I only felt sad when I saw that people believed I left their farce untouched because I regarded it as highly and dearly as they did. I did not want to submit to their inanity, yet I sought to let it be when I could. It is their joy, I thought, they live from it.

  Often I even resigned myself to taking part, and when I was so soullessly, so grudgingly present, no one noticed, no one found anything wanting, and had I asked them to forgive me, they would have stood in wonder and asked: But what have you done to us? The forbearing creatures!

  Often, when I stood at my window in the morning and the bustling day greeted me, I, too, could momentarily forget myself, could look about me as if I might undertake something in which my being could still find pleasure as in the past, but then I chided myself, then I recalled myself like someone who lets slip a word of his mother tongue in a land where it is not understood – where shall you go, my heart? I said sensibly to myself, and obeyed.

  What is it, then, that man wants so much? I often asked; what is the meaning of the infinity in his breast? Infinity? Where is it? Who has perceived it? He wants more than he is capable of! that might be true! O! you have experienced it often enough. And it is necessary as it is. What gives strength its sweet, rapturous feeling is that it does not pour out as it will; precisely this creates the beautiful dreams of immortality and all the lovely and colossal phantoms that enchant man a thousand times over, this creates for man his Elysium and his gods, that the line of his life does not run straight, that he does not travel toward his destination like an arrow and that an alien power throws itself in the way of this fleeing creature.

  The heart’s wave would not foam up so beautifully and become spirit, if the ancient, mute rock, fate, did not stand opposed to it.

  But the impulse in our breast dies nonetheless, and with it our gods and their heaven.

  The fire flares up in joyful forms from the dark cradle where it slept, and its flame rises and falls and breaks apart and joyfully entwines around itself again until its matter is consumed, now it smokes and struggles and expires; what remains is ash.

  So it is with us. That is the core of all that the wise tell us in frightening, enticing mysteries.

  And you? what is your concern? That at times something rises in you, and, in one instant, like the mouth of a dying man, your heart opens itself to you so powerfully and then closes – precisely this is the ill omen.

  Only be still and let it run its course! Do not fabricate! Do not childishly attempt to make yourself a foot taller! – it is as if you wanted to create another sun and new pupils for it, to engender an earth and a moon.

  So I dreamed on. Patiently, little by little, I took leave of everything. – O you contemporaries of mine! do not consult with your doctors nor with your priests when you inwardly waste away!

  You have lost faith in all that is great; thus you must depart, you must, if this faith does not return like a comet from foreign skies.

  HYPERION TO BELLARMIN

  There is a forgetting of all existence, a falling silent of our being, in which we feel as if we have found everything.

  There is a falling silent, a forgetting of all existence, in which we feel as if we have lost everything, a night of our soul in which no glimmer of a star, not even a rotten piece of wood illuminates us.

  I had now become calm. Now nothing more drove me from bed at midnight. Now I no longer scorched myself in my own flame.

  I gazed out before me now, silent and solitary, and did not let my eye wander into the past and the future. Now far and near no longer pressed together in my mind; I did not see men when they did not force me to see them.

  Once the century lay before my mind like the eternally empty cask of the Danaides, and my soul poured itself out with prodigal love so as to fill the voids; now I saw no more voids, now the boredom of life no longer oppressed me.

  Now I no longer said to the flower, you are my sister! and to the wellsprings, we are of one kind! like an echo, I now faithfully gave each thing its name.

  As a river runs past arid banks, where no willow leaf is reflected in the water, the world ran past me stripped of beauty.

  HYPERION TO BELLARMIN

  Nothing can grow, and nothing so profoundly waste away, as man. He often compares his suffering to the night of the abyss and his bliss to the ether, and how little does that say?

  But nothing is more beautiful than when dawn breaks in him again after a long death, and pain goes like a brother to meet distantly dawning joy.

  O it was heavenly anticipation with which I now greeted the coming spring! Like the beloved’s distant lyre in silent air when all sleeps, spring’s soft melodies sounded about my breast; as if it came from Elysium, I hearkened to spring’s imminence when the dead branches stirred and a gentle breeze brushed my cheek.

  Lovely sky of Ionia! never had I been so attached to you, but never had my heart been so similar to you as then in its cheerful, tender play. –

  Who does not long for the joys of love and for great deeds when spring returns in the eye of heaven and in the bosom of earth?

  I rose as from a sickbed, quietly and slowly, but my breast trembled so blissfully with secret hopes that I forgot to ask what this should mean.

  More beautiful dreams enveloped me now in my sleep, and when I awakened they were in my heart like the trace of a kiss on the cheek of the beloved. O the morning light and I, we went to meet each other like reconciled friends when they still act somewhat estranged and yet already bear in their souls the imminent, infinite moment of embracing.

  My eye now truly opened once again, though admittedly no longer as it once had, armed and filled with my own strength; it had become more imploring, it begged for life, and yet in my innermost being I felt as if I could become as I once had been, and better.

  I gazed upon men again, as if I, too, should be active and find pleasure among them. I heartily took part everywhere.

  Heavens! what a malicious pleasure it was that the proud eccentric had now become like one of them! how they took amusement in it – that hunger drove the deer of the forest to run into their poultry yard!

  O! I sought my Adamas, my Alabanda, but no one appeared to me.

  Finally I wrote to Smyrna, and it was as if all the tenderness and all the power of man converged in one moment as I wrote; I wrote thus three times, but no reply, I begged, threatened, invoked all the hours of love and boldness, but no reply from the unforgettable man whom I loved unto death – Alabanda! I cried, O my Alabanda! You have broken the staff over me, condemning me to death. You held me upright, were the last hope of my youth! Now I want nothing more! Now it is solemn and sacred!

  We pity the dead as if they felt death, and yet the dead have peace. But this, this is the pain that no pain equals, this is the incessant feeling of utter annihilation when our life loses its meaning, when the heart tells itself, You must descend, and nothing remains of you; you have planted no flower, built no hut only so that you could say: I leave a trace behind on earth. O! and the soul can always be so full of longing even as it is so despondent!

  I always sought something, but I dared not open my eyes before men. I lived hours in which I feared
the laughter of a child.

  Meanwhile I was mostly very quiet and patient. I often had strange superstitions about the healing power of many things: from a dove that I bought, from a rowing trip, from a valley that the mountains concealed from me, I could expect consolation.

  Enough! Enough! had I grown up with Themistocles, had I lived among the Scipios, my soul would certainly never have come to know this side of itself.

  HYPERION TO BELLARMIN

  At times a strength of spirit still stirred in me. But, I admit, only destructively!

  What is man? I might begin; how does it happen that there is such a thing in the world, something that ferments like a chaos or molders like a rotten tree and never thrives to ripeness? How does nature tolerate this sour grape amidst its sweet ones?

  To the plants he says, I, too, was once like you! and to the pure stars, I will become like you in another world! Meanwhile he breaks asunder and now and again performs his arts on himself as if, when a living thing falls apart, he could put it together again like masonry; but it does not disconcert him when nothing is bettered through all his deeds; what he performs remains, after all, an artifice.

  O you poor men who feel this, who, like me, do not like to speak of human purpose, who, like me, are so completely seized by the nothing that reigns over us and so thoroughly recognize that we are born for nothing, that we love a nothing, slave away for nothing, so as to cross over gradually into nothing – how can I help it if your knees break when you reflect seriously on it? I, too, have at times sunk into these thoughts and have cried, why do you put the axe to my root, cruel spirit? and am still here.

  O once, you dark brothers! it was different. Then it was so beautiful above us, so beautiful and joyous before us; these hearts, too, overflowed before the distant, blessed phantoms, and our spirits, too, penetrated boldly, exultantly upward and broke through the confines, and when they looked about, alas, there was infinite emptiness.