The Poet Friedrich Hölderlin

Sketch of “mad poet” Hölderlin

“Night, the astonishing, there, the stranger to all that is human,
Over the mountain-tops mournful and gleaming draws on.”
— Friedrich Hölderlin, from Bread and Wine

Dear Friends,

At our meeting on February 8, we spent the entire hour with Friedrich Hölderlin, a poet (and philosopher) who is new to our group. I did not make a recording.

Section poets Peter Rennick and Nicholas Morrow contributed verses to begin our evening. I discussed early German romanticism in respect to the literary development of Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophy, and we touched on a few important texts briefly, including “The Oldest Systematic Program of German Idealism” (so-called), “Bread and Wine,” and the novel Hyperion. In respect to the first text, I mentioned the work of Prof. Eckart Förster, who has contributed regularly over the years to Section colloquia and presentations in Dornach at the Goetheanum (Forschungskolloquium Philosophie). I made a reconnaissance of the literary terrain in which we situate Hölderlin, with a view toward a walkabout in the extended modernist landscape that includes Nietzsche, Rilke, Celan, Heidegger — and of course Rudolf Steiner, among others.

What do I do when I philosophize?
I speculate homeward . . .
— Novalis, excerpt of a fragment from the Fichte Studies, 1795-96

Novalis, another Friedrich, entered our discussion also as a poet of comparison to Friedrich Hölderlin. I briefly contrasted the biographies of the two poets in respect to their historical and literary situations. Novalis died early; Hölderlin spent the last half of his life (36 years) as a mad poet in and about a room in a tower in Tübingen. I made reference to the title of Owen Barfield’s collection of “anthroposophical” essays “Romanticism Comes of Age” and referenced the difficulties that arise when one attempts to define the wiggly, illusive term “romanticism.” As a place to start such a quixotic quest, I referred to our Section work with Novalis over the past several years and pointed again to the well known fragment by Novalis that begins “the world must be romanticized.”

Click this sentence for more information on Novalis from previous Section meetings over the past years.

“Friends, the soil is poor.
We must scatter abundant seed
to ensure even a middling harvest.”
— Novalis, from Pollen

“. . . the sceptic finds flaws and contradiction in all that is thought
only because he knows the harmony of flawless beauty
that never is thought . . .”
— Friedrich Hölderlin, from the novel Hyperion

“Beauty, Truth, and Goodness?”

I discussed the tension between philosophy (“science”) and poetry in respect to the theme of Beauty in so far as that theme comes forward in the work of Novalis, Hölderlin, and quite a few other highly significant members of their generation—all of whom influenced Rudolf Steiner. “Beauty, Truth, and Goodness” was an important seed topic at the Section Conference in 2024, and this topic will be nurtured again at the North American Section Conference planned for May 2025. Section leader Christiane Haid will join us for that conference, as she did last year. I referred persons to Christiane’s important essay “The Dawn of the Beautiful: A Utopian Future?” and to her opening keynote lecture of the 2024 Section Conference — two texts that explore this theme of “Goodness, Truth, and Beauty” and which relate very directly to the topic of our recent February 8 meeting.

“It is not we who have language; rather, language has us . . .”
— Martin Heidegger, from Hölderlin’s Hymns “Germania” and “The Rhine”

“Human beings without an aesthetic sense are our philosophers of letters. The philosophy of spirit is an aesthetic philosophy. One cannot be witty in anything; one cannot even reason wittily about history – without an aesthetic sense. Here it shall be revealed what is lacking in people who do not understand ideas – and confess faithfully enough that everything is obscure to them as soon as it goes beyond tables and registers.”
— F. Holderlin or maybe F. Hegel or maybe F. Schelling (or maybe Schiller??), but probably the first F, according to Eckart Förster; an excerpt from “The Oldest Systematic Program of German Idealism” that we considered on February 8.

And while we’re on the topic of early German romanticism, keep in mind that the May 2025 Conference will feature a performance of “Hymns to the Night” in a fresh translation for our 21st century. This project is offered as an artistic a collaboration (poetry and music) by myself and virtuouso Canadian violinist Emmanuel Vukovich. It is an attempt to explore the Orphic dimensions of a poem (Hymns to the Night) that Rudolf Steiner and Marie von Sivers celebrated many times in the first decades of the 20th century. For more about Novalis and Anthroposophy and Rudolf Steiner, click this sentence.

“I once discovered amongst his papers a terrifying phrase replete with mystery. After honouring the renown of a list of Greek heroes and the beauty of the realm of gods, he says: ‘Now for the first time I understand humankind, because I dwell far from it and in solitude.”
— Wilhelm Waiblinger, from Friedrich Hölderlin’s Life, Poetry and Madness, 1831.

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