/lit/ - Literature

https://web.archive.org/web/20120204121748/http://www.wbenjamin.org/holderlin.html
>From Wilhelm Waiblinger's essay:
>"Friedrich Hölderlin's Life, Poetry and Madness"

> Conz told me that Hölderlin once leaned over him and read aloud a few verses from Aeschylus, whereupon he then shrieked out in convulsive laughter: "I don't understand that. It's kamalatta language," for the coining of new words is one of Hölderlin's eccentricities.

>His Hyperion can occupy him all day long. Hundreds of times when I came to visit him, I could already hear him outside declaiming in a loud voice. His pathos is extravagant and Hyperion is almost always lying opened on his table; he often read aloud to me from it. And after he had read a passage, he would begin to exclaim with vigorous gestures, "O beautiful, beautiful Your Majesty!" Then he would read some more, suddenly adding, "You see there, Gracious Sir, a comma!" He also read aloud from other books which I put in his hands, but understood nothing because he's too distracted and can't even follow one of his own thoughts, let alone one foreign to him. Nonetheless, he would consequently praise the book excessively in his usual politeness.

>I wanted to give him other books and thought that he would surely read Homer, who he would certainly remember. I brought him a translation, but he would not accept it. I left it with the carpenter and told him that Hölderlin should keep it, that it now belonged to him. Just the same, he would not accept it. The reason for this is not pride but rather fear of upsetting himself by getting involved with something unfamiliar. Only what was familiar kept him calm: Hyperion and his dusty, old poets. Homer had been a stranger to him for twenty years, and now everything new upset him.

> music had not yet abandoned him completely. He still played piano correctly, though in a highly eccentric style. Whenever he plays, he sits at the instrument all day long. He will follow a childishly simple notion, turn it around, and play it back hundreds of times all day until one can endure it no longer. And along with this come quick, spasmodic fits which force him to race like lightning across the keyboard with his long, overgrown fingernails clattering all the way. It is the greatest displeasure for him to have these trimmed, and he has to be tricked like a stubborn and capricious child into having it done. When he has played long enough to stir his soul, he suddenly closes his eyes, lifts his head and begins to sing as if he wanted to pine and waste away. As many times as I heard it, I could never figure out what language it was; but he sang with an excessive pathos, and it sent shivers through every nerve to see and hear him in this way. Melancholy and sorrow were the spirit of his song, and one could tell that he had once been a good tenor.

https://web.archive.org/web/20120204121748/http://www.wbenjamin.org/holderlin.html
>From Wilhelm Waiblinger's essay:
>"Friedrich Hölderlin's Life, Poetry and Madness"

> Conz told me that Hölderlin once leaned over him and read aloud a few verses from Aeschylus, whereupon he then shrieked out in convulsive laughter: "I don't understand that. It's kamalatta language," for the coining of new words is one of Hölderlin's eccentricities.

>His Hyperion can occupy him all day long. Hundreds of times when I came to visit him, I could already hear him outside declaiming in a loud voice. His pathos is extravagant and Hyperion is almost always lying opened on his table; he often read aloud to me from it. And after he had read a passage, he would begin to exclaim with vigorous gestures, "O beautiful, beautiful Your Majesty!" Then he would read some more, suddenly adding, "You see there, Gracious Sir, a comma!" He also read aloud from other books which I put in his hands, but understood nothing because he's too distracted and can't even follow one of his own thoughts, let alone one foreign to him. Nonetheless, he would consequently praise the book excessively in his usual politeness.

>I wanted to give him other books and thought that he would surely read Homer, who he would certainly remember. I brought him a translation, but he would not accept it. I left it with the carpenter and told him that Hölderlin should keep it, that it now belonged to him. Just the same, he would not accept it. The reason for this is not pride but rather fear of upsetting himself by getting involved with something unfamiliar. Only what was familiar kept him calm: Hyperion and his dusty, old poets. Homer had been a stranger to him for twenty years, and now everything new upset him.

> music had not yet abandoned him completely. He still played piano correctly, though in a highly eccentric style. Whenever he plays, he sits at the instrument all day long. He will follow a childishly simple notion, turn it around, and play it back hundreds of times all day until one can endure it no longer. And along with this come quick, spasmodic fits which force him to race like lightning across the keyboard with his long, overgrown fingernails clattering all the way. It is the greatest displeasure for him to have these trimmed, and he has to be tricked like a stubborn and capricious child into having it done. When he has played long enough to stir his soul, he suddenly closes his eyes, lifts his head and begins to sing as if he wanted to pine and waste away. As many times as I heard it, I could never figure out what language it was; but he sang with an excessive pathos, and it sent shivers through every nerve to see and hear him in this way. Melancholy and sorrow were the spirit of his song, and one could tell that he had once been a good tenor.