Hölderlin's Pindar Fragments

[Anonymous No.18743557]

Someone asked for a discussion of the Pindar Fragments so I will try some effortposting.
This is the first fragment:

Unfaithfulness of Wisdom

O child whose love most clings
To the pontic game beast's skin,
The rock-enamoured, with all cities mix,
Praising, with good will,
That which is present,
And differently think when the times are different.

The lonely school's capacity for the world. The innocence of pure knowledge as the soul of intelligence. For intelligence is the art of remaining faithful in changing circumstances; knowledge the art of being sure in one's understanding in the midst of positive errors. If our understanding has been exercised intensely, it retains its strength even in diffusion; inasmuch as it easily recognizes alien things by its own honed sharpness, and so is not easily confused in uncertain situations.

So Jason, a pupil of the centaur, confronts Pelias:

I believe I possess
Chiron’s doctrine. For I come from the grotto,
By Charikli and Philyra, where the
Centaur’s girls fed me,
The holy; twenty years, though I,
Have spent and not one work
Or word, a dirty one, said
To them, and have returned home
To restore my father's rule.

[Anonymous No.18743603]

Previous thread by Hölderlin anon.
>>/lit/thread/S18719060#p18732144

And the original thread with a lot of sources and discussion of the most relevant myths.
>>/lit/thread/S18295963

[Anonymous No.18744001]

There are a few recurring themes in the fragments, especially wisdom, beauty, and justice. And of all the images there is nothing so prominent as the centaur. The centaur is the earliest man, of the Golden Age, or perhaps even before it - one may think of the story of the Centaur where he sees the first man without bull body and senses something far greater than death. This is not unlike the dawning light that Herodotus saw in the beginning of history, or the views from land and sea, primitive and modern man who collided in the end of history, perhaps ages.

The bull image is perhaps also better than the horse to understand, as there are more brute instincts, harder to control, which only intensifies the lofty heights to which the part of man raises himself. In such images the earth is inescapable, whereas in man detached from his animal half he appears already divided from nature.

[Anonymous No.18744108]

>>18744001
Even then there is an immense force of nature. In the Silver Age man is birthed from the Nymphs, emerges from the wounded bark of trees. But one sees in this an opposite movement, like that of the sea which gave birth to the forest, all of its tributaries which meet in the great rivers and lakes, the combining of salt waters with those of the mountain streams. These are often the most beautiful places, the valley and the waterfall, and in them is carried a great sense of timelessness, the idyllic and formative lands.
It is also the land of the centaur. Like him and the streams, truth exists in eruption, where there is forceful collision of not land or bodies but dominion and a wealth of character. Wisdom resides where this earthy-mighty character resides undiminished, and also where man can raise it to the loftiest heights, like air.

Where the titans carry the elements in doomed might, and the gods raise themselves above and master them, man must cut through like a forester who cannot leave any trace of his path. He is neither predator nor prey.
It is no mistake that the centaur comes to an end at the same time as the war of the titans and gods.

[Anonymous No.18744152]

>>18744108
One may think here of the light steps of deer and caribou on rocky lands. Or the Irish character which is strangely freed from the earth in its relation to stone. There is perhaps no more centauric being, which suggests something very unlike material or geographical determinism. In each land there is an uncertainty of elements which give possibility - the will of a nation is largely determined, but through the unseen, and here man frees himself more than anywhere.

[Anonymous No.18744175]

>>18744152
Centauric dances
https://youtube.com/watch?v=TJYR-D6Talw
https://youtu.be/SIxjHFHq9FQ

[Anonymous No.18744235]

This of course goes against any of the conservative thought which turns against the peasantry, the commoners. Often it is only in the earth-mighty that any tradition survives.
This may also be one of the main differences between Hölderlin and Nietzsche. What is of wealth and freedom in Hölderlin is hardened and forced in Nietzsche - a Zarathustra who can only cut wealth out of his mouth.

Such polarity and opposition is the gain of knowledge, perhaps often against wisdom - which can be a natural destructivenwss.

[Anonymous No.18744259]

One may say also that the conflict of wisdom, knowledge, and intelligence acts much like the test of the Muses, or when any god causes the appearance of numinous signs. The second (?) Fragment I think refers to this with Queen Truth, and the coarse lies. One may be drawn away from the instincts, or knowledge, towards the coarse lie.
Wisdom is to remain whole, like the centaur, in even the most trying conditions. But even then there is fate, as with Athena who perhaps herself turns away from wisdom in her destruction of Ajax.

[Anonymous No.18744620]

"Certain animals howl when they hear music. My better-bred people, however, laughed when there was talk about beauty of the spirit and youth of the heart. Wolves run away when someone strikes fire. When these men saw a spark of reason, they turned their backs like thieves."

[Anonymous No.18745454]

The conflict of Heidegger and Jünger may also be helpful here. The thinker and the seer.

[Anonymous No.18745592]

>>18744259
here's the fragment Of Truth:

Beginning of great virtue, Queen Truth,
May you not trip up
My thinking on harsh falsehood.

Fear of truth from taking pleasure in it. For the first living understanding of truth in a living sense is, like all pure feeling, exposed to confusion; so that one does not err through one’s own fault, nor through a disturbance, but because of the higher object, for which, relatively, the mind is too weak.

so what do you think he means by the "fear of truth from taking pleasure in it"? I think the most important thing here is the relation of reason and knowledge to the inifinite. this is very similar to what he says in the fragment The Inifinite:

Whether I of Right the wall,
The high one, or of crooked deception
Will ascend, and so me myself
Circumscribing, will live
Myself out; about this
Have I equivocal a
Mind, exactly to say.

One of the wise man’s jokes, and the puzzle should almost not be solved. For the wavering and struggling between right and intelligence only resolves itself in a continuous relation. ‘I have an equivocal mind exactly to say.’ That I may then nd out the connection between right and intelligence, which must not be ascribed to them themselves but to a third, through which they hang together infinitely (exactly) – that’s why I have an equivocal mind.

[Anonymous No.18745685]

Why are you reading a translation of a translation of Pindar? Hölderlin literally didn't add anything to the fragments, they are just his attempts at reproducing Pindar's style in German

[Anonymous No.18745719]

>>18745685

[Anonymous No.18745738]

>>18745685
but that is simply false. If you read what we posted above, you’ll see that the translation (and not even literal) is only one aspect of the work, his „commentary” is much more important.

[Anonymous No.18745739]

>>18745685
Why are you seething? Because you can't write at all?

[Anonymous No.18745755]

Can anyone comment about Hölderlin's division between paganism and christianity? Would he represent best what Nietzsche said about the two different values conflicting with each other, which could be summed up as the immanent and transcendent, the priestly and the warrior.

[Anonymous No.18745765]

>>18745738
Do you know if there is an edition in english (and hopefully english-german bilingual) of it?

[Anonymous No.18745835]

>>18745765
The Hamburger Collection "Poems and Fragments" which must be 900 pages or so. Last time I checked only the second edition was affordable. I would reprint it but haven't found the files.
I think the only things missing from the collection are his essays, letters, notes on Empedocles, and Hyperion. And perhaps a few of his late or madness poems.
The other thread has the Hamburger translation, as well as one of my own (which is more than a reworking than a proper translation). I'll post them here.

[Anonymous No.18745868]

Untreue der Weisheit

O Kind, dem an des pontischen Wilds Haut,
Des felsenliebenden, am meisten das Gemüt
Hängt, allen Städten geselle dich,
Das Gegenwärtige lobend
Gutwillig,
Und anderes denk in anderer Zeit.

Fähigkeit der einsamen Schule für die Welt. Das Unschuldige des reinen Wissens als die Seele der Klugheit. Denn Klugheit ist die Kunst, unter verschiedenen Umständen getreu zu bleiben, das Wissen die Kunst, bei positiven Irrtümern im Verstande sicher zu sein. Ist intensiv der Verstand geübt, so erhält er seine Kraft auch im Zerstreuten; sofern er an der eigenen geschliffenen Schärfe das Fremde leicht erkennt, deswegen nicht leicht irre wird in ungewissen Situationen.

So tritt Jason, ein Zögling des Centauren, vor den Pelias:

ich glaube, die Lehre
Chirons zu haben. Aus der Grotte nämlich komm ich
Bei Charikli und Philyra, wo des
Centauren Mädchen mich ernähret,
Die heilgen; zwanzig Jahre aber hab
Ich zugebracht und nicht ein Werk
Noch Wort, ein schmutziges, jenen
Gesagt, und bin gekommen nach Haus,
Die Herrschaft wiederzubringen meines Vaters.

-------

(Hamburger Translation)

Unfaithfulness of Wisdom

O child whose love most clings
To the pontic game beast's skin,
The rock-enamoured, with all cities mix,
Praising, with good will,
That which is present,
And differently think when the times are different.

The lonely school's capacity for the world. The innocence of pure knowledge as the soul of intelligence. For intelligence is the art of remaining faithful in changing circumstances; knowledge the art of being sure in one's understanding in the midst of positive errors. If our understanding has been exercised intensely, it retains its strength even in diffusion; inasmuch as it easily recognizes alien things by its own honed sharpness, and so is not easily confused in uncertain situations.

So Jason, a pupil of the centaur, confronts Pelias:

I believe I possess
Chiron’s doctrine. For I come from the grotto,
By Charikli and Philyra, where the
Centaur’s girls fed me,
The holy; twenty years, though I,
Have spent and not one work
Or word, a dirty one, said
To them, and have returned home
To restore my father's rule.

[Anonymous No.18745877]

Here is my own.

Unfaithfulness of Wisdom

O child who clings to the pontian wild hide,
The stone-loving, highest of all natures,
Holding, to all cities joined,
That presently lauds
Good-willing,
And other thoughts in other ages.

The capacity of the isolated school for the world. The innocence of pure knowing as the soul of wisdom. For wisdom is the art of remaining faithful in changing circumstances; knowing is the art of being certain in one's understanding in the midst of positive errors. If our understanding has been exercised intensely, it retains its strength even in diffusion; inasmuch as it easily recognizes foreign things by its honed sharpness, and so does not stray from the course in uncertain situations.

Thus Jason, the Centaur's disciple, appears before Pelias:

I believe I possess
Chiron’s doctrine. For I come from the grotto,
By Charikli and Philyra, where the
Centaur’s daughters raised me,
The holy ones; though twenty years
Have I spent, not one untoward act
Nor sordid word have I uttered
To them, I have returned home
To restore my father's dominion.

[Anonymous No.18745956]

>>18745835
I see there is that other edition of Hamburger's collection, which is not the Penguin one. It seems scarce and a bit rare though, this explains the price. Thanks for the threads and for the posts, anon. Are you fond of any secondary literature on Hölderlin?

[Anonymous No.18746012]

>>18745592
A difference in translation here is "Initiator" and "thrust" (stoßest), which in the Penguin suggests more of an accident, a failure of the will of mind, whereas it seems he is speaking more of fate and being thrust up against a "coarse lie." I will have to check the Pindar later to see if it is the same, however Hölderlin's theory of translation suggests poeticizing to the era, so there may be more emphasis here or certain things relevant to our relation to truth and reason.

the line of your question is "out of liking for it" (Wohlgefallen), or the well-liked. This may be something like the truth which comes too close to our essence, and strikes us fear as in the presence of God. This could drive us away from truth just as well as any mistake, or failure on our own part. This is the danger of truth, and also that element which always eludes us, or strikes us strongly precisely because it is ineffable. Even where we seem to grasp it, it grasps us all the more. The conflict of the will and the willless.

There are also some questions here regarding Weisheit, Klugheit, and Wissen which don't translate that well. They are all types of wisdom and knowing, and perhaps "instinct" or cunning works better than "intelligence".

He also quotes at the beginning of Hyperion that to be confined by the smallest is divine, which suggests the alternate side of the infinite, the inner light rather than the absolute. So the danger may be that we are driven from either knowing or instinct, like a centaur at his death where he also sees the death of the era. This can be through fate or even our own isolated failure of judgement, a weakness before the test of theomorphosis where instead we lose sight of the infinite, the stream which is undiminished.

[Anonymous No.18747348]

>>18745956
I don't read a lot of secondary literature to begin with, but for Hölderlin I will have to read some. I plan to read Heidegger's works and a few others that seem interesting, I think one on justice that someone posted here. I don't know if there is anything specific on the Pindar Fragments, but I would definitely read a book on them if anyone knows one.
Jünger mentions him sometimes, but I can't think of anything beyond that.

[Anonymous No.18747625]

>>18743557
What was Holderlin's opinion of Jews?

[Anonymous No.18748625]

>>18745956
>>18747348
the second anon here, I strongly recommend Heidegger's writing on Holderlin, although they are very hermetic and difficult, as he touches on a lot of different subjects along the way. I started reading Two Studies of Friedrich Holderlin by Werner Hamacher which was recommended in a previous thread and so far I find it very helpful, you can find it on zlibrary. as for biographical aspect, I strongly recommend Zweig's Struggle with the Daemon. he writes on Holderlin, Kleist on Nietzsche, about their life and work and how it relates to their madness.

[Anonymous No.18748691]

>>18746012
I checked the original fragment and in place of Beginning or Initiator there's ἀρχά which pretty self-explanatory, wheras what Holderlin translates as "stossest" originally states as πταίσῃς which means something like "may you not make me stumble", so I guess the english translation is pretty accurate. also, I haven't found any secondary literature on Pindar Fragments, perhaps it's time to write one.

[Anonymous No.18748892]

>>18748691
Interesting

[Anonymous No.18749329]

bump. don’t know if this has been answered but is there any good place to start with Hölderlin? I’m already familiar with the myths so I think that will help me a lot

[Anonymous No.18749390]

>>18749329
I'd recommend starting with his early novel Hyperion, then the odes from the middle period and finally late elegies like Bread and Wine and hymns like Patmos or Rhine. you should look for the Hamburger edition mentioned here a couple of times. after all of this I'd recommend reading his Pindar Fragments, it's one of my favourite works of his.

[Anonymous No.18750932]

Bump

[Anonymous No.18752060]

>>18747625
Don't know. Is it important?

[Anonymous No.18752157]

>>18748625
Great, thank you for the rec. Zweig's has been on my list too.

[Anonymous No.18753055]

bump

[Anonymous No.18753198]

>>18752060
Well, considering how Wagner transmutes major ideas in the German psyche like the wandering jew into artistic ideas, I wonder if Holderlin did anything similar with jews, of if he was even aware of them in any meaningful way.

[Anonymous No.18754554]

>>18743557
Bump

[Anonymous No.18754867]

>>18753198
I don’t think Hölderlin ever says something about Jews. He writes a lot about Christ but not him being jewish.

[Anonymous No.18754896]

Replies:34
Posters:7


Hölderlinbros...

[Anonymous No.18754967]

>>18754896
Atleast the Hölderlinbros make high effort threads

[Anonymous No.18754986]

Holderlin has nothing on Waldun

[Anonymous No.18755064]

>>18754967
Yeah das right. Im also not a virgin because Im an ugly ass nigga but because Im a high effort sexual predator

[Anonymous No.18755692]

>>18754896
Holderlin is just too based for this board. Also most /lit/izens don't read

[Anonymous No.18755702]

>>18754896
There's more replies because the faggot OP keeps bumping this shit thread and deleting the posts.

[Anonymous No.18756301]

>>18755702
>faggot OP
Where's your threads?

[Anonymous No.18756498]

>>18755702
OP is one of the only good posters left.

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.18756624]

Hey Holderlin-chads, how do you feel about Rilke?

[Anonymous No.18757293]

>>18745755
I've discussed it before. Will try to find the thread layer, unfortunately warosu seems to be down again. Here is Jünger

"To overcome the fear of death is at once to overcome every other terror, for they all have meaning only in relation to this fundamental problem. The forest passage is, therefore, above all a passage through death. The path leads to the brink of death itself—indeed, if necessary, it passes through it. When the line is successfully crossed, the forest as a place of life is revealed in all its preternatural fullness. The superabundance of the world lies before us.

Every authentic spiritual guidance is related to this truth—it knows how to bring man to the point where he recognizes the reality. This is most evident where the teaching and the example are united: when the conqueror of fear enters the kingdom of death, as we see Christ, the highest benefactor, doing. With its death, the grain of wheat brought forth not a thousand fruits, but fruits without number. The superabundance of the world was touched, which every generative act is related to as a symbol of time, and of time’s defeat. In its train followed not only the martyrs, who were stronger than the stoics, stronger than the caesars, stronger than the hundred thousand spectators surrounding them in the arena—there also followed the innumerable others who died with their faith intact. To this day this is a far more compelling force than it at first seems. Even when the cathedrals crumble, a patrimony of knowledge remains that undermines the palaces of the oppressors like catacombs. Already on these grounds we may be sure that the pure use of force, exercised in the old manner, cannot prevail in the long term. With this blood, substance was infused into history, and it is with good reason that we still number our years from this epochal turning point. The full fertility of theogony reigns here, the mythical generative power. The sacrifice is replayed on countless altars.

[Anonymous No.18757301]

>>18757293
In his poems Hölderlin saw Christ as the exaltation of Herculean and Dionysian power. Hercules is the original prince, on whom even the gods depend in their battle with the titans. He dries out the swamps and builds canals, and, by defeating the fiends and monsters, he makes the wastelands habitable. He is first among the heroes, on whose graves the polis is founded, and by whose veneration it is preserved. Every nation has its Hercules, and even today graves form the central points from which the state receives its sacred luster.

Dionysus is the master of ceremonies, the leader of the festive procession. When Hölderlin refers to him as the spirit of community, this community is to be understand as including the dead, indeed especially them. Theirs is the glow that envelopes the Dionysian celebration, the deepest fount of cheerfulness. The doors of the kingdom of death are thrown wide open, and golden abundance streams forth. This is the meaning of the grapevine, in which the powers of earth and sun are united, of the masks, of the great transformation and recurrence."

[Anonymous No.18757427]

>>18757301
In short, we meet the gods from the greatest distance, even in their presence we may not know their names, much as the tales of the Muses are revealed like a Gordian Knot the symbols may be a lie, leading us away from truth and wisdom.

Jünger refers to Christianity as a Silver Age response to the divine shifts and theomorphosis. It may even be an Iron Age shift, as the laws surrounding iron in construction would suggest. Naming of God ( especially in Judaism) and the restriction of idols is also a sign of the great danger faced in such an age. In one sense it may be seen as a decline, or falling away from the gods, but in another that they are too close. The restriction of naming then acts as a type of knowing, that God and the One are too close, we approach ruin and violence not from a fall from grace but an excess of destructive power, being incapable to maintain dominion where tje tests of God are foremost. Very much life affirming, only with its own dangers.

This would be a very different reading than Nietzsche, and throughout Hölderlin's writings you will find many similarities and then great departures. Even if it is something subtle like the quote above on animals and reason, Hölderlin is completely free and without any sense of resentment. He held a divine character and wealth of being. And this way of seeing penetrates into the era of decline, which is seen instead as another age of great possibilities.
So the opposition of christianity and paganism is really a matter of time and ages, much like the different way of seeing the world as mythic or historical, or even post-historical time. Our proximity to the gods can change the naming, where we are closest to them there is an immense force which we cannot see, great power but also a threat of nihilism and hubris. At a distance we are largely left to our own will but this can also clarify the gods, the certainty of separate dominions, like states with a beautiful natural boundary which encourages a strong peace.

This is similar to Pindar who seems to point towards law as the highest of all, with the gods approaching a type of mortality where law incurs with its violence into the heavens and the world.

[Anonymous No.18758585]

bump

[Anonymous No.18759816]

bump

[Anonymous No.18759834]

>>18759816
Wow, OP, why don’t you let this dead thread die, instead of being a huge fucking faggot and bumping it?

[Anonymous No.18759841]

>>18759834
Go read a book for once.

[Anonymous No.18759845]

>>18759816
Kek, he even deleted it. What a fag.

[Anonymous No.18759847]

>>18759845
He always does this. Whenever his thread is almost dead. He bumps it and deletes the post a minute later.

[Anonymous No.18759857]

>>18759847
Oh, I know. That fag just bumps it over a fucking week.

[Anonymous No.18759866]

Samefaggot ruining the board. Going to post a Tocqueville thread for you tranny

[Anonymous No.18759870]

>>18759866
>IP went up
>Samefag
God, you really are a huge fucking faggot.

[Anonymous No.18759880]

>>18759870
Ignore him. Fag can’t take any critique whatsoever.

[Anonymous No.18759949]

>>18759880
>critique
Where? This was a great thread until you showed up

[Anonymous No.18759973]

>>18759949
>Great thread
>Has to bump it every time since it all. It dead.

[Anonymous No.18760167]

>>18759834
Holderlin anon is one of the only good posters.

[Anonymous No.18760443]

>>18759973
Post threads. It's been two months.

[Anonymous No.18760712]

What are some poems with this theme?

[Anonymous No.18760916]

>>18757427
From a letter

"My dear Mother, I can well believe that it must be a relief and cheering for you to think of me as having the best feelings a human soul can have and to be able to hold on to that knowledge amid the doubts and anxieties with which even the best must regard each other, and the more so the closer they are, for in the end we hardly know ourselves and shall never know another person even as well as that. I reserve the right to deliver you a complete profession of faith at more leisure, and I wish I could express my heart’s opinion to everyone with the candour and purity I do to you. But the scribes and Pharisees of our time, who have made out of the dear holy Bible a cold prattle that kills heart and spirit, I certainly don’t want them as witnesses of my intense, living faith. I know very well how they came to their views, and because God forgives them for giving Christ a worse death than the Jews, making his Word into a letter and him, that lives, into an empty idol, because God forgives them this, I forgive them too. Only I don’t care to lay myself and my heart bare where it will be misunderstood, and for that reason keep quiet before professional theologians (that is, those who are not such freely and in their hearts, but only under duress and because of their office) just as readily as before those who want to have nothing to do with it all because for them religion, which after all is the first and last need of mankind, has been spoilt in childhood by the dead letter and the terrifying command* to believe. My dear Mother, if there are harsh words in these lines they are certainly not written out of pride or hate but only because I could find no other way of making myself clear with the necessary brevity. The way things are now, particularly with regard to religion, this all had to come about, and the state of religion was almost as it is now when Christ appeared in the world. But just as winter is followed by spring, so the spiritual death of man has always been followed by new life, and the holy always remains holy, whether people respect it or not. And there will be many who are more religious in their hearts than they are willing or able to say, and perhaps many of our preachers, who simply can’t find the words, say more, too, in their sermons than others suspect because the words they use are so ordinary and have been misused in hundreds of ways. Make do with this unfeigned expression of my thoughts for the moment, until I can find an hour when I can write with all my soul."

[Anonymous No.18761470]

>>18756624
haven't read him yet. Is he like Hölderlin?

[Anonymous No.18761936]

>>18756624
Somewhere I read how his writing was a bit forced and unfree compared to Holderlin, which seems accurate.