Politics and Truth in Hölderlin: Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity 9781640141063, 9781800102149, 9781800102156, 2020951418

Citation preview

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Politics and Truth in Hölderlin

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Politics and Truth in Hölderlin Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Anthony Curtis Adler

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021 Anthony Curtis Adler All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation, no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded, or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. First published 2021 by Camden House Camden House is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt. Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA and of Boydell & Brewer Limited PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK www.boydellandbrewer.com ISBN-13: 9781640141063 (hardcover) ISBN-13: 9781800102149 (ePDF) ISBN-13: 9781800102156 (ePUB)

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Library of Congress Control Number: 2020951418. Cover: Detail from An Eruption of Vesuvius, by Johan Christian Dahl, 1824, oil on canvas. Metropolitan Museum of Art, gift of Christen Sveaas in celebration of the Museum’s 150th Anniversary, 2019. Made available under a Creative Commons Zero (CCO) license.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

For my mother, Judith Curtis Adler

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

ἐν βυθῷ γὰρ ἡ ἀλήθεια “For truth is in an abyss” —Democritus

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Contents Foreword: “The Metapolitical” Peter Fenves ix Acknowledgments xiii List of Abbreviations Editions and Translations

xv xvii

Introduction 1 1: Hyperbole, Measure, Dance

37

2: The Athens Letter—Choreographic Writing

74

3: Political Personae

123

4: The Politics of Life

179

5: The Choreographic Project of Modernity

220

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Bibliography 279 Index 295

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Foreword: “The Metapolitical” Peter Fenves

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

A

t the beginning of his Stern der Erlösung (Star of Redemption) Franz Rosenzweig describes three “meta-” fields, which together encompass certain “irrationalities” in life that correspond to irrational numbers in mathematics: the meta-physical, which concerns God; the meta-logical, which is a matter of the world; and the meta-ethical, which revolves around the isolated human being. Nowhere, however, does Rosenzweig so much as suggest that there is something like the “meta-political”— and this despite the fact that the Star of Redemption can be described as meta-political in a philologically exact sense, for, just as an enigmatic treatise in the Aristotelean corpus acquired the title of Metaphysics simply because it came after the one entitled The Physics, so Rosenzweig’s magnum opus appeared shortly after the publication of his Hegel und der Staat (Hegel and the State), which, for its part, was a long adieu to the very idea of rational political thought. In a crucial passage of Hegel and the State, Rosenzweig evokes an affinity between the self-division Hegel experienced circa 1796 and the self-division Hölderlin attributed to Hyperion, the “hermit” in modern Germany. In light of the present work by Anthony Adler, it is now possible to provide an exact formula for what Rosenzweig fails to see when he compares Hegel with Hyperion: he overlooks the metapolitical and replaces it with the meta-ethical, which consists in the eremitic condition par excellence—life beyond the ethos of any given community. And the reason Rosenzweig misses the metapolitical? This can be attributed to the fact that he finds in Hyperion as a whole little more than a resonant evocation of a desperately self-divided character that he identifies now with Hegel, now with Hölderlin, and also probably with himself.1 Adler uses the term “metapolitical” only in a single paragraph, where he outlines the movement of his argument from the second to the third

1 In Hegel and the State Rosenzweig says of Hyperion that it contains a “highly personal altercation [Auseinandersetzung] with the Kantian-Fichtean vital law of defiance against established statutes” (see Rosenzweig 1920, 67); the idea of such defiance then becomes the nucleus of the “meta-ethical,” as described in The Star of Redemption.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,



Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

x

Peter Fenves

chapter and likewise indicates how the third chapter issues into the fourth, which revolves around the “politics of life”: “The ‘happenings’ of the novel no longer take place within the horizon of a certain conception of action . . . but involve a mode of inquiry that we must call political, or even metapolitical, since it concerns, and calls into question, the most fundamental presuppositions of political existence—namely, the very mode in which we (and who we are is not simply given beforehand but will only solidify with the asking and answering of this question) exist, the very form that our lives take, and indeed what it will mean to live or exist” (122). The sparse use of the term “metapolitical” conforms to a distinguishing feature of Adler’s mode of argumentation. Instead of introducing technical terms, he works with the vocabulary of the texts under examination; in the same vein, he practices a form of gestural criticism that responds to the gestures in the texts themselves. Under these stringent conditions, the appearance of a non-Hölderlinian term like metapolitics—which gestures, instead, toward current academic trends—is jarring enough to warrant attention.2 In its transitional place, however, the term is altogether appropriate, for it appears only for the purpose of helping readers see the direction of his argument and thereafter passes away. The advantage of this roundabout strategy is clear: the idea of the metapolitical will never be detached from the concrete “happenings” of the novel in which its outlines become evident. The relation between the beginning of Rosenzweig’s Star of Redemption and Adler’s treatment of Hyperion can be productively examined from at least two other directions as well. For Rosenzweig—and this impressed Walter Benjamin to such an extent that he included it in his Origin of the German Trauerspiel—the meta-ethical solicits a particular genre, namely Greek tragedy, whose defiant protagonists find themselves in a condition that severs them from all relations. Thus do tragic heroes become “hermits” in ancient Greece. Under Adler’s optic, a modern novel can be seen to have a similar relation to the metapolitical— but only a single and, indeed, singular novel, which defies its own genre. And what in each case lies beyond the meta-condition in question? For Rosenzweig, an “eternal people” stands at the center of the “star,” whose light—a metaphor for truth—radiates outward through the expansive path of “historical” peoples. For Adler, this question is answered in the course of his central chapters, which result in the final one: beyond the “political modes” (122) that he discerns in three of Hyperion’s personae, there stands the body; more exactly, there is where physical bodies move beyond any predetermined paths, enriched by their lack of origins and goals alike. The radiance of this motion is modern “dance writing.” The project Adler thus uncovers in Hyperion is a “choreography” in which 2

See, for example, Alain Badiou 2005.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.



Foreword: “The Metapolitical”



xi

meta- and hyper-moments enter into a delicate meta-dance with each other: the metabolic hyperbole of Hölderlin’s language engages with the hyperbolic metabolism of nature. By way of its choreographic conclusion, Adler joins a small but distinguished group of scholars who have begun to rediscover the Hölderlinian body.3 A gestural mode of critical analysis is required for this effort, for, with one extraordinary exception, there are few direct references to the body in Hölderlin’s writings. The exception can be found in the “Anmerkungen zur Antigonä” (Remarks on Antigone), where the word Körper appears with almost obsessive frequency. “Remarks on Antigone” are a paradigmatically “late” work according to standard representations of Hölderlin’s riven career, while Hyperion is generally seen as a straightforwardly “early” text in which he prepares the ground for his true poetic vocation. To rediscover the writing of the body in Hyperion not only runs counter to dramatic scenarios in which late Hölderlin is cast as a victor over his earlier self; it also lets us see, writ large, the temporal entanglement that constitutes the most striking structural feature of Hyperion itself. It is not as though the “Remarks on Antigone” comes “full circle” back to Hyperion; but Adler gives us an insight into the shape of Hölderlin’s writings whereby “late” and “early” are always gently entangled with each other. This entanglement is one thing that can be learned from Adler’s study: Hyperion is not a monument of an earlier stage of the poet that he transcended on the way toward his late poetry. A cognate lesson can be drawn from the earlier comparison with Rosenzweig’s work. The lesson reads, in short: do not underestimate “Hyperion.” This happens when the novel is seen simply as a vehicle for the representation of a particular type of figure who—like Hölderlin, Hegel, or the reader—experiences the contradictory demands of an onrushing modernity. The novel is similarly underestimated when it becomes nothing more than a romantic gesture. Adler alludes to such a situation in the following footnote: “In a letter written in August 1926 to Hannah Arendt, [Martin Heidegger] tells her that Hyperion is one of the few books on his desk” (25). With this gesture, Heidegger can be overheard to say: you are to me what Diotima is to Hyperion. In August 1926, Heidegger had just quasi-completed a praxeology under the title Sein und Zeit (Being and Time). Many years later, Arendt would respond with her own praxeology entitled The Human Condition. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin shows us what both of them might have learned if they had reread the book lying on the professor’s desk.

3 See McCall 1988, 53–72; Nägele 1999, 245–67; Schutjer 2001, esp. 163– 205. (None of these treats Hyperion except in passing.)

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Acknowledgments

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

P

eter Fenves and Sam Weber have encouraged this project from the beginning and offered decisive guidance. Others to whom thanks is due, whether for friendship, for conversation, for the gift of their erudition and expertise, or just for a word of encouragement, include Andrew Benjamin, Lily Cho, Young-Ae Chon, Catherine Chung, Stanley Corngold, William Franke, Markus Hardtmann, Jen Hui Bon Hoa, Brooke Holmes, Kil-Pyo Hong, Kerry Hubata, Daniel HoffmanSchwartz, Martin Jay, Halla Kim, Astrid Lac, Krys Lee, Shasha Li, Mathelinda Nabugodi, Barbara Natalie Nagel, Julia Ng, Hyungji Park, Saein Park, Terry Pinkard, Aljoša Pužar, Thomas Schestag, Karin Schutjer (who read and commented on an early draft), Wilson Shearin, Tanvi Solanki, Harriet Yoo, and Kirk Wetters. I am grateful for my colleagues and students at Underwood International College, and for the support Yonsei University has given over the years for my research, including the acquisition by the library of the expensive yet indispensable Frankfurter Ausgabe. A book, of course, is nothing, almost nothing, without a publisher. I am immensely thankful to Camden House for taking on my manuscript, and, in particular, to the editorial director, Jim Walker, for his extraordinary care at every stage of the process of publication, as well as to the anonymous reviewers for their intellectual generosity and their critical acumen. It is impossible for me to separate my work on this book from my friendship with Paul North, just as it would be hard to separate my enthusiasm for this project from his and from the many conversations that grew out of our disjoint collaboration. My father, Stephen, and his second wife, Sarah Brett-Smith, both academics, always asked me where things stood with this book; a gentle nudge never hurts! And my mother, a lifelong lover of literature and poetry with a relentlessly curious intellect, inspired and encouraged me in other ways. Finally, I would like to thank my wife Hwa Young Seo, who has never ceased bringing me joy with her creative, musical spirit and her laughter, for putting up with my eccentricities, and reminding me that there is more to life than work.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Abbreviations FA

Friedrich Hölderlin. Sämtliche Werke: Historisch-kritische Ausgabe (Frankfurter Ausgabe). Edited by Dietrich Eberhard Sattler. 20 vols. Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Roter Stern, 1974–2004.

GSA Friedrich Hölderlin. Sämtliche Werke (Grosse Stuttgarter Ausgabe). 8 vols. Edited by Friedrich Beissner. Stuttgart: Cotta, 1946–84. GSW Johann Wolfgang Goethe. Sämtliche Werke, Briefe, Tagebücher und Gespräche. Edited by Waltraud Wiethölter et al. 40 vols. Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1985–. HGA Martin Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann. 1975–. KAA Immanuel Kant, Gesammelte Schriften (Akademie-Ausgabe). Edited by the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences. 23 vols. Berlin: G. Reimer, 1902; Berlin & Leipzig: Walter de Gruyter, 1922–. Friedrich Hölderlin. Sämtliche Werke, Briefe, und Dokumente. Edited by Dietrich Eberhard Sattler. 12 vols. Nürtingen: Luchterhand, 2004.

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

SW

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Editions and Translations

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

T

he following book makes use of three different editions of Hölderlin’s writings—the Grosse Stuttgarter Ausgabe (GSA), the Frankfurter Ausgabe (FA), and the Sämtliche Werke, Briefe, und Dokumente (SW), which presents Hölderlin’s writings in a chronological order. While relying mainly on the FA when citing the various versions of Hyperion as well as the poetological writings, I use the GSA for lyric poetry (where Sattler’s refusal to present the “pure word” of the poet, while eminently justified, opens up a philological can of worms that would distract too much from the argument), and the SW for Hölderlin’s correspondence. There are several English versions of Hyperion available, and most of his lyric poetry, as well as The Death of Empedocles, many letters, and nearly all the theoretical fragments, have also been translated. Nevertheless, I’ve decided to rely on my own translations, not because I think these are superior to what is available—fine poets have tried their hand at Hölderlin, and I am not a poet at all—but on account of the importance, given the nature of this book, of terminological consistency and precision. Foreign-language works are introduced with their original title together with the translated title in parentheses, and, for modern works, the date of publication or—in the case of Hölderlin’s own writings as well as other posthumously published works—of composition. The translated titles of Hölderlin’s poetry are for the most part consistent with the Penguin edition (Selected Poems and Fragments) edited by Jeremy Adler and published in 1998, while the chronology is based on Sattler’s Sämtliche Werke, Briefe, und Dokumente (see SW 1:249–75). I’ve included the original German for all lyric poetry but not usually for Hölderlin’s prose writings or other sources, since this would have added too much to the heft of an already rather hefty volume. For all other works, including those written in Greek and Latin, the reader may assume the translation is my own unless either 1) another translator is given or 2) only the translation, and not the original, is listed in the bibliography.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Introduction

I

The Unceasing Weather of Revolution

his 1965 address to the Hölderlin-Gesellschaft, the Elsassian Germanist Robert Minder sketches with hyperbolic precision the singular significance of the French Revolution for Hölderlin’s life work: for Hölderlin the Revolution had “shined into the narrow-minded domesticity of the Swabian and German feudal state ‘like an unceasing weather’ [wie ein unaufhörlich Wetter] and pushed open the gate to worlds where the antique republic seemed to arise again in the spirit of the eighteenth century, borne by the genius of an enraptured [hingerissen] youth.”1 The French Revolution was a decisive event for Hölderlin’s life without exactly being an event in or of his life. Its consequences for his life and work can be traced out from his school years, when he and his fellow seminarians, Friedrich Hegel and Friedrich Schelling among them, planted a “tree of freedom” on the Neckar’s banks and joined Jacobin clubs, to his friendship with Isaak von Sinclair, his travel to Bordeaux, and even his institutionalization for mental illness and confinement in the tower by the Neckar, which was perhaps a ploy to escape prosecution after the failed attempt, in which he might have been involved, on the archduke’s life.2 Yet revolution was not in the first instance something that happened to him; not a “life event” like the humiliations of his work as a private tutor or his thwarted affair with Susette Gontard and her subsequent death. Rather, it was a world event, a historical event; happening to, for, against all of Europe, all of humankind, all planetary life. Moreover, the French Revolution was not just something that happened, one event among many, but was that which opened up the state, with its closed domestic order— its closed economy of significations and values and ranks—to the tempest of revolutionary time, a time that is in its innermost gesture turning, bent, fermenting.3 Not merely an event in the world—a single revolutionary

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

n

1 Minder 1968, 28; Note that in Swabian Wetter can mean not only weather but also Gewitter (thunderstorms, storms) and Unwetter (tempestuous, inclement weather). 2 See Bertaux 1969, 13–63; Horowoski 2017. 3 Regarding Walter Benjamin’s discussion of Hölderlin’s phrase “Wende der Zeit” (turning point of time), see Fenves 2011, 15–16. The “turning” of time is

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

2 I  ntroduction

event, situated within and understood in terms of the horizon of a progressive or cyclical historical time—it opens the gates to the world. Hölderlin was certainly receptive, as very few could have been, to the world-historical fulgurations of a revolution occurring just as he stood at the cusp of adulthood. Liberty, fraternity, and equality were no mere abstractions for him; they possessed the concreteness that concrete oppression alone grants. His education at the Tübinger Stift (Tübingen seminary), itself subject to increasing ducal supervision after 1789, initiated him into the Württemberg mandarinate, a clerical and bureaucratic elite selected through a demanding system of examinations.4 But it also made him a debtor to the state, required to pursue an ecclesiastic or government career under penalty of having to repay his scholarship. And though he had inherited enough money from his father to pursue his poetic vocation as a private author, his mother, by refusing to release his patrimony, sought to compel him to marriage and a respectable clerical vocation.5 Finding employment as a private tutor, he could gain a measure of independence, see something of the world, and be introduced to many of the leading lights of his age. But the position of Hofmeister was ambiguous and often humiliating; however much his education and personal qualities were admired, however delicately and respectfully his employers treated him, almost as if he were one of their own, he could never forget that he was a servant.6 His attempt to start his own journal, crushed in the bud by the reigning literary elite, came to nothing. Nor was it possible for him, as a subject of the duchy of Württemberg, to be complacent about politics; the French Revolution had itself stressed to its limit the fragile balance that existed between the burghers, who enjoyed an unusual degree of political power, and the ruling house, and indeed the duke Karl Eugen (1728–93), who had long sought to establish an absolute monarchy emulating the opulence of the French court, and who was known for both his intemperance and despotic rule, would seem, in the eyes of the people, the very model of a tyrant.7 But the French Revolution not only spoke to a desire for liberation born of the concrete experience of repressive forces and structures. It also resonated with an image of political freedom that Hölderlin drew from multiple sources: from the literature of ancient Greece, to which his philological education at the Tübingen seminary gave him intimate access; from at the center of Hamacher’s two principal engagements with the poet (Hamacher 1971 and 2004–5). 4 Regarding the mood in the Stift after the French Revolution, see Bertaux 1969, 50–53. 5 See Horowski 2017, 120–24. 6 See Bertaux 1984, 14. 7 Regarding the political climate in Württemberg, see Gaier et al. 1995– 2003, 1.1: 57–95; Franz 2012.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Introduction



3

contemporary authors such as Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Friedrich Schiller, as well as the patriotic poet Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart, locked up for ten years by the duke in his private prison atop the Asperg; from the long tradition of Swabian republicanism; and even from certain radical strains of Pietistic theology. It is due to the manifest significance of the French Revolution for Hölderlin that his work has become the site of such tremendous ideological struggles: the task of neutralizing the revolution together with the revolutionary impulse of his work has fallen to his interpreters, who have gone to great lengths to make Hölderlin safe—for a prophetic and purified German nationalism, for National Socialism, for the history of Being, and, especially after the Second World War, for a properly philological academic study, modest in its aims and circumspect in its insights. Pierre Bertaux summed up the situation in the opening salvo of his Hölderlin und die Französische Revolution (Hölderlin and the French Revolution, 1969):

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

To attribute a political meaning to Hölderlin’s poetry was till recently deemed a heresy by (West) German Hölderlin scholarship. The philological tradition regarded poetry and politics, and all the more left wing-minded politics, lyric and sans-cullotes as incompatible. Hölderlin a Jacobin? Unthinkable! He was an enthusiast, a poet, and mentally ill.8

Yet if we are to recover the political sense of Hölderlin’s work, it cannot be enough just to attribute a political meaning to his poems on the basis of biographical facts. Minder’s quote is, indeed, itself exemplary for a strategy of interpretation that Bertaux will carry through with great consequence: precisely by means of the radically decontextualizing power of citation, the poetic word is embedded within the biographical-historical context so as to create a semblance of continuity between the work itself and this context. Thus citation, itself perhaps the oldest and most fundamental philological institution, assumes a function that is, in the most literal sense, counterrevolutionary even though deployed in the name of revolution. The event of revolution becomes a nonevent; it is restored to the continuous and progressive order of “ordinary” historical time. But if we turn back to Hölderlin’s own words—the image, deliberate and precise, of an “unceasing weather” is drawn from an emendation to the fragment “Die Völker schwiegen, schlummerten . . .” (The peoples remained silent, slept)—a different sense of time, and of politics, becomes manifest. This seemingly paradoxical formulation draws attention to an ambiguity in the concept of the weather itself, which can refer both to the 8

Bertaux 1969, 9.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

4 I  ntroduction

general and ongoing phenomena of meteorological variation and to the particular manifestation of these general phenomena through events of extreme turbulence such as the thunder storm, in which large quantities of accumulated electrostatic energy are suddenly released. The ambiguity of the weather is also, of course, the ambiguity of time; the derivation of the word tempest from the Latin tempus, meaning “time” or “season,” hints at the close connection between time and weather. Indeed, time is itself tempestuous, and, as any reader of Hamlet knows, most so when it is most out of joint. This double ambiguity, in turn, suggests that the revolutionary event manifests the ultimate unity of natural and historical time; it is only during periods of relative calm, in which time manifests itself as a general law of variation rather than the singularity of the event, that the orders of historical and natural time appear distinct. The full sense of this only emerges when we consider the context in which the syntagm appears: “For five summers the great life gleamed / An unceasing weather among us” (Fünf Sommer leuchtete das große Leben/ Ein unaufhörlich Wetter unter uns; GSA 1.2:550). Given that the poem was written in the fall of 1797, the five summers might refer back specifically to the institution of the new calendar in the fall of 1792. The revolutionary event, accordingly, would consist not merely in the irruptive manifestation of revolutionary time, but in its institutionalization. It is this institutionalization that allows for a continuing relation to the continuous event of revolutionary time.

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The Effacement of the Political in the Reception of Hyperion Hölderlin’s work on his novel Hyperion oder Der Eremit in Griechenland (Hyperion or the Hermit in Greece) coincides in large measure with the unceasing weather of the revolution; he began work around 1792, publishing the first volume in 1797 and the second in 1799. Unsurprisingly, given the tumultuousness of the events that took place during these years, Hyperion also records Hölderlin’s changing attitude toward revolutionary politics. The question of politics and the experiences of political revolution indeed stand at the center of a work that was conceived in the wake of the terror and completed not even a decade after the storming of the Bastille. In letters written to a German friend from his hermitage, the novel’s eponymous protagonist recalls the stages of his young life, his friendships, his love for a woman who evokes the lost ideal of harmony and beauty, his travels through the ruins of antiquity, his catastrophic involvement in the first revolts of the Greeks against the Turks, and finally the death of his beloved, who with her dying words seems to point him down a new path. In conversations with his friend Alabanda, himself a member of a secretive conspiracy, he debates the goals of revolution and

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Introduction



5

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

the limits of the power of the state. Sailing toward the ruins of Athens, he lectures to Diotima and some nameless friends on the origins and nature of Athens’s greatness. Yet a survey of the reception of Hyperion and the vast scholarship dedicated to it reveal that, from the beginning, its manifest political dimension has been neglected, obscured, catastrophically misunderstood. Here we must content ourselves with a very brief sketch: the literature on Hyperion is vast, and has already itself been the subject of a lengthy monograph.9 Hyperion’s political intention, to be sure, did not escape Hölderlin’s intimate circle of friends as he began work on it.10 Yet for the most part, even in the very first phase of Hyperion’s reception, its readers would call attention not to its political edge but to its richness and intensity of affect and its “tender sensibility and feeling for the beauty of nature,” in the words of Wilhelm Heinse, who himself regarded the hero not as an apostle of freedom but of nature (GSA 3:315).11 More sympathetic, enthusiastic readers, especially among the new wave of romantic authors, will defend Hyperion’s unity and coherence, yet only by completely sacrificing its political dimension on the altar of aesthetics.12 This is 9 Castellari 2002. 10 Magenau, writing to Christian Ludwig Neuffer in 1791, in what is the first written record of the novel, speaks of the eponymous protagonist as “a freedomloving hero, und genuine Greek, full of powerful principles” (GSA 3:296). Sinclair, as Siegfried Schmid mockingly notes to Hölderlin in 1797, saw in his novel “a personified system of morality”—an interpretation that draws it back into the horizon of praxis and hence of Greek political thought (GSA 3:315). In a letter to Philipp Emanuel von Fellenberg in 1799, Boehlendorff describes Hyperion as “writing that, in the deepest sense, deserves to make a new epoch [Epoche zu machen]” (GSA 3:316). 11 The Neue Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek (New Universal German Library), in a 1798 review of the first volume, finds nothing more than “a colorful weave of sensations, thoughts, phantasies, and dreams.” Another review, more positive and yet still skeptical, observes “an inner moral struggle with the self that only finds peace and soothing in the harmony of nature” (GSA 3:323). 12 A review by Carl Philipp Conz published in 1801, which certainly ranks among the most perceptive interpretations of the novel from the first period of its reception, begins with the remark that “the whole is, in our view, more a poem [Poëm] than a novel,” as if an appreciation for Hyperion’s wholeness can only be gained by denying that it is really a work of prose. Achim von Arnim, in a 1817 letter to the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, notes: “Already for a few years I’ve had the plan of working out an aesthetics according to Hölderlin’s Hyperion, because it [read: the aesthetics] will be elegiac in nature, and this most marvelous of all elegies gives the most manifold occasion for it” (GSA 3:319). Hölderlin, to be sure, himself speaks in the preface of Hyperion’s “elegiac character.” Yet the sense of this term can only be understood in light of Hyperion’s political desire (GSA 3:5). Arnim’s use of elegiac, by contrast, betrays the programmatic

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

6 I  ntroduction

nowhere more evident than in Wilhelm Waiblinger’s fateful engagement with Hölderlin and his Hyperion, which he read shortly after starting his visits to the tower where the poet lived under the care of Zimmer. His response to the poet’s works of a piece with the myth of madness that he helped fashion, Waiblinger discovers in Hyperion a “frightfully beautiful” “effusion [Guss] of the greatest, purest soul.”13 Nor is it surprising that, finding in Hyperion a work of pure enthusiasm to which he responded in kind, he would almost immediately begin work on his own novel Phaeton. Enthusiastic imitation takes the place of sober reading.14 Yet perhaps the most telling indication of the effacement of the political appears in the immediate aftermath of the second edition of Hyperion. This was published in 1822, by which time, as Beissner observes, Hölderlin and his work had fallen into a “terrifying degree of oblivion” (GSA 3:328). In one of the first public responses to the novel, Adolf Müllner, while calling attention to the political dimension of the novel, nevertheless dismisses it as infantile, incoherent, full of tedious enthusiasm, a symptom for the disorders of the age: “his world view is not clear, or rather he doesn’t have one, and his drives only drive forth bubbles of bluster.” He then proceeds to provide as examples of this bluster an anthology of gnomic utterances on the matter of political philosophy (Staatsphilosophie) (GSA 3:330). Two years later Gustav Schwab, at the time already working on the first collection of Hölderlin’s poems, responds to Müllner’s “half mocking, half condescending review” with a piece published in the Literarisches Conversations-Blatt (Literary Conversation Paper). Yet his impassioned apologetics is perhaps more damaging than Müllner’s derision, for rather than defending Hyperion’s significance and coherence as a political novel, Schwab will insist that it should not really be read as a novel at all—that it has “no plot, no progress of events, no characters or at least no individual characters”—though at the same time, anticipating Wilhelm Dilthey’s biographizing and psychologizing approach, he also finds in Hyperion a presentation of the process of maturation that every “nobly gifted man” passes through. Hyperion thus appears as a Bildungsroman avant la lettre—or almost avant la lettre, since the term Bildungsroman had in fact first appeared in print two years earlier in a transcription of a lecture by Karl Morgenstern. Nothing is left of politics, or of Staatsphilosophie, but an affect of patriotism, which, together with love and nature, ranks as one of the three ideals and idols of genial youth (GSA 3:331–35). tendency of post-Jena Romanticism to reduce the political to one more occasion for affect, inwardness, and creative productivity; See Schmitt 1986, 127. 13 Waiblinger 2017, 39. 14 A noteworthy exception is Josef Görres’s unsigned review in Aurora (GSA 3:325–7). This was published in 1804, at which time Görres was still a committed republican.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Introduction



7

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

If I have tarried for a while on the earliest reception of Hyperion, it is because, in these largely impressionistic, more or less immediate reactions to the novel, we find the groundwork laid for the more scientific, philologically rigorous scholarship that, beginning with Dilthey, will be offered in the name of the Geisteswissenschaften (human sciences), and which will ultimately elevate Hölderlin, in what is certainly one of the most stunning posthumous reversals of fortune, to the first rank of German poets. Dilthey deserves great credit for taking Hyperion seriously as a literary work, as well as for uncovering many of the themes that will preoccupy scholarship for the next century.15 Nor does he fail to note the biographical significance of politics for Hölderlin’s Hyperion; with great insight he finds in the early hymns an almost systematic encomium of the virtues of the new republic.16 Yet by reading Hyperion as a Bildungsroman, manifesting the post-Rousseauian obsession with “inner culture,” he allows the political to appear only as the backdrop against which the true drama, the drama of interior development, shines forth.17 Depoliticization, moreover, goes hand in hand with aestheticism. Hyperion becomes the prophet neither of a metaphysical or even religious doctrine but of the “experience of an artist eager to find beauty.”18 Dilthey raised Hölderlin to the highest echelon of the German literary pantheon, rescuing him from the obscurity to which he had been condemned for most of the nineteenth century. Yet it was Friedrich Gundolf, a Jewish-German professor of literature and member of the George circle, who would launch Hölderlin beyond Lessing, Schiller, and the romantics, even beyond Goethe, into a stratospheric element so rarefied that only Dante, Plato, Pindar, and perhaps Homer could still be named in the same breath.19 Yet if Gundolf’s reading, which stresses the singu15 These themes include Hölderlin’s pantheism and philosophy of love, his conception of nature, the relation of his work to his friends Schelling and Hegel, his modernism and affinity with Nietzsche, as well as the formative significance of life experiences, including his humiliations as Hofmeister, and, certainly not least, his enthusiasm for the French Revolution and his subsequent disappointment. 16 Dilthey 1922, 364. 17 Dilthey counts Hyperion among the Bildungsromane, that, arising from a Rousseauian influence, reveal the direction of the spirit during this time toward inner culture. Yet for Dilthey, Hyperion also seems to stress the genre to its limit: Hyperion is a “heroic nature” striking out to “work upon the whole” yet ultimately thrown back against his own existence. Thus these Bildungsromane give expression to the “individualism of a culture which is limited to the sphere of interest of private life” (Dilthey 1922, 393–94, 400). 18 Dilthey 1922, 406. 19 For a powerful account of Gundolf’s interpretation of Hyperion, stressing its Nietzschean dimension, see Fenves 2011, 33; For the role of Gundolf, together with Norbert von Hellingrath and Friedrich Wolters, in creating a nationalist mythos around Hölderlin, see Suglia 2002.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

8 I  ntroduction

larity of the poetic work over the generic claims of the Bildungsroman, wrests Hölderlin from both Weimar classicism (which knows only the Apollonian) and romanticism (which turns the Greek ruins into a mere occasion for affect), and moreover even recognizes the originative nature of revolutionary time, this is done at the price of rendering the political dimension of his work altogether incomprehensible. It is no longer possible even to think of Hölderlin as engaged with his times, let alone as responsive to the event of a democratic revolution: “Under no circumstances does the prophet have to conduct himself according to the claims of the times, as one demands in a democratic age, but solely according to his daemon.”20 And while Gundolf liberates Hölderlin from the confining paradigm of the Bildungsroman, he does so only by calling attention to a purely interior process of Bildung, the eternal metabolism of creation and destruction. Or, in a sense, he provides us with what had already been anticipated by Schwab: a purely interior drama of interiority. Gundolf’s text presents with striking clarity the field of tensions within which the depoliticizing reading of Hyperion operates: while the novel will continue to be understood as of essence a Bildungsroman, the quasibiographical, concrete process of Bildung will be opposed to a “poetic calling” that is either a purely religious, rapturous responsiveness to the innermost nature of things, born from the elemental, uncompromised purity of Hölderlin’s nature, or is aesthetic in a more conventional, classical—which is to say, more Goethean, Schillerian, less Nietzschean— way, involving the cultivation of an inner harmony. The second approach, already to some degree implicit in Dilthey, finds its greatest exponent in Lawrence Ryan’s influential study of Hyperion.21 For the first time, Ryan demonstrates the inner coherence of Hölderlin’s novel, arguing that it is organized around the subtle intertwining of two separate levels of narration: not only the actual life events that Hyperion recounts to his friend Bellarmin but also the process of self-reflection taking place in the course of the narration.22 Ryan deserves the greatest credit for putting to rest the notion that the novel is not really a novel at all but just a rhapsodic, lyrical medley of sententiae and an outpouring of affect. Yet in so doing he also helps solidify the interpretation according to which Hyperion’s formative education consists in nothing else than learning to renounce politics in 20 Gundolf 1916, 24; Regarding the significance of the demonic for Gundolf, who draws in particular on Goethe’s “Urworte. Orphisch” (Primal Words. Orphic, 1817), see Wetters 2014, 70–74. 21 On the differences between Dilthey and Ryan’s conception of the Bildungsroman, see Mahoney 1986; Mahoney proposes, against both, that Hyperion’s identity as Bildungsroman be understood in terms of its intended effects on the reader. 22 Ryan 1965, 3–4.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Introduction



9

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

favor of a poetic vocation as “aesthetic educator” in the style of Schiller.23 This is, of course, a great deal more modest, humanistic, and palatable than Gundolf’s image of Hölderlin as prophet, called upon by his daemon to judge and condemn the present godless age and anticipate the rebirth of the pagan deities—not to speak of the Nazi appropriation of Hölderlin as the poetic herald of the holy empire of the Germans. And it is also more compatible with the pretense of philological positivism that, exemplified by Beissner’s historical-critical Hölderlin-edition (1943–), would prevail in the decades following the end of the Second World War.24 Yet it perhaps renders the political intention of Hölderlin’s work even less recognizable than before. The tension between these two readings, one might even say, involves two different ways of understanding katharsis, purification, the most central and mysterious concept of Aristotle’s Peri Poetikēs (Poetics): either as elimination or as a kind of cleansing. This matrix of tensions still continues to determine much scholarship on Hyperion. It often seems that either the late style is sacrificed to Hyperion, or Hyperion to the late style. Either Hyperion, as a novel of artistic formation, is allowed to dictate a kind of poetic norm. Or it can appear only as a stage that must be overcome, repeating the Bildungsroman-logic at another level. Or, in the manner of Gundolf and Heidegger, it is what must be sacrificed, passed over in silence or reduced to a simplistic caricature, in order to propel Hölderlin into an orbit seemingly at the furthest remove from all mundane, bourgeois, values and sensibilities. It is, however, not until 1967, with the publication of Bertaux’s provocative essay “Hölderlin und die französische Revolution” (Hölderlin and the French Revolution), followed by a book of the same title, that the question of the political, coming to the foreground, assumes the significance that it deserves.25 This, in turn, gives rise to a spate of schol23 Ryan 1965, 7; Friedbert Aspetsberger is yet more dismissive of political readings of the novel, arguing that “politics” has no essential autonomy vis-à-vis aesthetics (Aspetsberger 1971, 293–96). 24 See Fehervary 1977, 15–32. 25 Bertaux 1967–68, Bertaux 1969; A minor tradition of explicitly political interpretations of Hyperion does exist prior to Bertaux. In his 1933 Habilitationsschrift, the Jewish poet and literary critic Ludwig Strauss, arguing that Hölderlin invests nature with a concrete power to institute community between human beings, distinguishes his understanding of politics from that of the romantics; whereas the latter transfigured the state into a symbolic mediating representation of the divine, Hölderlin, like Fichte, advocates the immediate rule of the divine among human beings, with divine nature itself redeeming them insofar as they submit to it. In this sense Hölderlin, Strauss argues, rejects the organic state of the romantics: the state remains mechanical, artificial, limiting. Yet it is above all with Lukács’s 1934 essay that the political interpretation of Hölderlin and Hyperion begins. Reacting against both the aestheticizing, dehistoricizing tendencies

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

10 I  ntroduction

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

arship on Hölderlin’s concrete relation to politics.26 Regardless of the specific biographical conclusions that one draws, there is a more fundamental problem with Bertaux’s approach, which nevertheless has brought to light much invaluable evidence and allowed for a far less one-sided picture of Hölderlin to emerge: the work tends to become completely subsumed in his life, such that, even if Hölderlin’s poetry is fully appreciated for its extraordinary power and originality, even if a kind of shame of Dilthey and Gundolf and the Nazis’ mendacious and tortured attempts at appropriation, Lukács insists on reading Hölderlin in the context of his historical situation and the tension between the heroic “form” of the French Revolution (Robespierre) and its prosaic content: “bourgeois society in its progressiveness, and, at the same time, repugnance” (Lukács 1947, 111). Whereas Hegel, like Goethe, would come to terms with this prosaic quality—an accommodation ultimately allowing for the bourgeois-revolutionary mode of thought to develop into the proletarian-revolutionary—Hölderlin refuses compromise. This refusal turns into a “tragic one-way street.” Remaining committed to the idea of the polis-republic, he cannot recognize the real conditions of capitalism and is left no choice but to seek social rejuvenation through a new religion, proposing his own version of the Robespierrian cult of the supreme being. A different tact is taken by Delorme (1959), who argues, contra Lukács, that Naturmystik (nature mysticism) is not the last word in Hölderlin, who, far from abandoning the revolutionary dreams of his youth, recognizes the difficulty of their realization (178). 26 Beck 1967–1968 argues that, while Bertaux demonstrates the significance of Hölderlin’s republican sentiments for his life and work, he fails to provide a nuanced account of the spectrum of political sentiment present in Germany during the time of the French Revolution, and also refuses to acknowledge a shift in Hölderlin’s opinions in the aftermath of the Jacobin terror (28–52). Böckmann (1970) critiques the political interpretations of Lukács and Bertaux, arguing that Hölderlin’s sympathies lay with the moderate Girondists; that his involvement with Sinclair must be interpreted in light of a nuanced understanding of Swabian politics; and that, in Hölderlin’s poetry itself, the political is subordinated to a Schillerian notion of “aesthetic education,” in which the task of the poet is above all to educate human beings in the proper comportment toward nature. Gerlach (1973), in a study of the concept of history in Hyperion and The Death of Empedocles, seeks to refine and develop Lukács’s analysis by asking: “Which forms does irrationalism assume in Hölderlin’s work, and what is the relation of the irrational to the rational moments?” (8). Bertheau (2003), stressing the importance of “human rights” for Hölderlin, criticizes Bertaux’s attempt to turn Hölderlin into a “terroristic Jacobin and Babouvist” (21). Finally, Prill (1983), arguing against the overwhelming tendency of political interpreters of Hyperion, including first and foremost Lukács, to decontextualize Hölderlin’s social critique, ignoring its complex debt to the historical-philosophical thought of his time, stresses that “Hölderlin, both in the justification of his critique of the present as well as in the conception of his utopian sketches, is dependent on and stands in relation to the societal-spiritual conditions of his age, whose determination, however, is only to be achieved in the work” (7).

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Introduction



11

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

is felt before its greatness, it remains a fetish: a signifier of both purity— revolutionary but also linguistic, German but also non-German, antiGerman—and militant virility, and, above all, of the tragedy that befalls those who live without compromise. Such an approach could even be said to end up repeating, despite its best intentions, the purifying distinction that Gundolf draws between the Dionysian logic of the true work, with its eternal repetition of the interior drama of genesis, and the realm of life with its illusions of progress.27 A more subtle take on Hyperion’s politics appears in Lorelea Michaelis’s doctoral dissertation, one of the first sustained attempts to read the novel not only as a political work but also as a work of political theory. Hyperion, Michaelis argues, belongs within the tradition of modernity, conceiving of political action as future oriented and predicated upon humankind’s transforming power over nature. Yet unlike Kant or Karl Marx, it attaches a positive value to the experience of disappointment. Destabilizing “the self-understanding of modernity,” this “exposes the illusion of self-sufficiency to which modern conceptions of politics and action are prone,”28 pointing the way toward overcoming the conflict between nature and politics. The language of illusion and disillusion nevertheless seems still too caught up in the logic of the Bildungsroman, which after all has to do with nothing so much as with lost illusions, with 27 It is not surprising, then, that when renewed attempts are made at reading Hyperion itself from the political perspective that is opened up by Bertaux, these will tend to repeat the Bildungsroman paradigm, merely inflecting it with a political valence. Thus Günter Mieth, in what is among the most nuanced accounts of Hölderlin’s political formation, claims that his work brings together into “a suspenseful existence without compare” the two characteristic German responses to the radicalization of the French Revolution: the reformist path of Schiller and the revolutionary path of Georg Forster (Mieth 1978, 27). The tensions of Hölderlin’s political thought—the antithesis between “the bold struggle for freedom” and the “yearning for unchanging beauty”—achieve, so he concludes, an “epic synthesis” in Hyperion (Mieth 1978, 32–33). And Klaus Schuffels’s (1977) “Schiksaal und Revolution” (Fate and Revolution), published in the second volume of Le pauvre Holterling—the journal attached to the Frankfurter Ausgabe— argues that Hyperion is a thoroughly political and revolutionary work, conceiving of revolutionary politics as the struggle against “fate”—any “external power” that opposes itself to and forces the submission of human will. Schuffels then argues, contra Ryan, that Hyperion doesn’t conclude with political resignation; the Dichterberuf (poetic calling) doesn’t substitute for political activity. Rather, the “temporary depression” has been overcome, and Hyperion continues to demand political change. If Hyperion is rehabilitated as a properly revolutionary work, this comes at the price of an almost grotesque oversimplification of its structure— Adamas is neglected, and Diotima is relegated to an object of enthusiasm; an “it girl” for revolutionary politics. 28 Michaelis 1997, ii.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

12 I  ntroduction

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

a disappointment and disillusionment from which one learns the “way of the world.” In recent decades, incorporation of more theoretically nuanced approaches into the field of German studies, together with a more sophisticated (and far less provincial) historical sensibility, has made possible new and compelling approaches to Hölderlin’s novel.29 In general, though, these readings tend to draw away from the political dimension of Hyperion, stridently resisting what Werner Hamacher, already in his 1971 master’s thesis, refers to as the suppression of textuality in favor of the “monographic intentions of a politically engaged writer.”30 This diminished emphasis on the political dimension of Hyperion is certainly understandable, given the methodological crudity with which past political interpretations have operated, yet it is neither inevitable nor wholly justified. The political turn in literary theory and continental philosophy, evident in Jean-Luc Nancy’s La communauté désavouée (The Inoperative Community, 1986), Derrida’s Spectres de Marx (Specters of Marx, 1993), and the work of Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou, Slavoj Žižek and Judith Butler, suggests that a theoretically informed approach to the novel need not preclude a political interpretation. Indeed, the question of politics, as 29 These include the essays published in 1998 by Hansjörg Bay under the title Terra Incognita, his 2002 monograph “Ohne Rückkehr”: Utopische Intention und poetischer Prozeß in Hölderlins “Hyperion” (“Without Turning Back”: Utopian Intention and Poetic Process in Hölderlin’s Hyperion), and Gideon Stiening’s 2005 Epistolare Subjektivität: Das Erzählsystem in Friedrich Hölderlins “Hyperion oder der Eremit in Griechenland” (Epistolary Subjectivity: The Narrative System in Friedrich Hölderlin’s Hyperion or the Hermit in Greece). In this context one must also mention a growing body of Anglophone scholarship, including articles by Edgar Pankow (1999), Yuna Shin (2000), Kirk Wetters (2008), Sean Franzel (2009), and Joshua Billings (2010). These readings have discovered many new dimensions of the novel, not least of all casting light on its complex involvements in contemporaneous discursive practices, and yet, for the most part, they have tended to again deemphasize the political character of the novel. Characteristic in this regard is also Volker Rühle’s Verdichtete Zeit (2010), whose untranslatable title suggests both “poeticized” and “condensed” “time.” Taking into account Hölderlin’s entire oeuvre, Rühle demonstrates the emergence of an understanding of temporality that stresses not only the creative originary process of becoming but an experience of a radical openness to incalculable new possibilities. This experience, moreover, does not simply privilege the present or future over the past but involves a complexly mediated relation between all three temporal dimensions (Rühle 2010, 7–30). Yet while thus stressing the “evental”—or as he calls it, “speculative”—aspect of Hölderlin’s work, he does not draw an essential connection with the political. As a consequence, the difference between Hölderlin and Hegel remains opaque; both seem to be “speculative” in more or less the same way (Rühle 2010, 25). 30 Hamacher 1971 (trans. Ng 2020).

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Introduction



13

the question of a nonmetaphysical account of revolutionary time, underwrites Hamacher’s own engagement with Hölderlin.31 Nor is it clear that a nonpolitical reading of Hyperion, or indeed Hölderlin’s oeuvre as a whole, is possible. The high ideological stakes suggest that there is in fact no such thing as a purely aesthetic or positivist reading, but that denying the novel’s evental and political dimension leads to the more or less explicit repetition of political concepts that could be characterized as conservative, reactionary, or indeed counterrevolutionary in the most literal sense.32

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Beyond Disillusionment It is telling that Michaelis, reading Hyperion as political theory, builds her analysis around disillusionment. Thus her analysis reappropriates for political theory precisely that category that had in the past underwritten nearly every attempt either to depoliticize Hyperion altogether in the manner of Dilthey, Ryan, and Aspetsberger, or to marginalize its political content, as does György Lukács, by turning it into the biographical record of failed enthusiasm. Indeed, so long as the Bildungsroman paradigm remains tacitly at work, as we see even in the most enthusiastically political readings, the category of disillusionment is always held in reserve; waiting in the sidelines to be brought into play as soon as it is necessary to rectify Hölderlin/Hyperion’s idealism with the bitter pills that the last two centuries of history have forced us to swallow. One might even argue that the most recent readings of Hyperion, and especially those inspired by deconstruction, remain caught up within this same horizon even when free of overt invocations of the Bildungsroman, insofar as it is only with the very greatest exertion of theoretical rigor that a “postmodern” mode of reading, with its rejection of the grand metanarratives of culture, history, politics, and aesthetics, can avoid appearing as anything other than the culmination of a long project of critical disillusionment that, in its utmost 31 Fenves 2020. 32 This is the case, for example, in Thomas Pavel’s brief discussion of Hyperion in his Lives of the Novel, one of the few Anglophone works to engage with Hölderlin in the context of a systematic survey of the novel genre. The catastrophe of war, for Pavel, teaches Hyperion that humans, far from having evolved, are “essentially savage”; thus he “gives up hope for their salvation,” finding “his only comfort in nature” (Pavel 2013, 156–57). Pavel’s interpretation, unsustainable in light of Ryan’s thesis, is an outlier; it is more typical to find Schiller’s Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen (Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man, 1795) than a “paleoconservative” misanthropy reminiscent of Joseph de Maistre. Nevertheless, it suggests that Hyperion forbids the neutral gaze of the disinterested spectator: it is of the essence of the event, belonging to the very mode of its appearance—its phenomenality—to demand a decision about the event.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

14 I  ntroduction

consequence and rigor, ultimately must even turn against itself. If the category of disillusionment is so powerful, however, it is because it draws on a tendency that goes far beyond Dilthey, German romanticism, and the more or less provincial origins of the notion of the Bildungsroman itself. Indeed it puts in play nothing less than Platonism—not as a mere system of doctrine, but as a horizon of truth, and indeed a political horizon of truth. At play is the sundering of truth into two modes, the real and the ideal, each providing an alibi for the other, excusing the other for its failings, thus allowing us to exist neither in the cave nor in the sun, but between, in the twilight coexistence of an ideal order that can never get real and a reality that can never get right; a hope that is always there and yet never, and never yet, for us. While disillusionment certainly plays a role in Hyperion, this is not a disillusionment with revolutionary politics as such but registers the recognition of the failure of the specific manner in which the politics of the French Revolution sought to institutionalize a relation to revolutionary time. It follows that the political sense of Hyperion, and indeed of Hölderlin’s mature poetry, has less to do with vague revolutionary enthusiasm or even with a fidelity to a certain strain of French revolutionary politics, be it Jacobin or Girondist, than with a radical and sober rethinking of the conceptual foundations of the political thought of the West. This is also not to deny that Hölderlin, through the process of writing Hyperion, gains new clarity about the poetic vocation to which he will dedicate the next years of his life. Yet this poetic vocation is not a turn from revolutionary politics to aestheticism or mysticism. Hölderlin’s poetry is thoroughly political, not because it hides a political meaning behind ambiguous, obscure, or seemingly innocent turns of phrase, but because it is the fruit of a far-reaching, even in some sense “systematic” reflection on the manner in which an institutionalization of revolutionary time is possible. The transformation that takes place, and the nature of this disillusionment, appears with great clarity in the following lines from the poem “Wie wenn am Feiertag . . .” (As on a holiday . . .), written in the summer of 1800 after Hölderlin’s move from Homburg to Nürtingen: Yet it behooves us, under God’s thunderstorms, You poets!, to stand with our head exposed, The father’s bolt itself with our own hand To grasp, and extend to the people, Shrouded in song, the heavenly gift. [Doch uns gebührt es, unter Gottes Gewittern, Ihr Dichter! mit entblößtem Haupte zu stehen, Des Vaters Stral, ihn selbst, mit eigner Hand

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Introduction



15

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Zu fassen und dem Volk’ ins Lied Gehüllt die himmlische Gaabe zu reichen] (FA 8:556)

The tremendous power of Hölderlin’s late poetic style has much to do with the very thing that makes it so ideologically contested: the “meteorological”—revolutionary-historical sense—is veiled, shrouded—gehüllt— in song. This “shrouding” suggests an understanding of poetry that goes back to a point in the history of Greek thought that we might call preclassical, pre-Socratic, or indeed presophistic: to the time when poetry and philosophy had not yet gone their separate ways. For as Protagoras explains, in identifying himself as a sophist he is doing nothing more than openly professing to an art that is itself of the greatest antiquity but has always been practiced under a veil, and most often the veil of poetry.33 Hölderlin’s late poetry, by contrast, refuses to act as though democracy has already arrived, for what makes self-professed (as opposed to hidden) sophistry possible is the very existence of a kind of discursive openness, the openness of the agora and the democratic polis. This openness itself experiences a crisis with Socrates’s trial and execution, leading Plato, whose own thought is a continual meditation on the tragedy of Socrates’s death, to renounce democratic openness in the name of saving philosophy (which now must be carefully distinguished from sophistry) and its truth.34 Should we begin to understand Hölderlin’s late poetry, we must in turn make every effort to distinguish between a presophistic and postsophistic (Platonic) esotericism, while nevertheless also recognizing that a decisive transformation takes place with Hölderlin’s “inventive return” to Sophocles, Pindar, Heraclitus, and Empedocles.35 The poetic shroud is not a noble lie; it does not serve to achieve popular compliance in the divine truth to which the philosopher alone has access. Rather, it serves to anticipate a democratic openness, the openness of the people to the “meteorological” truth of time; the openness of the people (who doesn’t yet exist—and can’t be understood in terms of “identitarian” constructs like nationality, ethnicity, or race) to the event of becoming a people. The shrouding mediates between the two extreme poles whose momentary touching is of the essence of the lightning bolt; the heavens and the earth, the innermost truth of history and its utterly concrete specificity. It is not allegorical or metaphysical, translating the purely spiritual into sensuous 33 Plato, Protagoras 316c–317a. 34 In a 1794 letter to Neuffer, Hölderlin even discusses his plans to write a tragedy about the death of Socrates (GSA 6.1:137). 35 Significant in this regard is the philological tendency that belongs to the very composition of the late poems (See Adler 2015).

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

16 I  ntroduction

terms, but rather diffuses, softens, diverts, translating from the purely vertical into a horizontal axis in which life is possible. Hölderlin’s Hyperion, by contrast, often sings—its language possesses a remarkable lyric force—but it is not shrouded, veiled in song. His decision to abandon the “metrical version” and write his novel in prose—a lyrical, rich, hyperbolic prose, to be sure, but prose nonetheless—suggests the intention to produce an exoteric rather than esoteric work, and indeed an exoterically, manifestly political, work. Yet if Hyperion is openly political—written first of all for a people that exists in the mode of openness, open to itself, to the world, to the earth—Hölderlin also begins to recognize in the process of working on his novel that, at the very least, the Germans are not yet such a people; that they are not yet open to themselves. This is expressed with precision in the epigrammatic poem “An die Deutschen” (To the Germans), composed in Frankfurt around April 1798: “For, You Germans, You too are / Poor in deed and full of thoughts” (Denn, ihr Deutschen, auch ihr seyd / Thatenarm und gedankenvoll; GSA 1.1:256). For the ancient Athenians, as Pericles’s funeral oration in Thucydides’s Historiai (History of the Peloponnesian War) would suggest, word (logos) and deed (ergon) complement each other. By contrast, thought—which is perhaps of essence nothing else than a word that has been turned inward and become apolitical, contemplative—is at odds with the deed. It not only leads to inner turmoil but makes the deed impossible. Thus Hyperion rebukes the Germans to his German friend: they are barbarians, made more barbaric by their science and industry and even their religion; he cannot imagine a people that is more zerrissen, more scattered, distracted, torn up inside (FA 11:774). The disillusionment playing out in Hyperion is in a certain sense a disillusionment with democracy, and yet not in a sense that would serve a reactionary, counterrevolutionary politics. Rather, it involves the recognition that the presence of the people to itself cannot serve as the basis for revolutionary politics; that the democratic parousia cannot institutionalize a relation to revolutionary time. The problem, however, is not just that this specific people—the Germans or even the French—is absent and cannot be restored, but that the people cannot exist in the mode of presence and self-presence, or for that matter simple absence; that the openness of the people to revolutionary time is not the divine self-presence of the voice, but is mediated in an essential way by the written poetic word. A new kind of poetic and indeed philological institution will become necessary; a new sense of poetic language and its truth. It will seem, in turn, as if nature takes the place of the people, with democracy, the rule of the people, yielding to physiocracy, the rule of nature. Yet it is not a question of a simple displacement: nature is not opposed to the people as an alternative political and ethical subject but constitutes a different mode of political openness, a different mode of truth. There is indeed no nature

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Introduction



17

worship in Hyperion or, for that matter, Hölderlin’s mature poetry, no cult of divine nature, no pantheism. Nature is not in the first instance a substance but a way in which truth, by way of its poetic institution, happens.

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The Politics of the Novel In Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik (The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music, 1872), Friedrich Nietzsche writes: “The Platonic dialogue was, as it were, the boat on which the shipwrecked older poetry, together with all its children, took refuge: squeezed together in a narrow space and anxiously subservient to their pilot Socrates they now voyage into a new world. Plato had indeed offered, for all posterity, the model of a new art form; the model of the novel.”36 The novel is itself based on the Platonic dialogue; and indeed it rescues the shipwreck of the older poetry on the raft of prose. If, however, the Platonic dialogue makes it possible to stow away—aufheben, as it were—ancient poetry all the way into the modern age, it is through a combination of the resources of prose, which allows poetry to be preserved in the manner of citation, and the burgeoning conceptual apparatus of what will become metaphysics, ultimately ossifying into the opposition of the ideal and real. If we grant, in turn, that disillusionment belongs within the horizon of a Platonic determination of the essence of truth—that disillusionment is possible when truth operates through the tension of the real and the ideal—this would suggest that a logic of disillusionment is inherent in the genre of the novel. It is a kind of subjectivized, interiorized Platonism. Disillusionment, this is to say, is not merely the specific content of a certain class of novels. Rather, the logic of the novel is so deeply bound up with the logic of disillusionment that the interpretative paradigm of the Bildungsroman amounts to nothing else than interpreting the novel entirely on the basis of the logic of the novel. This suggests, in turn, that the depoliticized reading of Hyperion comes down to allowing the “logic of the novel” to guide its interpretation. Indeed, what Nietzsche says of poetry is even more true of politics, for indeed the shipwreck of the one, as Hölderlin himself saw with the greatest clarity, is of a piece with the shipwreck of the other. Ultimately, there will be only one shipwreck; the shipwreck of the Athenian polis. We cannot begin to understand the political sense of Hyperion if we take for granted the fact that it is a novel. We must not regard the novel as a mere vehicle for political ideas. If the logic of the novel remains uninterrogated, then it can only end up infiltrating our interpretation, since this logic is in a certain sense the dominant logic of modernity itself. And hence we must insist that if Hyperion allows a radical rethinking of the 36 Nietzsche 1999, 1:93–94.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

18 I  ntroduction

political, it is only through the form of the novel—the institution of the novel. This form is never reduced to a mere vehicle for presentation of abstract philosophical and political truths; rather, it is precisely what, in the novel Hyperion, is at stake. This observation, in turn, initiates a series of questions concerning the relation between politics and the genre of the novel. Is the political novel nothing more than a subgenre of the novel in general? Is Hyperion merely one political novel among many, or is it political in an entirely unique sense? The fundamental problem with the scholarly literature on Hyperion is that it has never really asked these questions, never taken them seriously; it has yet to reckon with the possibility that Hyperion is political—and a novel, indeed a political novel—in a matter that is itself somehow singular and without precedent. Or that indeed the constitutive tension running through Hyperion, already obliquely indicated in the divide between Dilthey and Gundolf, is not the ultimately dialectical tension between the real and the ideal, or between interior purity and socialization, or between militancy and acquiescence, but between the generic truth of the novel and the singular truth of the revolutionary event.37 The French Revolution is not just an event that happens to be political, as if “political” were a category that could be applied generically to certain situations or spheres of life. Rather, and in a more fundamental way than the English or even the American Revolution, the French Revolution involved an attempt to revive the political in the classical sense; to restore the great politics, the true politics, of Athens and republican Rome. Hence we have a new state religion, new festivals, new forms of dress, even a new calendar. In this sense, moreover, the evental characteristic of the French Revolution is twofold: not only is it the event of the attempted return to true politics, but true politics involves a logic of the event rather than the causal necessitation that has come to dominate our sense of history. Politics involves a relation to a revolutionary time in which the irruption of originality, the beginning of new things, is possible. But if the French Revolution, haunted from the outset by an ambiguity that would trouble all those who have attempted to come to terms with it, is at once the event of the event and the repetition of the event of the event, the novel as genre stands in a no less fraught relation to the eventfulness of politics. In The Human Condition (1958), Hannah Arendt remarks in passing that the novel is “the only entirely social art form.”38 37 The perverse and fateful rigor of Gundolf’s interpretation of Hölderlin consists in its banishing the singularity of the event to the plastic work and thus turning it into the eternal repetition of the Dionysian/Orphic mystery. 38 Arendt 1958, 39; In his 1981–82 lectures at the Collège de France on L’Herméneutique du Sujet (Hermeneutics of the Subject), Foucault argues that during the Hellenistic and Roman age, the “care of the self” no longer becomes,

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Introduction



19

She further notes that its rise from the middle of the eighteenth to the end of the nineteenth century, accompanied by an “astonishing flowering of poetry and music,” coincides with “a no less striking decline of all the more public arts.” The novel, this suggests, belongs to a horizon of experience that is fundamentally apolitical, or, rather and more precisely, depoliticized. For Arendt, the social comes to dominate when the opposition between the private and the public, constitutive for a properly political form of existence, has collapsed into indistinction. Arendt’s brilliant aperçu, exaggerated as it might seem, is confirmed even when we take a much longer view of the novel’s genesis. Whereas epic and lyric originate in preclassical Greece, and the birth of tragedy and comedy is intimately tied to Athenian democracy, the novel is a manifestly postclassical genre; the first Greek novels appear during the Hellenistic age when the Greek polis had already lost its independence. The greatest ancient novel, Apuleius’s Metamorphoses, often known in English as The Golden Ass, speaks in a powerful way to the loss of political agency: turned into a donkey, the protagonist can listen and obey and hence is capable of a purely physical resistance, is even capable of thought, but he cannot speak; his voice has been taken from him. He is reduced to the condition of a slave, who can, of course, speak, and yet, an “assistant in those things directed at action” as Aristotle puts it, cannot truly participate in the reason that commands and guides civic affairs, lacking a political voice.39 And already with the Metamorphoses we discover, at the center of the novel, an inner experience that can no longer communicate itself either through dramatic dialogue or through the utopia of lyrical immediacy. This self-intimacy becomes the last reserve of privacy, with which the novel, in its modern development, comes to play sophisticated games. But in just this way the novel is not only the social art form par excellence but also precisely that literary form in which a most profound engagement with the problem of politics becomes possible. For the residual privacy of pure inner experience is at one and the same time the last reserve of political experience, since it alone, following a rigorous dialectical principle, preserves the public through the clarity of genuine opposition. In light of these remarks, we may begin to grasp the more precise sense in which Hyperion is a political novel. It is precisely not political in the manner of the modern novel in general. If, as Franco Moretti argues, as it was for classical Greek authors, a necessary preparation for political life, but turns into an end in itself (See the course summary, Foucault 2005, 491–505). Hellenistic novels, he further argues, are symptomatic of this transformation, and precisely in so far as they focus obsessively on the virginity of the protagonist, which is nothing else than “the visible form of the relationship to the self in its transparency and mastery” (Foucault 2005, 449–50). 39 Aristotle, Politics 1254a.8.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

20 I  ntroduction

the Bildungsroman, “the most contradictory of modern symbolic forms,” emerges as the dominant symbolic form for modernity, it is insofar as it presents a process of socialization consisting “first of all in the interiorization of contradiction.”40 Treating the tension between the omnipresent demands of society and resistant inner experience, the “typical” modern, if not modernist, novel is political in a dialectical sense; the political takes place as the struggle for a reconciliation born in resignation, a freedom born of self-restriction; liberation through submission to the state. Political events, real or fictional, may play into the narrative, but they are seldom more than circumstances that individual characters, who have come to understand their own existence as historical, must come to terms with, adapt themselves to, exploit, or shield themselves from. It is perhaps only where this dialectical theme is presented tragically or ironically that the modern novel remains artistically—and indeed ideologically—compelling. One might even wonder if the pure ideal of the modern novel could only be fulfilled in a work that, for all its prosaic brilliance, is not actually an artwork at all: Hegel’s Die Phänomenologie des Geistes (Phenomenology of Spirit, 1807). Or perhaps, rather, we might follow Hansjörg Bay in juxtaposing Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, which seeks to “wrest from” the negative labor of understanding and death the process of the self-unfolding of the absolute, with Hyperion. Failing to achieve the “perfection of the figure of the circle,” Hölderlin:

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

recognizes in the very striving for completion something decentering that drives man, in a kind of running amok after the absolute, beyond all finite constraints into something unknown that may just as easily show itself to be the “night of the abyss” as the yearned-for “heaven of perfection.”41

This reading, by intensifying the negative to the point of absolute rupture and ambiguity, stresses the singular strangeness of Hölderlin’s novel. Yet for Bay, the value of both Hyperion and the Phenomenology of Spirit rests in their capacity to do justice to the “experiences of modernity.”42 Understood as a poetic version of the psychoanalytic working-through (Durcharbeit), the novel is thus assimilated to the general process of psychic coping mechanisms constituting modern life.43 This dialectical politics is, moreover, unthinkable apart from the project of political liberalism: a politics of nonpolitics, of patience, of submission to history and its glorious if yet unfathomable rationality. It is 40 41 42 43

Moretti 1987, 5–10. Bay 2002b, 10–11. Bay 2002b, 12. Bay 2002b, 15–21.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Introduction



21

perhaps not surprising that, under the regime of neoliberalism and consumerist late capitalism, the very resistance of private experience to social expropriation has become the wellspring of the greatest profits; taking the form of an addiction-and-recovery-machine, life becomes a perverse Bildungsroman, unfolding to the rhythm of capital accumulation, in which, as the price of doing the business of living, everyone must, again and again and again, pay twice—once for the interior experiences that alone grant pleasure, once for the return to a sobriety that consists in nothing more than a resigned acquiescence to an everydayness that has declared itself to be true happiness even though it offers nothing beyond normalcy as an end in itself. Hyperion, by contrast, is political only insofar as it rejects this ultimately catastrophic logic of gradualism, the phantasmic dream of progress. With great sobriety and clarity, Hyperion insists on politics as event; it responds to the event of the French Revolution, the event of a repetition of politics as event, by returning to Greece; returning to an even more originary, radical, sense of the event. Performing the failure of this return ultimately makes it possible to tarry with the event, to stand up to it; it allows for the theorization of a mode of political existence that is receptive to the evental and revolutionary character of time, while nevertheless coming to terms with the fact that history has happened and that the event cannot happen again as a pure origin. Hence, if it is a political novel, it is so only in a sense that brings into the open the tensions and paradoxes inhabiting this phrase. The genre of the novel demands that we seek the political only by way of its renunciation. Thus Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister learns to renounce his theatrical ambition, which is grounded ultimately on the conviction that the theatrical stage will allow the member of the bourgeoisie, having submitted himself to a regime of self-cultivation, to appear personally in his splendor just as would be possible in high society (GSW 7.2:290). Yet the true political dream is renounced from the outset; it is only able to appear as a kind of aesthetic yearning. Hyperion, however, insists that revolutionary politics be the explicit theme of the novel; that the novel, by contesting the novel genre from within, itself stages a revolutionary politics. This is not to deny that Hyperion is also a novel of failure, of fate, of the melancholy of historical time and its ruins. And it is even, in a certain sense, still also a Bildungsroman—at the very least, a structural necessity demands that, alongside another reading, it be read this way as well. But it insists, nevertheless, on the return to the political, refusing to renounce it in favor of the automatism of progress. Its no goes hand in hand with a yes: if it rejects the possibility of repeating politics in the classical sense—a politics of the autonomous and self-contained polis, built on the opposition of private and public as well as the subordination of mere nature to human reason—it also affirms a new kind of politics, based on a new

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

22 I  ntroduction

conception of the event. This new politics, which at once repeats the classical politics and transforms it utterly, will consist first and foremost in a new stance toward revolutionary time, the tempestuous weather breaking open the state. Whereas classical politics, seeking to exclude revolutionary time, gives birth to the closed order of the state, institutionalizing a fixed relation to the revolutionary event through concrete forms of life and structures embodying the self-presence of the people, this new politics, anticipating a people that has not yet and cannot arrive—if arriving means becoming present to itself—becomes an unceasing openness to an unceasing weather.

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Singularity, Gesture, and Event The political project of Hyperion consists in rethinking the relation between the evental singularity of revolutionary time and the generic logic (of the state and the people) through which a relation to evental time is instituted. In this sense, it anticipates what is perhaps the most characteristic and conceptually radical tendency of the political thought of the twentieth century: the critique of the generic. Such a critique, which finds inspiration in Nietzsche and Søren Kierkegaard and the antiHegelianism of the proceeding century, challenges the logic of universality that underwrites both liberalism and communism, individualism and totalitarianism. This tendency assumes many different forms: Carl Schmitt, in his 1922 treatise Politische Theologie (Political Theology), will seek to ground the generic order of the law in an underived and originary sovereign decision.44 Hannah Arendt, in The Human Condition, will stress the importance of plurality and natality—the birth into presence of what is truly new—for politics.45 And in postwar French and Italian philosophy—in Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Giorgio Agamben—the logic of the singular will become the basis for thinking a new kind of community no longer based on the logic of the common. Moreover, where political critique does not coincide with a critique of the logic of the generic, the results are catastrophic: liberalism, abstaining from critique of the corrosive universality of capital, becomes state power and bureaucracy, socialism takes on totalitarian characteristics. Propagandizing for the timeless verity of the so-called “universal values” of the West while rejecting its own most subtle insights, political philosophy becomes neoconservatism. Refusing to recognize that community cannot be grounded on generic traits but only on the singularity of the situation, the politics of identity becomes identitarianism, the disastrous ideology of the so-called “alt-right.” 44 Schmitt 1985. 45 Arendt 1958, 178.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Introduction



23

It is for this reason that, as tainted as Heidegger’s legacy has become, his thought, essentially political in character, remains vital for the present time. For Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit (Being and Time, 1927) initiated a critique of the generic logic of metaphysics which, even if it has been superseded in certain respects, remains unsurpassed in its scope and rigor. The cardinal error of metaphysics for Heidegger consists in trying to think Being generically—in terms of either a negative or a positive characterization of what is common to all beings. Being is not God, not the highest or first or only true being, since even if God is conceived by way of a via negativa as having nothing in common with finite beings, nevertheless this negative characterization still reduces Being to the measure of what is common. Hence it is not by denying finitude but by thinking it through, and thinking through it, that it would begin to be possible to inquire into the sense of Being. Or indeed, by interrogating that being, namely Dasein—the being that we ourselves are—whose very Being is characterized by a radical singularity. The analysis of Dasein ultimately demands not only a “deconstruction” of the categorial (generic) logic that is presupposed by all the existing forms of scientific discourse, but a new way of thinking about time and a critique of the privilege accorded to presence. But above all it demands a different way of conceiving of truth; a different sense of truth. Heidegger’s most fundamental, if still somewhat inchoate, insight consists in this: that the correspondence theory of truth, which, derived from Aristotle, has come to establish itself as the only way of thinking about truth, is inextricably bound up with the logic of the generic. To conceive of truth as the correspondence of a proposition, thought, or utterance to some other reality is to submit the very possibility of what can be true to the logic of the generic; there can only be truth if there is something common between these two strata, and hence truth can only express itself in terms of what is common. It can never escape the order of universals. Indeed, it is only by doubling the strata that are articulated through universals—positing an originary difference between language/ thought/propositions and reality but then folding these two sides back into a mysterious correspondence—that the logic of universality can sustain itself. There can be no universality without this schism and fusion. Yet for there to be correspondence truth something else must happen: things must show themselves. This originary disclosure is of essence a disclosure of singularities, grounded in the singularity of Being as such. The event of this showing itself is itself a singular event, even though it also shows itself as, and grounds the order of, generic truth. To think this event as event—to take measure of its resistance to the generic order that arises from it—it will, however, be necessary to understand originary truth not just as disclosure but as a play between unconcealment and concealment. For indeed: the order of the generic, by showing the singular for what it is, at once conceals the originary unconcealment of singularity, and yet

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

24 I  ntroduction

with this very concealment also reveals the abyssal ground of the truth— the untruth that inhabits, and plays itself out in, truth. Heidegger, of course, avoids words like “singularity”; to speak of a “logic of singularity” would be to reduce singularity to the most generic terms, or indeed to only conceive singularity generically, as the generically nongeneric. In Being and Time he will talk of Jemeinigkeit (mineness) and Eigentlichkeit (authenticity) rather than Singularität, Einzigkeit, or Vereinzelung. Indeed, there can be no philosophy of singularity but only a thinking of singularity, whose very rigor, moreover, demands that the concept “singularity” itself disappear. Yet this dilemma runs through every attempt to come up with a terminology for the truth event. “Unconcealment” and “concealment” themselves cannot but function as generic characterizations, and in this way, moreover, correspondence truth sneaks in through the back door. The true account of truth as unconcealment, perversely, cannot help but claim to correspond to the true nature of the event. It is perhaps not least of all to escape this aporia that Heidegger, recasting his project as a dialogue between poetry and thought, turns to Hölderlin. Hölderlin’s poetry promises nothing less than a poetic institution of the event, presenting it without conceptualizing it. It allows Heidegger finally to abstain from the concept. In a remarkable passage from Heidegger’s unfinished dialogue “Das abendländische Gespräch” (The Occidental Conversation), written in the years 1946 and 1948, the younger interlocutor remarks to the older: “Perhaps we first begin to think correctly that from which we keep concepts at a distance” (HGA 75:77).46 Yet one begins to sense that this strategy only defers a confrontation with the aporia that it seeks to avoid: Heidegger’s readings never stray far either from the gnomic utterances that define the almost prosaic language of the late hymns or from the fundamental words (Grundworte) of his poetry. The impasse is symptomatic of Heidegger’s failure to think the political character of truth: to think the singularity of the truth event not only as political, but as concretely political. His readings of Hölderlin, which almost never betray the slightest hint of resistance—which indeed remove the poet from the element in which critique might be possible— are nevertheless characterized by an utter resistance to what is perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Hölderlin’s project: his subtle yet intense confrontation with Rousseau, Plato, and classical political thought more generally—a confrontation that culminates in a new way of thinking the political character of truth, a new way of understanding politics as fundamentally a relation to truth. 46 Robert Savage argues that The Occidental Conversation marks Heidegger’s abandonment of an explicit nationalism (2008, 32–95; esp. 82).

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Introduction



25

This project runs through Hölderlin’s life work, despite the changes in perspective that take place. Yet at its center is Hyperion, a work which is, for the most part, neglected by Heidegger, despite his having an intimate familiarity with it and its indeed playing a significant role in his first enthusiasm for the poet.47 This neglect is from one perspective easy to understand: the late hymns remain the pinnacle and the extremity of Hölderlin’s project. And there is indeed every reason to suppose that Hyperion, in contrast to these, is still caught within a metaphysical horizon that the late hymns, by Heidegger’s account, must move beyond. In a certain sense, this could not be otherwise, because the logic of the novel, as I have already intimated, is the generic logic of philosophy brought into relation to the singularly poetic as that which it preserves only by assimilating. Yet from another perspective, precisely this reveals the catastrophic limitation of Heidegger’s reading of Hölderlin; its failure, namely, to see that the late hymns only become possible, and can only be understood in terms of, Hyperion. Not because Hyperion prepares for Hölderlin’s poetic vocation, but because of its political sense, which consists first of all in confronting the genre of the novel through the novel. For Heidegger, Hölderlin is the poet of poets; the poet who poeticizes poetry itself. Heidegger’s Hölderlin, accordingly, makes it possible to think a poetry that has been subtracted from everything prosaic and merely philosophical, and indeed from the entire legacy of Platonic metaphysics. It allows a return to a time before the shipwreck; it performs the rites by which the phoenix of poetry will rise again from the ashes of historical time. Against this, we must insist that the novel is the genre of genre, of the generic, and that with Hyperion, by confronting the novel as genre by way of the novel, Hölderlin thinks through the transformation of the political that alone makes a certain revival of poetry possible. Without this digressive passage, without facing up to the concrete shipwreck, the resurrection of true poetry and politics and thought—a poetry and politics and thought of the truth—can only lead to more of the same, which is to say, either emptiness or banality. The aim of the following book is this above all: to bring into view Hölderlin’s politics of the event by focusing on the concrete figures through which this politics posits itself. It is a question above all of a gestural reading: the concrete singularity of the gesture stands opposed to an abstractive poetics of genre. This concept of gestural criticism traces back to Walter Benjamin and also Max Kommerell, and has been developed by Giorgio Agamben and Sam Weber, who, in the following passage from

47 In a letter written August, 1926, to Hannah Arendt, he tells her that Hyperion is one of the few books on his desk (See Savage 2008, 40).

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

26 I  ntroduction

Theatricality as Medium, offers a powerful account of the connection between gesture, the critique of Aristotelian teleology, and singularity:48

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

A gesture, then, is a bodily movement that interrupts and suspends— the German word Haltung literally suggests a ‘holding’ or ‘stopping’—the intentional-teleological-narrative progression toward a meaningful goal and thereby opens up the possibility of a different kind of space, that of an incommensurable singularity.49

It is important, moreover, that insofar as the gesture opens toward singularity, its existence must assume the form of citability rather than the realization of a potentiality (dunamis) or of an ideal: “Cited as citable, gesture is never simply present, but split between past and future, invoking the past to portend an unpredictable future. A form of repetition, citation reveals that it is not necessarily a return of the same.”50 It is acknowledged, nevertheless, that even in Hyperion, his most concretely political work, Hölderlin remains incapable of a certain prosaic concreteness and detail, let alone of the sort of sober, patient digestion of the tradition that Hegel was to master. This incapacity is the enabling ground of Hölderlin’s novel-poetic thought. To see Hyperion’s concreteness—a concreteness that, as the concreteness of gesture, remains schematic—we must bring the text into relation to discourses and practices that are only hinted at in the text itself. It will be necessary to show, indeed, that Hölderlin’s evental politics does not abjure the politics of the modern age in favor of prophecy and messianic patience, but gestures toward a new way of engaging with these practices. Two discourses play a particular crucial role in this account: the economization of politics—the extreme manifestation of the antiteleological tendency of modern political thought—and dance, in particular the formal language of ballet. The latter too will involve a decisive rejection of teleology, and hence of the conception of tragedy offered in Aristotle’s poetics. Teleology is the highest principle of a politics based on a generic logic; happiness, which belongs to everyone and no one, is the ultimate telos around which generic politics revolves. If the thoroughgoing economization of politics ultimately leads to the rejection of political happiness in favor of a pleasure existing only as artificially induced dopamine surges, Hölderlin shows how a different kind of economy and a different kind of pleasure would be possible: the true pleasure of the festival; a pleasure that, gathering the business of the busy day around it and bringing it to a kind of stillness, becomes open to the truth of revolutionary, tempestuous time. 48 Agamben 1999, 2000; see also Adler 2007. 49 Weber 2004, 46. 50 Ibid. 47.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Introduction



27

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Itinerary Gestural criticism has its own rhythms: it poses itself by way of the gestures that it seeks to expose, and it cannot but take form as these gestures, since the truth that it implicates is itself gestural. Thus the choreographic reading of Hyperion will have to assume a dancing quality, turning against the form of linear argumentation though without abandoning it altogether. Rather than trying to summarize our itinerary, it might be best merely to call attention to certain choric tendencies—conjunction, juxtaposition, recapitulation—that organize it. Dance, which appears in the text of Hyperion as barely more than a mere signifier—there is never an attempt to exhibit the dance, to perform the dance literally and as such through a sort of ekphrasis—will be brought into conjunction with other terms and with their texts and traditions: poetics, politics, economics, history, music, tourism, ruins, curiosity, the epistolary novel, choreography. Thus a filigree of affinities will emerge, allowing the dance to appear neither as a mere signifier, nor as a fully given presence (and as such, in turn, a signifier for the fullness of corporeal presence), but as a gesture, the trait of a truth to come. This gesture will come into opposition to other gestures: it will never be possible simply to say what the gesture is, but, through recapitulation, the question of the truth of choreography, choreography as a relation to truth, will be posed with ever greater intensity. If only to provide a sort of guiding thread to help the reader find his or her way through the turns of an exposition that may seem at times somewhat bewildering, it will nevertheless be helpful to describe this exposition as an itinerary of reasoning, with a starting point and a final destination. The following book consists of five chapters, each of which is divided into seven sections. The first chapter (“Hyperbole, Measure, Dance”), begins (“Nonsense Paired with Pretension”) by calling attention to the hyperbolic style of the novel Hyperion, which not only stands in such striking contrast to the almost prosaic sobriety of the late poems, but, quite paradoxically, seems to account for the far kinder reception that his novel received among his contemporaries. At the core of Hölderlin’s poetic project is an engagement with hyperbole, which moreover, in contrast to the hyperbole of Schelling and the romantics explored by JeanLuc Nancy and Philippe Lacoue-Labarth, is an absolute hyperbole, no longer held back by the logic of the system or organic structure. The second section of the first chapter (“Hyperbole”) explores the place of hyperbole within classical rhetoric, arguing that even though hyperbole seems to be something of an afterthought within this tradition, not least of all since it lacks the representational structure of tropes such as metaphor, nevertheless a different, and more positive, account of hyperbole emerges in the work of Quintilian: the trope of hyperbole calls attention to an experience of truth that involves an originary measurelessness,

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

28 I  ntroduction

and is indeed rooted in the inherent and radically hyperbolic tendency of human nature; the very desire for truth impels us to correspond to a nature of things that surpass measure. This culminates in the treatise on the sublime attributed to Longinus, itself a significant text for Hölderlin. The third section (“Sturm und Drang”) seeks to draw a contrast between the “homo hyperbolicus” of Sturm and Drang, exemplified by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (The Sorrows of Young Werther, 1774), and Hölderlin’s hyperbole. The latter, I argue, no longer seeks to contain hyperbole to the margins of the work; rather, hyperbole sets the mood for the entire work—it is the experience of the utter loss of an extralinguistic reality; of the nothing-but-words. In the following section (“Sobriety”) I turn to Hölderlin’s short prose text from March 1799 titled “Reflexion” (Reflection), also known in English as “Seven Maxims,” arguing that this gives insight into the primary task of Hyperion: to find a new kind of measure, starting out from, yet passing beyond, the experience of radical hyperbole. This new measure (“Equilibrium”) will be internal rather than external; it will involve binding oneself from within. It will demand balance and equilibrium—a kind of balance found from within the body, from among bodies, rather than given from the outside. Precisely this kind of internal measure, I argue, begins to come into play in a number of discourses in eighteenth-century Germany. Theorists of German prosody such as Karl Philipp Moritz, aware of the challenge of achieving the subtlety and variation of classical meter without doing violence to the intrinsic qualities of the German language, stress the need to conceive of meter no longer as a formal structure imposed on poetry, but as immanent to the poetic work itself. But it is above all in Jean-Georges Noverre’s Lettres sur la danse, et sur les ballets (Letters on Dancing and Ballets, 1760), with his concept of elasticity, that one discovers a striking anticipation of the “Seven Maxims.” The next section (“The Theory of Dance in Germany circa 1800”) follows up this hint. Looking at Christian Gottfried Körner’s “Über die Bedeutung des Tanzes” (On the Meaning of Dance) and Friedrich Muhrbeck, an adjunct professor of Philosophy at Greifswald, whom Hölderlin met while traveling with Sinclair, I argue that the last decades of the eighteenth century in Germany witnessed a rich and sophisticated discussion of the philosophy of dance. Dance comes to be understood in vitalist terms that challenge conventional philosophical aesthetics, but which resonate with central motifs of Hölderlin’s poetry, including, first and foremost, the festival. In the last section of the first chapter (“Dancing Dolphins”), I return to Hölderlin, arguing that, even though very little has been written about dance in Hölderlin, it is in fact a persistent, if sparse, presence in his work, and indeed is of far greater significance than its textual presence would suggest. It is clear, moreover, as close readings of both his Magister essay and his commentary regarding the Pindar fragment “On the Dolphin”

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Introduction



29

suggest, that for Hölderlin the problem of poetry is essentially bound up not only with music but with dance. Dance is not just vaguely present as a motif in Hyperion; it is concretely associated with Diotima, Hyperion’s lover; and yet she never appears as a dancer—she does not herself embody the dance. Rather, she summons Hyperion toward dance, to which she refers in the two key passages in which she exhorts him to reconsider his path. The second chapter (“The Athens Letter—Choreographic Writing”) begins by addressing the complex relations between dance and the figure of Diotima (“Diotima’s Dance”), the novel’s epistolary structure (“Letters”), and then turns (“Diotima’s Mourning, Hyperion’s Spiel”) to consider in more depth the first of Diotima’s summons, which occurs during a trip to Athens that she takes with Hyperion and some friends. The voyage to Athens, I argue, brings Hyperion and Diotima under the sway of Athens’s ruins and their “ruinous” mode of signification. The ruins indeed signify, via ruination and in their grandiose insignificance, the originating power of history—the inner characteristic of revolutionary time. The next section (“The Caesura of the Speculative”) turns to Hyperion’s speech, as they sail toward Athens, on the causes and nature of the city’s greatness. This speech, I argue, should not be taken as a simple statement of Hölderlin’s philosophy, but reveals the failure of Hyperion’s attempt to master Athens’s ruins, and the ruinous nature of historical time, through a speculative (generic) mode of philosophical thinking. The “spectacle” of Athens’s ruins simply interrupts Hyperion’s speech; Athens appears as a “holy chaos,” and Hyperion appears almost crushed. As he walks away from the center of the city, Diotima addresses him; the fundamental political activity, she explains, is the sowing of the poetic letter, and yet this demands the Bildsamkeit (docility, malleability) of the people, which in turn reveals itself through their “merry dance and holy fairy tale.” The invocation of dance in the first summons already suggests an understanding of dance as choreographing a politics that complies with the revolutionary gesture of historical time. I then turn (“The Arabian Merchant”) to the figure of Mohammed, invoked by Hyperion in his response to Diotima, arguing that this marks his decisive break with a teleological view of history. Indeed, that Hyperion takes place in a part of the world under Turkish rule is of great significance; choreographic writing may itself be seen, as the Koran was often regarded by Christians, as a kind of counterfeit revelation, involving an agricultural gesture of “sowing the poetic word”—a diasporic compliance with the scattering movement of history. The next section (“The Garden”) considers the significance of the setting of Diotima’s words, arguing that the garden does not merely serve, in a somewhat conventional fashion, to evoke the thought of paradise, but has everything to do with the germinal conception of a new politics found in Diotima’s words. Human beings and nature are to be

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

30 I  ntroduction

understood as a single oikos, a single household, in which life itself is not just growth but decay; the garden (Garten), in other words, is the site of fermentation (gären), which, moreover, names the innermost tendency of humankind, its hyperbolicism. The final section (“The Event of Politics”), recapitulating the results of the itinerary up to this point, provides a preliminary formulation of choreographic writing while introducing the guiding question of chapter three: the question, namely, of the subject of choreographic writing. Who is responsible for choreographic writing, and for whom are they responsible? A reader who is familiar with Hyperion might be baffled by the fact that, in the first two chapters, I mention only Diotima, and not the others whom Hyperion encounters. This was deliberate: it is a matter, once again, of disorienting an organic, teleological reading of the text that must culminate in its interpretation as a Bildungsroman. In chapter 3 I approach Hyperion’s friends, Adamas and Alabanda, each of whom defines an epoch in his life, as well as the League of Nemesis, from a perspective that only becomes possible once we have entered into the ductus of the text from its periphery. Each of these, I argue, exemplifies a mode of political existence, and from the analysis of these it becomes possible to work out, with more concreteness, the theory of the political that is tacitly at work in Hyperion. They are, in this sense, political personae. The third chapter (“Political Personae”) begins by arguing, in a section of the same name, that the somewhat awkward organization of Hyperion is not a mere artistic failing, but results from the abrogation of a conventional, teleological framework for understanding the nature of human action and agency. The characters whom Hyperion encounters do not merely operate within the quasi-Aristotelian ethical framework that is taken for granted in the Bildungsroman, but, instead, they each bring to view a constitutive mode of political agency, exemplifying different political forms of life. The claim of the Bildungsroman and of the teleological gesture, by contrast, is not unambiguously supported by Hyperion’s adventures, but is presented through the summons of his German correspondent, Bellarmin. This summons, as already suggested, must be understood in juxtaposition to the summonses of Diotima. The novel as a whole poses the need to decide between them—each of which leads toward a fundamentally different interpretation of the meaning of the novel as a whole. The following three sections (“Adamas”; “Alabanda, or Spoudophilia”; “The League of Nemesis”) provide readings of these three political personae. Hölderlin’s political personae, I further argue, must be understood in terms of their relation to the fundamentally nonteleological gesture of ruination and origination—the alternation between becoming and passing away. Ultimately however—as I argue in the next section (“The Living Dead”)—the forms of political existence embodied in the political personae fail to present a viable alternative to a teleological

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Introduction



31

conception of politics. Not only does each issue in catastrophe, but none of them are able to overcome the externality of death to life, and thus they ultimately remain within a teleological horizon that depends on the opposition of death, as the end (telos) of life, to life itself. I then turn (“Arbeit—Tätigkeit—Geschäft”) to Hyperion himself, considering the mode of political existence manifest in the events described within the novel and his encounters with the three political personae mentioned above. Here I argue that Hölderlin’s contrasting use of these three terms (Arbeit, Tätigkeit, Geschäft) involves a subtle and philosophically rich account of political existence, which comes to be understood in terms of different ways of relating to revolutionary time as the surplus-producing, fermenting life of nature. Labor, in particular, mediating between specifically human activity and the “business” of nature, creates a world through canalizing, opening up room for the overflowing life of nature. And in this way, moreover, labor is also intimately concerned with language, which is itself a “great surplus.” In the final section of chapter 3 (“Hyperion’s Complicity with Nemesis”) I explain in more detail the difference between the labor of Hyperion and Alabanda, with a view to how their common labor fighting for the Greek Revolution results in such catastrophic failure, unleashing the vengeful violence of the population. The source of this failure, which turns Hyperion into an unwitting ally of the League of Nemesis, rests in a failed dance training and choreography. Diotima’s first summons, moreover, by conceiving of dance in terms of an implicit opposition of form and matter, lays the foundation for this failure. Chapter 4 (“The Politics of Life”) is organized around an interpretation of Diotima’s second summons. Whereas the first summons is spoken to him during the trip to Athens, an event that sets the stage for his military actions, the second summons appears in a letter that only reaches him after she has passed away. This second summons, I argue, provides a deeper and more radical account of a choreographic politics. While this chapter is organized around a line-by-line reading of the summons, it also enters upon a number of digressions into the history of dance, music, and philosophy, preparing for the discussion of the choreographic project of modernity in the next chapter. I first return (“Diotima”) to consider the figure of Diotima, arguing that her role is not simply to exemplify “divine beauty” but to lead Hyperion beyond philosophy by imparting to him a different mode of openness to truth. This suggests, once again, the importance that must be attached to the summonses that she addresses to Hyperion. The next section (“Diotima’s Path to Language”) introduces her second summons, considering how her ability to communicate—her new loquaciousness—is conditioned by an awareness of her imminent death. The following four sections (“The Renunciation of a Politics of the Heroic Deed”; “The Gathering of Nature”; “‘Die Armen . . . die der

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

32 I  ntroduction

Tod uns gibt’”; “The Politics of Life”) argue that Diotima begins the summons by suggesting the need to reject the ideal of the Greek polis— of a political community unified through a shared courage in facing a common death—without rejecting politics as such. Instead, she proposes what could be seen as a politics of bare life—in which the community of the living is not organized hierarchically but through a relation of “aroundness.” Beings distinguish themselves not through relative height or depth, submission or domination, but through whether they exist in the mode of constancy or alternation. Developing the poetic and political notion of a representation through alternation, the final section of chapter 4 (“Mimēsis and Methexis”) suggests that this involves a challenge to a poetics, derived from Plato, of mimēsis or methexis. Drawing on contemporaneous theories of melody and harmony, and especially the famous debate between Rousseau and Jean-Philippe Rameau, Hölderlin conceives of a form of representation in which the “perfect” does not ever appear instantaneously, even if only by way of the mediation of a sensuous symbol, but is presented through a sequence of partial moments. The account of representation given in the second summons is not merely an aesthetic doctrine, but gestures toward a mode of political existence that answers to the problem of hyperbole—the experience of an absolute absence of external measure. Choreographic writing acts toward possibilities of existence that are not yet adequately given to us. Gathering together the threads of my reading of Hyperion while also continuing the analysis of the passage from Diotima’s letter introduced before, the fifth chapter (“The Choreographic Project of Modernity”) argues that the notion of choreographic writing, adumbrated in Diotima’s two summonses, resonates with a far-reaching transformation of the conception of politics that takes place during modernity. Or indeed it allows the disparate tendencies constituting this transformation, which I identify in the first section of this chapter as the “choreographic project of modernity,” to appear as a luminous constellation, opening the way to a new conception of the political. In the next two sections (“Misura and Fantasmata”; “Ballet du Cour”), I claim that the central problematic of Hölderlin’s political poetics of “representation in alternation” can be found in the theory and practice of theatrical dancing in the Renaissance and Baroque, and specifically in the concepts of misura (measure) and fantasmata, the latter of which anticipates Hölderlin’s notion of the caesura, as also in the aesthetics of a Heraclitean “harmony of opposites.” The following section (“Hölderlin’s Virtuosity”), developing the notion of “aroundness,” draws a connection between dance and the concept of virtuosity proposed in Hölderlin’s letter to Casimir Ulrich Karl Boehlendorff. Virtuosity suggests a way of conceiving of a political body that is not organized organically and teleologically, and indeed does not posit itself in opposition to the violent force of external nature but takes up the forces of nature within

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Introduction



33

itself as its own nature. It is in this light, I then argue (“The Labyrinthine Dance”), that we can begin to understand the figure of the labyrinthine dance that appears in Hyperions Jugend (Hyperion’s Youth). The labyrinthine dance invokes the myth of Theseus and also Dionysus and thus refers dance back to the origin of politics. Moreover, it involves a peculiar tension, which will be of the most vital significance for the interpretation of Diotima’s second summons. The labyrinth is both the figure of sovereignty and of the defeat of sovereignty. Dance, this suggests, does not constitute regal power by inscribing the mechanisms of power into the body, but deconstructs or deconstitutes power by turning the errant movements of the labyrinth into the opening of political space; an opening toward political truth. The choreographic project of modernity in Hölderlin thus involves the return to a Dionysian choreopolitics by way of an endless detour through technique. This notion of a choreographic politics may seem vague—and far removed from any more concrete, sober political thought. Yet I will suggest in the penultimate section (“Physiocracy”) that it is intimately related to the economization of politics that takes place in the late eighteenth century. Hyperion could indeed be seen to intervene in the rise of political economy and the thoroughgoing “biopoliticization” of politics that it implies. By developing a nonteleological, choreographic understanding of labor and political existence, Hyperion suggests how a modern biopolitics might nevertheless hold on to what is “highest” in Greek politics— the capacity of the political to become open to truth. Hyperion, this is to say, does not challenge or resist the economization of politics. Indeed it accepts it as necessary. Yet it offers itself as a surplus to a mode of thought already based on surplus: this surplus to surplus is the surplus that flows over into truth. Considering the hitherto unexplored Physiocratic resonances in Hyperion and others of his writings, I thus suggest that Hölderlin proposes a radical version of Physiocracy, in which politics is understood in terms of our comportment toward the dynamic ferment and surplus of nature—not that which is given before man, but the giving of the gift of new life. The final section (“Court and Courtliness”) returns to Diotima’s summons, turning to the conclusion, which gathers together the threads of the discussion up to this point and allows the gesture of choreographic writing to appear in even sharper relief. Taking my departure from Diotima’s invocation of courtly ceremony and her appropriation of the image of the “golden chains,” I suggest that, with her words, the court replaces the polis as the site of politics broadly conceived. The reference to dance, in this passage, suggests more concretely the role that the ballet would assume in the cérémonial de cour (court ceremony) of the absolute state under Louis XIV. And yet Hölderlin does not merely seek to confirm absolutism. Rather, taking up the gesture through which Physiocracy would seek to preserve monarchy while

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

34 I  ntroduction

rendering it inoperative, he will introduce a court and courtier for whom the sovereign, as the organizing center, exists only as a sovereignty immanent to the natural world: the rule of nature radically conceived. The human sovereign remains only as the negative act of withdrawal, which opens up a space for the giving of nature. This will suggest the understanding of the law that is developed, several years after Hyperion, in the late Pindar fragment “The highest.” The law, as rigorous mediacy and discipline, choreographs the gestures through which the body, becoming virtuosic, opens up to nature’s revolutionary truth. For those who remain beholden to the image of Hölderlin as the tragic prophet of a better world, whose spirit ran aground on the brutal reality of his age, my reading of Hyperion may seem perverse. It is not Hölderlin’s madness that interests me, but his extraordinary sobriety: a sobriety that allows him, despite lacking almost all the conceptual resources of more concrete forms of political thought, to not only recognize the limit of the political discourse of the West, in both its classical and modern manifestations, but to envision a new kind of politics; a new politics of truth, and indeed a politics of a revolutionary, tempestuous— timely and untimely—truth. Yet more perverse, however, is the suggestion that Hölderlin, to this end, would draw on Physiocracy, aligning himself with one of the early forms of liberalism and economism. Should we then regard Hölderlin’s Hyperion, from which Friedrich von Hayek draws the epigraph to the second chapter of Der Weg zur Knechtschaft (The Road to Serfdom, 1944), as a forerunner of neoliberalism?51 Does not neoliberalism, in theory if not in its actual practice, present the most extreme manifestation of the modern tendency to remove normative decisions from the political sphere, limiting the function of the state to the defense of the right to property, of territory, and of freedom of trade? Does it not deny every normative role to the state, save that of upholding the norms of the market economy? And does it not maintain that all human relations, including our relation to the earth and nature itself, must be mediated through the self-organizing power of the market, which thus emerges as the new god—invisible and yet all-knowing, all-powerful? Yet Hölderlin, as I argue, will announce the end of classical teleological politics and herald a new god, a new sense of truth: nature, enfolding within itself the historical life of human beings, in its spontaneous powers of self-organization and its power to give; its ferment and its yield. The proximity of Hölderlin to a certain proto-neoliberalism must be taken very seriously, not least because neoliberalism must be taken seriously. Above all, we must avoid the double, and complementary, temptations of excoriating neoliberalism in theory while participating in practice. 51 Hayek 2007, 76.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Introduction



35

Yet practical resistance must start out by recognizing the impotence of forms of practice that presuppose, or seek to return to, a classical politics. Not only can there be no revival, by way of political philosophy, of eternal political verities and norms, but the current alliance of neoliberalism and neoconservatism, especially when leavened with a bizarre mix of populism, evangelical theocracy, and economic nationalism, is proving itself ever more disastrous. Hölderlin’s Hyperion shows how it might be possible to suture the self-organizing potencies of nature and human life, in the collaboration that constitutes historical existence, to the problem of truth yet without retreating into a normatively oriented, teleological conception of politics. He discloses the prospect of a politics that rejects the imposition on nature of finite, humanly conceivable norms—that rejects the regime of the finite understanding—and yet nevertheless refuses to submit politics to the utterly inhuman machinations of world history or the market economy.

Terrae Incognitae It is telling that in the poem “Andenken” (Remembrance, 1803), which D. E. Sattler regards as the prooemium to the twelve so-called “Hesperian Songs” that, existing in only fragmentary form, were to constitute the poet’s masterwork, Hölderlin takes leave of Hyperion, as also perhaps of his philosophical friends:52

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

But where are the friends? Bellarmin With the companion? Many Are afraid to go to the source; Wealth begins, namely, In the sea. They, Like painters, gather together The beauty of the earth and don’t spurn Winged war, and Living alone, for years, under The mast stripped of leaves, where the city’s holidays Don’t gleam through the night; Nor the play of violins and inborn dance. [Wo aber sind die Freunde? Bellarmin Mit dem Gefährten? Mancher Trägt Scheue, an die Quelle zu gehn; Es beginnet nemlich der Reichtum 52 See Sattler 2001, 5–6.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

36 I  ntroduction

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Im Meere. Sie, Wie Mahler, bringen zusammen Das Schöne der Erd’ und verschmähn Den geflügelten Krieg nicht, und Zu wohnen einsam, jahrlang, unter Dem entlaubten Mast, wo nicht die Nacht durchglänzen Die Feiertage der Stadt, Und Saitenspiel und eingeborener Tanz nicht.] (GSA 2.1:189)53

With these lines, Hölderlin would seem to have carried himself away and over into a new poetic element: no longer the archipelagic world of ancient Greece but the open sea; the element in which the political project of modernity, with its restless conquest of space and defeat of distance, began to unfold and continues to unfold. While an earlier generation of scholars, as if in apotropaic defense against the radical displacement at work, would call these late poems the “patriotic songs,” they sing not only of Switzerland and the Rhine, but of Patmos and India, and even of Columbus and Tinian, an island far off in the Pacific. The seafaring merchant now appears as a model for the poet; gathering together the beautiful things of the earth, the poet lives alone in a hostile element, foregoing the cities and their festivals, the lights illuminating the darkness of night, and even the play of strings and dance. Does this then also point us beyond dance as an operative motif? Might we then assume that Hölderlin’s choreopolitics represents a passing phase in his thought? Perhaps. Yet it is not music and dance that the poet must forego, but the music and dance—inborn, native—of the city; the music and dance that has already been born and passed on, coming into being as the historical life of the city itself, as the fixed site of human dwelling. Another kind of festive song and dance will in fact offer a new dwelling for the poet; a dwelling that is no longer built into the firm element of the earth but that roams over the ocean that surrounds, contains, and gathers together the earth. This song and dance is solitary, almost disembodied; remembrance not of any given historical origin, but of the originating power of the origin itself.

53 Sattler 2001, 10.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

1: Hyperbole, Measure, Dance

W

1.1 Nonsense Paired with Pretension

Hölderlin, the struggle for style remains singularly exposed. It is not just that so many of his writings remain unfinished, rarely attaining the gracious ease that would allow the reader to forget the author in the work. More important yet is that this struggle passes through, and indeed remains bound up with and caught up in, an extraordinary constellation of mostly fragmentary philosophical, political, and poetological meditations. If Hölderlin’s poetry marks a rupture, a break with tradition, this break is, first of all, a matter of style. His earliest reception gives evidence of this. While a few early pieces, seldom now ranked among his greatest, found some immediate success, mockery greeted the small selection of his poems, more representative of his mature style, that appeared in the Taschenbuch für das Jahr 1805, der Liebe und Freundschaft gewidmet (Pocketbook for 1805, Devoted to Love and Friendship). One reviewer would speak of Hölderlin’s “recently versified ramblings [Radottagen]” (SW 11:23). Another proposed a generous prize “for the few mortals who can rightly boast of understanding the new poems of Hölderlin . . . and we would not exclude even the author himself from the competition.” “Nothing,” the reviewer adds, “arouses more displeasure than nonsense paired with pretension.” And even Carl Philipp Conz, a more sympathetic and sensitive reader, greeted the newer works with apprehension, preferring Hölderlin’s earlier style. “For they are,” he notes, “sui generis and awaken entirely mixed feelings. They seem like sounds torn away from the disrupted, once-beautiful union of mind [Geist] and heart. Hence the language is ponderous, dark, often completely incomprehensible, and the rhythm is equally raw” (SW 11:30). Yet the clearest evidence of this shift in poetic style is the very different fate of his Hyperion. In Hölderlin’s own lifetime, even before he was committed to the care of Zimmer and became the “mad poet,” Hyperion not only was the main source of his reputation as a writer, but also had been largely well received by critics. Yet even though, with the revival of interest in Hölderlin at the beginning of the twentieth century, his novel is still regarded as an important part of his oeuvre and a considerable body of secondary literature has already been devoted to it, it is seldom ranked among the supreme accomplishments of the poet. Most often, it is itself read as a kind of transition, whose more accessible and prolix style

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

ith

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

38 H yperbole, Measure, Dance 

illuminates the hermetic, recondite late work, or even demonstrates how Hölderlin not only came to accept his vocation as a poet but discovered the foundations of his late style.1 Turning our gaze from secondary literature produced within the academic framework of literary studies to those authors—such as Walter Benjamin, Heidegger, Theodor Adorno, Péter Szondi, and, more recently, Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy—most responsible for generating interest in Hölderlin beyond the narrow circle of Germanists, the relative neglect of Hölderlin’s novel is yet more striking. With the exception of Nancy, none of these has devoted significant attention to the interpretation of Hyperion.2 One can easily imagine why Hyperion has not commanded more attention among those who wish to emphasize the radical, anticlassical, or even antimetaphysical tendencies of Hölderlin’s poetry. Hyperion seems to affirm precisely the sort of teleological metaphysics that Hölderlin’s later poetry will move away from, even if nevertheless bringing it to a sort of threshold where the project of restoration and recuperation begins to break down.3 Yet this surface is also misleading. Looking beyond certain explicitly metaphysical claims scattered throughout—claims that cannot be taken at face value—and even beyond the teleology inherent in the complex narrative logic, one finds a text that is as strange and as demanding as any. Though with this difference: whereas the late poetry is elliptic to the extreme, Hyperion seems to say too much. Thus it comes down to a matter of style. Hyperion’s style is as singularly irritating to the modern reader as the style of the later poems is enrapturing. The language, lyrically powerful as it is, presents an intensity of pathos that tends to overwhelm whatever nuance, variation, or texture the text possesses. There is little of the objectivity and detail in description that has come to distinguish the nineteenth-century realist novel. But above all the style lacks authorial detachment, distance, perhaps even, as Hölderlin might himself say, sobriety. This is all the more striking given that its narrative structure involves a sophisticated and unprecedented form of self-reflection, anticipating the complex strategies of modernist literature. To get a sense for the magnitude of this transformation, one might compare Hyperion to Rilke’s Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge (The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, 1910), a work which, with respect to its themes and narrative structure, is an heir to Hölderlin’s novel. Just not in its 1 For a study of the critical reception of Hyperion, see Castellari 2002; Ryan 1965, 236. 2 See Nancy 1993. 3 Santner (1986), following Ryan, reads Hyperion in this way; By contrast, Kuzniar (1987) maintains that “the persistent postponement of the parousia in the late hymns—magnified, as we shall see, in the last fragments—is already latent in Hölderlin’s Frankfurt period” (153).

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Hyperbole, Measure, Dance



39

style, which, in contrast to Hyperion, is calm, detached, elliptical, and, in a word, sober. And yet it is precisely Hyperion’s style that allowed its contemporary readers to look past so many deviations from literary conventions and so much baffling modernity. One reviewer praises Hyperion as the product of a “power of imagination that blossoms, feels deeply, and raises itself up to ideas” in which everything is conceived and felt in a “noble, high style” (FA 10:27). And Conz, after remarking that it is more “a poem than a novel,” excuses under this formula so many things that might otherwise confuse the reader and lead him astray in his judgments—not least of all that Hyperion himself has “too much of that which we are accustomed to call effusive [überschwänglich] or exaggerated [überspannt]” (FA 10:28–29). Hyperion’s prose, with its lyricism and its “high, noble” style, is, above all else, hyperbolic, and it is precisely this hyperbolic style that excuses, and allows us not to be led astray by, Hyperion’s all too hyperbolic character. The contrast with Conz’s evaluation of the late poetry is striking: if the prose of Hyperion becomes lyrical to excess, the later poems fall back into a prosaic language that—ponderous, obscure, raw— refuses to submit to a fleeting rhythmic continuity. It is not hard to criticize this stylistic hyperbole. Yet the very name that Hölderlin gave to his novel suggests he sought to draw attention not only to a character trait of the protagonist, indeed the basic trait of his existence, but to the problem of hyperbolic style itself—and perhaps also the question of hyperbole as a classical rhetorical trope. Too subtle for its own good, this strategy failed in the very measure that the novel succeeded: the hyperbolic style, which should have been a first provocation, ingratiated itself too much to the reader, proved too much in the spirit of the times, allowing the challenge of the novel to pass unnoticed. It would take the irreverent and Francophile Müllner to recognize, if only to mock, Hyperion’s political intention. Hyperbole indeed has a long and curious history in traditional rhetoric and poetics, and also plays a vital, if covert role in the poetic revolutions that, taking place in Germany at the close of the eighteenth century, led to the romantic style. In their study of Jena romanticism, Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy, calling attention to the hyperbole of the introduction to Friedrich Schlegel’s Gespräch über die Poesie (Dialogue on Poetry, 1800)—a text strongly influenced by Schelling—argue that for Schlegel “the hyperbolization of poetry, the poetic dissolution, is the very effectuation of the idea of organon—or the organon as Idea.”4 This suggests precisely how Hölderlin’s concept of hyperbole differs from Schelling’s and Schlegel’s. For the latter, hyperbole dissolves the poetic work into the poetry of nature, realizing the absolute as the organic 4

Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy 1988, 93.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

40 H yperbole, Measure, Dance 

structure of ideas. The poetry of words—artistic organicity—potentializes the poetry of nature, revealing “something like its truth.” The hyperbolic movement, dissolving the poetic work into the poetry of nature, gathers nature’s poetry around its higher truth. But in just this way, the movement of hyperbole remains held back from within by its reference to the logic of the system, of the idea, of organic structure—and, not least, of metaphor. Hölderlin’s hyperbole, by contrast, dissolves every “organic” sense of language, and the metaphoric, ideational, representational logics on which they depend. To think hyperbole, indeed to think hyperbolically, Hölderlin must return to the ambiguous, multiple origins of the Western traditions of rhetoric and tropology—to a point in the history of poetics before the logic of metaphor and analogy became fully entrenched. This explains his obsessions with Pindar and Sophocles, but also and above all Empedocles, who, as Aristotle said (in a fragment from a lost text cited by Diogenes Laertes), was the first to practice rhetoric.5 And from this perspective we might also begin to understand the novel Hyperion. Set in a modern Greece where classical antiquity continues to haunt through its ruins and weigh heavily on the present, Hyperion meditates on hyperbole as the critical point deciding the relation between a modern and classical rhetoric and poetics.6

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

1.2 Hyperbole Within the classical tradition of rhetoric and poetics, hyperbole remains something of an afterthought, tacked on to the discussion of metaphor and other more prominent tropes.7 Even the treatise on the sublime attributed to Longinus touches on it only briefly. It is as if the suspicion and care that hyperbole demanded in its employment carried over to its treatment—as if precisely here the danger of saying and thinking too much becomes acute. Thus Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria (Institutes of Oratory) saves its discussion for last on account of its boldness.8 If, because of its boldness, hyperbole arouses laughter when used properly, perhaps its discussion could also easily become ridiculous. Hence the need to maintain a proper measure—“it should not be beyond the measure (non tamen debet esse ultra modum)”—lest one cross over into kakozēlian, the bad taste of an affected style.9 But how can one speak 5 Empedocles, frag. A1 Diels-Kranz. 6 For an exhaustive treatment of the sources of Hölderlin’s modern Greece and its meaning for Hyperion, see Theile 1997. 7 For a recent and accessible account of classical theories of hyperbole, see Johnson 2010, 20–67. 8 Quintilian, Institutio oratoria 8.6.67. 9 Ibid., 8.6.73.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Hyperbole, Measure, Dance



41

moderately—without going beyond the modus—of what is, by definition, the loss of measure. Hyperbole is an extreme trope, the trope of extremes. To use it properly is to keep it contained within certain extreme positions in the text, allowing it to add grandeur to especially significant moments of action and expression without the entire text succumbing to a hyperbolic mode. Thus the discussion of rhetoric must also restrict hyperbole to the periphery, saying as little as possible without saying nothing at all. If hyperbole has occupied such a peripheral position within the system of tropes established by classical rhetoric and poetics, it is due not just to a refined sensibility but to the privilege accorded to those tropes, such as metaphor, metonymy, allegory, and irony, that involve a two-termed relation of representation—a privilege maintained up until the present day. The dignity accorded to metaphor goes back to Aristotle’s Poetics. The greatest asset that the poet can possess is the capacity for metaphor. To “metaphorize well” is to discern similarities, and precisely this ability cannot be “learned”—it cannot be acquired from another person but must originate in one’s own inborn nature: “but by far the greatest [asset] is the ability to use metaphor. For this alone cannot be acquired from someone else, but is the sign of a well-endowed nature. For to metaphorize well is to behold [theōrein] that which is similar.”10 The gift of metaphor is the basic ingenium of the “naturally gifted” rather than “manic” or “mantic” poet; the natural basis of the ingenuity and genius of the poet who poeticizes “naturally,” through the plastic versatility of his or her imagination, rather than ecstatically. Thus metaphor itself becomes a metonymy for the tropic or figural as such. The privilege of metaphor lies in the privilege of poetry conceived as a purely “natural” human capacity, and moreover a natural capacity intimately bound up with the capacity for thought, since the ability to discern or behold—literally theorize—similarities is the root of all intellectual activity, and not least of all philosophy itself. Judged from the perspective of a theory of tropes exalting metaphor in this way, hyperbole could only appear deficient, impoverished. It cannot support either the master discourse of philosophy as representational thinking, nor its deconstructive undermining. In a purely formal sense, it also substitutes one term for another, yet the relation between the content of the original and the substituted terms no longer involves subtle, obscure similarities but the mere amplification or exaggeration of an apparently literal truth. As Cicero explains in his Rhetorica ad Herennium (Rhetoric for Herennius): “Hyperbole (superlatio) is a [mode of] discourse surpassing the truth for the sake of making something either greater or smaller.”11 And as Quintilian puts it: “. . . hyperbole

10 Aristotle, Poetics 1459a.8. 11 Cicero, Rhetorica ad Herennium 4.33.44.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

42 H yperbole, Measure, Dance 

deceives, without wishing to dupe.”12 Whereas metaphor and analogy involve relations between things that, without necessarily being unnatural or supernatural, nevertheless lie beyond the power of all human beings to discover, hyperbole merely marks a deviation from a simple truth that anyone, given the proper circumstances, could observe or experience. Yet the classical rhetorical tradition also contains hints of a more positive account of hyperbole. Aristotle’s Rhētorikē (Rhetoric), regarding hyperbole as a kind of metaphor, discusses it only once. Hyperboles, he remarks, have something youthful about them, since they make manifest vehemence (sphodrotēta gar dēlousin).13 The abstract noun sphodrotēta comes from the adverb sphodra, meaning “very much, exceedingly.”14 Hyperbole, this is to say, reveals the quality of being in excess. The description of the youthful temperament in the second book of the Rhetoric suggests the implications of this: “And they err in all things, taking them too far and doing them too vehemently, contrary to (the maxim of) Chilon. For they do all things to excess. They love to excess and they hate to excess and likewise with everything else.”15 If the Rhetoric itself, as Heidegger will argue, involves nothing less than a hermeneutics of concrete human existence, interpreting the fundamental possibilities of the Being of humans as living beings possessing language, this suggests what is at stake in Aristotle’s account of vehemence, and hence, ultimately, of hyperbole itself (HGA, 18:110–11, 122). The vehemence of youth is nothing else than a hyperbolic errancy. Hyperbolic language is youthful because youth is hyperbolic: both are always missing the mark. What hyperbole makes evident is thus not merely one personality trait among many, nor the disposition of the rhetor, but an errant tendency that belongs at once, and perhaps in each case fundamentally, to both things and words. For Aristotle, moreover, what errs, what misses the mark, is what strays from its telos, the goal that each thing strives for and that brings each thing to completion. The vehemence of youth is thus nothing else than the straying tendency of life; an innate, natural resistance of life and nature and even language to telic order; not a striving toward fulfillment, as the ideology of Bildung and self-formation would have it, but away from and in excess of this. The power of youth is a power of surplus that sits ill with ethics itself, to the extent that virtue, as Aristotle argues in the Nicomachean Ethics, involves a mean between extremes, with vice either a falling short or a hyperbole.16 12 Quintilian, Institutio oratoria 8.6.74. 13 Aristotle, Rhetoric 1413a.29. 14 Liddell and Scott 1996, 1741. 15 Aristotle, Rhetoric 1389b.37–40. 16 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1106b-1107a; Significantly, the phrase “goldene Mitte” also appears in Hyperion (FA 11:675).

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Hyperbole, Measure, Dance



43

This usage moreover, as Agamben argues, already appears in Plato’s Politeia (Republic) with the Myth of Er.17 Rather than developing and confirming Aristotle’s insight into the nature of metaphor and poetic language, the subsequent tradition of rhetoric and poetics tended to content itself with mere taxonomy and a superficial description of tropes.18 Yet even amid a general decline in philosophical rigor and originality, the problem of hyperbole is posed in ever more radical ways, making explicit an aspect that is only obliquely present in Aristotle. It is as if, with Hellenistic and Roman literature, the conditions became ever more favorable for appreciating and evaluating hyperbole. While Cicero lacks Aristotle’s insights into the rootedness of the disclosive power of language in the concreteness of everyday life, his seemingly banal definition in the Rhetoric for Herennius of hyperbole as a “discourse surpassing the truth” nevertheless casts a new and penetrating light on the relation of hyperbole, and discourse or language as such, to truth.19 But it is above all with Quintilian’s Institutes of Oratory that the treatment of hyperbole begins to come truly into its own. Consider again the formulation cited above: not merely an errancy that misses the mark of or passes beyond the truth, “hyperbole deceives, without wishing to dupe.” The strangeness of this formulation is striking: hyperbole would involve an active embrace of error rather than a merely passive failure of cognition, and yet the intention of actively embracing and propagating error is not simply deception. Hyperbole deceives not in order to conceal, but rather to reveal, the truth. We are already in the vicinity of the transformation in the understanding of the relation of life and truth that will come to the fore in postwar French philosophy. As Michel Foucault writes, in his introduction to Georges Canguilhem’s Le normal et le pathologique (The Normal and the Pathological, 1943, 1966), “in the extreme, life is what is capable of error . . . The opposition true and false, the values we attribute to both, the effects of power that different societies and different institutions link to this division—even all this is perhaps only the latest response to this possibility of error, which is intrinsic to life.”20 Just as Aristotle’s understanding of metaphor suggests an originally metaphoric disclosure of the truth, Quintilian’s definition of hyperbole calls attention to a truth that can only be revealed hyperbolically, only by willfully straying from the truth. The nature of such a truth becomes clearer when he explains: “Hyperbole is then a virtue when the thing itself, of which there is need to speak, exceeds the natural measure.”21 An excessive discourse 17 Agamben 2016, 259. 18 Regarding the decline of rhetoric, see Ricouer 1977, 9–10. 19 Cicero, Rhetorica ad Herennium 4.33.44. 20 Foucault 1989, xix. 21 Quintilian, Institutio oratoria 8.6.76.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

44 H yperbole, Measure, Dance 

becomes virtuous when the thing itself, the correlate of discourse, exceeds the very measure that would allow it to be spoken of adequately through a discourse holding itself to the measure of the thing. Hyperbolic, unmeasured discourse corresponds to a realm of things to which the very possibility of truth as correspondence no longer corresponds. A speech that surpasses measure is the only way to measure up to unmeasured, immeasurable things. Or indeed, it is a speech that has become adequate to the fact that words and things go beyond their own nature in such a way that their discrete existence as words and things, and the very possibility of an adequation between them, falls by the wayside. From the beginning, of course, philosophy has concerned itself with that which is unlimited, infinite, surpassing the limits of discursive reasoning. For the pre-Socratic Anaximander, the successor of Thales and the first major Milesian thinker for whom there is direct textual evidence rather than just doxographic lore, the boundless (apeiron) is the archē, the first principle from which all reality is generated.22 It might seem easy, in turn, to contain the implications of Quintilian’s statement by identifying hyperbolic truth with the truth of the metaphysical or even supernatural. For Quintilian, however, the supernatural—or unnatural—truth of hyperbole is not the province of the manic poet ecstatically carried away from the everyday order of things. The hyperbolic impulse is, rather, among the most ordinary and natural things. As Quintilian explains: “[Hyperbole] is, however, also in common usage both among the uneducated and peasants, clearly because everyone has an inborn desire for making things greater or smaller, nor is anyone content with the truth [nec quisquam vero contentus est].”23 Innate to all human beings is the desire to make things more (or less) than what they really are. Human nature is not contented—is not preserved and contained and gathered together—by the truth of the nature of things. The nature of humankind is itself to go beyond every natural measure. If indeed, according to the inscription on Loyola’s tomb that is the motto of Hyperion, it is divine to be contained by the smallest things without being coerced by the largest, then the essence of human beings is the converse: to be coerced by the smallest without being contained even by the largest. Thus the truth that hyperbole reveals is first of all humankind’s own hyperbolic tendency. Yet if human beings are not contented by the truth, perhaps it is because truth, conceived as representation and correspondence, cannot be content with itself. The very desire for truth impels us to correspond to a nature of those things that, in their very nature, surpass measure. Because the limitless cannot be relegated to the beyond, but inhabits the very nature of things, things are of their very nature arational if not irrational, and 22 Anaximander, frag. B1 Diels-Kranz; Regarding the significance of Anaximander’s cosmology for the earliest Greek thought, see Kahn 1994. 23 Quintilian, Institutio oratoria 8.6.75.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Hyperbole, Measure, Dance



45

hyperbolic speech, rather than being something extraordinary, is the most common of things. Already intimated is the problem that Nietzsche calls attention to: the philosophical desire for truth leads beyond truth. In his Poetics, Aristotle attributes poetry above all to the natural and inborn tendency of human beings to engage in mimesis and rejoice in imitations.24 For precisely this reason, the object of mimesis is anything but a matter of indifference, and indeed the most fundamental genre distinction, that between “comedy” and “tragedy,” refers above all to the “ethical stature” of the object of imitation. From such a perspective, moreover, hyperbole must appear as a grave danger, since it involves imitating what, being measureless and hence inimitable, must entail the loss of human measure. The tragic actor Callippides became known as the “ape” on account of his lian huperballonta, his “throwing himself excessively beyond”—his excessive hyperbolizing.25 What Quintilian suggests, in turn, is nothing less than an alternative natural basis for poetry, and indeed an alternative conception of human nature, existing side by side with the mimetic instinct. Perhaps the root of poetry is not only the desire for a mimetic totality of similarities, but also a desire for excess, for going beyond, grounded in an ineradicable surplus of desire, or indeed in a desire for the expression of surplus. Each of these poetic instincts contests the other, with poetry itself, in its richness of forms and possibilities, produced from antagonisms that are not resolved in a higher dialectical synthesis. It is with the treatise on the sublime attributed to Longinus that this new conception of poetry finds its richest exposition. If the trope of hyperbole sensu stricto continues to play only a minor role, it is because all the tropes and aspects of style have been subordinated to a hyperbolic rather than mimetic mode of expression. The concept of hypsos cannot be understood apart from the hyperbolic as such. If the sublime represents the perfection, literally the highest pitch, of language and discourse, and is the source of the fame of great writers of both poetry and prose, it is because the superior works of literature, the huperphua—those things that are monstrous and extraordinary, and whose nature it is to grow beyond the measure of nature—do “not lead those who are listening into persuasion, but into ecstasy,” transporting them beyond themselves. Thus Longinus restates, even more forcefully and hyperbolically, Quintilian’s account of human nature: What then was the vision of those demigods who aimed only at what is greatest in writing and scorned detailed accuracy? This above all: that Nature has judged man a creature of no mean or ignoble quality, but, as if she were inviting us to some great gathering, she has called us into life, into the whole universe, there to be spectators of 24 Aristotle Poetics 1448b.4–9. 25 Aristotle Poetics 1461b.34.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

46 H yperbole, Measure, Dance 

her games and eager competitors; and she therefore from the first breathed into our hearts an unconquerable passion for whatever is great and more divine than ourselves. Thus the whole universe is not enough to satisfy the speculative intelligence of human thought; our ideas often pass beyond the limits that confine us.26

Hölderlin read Longinus’s Peri Hypsous (On the Sublime) in 1788 and returned to it again around 1799, when he worked on the poetological essays for his journal Iduna, and indeed the aphorisms of the “Seven Maxims” were written, as Martin Vöhler argues, under the direct influence of Longinus—all the more remarkable given that, by this time, Longinus, who enjoyed considerable popularity in the eighteenth century, had already fallen out of favor.27 The following passage from Hyperion, in which the protagonist reflects back on his departure from his boyhood mentor Adamas, suggests that precisely this sublime, counter-Aristotelian anthropology, itself rooted in the rhetorical treatment of hyperbole, haunts Hölderlin’s novel: But let no one say that fate separates us! We are the ones [to do so], we! We find our pleasure in throwing ourselves into the night of the unknown, in the cold strangeness of some other world, and, if it were possible, we would leave the region of the sun and storm out from the planet’s limits. (FA 11: 595)

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

1.3 Sturm und Drang Born at the threshold, at the point where language and nature surpass their limits and pass into one another, hyperbole falls outside the order of nature. There can be no history of the concept of hyperbole, if history depends on the causal continuity of natural events. And if one could reconstruct a history linking Hölderlin’s Hyperion to the classical 26 Longinus On the Sublime, 35 (trans. Fyfe 1995). 27 Vöhler 1992–93. Vöhler further argues that, against earlier one-sided readings of Longinus, Hölderlin stresses a “sober inspiration” (nüchterne Begeisterung), thus at the same time countering Schiller and Goethe’s sometimes rather one-sided advocacy of sobriety. Especially significant, for this, is the concept of inversion, which draws on Longinus’s notion of hyperbata; the appropriation and development of the musical analogies in Longinus, leading to the notion of tonal alternation; and the adaption of Longinus’s notion of the kairos—the “correct moment” for the incorporation of the part into the whole. See also Seifert 1982, 69–79; As Lewis (2011) has demonstrated, the influence of Longinus on Hölderlin, mediated through the French translation by Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux, extends into the “Remarks on Oedipus” and “Remarks on Antigone” composed between 1802 and 1804.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Hyperbole, Measure, Dance



47

tradition, this would not get at what is most decisive: the irruptive force with which hyperbole imposes itself, at certain moments in “literary history,” as a problem that needs to be addressed, giving rise to various strategies of coping. Thus, in the last decades of the eighteenth century in Germany, with such works of the so-called “Storm and Stress” as Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther and Schiller’s Die Räuber (The Robbers, 1781), the homo hyperbolicus emerges as a kind of hero-antihero. This coincides with the new interest in the sublime, which presents a horizon for an aesthetics that, passing beyond the finitude of beauty, is able to respond to the infinite demands of freedom. With Schiller, the early romantics, and finally Schelling and Hegel this infinitude, closely related to hyperbole, will provide the key to understanding the break of the modern world with the classical. During this transitional moment in which modern poetics takes shape as a proleptic response to a hyperbolic contagion threatening to dissolve language from within, Hölderlin’s poetry seems to play only a very marginal role. Yet his marginalization owes to the radicalness of his approach to hyperbole. This explains why his writing was best received at its most hyperbolic, whereas the sobriety of the mature style will appear insane. The hyperbolic style of Hyperion exposed with exceptional clarity the problem to which the great writers of his age felt compelled to respond; it was his answer to the problem that his contemporaries could not follow, and precisely because he sought this answer in an intense confrontation with the problem itself. For unlike his contemporaries, he will refuse to treat hyperbole as a matter of ethics, psychology, epistemology, or even aesthetics, but will address it fundamentally as a question of poetic language as such.28 The most striking indication of this is the perilously dense, difficult fragment known as “The manner of proceeding of poetic spirit” (Die Verfahrungsweise des poetischen Geistes). The term hyperbolic, itself a plausible translation of Übergang (transition, going-over), appears several times, naming one of the most central concepts of the essay and hence of Hölderlin’s poetics as a whole.29 In one passage, hyperbole is named together with metaphor, as if both terms gestured toward something for which Hölderlin cannot yet find a name: “the entire poetic manner of proceeding [Verfahrungsweise] in its metaphorical [aspect] its hyperbolic [aspect], and its character” (FA 14:306). In another passage, the hyperbolic manner of proceeding discloses the perspective, beyond “beautiful life,” of 28 See Hofmann 1996, 1–9. Hofmann contrasts Hölderlin’s Dionysian poiēsis with the classical aesthetics of the sublime, as found above all in Schiller. 29 Reading Hölderlin with a view to Schlegel’s “Transzendentalpoesie,” Grunert (1995) demonstrates the critical significance of the concept of Übergang for Hölderlin’s poetics.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

48 H yperbole, Measure, Dance 

life in general, involving a manner of relatedness, of transition, that is no longer characterized by, or restricted to, a merely “harmonic opposition”:

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Precisely through this, through this hyperbolic procedure [Ver­ fahren], according to which the ideal, harmonically opposed and united, is regarded not merely as this, as beautiful life, but also as life in general, thus also as capable of another condition, and indeed not of another harmonically opposed [condition], but of a directly opposed, an extreme [condition]. (FA 14:307)

Many texts from the last decades of the eighteenth century, though written in a more or less hyperbolic style, ultimately seek to contain hyperbole within an extreme position in the text, subjecting it to a law of gradation and development. Thus they respect Quintilian’s warning against passing over into bad taste. In Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, Werther’s letters become hyperbolic after he has lost his feeling for reality and inner equilibrium. Hyperbolic style is treated not only as a pathological condition, but as an affliction of the epistemic faculties that occurs when a genial receptivity, turned away from nature—where alone it could hope to calmly experience its own infinite nature—encounters only its own desires. In this gesture, moreover, we already find the kernel of the Bildungsroman, which seeks nothing else than to restore to the hyperbolic, rootless subject a place in the world. By contrast, Hyperion’s hyperbole, not reserved for extreme moments, sets the mood for the entire work. His words flow forth in manic intensity, a single sustained blush, as if all his life blood rushed suddenly into his head, struggling to find word, but finding only words that circulate and eddy, cancelling one another out or disappearing into their own wake. The unrestrained superlatives, the majestically imposing and majestically vapid meanings, the paratactic juxtaposition of contraries, and the manic affect expose language to an inflationary loss of meaning. But the most telling sign of Hyperion’s hyperbole are the innumerable terse imperatives and elliptical phrases scattered throughout its pages: a staccato rhythm interrupting the flow of prose. The command “come!,” lacking all qualification, calls to nothing known, familiar, or definite, but points the way into the beyond. Or the novel’s last words: “Thus I thought. More next time.” This not only refuses to grant the narrative the measure of a proper ending but also ruptures the boundary between poet and work, fiction and autobiography, forcing us to regard his own poetry and writings as the continuation promised in the novel (FA 11:782). The style of Hyperion is characterized by this displacement of hyperbole, as the extreme trope par excellence, away from the extremities of the work and into its center. Precisely this will place unique demands on its interpreters and readers. Hyperion, the novel’s hero, not only expresses himself in an endless hyperbole but exists hyperbolically. Hyperbolic

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Hyperbole, Measure, Dance



49

existence and hyperbolic language, indeed, are one and the same: not only because hyperbolic existence expresses itself hyperbolically, but because to exist hyperbolically is to exist all the way in language, which in turn becomes hyperbolic to the extent that it is no longer constrained through the relation to an extralinguistic res. It is only, as it were, a notyet-fully-hyperbolic existence, an existence for which hyperbole were the exception—the extreme, rather than the norm—that could articulate a comfortable opposition between “reality” and “language.” The first letter of the Fragment von Hyperion (Fragment of Hyperion), published in Schiller’s Thalia in 1793, already gives a sense for this:

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

I now want to return to my Ionia: in vain did I leave my fatherland and seek truth. And how could words [Worte] satisfy my thirsting soul? Words I found everywhere: clouds, and no Juno. I hate them like death, all the wretched things midway between something and nothing. My entire soul resists that which is without essence. That which is not everything, eternally everything, to me, is nothing to me. (FA 10: 48)

Hyperion communicates in words that he has found only words. Even the soul, as this thirsting for what is more than mere words, is itself only a word, and can only be a word; otherwise it would have already found itself as the object of its desire. But this means that the soul cannot even consist in desire, or can only consist in a desire consisting only in the word “desire,” since otherwise, if only by finding itself as desire, the soul would have found something other than a word. The soul, as it were, shrinks into nothing: into the impossible desire for desire that exists only in the word “desire”; a desire for desire that can never be real desire, but only a word. If his entire soul, his very essence, strives against the inessential, it is because it cannot but find itself lacking in essence. Hyperbole is the experience in words of the nothing-but-words.

1.4 Sobriety I never strike, as I wish, The measure. —“Der Einzige” (The Only One)30

Hyperion’s hyperbole poses, as a matter of literary style, a problem that will prove decisive for Hölderlin’s poetic thinking. An absolutely hyperbolic style, the hyperbole into hyperbole, is what remains when a classical poetics has abandoned, or been abandoned by, the truth—not only the 30 “Nie treff ich, wie ich wünsche, /Das Maas.”

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

50 H yperbole, Measure, Dance 

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

given truth of the natural reality that the poetic word is supposed to imitate, but truth as the revelation of beings, and Being, through language. This is above all a problem of measure: hyperbole is the trope of exceeding measures.31 If nothing is left but hype, it is because every measure has been carried over into excess, and thus there is no longer any measure at all. Hyperbole draws us into the gravitational pull of pure language, the experience of nothing-but-words, since pure language is nothing else than a language that has lost all sense for the measures given by extralinguistic reality. Responding to this crisis, Hölderlin seeks a new way of having measure within the measureless immanence of the pure language revealed when the trope of hyperbole is brought to its limit.32 Hyperbole thus names an extreme limit of classical poetics: the radical detachment from a mimetic mode of representation and a donative notion of truth. To find this new kind of measure therefore demands leaving behind classical poetics with all its philosophical presuppositions.33 31 The close connection between measure and poetic hyperbole is recognized by Hegel in his Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse (Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Basic Outline, 1817), when, in a supplement to a section just prior to “Measure,” he criticizes the “bad infinity” that is used by poets such as Albrecht Viktor von Haller and Klopstock to express the infinity of nature and even of God (Hegel 1969–71, 8:219–20). Measure then appears as the true, as opposed to bad, infinity (229). 32 While Hölderlin goes much further than his contemporaries in experiencing the lack of measure as language itself, nevertheless the crisis of measure is very much central to German idealism, which begins with Kant’s “Copernican” reorientation of philosophy and with his denial that we can have theoretical access to the thing in itself. Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit rejects Kant’s critique of absolute knowledge and yet, in contrast to Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, Schelling, and Fichte, Hegel also denies that we can have immediate access to the absolute. Yet even though the absolute only becomes fully known as the result of the dialectic, it is evoked, at each “shape of spirit,” as an internal measure which, immanent to the particular shape of spirit, nevertheless initiates the process of determinate negation that is the engine of the dialectic. Thus he writes in the introduction: “But the distinction between the in-itself and knowledge is already present in the very fact that consciousness knows an object at all. Something is for it the in-itself; and knowledge, or the being of the object for consciousness, is, for it, another moment. Upon this distinction, which is present as a fact, the examination rests. If the comparison shows that these two moments do not correspond to one another, it would seem that consciousness must alter its knowledge to make it conform to the object” (Hegel 1977, 54). 33 Polledri (2002) suggests that Hölderlin scholarship, conceiving of him as the poet of the “eccentric path” and “yearning for the boundless,” has tended to neglect concepts like measure, the middle, stillness, and peace in favor of the aorgic (Hölderlin’s neologism for that which is unorganized, orderless yet not simply inorganic), titanic, eccentric, chaotic, and revolutionary (11–12). Yet beginning with Mojasevic (1963–64), there have been some studies of measure in

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Hyperbole, Measure, Dance



51

The theoretical and poetological reflections written in the spring of 1799, such as the “Seven Maxims,” explore this problematic in a more philosophical idiom. If no first principle, no archē beyond the human exists to provide the measure for human beings and things, nevertheless man himself is also not, as Protagoras would have it, the measure. Rather, the nature of man is measurelessness: the human is always going beyond whatever it is, since, in a decisive way, it is open to an absolute that is beyond all measure. Thus he is subject to Begeisterung—the ecstatic pull into spirit (Geist) as the absolute. The philosopher, ecstatically open to the beyond, all too easily loses his footing: The wise ones however, who only differentiate with their spirit, [and thus] only universally, rush quickly back into pure Being, and fall into an indifference that is all the greater, since they believe that they have differentiated sufficiently, taking the nonopposition [Nichtent­ gegensetzung] to which they have returned as eternal. (FA 14:74)

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The philosopher, in other words, tries to seek a measure, a basis for differentiation, in what is always already without measure. What he loses sight of, above all, is his own nature, his individuality. And it is in this individuality alone that man, in his essential measurelessness—in his openness to the absolute—can still find a measure. As Hölderlin explains in the second of the seven maxims: “This is the measure of inspiration [Begeisterung] that is given to each one. In this way some are able to maintain the necessary degree of reflection [Besinnung] amid a stronger Hölderlin. Görner (1993) demonstrates the very central role of Mitte and Maß in Hölderlin’s writings, including Hyperion (29–43), showing that his engagement with the concepts of Maß and Mitte goes back to his early writings on Greek literature and culture from his days at the Tübingen seminary. Polledri’s own study aims “to exhibit the development of the concept of measure in the entire work of Hölderlin’s and the hitherto neglected relation between measure and chaos, the organic and the aorgic,” while also relating Hölderlin’s measure both to the work of his contemporaries and the historical evolution of the concept (12). Of special significance for Polledri’s reading is the final version of Hyperion, since here Hölderlin comes to stress the “provisionalness of all measure,” conceived as a “condition that can only be reached in life for a while and which is constantly followed by disharmony and suffering” (18). In Hölderlin’s works after 1800, all the way into the late poetry, the “provisionalness” and “precariousness” of measure is conceived ever more radically, but the goal of measure is never entirely lost from view (19–22). Drawing on Heidegger to address Hölderlin’s philosophy of gesture, Levin (2005) focuses on the tension between the ethical demand for measure and the abyssal immeasurableness of Being; Schröder (1995), taking his departure from Benjamin, Adorno, and Szondi, relates the concept of measure to a “secularization of the beautiful,” claiming that in Hölderlin’s late lyric “poetic speaking reaches the limit of its possibilities” (15).

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

52 H yperbole, Measure, Dance 

fire than others. Where sobriety abandons you, there is the limit of your inspiration” (FA 14:69). This sobriety is not the prosaic surefootedness of a finite understanding that cannot see beyond mere things, but is a spirited sobriety, preserving Besinnung—mental composure—amid inspiration.34 This “measure of inspiration,” the degree of inspiration one can endure without losing one’s sobriety, is the measure of individuals in their individuality, allowing them to hold a place between pure Being and the prosaic order of mere things and to differentiate—to measure the difference—between the two extremes. Everyone has such a measure, and yet for most this measure of the measureless is set at a certain degree. For the “great poet,” by contrast, the measure of the measureless is itself measureless: “The great poet is never abandoned by himself, though he may raise himself as far above himself as he wants” (FA 14:69). He can measure up to the measure of every individual, passing fluently between different measures, and he can even keep his own measure while pressing to infinity. Neither is he limited to a single measure, nor, like the philosopher or “wise one,” does he renounce his individual measure for the measureless universal. The poet alone can thus keep measure while surpassing every measure: never forsaken by himself, he provides a measure for himself through his individuality even as he raises himself as far beyond himself as he pleases. Only thus does he become “des Geistes mächtig”—in command of the spirit. Yet this more abstract theory of measure depends on, and even derives from, the stylistic presentation in Hyperion. The idealistic terminology—pure Being, indifference—remains a conceptual approximation to the experience of pure language. And thus the solution can also only be achieved in the element of language: as a stylistic accomplishment. Although Hölderlin will make a number of remarkable attempts, such as “The manner of proceeding of poetic spirit,” to explicate in the nascent philosophical idiom of German idealism the nature of the style that follows from being in command of spirit, ultimately he must, by his own admission, abandon philosophy. Problems of style—and the most pressing problems are nothing else—demand a poetic solution; philosophy is not enough. Hölderlin’s revolution in poetic language is above all a hyperbole of hyperbole: hyperbolic language throwing itself beyond its own hype. And it is his novel Hyperion, which begins with pure hyperbole and yet finds its way, from within this and not through its mere marginalization and repression, to the new sobriety of the poetic word, that traces out this passage into the terra incognita beyond every passage beyond. At stake in the hyperbole of hyperbole is this above all: finding a new measure—not 34 This recalls the Athenian stranger’s defense of drinking games in Plato’s Nomoi (Laws) (637a–642b).

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Hyperbole, Measure, Dance



53

just a different measure, but a new kind of measure, a new logic of the modus. It would not be wrong to find in this an intimation of what Agamben, in L’uso dei corpi (The Use of Bodies, 2014), understands as a “modal ontology,” an ontology rooted in the qua (as) as the “proper place of mode.” Drawing on the different senses of commodus, Agamben writes: “Restoring being to its as means restoring it to its com-moditas, namely, to its just measure, to its rhythm and its ease.”35 Hyperbole is not simply an aberrant form of writing and acting: it is a response to, indeed a responsibility toward, the interior—radical and ineradicable—hyperbole of nature and Being. To surpass hyperbole means finding a new measure within the very immoderation of things—finding immoderation in measure and measure in immoderation.36 Hyperbole measures up to the immoderate propensity of things. It runs up against the limit of measure conceived as an external standard that, even if ultimately derived from a field of immanence (such as “life”), is imposed as a norm from outside.37 Beyond hyperbole—as the hyperbolic radicalization of hyperbole—is a new kind of measure; a measure that, immanent to what is measured, measures it against itself, finding measure in its excess. If the great poet is never abandoned by himself, remaining sober even in ecstasy, it is because his measure measures its own excess.

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

1.5 Equilibrium Among the most famous accounts of rationality’s limits is the Homeric parable in Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s Dialektik der Aufklärung (Dialectic of Enlightenment, 1947). As they sail toward the sirens, Odysseus stops up the ears of his crew but lets them continue rowing, unimpeded in their movements. He has his men bind him to the mast of the ship but leaves his ears unblocked. They are free to move without listening; he to listen without moving.38 This parable suggests the stakes of Hölderlin’s intervention in the long tradition of reflections, starting from Plato’s Ion, on manic inspiration, enthusiasm, fanaticism and “mass psychosis.” To speak of a “measure of inspiration” is not 35 Agamben 2016, 173. 36 In “Hölderlin und das Wesen der Dichtung” (Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetry, 1937), Heidegger, glossing the conclusion of “Remembrance”—“What remains however, the poets institute” (Was bleibet aber, stiften die Dichter)— writes: “Precisely the one who remains must be brought to a standstill against the tearing away; the simple must be wrung free from confusion, the measure placed before what is measureless. That must come into the open, which bears and prevails through beings in their entirety” (HGA 4:41). But this does not yet go far enough in recognizing the hyperbolic sense of measure. 37 See Esposito 2008. 38 Adorno 1984, 51.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

54 H yperbole, Measure, Dance 

simply to impose on enthusiasm a concept of measure foreign to it, but to discover within enthusiasm a measure beyond ordinary measure—a measure of the immoderate that allows us to stand up to it. Whereas Odysseus and his men had to choose between the measureless rapture of listening and the prosaic, everyday, practically oriented and measured movements of rowing, Hölderlin sees a continuum: all of us have a certain measure of inspiration; all of us can stand up to it to a certain degree. Only the great poet, however, can submit absolutely and still keep his wits about him. But what is it that allows for this new attitude toward inspiration? Perhaps it is only possible for the individual to have a measure of inspiration if, instead of being bound from the outside, restrained by a moderation foreign to his nature, he is bound—or indeed, binds himself—from within. If the Homeric parable seems to sunder the body from the soul, such that one must be bound for the other to be free, Hölderlin implicitly conceives of a body that has bound itself at every point, becoming its own ligation and ligaments. If we can still speak of the soul, it is only as the way in which the body is bound to itself. Hence, what keeps the great poet from falling into the depths or the heights is on the one hand the “elastic spirit,” and on the other the “force of gravity” of a capacity for reflection (Besinnung), a sober presence of mind. What poetry requires is a balance or equilibrium—in German: Gleichgewicht—between two opposed forces. Precisely such a balance between two forces, each of which tends toward the extreme, pulling either up to boundless heights or down into measureless depths, suggests the possibility of finding measure in the measureless. Measure arises as the precarious balancing of two contrary and extreme tendencies.39 Such an account of poetry is not without precedent. In eighteenthcentury Germany, poets and theorists such as Jakob Bodmer, Johann Friedrich Breitinger, Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock and Karl Philipp Moritz became increasingly aware of the challenges of achieving the subtlety and variation of classical, quantity-based meter without doing violence to the intrinsic phonic qualities of the German language.40 With this interest in prosody came an awareness of the need to have poetic measure arise from out of language through a kind of internal disciplining rather than being

39 Reitani (2006–7) stresses the importance for Hölderlin’s poetry of the vertical dimension, and the tension between the gravity of the earth and the pull of the heavens, calling attention to his sighting of an early hot air balloon in 1787 (10–14). 40 It is no doubt with these discussions in mind that Hegel, in the preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit, can draw an analogy between the speculative proposition, with its conflict between “the general form of a proposition and the unity of the Notion which destroys it,” and the “conflict that occurs in rhythm between meter and accent” (Hegel 1977, 38).

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Hyperbole, Measure, Dance



55

imposed from without as an artificial schema.41 Thus Karl Philipp Moritz, in his Versuch einer deutschen Prosodie (Attempt of a German Prosody, 1786), not only insists on the organic rather than mechanical structure of poetry, with even the smallest element of the poem corresponding to and according with the whole, but he maintains that poetic meter (Metrum) should not, as in the case of ancient meter, derive from an artificial composition of long and short syllables, but that the length of syllables should follow the way in which the syllables have been placed in relation to one another, reflecting their relative position.42 Measure thus comes to be seen as immanent to the poetic work—no longer a formal structure imposed on poetic language from the outside but a subtle balance of accent and length and semantic weight realized within the fabric of the poem itself. These innovations in German prosody, as Boris Previšić argues, are of decisive significance for the development of Hölderlin’s poetic style, and above all free verse songs from 1803 such as “Der Einzige” (The Only One). Nor is it only in poetics that a concept of immanent measure comes into play. In the latter part of the eighteenth century, biologists, rejecting mechanistic reductionism, will conceive of the living being as an active self-organizing power that is able, through metabolism, regeneration, and reproduction, to preserve itself as a tenuous equilibrium that is constantly being disturbed by the less organized reality surrounding it, and yet is itself provoked through these disturbances to reconstitute itself.43 Moreover, the poetics of immanent measure also draws on an existing artistic tradition that has been in play in Europe at least since the Renaissance: the theory and practice of dancing.44 Because of the historical neglect and marginalization of dance as a subject of academic study, and the tendency to treat it in isolation from other cultural and artistic practices, little attention has been given to these connections.45 In “Seven Maxims” the poetic spirit appears akin to a dancer. It is the properties of the spiritual domain, analogous to those of physical reality, that allow it to maintain its balance. Just as the dancer trains his body to stay balanced and composed and graceful while executing 41 For an excellent discussion of the development of German prosody in the eighteenth century, see Previšić 2008, 21–48. 42 Ibid., 40–41. 43 See Metzger 2002–3. Metzger draws intriguing connections between the biological, chemical, and systems-theoretical discourses of the late eighteenth century and Hölderlin’s poetics and theory of history. 44 Without explicitly discussing dance, Port (1996), applying the Warburg School’s “problem-historical” approach, draws connections between Hyperion’s nature aesthetics and the aesthetics of measure in the early Italian Renaissance (8). 45 Despite all the attention paid to the musical dimension of Hölderlin’s work, there is, to my knowledge, no significant scholarly study of his relation to dance.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

56 H yperbole, Measure, Dance 

complex movements, thus becoming capable of ever greater expression, Hölderlin’s poet must cultivate the ability to maintain mental composure under the sway of inspiration. Suggestive, in this regard, is the mention of elasticity. Belonging first of all to the discourse of the natural sciences, where it refers to the capacity of a material to return to its original shape after the deformation caused by the application of an external force, the concept of elasticity also plays an important role in Noverre’s extraordinarily innovative Letters on Dancing and Ballets, first published in both Stuttgart and Lyon in 1760, and in German translation in 1769. Noverre speaks, for example, of how “the elasticity of the instep, and the more or less active play of the tendons, add to the natural sensitiveness of that part, and lend value and brilliancy to the dance.”46 The value of this hint is not philological: it is not a matter of making the rather improbable argument that Hölderlin, in using the word “elastic,” was directly influenced by Noverre. Rather, it suggests a deeper, if more subtle convergence of Hölderlin’s poetics and the theory and practice of the ballet. In both cases, the terminology of the natural sciences is not merely appropriated by an artistic practice but becomes invested with an immanent artistic or aesthetic sense. For Noverre, the elasticity of the instep is no mere mechanical means toward higher aesthetic purposes, but part of the meaning of dance. And so too for Hölderlin: the elastic spirit of the poet, in its opposition to gravity, is inherent in the sense of the poetic work.

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

1.6 The Theory of Dance in Germany circa 1800 Dancing is infinitely varied in all the provinces of Germany . . . Their dancing is seductive, because it is entirely of the soil; their movements radiate only joy and pleasure; and the precision with which they execute the dance affords a particular charm to their attitudes, steps and gestures. —Noverre, Letters on Dancing and Ballets

There is little to suggest that Hölderlin either engaged explicitly with theoretical discourses on dancing or had intimate knowledge of the specific technical demands of the danse d’école and theatrical dancing. Yet a certain regime of physical and musical training, including social dancing, fencing, horseback riding, piano, and flute, was part of the education he received in his youth, and there is every reason to suppose, as Bertaux suggests, that a sense of physical movement and musicality is, from the beginning, vital to his poetry.47 Indeed in a grand-bourgeois household such 46 Noverre 2004, 128. 47 Bertaux 1984, 9.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Hyperbole, Measure, Dance



57

as the Gontards, where he was employed as a private tutor (Hofmeister) during a critical period in the composition of Hyperion, social dancing belonged to the fabric of life. Hölderlin indeed found quite oppressive the expectation to be present at the frequent festivals of the household.48 Susette Gontard, Hölderlin’s lover and the inspiration for Diotima, herself received the dance training requisite for a woman of her social class, and was known for her perfect mastery of social etiquette.49 And as a Hofmeister, responsible for cultivating the mind and body of his charges, Hölderlin must have been aware of the dance lessons his pupil received, though these would have been entrusted to a specialist.50 Moreover, there is compelling evidence for the importance of dance— as a theoretical problem, a social practice, and an object of fascination— in the intellectual and cultural milieu to which Hölderlin belonged. For Schiller, Andrew Hewitt argues, dance was not just the “example of the existing social order but rather a model for that order”: figuring into his understanding of grace and play, dance is central to his humanistic project of aesthetic education.51 Nor did Schiller’s own theoretical reflections on dance occur in a vacuum. When Körner submitted his essay on dance for publication in the Musenalmenach (Muses’ Almanac), Schiller, writing back, called attention to “the newly awakened interest in this art” occasioned when a famous dancer, the wife of the Italian choreographer Salvatore Viganó, performed in Berlin.52 Wilhelm von Humboldt had recently written to Schiller of the performance: he had been completely “carried away” (hingerissen). This choric enthusiasm coincided with a growing emphasis on “physical education” among reformist-minded pedagogues such as Peter Villaume and Johann Christoph Friedrich Guts Muth, who, comparing his students with the naked youth of Greek statuary, concluded that modern life led to a crippling of the physique that must be remedied through a “gymnastic” regime of physical education.53 Here, as Alexander Honold has suggested, we may even discover a direct influence on Hölderlin. As he was finishing the second volume of Hyperion, he was introduced, through Johann Gottfried Ebel and Samuel Thomas von Soemmerring, to a former private student of Guts Muth: the young geographer Carl Ritter, also employed as a private tutor in Frankfurt.54 48 See Fertig 1990, 66–67. 49 Brauer 2002, 25. 50 Fertig (1990) observes that in the grand-bourgeois life of late eighteenthcentury Germany, the education of children, when done at home, typically became the exclusive responsibility of the housewife—as seemed to be the case in the Gontard family (53). 51 Hewitt 2005, 1–12. 52 Schiller and Körner 1847, 3:319; see Hewitt 2005, 1. 53 See Honold 2002, 96–116. 54 Honold 2002, 114.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

58 H yperbole, Measure, Dance 

This newly awakened interest, moreover, reflected a curious digression in the history of theatrical dance in the West, which, from the Italian Renaissance to George Balanchine’s New York City Ballet, has almost always gravitated toward the principal centers of political and economic power. From 1761 to 1774, the provincial and unimportant duchy of Württemberg, then under the reign of Karl Eugen, served as the adopted home of Noverre, one of the greatest innovators in the history of the ballet. Noverre’s influence on German literature, during the Enlightenment and beyond, was also profound. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was a great admirer of the Letters on Dancing and Ballets, and was partly responsible for the German translation published in 1769.55 The influence of Noverre on Lessing, and the proximity of their ideas for dramatic reform, is evident in Lessing’s Laokoon: oder über die Grenzen der Mahlerey und Poesie (Laocoon, or on the Limits of Painting and Poetry, 1766) and his Hamburgische Dramaturgie (Hamburg Dramaturgy, 1767, 1769).56 Noverre and Lessing both sought to go back to Aristotle, wresting the deeper insights of the Poetics from their often misguided and dogmatic reception. Dramatic unity was thus understood in terms of the functional relation of part and whole. And Noverre’s influence can also be felt in Goethe, Schiller, and Christoph Martin Wieland.57 While no concrete textual evidence links Hölderlin to Noverre, we may assume he was familiar with Noverre and his works, not least of all since Noverre, though in the pay of duke Karl Eugen, pursued a theatrical and aesthetic project that was unabashedly radical in its tendencies. Perhaps more than any other artist of the eighteenth century, Noverre demonstrates the possibility of subverting the system of power from within by advancing reforms that, seemingly justified on purely aesthetic grounds, involve revolutionary political ideals. To better appreciate the resonances between Hölderlin’s poetological writings and the theoretical discussions of dance that arose in Noverre’s wake, let us consider more closely the short essay, titled “On the Meaning of Dance,” that Körner tried without success to publish in the Muses’ Almanac. While this essay, which Körner penned in January 1795 while working on musical theory, was not published until 1808 in the first issue of Heinrich von Kleist and Adam Müller’s short-lived Phöbus, Körner’s friendship with Schiller, with whom he engaged in a well-known correspondence about aesthetics, makes it plausible that Hölderlin, who lived in Jena for the first half of 1795 and enjoyed contact with Schiller during this time, either had access to the essay in some form or was exposed to 55 Sträßner 1994, 44. 56 Ibid., 65. 57 For a comprehensive study of Noverre’s influence on Wieland, Goethe, and Schiller, as well as Lessing, see Sträßner 1994.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Hyperbole, Measure, Dance



59

its principal ideas.58 We might indeed compare it with Hölderlin’s “Seven Maxims,” itself an attempt to show how the poet can find balance and measure despite lacking the objectivity that Schiller, seduced by Goethe’s classicism, would recommend to the wayward young poet. Hölderlin would seem to develop precisely those ideas in Körner that are most at odds with Schiller’s own aesthetic humanism. In the “Seven Maxims,” we recall, Hölderlin conceives of the poet’s task as the ascent and descent on an infinite ladder of degrees of inspiration, with the poet’s sobriety (Nüchternheit) a hovering that resists falling either upwards or downwards (FA 14:69–71). The “great poet,” he writes, “is never abandoned by himself, even though he may raise himself as far above himself as he wants. One can also fall into the heights as well as into the depths. The latter is prevented by the elastic spirit, whereas the former is prevented by the gravity that lies in sober consciousness [Besinnung]” (FA 14:69). While the following passage from Körner’s essay remains rooted in a Kantian and Schillerian vocabulary of “free play”—stressing dance’s aesthetic dimension over its corporeality—it nevertheless proposes a similar contrast between elasticity and gravity:

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The free play of the living being in its world is indicated through the victory of form over mass in movement. The shape [Gestalt] hovers in space without exertion and resistance. It is not held to the floor through heaviness [Schwere]: it cleaves to it from inclination. Every muscle preserves its sensitivity [Reizbarkeit] and elasticity, yet they stand under the mild rule of an inner force, which they freely seem to obey.59

Dance, moreover, involves a scale of degrees of tension (Spannung) and relaxation (Nachlassung), analogous to the musical scale (Tonleiter) with its opposed poles of height and depth. The extremes of the scala are not just formally distinct but involve fundamentally opposed modalities of Being—infinite activity (“a floating upwards, a striving into the infinite [ein Emporschweben, ein Streben ins Unendliche]”) and infinite passivity (“a collapsing, a devotion to external expressions [ein Zusammensinken, eine Hingebung gegen äußere Eindrücke]”). The richness of the language of a mode of dancing consists precisely in the multitude of gradations (Abstufungen) that are able to appear in a determinate fashion.60 58 For the dating of this work, see Körner 1964, 134. 59 Körner 1964, 50. The link drawn between Reizbarkeit (irritability) and elasticity is especially interesting, suggesting a connection between Körner’s understanding of dance and contemporaneous biological discourse. The concepts of Reizbarkeit and Empfindlichkeit (sensitivity), which also influenced Hölderlin, led to a rethinking of the nature of life itself (See Oehler-Klein and Wenzel 1996– 97, 83–101). 60 Körner 1964, 51.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

60 H yperbole, Measure, Dance 

For Körner, the question of the meaning of dance invoked in the title must be raised not in order to render dance comprehensible to but rather to protect it from philosophy, and above all from those theories that, reducing meaning to what can be articulated in words, destroy the “tender blossoms of art.”61 The very question of meaning (Bedeutung) is thus as much ironical as earnest; the meaning of dance is what escapes meaning, something ineffable. Least of all can it be reduced to a play of shapes (Gestalten) or schemata. Rather than exhausting itself in a meaning accessible to the understanding, it originates from, and exists as an announcement (Ankündigung) of an intoxicating feeling of power; a “festive mood” (festliche Stimmung) or “ideal of life” (Ideal des Lebens). The meaning of dance, in other words, is nothing other than the very festivals “in which the human being raised himself beyond the animal condition.” Körner even goes so far as to suggest that it is precisely the “unique quality of a particular festival” (Eigenthümliche eines besondern Fests) that grants dance its determinate meaning. It is worth noting that Heidegger’s brief discussion of dance in Hölderlin—it could seem like little more than a passing note in his 1941/42 lecture course on the poem “Remembrance”—stressed precisely the connection between play, dance, and festival: a thematic constellation that itself belongs within the horizon of Körner’s essay, and his correspondence with Schiller, for whom, of course, Spiel (play) is a guiding word. Heidegger writes: “If the human being himself in the controlled unity of his figure comes into play, dance arises. Play and dance belong to the splendor of the celebration” (HGA 52:67). The purely festive is precisely what is prior to the dramatic—the fundamental category of Aristotle’s Poetics—and likewise to the privilege accorded action as object of mimesis. What dance originally means is the festive mood of a higher life both above and prior to the needy life of everyday activity; a life that is beyond and before praxis. This higher life is above all the life of the race or Geschlecht in its two intertwined senses: the relations of man and woman as they constitute the national life of a particular people.62 It involves sensual desire as mediated through morality (Sitte). And it is precisely by returning to its festive roots that the dramatic dance can escape the decay and sterility that has beset the ballet as a result of seeking an object of representation, akin to an action, from mimetic poetry.63 Precisely by abandoning its own drama, the dramatic dance gains access to a “most abundant material,” taking pleasure in the “riches of human nature . . . which exhibits in the most manifold pictures the inner strife between passion and a pleasing and graceful [hold]

61 Ibid., 48. 62 Ibid., 56. 63 Ibid., 54.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Hyperbole, Measure, Dance



61

morality.”64 To return the dance to the festivity of nature, conceived not simply as the state of nature—the pastoral ideal—but rather as a strife between sensual passion and a higher moral order, is not simply to restore an art form to its past grandeur, but to preserve the seeds of “beautiful human nature” that, still found in youth, perish with the onset of maturity in an era when the festive mood has itself become rare.65 Recent scholarship has brought to light yet another indication of a philosophical interest in dance among Hölderlin’s milieu. Here, moreover, we may surmise both a more immediate impact on the composition of the second book of Hyperion, and also a connection with politics. Accompanying his friend Sinclair on a diplomatic mission to the Rastatt Congress in the fall of 1798, Hölderlin joined the company of a group of men who, as he puts it in a letter to his brother, were “full of spirit and pure impulse.”66 Among these was Friedrich Muhrbeck, who in 1796 had become adjunct professor of philosophy in Greifswald. Hölderlin would describe Muhrbeck as “giving his soul wings . . . toward a bold philosophical work to which he is now still adding material.”67 Nothing would come of this: he did not publish a single line of philosophy in his lifetime.68 Yet he clearly impressed the small, academically inclined circle of friends with his passionate philosophical interests. Writing to his friend Johann Smidt just before the arrival of Sinclair and Hölderlin, Fritz Horn describes the extraordinary nature of the conversations at Rastatt in which Muhrbeck played a crucial role: “We plotted all sorts of schemes with one another and treated many topics: philosophy, politics, current affairs, physics, mathesis, love, holy matrimony, revolutions, etc. etc.: and derived many results.”69 Muhrbeck was himself described as possessing a bold and original philosophical vision, a keen eye for the truth, and strong powers of selfreflection. He lacked only the capacity for “clear presentation,” trusting too much in instinctive feeling.70 Impressed by Muhrbeck’s thoughts, Horn spends several pages of his letter explaining them, and even wonders if the title “philosophy” is adequate. For Muhrbeck, indeed, philosophy in its present form, which consists principally in trying to answer questions, resolve doubts, prove propositions, and make prescriptions, is itself only a symptom of sickness. Anticipating Wittgenstein and Karl 64 Ibid., 54–56. 65 Ibid., 57. 66 Franz 2008–9, 281; For the significance of the Rastatt Congress for the evolution of German Jacobinism, as well as an interesting analysis of the failure of revolutionary thought to take hold in Germany, see Aretin 1980–81, 4–17. 67 Franz 2008–9, 281–82. 68 Ibid., 295. 69 Ibid., 285. 70 Ibid.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

62 H yperbole, Measure, Dance 

Kraus, Muhrbeck argues that the very uncertainty that philosophy tries to eliminate by these procedures betrays a sick condition. And thus the certainty that philosophy provides as a remedy does not respond to an essential human need but merely treats the symptoms. What is needed, instead, is to address the root cause of the symptoms—the sickness itself. Were this achieved, there would no longer be a need for the philosophical search for certainty.71 Muhrbeck in turn understands sickness as a “quantitative annihila­ tion”—a one-sidedness of life—in response to which life must “be given back to itself.” But this “reawakening of life,” “all of which, save an immortal germ, has been annihilated” cannot proceed through syllogisms but only through “the sight [Anblik] of fully healthy life.” Needed is an image or picture (Bild) faithfully representing the spirit of life. This image would be a mirror “from out of which the most perfect life is beamed back for all in whom its sparks glow,” and this mirror in turn is likened to the “infinite sea in a state of stillness, in which the bestarred sky mirrors itself.”72 Having neither frame nor limits, it must be like a moving painting, able to depict “a growing tree—the development of the child into a human being and the various races as branches of the stem.” And this mirror, moreover, must “allow no doubt about its authenticity, the sight of it must forestall every demand of proof, conviction.” Horn, interrupting his sketch of Muhrbeck’s philosophy at this point, casts doubt on how such a picture could be given to sickly human beings given their diversity with respect to age, race (Geschlecht), nation, and the era in which they live. How would it be possible, he wonders, for someone to appear who would transcend all these differences, unifying within himself the purest humanity for more than just a passing moment. This demands more than just complete health—it demands a transcendence of life.73 Horn seems to recognize that Muhrbeck’s philosophy—a striking if vague anticipation of Nietzsche—runs up against the limit of its own humanistic presuppositions. The transcendental image of health he seeks, it would seem, could be no mere human being, but an Übermensch.74 Muhrbeck’s response to these objections, as imagined by Horn, is quite remarkable. While Muhrbeck sees the great difficulty, if not impossibility, of realizing this ideal image, he nevertheless believes in the existence of those who, while not freed from the general sickness afflicting 71 Ibid., 286; The power of this notion, as vaguely formulated as it is, emerges in light of Heidegger’s critique of the Cartesian quest for certainty. 72 Ibid., 286–87. 73 Ibid., 287–88. 74 Or one might compare Nietzsche’s aphorism on the grosse Gesundheit (the great health) in Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (The Gay Science, 1882) (1999, 3:635–37).

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Hyperbole, Measure, Dance



63

humanity, somehow experience enough transient moments of perfect health that they are able to gather these momentary glimpses of perfect life together into a picture that they can then use to cure their sickness: “Muhrbeck believes in such momentary limitlessness of the human being, in proof of which he introduces—dance.”75 But if dance momentarily exhibits an unlimited existence that cannot yet assume a stable, lasting form among human beings, it is perhaps because both movement and the momentary belong essentially to its structure. For ultimately, it itself consists in movement and becoming rather than stasis; the sickness afflicting life is a consequence of the direction of life having been turned away from change and toward stability, security, certainty. Horn’s exposition does not entertain these possibilities, and it is impossible to know if Muhrbeck, in these fleeting, inchoate, and almost entirely forgotten flashes of insight, recognized the radical tendencies of his own thought. Yet if the dash conveys hesitation at the role Muhrbeck assigns to dance, Horn’s response suggests that he too did not hesitate to think seriously about its nature. Noting that “the manner of satisfaction that can arise from the harmony of movements with the demand made by music . . . is only an equilibrium between an external and internal play,” he wonders whether “the dance follows the music or music follows the dance.”76 It might be pointless to speculate about the impact that this conversation, which took place around the time Hölderlin was finishing the second volume, had on the composition of Hyperion. Still, it seems significant that, contrasting the temperament of Muhrbeck and Sinclair, these two “extraordinary” men, Horn writes: “The first wants a harmonious world, and wants to lose himself in it; for the other it is very convenient that the world is not like this in order that he can still properly fight with it.”77 Sinclair is often seen as a model for Alabanda, just as Diotima, who was introduced to Hyperion before Hölderlin’s appointment as private tutor for the Gontards, assumes the features of Susette Gontard in the final version of the novel. In the second volume, Hyperion appears torn between Diotima and Alabanda, and the very different ways of living that they embody. Perhaps, then, Muhrbeck’s philosophy of the ideal dance image also contributed to Hölderlin’s conception of Diotima, and, specifically, her final summons—even allowing a certain rapprochement of the forms of life embodied by the two friends. It is also worth noting that when Muhrbeck came to Rastatt, he was on his way to Paris, though the trip had been postponed because of difficulties obtaining a visa.78 Perhaps he was drawn to France not only by 75 76 77 78

Franz 2008–9, 288. Ibid., 288. Ibid., 290. Ibid., 283–84.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

64 H yperbole, Measure, Dance 

the new politics but also by the chance of glimpsing the new dancing, including folk dances such as the carmagnole, to which the fall of the ancien régime had given rise.79 This casts a new light on the famous discussion of the “southern body” in the letter that Hölderlin would write to Boehlendorff, himself a close friend of Muhrbeck, on his return from Bordeaux. And perhaps we may also recall the poem “Remembrance,” itself written in remembrance of the French city, whose residents, Dieter Henrich notes, were known for their passion for dancing, and where Hölderlin himself arrived just in time for the “balls and amusements” that flooded its streets with masked revelers.80 In this poem, which we already encountered in the introduction to this book, Hölderlin contrasts the port city’s holidays, violin song, and dance with the sailors’ solitary life on the sea, the source from which all wealth begins.

1.7 Dancing Dolphins It is hellenic that Hölderlin can only experience and express the creative and generative powers in themselves and in their external manifestation, the excitement and shudder that seizes him at the breath of nature or fate, under the form of moved human bodies . . . He automatically poeticizes all inner processes to moved shapes and feels the shape, which he beholds, as the symbol of movements or forces. —Friedrich Gundolf, Hölderlins Archipelagus

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Hölderlin was extremely musical, and, to the end, had always liked to make music and danced to the music of others. —Reinhard Horowski, Hölderlin war nicht verrückt: Eine Streitschrift

That so little has been written about dance in Hölderlin should not surprise; the word “dance” (Tanz) appears but a few times throughout the whole of his work, and only twice in the final version of Hyperion, though it is also mentioned once in Hyperion’s Youth, and, significantly, in two passages from the preliminary stage of the final version. The few attributes linked to it—“labyrinthine” (labyrinthisch), “merry” (lustig), “innate” (eingeboren), “consecrated” (geweihet)—are certainly suggestive, hinting at the rudiments of a theory of dance that accords with Körner and Muhrbeck. Dance is innate to human nature. It expresses joy. It is sacred, belonging to the festival bringing together mortals and gods. Yet these predicates remain quite abstract, and, apart from a reference in 79 Homans 2010, 113. 80 Henrich 1986, 210. Lefebvre 2003, 13; see Bertheau 2003, 117.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Hyperbole, Measure, Dance



65

Hyperion’s Youth (and a similar passage from the penultimate version) to the “labyrinths of the Ronneca dance [Labyrinthen des Ronnecatanzes],” fail to name a specific dance let alone exhibit its movement. Nor do his theoretical writings treat dance explicitly. Whereas Klopstock, Schiller, Herder, Humboldt, Mallarmé, Valéry, Rilke, and Nietzsche invest dance with figurative meaning and philosophical resonance, Hölderlin’s dance appears as barely more than a word, a formula. If his writings develop a discourse around it, this discourse calls no attention to itself. The seeming neglect of dance is surprising, not only given the importance for Hölderlin of the Dionysian, which, introduced to him mainly through Heinse’s Ardinghello und die glückseligen Inseln (Ardinghello and the Blessed Islands, 1787), he will develop in a novel, rigorous fashion, but also given the crucial role of musicality for his poetic theory and practice—an aspect of his work that has already attracted considerable critical attention. As Ryan argues, Hölderlin’s mature poetry follows the principle of “tonal alternation” developed in the poetological sketches written between 1798 and 1800.81 And Hölderlin’s poetic sense of rhythm is no less sophisticated.82 Yet music and dance are intimately related both to one another and to poetry: not only in their origins but in their development. In the music novel Hildegard von Hohenthal (1795–96), a principal source for Hölderlin’s own understanding of the musicality of poetry, Heinse stresses the physicality, and indeed corporeality, of poetic meter.83 “[Verse] feet,” he writes, “are, all in all, the most manifold forms of movement in their purity, separated off from material.” He demonstrates this with the iamb, “the most common foot in all languages”: “We immediately find this form when [the human being] draws back his right hand and strikes. The short syllable expresses the movement, and the long syllable the force that is displayed [auffallende Kraft]. With the legs there is a leap, a rapidly proceeding double step.”84 Moreover, Hölderlin’s Magister essay “History of the Beautiful Arts,” one of his earliest preserved writings, already demonstrates an awareness of this constellation of connections. In one of the rather few passages not copied more or less verbatim from one of his sources, he writes:

81 Ryan 1960. 82 Previšić 2008. 83 See Komma 1953, 109–10 and Gaier 1998–99. The importance of Heinse, to whom Hölderlin was introduced through Susette von Gontard, has been established by Petzold (1967) and Pigenot (1923), though Hock (1950) takes a more skeptical view of their relationship. For a detailed biographical account of the role of Heinse in Hölderlin’s relationship to Susette Gontard, see Hock 1995. For a more theoretical and speculative account of the significance of Heinse for Hyperion, see Gaier 1999, 25–54. 84 Heinse 1903–25, 5: 257, cited in Gaier 1998–99, 133.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

66 H yperbole, Measure, Dance 

Sophocles soon trod [trat] in the footsteps of his teacher Aeschylus with advantages that made him fear for his fame. Sophocles was an Athenian, finely formed in body and soul, a master of music and the art of dancing. In his sixteenth year he sang to the Athenians, accompanying with his lyre and mimetic dances, their Salamic victory, and everyone was captivated with the youth. In his twenty-fifth year, he appeared [trat] for the first time before his people with a tragedy. (GSA 4.1:203–4)

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Not only is the young Sophocles’s training as a dancer stressed, but a dance-like image of stepping (treten) in and forward describes the relation between him and his teacher and competitor Aeschylus as well as the Athenian people. If Sophocles will surpass his greatest predecessor, it is not least of all owing to his finely formed body and mind and a choric training that allowed him, making his first appearance at an age of blossoming sexuality, to charm his audience. If one hesitates to attach too much weight to this passage from Hölderlin’s juvenalia, the “Anmerkungen zum Oedipus” (Remarks on Oedipus), from a decade and a half later, show his interest in Sophocles’s choric training carrying over into his most mature, conceptually sophisticated, and original theoretical writings. The “Remarks on Oedipus” begin by insisting that, to secure for poets a bourgeois (bürgerliche) existence—to provide them with a respectable place in the community such as they enjoyed in Athens—it is necessary to raise poetry to the “μηχανη of the ancients” (GSA 5:195). Modern poetry, which especially lacks the scholastic and “craftsmanlike,” needs a “lawful calculus” by which to bring forth the beautiful. With tragedy, this law and calculus involves equilibrium rather than pure sequentiality. He continues: Thus there becomes necessary, in the rhythmic sequence of the representations [Vorstellungen] in which the transport exhibits itself [sich darstellt], that which prosody calls the caesura, the pure word, the counterrhythmic interruption, in order, namely, to counter the torrential alternation of representations at its peak such that, as a result, it is no longer the alternation of representations, but representation itself, that appears. (GSA 5:196)

Sophoclean tragedy depends on tensions between rhythm, sequentiality— a sort of enchaînement—and equilibrium. It is, in this sense, the exalted fruit of his early training as a dancer. Hölderlin’s caesura, as I will indeed argue in the final chapter of this book, is anticipated, in stunning fashion, by the fantasmata of Renaissance dance. Hölderlin’s engagement with Pindar reveals a similar interest in the relation between early training in the wordless muses and the poetic work. Pindar’s father, the Magister thesis notes, was a flute player, and the

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Hyperbole, Measure, Dance



67

poet himself had been instructed in this art. Dietrich Uffhausen conjectures that this inspired Hölderlin to take flute lessons from the virtuoso Friedrich Ludwig Dülon.85 For Hölderlin, training in music and dance was an essential preparation for, and component of, ancient poetry; to “go to school with” the ancient poets and master the principles of their poetry such that they could be revived in modern form, it would be necessary to also become mousikos. A remarkable passage from Reinhard Horowski’s Hölderlin war nicht verrückt (Hölderlin Was Not Crazy, 2017) suggests the extent to which he appropriated as his own the choric poetics of ancient Greece: if, after his so-called “internment” in the tower he hopped around the garden at night while saying incomprehensible things, it was not a sign of madness but just means that “Hölderlin, under the influence of the Greeks, composed poetry while moving.” For: “Greek epics and lyric poetry were indeed also declaimed, or, better, sung by the performers—the rhapsode . . . and the choruses that typically accompanied him—in rhythms and with rhythmic (dance)-steps.”86 His subsequent engagement with Pindar, whose influence on and significance for his late style can hardly be overstated, shows moreover that for Hölderlin dance was intimately related to music and tonality.87 Especially telling in this regard is the Pindar fragment that he translates under the title “Vom Delphin” (On the Dolphin). In a recent edition of Plutarch’s Table-Talk, Hölderlin’s likely source, this reads:88 haliou delphinos hupokrisin. ton men akumonos en pontou pelagei aulōn ekinēs’ eraton melos.89

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Hölderlin translates: Him, in the waveless sea’s depths, the song of flutes had moved lovingly. [Den in des wellenlosen Meeres Tiefe von Flöten Bewegt hat liebenswürdig der Gesang.] (GSA 5: 284)

85 Uffhausen 1989, xi. 86 Horowski 2017, 117. 87 On the significance of Pindar for Hölderlin, see Benn 1962. 88 See Franz and Knaupp 1988. 89 Plutarch, Table-Talk 7.4f–5c (trans. Minar, Sandbach, and Helmbold 1961, with some modifications). See Franz and Knaupp 1988; Sattler (1988, 288) offers the following as the Greek original: “Τὸν μὲν ἀκύμονος ἐν πόντου πελά-/ γει αὺλῶν ἐκίνησεν ἐρατὸν μέλος.”

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

68 H yperbole, Measure, Dance 

His commentary reads:

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The song of nature, in the weather [Witterung] of the muses, when the clouds hang like flakes over the blossoms and over the luster [Schmelz] of golden flowers. At this time every being [jedes Wesen] declares its tone, its faithfulness [Treue], the manner [Art] in which something hangs together with itself. The difference of manners alone makes for separation in nature, so that everything thus is more song and pure voice than the accent of need or, on the other hand, language. It is the waveless sea, where the mobile fish feels the pipings of the tritons; the echo of growth in the soft plants of the water. (GSA 5:284)

While this certainly grants Pindar’s fragment a more esoteric and profound meaning than what Plutarch discovers, Hölderlin’s esoteric commentary in fact works together with the exoteric, manifestly “popular” table-talk, which addresses itself to a key concern of the “Seven Maxims.” Addressing the thesis “[that] it is necessary to guard especially against the pleasures of bad music [kakomousias] and how this is to be done,” Plutarch’s dialogue begins at the time of the Pythian games. Callistratus, director of the Amphictyons, invites a flute player, whom he had himself disqualified from the games, to perform at a private dinner party. The flutist appears with his splendidly dressed dancing party, and, beginning moderately enough, once he senses that the listeners are under his spell and he can do with them as he pleases, he “casts off all disguise [apokalupsamenos] and shows that music can inebriate, more effectively than any wine, those who drink it in as it comes, with no restraint.”90 Soon the guests leap up and join the dancing “with movements disgraceful for a gentleman, though quite in keeping with that kind of rhythm and melody.” The unnamed flute player, excluded from the public festival, appears as a mask of Dionysus. The symposium becomes a bacchanalia. This unsettling experience of the ecstatic, intoxicating power of music occasions the discussion between Callistratus and Lamprias, in which the former defends the pleasure of spectacle against the latter. Callistratus begins by rejecting the sort of argument that seeks to excuse the pleasures of sight and sound by claiming that they are fundamentally and radically different than other kinds of pleasures. Neither does the word “beautiful” (kalōs) apply only to pleasures of sight and sound, nor are these pleasures exclusively human. It is in this context that Callistratus cites Pindar. While appealing to the rational faculties of the soul, music also has the power to enchant irrational animals. Dolphins dance to the strains of the flute, and dancing itself 90 Ibid., 7.4c–d.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Hyperbole, Measure, Dance



69

can be used to capture horned owls, “which take pleasure in the spectacle and imitatively move their shoulders rhythmically this way and that.” If music and dance can be defended, it is neither because they are purely rational nor exclusively human. Their claim to a special status is more limited: while melody, rhythm, and dance and song are rooted in sense perception, they also somehow go beyond it, finding a “basis for their pleasing and enticing quality in the mind’s faculty of enjoyment.”91 Song and dance are special not because they only touch the mind, but because, going beyond sense perception yet without rejecting it entirely, they can also find a basis for pleasure in the “rejoicing” of the soul. A very different defense becomes necessary: it is not a matter of purity, of the rigorous exclusion of a corrupting corporeality and sensuality, but of a transfiguration, a Verklärung of sorts, in which what is dark, private, and hidden is brought into the light and made public.

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Thus none of the pleasures of this kind is secret or requires darkness and walls . . . and to witness a spectacle of sight and sound in a large company is considered more enjoyable and more impressive because we are associating as many persons as possible with ourselves, surely not in incontinence and sensuality, but in a liberal and civilized pastime.92

Whereas the pleasures of the body draw us into our bodies as the site of a private, hidden, shameful experience belonging to the body alone, the pleasures of sight and sound, of music and dance, bring us out of the privacy of the body into a public space, a space of common, public sensations (a sort of “common sense” as it were), gathering the community around a public spectacle of pleasures that still also belong to the body. The body politic gathers together to learn what the human body is and what it is capable of feeling. The flute player’s scandalous self-unmasking thus itself comes to appear in a very different light. By throwing off his disguise, revealing himself as Dionysus and enticing the audience through the intoxicating power of music to a licentious Bacchic dance, he is not corrupting them and making them act shamefully but freeing the pleasures of the body from their shameful hiddenness, allowing them to assume a public, political form. This also casts new light on the episode occasioning the dialogue. The arrival of Dionysus—of the theater and its spectacle—rather than introducing a dangerous element from outside and turning a dignified private affair into a deranged bacchanalia, grants a political sense to otherwise merely private pleasures. Whereas Plato felt it necessary to 91 Ibid., 7.5a. 92 Ibid. 7.5a–b.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

70 H yperbole, Measure, Dance 

exclude the tragic poet—and effeminate music—from the city, now it is the flute player who, crossing the limen of the private dwelling, brings the polis with him. The intoxicating power of music takes us back to the origins of the political, and thus suggests how, precisely at a moment when political institutions are themselves in decay, a renewal of political life is possible. This already suggests the resonance that Plutarch’s dialogue had for Hölderlin, making plausible the supposition that his return to Pindar and to the archaic is mediated through the radicalization of a Hellenistic problematic. Moreover, it is in this light that the deeper significance of Pindar’s fragment comes to light. If the political sense of music is to move the body to dance, bringing private pleasure into the open, then—insofar as music moves the bodies not only of human beings but of animals— this would in turn suggest that the polis is not restricted in scope to the bodies and lives of human beings.93 The Dionysian death and rebirth of the polis gives rise to a new kind of politics, in which the sense of the political—the political sensorium—is no longer restricted to the human but encompasses all of nature. Hölderlin’s commentary on the fragment could perhaps be interpreted in this light. It might at first seem as if Lamprias, responding to Callistratos, simply repeats the critique of the ethical danger of “effeminate” music found in Plato. Yet while he does retreat to a “classical,” ultimately Socratic position that regards rationality as the purpose of human life, he is not oblivious to the force of Callistratos’s argument. Significantly, Lamprias begins his rebuttal by identifying Callistratos as a follower of Dionysus entranced by the god. “I fear the ancients were wrong in calling Dionysus the son of Lethe; they should have made him her father.” Thus he tacitly acknowledges that Callistratos’s perspective is fundamentally opposed to his own Socratic stance: to follow Dionysus is not only to forget certain distinctions that a Socratic (or we might say: “analytic”) philosopher will remember, but to embrace ecstatic forgetfulness—of inhibitions, of limits, of distinctions—as the act constitutive of political life. What Callistratos, in the train of Dionysus, has forgotten, more specifically, is the distinction between akrasia (weakness of will, incontinence) and ignorance (agnoia) or oversight (parorasis)—a distinction which itself only has sense if one assumes that knowledge is the ground of right action. For the true danger of music and dance emerges only in light of this distinction. When we overindulge in food, drink, and sex, we immediately suffer the consequences. If we continue to do these things, it can only be because a 93 The idea of a cosmopolitan order encompassing both humans and animals can be found in Hellenistic philosophy, especially Epicureanism, and even in the Neoplatonic Porphyry’s De Abstinentia (“On abstinence from animal food”), which includes an argument for the rationality of nonhuman animals.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Hyperbole, Measure, Dance



71

weakness of will forcibly suppresses our reasoning. The enjoyment of spectacles does not cause us immediate and palpable harm. Rather: they “hoodwink” us, “outflank[ing] our defenses.” Hence, those who overindulge in spectacle are not called incontinent. Rather: “it is through inexperience that they are swept away downstream.” “Hence,” he concludes “we must be especially wary of these pleasures; they are extremely powerful, because they do not, like those of taste and touch and smell, have their only effect in the irrational and ‘natural’ part of our mind, but lay hold of our faculty of judgment and prudence.”94 Music and dance, Lamprias thus suggests, present a far profounder danger to virtue than food, drink, and sexual intercourse. Because the latter are clearly harmful, they compel those who overindulge in them to suppress their rational faculties—but in this way they still preserve practical rationality, the power of judgment and prudence. They do not compromise our basic capacity to recognize distinctions and live within limits: they only temporarily suspend such limits. The pleasures of music and dance, by contrast, cause us to forget the very limits upon which a rational, sober existence depends. They lay hold of both the irrational and rational parts of the soul, undermining the very distinction between the two. Indeed, the greatest danger of these pleasures consists in the fact that, unlike other pleasures and other forms of luxury, no emotions stand in their way. Whereas “in the fish-market, stinginess restrains the finger of the epicure; and miserliness turns lechery from the expensive harlot,” the pleasures of the spectacle are not held back by an economic principle of limited resources. In this argument, the possibility of calculation (logismos) itself involves an economic order of credit and debt. Music seduces reason because, existing as a sort of pure excess, freely exchanged and freely available, it lacks “calculation” to “save” and “instruct.” Melody and rhythm, it follows, are stronger than, even superior to, reason. This superiority, unsettling the Socratic moral edifice, is the ultimate source of their danger. Lamprias thus himself seems to accept Callistratos’s Dionysian wisdom, recognizing the power of a more original moment of forgetting difference even while recalling the distinctions that would allow one to confront melody and rhythm’s dangers. The consequences of this become clear when Plutarch, breaking the silence that fell as Lamprias finished, asks how reason is able to rescue us. After all, it can’t just block up our ears or make us leave whenever an instrument begins to play. Lamprias’s response is surprising. The only remedy “whenever we fall among the Sirens” is to “call upon the Muses and take refuge in the Helicon of olden times.” Only good taste can save us from the danger of bad taste: “it is possible to take a man who is enjoying mimes and tunes and lyrics that are bad art and bad taste, and lead him back to 94 Ibid., 7.6a–b.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

72 H yperbole, Measure, Dance 

Euripides and Pindar and Menander.” Stirred by the bacchanalian frenzy, if we “set up for comparison songs and poems and tales of true nobility, [we] shall not be altogether dazed by these performances, nor shall we surrender ourselves, as it were, to float reclining on the gentle stream of the music.”95 Pure reason alone cannot confront the danger of bad music and dance. The more purified reason becomes through philosophical discipline, the more vulnerable it is to the insinuating power of the Dionysian—the return of the repressed. The only power that can resist the charm of bad music is the charm of good music. Music is a pharmakon, poison and antidote. It is not enough just to forget the Dionysian moment of constitutive forgetting by remembering the distinctions upon which the claims of reason depend. Rather, one must go back to the origin, to the poetry created at the moment when, overwhelmed by the Dionysian experience that gives birth to the political, it was possible and indeed necessary to stand up to the Dionysian from within through an order and measure that allows one to hold on to one’s composure in the midst of intoxicating ecstasy. Thus the Dionysian transfiguration of the private and shameful into the public becomes subject to a second transfiguration: orgiastic union turns into measured dance. The polis emerges as the mediation of immediacy through the law, whose first form is the nomoi of song. Pindar, who is cited both by Callistros and again by Lamprias in the above passage, assumes a special significance in this regard: in each case the ecstasy of dance becomes a measured verse. The Pindaric fragment is invoked as the inscription of the dance writing that gives the measure of nomos to Dionysian experience. It would not be too much to say that in this return to Pindar by way of Plutarch, we find both the germ of Hölderlin’s poetics and the hidden axis of the political choreographics of the ballet. And perhaps we also find a hint of this germ in the Magister thesis. Paraphrasing Johann Erich Biester’s German translation of Jean-Jacques Barthélemy’s 1788 Travels of Anacharsis the Younger in Greece, Hölderlin writes: Around this time lived Arion of Mythemna. He sang his songs to the lyre, invented dithyrambs, and accompanied them with round dances. His contemporary was presumably Terpander, who added three new strings to the four strings of the lyre, made songs for various instruments that would serve as models, introduced new rhythms to poetry, and brought action and life into the hymns that were intended for musical competition. (GSA 4.1:194)

This passage calls attention not only to the originally close relation between poetry, song, and dance, but to the special relation between dance, the Dionysian dithyramb, and the origins of tragic drama. And also 95 Ibid., 7.6e.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Hyperbole, Measure, Dance



73

dolphins: since, of course, Arion, according to the fabulous legend retold in Novalis’s Heinrich von Ofterdingen, was rescued from sailors, who had planned to murder him and steal his treasures, by dolphins drawn to his song.96 Perhaps the same dolphins into which, in another myth, Dionysus transformed the pirates who tried to carry him away.

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

* * * Hyperbole encounters and experiences language in its measureless excess; over itself, indeed over the very possibility of recognizing itself in its selfsameness, and over the world, the realm of beings that language claims and seizes with its names. If the “specific potential of human language” is, as Agamben will claim, the “pre-supposing relation,” by which “the thing named is presupposed as the nonlinguistic or nonrelational with which language has established its relation,” and if moreover the entire history of Western philosophy unfolds out of “the ontological apparatus that Aristotle leaves as an inheritance,” then hyperbole is beyond language and Being, beyond onto-logy as the regime of “gather[ing] and articulat[ing] beings by means of words.”97 Hyperbole experiences the fracture, the being-already-fractured, of onto-logy through the “beyond” of language and of Being and of their co-belonging. Hölderlin’s Hyperion unleashes hyperbole, experiences it in the most intimate manner possible—as literature. Yet it also gestures toward dance. This gesture might appear reactive, reactionary. Isn’t dance just another figure for an origin (Urpoesie, Ursprache) that will be discovered as destination, folding the errant paths of historical becoming back into teleology? Yet there is more to it: dance is a different manner of having measure and of having truth . . . Or indeed: measure as manner: “At this time every being declares its tone, its faithfulness, the manner in which something hangs together with itself. The difference of manners alone makes for separation in nature, so that everything thus is more song and pure voice than the accent of need or, on the other hand, language.” Not just modal ontology, an ontology of “manner”—as Agamben proposes in The Use of Bodies—but modal alethology: Treue (trueness, faithfulness—truth as habit, commitment) is dance. But we are still dancing around Hyperion . . . But dance is always “dancing around”—perichōrēsis . . . Incessant circumincession . . . Entangling and intertwining . . . We will begin again—dancing is always beginning again, again with; this time with Diotima, with her dance, and with her letters. Dance and letters, it will seem, cannot be kept apart. And, with this, the figure of choreographic writing flickers into view. 96 The story is found in Herodotus Historiai 1.24; Novalis 1978, 1:257–58. 97 Agamben 2016, 115–224.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

2: The Athens Letter— Choreographic Writing

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

T

2.1 Diotima’s Dance

he name of the heroine of Hyperion offers another hint of dance’s significance. In the final version she is known as Diotima. But in the Fragment of Hyperion she is named Melite. And in the Waltershausen paralipomenon, part of an even earlier version, Hyperion’s lover, following Horace, is called Glycera—“the sweet one”—a name often used for hetaerae during the Hellenistic age. Taken together, these names suggest a constellation of associations. A long-standing tradition links Diotima with Aspasia, the cultured, educated, and brilliant courtesan who was Pericles’s mistress.1 Born in the Ionian city Miletus, Aspasia was sometimes also rumored to be the mistress of Socrates.2 By calling attention to a Milesian birth, the name Melite subtly identifies Diotima with Aspasia, and Socrates’s mistress with Pericles’s. This is especially significant if we consider that Hölderlin’s Hyperion draws on, and indeed seeks to unite both the democratic politics of the ancient Athenians and Plato’s philosophy. Despite their apparent opposition, both could perhaps be traced back to the Ionian intellectual currents that Aspasia herself helped introduce into Athens. And thus we might envision here the prospect of their reconciliation—a reconciliation that depends on reintroducing into the male-dominated polis, centered on the outdoor, public space of the agora, the domestic, interior, “female” space that had been excluded and marginalized.3 Miletus, moreover, was not only known for philosophy but for its dancing girls—Théophile Gautier, the nineteenth-century French poet and balletomane, invokes them in his description of Fanny Elssler.4 Indeed, as Thoinot Arbeau notes in his 1588 Orchésographie (Orchesography), Aspasia is said to have taught Socrates to dance.5 And if both tendencies grew corrupt when male philosophers and politicians failed to grasp the wisdom divulged by a woman, then perhaps it

1 2 3 4 5

See Henry 1995. Ibid., 64–65. See Henry 1995, 46. Gautier 1986, 53. See Arbeau 1967, 13.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The Athens Letter—Choreographic Writing



75

is by appreciating the dance of a woman, even learning to dance from a woman, that a less errant reception of this wisdom could be possible.6 In the final version of Hyperion dance appears both times in Diotima’s summonses to the eponymous protagonist of the novel. Just as Diotima first appears in Plato as the female teacher of Socrates—a teacher whose teachings are threatened from the outset by misinterpretation in the hands of the philosopher appropriating them in the name of philosophy— Diotima’s summonses, by calling Hyperion to the dance, seem to him, as recipient of a tradition of politics and philosophy dominated by men, beyond the limits of his understanding. This points toward a decisive constellation of motifs. Still, the minimal presence of both word and thing pose an almost insurmountable obstacle for a method of reading governed by philological positivism. How can a word that barely appears carry any weight? Yet in a body of work marked by its extraordinary economy and compression, the very rarity of a word perhaps suggests a singular significance. If dance were theorized and described, or indeed woven into his oeuvre in a more substantial way, it would become implicated in a conceptual apparatus that, however innovative in relation to Hölderlin’s intellectual milieu, nevertheless imperils the radicality of its significations. The very rarity of its appearance allows it to perform its hyperbolic operations. To get a better sense for how dance’s absence opens the way toward a more fundamental place for dance within the text, it will be helpful to draw a comparison with The Sorrows of Young Werther. Hyperion must, indeed, be read in dialogue with Goethe’s novella. Both are written in epistolary form, and both feature a youthful hero whose temperament, marked by a yearning for the infinite, conflicts with the age in which he lives. And both feature a heroine who, exemplifying a virtue construed as specifically feminine, has an ambiguous effect, at once therapeutic and destructive, on the hero.7 Yet whereas Werther’s tragic denouement is conceived in pathological terms, as if approaching the political malaise of the bourgeoisie through a hygienic project of aristocratic self-cultivation, Hyperion refuses to efface politics through ethics. In the letter from the sixteenth of June, a few days before the summer solstice, Werther tells his friend of his first encounter with Lotte. It is not only that Werther meets Lotte on the way to a ball, and his love is 6 This isn’t to suggest that, for Hölderlin, the dance is inherently “feminine,” but only that he attributes the teaching of the dance—a teaching whose principal recipient is the male philosopher—to the female figure of Diotima. Hölderlin stood at the threshold of the “emasculation” of the dance, and especially the ballet, that takes place in the nineteenth century, but his own discourse opposes itself to this. 7 See Zinkernagel 1907, 59–61; Bacher 2002–3; Stiening 2005, 24.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

76 T he Athens Letter—Choreographic Writing 

first ignited as they join together in a German country dance—a kind of waltz.8 By describing his encounter with her dancing, and even how she dances, Werther can get past the “wretched abstractions” that he falls into when he first tries to speak about her. If the somewhat clichéd and vague language he first uses to describe her—“so much simplicity amid so much understanding, so much goodness amid so much steadfastness, so much calmness of the soul amid true life and activity”—fails to express a single “trait [Zug]” of her nature, it is because the most essential trait of her being consists in how these opposing characteristics interact gracefully, yielding to one another over time (GSW 8:37).9 Her traits can only be described through dancing, because these traits are not mere plastic features but the graceful alternation between stasis and movement, simplicity and complexity, generosity and self-assured composure, centered calmness and vitality. As a regimented play of proximity and distance allowing the opposite sexes to encounter each other while preserving the proper distance, social dancing is more than just the elaborate, protracted, ritualized symbolic prelude to sexual union: it is the dynamic schematism of the living interplay of qualities that together constitute the vital existence of human personality. The spell that Lotte casts over Werther has everything to do with her embodying a form of “sociality”—Geselligkeit—involving the exchange of goods. She first appears to him allotting bread to her younger siblings, matching each piece to their “age and appetite” (GSW 8:40). She has taken on the role of her deceased mother, but if the mother gives to her children from a one-sided, seemingly unconditional devotion, Lotte is only the first among equals, distributing limited goods according to a higher, more subtle principle of equity. This already suggests a political order that is no longer monarchic and hierarchical but based on a reciprocal satisfaction of needs. Yet her very charm threatens to undermine the new concept of community that she embodies. Her siblings have to receive their daily bread from her and her alone (GSW 8:40). And Werther likewise has to possess for himself the one whose very essence involves distribution and exchange, and thus prefigures, through the flow of social goods that she orchestrates, the expropriation of settled property and Aristocratic rank. His dance with Lotte already intimates the contradiction at the crux of the tragic events. He seems like a good dancer, but in truth he is a very bad dancer. Entering the dancing hall, he was so lost in his own dreams that he hardly noticed the music. And when he begins to dance alone with Lotte, the logic of social dancing—its figuration of social relations 8 Homans (2010, 115) vividly describes the waltz’s dangerous and subversive quality. 9 Regarding the significance of dance for Goethe, see Salmen 2006.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

The Athens Letter—Choreographic Writing



77

and indeed of sociality as such—escapes him. He becomes so carried away while dancing with her as to forget that social dancing is about dancing not just with the one but with others:

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Never have I danced so well! I was no longer a mortal being. To hold the loveliest creature in my arms and to whirl with her like the wind so that the surroundings disappeared—truly, Wilhelm, I swore to myself that a girl whom I loved, on whom I might have claims, should never be allowed to waltz with another man save myself, even if it would spell ruin for me. You will understand! (GSW 8:48; trans. Mayer and Bogan)

He becomes a great dancer, carried away by enthusiasm, superhuman, flying around like a force of nature, like the very weather itself. Yet the moment he seems to have lost his individuality and rejoined the All, he insists on his right to possess absolutely the girl that he loves and who has been spoken for by him. As if threatened by the vertiginous turns of the dance, he falls back, more forcefully than ever, on the most primitive form of the right to property. And with so much force, indeed, that he is willing to lose the very balance upon which dancing depends. He will forbid his beloved from waltzing with another even if it would spell his own ruin: wenn ich drüber zu Grunde gehen müβte—even if he has to fall to the ground over it. And so it now pains him to see Lotte, who charmed him as she distributed bread, allotting the oranges he had given her to her friends. Dancing, in The Sorrows of Young Werther, offers the central motif, not only organizing the scene from within but orchestrating its representation. The representation of the social dance, allowing it to appear in such vivid concreteness, not only puts the young Goethe’s virtuosic realism on display, but illuminates Werther’s pathological tendencies; his incapacity to “fit in,” despite all his grace and flair, with the measured rhythms of everyday life. The linguistic representation of the dance in its concrete, rhythmic presence—the choreography of an accomplished literary realism—is the very means by which Goethe himself takes distance from the semi-autobiographical protagonist. Choreography is appropriated as literary style, transformed into the imitation of the movements of a social order that has been thoroughly naturalized. Werther is condemned to his hyperbolic awkwardness as if a fact of nature, just as Lotte is condemned to her grace. What is unthinkable is that one person could learn to dance from the other. By contrast, the abstractness of dance in Hölderlin reveals its significance rather than its insignificance. One could even say, without exaggeration, that Hölderlin’s poetic life work takes its departure from the refusal to foreclose the futural potency of dance by depicting it. Thus in Hyperion

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

78 T he Athens Letter—Choreographic Writing 

dance itself is not represented, but only named. It remains only a word. Unlike Werther’s Lotte, Diotima has a song—a song that allows one to recognize her silence—but no dance (FA 11:648). Yet despite being merely named, mentioned, referred to—despite the text itself never itself attempting to choreograph, to write dance—dance assumes great significance in Hyperion. Rather than dance becoming present—and indeed present as the sensuous figuration of the very power of poetic language to disclose to us the absolute immanence of a perfectly realized experience—it remains a mere signifier. It refuses—and indeed withdraws—the presence that it promises, signifying nothing so much as the failure or lack of signification. Yet in this way, according to a logic that Hölderlin will explain in the fragment on “Die Bedeutung der Tragödien” (The Meaning of Tragedies, 1803), it signifies the power of signification rather than the fulfillment in which this power is exhausted. This becomes more clear as we now turn to those passages in the final version of Hyperion where dance does in fact appear. The first time is in the letter recalling the trip that Hyperion and his friends took to Athens. I bid you enter once more into Athens and also look at the people that walk around among the ruins, the raw Albanians and the other good childish Greeks who console themselves with a merry dance and a holy fairy tale over the shameful power [Gewalt] that burdens them—Can you say “I am ashamed of this material?” I think it can yet be formed [es wäre doch noch bildsam]? Can you turn your heart away from the needy ones? They are not bad, they haven’t harmed you in any way! (FA 11:689)

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The second time is in Diotima’s last letter to Hyperion: Look up into the world! Is it not like a wandering [wandelnd] triumphal parade,10 where nature celebrates the eternal victory over all corruption? and doesn’t life, for the sake of [its] glorification, lead death along with itself, in golden chains, just as the general once led the captured kings? And we, we are like the virgins and youths, who, with dance and song, in alternating figures and tones, escort the majestic parade. (FA 11: 768)

We notice, to begin, that dance is named only by Diotima, appearing among the words addressed by her to Hyperion, first in conversation and then in a letter that arrives after her death. Her words, in each case, constitute a summons. They exhort him to move beyond his present position and perspective by becoming a spectator of the dance. Rather than 10 Hölderlin’s use of wandeln in this passage conveys both transformation and an errant physical movement.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The Athens Letter—Choreographic Writing



79

appropriating dance as the occasion for a virtuosic display of literary style, Hölderlin thus keeps its futural potency intact. It is not only something to learn from, but has a decisively political sense. In the first summons, the merry dance and the “holy fairy tale” are what allow the “good, childish Greeks,” living on among the ruins of a once-glorious civilization, to console themselves under Turkish rule. In a small, childish, simple form, they preserve the memory of the Greeks’ true political destiny. The river poem “Der Main” (The Main, 1799) draws a similar connection between dance and historical memory: the “labyrinthine dance,” together with wine and music, preserves among the remaining inhabitants of the Greek islands a trace of a once-glorious political existence (FA 5:574–75). And in the second summons, dance celebrates a certain kind of natural power, explicitly political in its conception. Yet there is now a decisive shift. In the first summons the actual dance (which is nevertheless only pointed out, and not described) preserves a political intention even in the most wretched circumstances, whereas in the second summons the dance, no longer concretely manifest as a cultural form even if also not merely metaphorical, names nature as an immanent political space. This suggests more clearly that dance not only bears a political weight but points toward a thinking of politics that goes beyond what can be said and shown within the text. Thus a reading of Hyperion that focuses on the appearance of dance in these two summonses will assume a very different shape. Rather than trying to establish the internal coherence of the text, folding the discursive layers of the novel together in such a way that they can assume the form of a totality, it will instead turn the text out toward its most peripheral, eccentric, indeed hyperbolic moments.11 One should not suppose, however, that by assuming a political character dance loses all attachment to the domestic sphere. In the second summons, indeed, dance remains closely associated with alternation and exchange, signaling an economic problematic that Hölderlin will indeed develop in far greater depth than Goethe. Hölderlin’s refusal to represent the dance and to grant it a concrete, socially realized form allows it to point toward an economic order that cannot be restricted to the home (oikos) in the narrow sense. Nor is it just a question of breaking with a specific representation of a concretely realized utopian ideal. Rather, it involves a thoroughgoing rejection of a conception of utopian politics founded on the opposition of the real and the ideal and on a mythopoetics of representation. These two tendencies, moreover, are closely connected. Only by calling into question the presuppositions of political philosophy is Hölderlin able to open up the question of the truth of political economy. Only, in other words, by carrying through the tradition of Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Kant—challenging the idea that 11 Ryan 1965.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

80 T he Athens Letter—Choreographic Writing 

political philosophy involves the presentation of an ideal—does Hölderlin discover in economic life not a “natural order,” not the imitation of a divine ideal, but the site of an opening toward a new manner of truth; a mode of “truthing,” of the event of truth, that is not fundamentally mimetic but hyperbolic. I have spoken thus far only of Diotima’s summonses. Another summons, however, comes from Bellarmin, the “beautiful German,” a name which some have suggested was a pseudonym for Schelling.12 Present only as Hyperion’s correspondent, Bellarmin never appears within the events narrated by Hyperion, and yet he occasions this narration by calling on Hyperion to recall his past—to recollect, to gather together the shards of memory into the unity of a single coherent history. This summons, which comes from outside the text—none of Bellarmin’s letters are included—calls toward a teleological process of Bildung. No surprise, then, that it should come from a stand-in for Schelling, and, moreover, reach him from Germany. Bellarmin’s summons represents the imperative of a historical mode of thinking, finding its fulfillment in German idealism, that will discover the sense of the events of the present by referring them to a hidden plan of nature or spirit, or at least finding logical necessity in their development. Ryan’s interpretation of Hyperion as a highly sophisticated Bildungsroman is, from a certain perspective, irrefutable. If we read Hyperion as a response to Bellarmin’s summons, it could only appear in this light. Yet this very process of recollection, by bringing Hyperion to recall the two summonses of Diotima, also leads him beyond the teleological closure in which it culminates.

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

2.2 Letters Hölderlin’s refusal to represent dancing is intimately tied to another aspect of Hyperion. If dance is given without being had, and perhaps thus given only to be passed on, existing only as a gift, then it itself possesses the nature of a missive. This is a quality, moreover, that it shares with Hyperion itself, as indeed both the final version and the Fragment of Hyperion—like Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa; Or, The History of a Young Lady (1748), Rousseau’s Julie; ou la nouvelle Héloïse (Julie, or the New Heloise, 1761), Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, and Heinse’s Ardinghello and the Blessed Islands—take form as a series of letters.13 12 Binder 1970, 213. 13 Stiening (2005), in one of the most compelling studies to date of Hyperion as an epistolary novel, criticizes the tendency of scholars of both Hölderlin and the epistolary novel to treat Hyperion outside the historical context of the poetics of the epistolary novel, attributing this to a reductive understanding of the epistolary novel as a poetic expression for a language of immediate feeling (5). Scholarship

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

The Athens Letter—Choreographic Writing



81

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

This might seem of little consequence, given the tremendous popularity of the epistolary novel in the latter half of the eighteenth century.14 Indeed it suggests that, despite conceiving of his novel as an expedition into a terra incognita, Hölderlin lacks mastery over the conventions of his time, incapable either of submitting them, as did Goethe in The Sorrows of Young Werther, to higher aesthetic principles, or rejecting them entirely. But perhaps in the epistolary genre a revolutionary content simmers beneath a more restful exterior. Far from merely granting novelty and charm to the narration of events, the letter allows the exposition—the self-positing and self-creation—of a reality that exists only in and through letters.15 Since the letter promises the immediate communication of passion, if only to complicate this immediacy through the absence of the addressee and the deferral in its delivery, it is tempting to understand it as the literary expression of an inward-turned subjectivity; the subject that, in attempting to convey its private mental states, is fated to realize the tragic impossibility of true communication. From the Greek epic to has indeed largely neglected the epistolary character of the final version of Hyperion, which plays little part in either Ryan or Aspetsberger’s studies, the two most important German monographs on Hölderlin’s novel. And indeed, as Stiening claims (3), it follows from Ryan’s interpretation, which stresses the moment of reflection and retrospection, that the epistolary form, with its claim to emotional immediacy, serves a merely superficial function. In a more compelling explanation of Hyperion’s epistolary form, Link (1969–70) situates Hyperion as a hybrid between the verse national epoch and the epistolary bourgeois novel. Stiening’s own interpretation will attempt to show how an “enthusiasm for speculation” organizes Hölderlin’s novel, with an epistolary narrative technique organizing the unity between the three tendencies of the age named by Friedrich Schlegel: Kantian philosophy, the French Revolution, and the prose form of the novel. Among English scholarship, Silz (1969) does devote an entire, albeit short, chapter to this aspect of the novel, and yet, lacking real sensitivity to the novel and judging it by conventional aesthetic criteria, he sees the “letter form” above all as a failed integration of an eighteenth-century convention. A more judicious treatment of Hyperion’s epistolary form appears in Gaskill (1984), which offers an alternative to Silz for the English reader. While also approaching the work from an almost purely literary perspective, Gaskill nevertheless decisively rejects Silz’s criticisms. Still, his own positive assessment of the novel’s epistolary form remains superficial, regarding it, in psychologistic terms, as the condition of Hyperion’s ability to confront his past. 14 For an account of the epistolary genre in the eighteenth century, with a view to Hyperion, see Stiening 2005, 5–33. 15 The revolutionary impulse of the epistolary novel can also perhaps be construed more literally. Thus Albrecht (1994–95) conceives of the epistolary form as the “reflections . . .of a network of nationally and revolutionarily minded ‘individual letter writers’” (248–61). See also Link (1969–70), 193.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

82 T he Athens Letter—Choreographic Writing 

the novels of Apuleius and later Cervantes, an inward-turned subjectivity appears as the pathological exception to an external reality structured by the causal coherence of fate or the laws of nature. Yet in the epistolary novel, the pretense of an outward reality and the causal concatenation of events becomes no more than the insubstantial thread leading through the labyrinthine architectonic of the passions. Yet without either denying the significance of inwardness for the genre, or diminishing the structural complexity of a subjectivity that is founded on a moment of absence,16 one may still wonder whether this subjectivity really serves as the starting point and ground of the epistolary novel. Perhaps the passions, moods, and tones that the epistolary novel brings forth do not exist prior to the act of writing—present to the subject in an absolute though private certainty of his own nature—as if a deposit of private mental events that the author would endeavor to publish and bring into the open. Rather, the subjectivity peculiar to the epistolary novel will itself arise through the act of letter writing, from the attempt to correspond with the other; the subjectivity and subject of the epistolary novel is the trial of this perhaps impossible correspondence. Moreover, if this inwardness is produced and not simply given, it is also not the autonomous, selfpositing subjectivity that Fichte distills from the letter of Kant. Instead, it softly rises up from a sphere of domestic harmony whose inhabitants are almost wholly absorbed in daily routine. The subjectivity that begins to dwell in itself and discover an inwardness dissonant with the world is a symptom of a rift that itself has its roots in the household with its tension between more open and more intimate spaces.17 Thus in Rousseau’s Julie, or the New Heloise a rustic life isolated from the city and the larger world provides a laboratory for revealing the richness of the passions that arise from the constriction and monotony of a life in which the same things keep on returning.18 Epistolary inwardness is not a monadic, windowless ego but a house. Rather than the domestic realm representing the psyche, the soul itself, with its catacombs, attics, and antechambers, exists only to cast light on the domicile. Nor do the passions have a merely epiphenomenal existence, supervening on the material reality of the household economy or emerging as a parasitic disruption of its flows. Not only is the domestic sphere 16 Pankow’s (1999) “Epistolary Writing, Fate, Language: Hölderlin’s Hyperion” develops a similar account of epistolary subjectivity. Letter writing involves a relation to absence that disrupts not only the unitary subject’s self-constitution but also the attempted return to childhood and the Greek past, and even the project of literary nationalism itself. 17 Arendt’s The Human Condition provides a powerful account of the emergence of intimacy, in relation to sociality, in the eighteenth century (1958, 38–39). 18 Rousseau 1990–2010, 6:9.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The Athens Letter—Choreographic Writing



83

intimately involved with the passions, since these serve as the springs of its operation, but it is itself in its essence musical and choric. The Sorrows of Young Werther already reveals the choral nature of the domestic sphere. As though taking the preface of Rousseau’s Julie, or the New Heloise to heart, Lotte repudiates all novels and every book in which she cannot find her own world, her own domestic life (häuslich Leben). Yet she still has one passion and one flaw: dance (GSW 8:44). It is in dancing, as it were, that she will find something “as interesting and heartfelt . . . as [her] own domestic life”—and precisely because dance itself is nothing else than the pure inner essence of domesticity (GSW 8:45). And since the passion of dance reveals the root of all domestic passions, it also offers the best cure for those other passions constantly threatening the domestic order. Concluding her brief apology of dancing, Lotte explains: “And when I have something in my head and drum myself out a contradance on my out-of-tune piano, then all is good again” (GSW 8:44). The choric pathos of the domestic sphere, of a world of passions existing only in rhythmic repetition and exchange, is able to banish everything from the head, dissolving the blockages of affect that, interrupting the flow of exchanges ordering domestic life, threaten to grow into an awareness of a self fundamentally opposed to others and at odds even with itself. Yet Goethe attempts to represent this choric pathos through and as the idealized beauty of woman. Such a representation is inherently tragic; the infinite movement of life can only appear in the world as one thing among other things through its destructive powers. In Hyperion, by contrast, this choric pathos is not represented through Diotima, but appropriated by her. Never attaining the clarity of a symbol, Diotima points with her summonses toward a very different—nonsymbolic and nonrepresentational—manner in which literature relates to truth. This explains the awkwardness of Hölderlin’s appropriation of the genre of the epistolary novel. Hyperion departs from the norms of the epistolary novel, stressing the genre to its breaking point. Yet far from allowing the genre to decline into a dead and artificial conventionality, or subordinating it to the demands of another aesthetic regime such as literary realism, he brings its inner tendencies to the fore.19 At the first level of narration, the novel consists entirely of letters from Hyperion to Bellarmin, his German friend. Bellarmin’s answers never appear within the text, and are seldom even alluded to. Moreover, all other correspondence, including the lengthy exchange with Diotima and the letter from Notara, is nestled within the letters to Bellarmin; they are transcriptions, rewritten by Hyperion’s own hand. By thus simplifying the epistolary structure, Hölderlin follows Goethe’s precedent, yet goes even further to unsettle the assumption that a correspondence ever actually 19 For an exhaustive account of these deviations, see Silz 1969, 17–29.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

84 T he Athens Letter—Choreographic Writing 

takes place. Whereas Wilhelm’s character reveals itself through Werther’s letters, and we even learn that he takes action against his friend’s unraveling, Bellarmin lacks all concrete traits, playing no part in the novel’s action beyond calling on Hyperion to recall his story. And whereas Goethe undermines the conventions of the epistolary novel in order to join the inwardness of the letter with dramatic intensity and formal coherence, creating a tragedy of the “beautiful soul”—of the subject that withdraws from action into its own depths—Hölderlin undermines the dramatic immediacy of letter writing yet without ceasing to utilize precisely those more rococo aspects of the genre for which Goethe has little patience. The letters to Bellarmin, to be sure, are written after Hyperion had returned to Greece from Germany and become a hermit, and thus at a great distance from the events that seem to be the chief concern of the novel. And despite the use of the present tense in the first two letters and the occasional reversion thereto, the principal content of the letters involves the narration of events belonging to the past and indeed serves to explain Hyperion’s present state of hermitage. Yet in the correspondence between Hyperion and Diotima nestled inside the novel, the letters are intimately involved in the action, with Hölderlin hardly shying away from exploiting the melodramatic possibilities intrinsic to the genre. Some argue on these grounds that Hölderlin has no compelling reason to use the epistolary genre in the final version of Hyperion.20 Perhaps he would have done well either to stick with the straightforward narration of Hyperion’s Youth, or even carry through his brief attempt to render it in epic meter. Yet it is precisely because the epistolary form for the most part doesn’t play directly into the narration that it constitutes it more fundamentally. Not invested in the particulars, it is all the more invested in the work as a whole. The central events of the novel only come into being through and have their existence in an act of recollection itself founded upon Hyperion’s relation to a distant, purely passive correspondent. Only a vestige remains of an existence separate from their narration. The true action of the novel is not the external, actual events narrated, but the process, as much passive as active, of narration and memory. The moods defining each point of his narration have their root in this process, and indeed the truer action of Hyperion consists in the interplay of these moods. This is expressed felicitously in the preface to the first volume, where Hölderlin speaks of Hyperion as the “resolution of the dissonances in a certain character” (FA 11:579). An imitation of neither action nor character, the novel revolves around the tones or moods themselves, with these assuming a life of their own, no longer existing merely as an epiphenomenal accompaniment, a sort of incidental music, of the plot. If there 20 See Silz 1969, 17.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The Athens Letter—Choreographic Writing



85

is still reference to a certain character, this is merely the specific material in which a more general rule is demonstrated. The moods no longer merely express transient conditions (pathoi) of the soul, given coherence through character (ethos), but rather, character itself is a tonal phenomenon, arising from the dissonance of moods and dissolving with their resolution, so that the resolution and dissolution in a character is also the dissolution of character. To recognize the priority of mood over action and even over subjectivity is to resist reading the novel as a novel of education where the hero, achieving both an equilibrium of the conflicting forces of his soul and a balanced relation to the world, becomes a fully actualized, mature individual. With Hyperion, such an interpretation demands conceiving of the novel as a description of the trials and stages of development through which Hyperion assumes his poetic calling. Such an interpretation implies a teleological closure, even when acknowledging how the text’s double narrative structure intercalates the narrated events with the transformation, enabled through narration, of the narrator himself. Diotima’s words, calling for nothing more than, and thus exhausting themselves in, the emergence of a fully self-conscious self capable of action, could no longer call Hyperion beyond himself. It may seem odd to claim that Hyperion is not a novel of education oriented toward a certain end or ideal of personal integrity. This no doubt contradicts the impulse of most readings of the work, regardless whether they seek to discover in it the foundations for a rule and order—a Gesetzlichkeit—that holds sway over his entire oeuvre, or to set up an opposition with the later poetry. Indeed it seems even to contradict Hölderlin’s own words, and above all the preface to the Fragment of Hyperion, where he famously refers to an “eccentric path.”21 Offered with a philosophical seriousness that could hardly have ingratiated more casual readers to his work, these prefatory remarks postulate two ideals of our existence: first, a condition of the highest simplicity, “in which our needs [Bedürfnisse] accord [zusammenstimmen] with themselves and with our powers and with everything to which we relate through the mere organization of nature and without our doing [ohne unser Zutun],” 21 For a thorough discussion of the motif of the “eccentric” in Hölderlin, see Schadewaldt 1952, 1–16. Schadewaldt argues that Hölderlin had in mind not only the figural and more everyday sense of the term but also its usage by astronomers and mathematicians; Bertaux (1969) conceives of the “eccentric path” not only in an astronomical but in a political sense—a revolutionary moment of transition from one circular orbit to another (157–58); Bay (2002a), challenging both Schadewaldt and Bertaux’s interpretations, suggests that the “eccentric path” doesn’t represent an eternal law of human existence but rather should be understood as a tool that Hölderlin “interrogates and tests, in ‘the evolving workplace’ of the text, with a view to its possibilities” (607).

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

86 T he Athens Letter—Choreographic Writing 

and, second, a condition of the highest culture (Bildung), which enjoys this same accord—though with needs and forces infinitely multiplied and strengthened—not simply through the favor of nature but through the organization that we are ourselves in a position to provide for ourselves. These two ideals—first, the native, natural condition of the individual human being and the human race as a whole, and, second, its repetition through free agency—are both static conditions (Zustände). The eccentric path leading between them is simply the movement from a beginning to an end, with the latter no mere arbitrary point of termination but the active determination of the trajectory taken between the two poles. The eccentric path is, in other words, fundamentally determined by a goal or telos, and moreover displays such a degree of regularity that, just as Johannes Kepler was able to discover the same eccentric, elliptical orbit in all the planets despite the apparent irregularities in their orbits, one would also be able to find a single figure beneath all human phenomenon; a universal law of the humanities, as it were.22 To view these remarks in the proper light, not overestimating their importance, one should recall that, when they were written, Hölderlin’s own eccentric path had brought him under the sway of Schiller, who published the Fragment of Hyperion in his journal and also arranged for Hölderlin’s first ill-fated position as house tutor.23 During the years before his departure from Jena, Hölderlin, remaining under Schiller’s influence, engaged in an intense study of philosophy and especially the Kantian system, preoccupied above all with the question of the end of history. Thus in a letter to Hegel from January 1795 he suggests that the entire spirit of Kant’s system lies in a teleology unifying nature’s mechanistic causality with its purposiveness (SW 4:115–16). And much like Schiller’s reinterpretation of the third critique, Hölderlin attaches central importance to the aesthetic ideas, proposing an even more radical transformation of Kant’s critical philosophy.24 Yet by the time he wrote the preface to the final edition, he no longer regarded the alienation from and return to nature 22 Hölderlin’s reference to the eccentric path evokes Kant’s Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht (Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View, 1784) (KAA 8:18). Other textual sources, according to Strack (1976), include Kant’s Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels (Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, 1755), Karl Philipp Moritz’s concept of Thatkraft (active force), and Plato’s Phaedrus (179–96; See also Görner 1993, 33). 23 Regarding Hölderlin’s complex relation to Schiller, see Mieth (1992–93), 68–79. 24 A letter to Neuffer on October 10, 1794, promises an essay on the aesthetic ideas that, taking over from where Schiller had left off, will at once simplify and expand Kant’s analysis of the beautiful and sublime (SW 4:74). This essay, if it was ever written, has not been preserved. The preface to the penultimate

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The Athens Letter—Choreographic Writing



87

as the universal and certain telos of man. Whereas the preface to the Fragment of Hyperion, by telling the reader to read the work as a literary exemplification of an abstractly formulated teleological movement, frames the work philosophically, the preface to the final version is less direct and more questioning. Rather than telling the reader how to read the novel and what it means, it merely calls attention to the problem of reading and interpretation, and above all to the danger that his work, taken either too gravely or too lightly—treated as a moralizing compendium or read simply for an ephemeral pleasure likened to the scent of a flower—will not be understood (FA 11:579). And it is likewise significant that Hölderlin promises, or at least would promise, the love of the Germans to Hyperion. Just as the human being in general is replaced by a certain character, the cosmopolitan universalism of Lessing, Schiller, and Kant gives way to an address to a specific historical people in its singular, no longer universal, destiny. And indeed a people that, as the odd counterfactual subjunctive suggests, does not yet exist as the true promised recipient of the book, since it does not yet know how to read but only to extract either morality or pleasure from the written word, and thus is incapable of loving the book, of loving the letter or word. A people, in other words, that is perhaps philosophical, but not yet philological.25 It follows that the action of the novel—this dissolution (Auflösung)— should not be understood as the self-contained accomplishment of an action with a beginning and an end. Far from preparing the reader for the repetition of a foreordained telos, the preface of the final version warns him against submitting to the closure implicit in the novel of education. A look at Hyperion’s narrative structure suggests, even more clearly, that it does in fact beckon beyond itself; that it is truly an expedition into a terra incognita and not simply the explicit repetition of an essential, inborn, human nature. Diotima no longer realizes an ideal but heralds unfamiliar horizons. The final version of Hyperion does seem to end with a sort of epiphany, recalling the language of the preface. “The dissonances of the world,” Hölderlin writes, “are like the feud [Zwist] of lovers. There is reconciliation amid the strife and all that is sundered finds itself again. The veins in the heart diverge and turn and everything is a single, eternal, glowing life” (FA 11:782). Yet this discovery does not belong to the present time of the narrative; the passage cites the thoughts that occupied him while still in Germany. Far from expressing the actual resolution of version of Hyperion similarly suggests the idealistic and teleological conceptions that frame the work at this time (FA 10:276–77). 25 See Gaier 1978–79, 88–90; Franzel (2009) stresses the importance of apostrophic addresses to imaginary or absent audiences (155–73); Regarding the explicitly philological dimension of Hölderlin’s poetry, see Adler 2015 and Adler 2020.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

88 T he Athens Letter—Choreographic Writing 

dissonances, it only gestures toward it. Indeed the last lines, written to Bellarmin from the present, suggest anything but resolution and finality: “Thus were my thoughts. More next time” (FA 11:782).26 The deeper reconciliation and resolution of dissonances happens only through reflection on these words as the culmination of the reflective narration of his own history. It takes place through the text but not in it. The resolution of dissonances is not what is narrated, but rather takes place as the attempt to write one’s narrative, constituting the relation of reader and writer. The field in which this resolution can occur thus encompasses the relation of Hölderlin, as Hyperion’s author, to his readers—a relation which, as the preface suggests, remains ambiguous. The site of resolution is not the novel as a static text—a work—but the act of writing and reading. The novel itself—itself perhaps the least fragmentary of all of Hölderlin’s works—does not present an accomplished, perfected totality, but a passage into the terra incognita of the work, the labor, of poetic writing and also poetic reading. Yet it is in this sense that, through Hyperion, Hölderlin ascends to his poetic calling, his Dichterberuf.27 Hyperion himself appears as a letter writer, a philosopher, a revolutionary, a hermit, and even once as a bard—when he sings the “Fate Song” (Schicksallied)—and yet never as a poet of the written word. And yet he is called to poetry by Diotima, and his entire narration to Bellarmin is, above all, an attempt to come to terms with this summons. It is in precisely this sense that Hyperion realizes the epistolary genre. The challenge to teleology already challenges the validity of genre as such, since the notion of the latter presumes that the individual literary work fulfills itself as the realization of a generic type. Moreover, Hölderlin, in the successive versions of Hyperion, first conceives of teleology gesturally as the resolution of dissonances and then opposes this to another, no longer teleological gesture: the turning and divergence of the veins of the heart, which has neither beginning nor end but is at all times and everywhere “a single, glowing, eternal life.” This latter figure finds an analogue in the gesture of letter writing which, through Hölderlin’s seemingly awkward appropriation of epistolary form, appears no longer simply as a means of literary expression but as the very sense of the novel. Letter writing reveals the dissonance residing within subjectivity and thus poses 26 Ryan and Aspetsberger disagree regarding the interpretation of the last letter, in which Hyperion describes an almost complete submission to nature. Ryan (1965, 213) understands this as a regression to an earlier stage in the protagonist’s Bildung. Consequently, he considers Diotima’s Dichterberuf to be the true conclusion of the novel. Aspetsberger (1971, 93–103), by contrast, attaches a greater significance to this passage, regarding it as a wordless experience enabling the younger Hyperion’s ascension to the maturity that makes it possible for him to recount his life to Bellarmin. 27 See Ryan 1965, 6.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

The Athens Letter—Choreographic Writing



89

the question whether this dissonance can and should be overcome or whether it is not in fact of the essence of the musical economy of moods. Yet even the emergence of the nonteleological figure of the circulation of blood as an answer to this question does not settle matters. With the “more next time,” the interpretation of this last gesture passes beyond the immanence of the text. As if the work of Hyperion itself consisted in a letter of indefinite address, the truth of the text is not to be found in the text itself but in the answer to the summonses that issue from it. Will Hyperion follow Bellarmin and the path of teleological recuperation, or will he follow Diotima? The answer to this question is, with these last words, held in suspense. With this in mind, let us now turn to the Athens letter. Drawing the first volume to a close, the Athens letter occupies the very middle point— the navel, as it were—of Hölderlin’s novel. It is here, moreover, that Hyperion, lecturing to his friends, presents the teleological philosophy of history that itself seems to support the attempt to understand the novel as a whole in terms of a narrative of recuperation and reintegration. Yet as I will show, it is precisely here that the tension between the two summonses, Diotima’s and Bellarmin’s, comes into play; a tension, moreover, that cannot be reduced to the conflict between two opposed messages, two clear paths between which the protagonist must choose, but involves two incomparable forms of reading/writing. While the Athens letter narrates an episode culminating in a philosophico-historical metanarrative, it also discloses through Diotima’s summons to Hyperion, and as the inner gesture of epistolary communication, the choreographic scattering of gestures toward a new manner of truth.

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

2.3 Diotima’s Mourning, Hyperion’s Spiel In the Athens letter Hyperion recounts to Bellarmin how he and Diotima, along with a cohort of friends, took a trip to the ruins of Athens. This excursion is taken more or less on a whim, without clear purpose. Athens is just something that must be seen. Yet while the Athens trip is mere tourism, a sentimental journey typical of the scenery-oriented tourism of an age in which the roots of the modern tourism industry can be found, it is also an absolutely decisive event in the shaping of his life.28 There are,

28 See Trotha 2002–3, 18; Touristic voyages, as Constantine (1979) notes, were common among members of Hölderlin’s social milieu, and Hölderlin himself took such a voyage to Switzerland in 1791, travelling along routes frequented in droves by “artists, amateurs, and dilettantes who had money and leisure time.” Hölderlin’s poetic treatment of place, Constantine argues, gradually moves away from the largely conventional and “touristic” approach of the earlier poetry.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

90 T he Athens Letter—Choreographic Writing 

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Hyperion writes to his German friend, great hours (große Stunden) in life, and the trip to Athens belongs among them.29 As Hyperion and his friends approach Athens, it indeed becomes clear that their relation to the ruins of Athens, while dominated by an attitude of idle curiosity toward the not-yet-seen, is neither merely touristic nor governed by a telos of self-fulfillment. Within the context of the novel, visiting the ruins of Athens doesn’t appear as something that everyone, or at least every Greek, or even Hyperion himself, should do. Athens is for Hyperion the home of democracy, of philosophy, of beautiful art, yet all this can be learned from books. The ruins themselves preserve little of the past glory. Or indeed, if Thucydides is right, they give an entirely false, exaggerated sense of Athens’s strength.30 Moreover, we learn of Athens’s greatness from Hyperion only after the friends have embarked on their journey and are already drawn in under the spell of the city’s ruins. It is these ruins, rather than some touristic commonplace, that bring Hyperion to start thinking about the city and its significance. Indeed, in the letters prior to the Athens letter, narrating the events before the great hours, Hyperion shows little interest for this or any other city. He mentions Athens only once, in the same breath as Rome, and only to convey to Bellarmin the arrogance he and Alabanda felt toward the past: “We also called the past before our judge’s bench, proud Rome did not frighten us with its gloriousness, Athens did not bribe us with its youthful bloom” (FA 11:608). Back then, history was only a legend of heroes; the setting for stellar deeds and men, whose very exemplarity implies that they can be emulated and repeated. Not until Diotima, alone descrying the phantom of the Olympieion—the temple of Olympian Zeus—cries out to Athens and gives voice to her mourning does Hyperion think of visiting its ruins: with this his political education truly begins (FA 11:675). The tourist, visiting somewhere, becomes eye witness to what was mere hearsay, making the remote near and the foreign familiar. By 29 Regarding Hyperion’s intimate relation to the travel literature of the age, see Honold 2002, 32–41. Hölderlin draws directly on Richard Chandler’s Travels in Asia Minor, and Greece and Marie Gabriel Florent Auguste, Count de Choiseul-Gouffier’s Voyage pittoresque de la Grèce (Picturesque Voyage of Greece, 1782) as sources for his knowledge of modern Greece (GSA 3:434). Briegleb (1982, 418–25) suggests Hölderlin had in mind the painter James Stuart and the architect Nicholas Revett, who, after spending nearly two years in Athens, published The Antiquities of Athens (1762), which represents the first attempt to make “an exact documentation of the extant remains of the antique buildings in Athens and their architectural details.” While Briegleb understands this reference as a “homage” to what is possibly another important source for the Athens letter, the tone of this passage suggests also that Hölderlin wishes to critique the attempt to relate to the past through the scientific method of archeology. 30 Thucydides, Historiai 1.10.2–3.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The Athens Letter—Choreographic Writing



91

contrast, the distance first separating the friends from Athens, whose ruins are already visible from where they stand, is intensified rather than eliminated as they approach.31 The act of beholding brings to the fore the antagonism in the travelers’ relation to what they see. “We look up to them,” Hyperion explains, “as to the colossal forms [Gestalten] of the future and antiquity. We wage a marvelous struggle with them, and if we withstand them, they become like sisters and leave us not” (FA 11:674). The “great hours in life” are not peaks or climaxes of present experience, ephemeral moments of full life. Far from providing an instant of perfect satisfaction, the fulfillment of all yearning and desire, they take shape as the colossal forms of the future and the past. They are giant monuments— literally colossi—imposing themselves on the time to come, which, rather than supporting from below, menace and overwhelm; not the release of the drives of life, but their intensification and accumulation: “The life in us,” Hyperion writes of their voyage by sea to Athens, “was like the life of a newborn island of the ocean upon which the first spring begins” (FA 11:675). Jutting forth in this miraculous monstrosity, the great hours call us to struggle against them, becoming at home—well-versed and traveled—in their summits, passes, overhangs, abysses, and valleys. Nor do we master these as the tourist masters the present, grasping what is remote and strange and carrying it off in his memory as a souvenir. In truth, we do not master them at all, but only survive, becoming their equals and their companions in life. Literally great, they are also literally Stunden (hours): they exist as what we must stand up to, and which, if we succeed, will always stand by us. Athens does not exist for Hyperion as an empty intention to be ful­filled through corporeal givenness, allowing him to finally say that he has been there and done that. Rather, its corporeal givenness, first announced through its apparition, evokes the idea of the city—indeed, the city as ideal—giving substance to Diotima’s mourning. This physical presence is, moreover, monstrous, horrific: it appears not merely as body (Leib) but corpse (Leichnam); a leviathan shipwreck, a carcass that—like Poly­ neices’s—remains unburied. Not yet covered over by the debris and refuse of time, it juts out from the earth, or rather from the seam that binds the earth and the sea, at once immeasurable and unrecognizable (FA 11:685).32

31 Osterhammel (2012–13), drawing attention to the significance of geography for Hyperion, refers, suggestively, to Hölderlin’s “stratospheric phantasy”; see also Grolman’s (1919) early, yet subtle, study of Hyperion. Grolman attaches central significance to “the opposition between preserving and overcoming distance” (73). 32 For the shipwreck’s significance as political and existential metaphor, see Blumenberg 1979.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

92 T he Athens Letter—Choreographic Writing 

The colossal forms of the great hours thus seem to coincide perfectly with Athens’s ruins, sharing the same topography. The grandeur of the great hours arises through and corresponds to the grandeur of Athens’s ruins, coming into being when the city’s unburied, ruinant corpse fleshes out Diotima’s mourning. Precisely these ruins, haunting the whole of Hyperion—even in Germany, where Hyperion no longer finds the ruins of buildings, he still sees the disjecta membra of human beings—make Greece the only fitting showplace for Hyperion’s “elegiac character” (FA 11:774). Only among ruins can things show themselves in the unique mode of phenomenality characterizing the novel as a whole. For time is itself ruinous: a star born explosively from its contraction, it gains the texture of past and present only through ruination. As the great hours arise from ruins, the immediate significance of the ruin qua sign and the potency it reveals are inversely related. It is not that a small ruin signifies more than a vast ruin, but rather that the ruins, however vast, signify the intensity and creative powers of history not through their living, creative potency but through their ruination and decline. A later fragmentary theoretical reflection, “The Meaning of Tragedies,” written in the ambit of the late hymns, treats as its theme just such a relation, claiming that, since there is a just and equitable division of all potencies or faculties (Vermögen), the original (ursprüngliche)—the secret ground of all nature and the source of all that comes into existence—appears not in its original strength but rather in its weakness. Radical equality between things is thus achieved by balancing reality against appearance; what is originally strong appears weak, and hence with tragedy the sign—insignificant (unbedeutend) and ineffectual (Wirkungslos) in and of itself—reveals what is original and potent (FA 14:383). Ascribing a similar structure of signification to the ruin—treating it as a tragic sign—one could say that the ruin, manifesting itself as ruin, reveals its origin. The ruination of the ruin is the origination of the origin—the originary comes out in its ruins—and in just this way, the colossal terrain of the past and the future forms itself in the showplace and stage of ruins.33 Grandiosely insignificant, a mere pile of stones, the ruin becomes colossal when, signifying the past in its origins, it also discloses the origination of the future. History thus appears not as a goal-directed process, but as the alternation between becoming and passing away. Hyperion’s attitude toward the ruins thus allows their insignificance to become significant in its insignificance. This suggests a specifically political curiosity, opposed to every form of curiosity where the object 33 My own understanding of this double movement of the Ursprung is indebted to Heidegger’s interpretation of Hölderlin’s poetry, and in particular “The Rhine,” though I would insist it be understood as the interplay of ruin and origin. This moreover reveals, as Benjamin sensed, a deep affinity to the Baroque.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The Athens Letter—Choreographic Writing



93

of curiosity (the mere sign, the symptom, the clue or trace) is merely the occasion for the, if only transient, fulfillment of curiosity. Apolitical curiosity assumes two forms: epistemological curiosity and the curiosity of emotion and mood. In the former, the ruins appear as a field of artifacts which, as trace evidence of past human activity, can be unearthed and interpreted, situated within a context of causal relations, revealing the truth about the past of the human race. In the latter, they occasion mood and imagination—for Carl Schmitt the essence of political romanticism. The romantic, no less than the scholar, delights in ruins and all else that appears estranged from the horizon rendering it immediately comprehensible. Yet rather than compensating for the loss of the context of everyday use by embedding the found artifact within a thick weave of historical relations, he treats it merely as an occasion to conjure forth moods and fantasies, creating an ephemeral, passing world lacking consistency and causal coherence.34 Both the romantic and the scholar seek mastery over ruins, and gain this without struggle. While the ruins serve as a horizon for signification and not merely as a symbol or token of a finite meaning, this horizon has always already been mastered; the limits of what it may reveal are predetermined through either the regulative idea of the causal coherence of history or the self-positing of an absolute subject incapable of discovering anything in the ruins that it hasn’t put there itself. Both forms of curiosity in turn involve at once dominating the ruins and submitting to them, and yet the relation of domination and submission remains unstable. The theoretical spectator dominates the ruins by interpreting them, reducing them to mere evidence. And yet he is also dominated by them, since this interpretation, appearing objectively valid, in turn commands his assent. Likewise, the impassioned romantic spectator dominates the ruins by giving them an emotional meaning that in turn dominates him through the passivity of affective experience. Hence both forms of curiosity are essentially apolitical, and precisely because the operation of curiosity, rather than disclosing a vision of political possibilities, is predetermined by a certain form of life. Theoretical and emotional curiosity is only possible for the atomized and ultimately solipsistic Cartesian subject.35 34 Schmitt 1986, 19. 35 Regarding the significance of “theoretical curiosity” for the discourse of modernity, see Blumenberg 1983, 229–452. For Blumenberg, ancient forms of theoretical curiosity were marginalized in the wake of Christianity because the “claim to happiness” bound up with them could no longer be maintained once happiness was understood as salvation through faith. The revival of “theoretical curiosity” in the modern age, accordingly, is only possible through a transformation in the understanding of the very relation between curiosity and happiness: “The investigator of nature could no longer remain—nor again become—the ancient world onlooker, though he had to reconstruct the connection between

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

94 T he Athens Letter—Choreographic Writing 

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Political curiosity, by contrast, is the curiosity about what we are, how we are organized, and what is possible for us. It doesn’t concern actualities of knowledge or feeling, obscurely intimated in the trace evidence surrounding us, but possibilities. If political curiosity is nevertheless different from the political inquiry of classical philosophy—if it remains curiosity—it is because it doesn’t seek the security of an answer, or even the skeptic’s confidence in the impossibility of an answer, but rejoices in living with the question. It remains bound to the senses, and especially the sense of vision, not because these could provide the proper foundation for either knowledge or experience, but rather because the senses are radically transcendent, opening up to the possibility of new, singular modes of the event of truth. And thus the first sense of political curiosity is linguistic: the experience of language in its potentiality—a potentiality present in each word insofar as it exists neither in the present (as ordinary-language philosophy maintains), nor the past (as for the philologist), nor the future (as poetic event, the irruption into reality of what is without precedent), but as all three dimensions in their interrelation. The ruins of Athens appear not only colossal but dangerous. So dangerous, in fact, that Hyperion is not at first able to stand up to them. This is fitting since, while all curiosity involves danger, political curiosity is dangerous in a special sense: the form of our existence is itself at stake.36 Exposed to the ruins without reserve—almost crushed beneath them— he gives in to despair and inveighs against the “sumptuous play of fate [prächtig Spiel des Schiksaals]” that tears down the temples, turning their crippled gods into benches for peasant huts and their gravestones into resting places for grazing livestock: a wastefulness (Verschwendung) of fate that, even as it annihilates greatness and beauty, nevertheless reveals a majesty more regal than Cleopatra “as she drank melted pearls” (FA 11:686–87). Yet this defeat is not the last word. If it were, the attitude of political curiosity would be lost. Everything would have been decided. cognitive truth and finding happiness in a different way if, following Francis Bacon’s new formula, domination over nature was to be a precondition of the recovery of paradise” (232). 36 Binder (1961–62, 1–19) argues that there are three different concepts of the human in Hölderlin, corresponding to the early work, the period of Hyperion and The Death of Empedocles, and the later poetry. The first conceives human beings in relation to the sphere in which they exist. The second, positing the essence of the human being in his way of relating to the world and to himself, involves the tension between being “everything” and being “nothing.” The third turns away from an idealistic humanism: man hears and interprets the signs of beings, the Winke (hints, beckonings) of gods. This schema and periodization is illuminating, yet I would argue that all three moments converge in Hyperion. Moreover, the humanism of the first and the second is already overcome in the final version, and a “hermeneutic” paradigm emerges.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

The Athens Letter—Choreographic Writing



95

Instead, the defeat gives way to a struggle, an agonistic relation. It must be possible to answer to the ruins without either imposing an end upon them or submitting to their senselessness as an end—to answer to them outside of the horizon of teleology; to discover in the ruins a danger that we can neither dominate nor submit to—either way the danger would pass—but which we must live with. Such a stance will require the utmost vigilance against every retreat, every form of security, every metaphysical vision, however plausible, subtle, and innovative. Political curiosity remains a work in progress, and it is this work in progress that is worked out in Hyperion. This, more than anything, will explain Hyperion’s uncanny proximity to the Bildungsroman. There will be advances in understanding, moments of resignation, friends and lovers will become teachers in the art of living, and these friends will come and go. Hyperion will reflect on his past and tell his story; he will try to discover the meaning of his life. Thus it could seem that everything comes down, in the end, to recuperating this meaning, of realizing what he is. Yet the education at work is political: not toward the realization and (possible) fulfillment of what he is, but toward becoming open to the possibilities of what we can be.

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

2.4 The Caesura of the Speculative The ruins disclose history as the potential through which a world comes into being, revealing a power of origination rooted neither in the pure autonomy of the subject nor in natural determinism. Not surprisingly, as Hyperion and his friends sail toward Attica, falling ever more under the sway of Athens’s colossal presence, their conversation turns to the question of origins. “We spoke among ourselves,” Hyperion recalls to his friend, “of the excellence of the ancient Athenians, from whence it comes and in what it consists” (FA 11:676). As the island itself, in their approach, rises out of the horizon—as though born from the sea—the life of the ancient Athenians also becomes present for Hyperion. He becomes aware of the problem of politics, of a history existing not simply in the chronicle of scattered heroic lives but as the common life of a people. In the ensuing conversation, moreover, Hyperion not only senses the political but thinks about it, taking it up as a theme for speculation. Here more than anywhere else Hyperion appears as a philosopher, and indeed a political philosopher. Hyperion’s speech, almost seven pages long, with only sparse interjections from the others, provides a sophisticated if schematic account both of the genesis of Athens’s own greatness and of the general process giving rise to political life. The greatness of Athens, he argues, is not the result of its climate, its art and philosophy, or its religion and its constitution (Staatsform), but rather came into being through a natural growth.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

96 T he Athens Letter—Choreographic Writing 

Philosophy, art, religion, and the form of the state are only “blossoms and fruit of the tree, not soil and root” (FA 11:676).37 Political and cultural life is a spontaneous, organic development. Athens surpassed others because it was left alone. Its inner nature was allowed to unfold undisturbed and in its own time, free from every manner of violent influence, not being driven out of itself too early either by external forces or by the excessively generous or meager bounty of the land. Even the foundational political action—the wondrously great deed (wundergroße Tat) of Theseus—is of a negative character, consisting in the voluntary limitation of the legendary king’s own regal power and violence (Gewalt) (FA 11:677). Theseus’s deed is understood neither simply as a continuation of the natural process of growth, nor as a voluntaristic intervention against nature, but, appropriating and transforming an image from Kant’s Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht (Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View, 1784), as a seed grain that, thrown into the heart of the people, produces an ocean of golden ears; an agricultural event that breaks with the continuity of natural growth by appropriating the powers immanent to nature itself (KAA 8:30). Through this almost purely negative formation and acculturation, the Athenians became human beings. Yet as human beings, they are already gods, and, as gods, beautiful (FA 11:678). This human-divine beauty in turn gives birth to the blossoms and fruits of Athenian culture, all of which refer back to beauty as the ground of their possibility, since indeed they exist only as repetitions of their origin, which, as the absolute principle of all that follows from it, exhausts all possibilities of form and content. The first child of beauty is art: the element in which the “divine human being” rejuvenates and repeats himself, allowing him to feel himself by opposing his beauty to himself as something objective (FA 11:678). The second is religion, the “love of beauty” (FA 11:678). Just as beauty, duplicated in art, now has both an original and a reflected existence, religion likewise takes two forms: first, an esoteric religion of the few and wise consisting in the love of beauty itself, and second, the love of the “children” of beauty, the gods as its manifold sensuous images. The transition from art to religion would thus seem to involve the passage from an immanent self-feeling to a transitive, relational affect. Whereas the former merely repeats the existence of beauty, religion, as the love of beauty, involves affect and even 37 Schuffels (1973, 304–17) argues that Hyperion’s Athensgespräch draws on Herder’s Vom Einfluß der Regierung auf die Wissenschaften, und der Wissenschaften auf die Regierung (On the Influence of Government on Science, and of Science on Government, 1781); Another importance source, as George (2002–3, 170) suggests, is Winckelmann’s Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums (History of the Art of Antiquity, 1764), though, he further notes, implicit reference is also made to Kant, Fichte, Schiller, and Schelling.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The Athens Letter—Choreographic Writing



97

action toward the beautiful; an orientation toward the ground of Being that encompasses the whole of one’s life. Yet though it involves a mode of praxis, anticipating political life, religion is inherently unstable. A people that has only art and religion will always be on the verge of dissolving into strife, since the way of living of the wise and the people conflict. Whereas the wise enjoy an immediate relation to beauty, the people relate to the origin only mediately; through its reflection and objectification into a plurality of figures. Politics, the third child of beauty, responds to precisely this originary religious crisis, restoring the unity lost with the division of the people into the many and the few, the dēmos and its exceptions. This understanding of politics might seem difficult to derive from Hyperion’s explicit definition of the sense for freedom as a sense for a happy medium between the despotism of arbitrary will (Willkür)—the sovereign decision—and the despotism of law. Yet a cursory reflection reveals a precise structural analogy between the two poles of each pair. Just as the love of beauty and the love of art relate to each other as the love of the thing itself versus the love of its objectification—its concretion in an enduring form—the law concretizes and crystallizes the arbitrary positings of will, granting them objective reality and permanence. Significantly, Hyperion, in representing arbitrary power, does not rely on the classical picture of the tyrant or despot as living a purely sensual existence, acting only from impulse for the sake of base gratification. Rather, his model is the theocracy of Egypt, whose denizens “are born with a drive to pay homage and idolize” (von Mutterleib an einen Huldigungs- und Vergötterungstrieb; FA 11:679). Likewise, the Nordic’s excessive love of law is conceived in theological terms as a lack of faith in the pure and free life of nature. In submitting themselves without reserve to a juridical order that objectifies and congeals life, they lose their openness to spontaneity and novelty. Revelation becomes impossible, since everything fundamental in life has already been decided (FA 11:679). The conflict between arbitrary will and law is, in other words, a conflict between theocracy and the rule of law. In the former an elite of wise men rule over the masses through divine decree; in the latter the people shield themselves against despotism, preserving their ancient liberties, by restraining the sovereign power through the very decrees that, now hardened into law, had previously served to express its power. They now worship the gods only through the mediation of mythology, protecting themselves from the immediate presence of the divine by transforming this presence into a fixed order whose fundamental relations are exhaustively given in the past tense of history. The sense of freedom in turn emerges through the reconciliation of these competing religious orders, and thus itself lacks positive content, defined only through the negation of both despotisms. Rather than taking form as a set of institutions superimposed on a prior religious difference and class conflict, it merely arranges antagonistic forces such that

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

98 T he Athens Letter—Choreographic Writing 

they keep one another in check. The constitution of the state as a stead of freedom repeats in the people as a whole beauty as the hen diapheron heautōi, the one differing from itself. The essence of Athenian democracy is a balanced antagonism. Beauty’s fourth and final child is philosophy. To his friends’ astonishment, Hyperion claims that philosophy, even in its most skeptical and negative forms, cannot exist apart from a sense for the beautiful. The great word of Heraclitus, the “εν διαφερον εαυτῳ” (hen diapheron heautōi) as Hölderlin writes out in Greek script, could only have been discovered by a Greek, since this proposition, as the fundamental principle and necessary precondition of all philosophical reflection, itself names the essence of beauty (FA 11:681). It not only provides the starting point for philosophy, but offers constant illumination to reason and understanding, allowing the latter in particular, while carrying out its finite and unfree tasks, to remain mindful “of the day of the festival” (FA 11:683). It allows it, in other words, to retain a sense for the highest horizon toward which its own activity is directed; the suspension of its labors. Moreover, just as beauty opens the horizon for philosophy, which comes into being when beauty is made known (kund) among human beings, philosophy brings beauty to conceptual clarity, analyzing it into its components and piecing it back together into a unity, thereby making it recognized and ultimately transforming what is recognized (das Erkannte) into law (FA 11:681). Philosophy is, as it were, the mediation between the original revelation of beauty and its congealment into concepts. Indeed, by moving back and forth between unity and multiplicity, it itself enacts the very principle it serves to articulate. Its action is this very articulation. Not only does it begin and end with beauty: it itself acts beautifully. Since Hyperion regards beauty as the highest principle, we might discover here an echo of the aestheticization of the intellectual intuition proposed in “Das älteste Systemprogramm des deutschen Idealismus” (The Oldest System-Program of German Idealism), anticipating the privilege that Schelling accords to art in his transcendental idealism and the socalled “philosophy of identity.”38 Just as Hyperion conceives of beauty 38 Thus Weibler (1996), reading the Athens letter as an exposition of Hölderlin’s thought, shows the parallels between his poetically articulated concept of nature and Schelling’s philosophy of nature, stressing the theological underpinnings of both as well as also their appropriation of the pantheistic philosophy of Bruno and Spinoza—see also Martens 1994, 185–98; For a rigorous and detailed account in English of the role of aesthetic intellectual intuition in Hyperion, see Davis 2015. I cannot, however, follow Davis in the claim that Hyperion involves a kind of poetization of Schelling’s philosophy of nature; despite being written in Hegel’s handwriting, the authorship of this fragment, which was discovered in 1913 by Franz Rosenzweig, is itself disputed, and has been attributed variously to Hölderlin, Schelling, and Hegel.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The Athens Letter—Choreographic Writing



99

as the ground of philosophical reflection, the philosophy of art (philosophical reflection upon the highest potency of prephilosophical life as the indifference point between knowing and acting, unconscious and conscious activity) is the keystone of Schelling’s system.39 Yet whereas for Schelling beauty is only one of three principal ideas—the first articulation of the idea of God—and shares its glory with truth and goodness, Hyperion on the surface has little to say about the other transcendental ideas. Beauty grounds both praxis and philosophy. Moreover, since beauty is the sole possessor of the throne of the divine, the role of art becomes more problematic. Precisely because art operates mimetically as a representation of beauty, it sunders the representation from its object, thereby giving rise to the original crisis: the class conflict between the wise, who worship beauty itself, and the people, who love only the idol. This is indeed the original division, and only politics— free activity—can restore an antagonistic unity. If beauty is the starting point and politics the destination of the process of Athens’s development, philosophy serves as the organon for the political while transcending its ends and indeed questioning the very idea of the telos. The politics that philosophy in turn enables would not involve simple unity or a single purpose, but a unity preserving within itself antagonism and conflict. Rather than producing a final account of the beautiful, it preserves the fluidity of its conceptual articulation, retaining in the thought of the beautiful the very tension between unity and division characterizing the beautiful itself as hen diapheron heautōi. Nor could this just mean presenting a true representation of the beautiful, capturing the deepest principle’s true essence in systematic form, for indeed a system betrays its principle the moment it posits itself as the principle’s final, true expression. Philosophy must never come to an end, but exists only as the ongoing struggle between the constructive and the skeptical, with determinate objectifications of reason gelling into being only to dissolve back into the one differing from itself, the hen diapheron heautōi. By conceiving of the unity of the theoretical and the practical not in terms of a final goal such as absolute spirit, in which all aspects of the system would find their most perfect integration, but through a Heraclitean gesture of an abiding dissonant unity, the Athens speech gestures toward an original and compelling vision of philosophy that anticipates later developments of German idealism while also laying out a different path.40 Thus it must seem strange to take Hyperion’s theory as anything less than 39 Schelling 1985, 2:201–15. 40 Hiller (2008, 17–43) stresses the importance of the Heraclitean notion of “harmonic opposition” for Hölderlin’s poetics, showing how it relates to the problem of poetic representation. In the Athens letter, she claims, Hyperion misunderstands the Heraclitean dissonant unity by imposing an “idealistic” logic on

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

100 T he Athens Letter—Choreographic Writing 

the more or less straightforward presentation of Hölderlin’s ideas. After all, few have the prodigal courage to destroy their own creations; to undo their own thoughts, emulating the regal wastefulness of history itself. Yet while neither Diotima nor the other friends challenge Hyperion’s pontifications, the text itself, as if distancing itself from Hyperion’s systematic ambitions, announces a certain skepticism toward his constructions.41 Not that it refutes or sublimates into a higher doctrine. It simply interrupts.42 As Hyperion tries to clarify his enigmatic words, the “almighty spectacle [Anblick]” of Athens itself, lying before them like an immeasurable shipwreck, causes him to stop talking; to suspend his discourse, the discourse of philosophy, just as it is reaching its climax. Philosophy cannot stand up to history’s remnants and debris—to the gesture of history as revealed through its ruins—but must bow down before them; while it can think their origin, it cannot yet discover the shape and form of the origin in the ruins themselves and realize that the terrain of the ruin and the origin are the same. Nor does he manage to restore the thread of his discourse. Wandering through the ruins, he is not capable of sustained thoughts but only, as Diotima tells him, of whims and fancies (Einfälle): he can no longer explicate highest principles but only what is accidental, inexplicable, groundless—at best divine inspiration, at worst disturbed fantasy. In the wake of the ruins of Athens, philosophy itself is left in fragments. At the very moment that Diotima reveals the groundlessness of Hyperion’s thoughts and leads her friend, who has now succumbed to the ruins, outside the city gates and into the nearby gardens “under the colors of life,” she not only appears in all her strength and glory but embodies a different sort of thinking; a thinking devoted to restful, quiet, musical thoughts whose constancy—Beständigkeit—does not give way before ruins (FA 11:687). The following passage, setting the stage for Diotima’s words to Hyperion, presents a stark contrast between the two friends: the one victorious in her battle with the ruins, the other vanquished. Despite all

it, effacing difference in favor of unity. Diotima then “corrects” Hyperion by calling his attention to radical negativity. 41 George (2002–3, 169–92) argues forcefully that the views presented in the Athens letter are no longer Hölderlin’s own. 42 Aspetsberger (1971), who also stresses the importance of the Athens letter and devotes considerable attention to it, offers a very different reading, arguing that the narrator nowhere else “addresses the world so comprehensively,” presenting a Weltentwurf (sketch of the world) to which he will remain true throughout the novel (44). The essence of this Weltentwurf consists in positing ancient Athens as the “ideal realization of human existence.”

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

The Athens Letter—Choreographic Writing



101

his quick thoughts, Hyperion stands helpless before the ruins, and needs Diotima to literally set him straight.43

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

My entire being raised itself up when I finally saw myself alone with Diotima; she had withstood a marvelous struggle with the holy chaos of Athens. Like the play of the heavenly muse’s harp over the un-unified elements, Diotima’s quiet thoughts held sway over the ruins. Like the moon from a tender cloud, her spirit arose from beautiful suffering; the heavenly girl stood there in her woeful mood like the flower that smells loveliest in the night (FA 11:687).44

If she can maintain her constancy and stability in the face of ruins, it is because they appear to her neither as signs of fate’s majestic power nor as mere objects to master through science or poetry, but as a holy chaos; not mere disorder and contingency but the disclosure of the holy—whole and absolute—ground of becoming. As this holy chaos the ruins defy the logic forcing a choice between absolute domination and absolute submission; they neither submit pliantly to a network of causal relations nor present the utter fragmentation and discontinuity that, in alternating measures, rules everything with its unfathomable mysteries and gives in meekly to the occasionalist constructions of the subject. Moreover, Diotima’s power over the ruins—her ability to stand up to them—is of essence musical. Her quiet, restful thoughts, Hyperion tells his friend, ruled (herrschten) over the ruins like the harping—the Saitenspiel—of the heavenly muses over the fractious, un-unified elements. Rather than violently imposing form onto the mere matter of the ruins, forcing them into a framework of interpretation, her thoughts bring them into a greater accord without violating their nature. And thus the difference between her spirit (Geist) and the conflicted, suffering element over which it rules involves a subtle, gentle contrast, like the moon emerging from the clouds. It is a question of shading, tonality; chiaroscuro. Whereas the other friends end up joining the British scholars picking through Athens’s remains, Hyperion and Diotima both have a fundamentally melancholy relation to the ruins. Yet whereas he submits to his sorrow and loses himself in bombast, her play (Spiel) is not ruled by mourning—it does not become the “sumptuous

43 The importance of such Zurechtweisungen (reprimands) in Hyperion is crucial to Ryan’s (1965) reading of the novel. 44 This is perhaps a reference to Amphion, who, playing his lyre, caused the stones to descend from the hills and arrange themselves into the high walls of Thebes. Yet the myth is reversed, suggesting the distinction Hölderlin will draw between ancient and modern lawgiving: whereas previously harmony had the power to build a city from raw nature, now it has power over the ruins of a city once built.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

102 T he Athens Letter—Choreographic Writing 

play of fate”—but rules it, granting measure and concord from within. It is not, in other words, a Trauer- but a Saitenspiel.45 This contrast between Diotima’s victory over the ruins and Hyperion’s defeat before them illuminates her summons. It not only establishes her authority, authorizing her words, but suggests, if only obliquely, that, rather than calling Hyperion toward a specific course of action or imparting a new direction to his will, her words reveal how he must comport himself toward the ruins and hence toward the ruinous tendency of history. Since Hyperion’s political thinking is so closely intertwined with the physical presence of the ruins of Athens, it is telling, moreover, that, when Diotima addresses her words to Hyperion, the two friends are walking ever further from its center. This hints at Plato’s Phaidros (Phaedrus), which, like the Symposion (Symposium), addresses the nature of love.46 Whereas almost all Plato’s other dialogues show Socrates engaging in philosophy within the walls of the city, the Phaedrus takes place outside of the city gates. This is a strange element for Socrates, since his thinking is so closely linked to the presence—living rather than dead—of the city that he chooses to spend his time within its walls, speaking with men, rather than outside among the birds and trees. “The country places and trees don’t wish to teach me anything,” he tells Phaedrus, “but the men in the city do.”47 That mere nature cannot teach him anything follows from what he wishes to learn. His fundamental concern is not the genesis and nature of the universe as a whole, but human nature, and above all whether he himself, as this particular man, “happens to be a beast more tangled up and puffed up with winds than a Typhoon, or rather a gentler and simpler animal, partaking by nature in some divine and modest lot.”48 This question, which at root asks whether the human being is truly a political animal or whether even the polis’s apparent order and stability merely repeat nature’s wild chaos, can only be answered inside the town or city, since only here does one find men. Nevertheless, the Phaedrus itself suggests that precisely this question, which questions the city’s boundaries and decides for or against its possibility, must be raised at the city limits. Similarly, Diotima’s words to Hyperion, spoken in the garden outside the fallen city, concern the holy chaos of history’s ruins— which, as the ruins of human achievement, themselves testify to human 45 Regarding the figure of Melancholia in Hyperion and its connection with Kronos, see Frye 1972. 46 A letter to Neuffer, from October 10, 1794, attests to the importance of the Phaedrus for Hölderlin. His essay on the aesthetic ideas, he remarks, could be regarded as a commentary on the dialogue (SW 4:74). 47 Plato, Phaedrus 230d. 48 Plato, Phaedrus 230a.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The Athens Letter—Choreographic Writing



103

nature. Are these truly and hopelessly chaotic, or is there a sense to be found in their senselessness? No less than Socrates’s question, her words concern the relation of humans to nature. Yet even so, and quite tellingly, the poles of the opposition have reversed. Now the latter is the still and quiet “holy life,” whereas human history is chaotic in its ruination. The immediate occasion for Diotima’s words is Hyperion’s renunciation of politics. Defeated by the ruins of history, his first wish is to flee from the ruination of time and indeed from the world in its entirety, seeking exile in Diotima herself. Heaven is dead and empty; the earth, once teeming with human beauty, is an ant hill. Yet he adds: “there is still a place where the old heaven and the old earth laugh to me. For all the gods of heaven and all the divine humans of the earth I forget in you” (FA 11:688). Beauty remains present in Diotima’s being; “the fountain of eternal beauty is not yet run dry.” This recalls the central problem of Plato’s Republic. How can the philosopher, having beheld the form of the Good, be made to return into the cave of politics? What could tempt him to retreat back into the realm of appearance? By ingeniously fusing Plato’s political philosophy with the eroticism of the Symposium and the Phaedrus, Hölderlin recasts these questions. It is no longer absolute presence and truth that tempts the philosopher but the vital existence revealed through beauty understood as the meeting of heaven and earth, the mediation between truth and appearance; no longer the present historical epoch’s deadness and fragmentation that bothers him but the untruth and transience of political life—its excessive vitality and colorfulness. The relation of Eros to politics has, moreover, itself changed. Love now substitutes for the ruins of the polis; that which alone still harbors life now that political life is no longer possible. In the Symposium, Socrates, as Diotima’s emissary, offers a philosophy of Eros in order to draw the city, with its complacent homocentricity, beyond itself. For Plato, love exists at the limits of the city, yet must be harnessed for true politics as the condition of deeds that imitate eternity and thus transcend the existing order. Here, by contrast, love is a blessed island: self-contained and solitary; at once the inner truth of genuine political life and a trap that keeps us from politics. Thus it is no longer enough for Diotima, in her speech to Hyperion, to show that love leads us beyond finitude. Rather, she must lead love beyond itself. Let us now cite Diotima’s first summons. There is a time for love, Diotima said with a friendly seriousness, just as there is a time for living in the happy cradle, but life itself drives us out. Hyperion!—Here she seized my hand with fire, and her voice rose with grandeur—Hyperion! I think you were born for higher things. Don’t fail to recognize yourself! The lack of material [Stoff]

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

104 T he Athens Letter—Choreographic Writing 

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

held you back. It did not go quick enough. That cast you down. Like the young fencers, you fell too rashly into the fray before your goal was certain and your fist adroit, and because you were, as is natural, hit more often than you hit, you became timid and doubted yourself and everything; for you are as sensitive as you are vehement. But nothing is lost thereby. Had your mind [Gemüth] and your nature grown ripe so soon, your spirit would not be what it is; you would not be the thinking human being had you not been the suffering, the fermenting human being. Believe me, you would never have recognized so purely the equilibrium of beautiful humanity if you had not lost it so. Your heart has finally found peace. I want to believe it. I understand it. But do you really think that you are now at the end? Do you want to lock yourself away in the heaven of your love, and abandon beneath you, rotted and chilled, the world that needs you? Like the beam of light you must go down, like the all-refreshing rain you must go down into the land of mortality, you must shine forth, like Apollo, convulse, quicken like Jupiter, for otherwise you are not worth your heaven. I bid you enter once more into Athens and also look at the people that walk around among the ruins, the raw Albanians and the other good childish Greeks who console themselves with a merry dance and a holy fairy tale over the shameful power that burdens them—Can you say “I am ashamed of this material?” I think it can yet be formed. Can you turn your heart away from the needy ones? They are not bad, they haven’t harmed you in any way! (FA 11:688–89)

Diotima’s words summon Hyperion out of himself and down into the world that needs him, calling him toward politics: not as participation in the life of an already existing political entity, not even as revolution, but as the act of offering illumination to the world and all-refreshing rain, making it arable and thus instituting the conditions for the possibility of political life. Diotima no longer appears either as the ideal of beauty or even first of all as the teacher of love and hence of philosophy as love of wisdom. Rather, she calls Hyperion, philosopher of beauty and love—the last student of Plato’s—beyond love and beyond philosophy and toward political engagement in the world. Whereas Plato’s priestess leads human Eros beyond earthly goods to what is truly beyond, Hyperion’s Diotima calls Hyperion to go under. Plato, of course, also understands politics as a going under. Yet unlike in the Republic, where the philosopher himself merely beholds the form of the Good (to agathon) in its purity, here Hyperion is himself the sun—his name says as much. His “going under” is not a regrettable departure from a higher and purer condition but a necessary consequence of his being, whose very nature is to overflow outside itself, to give itself away, to lose itself in the world and its ephemerality.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

The Athens Letter—Choreographic Writing



105

Diotima’s summons itself repeats the drive of life, which drives life itself out of itself; beyond every center. Expanding on this point, she offers a substantial revision of Hyperion’s own philosophy of history. Life does not simply realize itself by developing according to its own measure— an essentially teleological conception—but needs a violent stimulus from the outside. Indeed it is for itself this stimulus, interrupting and breaking itself off, driving itself beyond itself, causing itself to lose itself, and thus, through this loss, to discover what it must be.49 Because nature contains within itself a tendency toward alterity, “pure nature” gives way to the agricultural collaboration of human beings and nature. Agriculture is no longer a mere incursion on nature’s inner purity but involves a positive relation to its self-alteration. This, at least, is how Hyperion takes her words, discovering in them a call to plant, build, and grow (bauen) what is necessary (FA 11:690). In the following passage, Hyperion gives the most dramatic expression to the political significance of the cultivation of and collaboration with nature.

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

What? The Arabian merchant scattered the seed of his Koran and there grew for him a people of disciples [Schülern] like an endless forest, and yet the field shouldn’t also prosper [gedeihen] where the old truth returns in new living youth. (FA 11:690)

The mightiest political activity is the sowing and dissemination of the poetic letter, yet the letter can only take root where the people is bildsam—capable of being formed and molded; receptive to culture and education (Bildung). The condition for politics, this suggests, is a receptivity for formation that disappears once the process of formation is complete. Genuine politics exists only where the people remain in a state of potentiality.50 The malleability of Hyperion’s material—the raw Albanians and the other good childish Greeks—reveals itself above all in their merry dance and holy fairy tale. The receptivity of body and soul for choric movement and muthos manifests an openness to the poetic letter. But at the 49 Here I disagree with Gaier (1978–79, 109), who attributes to Hölderlin the attempt to discover a “natural law of historical development.” For Hölderlin, I would argue, political agency is radically disruptive of the continuum of “natural history,” even if, at the same time, its effectivity, the manner of its agency, involves a natural process. 50 The political implications of the concept of potentiality play a vital role in recent work on biopolitics: Agamben develops a challenging reinterpretation of Aristotle’s dynamis and energeia, and Virno (2004) conceives of post-Fordist labor in terms of a virtuosity that is more potential than actual.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

106 T he Athens Letter—Choreographic Writing 

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

same time, the dances of the modern Greeks have preserved aspects of the character of their ancient ancestors. The receptivity for dance, and the continuing capacity to dance, preserves a trace of the ancient form of existence.51 A passage from the German translation of Marie Gabriel Florent Auguste, Count de Choiseul-Gouffier’s Voyage pittoresque de la Grèce (Picturesque Voyage of Greece, 1782), an important source for Hyperion, reads: “With the Greeks the taste in dancing remained forever the same. Misfortune and slavery had no power over their natural tendency to pleasure, and a moment of festivity made them forget all their misery. Such a people, as frivolous as it is lovable, often believes itself to be sufficiently avenged for a new impost through a little song” (cited in GSA 3:468).52 Dance expresses a resistance to oppression rooted not in thoughts, not in political ideas, but in the body itself as the site of inextirpable physical habits.53 Diotima’s words have an immediate effect: Hyperion is transformed. When he appeared before as a philosopher, he had many words and much to say, and yet he could not withstand the site of Athens’s remnants. Now he is full of ineffable joy (voll unaussprechlicher Freude)—a delight that defies speech (FA 11:691).54 As they return to the city, the ruins 51 Wilhelm Heinse’s Aufzeichnungen (Notes) from 1778–90 stress the pedagogical importance of dance (2003–5, 2:293). And another note, drawing on Xenophon’s Symposium, mentions the importance of dance in the life of the Athenians, conceiving of the dance as an integral part of their way of life, exemplifying a measured, moderate pleasure (2003–5, 2:258). Heinse’s description of Athens, moreover, stands in a close connection with the Athens letter, which echoes its first words almost verbatim. 52 Beissner 1954. 53 While Heidegger calls attention to the significance of the dance, he effaces precisely what, for Hölderlin, are its two most decisive aspects: that, on the one hand, it carries into the modern world a memory of what is highest, but that, on the other hand, it perdures in the manner of its specific modernity (and Germanness): the ascendance of the formal, technical, mechanistic. Glossing the following passage from “Griechenland” (Greece)—“But like the round dance /At the wedding” (Aber wie der Reigen / Zur Hochzeit)—Heidegger writes: “The round dance is the Greek choros, the dance that, festively singing, celebrates the god: chorois timān Dionuson—to honor Dionysus with dances . . . The round dance is the drunken to-each-other of the gods themselves in the heavenly fire of joy” (HGA 4:172–74). Heidegger’s round dance is purely Dionysian and ecstatic; it has nothing of the sobriety of form. See also Levin 1980 and Warnes 2014. 54 We recall the first strophe of the poem “Menschenbeifall” (Human Applause, 1798): “Is not my heart holy, full of more beautiful life, / Since I love? why did you respect me more, / When I was prouder and wilder, / Richer in words and more empty?” (Ist nicht heilig mein Herz, schöneren Lebens voll, / Seit ich liebe? warum achtetet ihr mich mehr, / Da ich stolzer und wilder, / Wortereicher und leerer war?; GSA 1.1:250).

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

The Athens Letter—Choreographic Writing



107

have become otherwise: “Everything had become strange and new for us” (Es war uns alles fremd und neu geworden). It is as if for the first time the ruins appear in their originating ruination: truly colossal in form and shape; exhibiting the immensity of destruction, yet pregnant with the future. And his relation to them has also changed: if previously he was bowed under them, now he stands, he recalls to Bellarmin, “over the rubble and ruins of Athens like an agriculturalist on fallow land [Brachfeld]” (FA 11:691). The ruins of history have become arable; ruin is itself now an origin and source.55 Here we begin to glimpse the gesture that would allow Hyperion to stand up to the ruins and carry out Diotima’s summons. This gesture, significantly, is not the same as hers: it is not by embodying the musical life of nature in its alternation between growth and decay that he would be able to hold sway over the ruins, but by becoming an agriculturalist. Yet what is the gesture of agriculture, and what is its privilege as a stance toward history?

2.5 The Arabian Merchant

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The final version of Hyperion marks Hölderlin’s turn away from the teleological conception of history that, developed through the works of Lessing, Kant, Schiller, Fichte, and Schelling, finds its fullest expression in Hegel’s thought. He comes to question not only whether the world is a creation endowed with a purpose by its creator, but even whether human action or labor is organized toward a goal or end either given to it from the outside or to itself by its own reason. Athens, as one of the greatest achievements of human history, is the fulfillment of neither a divine 55 The word “Urbar” appears in Hölderlin’s hymn Der Ister (The Ister, 1803)—“For rivers make arable / The land” (Denn Ströme machen urbar / Das Land)—and plays a significant role in Heidegger’s reading of the hymn. For Heidegger, the Ströme (rivers) are the poets, whose thing it is to institute the poetic as the ground upon which human beings dwell. As he explains, “the poetic river spirit makes arable in an essential sense, it prepares the ground for the hearth of the house of history” (HGA 53:183). I would argue, though, that if we are to understand the political significance of this passage, we must conceive of the image of “making arable” more “materialistically,” even literally. Arability, for Hölderlin, is linked to canalizing; to a violent sculpting of the landscape. The reclamation of land from the sea through artificial dikes remains a potent symbol for technology as the domination of the natural environment. And the figure of canalization is also important for Machiavelli (1977, 67). Hölderlin, this suggests, conceives of the relation of technology, nature, and poetry rather differently than Heidegger. If the rivers do not merely bring water to the land but canalize and reform it, then this suggests that even those technai that most violently manipulate the land themselves stand in a continuum with the labor of nature.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

108 T he Athens Letter—Choreographic Writing 

nor human plan or purpose. Nevertheless, the historical development of a people is still understood as the unfolding of its inner principle, a realization of a formative drive that parallels, at the macrocosmic level, the genesis of the individual. Diotima’s words break with even this last vestige of teleology. Whereas Hyperion had already identified beauty—the hen diapheron heautōi—as the fundamental principle, suggesting that Being is nothing else than this movement of digression, Diotima points toward a more radical interpretation of this digressiveness, according to which history no longer consists in the immanent growth of the national life of a people toward an ideal state but rather in interruption, digression, scattering, with the essence, of its very essence, impelled outside itself. This already intimates a sense of history as revolutionary time. The underlying tendency of the drive is not toward formation but expulsion. It drives itself out; its impulse and pulse (Trieb) is always an expulsion (Vertreibung).56 Were the diasporic movement of history conceived only in these abstract terms, as though simply a function of a natural law, one could hardly avoid relapsing into some form of teleology that posits either a state of pure dispersion and fragmentation as the end of history, as though it operated according to a law of entropy, or an equilibrium between dissolution and order. This suggests the decisive significance of the transformation in the understanding of the organic nature of the political from a mere nature, left to itself, to a cultivated nature. The dissemination that constitutes the life of nature is not just the labor of nature but also of human beings. This latter, the agricultural sowing of the seed, is not utterly blind, but it is also not purposeful in the sense of a technē. It works toward something, but does not guide its activity toward a finite end— the form to be imparted to an action. Rather, it repeats the gesture of history—of revolutionary time—itself also the gesture of nature, and guides the process of dissemination.57 Crucial in this regard is Hyperion’s reference to the Koran and the prophet Mohammed, the “Arabian merchant,” in the passage cited above. Surprising given the religious pluralism of eighteenth-century Greece, this is the most explicit mention in the final version of any tradition of revealed religion—the church and festival of Panagia, which appear in the metrical version and Hyperion’s Youth, are absent.58 The Koran, indeed, 56 As Stiening (2002) argues, Hölderlin turns away from the “metaphysical” concept of the drive, influenced by Kant, Fichte, and Schiller, that appears in the metrical version. 57 In Hyperion, as Ingeborg Brose (1968, 6) argues, nature itself assumes a historical characteristic, thus anticipating the late hymns. 58 This silence, of course, might reflect self-censorship. For a forceful description of the obligations that bound Hölderlin to the Württemberg authorities throughout his life, see Constantine 1988, 3. Prignitz (1976, 12–17) contrasts

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The Athens Letter—Choreographic Writing



109

has the peculiar privilege of being the only work mentioned in the whole of the final version of the novel that is neither Greek, nor ancient, nor philosophy—indeed the only work other than Plato, and perhaps the closest to a work of written poetry. Plato and Mohammed are practically the only men of letters to appear in Hyperion. This is all the more striking given that earlier, discussing the greatness of ancient Athens, Hyperion echoed the sort of philhellenism prevalent in the later eighteenth century that, inspired by Johann Joachim Winckelmann, identified Greece, in contrast to the Orient, with the realized ideal of a harmonious and plastic beauty.59 If Mohammed now emerges, under the influence of Diotima, as a certain model, then this suggests once again that we must read the Athens letter as marking a profound shift away from the dominant concept of Bildung. The significance of Islam for German idealism consisted above all in the challenge it posed to a Eurocentric and teleological philosophy of history. If the polytheistic civilizations of China and India struck the Western observer as frozen in time, Islam not only possessed undeniable vitality as a historical force, having spread across the world in a few generations, but also posed a direct and immediate challenge to the West: as a military force threatening the Christian world at its limits; as a religious doctrine that, being simpler and more coherent in its fundamental tenets and purer in its monotheism, seemed in many ways closer to the deistic ideal of natural religion; and finally as a religious practice capable of organizing the totality of life around a single absolute idea. So Joseph de Maistre writes in his catalogue of the “Violent Destruction of the Human Species”: “Mohammed appears; the sword and Koran overrun two-thirds of the world.”60 Moreover, whereas Christianity had become a world-historical power by grafting itself onto the decaying corpse of the Roman empire, Islam seemed to have arisen outside the center stage of history, spreading through the dissemination of a creed that was as much political as religious. It challenged not only the particular historical privilege of the West, but the very notion of a history that is centered in a specific geographical region or a particular nation; of a history that is staged. Hence every account of world history, if it is to maintain the centrality of Europe, must “contain” Islam, situating it as a particular epoch and granting it a certain finite historical significance. Thus for Johann Gottfried Herder the Koran expresses the untamed poetic imagination of the East, while Hegel’s Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte the Protestant church in Württemberg, which was highly authoritarian and required from its clergy strict submission to the orthodoxy, with the more liberal environment of the Stift under the regime of Christian Friedrich Schnurrer. 59 See Koczisky 2009, 8–9. 60 de Maistre 1974, 54.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

110 T he Athens Letter—Choreographic Writing 

(Lectures on the Philosophy of World History), which were held in Berlin more than two decades after the publication of Hyperion, speaks of a “revolution of the Orient that shattered all particularity and dependence and completely enlightened and purified the mind [Gemüt] by making the abstract One, and only this, into the absolute object and likewise the pure subjective consciousness—the knowing of only this One—into the sole goal of reality, [or in other words making] the relationless into the relation of existence.”61 Just such a universal historical narrative, moreover, is needed to exclude the possibility that anything of moment could happen that was not somehow the bequest of the past, or at least conditioned by the past, if only insofar as the past generates contradictions that compel future developments. Universal history is the denial that history could take place not as an inheritance of what has already been given and produced, but through diasporic contagion. What is denied is the possibility of a true revolutionary breakthrough: a moment that would interrupt the given order with new, unprecedented possibilities. This suggests another way that Hyperion’s Greece is the “necessary showplace” for Hölderlin’s novel. Greece is not only in ruins but under Turkish rule. Situated at the margins of modern European history, it allows Hyperion, himself more pagan than Christian, to recognize what must escape the understanding of Christian Europe and Islam alike. If, for the former, the Koran must be either a counterfeit of the true revelation or a manifestation, pure or impure, of natural religion, for the latter the faith in the divine origin and finality of the Koran conceals its nature as a force within secularized history. Perhaps only when worldhistorical forces converge may one recognize a historical movement in its singularity. Indeed, what Diotima’s words bring Hyperion to realize is that a counterfeit of the divine word—a revelation that remains “his,” Mohammed’s and not God’s—indeed coming from the hands of a mere merchant, would be able to spread through the sheer power of dissemination, giving rise to a vast forest of disciples despite the humbleness of its origins. It is as though he glimpsed the possibility of historical events that are not simply products of the soil and the heavens—climatological in the sense that, despite his first hesitation, he ultimately affirms in his monologue on Athens—but happen through the dissemination of a word that is itself groundless, despite its own protestations to the contrary; not even a counterfeit of the true revelation but a copy of something that exists only through the act of making a copy of what does not originally exist at all. He beholds a history where the nomadic merchant, rather than the general or priest, would be the most powerful actor. What the “old truth” of Greece needs, if it is to revive itself and hold its own, is the counterfeit

61 Hegel 1969–71, 12:429.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

The Athens Letter—Choreographic Writing



111

revelation of a poetic language that orchestrates an openness toward instituting fictions.62 This gesture of the agriculturalist, the sowing of the poetic word, is what we can begin to understand as choreographic writing: a writing toward possibilities of political existence, and toward the truth implicated in and present through these possibilities.63

2.6 The Garden

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Diotima’s summons to Hyperion conceives politics no longer as either the subjection of nature to human ends or even as the glorification of the human by nature. Diotima’s words do not explicitly state what it would be instead, yet Hyperion can complete her thoughts. Beholding the ruins, he declares: “They will come, your humans, Nature! A rejuvenated people will also rejuvenate you once more, and you will come to be like a bride for it and the old league of spirits [Geister] will renew itself with you. There will be only One beauty; and humanity and nature will unite into a single all-comprehending divinity” (FA 11:691–92). Nature and man, in the new world, will be bound together in a single household, as a single oikos. 62 Koczinsky (2009) claims that around 1800 a profound shift in the philosophical conception of the Orient takes place. Hölderlin, Novalis, and Schlegel begin to realize, against the prevailing Enlightenment Orientalism, that the Orient, as aesthetic ideal, is a “modern projection, a fabrication.” 63 In his monograph on Hölderlin and the speculative pietism of Württemberg, Walter Dierauer (1986) argues that Hölderlin’s concept of Schrift (writing, scripture) involves a secularization of ideas of the Württemberg Pietist theologian Friedrich Christoph Oetinger. Radicalizing the Lutheran sola scriptura, Oetinger regards biblical script as an “absolute measure [Regelmass]” which, through its transforming power, directs the formative powers of the soul toward the order of salvation (86). The measure proper to the holy script, however, cannot be conceived in rational terms: scripture is God’s body, while God’s freedom is his “becoming and life,” and thus “the meaning of scripture is itself—with God—in [a process of] free growth” such that the interpreteter must himself “be seized by the transforming power of life” (92). Hölderlin, Dierauer suggests, detaches the power of writing from the special privilege accorded to a specific sacred scripture. Poetic writing, this suggests, has the power to provide a “fundamental measure” for the revelation of truth—and even the constitution of reality—that is radically groundless, based neither in God nor on a natural principle of reason. I would suggest, moreover, that for Hölderlin the source of measure is found in a certain materiality or physicality [Leiblichkeit] of language, analogous to the measure that the Renaissance dance masters discover in the body. Hence a poetics of experimentation, in which one seeks a language that can keep its footing as one ascends to ever higher levels of enthusiasm or even madness, takes the place of genial revelation.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

112 T he Athens Letter—Choreographic Writing 

The setting where their conversation begins, the gardens near the city, already contains this epiphany. In Hyperion the garden stands in a special relation to Diotima, who, unlike the novel’s nomadic hero, is herself unthinkable apart from the place where she dwells. It is already linked to her in the Fragment of Hyperion and Hyperion’s Youth, and yet it is in the final version, with the garden where Hyperion first beholds Diotima, that its nature appears most clearly. Hyperion recounts a conversation with Diotima in which they come to speak of the “life of earth,” naming “the earth one of the flowers of heaven, and heaven . . . the infinite garden of life” (FA 11:646). The garden, in its essence, is the garden of life, and just as the earth is itself a flower blossom of the endless heavenly garden, so too is the earth, as a living earth, the garden of earthly life. A further aspect of the garden appears in a letter to Diotima, in which, having been cast out of his father’s home, he shares his plans to flee Greece. Bidding her to come with him, he assures her that the secret of their hearts will rest in the depths of the mountain realm (Gebirgswelt) like the gemstones in the shaft. “In the lap of forests towering into the sky,” he continues, “we will feel as though we were under the columns of the innermost temple, where the godless do not approach, and we will sit at the fountain [Quell] and observe our world in its mirror, the heaven and house and garden and ourselves” (FA 11:748). Here the garden expresses the union between heaven—which is not itself opposed to nature but is nature in its infinitude—and the house, conceived as the central site of human dwelling. The first lines of the “The Oaks” confirm this interpretation. In this poem, written between 1796 and 1798, the life of nature in the garden stands in sharp contrast to a wilder nature (GSA 1.1:201).64 Whereas the life of the wild—the Wald—belongs only to the heavens and the earth, in the garden, whose growth doubtless also belongs to the heavens, nature nevertheless lives patiently (geduldig) and domestically (häuslich). The house is shielded against the heavens in their immediacy, and gains light and heat from the borrowed fire of the hearth, yet the garden, while domestic, is nevertheless also exposed. Otherwise it would be a hothouse—a Treibhaus—where nature, protected from the heavens and fostered with artificial warmth, is held completely within the confines of human dwelling. The life of the garden, as the meeting of house and heaven, involves a fundamental reciprocity between nature and human industry or Fleiß: “Caring and cared for in turn together with industrious man” (Pflegend und wieder gepflegt

64 It is worth noting that the oak, despite countless attempts made throughout human history, has proved utterly resistant to domestication (See Diamond 1999, 128–29).

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

The Athens Letter—Choreographic Writing



113

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

mit dem fleißigen Menschen zusammen). It is the site of the collaboration between human beings and nature.65 Most telling, however, is that, in the passage from Hyperion cited above, the garden is named together with the fountain (Quelle). The garden will appear most like what it is—which is to say, the nature of the world itself—when reflected in the fountain. This image seems strange, since the disturbed and flowing waters of a spring are poor mirrors of the light reflected off from natural objects. What the Quelle (spring) or Ursprung (origin) make manifest, however, is not the things of the world in their phenomenal appearance, but rather the underlying gesture of life, and thus of the garden as the garden of life: its overflowing and forwardspringing. It is, in this way, closely related to the concept of phusis. Phusis, the Greek word for nature, refers not to a set of objects in the world; not to that which is given prior to being worked over by human artifice, or created by God and given to human beings for their use. Rather, its meaning derives from the verb phuō, which in the middle voice means to “grow, wax, spring up, arise.” Nature is, above all, that which springs forth into existence of its own accord, moving from hiddenness into disclosure. It is, as Heidegger puts it, an “emerging and rising in itself and in all things.”66 And both Quelle and phusis in turn resonate with the German word gären. The primary meanings of gären include both a foaming effervescence and the dissolution from higher organic bonds into lower.67 Gären, however, is etymologically related to the Greek zōē, which means both life itself and also the froth that crowns a bucket of milk.68 Life is not simply growth and begetting but also decay; shooting away from the origin, it also falls back toward it. The Garten (pl. Gärten), in whose rich soil the decaying remnants of old growth nourish the new, is the site of life as gären (ferment).69

65 The garden motif in Hyperion should be understood in light of the shift that takes place in the eighteenth century from the French garden with its architectonic plan and geometrical forms to the carefully choreographed wildness of the English garden. Trotha (2002–3) demonstrates the importance of the art of gardening for the discourse of the late eighteenth century, and its profound connection with both aesthetics and politics. And as Michael Perelman (2000, 95) observes, gardening was a significant topic in eighteenth-century economic thought. 66 Heidegger 1993, 168. 67 Pfeifer 1989, 504. 68 Liddell and Scott 1996, 759. 69 Bachelard (1980) stresses the importance of the concept of fermentation for the natural history of the eighteenth century. And as Link (2006–7, 144–45) shows, Gärung (fermentation), understood in terms of a “model-symbolic” poetics rooted in a conception—derived in part from Soemmerring—of nature as a

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

114 T he Athens Letter—Choreographic Writing 

In the final version of Hyperion, this connection is brought much closer to the surface. Whereas in the earlier two published versions, Hölderlin uses neither the plural form of Garten nor the weak verb gären nor any derivation from its stem, the final version sees both the one and the other—and with a frequency that makes it impossible to regard their appearance as insignificant.70 If we look at the five passages where gären appears, it suggests both the ramifications of the concept and the subtle development in its meaning that takes place. 1. What is a human being? . . . how does it happen that there is such a thing in the world that ferments like a chaos or rots like a putrid tree and never reaches ripeness? [nie zu einer Reife gedeiht] How does nature endure this sour grape among its sweet bunches? (FA 11:631)

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

2. They say . . . that the sounds of battle die away over the stars and promise us that only in the future, when our yeast has sunken, will the fermenting life transform itself into the noble wine of joy, otherwise they no longer seek the tranquility of the heart that belongs to the blessed [die Herzensruhe der Seeligen] upon this earth. I know differently. I have taken the nearer path. I stood before her, and heard and saw the peace of heaven, and Urania appeared to me amid the sighing chaos. (FA 11:652) 3. The peoples once took their departure from the harmony of children; the harmony of spirits [Geister] will be the beginning of a new world history. Human beings started out from the happiness of plants, and grew up, and grew until they ripened, and from then on they continued to ferment without cease, from within and without, until now the human race, infinitely dissolved, lies there like a chaos, such that vertigo [Schwindel] seizes all those who still feel and see; but beauty flees away from the life of human beings up into spirit; what was nature becomes ideal, and if from beneath the tree is now rotten and weathered, a fresh pinnacle still rises out from it and greens in the sun’s gleam just as once did the stem in the days of youth; what was nature, is ideal. On this, on this ideal, system of fluids and receptacles, plays a very central role in Hölderlin’s thought. See also Martens 1994, 195. 70 In the discourse of the period, as Hölderlin’s own correspondence attests, the word gären is closely linked to the experience of the French Revolution. Time itself was thought to be in a state of ferment, bringing forth the new from the rot of the old. For a subtle treatment of the importance of Gärung in Hölderlin’s confrontation with the political situation between 1796 and 1799, see Mieth 1978, 44–50.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

The Athens Letter—Choreographic Writing



115

this rejuvenated godhead, the few recognize one another and they are One since there is One thing in them, and from these, these the second age of the world begins—I have said enough to make clear what I think. (FA 11:658) 4. No, my heart called out, no, my Diotima! it does not hurt. Preserve your peace for yourself and let me go my way. Don’t let yourself be disturbed in your peace, charming star! when beneath you it ferments and is murky. (FA 11:660)

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

5. Had your mind and your nature grown ripe so soon, your spirit would not be what it is; you would not be the thinking human being had you not been the suffering, the fermenting human being. (FA 11:689)

In the first four of these passages, gären is named by Hyperion. Only in the last is it spoken by Diotima, and here she uses it to name Hyperion’s essence as a human being. Gären, this suggests, is intimately connected with Hyperion’s understanding of human nature, and thus also with the way his own nature is constituted through this understanding.71 Hyperion’s words themselves bear this out. The first passage begins with a question immediately recalling Socrates’s words from the Phaedrus: “What is a human being?” For Socrates, however, the question ended in a choice—whether he is “a beast more tangled up and puffed up with winds than a Typhoon, or rather a gentler and simpler living being.” For Hyperion, by contrast, human nature seems to be already decided. The human being is a fermenting, rotting chaos that never ripens. In the second passage, it is not only the human being but life as a whole that is in ferment; or indeed life itself is of essence fermentation. Yet this does not put an end to questions—the question of human nature is not simply a rhetorical flourish. Rather, the questioning opens unto a new, and perhaps more probing, dimension: namely the inquiry into the origin of the human being in its chaos and ferment: “how does it come about that there is such a thing in the world” (wie kommt es, daß so etwas in der Welt ist)? 71 Heselhaus (1952) draws an important distinction between Herder’s and Hölderlin’s understanding of life and nature. While both conceive of nature as primarily plant-like, Herder’s nature—a smoothly integrated organic cosmos— includes human beings in its fold, whereas for Hölderlin, the titanic freedom of the human causes us to break out of the natural order. This brings Hölderlin to the thought of chaos, the aorgic. Human freedom is a function of the aorgic chaos occupying the very heart of nature, with life itself understood as the tension between the organic and the aorgic that gives rise to all things. Thus Hölderlin comes to oppose the symbolism of fire to the symbolism of the plant. Gärung could, however, be said to combine both symbolisms.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

116 T he Athens Letter—Choreographic Writing 

And if indeed life itself is fermentation, then we cannot simply regard this as the question of how a single being came into existence. Rather, while the human being best exemplifies this ferment, it holds for all life. This becomes clearer, indeed, in the third passage, where Hyperion answers the question of the origins of human ferment. Our fermenting growth, an overripeness that is never truly ripe—our overproductivity and surplus—itself grows out of vegetative life. The fermentation of the human being is thus simply an overgrowth of this first growth. And even beauty itself is, in a sense, an outgrowth of human ferment. Yet it has outgrown the human from which it emerged, fleeing out from “the life of human beings and up into spirit.” The fourth passage, in contrast to these three, does not add a new determination to the nature of fermentation, but rather articulates the difference between Diotima, as the beautiful and heavenly one, and Hyperion. Diotima stands above the ferment of life, whereas Hyperion’s path and his going—his Gang—takes him through those lower regions in which all life ferments and is dim and turbid (trüb), cut off from the light of the sun. If indeed this ferment touches and afflicts all human beings, this is true in a special sense for Hyperion. Precisely because he recognizes the essence of the human, Hyperion must go the way of human fermentation—our going beyond—much more intensely than others. It is not just that he knows what he is, whereas others live behind a veil of illusion. Rather, in knowing of our origin as the living being, the zōon par excellence, he also knows what the human being, in the deepest turmoil and unrest of its being—in its furthest overripeness—lets foam up and out of its reach, and which therefore it must itself desire and love—begehren—without being this itself. It is here that Diotima’s words gain a fuller significance: the very condition of Hyperion’s thinking is a suffering ferment, since indeed it is his destiny to think divine beauty and suffer his difference from it.72 Like the Garten, gären thus stands in a close relation to life, and both in a way express the relation of human beings to nature. This relation is not simply brought about after the fact by joining together entities with a discrete existence, but rather it first constitutes each through the manner of relation. Yet there is this difference. The garden is life in the middle, the life of plants in collaboration with human beings. The ferment, by contrast, is life in its extremity; life in its distance from the origin—an overripeness that falls backward to the place from whence it sprang—and also life in its underripeness, its barely organic origins in mulch and decay. It is the natural life in human beings that brings them beyond themselves and apart from nature and their own origin, though only to be drawn

72 See GSA 1.1:244.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

The Athens Letter—Choreographic Writing



117

back toward the origin more violently, more catastrophically. As Hölderlin puts it in the last lines of Hyperion’s “Fate Song”: Yet to us is given, To have no stead to rest, They swind, they fall The suffering humans, Blindly from one Hour to another, Like water thrown From cliff to cliff, Downward with the years Into uncertainty.

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

[Doch uns ist gegeben, Auf keiner Stätte zu ruhn, Es schwinden, es fallen Die leidenden Menschen Blindlings von einer Stunde zur andern, Wie Wasser von Klippe Zu Klippe geworfen, Jahr lang ins Ungewisse hinab.] (FA 11: 761–62)

Gären and the Garten, not unlike the two lovers, stand at once near to and far from each other. When we turn to the second summons, which appears near the end of the second volume, we will see that, in summoning Hyperion to his poetic calling, she also calls him to understand the single moment or gesture toward which both the words inflect—bend in—or decline, and indeed quite literally (gärten and Gärten): on the one hand the garden in its plurality, in the endless dissemination of the seeds of life, and on the other hand, the gären which, having come to pass and come to stand, gains a certain consistency, stability, and even steadfastness—a Bestand. This moment is, let us say in anticipation, the source (Quelle) and origin (Ursprung). This declension, not perhaps so different from the clinamen of Lucretius’s De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things), reveals even more vividly than before how both teleology and humanism are interrupted. However rationalistic its formulations, the teleology of history that we find in Fichte, Schiller, and certain passages of Hyperion is rooted in the myth, not merely Judeo-Christian in origin, of the return to, or rather re-creation of, the original garden—the paradisiacal condition of harmony with nature—that is brought about through the path wandered in exile from it. If there are an endless multitude of gardens rather than

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

118 T he Athens Letter—Choreographic Writing 

a single paradise, then this history, with all its implications, loses its bearing and its sense. Instead of staring off at a telos that is also an archē, we would look up toward the heavens; and if at first we feel dizzy at the sight of all these worlds, all these flowers of heaven, our vertigo will give way to rapture as we realize that only now do the possibilities of life unfold before us. At the same time, though, we see that the collaboration of nature and human beings is grounded in the very fact that human existence with all its labors is an outgrowth of nature. The labor of human beings belongs to nature, and nature’s to human beings. They are never absolutely opposed, but only diverge, though this divergence—which we could think of as the springing-forth of a river, a derivation that inscribes a rift into the earth—carries the weight of culture and history. We can only attain to the perspective that grasps their belonging together when we see that action is not in essence goal directed and intentional, but rather a gären and begehren, ferment and desire. Yet we should hesitate to think ferment, which itself involves a certain movement toward spiritualization and abstraction, too abstractly. Gären is also the fermentation that turns sugar into alcohol, juice into wine. Thus it invokes the Dionysian. Suggestive in this regard is Francis Bacon’s De sapientia veterum (The Wisdom of the Ancients, 1609), a book that was found in Hölderlin’s possession and served as one of the sources for his understanding of the Dionysian.73 For Bacon, the myth of Dionysus is a moral allegory for a lawless, disordered desire (in German: begehren). Semele, having bound Jupiter by an irrevocable oath to grant her request, asks him to embrace her in the same form as he embraces Juno. The wish granted, she is burned to death. The embryo of the god born of their union is carried till birth in Jupiter’s thigh. Bacon allegorizes: “for the appetite and thirst of apparent good is the mother of all unlawful desires, though ever so destructive, and all unlawful desires are conceived in unlawful wishes or requests, rashly granted before they are well understood or considered.”74 In Hölderlin, the moral dimension of Bacon’s allegorization is subtly transformed. While desire for the union with the highest remains the origin of wayward, errant, even lawless desires, these desires, in their errancy, are themselves the productive force that creates human culture and history. The birth of Dionysus, the god of wine, is the origin of the process of ferment; of an errant, wayward surplus growth; of growth as overgrowth. Hence in the poem “As on a holiday . . .”: Thus fell, as the poets say, since she desired to See the god visibly, his lightning on Semele’s house, 73 See Behre 1990–91, 77–99. 74 Bacon 1884, 385–86.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

The Athens Letter—Choreographic Writing



119

And she, divinely struck, bore The fruit of the thunderstorms, holy Bacchus. [So fiel, wie Dichter sagen, da sie sichtbar Den Gott zu sehen begehrte, sein Bliz auf Semeles Haus Und die göttlichgetroffne gebahr, Die Frucht des Gewitters, den heiligen Bacchus.] (GSA 2.1,119)

While Bacon recognizes the close connection between Dionysus’s discovery of wine and his role as a founder of culture, he presents this in a very negative light: “he was also the inventor and institutor of religious rites, but such as were wild, frenetic, and full of corruption and cruelty.” Moreover, in the subsequent interpretation, he conceives of this “institution,” and Dionysus’s conquests, in purely ethical rather than historicopolitical terms: as an allegory for the insatiable nature of the appetites. Hölderlin, by contrast, has Dionysus appear in a much more positive, and explicitly political, sense as the institutor of culture and the giver of laws—and indeed as a model for the “law giving” of the poets.75 Hence in “An unsere großen Dichter” (To our great poets), written between 1797 and 1798, the first poem to address the Dionysian: The banks of the Ganges heard the pleasure god’s Triumph as, all-conquering, from the Indus The young Bacchus came, waking With holy wine the peoples from their sleep.

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

O wake, you poets! wake them from slumber too, Who now still sleep, give laws Give life to us, be victorious, heroes! you alone Have the right of conquest, like Bacchus. [Des Ganges Ufer hörten des Freudengotts Triumph, als allerobernd vom Indus her Der junge Bacchus kam, mit heilgem Weine vom Schlafe die Völker wekend. O wekt, ihr Dichter! wekt sie vom Schlummer auch, Die jezt noch schlafen, gebt die Geseze, gebt 75 See Baeumer 1973–74, 97–118. Böschenstein (1989) stresses the specifically political dimension of Hölderlin’s Dionysus, understanding him as the “god of revolution”: “In his activity, which simultaneously overthrows and preserves, he is for Hölderlin a constant companion of the course of history, whose transformations and tensions he comprehends in the play of this god.” (Böschenstein 1989, 11)

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

120 T he Athens Letter—Choreographic Writing 

Uns Leben, siegt, Heroën! ihr nur Habt der Eroberung Recht, wie Bacchus.] (GSA 1.1,261)

That the poet, following in Dionysus’s train, should give both laws and life suggests the nature of the original Dionysian lawgiving: it is not a matter of a law that compels and restricts life, subduing a wayward and restive material, but of a law that has taken up within itself ferment and waywardness—a Gesetz that is not simply Recht but that, in the aspiration for the highest Jovian “Right,” becomes linkisch.76 The next verse of “As on a holiday . . .,” suggests, even more clearly, the Dionysian role of the poet: And thus the sons of the earth now, Drink heavenly fre without danger. And yet for us it is ftting to stand, You poets! under god’s storms with our head exposed, To grasp the father’s bolt, itself, with our own hand And to pass on to the people, Shrouded in song, the heavenly gift

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

[Und daher trinken himmlisches Feuer jezt Die Erdensöhne ohne Gefahr. Doch uns gebührt es, unter Gottes Gewittern, Ihr Dichter! mit entblößtem Haupte zu stehen Des Vaters Stral, ihn selbst, mit eigner Hand Zu fassen und dem Volk ins Lied Gehüllt die himmlische Gaabe zu reichen.] (GSA 2.1:119–20)

The task of poetry is nothing else than to repeat the Dionysian moment through which culture is given to human beings and instituted. But of course, Dionysus is not only, indeed not first of all, the god of poets but rather the leader of the dance. The poetic lawgiving must also be a return to Dionysian dancing, the memory of which, inborn and inherited, has been preserved in the native dance forms of modern Greece. Yet it would be wrong to think that the Dionysian dance, any more than the Dionysian law or rites, consists merely and one-sidedly in orgiastic excess. Rather, it too would articulate the tension between order and excess; organization and disorganization; the Jovian law and earthly life—a ferment inhabiting the body that, without shattering and dissolving into oneness with the All, brims over at every moment with the fire of heaven. 76 As Baeumer (1973–74) writes: “The poets, as erstwhile the young god, should awaken human beings, conquer the world, and give new laws and new life” (99).

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

The Athens Letter—Choreographic Writing



121

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

2.7 The Event of Politics Choreographic writing does not imitate and inscribe truths that are given to it beforehand, but scatters gestural inscriptions out into the world, prescribing a new way of being and an opening to a new kind of truth. Rather than belonging simply outside the natural order, either as the autonomous act of pure reason or as divinely inspired prophecy, it belongs at once inside and outside nature. It belongs within nature, and is indeed intimately part of nature, to the very extent that nature itself is what is constantly passing beyond itself, overflowing its own boundaries. Choreographic writing is in this sense the most extreme articulation of the surplus of life—the extreme gesture of the surplus; the hyperbolic tendency of life. But it is also, and at the same time, the possibility of gathering life around a gesture; of giving it new measure, finding a measure in the hyperbolic movement itself. Yet who, if anyone, is responsible for choreographic writing? And whom, in writing, are they responsible for? This question is critical, since there can be no meaningful philosophy of politics without a corresponding account of the nature of the subject of politics. And with this question, moreover, the precariousness of the concept of choreographic writing— the ease with which it can either fall back into more conventional conceptions of the political, or cancel out the very possibility of the political, becomes evident. For if the answer is no one and no one then writing disappears into the operation of nature. If the answer is some individual (or a collective) and other individuals (or a collective), then choreographic writing will become subordinated to the specific ontology of the subject. If the political is able to interrupt the flow between nature and writing— and not just as a moment of mediation—it is precisely because it opens this question up to its groundlessness. It poses the question on the abyss, so that the answer is no longer an already assured position guaranteeing the possibility of nature writing. What this means, somewhat more concretely, is that politics emerges as the possibility of drawing writing and nature together into a form of subjecthood that is not imposed on them from the outside through some sort of metaphysics or ontology of subjecthood—be it a Kantian notion of autonomy and rationality, or the Spinozistic ontology of the multitude—nor allowed to simply disappear transparently into the fluid intercourse of nature and writing, but instead forms out of their commerce as an eddy, a feedback loop, or, simply, and to speak more politically, a gathering. The political subject is not given in advance but constitutes itself as an event. Moreover, it is the evental character of the political subject that ensures the evental dimension of both nature and writing. * * *

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

122 T he Athens Letter—Choreographic Writing 

In the next chapter I will show how Hyperion rethinks the question of politics and political subjectivity. Yet in order to recognize the radicality with which this question is posed, we must begin again almost ab nihilo, forgetting the specific determinations that, for the sake of a certain expediency, we have attached to the political and allowing ourselves to be exposed to the shock of the text. Thus, once more, we will begin with a seemingly “literary” consideration. The seeming awkwardness of the plot will allow us to recognize yet again a break with the Aristotelian concept of praxis—one of the foundational conceits of both Western poetics and political thought. While this awkwardness issues from the explosion of the conceptual framework of traditional poetics, it is not merely negative, not merely a transgression of existing conventions, but gestures toward a very different type of evental structure. What takes place in Hyperion is no longer the realization of either a simple or complicated action, or even, as Ryan argues, a process of self-realization that operates through a complex narrative structure. Instead, it consists in the confrontation with different political forms of life. The “happenings” of the novel no longer take place within the horizon of a certain conception of action, such as would find its exhaustive fulfillment in Ryan’s reading, but involve a mode of inquiry that we must call political, or even metapolitical, since it concerns, and calls into question, the most fundamental presuppositions of political existence—namely, the very mode in which we (and who we are is not simply given beforehand but will only solidify with the asking and answering of this question) exist, the very form that our lives take, and indeed what it will mean to live or exist. To this end we will explore an aspect of Hyperion that we have not yet considered in much detail: the series of personae that Hyperion encounters before finding Diotima, and that constitute the core of what could appear as, and has certainly usually been taken for, a novel of education. Each of these, I will argue, exemplifies a certain mode of politics. This political analysis of the personae will then give way to a metapolitical analysis, which will demonstrate that the three political modes exemplified by Adamas, Alabanda, and the League of Nemesis each involve a different sense of what it means to exist politically.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

3: Political Personae

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

T

3.1 Political Personae

he characters whom Hyperion encounters seem one-dimensional, fleshless; they lack the quality that brings alive even the minor characters of most of what is considered great fiction. Their appearance follows an episodic, schematic schedule, and they almost never interact with one another in such a way as to allow the autonomous development of their traits. Yet while they could appear to be personified abstractions— one may justly suspect that Hölderlin lacked even a mediocre talent for conventional fiction—they are not mere caricatures or narrative clichés. Only the most unsympathetic reader could see them as failed attempts at realistic and nuanced characterization by a writer who had not yet found suitable means of expression, a poet who had not yet found his poetic calling. Are they then mentors in a Bildungsroman, each imparting the education needed at a certain stage in Hyperion’s development? Their entrances, to be sure, coincide with the stages of his early life, though indeed the first of these—childhood—is characterized by the absence of other human beings; Hyperion’s father and mother seem not to exist at all. He is fundamentally a child of nature, whose own nature develops in peace according to its inner law. But subsequent stages are each marked by the appearance of others who draw Hyperion into their orbit, giving shape to his existence: Adamas—boyhood (early youth); Alabanda and the League of Nemesis—homosocial (and homosociopathic) young adulthood; and finally Diotima—the channeling of erotic energies toward a female object.1 The process of Bildung, to be sure, is catastrophically interrupted: if the point is to prepare Hyperion to exist in the world, realizing his potential by interacting with others, it has failed. When Hyperion begins recalling his past in his letters to Bellarmin at the start of the novel, he has already become a hermit. But he’s no self-contented, godlike philosopher, who, enraptured in contemplation, can exist outside the city. He has not withdrawn from the world gladly but with a sense of despair and failure. Yet this still doesn’t compel us to reject the Bildungsroman

1 As Rosolowski (1995) notes, there is a tendency among scholars of Hyperion, underwritten by the universalizing and gender-neutral categories of German idealism, to suppress the significance of gender and sexual difference in Hyperion.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

124



Political Personae

as interpretive paradigm: it just means that the process of education now requires not only the past experiences themselves but subsequent reflection on them. The Bildungsroman paradigm does indeed apply to Hyperion: without recognizing the pedagogical function of these encounters, the novel loses all coherence. Yet just as we should observe the tension between, on the one hand, Bellarmin’s summons toward self-reflection and selfreconstitution and, on the other, Diotima’s summons toward a no longer telos-oriented concept of existence, we must also juxtapose the pedagogical function of the characters with another function. This is what is at stake in naming them political personae: embodying a form of political existence, they do not simply educate Hyperion or guide him toward selfcultivation, but introduce a form of life that is sufficient unto itself; one that has its own happiness, fulfillment, pleasure, even its own manner of truth. It is telling, in this regard, that Sinclair, the friend who was arguably in the best position to understand its political intentions, found in Hyperion a “personified system of morality” (GSA 3:315). Such self-sufficiency and happiness is, of itself, not only compatible with, but necessary for, the logic of Bildung. This becomes clear if we consider the parallel, so crucial to the German philosophy of history from Lessing to Hegel, between individual stages of development and the development of history itself. Just as each stage of life has its own form of happiness and fulfillment, Herder will argue that to each historical epoch belongs a happiness that is almost incomprehensible to those beholding it from the outside.2 At a certain point this happiness will begin to seem insufficient; one epoch gives way to another. But it cannot always seem insufficient, for there can be no experience—nothing could be learned, a certain world could never exist in relation to itself in such a way that it could even begin to pass beyond itself—unless it believed absolutely in itself in the moment that it exists. The concept of Bildung endeavors to maintain the compatibility between the educational and the political, even as, under the pressure of historical experience—the historicizing of experience—the relation between the two is strained to its limits. For indeed, historical experience challenges this very conception of the relation between happiness, politics, and education. The classical paradigm for conceiving this constellation of terms is developed in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Conceived as what, chosen only for its own sake and not for the sake of something else, serves as the ultimate end organizing all the other purposes toward which we act, happiness is the work (ergon) that, most proper to man, distinguishes him from other animals.3 When the aspects of life shared with 2 Herder 2002, 296. 3 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1097b.24–34.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.



Political Personae



125

other animals—nutrition, growth, sense perception—are removed from consideration, what remains is “some sort of active life of a being having reason” (praktikē tis tou logon echontos).4 Thus happiness is “some activity of the soul in accordance with complete virtue.”5 Happiness, so conceived, gives a sense to politics. The aim of the political art, which also encompasses ethics, is to assist us in the practical realization of happiness both by providing an outline of the nature of virtue and friendship and by describing the laws and educational regime that can best order the affairs of human beings.6 Education and law, in consequence, are subordinate to politics and ethics, and there is no possibility of a fundamental contradiction arising between them. Happiness can be achieved now, in this life, through the proper arrangement of political affairs, though there remains a lingering sense that only the completed life could be really and fully happy—that one cannot really be sure one has had a happy life until it is over. The experience of history, however, threatens precisely this happy relation between politics, conceived as the realization of a given form of human life, and education as the process leading to this realization. History shows us that the work of the human being passes beyond the compass of a single life, or even any given historical epoch, any given political configuration.7 Historical experience is thus the experience of a certain impossibility of happiness in the full sense conceived by Aristotle: the impossibility of a political form of life allowing us to realize our full human potential.8 The experience of history, however, tears the entire framework of the Nicomachean Ethics and Politics asunder. We must nevertheless be careful to distinguish between the experience of history and the philosophy of history. The latter responds to the former, resisting the threat that the former contains. Or put another way: the experience of history is nothing else than the experience of the impossibility of experience—of the fragmentation of the fulfilled, present, moment. The philosophy of history, and indeed the very concept of history itself as an object of possible experience, is the attempt, after the fact 4 Ibid., 1098a.3–4. 5 Ibid., 1102a.5–6. 6 Ibid., 1094a–b. 7 This is put very clearly by Kant in the second thesis of his Idea for a Philosophy of History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View (KAA 8:18). 8 Aristotle also recognizes a higher kind of happiness corresponding to a higher activity, the activity of contemplation, which belongs to us as no longer merely human but divine (1177a–1178a). This activity is also proper to us, but only so far as it belongs to our nature to become more than what we are. Yet precisely this notion of contemplation itself confirms and secures the ahistorical happiness of politics by exemplifying the sort of fulfilling happiness that the latter also promises.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

126



Political Personae

of this fragmentation, to restore a unity to experience and thus the possibility of happiness. This is how the logic of Bildung operates. By establishing a parallel between the epochs of world history and the stages of an individual life, as Lessing does in his Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts (On the Education of the Human Race, 1780), it becomes possible to conceive of a happiness that, while involving the work of human history in its entirety, nevertheless correlates with the forms of happiness possible in an individual life. A sort of analogical happiness, as it were, becomes possible for us in the now. Moreover, even though the work of history extends past our lives, the attitude of the philosopher, contemplating the work of history, allows for a recuperation of the happiness that otherwise will be impossible for us. Whereas the world-historical individual sacrifices his happiness for a purpose that transcends his own existence and that he only half understands, the philosopher can find happiness in identifying with the perspective of the absolute.9 Such a conception of the experience of history appears with unrelenting clarity in Hyperion. Modern Greece, a Greece in ruins, serves as a reminder of the destruction of the political world that once allowed for human fulfillment. Without such happiness, which organizes the experience of life into a coherent and meaningful unity, there can only be a chaotic juxtaposition of pleasure and suffering. It is in response to this shocking experience of the disintegration of experience that the ambiguity of Hyperion takes form. On the one hand, Bellarmin’s summons to Hyperion to recall his past and make sense of it insists on a philosophical recuperation of the coherence of experience and the possibility of happiness through a notion of Bildung, subordinating the political function of the political personae to their role as educators, such that the happiness of their various forms of life is concretely realized but at the same time insufficient. Yet at the same time, by refusing to subordinate the political to the educational in this way, another reading of Hyperion—one that is oriented around Diotima’s summonses—conceives of a very different kind of political education. Instead of exemplifying an insufficient happiness that could be made good either through history in its totality or through an “aesthetic” principle of succession, the political personae will show the impossibility of a happiness that, in the face of historical experience, should be sufficient unto itself. This, moreover, suggests the need to radically rethink the political, revealing a different kind of politics—a politics that comes to terms with the historicity of experience in a fundamentally different way than before. Rather than inverting the relation between politics and education—subordinating the former to the latter and thus displacing happiness into the work of history—it will challenge

9

Hegel 1969–71, 12:45–46.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.



Political Personae



127

the very idea that happiness, and politics, can be understood in terms of work and activity.10 That the characters of Hyperion are political in this way—that the substance of the novel is not simply their actions but the different ways in which they articulate a horizon for politics—is closely related to Hölderlin’s rejection, born of its inadequacy to his own experience, of the dualism between the spiritual and physical that continued to rule the letter, if not the spirit, of Kant’s philosophy even with its transformation in Fichte’s early Wissenschaftslehre (Science of Knowledge). The opposition of the spiritual and physical, of reason and sensuous nature, of form and matter—or, in its Cartesian formulation, of res cogitans and res extensa—is of ancient provenance and of vast consequence, and there is no aspect of Western thought or culture that it has left untouched. Yet if, at least since Plato, it has held most if not all discourse in its sway, in the latter half of the eighteenth century it assumed, with particular force and effect, the quality of a crisis, and for the very reason that, as Kant’s phantasmatic Ding an sich and rigoristic ethics made painfully clear, it had become stretched to its own limit, bearing the greatest load at the verge of its rupture, and even only functioning through its inner antinomies. This crisis was crucial for the genesis of Schelling’s identity philosophy and Hegel’s system.11 Nor was it merely an abstruse concern of philosophy, but structured the broader discourse of the era, with its tension between the cults of reason and sentiment, and even between social and political relations, repeating itself in both the erotic relation between friends and the political relation of rulers to their subjects. Hence the ideal of chaste friendship— exemplified in the famous friendship of Hemsterhuis and his Diotima, the Princess Gallizin—in which sexual desires are sublimated into an eroticism of the mind, and the social convention of marriage is considered false to human nature and yet nevertheless kept intact even as, in an ideal and spiritual realm, its transgression is celebrated.12 And hence the guiding principle of Friedrich the Great’s enlightened absolutism, immortalized in Kant’s essay “Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?” (Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?, 1784)—the fusion of the obedience of bodies and the freedom of minds: “reason, as much as you want and about whatever you want: just obey!” (KAA 8:41). In both cases, the idea of happiness is conjured forth only to be postponed endlessly into the future, as though the violence of Eros and revolution—their welling, 10 See Nancy 1993. 11 It is indeed closely related to what Hegel (1969–71, 2:20–25), in the preface to his Differenz des Fichteschen und Schellingschen Systems der Philosophie (The Difference Between Fichte’s and Schelling’s Systems of Philosophy, 1801), identifies as the Bedürfnis der Philosophie (need of philosophy). 12 Regarding this friendship, see Moenkemeyer 1975, 15.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

128



Political Personae

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

desire, and ferment—were harnessed to fuel the enduring mechanism of society in its slow, perhaps endless, progress toward self-annihilation. Stressed to its limits, this leads to the house tutor’s fate of real or figural castration, as in Rousseau’s Julie, or the New Heloise or Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz’s Der Hofmeister oder Vorteile der Privaterziehung (The Tutor, or the Advantages of Private Education, 1774). The political personae of Hyperion issue from the breach of the conceptual barrier separating reason and sensual nature—their violent collapse into identity, and indeed an identity prior to primordial division (Urteilung) and discourse. They simply allow no separation between “physical” and “spiritual” eroticism.13 The attraction of bodies and the communication of ideals—sensual desire and intellectual epiphany— become one and the same thing. This is true, as we will see, not only of Adamas, Alabanda, and Diotima—in which case Bildung and Eros flow seamlessly into each other—but even with the League of Nemesis, where Hyperion’s visceral loathing and repulsion immediately reveal as their cause the totalizing, even totalitarian, domination of nature by reason. Indeed, in narrating his encounter with the conspiracy to Bellarmin, Hyperion focuses on the countenances of its sinister confederates. “In their countenances [Mienen] was something,” he tells Bellarmin, “that penetrated the soul like a sword, and it was as if one stood before omniscience” (FA 11:615). Since the communication of characters in Hyperion is not mediated by the dualism of spirit and flesh, it defies the distinction between praxis and theory and the understanding of action as practical reason. Thus it cannot be thought of as an interaction, where action is presupposed as the mode of contact, but rather as a communication in which each character imparts to the others its own way of being. And therefore every union, every league or Bund, as the mutual imparting of such ways, constitutes the horizon for a different sort of politics. Each form of eroticism has its political correlate, and it is thus possible to stand 13 Of vast significance for Hölderlin’s work and biography is Wilhelm Heinse, who, drawing on Aristotle and Spinoza, developed a sensualist philosophy of life and politics. In a passage from his notebooks, written between 1788 and 1790, he offers a profanely sensual counterpart to Hölderlin’s aesthetics of tonal alteration (Heinse 2003–5, 2:290–91). Dance, moreover, plays a significant role in his sensualist, Dionysian aesthetics. An earlier note, written between 1779 and 1781, contrasts the mere dance—a scaffold without a building, a fleshless skeleton, a body without pantomime, scansion without verse and thought—to the living dance, “a leap of joy brought into rhythm [ein Freudensprung in Takt gebracht]” (1:414). Elsewhere Heinse writes: “Dance is the dawn of voluptuous copulation” (Der Tanz ist die Morgenröthe vom wollustigen Beyschlaf; 1903–25, 8.1:20). For a recent study of Heinse’s understanding of sexuality, see Sauder 1999, 77–90. Sauder (84–85) points at the fundamental relation between movement, dance, and sexuality in Heinse. See also Richter 1999, 125–38.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,



Political Personae



129

before and stand off from these possibilities, and even the possibility of totalitarianism itself as an omniscience (Allwissenheit), which, within its own horizon, denies all exteriority.14 In what follows, we will consider Adamas, Alabanda, and the League of Nemesis. Even though Diotima will also be regarded as a political persona, she has already been treated separately, and we will return to her in the next chapter. What characterizes the others, in contrast to her, is their untimeliness: they present a form of political life—rather than a merely individual ethical mode of existence—that ultimately proves ineffectual, since the historical condition of its possibility has ceased to exist. Through her form of life and her words to Hyperion, Diotima, by contrast, suggests a different form of politics. Yet the sense of her summons—its positive meaning—could only appear in light of a deconstruction of the failure of the forms of political life embodied in the others. It is this deconstruction that we will now attempt, first through the concrete exposition of Adamas, Alabanda, and the League of Nemesis, and then through a more fundamental analysis of the sense of the political expressed therein. This, in turn, will prepare us to return to Diotima and her second summons.

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

3.2 Adamas The first political persona named to Bellarmin is Adamas, yet Hyperion’s encounter with Adamas forms the second stage of his life.15 The first stage is a childhood that is fundamentally solitary, not involving a relation to another—his parents are never mentioned—but only to his own nature, and through this, to the natural world. It is characterized by “heavenly stillness [Ruhe]” and innocence (FA 11:587). The child “is wholly what it is, and therefore it is beautiful”; it has not yet tasted the “compulsion of law and fate”; in the child there is “only freedom.” The child knows only its heart, not “the needfulness of life”; and it is “immortal, since it knows nothing of death.” All this suggests a paradisiacal golden age of humanity, echoing Schiller’s concept of the naïve, and, moreover, the pedagogical principle, found in Rousseau, Heinse, and Joachim Heinrich Campe, that the child, during the first and most crucial stage of its life and education, should be left to develop its own nature, free from external coercion.16 Yet as much as this notion of childhood as a peaceful, self-contained 14 Thus Hyperion writes to Diotima: “You followed after me into my night, now come! and let me follow your light, let us return to your charm [Anmuth], beautiful heart!” (FA 11:747). 15 For an explicit attempt to interpret Hyperion as a Bildungsroman, taking its departure from the work of Ryan and Aspetsberger, see Mayer 1975–77, 244–66; also Gaier 1978–79, 88–95. 16 See Fertig 1990, 17–19; Guarda 2007.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

130



Political Personae

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

existence would seem to accord with an ethics of Bildung and a teleological philosophy of history, Hyperion’s words to Bellarmin, interpreting his own recollection of childhood, already complicate things. That in our youth, he explains, we believe the goal so near “is the most beautiful of all deceptions, by which nature assists [aushilft] the weakness of our being [Wesen]” (FA 11:588). The very experience that the child has of a perfectly natural, innocent, undivided existence—of being perfectly one with the natural world—is only a beautiful illusion granted us by nature to supplement the weakness of our own nature. The very presence of the goal to us, a goal that consists in nothing more than perfect self-presence—the presence of the goal as a goal that could be present and presented to us—is not an actual, constitutive original moment to which we can hope to return through the process of individual or historical development. Rather: it merely protects us, making it possible to survive and grow in this crucial formative stage before the real challenge of living begins. Whereas the logic of Bildung demands the actual presence of an original unity to which the process of history will restore us, here the narcissism of originary self-presence, despite the illusion of unity and self-presence, is ruptured from the outset. Time, from the beginning, is untimely. In the encounter with Adamas precisely this untimeliness is conceived in a more concrete, and concretely political fashion: as the incongruence between Adamas’s political agency and the world in which he exists. On the surface, this episode appears, in a clumsily obvious fashion, as a stage in a Bildungsroman. Hyperion is a boy and Adamas, an older man, serves as mentor or educator in the most literal sense, imparting a straight growth to Hyperion’s wild nature. Nor is the relationship without the pedophilic or ephebophilic eroticism suggestive of the relation of Socrates to Alcibiades.17 As Hyperion recalls to Bellarmin: I had grown up like a vine without a rod, and the wild tendrils spread out without direction across the soil. You indeed know how so many a noble force in us gets destroyed since it is not used. I roamed around, like a will o’ the wisp [Irrlicht], seized at everything!, was seized by everything, yet only for the moment, and the clumsy [unbehülflich] forces wore themselves out in vain. I felt that everywhere I was lacking something, and yet I could not find my goal. So he found me. (FA 11:590–91)

The presence of the goal in childhood, as we saw, is illusory. The natural, quiet growth of the child does not realize the goal in itself, but simply reveals the absence of goal and direction. The forces of the human 17 See Hölderlin’s poem “Sokrates und Alcibiades” (Socrates and Alcibiades, 1798) (GSA 1.1:260).

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.



Political Personae



131

being develop during this stage, but, lacking an inherent reference to a goal, they merely dissipate and achieve nothing unless a goal is brought to them from the outside. With the striking image of the rod, Hölderlin describes a desire, born of lack, for a discipline that, coming from without and assuming an unmistakably phallic form, would impose its law and principle. And it also recalls Hölderlin’s own critique of Rousseauian pedagogy, presented in a letter to Ebel from September 2, 1795, describing the principles that he follows as Hofmeister. Rousseau, he explains, was wrong to think that one must do nothing more than quietly wait until humanity awakens in the child. The purely negative education that Rousseau advocates must be supplemented by a positive education; objects must be brought before the child that are “great and beautiful enough to awaken in him his higher need, the striving for what is better, or, if one will, his reason” (SW 4:185).18 Whether or not Adamas succeeds in imparting a goal to Hyperion, his own true goal in life is not merely the ethical education of one individual. Rather, he wants to create “human beings”—a new people: “He had long enough practiced his patience and his art on his material, the so-called ‘cultivated world,’ but his material had been and remained stone and wood, indeed it took on, if compelled, the noble form of a human being from outside, but this was not what mattered for my Adamas” (FA 11:591). He has, in other words, assumed the role of the legendary founder of a people, a lawgiver. This is not the task of a mere human but of those beings who mediate between the gods and mortals.19 Thus Adamas himself appears almost as a purely spiritual being; his relation to Hyperion is a relation of pure inspiration, likened to the rays of the sun and a “ray of heaven” (FA 11:590). Inspiring Hyperion, he gives him his goal, and yet this goal is not a finite end that could be reached and accomplished once and for all, but rather a direction, guiding his growth as a staff guides wild vines, giving “number and measure” to their youthful conduct and drives, their Treiben (FA 11:590–92). Tellingly, the name Adamas evokes not only the Greek adama (ἀδάμας—“untamed.” “unconquerable”) but also the Hebrew Adam (‫—ׇא ׇד ם‬the proper name of the first man, but also “man” and “mankind”) and “adama” (‫“—ֲא ָד ׇמ ה‬ground” or “land”), suggesting in turn that we might conceive of him as the first man and the father of human beings, the original creator or progenitor, 18 See Fertig 1990, 48. 19 Hölderlin’s description of Adamas’s wish to create human beings suggests Rousseau’s claim in On the Social Contract; or, Principles of Political Rights that “one who dares to undertake the founding of a people” should feel himself capable of “changing human nature” by transforming the individual, “substituting a partial and moral existence for the physical and independent existence we have all received from nature” (Rousseau 1978, 68).

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

132



Political Personae

or even the soil and ground from which the human race sprang. He is the one who takes human beings in the merely natural, earthly ground of their existence and forms them into true human beings by bringing them into a relation to the divine, directing them toward a goal that transcends what they by nature are. He is the originator of their political destiny, as it were. Yet at this he is a failure. His existence is marked by futility—hopelessly out of sync with his times. He, who should have come at the beginning, is now an anachronism, a “mourning half-god.”20 This mourning is not tragic: it is not due to violating the boundary that separates gods from mortals. Rather, he mourns his belonging to a world that does not allow him to do what he was put on earth to do. Not able to create or make human beings, he is forced to find them, traveling to Greece to search under its ruins for those whom he had wished to create from scratch:

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Those whom he sought were once there, and yet to create them, he recognized clearly, his art was too poor. He also knew where they were. So he wanted to go there and seek their genius under the debris, in order to shorten the lonely days with this. He came to Greece. So I found him. (FA 11:591)

But what is the nature of Adamas’s art? Why doesn’t it suffice? Since there can be no polis (city-state) and no politeia (condition and rights of those who belong to the polis) without the politēs (citizens), and no politēs without human beings of a fit nature, Adamas’s failure to create human beings calls into question any approach to politics that founds the virtue of the state on the virtue of its citizens. The source of Adamas’s failure is that his mode of action depends almost entirely on inspiration (Begeisterung). A sign of this is Adamas’s kinship with Plato, to which Hyperion alludes at the start of the letter recounting the episode to Bellarmin (FA 11:589).21 For Plato, the philosopher of inspiration par excellence, pedagogy imparts “straight growth” to the body and the soul. Such inspiration characterizes the assymetrical relation between Adamas and Hyperion. Adamas, before he can “raise up” Hyperion, must condescend to him, with “the consuming glory of 20 With Hegel, as Avineri (1972) notes, the focus of political philosophy shifts from the “founders of polities and states”—the “semi-legendary legislators”—to the historical figures who are “central to the processes of world-historical change” (x). Hölderlin, one could say, stands at the threshold of this transformation. While rejecting the classical form of lawgiving personified in the Platonic and Rousseauian Adamas, he does not reject lawgiving altogether but rather seeks a different kind of lawgiving. 21 The name Adamas also suggests Adeimantus, Plato’s older brother, who himself appears in the Republic (327a).

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.



Political Personae



133

spirit [verzehrende Herrlichkeit des Geistes]” concealing itself, communicating itself to the other “like a spirity [geistig] water that flows from out of the depths of the mountains and communicates the secret force of the earth to us in its crystal drop” (FA 11:590). Moreover, Adamas is even identified with Apollo himself. Standing at the ruins of Apollo’s temple in Delos, he calls out for Hyperion to “be like this one!” and, grasping him by the hand, “held it out toward the god” (FA 11:594).22 Hyperion continues in his narration to Bellarmin: “and it was for me as though the morning winds bore us away with them, and brought us in the convoy (Geleit) of the holy essence (des heiligen Wesens), which now climbed up to the summit of heaven, friendly and grand, and miraculously filled the world and ourselves with its force and its spirit” (FA 11:594). The goal is not a human goal, attainable within a merely human time and world, but superhuman and moreover—since the god to which he is called, whether it is Helios-Apollo or the Titanic-Helios, is clearly linked to Hyperion—it is in essence the goal of going beyond, and indeed going beyond every merely human goal. Yet even while it is the goal of beyondness as such, it is nevertheless his, Adamas’s, beyondness, which is also Hyperion’s own, undeveloped, nature. Despite their inequality, there is indeed no opposition between Adamas and Hyperion other than that of the “large” and the “small,” the fully developed and still immature. Whereas Diotima will call into question his own hyperbolic nature, leading him beyond the transcendental impulse inherent in his nature, Adamas merely leads him toward its fullest realization yet without transcending its own transcendence. It is precisely because Adamas’s art is not the mere finite art of a mortal being, but rather the art of inspiration, that it does not suffice. A hint of this connection, closely related to the problem of Schwärmerei (fanaticism), appears in a passage from a letter to Hölderlin’s friend Boehlendorff dated December 4, 1801. It is worth citing at length, since we will more than once have occasion to return to it. Nothing is more difficult to learn than to freely utilize the national [das Nationelle]. And it is my belief that clarity of representation [Darstellung] is originally as natural for us as the fire of heaven was for the Greeks. For just this reason these will sooner be surpassed in the beautiful passion that you too have obtained for yourself than in the Homeric presence of mind [Geistesgegenwart] and gift for representation. 22 This image of boy and mentor wandering together through the ruins at Delos appears also in Hyperion’s Youth (FA 10:231). Here the older man is Diotima’s father, who, as we have seen, himself gives voice to the Platonic doctrine of Eros, once again suggesting the affinity between Adamas and the founder of the Academy.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

134



Political Personae

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

It sounds paradoxical. But I assert yet again and give you leave to examine and use it as you will: with the progress of culture [Bildung], the proper national [das eigentliche nationelle] always becomes the ever smaller merit. Thus the Greeks are less masters of the holy pathos since it is innate to them, whereas they excel in the gift of representation, beginning with Homer, since this extraordinary man was soulful [seelenvoll] enough to capture that occidental Junonian sobriety for his Apollonian empire, and thus truly appropriate [aneignen] the foreign. Among us it is reversed. For this reason it is also so dangerous to abstract the rules of art solely and exclusively from Greek preeminence. I have long labored at that and know now that, apart from that which must be highest among the Greeks and us, namely the living situation and destiny, we are not allowed to have anything else that is like [gleich] what they have. Yet the proper must be learned just as well as the foreign. Thus the Greeks are indispensable for us. It’s just that we won’t be able to follow [nachkommen] them in what is for us our own, national [unserm Eigenen, Nationellen], since, as we said, the free use of the proper is most difficult. (SW 9:183–84)

The paradox consists in the claim that what is innate, “the proper national,” not only becomes ever less of an accomplishment as a historical people progresses in its cultural development but that it is also fundamentally harder to master than the foreign. The gift for representation that distinguished Greek art was not native but foreign to the Greek nature, implying, moreover, that the decline of the art of the Greeks was due to their failure to master their own native element—the sacred pathos, the ecstatic force of inspiration. For the modern Germans, by contrast, it is precisely the gift of representation that is innate and hence hardest to master. This mastery, nevertheless, is not one-sided: if the “free use of the proper” is the hardest thing, it is precisely because it opens up the proper to the foreign and thus achieves that which is highest for both Greek and German, ancient and modern: namely, the “living situation and destiny [lebendigen Verhältniß und Geschik].”23 23 As Szondi (1978, 1:345–66) demonstrates, this aspect of the Boehlendorff letter has been completely misconstrued by readers such as Wilhelm Michels, Friedrich Beissner, Beda Allemann, and Walter Hof, who have taken it to argue for a poetics of passion and inspiration over “classical” technique and clarity. Szondi goes so far as to argue that Geschik should be understand as technē, Geschicklichkeit. Heidegger’s interpretation of the Boehlendorff letter moves in a somewhat similar direction, stressing “the law of the poetic becoming-at-home in what is one’s own from out of the poetic thoroughfare of being-not-at-home in what is foreign.” Yet his reading of Geschik is diametrically opposed to Szondi’s: “Hence, according to the word of the poet, in the age of the Germans the chief tendency

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.



Political Personae



135

If Adamas cannot create human beings, if he must fail politically, it is because the heavenly fire of Apollonian inspiration is no longer proper to the modern world as it was for the ancient Greeks. The “fire of heaven [Feuer vom Himmel]” was proper to the ancient Greeks as their origin— through which they came into their own and thus were created in their essential nature as what they are—but in the modern world it can no longer serve in this way to create human beings, but could at best only find them under the debris: “So he wanted to go there and seek their genius under the debris” (FA 11:591). These last lines, in turn, suggest that Adamas’s political action stands in a fundamental relation to ruins. Its limit—also the essential limit of the revival of the “political philosophy” of Plato’s Republic—consists above all else in a blindness to the remnants and corpses of history; an inability to read and interpret them. Adamas cannot face ruins but can only remove debris; he cannot look over and down upon history’s remnants. Thus when the two lie among the ruins of the temple of the forgotten Jupiter, surrounded by laurel roses and evergreens, with the life of spring and the eternally youthful sun reminding and warning them that the lordly, marvelous nature of the human now exists if at all only through its remnants and ruins, it is only Hyperion and not Adamas who truly responds to the monition born of the tense juxtaposition of the ruination of history and the originating eternity of nature (FA 11:593). Hyperion occupies himself with mournful play, placing himself at the point of contact between the pastness of history and the eternity of nature and thus corresponding to the mood of the place. Adamas, by contrast, who had himself hoped to find the living beneath the dead, and whose mission is thus marked from the outset by a certain elemental idiocy, neither unearths the past nor even sketches (zeichnet) the ruins themselves but only draws the landscape that surrounds them. He overlooks the ruins, failing to grasp them as a Zeichen, a sign.24 He does not relate to them even in the manner of an archeologist. Indeed, he does not relate to them at all. The identification of Adamas with Plato—and with a Platonic politics of inspiration—is significant, since it suggests the germ of a rigorous and powerful critique of Plato’s conception of politics. If Adamas is both the “mourning demi-god” and a modern incarnation of Plato, then this would suggest that Platonic political philosophy consists in the fundamentally misguided attempt to repeat an original, no longer possible, act of lawgiving. The experience of history teaches us that the material of politics no longer presents itself in a pure receptivity, and thus Plato’s must be to be able to encounter something, to have a fate, since fatelessness, the dusmoron, is our weakness” (HGA 4:87–88). 24 It is in this respect above all that Adamas differs from the portrait of Rousseau in the eponymous poem.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

136



Political Personae

antidemocratic project—his admiration for Sparta and Crete and his attempt to revive the art of giving laws and creating a people through them—is inherently flawed. This pure receptivity is indeed a correlate of the heavenly fire of the Greeks that is their given nature. Modern politics, by contrast, cannot presuppose the pure receptivity that allows for immediate and natural inspiration. It cannot rely on a natural openness to the Other, the lawgiving father of the nation; the transcendental signifier and signified in which the entire system of meanings and purposes would be anchored.25 It begins with a material that is already worked over, already impure, and no longer simply and purely receptive. And it seeks, through the mastery of technique, to cultivate an openness to an inspiration that is to come. The passages cited above suggest another facet of Adamas’s political art. It is sculptural; it seeks, and fails, to literally form human beings: “His material had been and remained stone and wood, indeed it took on, if compelled, the noble form of a human being from outside” (FA 11:591). It might at first glance seem difficult to reconcile the image of sculpting with the “inspirational” nature of his political action. Yet they belong together precisely insofar as the spiritual and inspirational pedagogue and political artist presupposes, as object, a material that is devoid of spirit and hence incapable of coming to life. Moreover, by joining these two motifs, Hölderlin demonstrates a keen insight into the limitation of the classical political paradigm. For the ontology of Plato and Aristotle, despite the generally low regard they had for the banausic, remains oriented around the experience of technē, regarding artifacts as the basic paradigm through which all beings are conceived.26 If the sculptor cannot serve as the paradigm for the political artist, it is because, being at once both an inspired genial artist and a handworker, he embodies the contradiction upon which a classical, inspirational politics comes to grief—the materiality upon which the political art should act remains in its essence fundamentally resistant, unruly, chaotic. It cannot be saved, or elevated. And this critique perhaps also takes aim at a philosophy of Bildung that, inspired by Winckelmann, would try to discover in Greek sculpture not only a model to be imitated of the perfect human form but a model of the method of imitation as well.27

25 See Rousseau 1978, 70: “Most peoples, like men, are docile only in their youth. They become incorrigible as they grow older.” 26 See HGA 18:219–23. 27 See Honold 2002, 96–116.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,



Political Personae



137

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

3.3 Alabanda, or Spoudophilia Hyperion’s encounter with Adamas ends as suddenly as it began. Adamas simply moves on, away from the Greece that had offered a temporary home and a passing distraction. “It is said that in the depths of Asia a people of rare excellence [Trefflichkeit] is hidden; his hope drove him on to there” (FA 11:595). Adamas gives Hyperion a goal, but he does not stick around to see this goal through to its realization. Perhaps this realization itself exceeds his art and his powers, untimely as they are. Inspiring Hyperion with an ideal without granting a sense for its feasibility, let alone a concrete path to its realization, he turns Hyperion into a fanatic and fantast, a Schwärmer. This is Platonic political education. And as Hölderlin writes in the “Seven Maxims”: “In good times there are seldom fantasts” (FA 14:71). Such fanaticism may be necessary, but its very necessity is symptomatic of an age in which it lacks effect; where the master signifier can only operate through a transcendence that renders it inoperative. When times are bad, signification is already hyperbole. The next stage of Hyperion’s life is adolescence. Unlike childhood and boyhood, this stage does not conclude with Hyperion’s narration to Bellarmin. Rather, the narrative is left hanging. Reading Hyperion as a novel of education suggests that the process of maturation is itself only accomplished through the act of self-reflection involved in recounting his adolescence to Bellarmin. The events of his adolescence themselves remain fundamentally open, awaiting interpretation. The two different political personae defining Hyperion’s adolescence, Alabanda and Diotima, each represent different possibilities of existence, a different manner of erotic relationship. Hyperion is torn between possibilities.28 And perhaps the League of Nemesis represents a third, extreme possibility of existence. Moreover, Alabanda is himself torn between his friend and the League of Nemesis, which plays a role in his life analogous, but also diametrically opposed, to that which Adamas assumes for Hyperion. By the time Hyperion encounters Alabanda, he has already lived for a while on his own, trying to come to terms with the desire for transcendence that Adamas imparted to him. Now his “island had become too small for him”; he needs to get out into the world. So he travels to Smyrna (İzmir), a city on the western coast of Anatolia that, once among the Ionian colonies, was known even in Hyperion’s time for its culture and a strong Greek presence.29 Here, his father advises, he can learn “the arts of the sea and of war, learn the language of cultivated 28 Honold (2002, 121–22) explores the tension between these two erotic relationships. 29 Delorme (1959, 132) suggests that Smyrna here signifies Jena. One can credence this suggestion without maintaining, as Delorme does, that Hyperion’s Greece is merely a vêtement draped over Germany.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

138



Political Personae

peoples and their state constitutions and opinions, morals, and customs,” and then, examining everything, choose the best (FA 11:599). This first step beyond youth is exhilarating, and the “hurrying progress calmed his heart not a little” (FA 11:599). Returning from his long walks through the surroundings, captivated by the beauty of nature and the recollection of Greece’s glorious past, feeling like “a drunken man from the symposium,” his heart fills out the deficiencies of human life with its own inner surplus of pleasure and beauty. His “needy Smyrna clothed itself in the colors of his inspiration [Begeisterung] and stood there like a bride”:

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The sociable cities attracted me. The senselessness of their morals pleasured me like a children’s farce, and, because I was by nature beyond all the forms and customs that had been introduced, I played with them all, and took them on and off like carnival costumes.” (FA 11:601)

This fragile, strained contentment doesn’t last long; he soon sees how heillos—awful, unholy, and hopeless, unsavable and unsalvageable—everything there really is. Human nature, it strikes him, “had dissolved into the manifold forms of the realm of animals” (FA 11:602). Seen through Adamas’s eyes, the culture of the human world must indeed appear bestial. And since he sees through Adamas’s eyes, yet Adamas has left him, he is now utterly alone: no one understands his enthusiasm for ancient Greece, or the seriousness with which he speaks of death. These melancholy reflections lead him for the first time to a kind of historical understanding. The “incorrigible nature of the century [Unheilbarkeit des Jahrhunderts]” becomes visible to him, and he even loses the hope that love could compensate for the lack of a livable world (FA 11:603). But just as he is preparing to leave Smyrna for good, riding through the surrounding regions to store up a memory of its beauty, he finally meets Alabanda, fulfilling his “secret longing” “to see the man whom for some time he had run across daily under the trees in front of the gate” (FA 11:604–5). It’s hardly possible to capture Alabanda’s nature—the form of his political action—in a single formula, since, like Hyperion, he changes and develops, appearing quite different when under the sway of the League of Nemesis or Hyperion and Diotima. Yet there are still certain tendencies characterizing his development. Most important of these is his haste, his Eile and Übereile. It is of Alabanda’s very nature to be always going, always im Gang, as one might say in German. He first appears riding his horse, and his few moments of stillness appear as an exception to the rule of his nature, brought about through his proximity to Hyperion. As they spend time together, Hyperion becomes like him, also partaking of his haste, just as subsequently Alabanda’s letter to him hastens his descent into the

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.



Political Personae



139

world. Their friendship and love—their particular manner of erotic communication—is just this proximity of their natures and likeness of their trajectories. It is a violent encounter—a Begegnung—of physical forces; the meeting of two streams “that roll from the mountains, and hurl off from themselves the burden of earth and stone and rotten wood and the entire sluggish chaos that holds them back, in order to carve [bahnen] a path to one another and break through to the point where, seizing and seized with equal force, united in One majestic river, the migration into the wide sea begins” (FA 11:607). Suggesting Hölderlin’s later river poems and yet also suffused with a powerful erotic sensuality, this image divests Alabanda’s and Hyperion’s movement of almost all traces of intentionality. Only the “in order to” remains as a somewhat awkward reminder of the will, yet even this perhaps merely marks the upshot of their fall. The stream’s motion and trajectory results from a process of accumulation and purification in which velocity, throwing off everything that retards its movement, allies itself with velocity, and yet becomes as a result not quicker but wider and slower—gaining its own sluggishness and torpor, albeit majestic—until finally it issues in the ocean, the almost absolutely sluggardly absolute. This amor velocitatis, this love of speed, is an unwise, thoughtless wisdom; a rush toward the All that can only mean its own dissolution and annihilation; a meeting of forces that, grasping and grasped in turn, cancel themselves out.30 Its ground is outside itself, unthought. Only when the rush is over—only when Alabanda has entered into a repose and stillness foreign to his nature—could he have self-insight. This happens in the second volume, in the conversation right before their final separation. Alabanda no longer appears just as a hero and man of action but explicitly as a thinker, communicating to Hyperion his mysteries; the more secret thoughts that he has had since he began to think. These more secret thoughts expose the root of his heroic character, of his thoughtless heroism; the reason why his relation to death is so different than that of Hyperion and others. This has nothing to do with the Christian faith in the afterlife. “I feel in myself,” he explains, “a life that no god has created and no mortal produced. I believe that we are through ourselves, and are only so intimately bound with the All through a free desire” (FA 11:758). Because the life common to all things is inward, uncreated, and immortal, the world could only be an accord of free beings, in which living beings, driven only by their own joyful drives, collaborate in a single life that is vollstimmig—full of moods, voices, and tones. Otherwise it would be wooden and cold, a heartless machine (Machwerk).

30 See the fragment: “Die Weisen aber . . .” (The wise however . . .; GSA 4.1:237).

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

140



Political Personae

The condition of all life—even of the slightest blade of grass—is freedom. Freedom is no mere exception to the deterministic causal order binding together phenomenal reality; it is not, as in Kant, a purely noumenal rather than phenomenal causality. Rather, it is the absence of a ground for one’s being outside the immanent necessity of one’s own drives. To exist in the manner of created being, caused by something outside of oneself, is to be unfree and thus not alive, even if one is subsequently left to one’s own devices. Life itself is what can never be created, not even by a god, but must create itself. Alabanda’s thoughts do not return to a psychology of will and intentional action, as though rejecting his heroic path as the mere result of errant, deranged self-renunciation, but merely reinterpret his own way of being, his unthinking rush, as a drive that is happy and free, froh and frei. The organism’s inner drives are no longer opposed to the higher freedom of the will. By eliminating all that lies outside its drives, life itself is conceived of in the absolute—as an accord (Einklang) and harmonious cooperation (vollstimmige Zusammenwirkung) of a continuum of momentary intensities. This elimination of essential exteriority from life might suggest a radical reformulation of Fichte, anticipating Schelling and Hegel’s absolute idealism. Hölderlin attended the first part of Fichte’s lectures on the Foundations of the Science of Knowledge in Jena in 1794 and 1795, and this certainly marked a turning point in the conception of Hyperion. Having just recently begun to advance his own distinct philosophical position in such works as his recent review of Gottlob Ernst Schulze’s Aenesidemus and his essay “On the Concept of the Science of Knowledge,” he now represented not only the uncontested advance guard of German philosophy—“the spirit of Jena”—but had also emerged as an outspoken and radical voice on matters of politics, vigorously supporting the French Revolution.31 For Hölderlin, Hegel writes to Schelling, Fichte will appear as a Titan struggling for humanity “whose sphere of activity would certainly not remain within the walls of the auditorium.”32 The word “Titan” is revealing, since this same word appears in the first description of Alabanda, and one need only read other contemporaneous descriptions of Fichte, such as Friedrich Karl Forberg’s, to see that Hölderlin’s reaction to him was not at all idiosyncratic.33 Also telling, 31 For a concise discussion of Fichte’s presence in Jena and his political radicalism, see Nauen 1971, 5. 32 Hölderlin 1963, 803. 33 For a comprehensive study of the titanic in Hölderlin, see Häny 1948. I cannot agree, however, with the all too schematic opposition that Häny draws between the positive picture of the Titan in both Hyperion and earlier writings and the negative figure that comes to the fore in The Death of Empedocles and the later poetry.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.



Political Personae



141

in this regard, is Hyperion’s description of the first moment when a rift opens between the two friends.34 Hyperion grabs Alabanda’s clothing, calling out: “Come! . . . who can endure any longer the dungeon that shrouds us in night” (FA 11:615). But his friend answers dryly, a shadow of mockery (Spott) gliding over his face: “Whither, my fantast [Schwärmer]” (FA 11:615).35 Hyperion is utterly devastated by this first hint of distance and coldness. It is, he explains to Bellarmin, as though he had fallen from the clouds. “Go,” he now orders Alabanda, “you are a small human being!” (FA 11:615). The pointed use of the word “mockery” (Spott) suggests a passage from the First Introduction to the Science of Knowledge, where Fichte speaks of the relation between the idealist and the dogmatist, and the danger to which each is exposed if they give in all the way to their philosophical nature. “The dogmatist gets hot in the collar, writhes and twists, and would persecute if he had the power to do so: the idealist is cold and in danger of mocking the dogmatist.”36 While this wasn’t published in Niethammer’s journal until 1797, the same year that the first volume of Hyperion appeared, we may suppose that Fichte spoke in his lectures about this difference of philosophical mood and attitude that distinguishes the dogmatist from the idealist. And indeed, Fichte’s own manner of speaking was known for its brutal and caustic energy.37 Moreover, in the above passage, Alabanda, who at first appears as a narrow, limited idealist, with an excessive confidence in human action, gives a much more radical formulation of idealism. Spontaneous life is no longer identical with the self-consciousness that, in positing the I in opposition to the not-I, lays the foundation of all finite experience, but dwells in everything possessing even the slightest degree of organization. This extreme idealism is not altogether foreign to Fichte’s thought, but it is present only as a possibility, whose ground rests in Fichte’s own relation to Baruch Spinoza’s pantheism. Spinoza was for him, as for Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi and later Schelling, the most consequent dogmatic philosopher, yet he also saw his own thought, stressing as it did the autonomy of the subject, as at once parallel and diametrically opposed to Spinoza’s Ethica, ordine geometrico demonstrata (Ethics, demonstrated in geometrical 34 See Prignitz 1976, 158; Mieth 1978, 54. 35 For the cultural implications of Schwärmerei around 1800, see Gaier et al. 1995–2003, 4:80–83. 36 Fichte 1845–46, 1:434. 37 Forberg, in a fragment of a letter published anonymously in 1798, writes: “The tone in which he usually speaks is cutting and abusive. He also does not speak beautifully, but all his words have weight and gravity . . . He does not allow his superiority to be felt in such a humiliating way as Reinhold: if, however, he is challenged, then he is frightful. His spirit is a restless spirit; he thirsts after the opportunity to do much in the world.” (Gaier et al. 1995–2003, 2:100).

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

142



Political Personae

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

order, 1677). Hölderlin, having dealt intensively with Jacobi’s Über die Lehre des Spinoza in Briefen an den Herrn Moses Mendelssohn (On the Doctrine of Spinoza in Letters to Moses Mendelssohn, 1785) even as early as 1790,38 was quite aware of this connection. Speaking of Fichte in a 1795 letter to Hegel, he writes: “His absolute I (= Spinoza’s substance) contains all reality” (SW 4:115). If idealism and dogmatism are truly parallel, and Spinoza is the purest version of the latter, then idealism must ultimately either renounce Spinozistic monism and accept the Kantian dualism between freedom and sensuality, if only as the necessary postulate of an ego that exists by heroically overcoming its own self-posited obstacles, or no longer restrict autonomy to rational subjects.39 This latter possibility itself demands a rejection of Alabanda’s earlier, still inarticulate, philosophy—the philosophy that underlies his stance toward the world before, in beginning to think, he had thought it through to its further consequence. Telling in this regard is one of the earliest conversations between Hyperion and Alabanda, in which the first traces emerge of the conflict that will cause them to split: “The god in us,” Alabanda 38 Henrich (1986–87, 60–92) demonstrates the importance of Jacobi’s On the Doctrine of Spinoza in Letters to Moses Mendelssohn for Hölderlin’s earliest philosophical development. Wegenast (1990), building on Henrich’s research into the early philosophical influences on Hölderlin, argues that Hölderlin’s engagement with Spinoza not only plays a decisive and central role in Hölderlin’s engagement with Kant and Fichte, helping him find a way beyond subjective idealism, but is absolutely critical for understanding Hyperion. I would argue, however, that Wegenast, who regards the final version as the consequent poetic realization of the penultimate version, fails to recognize the extent to which the political problematizes the ontological. 39 Mieth (1978) claims that Hölderlin, with his critical turn against Fichte, becomes the first in German philosophy to make the step from “subjective idealism” to “pantheism of a Spinozistic cast” (39). This turn is decisive for the subsequent development of German idealism, and we indeed find many echoes of this modified Fichteanism—a Fichteanism stressed to the point of dissolution—in Schelling’s philosophical writings from 1795 (when Hölderlin, in a few paragraphs written on his personal copy of the Science of Knowledge, offered a radical critique of Fichte’s philosophical project) up to 1801. During this period—as Frank (1985) argues—Schelling was trying to reconcile Hölderlin’s insight into the necessarily prereflexive and presubjective nature of the absolute with Fichte’s attempt to ground knowledge in the original self-positing action of self-consciousness. Crucial to this project is an understanding of nature, both in its totality as a selforganizing system and in each individual organism, as a positing of self-consciousness (Selbstbewusstsein)—also spoken of as Geist—through which it represents to itself the stages of its own inner act of self-production. This is expressed succinctly in the Abhandlung zur Erläuterung des Idealismus der Wissenschaftslehre (Treatise for the Elucidation of the Idealism of the Science of Knowledge), written between 1796 and 1797 (Schelling 1985, 1:178–79).

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.



Political Personae



143

asks mockingly, “for whom infinity opens itself up as a path, should stand and wait until the worm gets out of the way” (FA 11:610)? Echoing the language of Fichte’s Beitrag zur Berichtigung der Urtheile des Publicums über die französische Revolution (Contribution to the Correction of the Judgments of the Public regarding the French Revolution, 1793), this passage suggests once more Alabanda’s proximity to the Jena philosopher, who, in a certain way, has not yet begun to think.40 With the basic tendency of Alabanda’s existence having come into view, let us consider how this realizes itself as a particular mode of political action. The above passage already gives us valuable hints. That the world is an accord of free beings suggests as a correlative political ideal the free union (freier Bund), which we might likewise understand as a radicalization of Fichte’s already radically democratic political theory or of Kant’s realm of ends in the Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (Foundation of the Metaphysics of Morals, 1785). Yet these thoughts only appear after Alabanda has already turned away from the life of action. More important is the nature of their first friendship, and especially the conversation at its center. The fundamental gesture of their friendship is vividly evoked in the passage cited above, where Hyperion compares it to the merging of two streams in their downward rush. So powerfully are they drawn downwards and toward the sea—the absolute as origin—that they are impelled to free themselves from all the resistance coming from within as traces of decay and of the past. The subsequent passage elaborates this gesture, or at least will seem to do so at first, by explicating the particular nature of its temporality. This consists of two dimensions: not only purifying the present and the past, subjecting them to judgment under the aegis of Nemesis, but also projecting the future, though not through rational planning but through the very action of their souls pressing out into “colossal projections [kollosalischen Entwürfen]” (FA 11:608). The past and present—remnants, debris, ruins, all that is sluggish (träg) and that holds back from the future—are cleared away, allowing for the future in its pure and colossal forms to arise from the clearing. Yet this second image stands in tension with the first. There the streams press first toward each other and then toward the ocean, the absolute; here the colossal forms press out of the smooth, flat, hence also oceanic, clearing. But precisely in this tension we discover a twofold movement analogous to that binding together ruination and origination: the movement and countermovement of the origin and source. Falling back to the source makes it possible to rise up out of the source, and vice versa; each grounds the other. Yet there is also a decisive difference. If in the Athens letter, the colossal forms were themselves the forms of ruins, and the ruins gave shape and texture to origination—the future, in other 40 See Fichte 1845–46, 6:299–300.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

144



Political Personae

words, was shaped by the past—here, by contrast, the ruins do not positively structure the colossal forms of the future. The latter arise only when the present has been thoroughly purified of the past. The conversation that follows, of decisive significance for their friendship, grants yet more insight into Alabanda’s relation with the past. Alabanda and Hyperion sit together in a field, embracing each other in the evergreen laurel’s darkness, reading the passage from Plato “where he speaks so wonderfully of aging and becoming young.”41 This passage appears in the Politikos (Statesman) and is part of a myth that the stranger inserts into his inquiry into the nature of the politikos, the man of politics.42 Recourse to myth becomes necessary once the strictly dialectical method of classification has led to an impasse. While it has defined the politikos as a herder of featherless bipeds, it fails to grasp the difference between him and the countless others—merchants, husbandmen, gymnastic trainers, and physicians—who also somehow tend to the needs of human beings. Left to its own devices, the dialectical method cannot account for the special nature of human “herding”—human political life.43 This is because human politics has a historical dimension that the dialectic cannot grasp. Hence it is necessary to start from another beginning (ex allēs archēs) and set upon some other path (hodos)—the beginning and path of muthos rather than logos.44 The stranger’s myth speaks of the metabolē (transition, change, exchange) that leads from the so-called “golden age” of Cronus to the age of Zeus, the time of the present.45 During the first age, God accompanied the universe, guiding it in its revolutions, but then he released the tiller, letting the universe, which itself tends in the reverse direction, to return to its own innate movement.46 The one age is thus characterized by the proximity of God, the other by His distance, and there is, moreover, a strict correlation between the relation of God to the universe and the relation between its inhabitants, the different living organisms, and above all between humans and beasts. During the age of Cronus, all 41 See Lampenscherf 1992–93, 145–49. 42 Plato, Statesman 270d–e; Frye (1972) stresses the importance of Plato’s Statesman for Hyperion. The myth of the ages of the world, he argues, underlies Hölderlin’s novel, which is organized around the subtle interlacing of psychic and seasonal time. 43 Plato, Statesman 268b. 44 Plato, Statesman 268d. 45 Plato, Statesman 270b–272b; The idea of the Golden Age, whose principal Greek source is Hesiod’s Erga kai Hēmerai (Works and Days), is an important topos of the eighteenth century. For a scholarly survey of the history of the figure of the Golden Age and its reception by German romantics, including Hölderlin, see Mähl 1965. 46 Plato, Statesman 269d–e.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.



Political Personae



145

creatures were tame and lived in harmony and the earth furnished human beings with what they needed of its own accord, and neither were there political bodies—politeiai—nor were women and children possessed as property.47 In the age of Zeus, by contrast, the animals became fierce and the earth stingy, forcing the gods to give humans the gifts of fire, the arts (technai), and agriculture, lest they perish altogether.48 Thus human existence assumes its present character. As Socrates explains: “From all these arose all the things which go together in preparing a place [sugkateskeuaken] for human life [bios] . . .”49 Fire, the arts, and agriculture, as it were, form a vessel (skeuos) for human life—they open up the space which comes to be filled by a specifically human existence. Foremost among these is the statesman’s art—the care (epimeleia) of the entire human community (koinōnia) and the rule (archē) of all men.50 The myth grounds the essence of political activity—understood as all that prepares a vessel or site for, tends to, and guides, human life— in this metabolē, which is not merely the central historical event, the crux of history, but constitutive of historical time as revolutionary time, of the “turn of time,” to use the phrase from the poem “Blödigkeit” (Timidness, 1803), which for Benjamin, as he argues in his 1914 essay, exemplifies the shift to Hölderlin’s late style.51 It is the very way that history (Geschichte) happens (geschieht). The myth of the two ages, we can even say, underwrites Hölderlin’s understanding of the historicity of politics in Hyperion and throughout his life work. Consider, for example, the poem “Natur und Kunst oder Saturn und Jupiter” (Nature and Art or Saturn and Jupiter, 1800) and the theoretical fragment “Das Werden im Vergehen” (Becoming in Passing Away, 1799). Nevertheless, the nature of this metabolē is only faintly suggested by the reference to growing old and young. Much more revealing is a passage from one of Diotima’s letters to Hyperion, where she tells him how, amid the refuse and detritus of a once-joyous Athens, she could no longer escape thinking about “how the page had turned,” “that now the dead are walking [gehen] upon the earth above and the living, the god-humans [Göttermenschen], are down beneath” (FA 11:744). This is perhaps an allusion to the passage from the stranger’s myth where he describes how a reversal in the process of life accompanies the reversal in the world’s turning, with the old returning to childhood and “those who are dead and lying in the earth taking shape and coming to life again.” The living become dead and the dead become living: the ruins become alive, and 47 48 49 50 51

Ibid., 271e–272a. Ibid., 274c. Ibid., 274d. Ibid., 276b–c. Benjamin 1980, 2.1:105–26.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

146



Political Personae

the living, ruins. History, as the ground of politics, is of essence the ruination of the origin and the origination of ruins. Alabanda and Hyperion’s subsequent conversation relates intimately to the passage that they have just read and contemplated, and indeed develops one way of understanding the relation of the action of politics to the event of history. What had only been hinted at when they previously spoke of the judgment and purification of the past and present now becomes explicit: it is necessary, Hyperion explains, to destroy everything that steals “light and air from the young life that ripens toward a new world” (FA 11:610). On hearing these words, Alabanda declares Hyperion his “brother in arms [Waffenbruder],” and goes on to reveal the essential traits of this revolutionary violence. Citing the passage in its entirety:

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The god in us, for whom infinity opens itself up as a path, should stand and wait until the worm gets out of the way? No! No! We won’t ask whether you want to! You never want, you slaves [Knechte] and barbarians! We also won’t wish to make you better, for it is futile! our only concern is that you get out of the way of the victorious course of humanity. O! may someone light the torch for me, so I can burn the weeds from the heath! may someone prepare the mine for me so I can burst the sluggish stumps from the earth! (FA 11:610)

These words allude to the violence that had indeed revealed itself during the French Revolution. The need for such revolutionary violence rests with the revolutionary, metabolic, nature of the event of history. Political action enacts the reversal immanent to history by destroying the old world—the world of living ruins. Immediately after Alabanda has spoken, the first traces of a rift emerge. Hyperion will not go so far in affirming violence. While tacitly admitting that it may be necessary to remove those who stand in the way, he adds that whenever possible one should gently set them aside. After a moment of silence, Alabanda, responding to this, reveals the pure and absolute desire for the future that is the deepest ground of his politics— “My desire is with the future” (Ich habe meine Lust an der Zukunft). For him the end of action is not happiness—the future realization of the fully actualized present life that has been set forth as goal—but the future itself. For a time these words seem to have won Hyperion over. But he is not truly convinced, only torn away from his own nature—held momentarily in the other’s sway. By his very nature, Alabanda leaves no room for doubt: he cannot convince through rational arguments but can only persuade and bribe, submerging the other in his own passions (FA 11:613). A few days later, Hyperion returns to their previous conversation—it has clearly been troubling him a great deal—with the abrupt assertion that his friend “allows the state too much space for violence” (FA 11:614). In

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.



Political Personae



147

truth, he maintains, the state is nothing more than the husk around the kernel of life, the wall around the garden of human fruits and flowers. It is only able to protect growth and life, shielding it from violence, but it cannot demand (fordern) what it cannot compel or coerce (erzwingen), which is, above all, life itself and the heavenly rain, the inspiration (Begeisterung), that brings it forth. Hyperion’s critique of Alabanda anticipates Hegel’s scathing critique of Fichte’s attempt to derive the liberal order in all of its particularities—even down to the “picture ID”—from the conditions necessary for the realization of human autonomy, which is conceived as the ability to impose a rational form on an irrational material.52 The very attempt to secure human autonomy through laws and their enforcement must result in the infinite extension of the police state, since if human interactions and interrelations are conceived in terms of the determinate causality of the understanding, then we can discover possible harm to others in every single possible action. For the state to secure the perfect freedom of its subjects would then demand police supervision of every aspect of their lives.53 Unless grounded in a principle beyond the mere understanding, freedom undermines itself. Nevertheless, only Hyperion, not Alabanda, speaks of the state. This not only challenges the direct identification of Alabanda’s political theory with Fichte’s but suggests that the point of Hyperion’s critique is not to criticize Alabanda’s view of the state but to expose the perilousness of engaging in revolutionary violence without recognizing this as itself constitutive of a new order. If violence is essentially of the state—if the state is the only possible space, Stätte, of violence—than to create any room for violence at all as a political activity is to accommodate the violent force of the state.54 The space of the state is, as it were, only the space of the wall. For just this reason, the space of the state, as the site of violence, should be restricted to a kind of negative space and a negative violence. The violence of the state can only have a negative protective function: it cannot serve to bring forth the life that should exist within the state’s confines. Just as Alabanda’s understanding of political action is grounded in his relationship to time, so too is Hyperion’s. At the height of his enthusiasm, he speaks to his friend of the future epoch of the new church, when the awakened feeling of the divine will return divinity and beautiful youth to human beings (FA 11:614–15). The temporality of Alabanda’s revolutionary yet state-centered violence, as we saw, involves pressing forward, through the annihilation of the past and present, into the future 52 Hegel 1969–71, 7:25. 53 Ibid., 2:84–85. 54 The German word for violence—Gewalt—is a cognate of walten (“reign,” “rule,” “prevail”) and verwalten (“administer,” “manage”).

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

148



Political Personae

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

that compels and conjures it into being. It belongs to a politics of pure rush and haste that forgets its own goal in its onward rush and must do so, since, having renounced the present, it has abandoned the possibility of ever reaching, even momentarily, a point of rest. Hyperion’s future, by contrast, not only cannot be compelled but resists conceptual clarification. After repeating the “when” (wann) that begins his luxuriant sentence, he breaks off midthought, and, beginning again after a hyphen, adds “I cannot announce it [verkünden], since I have scarcely a premonition, but it would certainly come, certainly.” The coming of the new church, the repetition of the Golden Age, cannot be heralded or foretold; cannot be made kund—kindred, familiar, and known. Hyperion scarcely even anticipates it. And yet this coming is nevertheless certain. Each of these different relations to time, moreover, implies a fundamentally different relation to death, decay, and ruination. Here we discover the deepest affinity between Alabanda’s metaphysics and his politics. His radical idealism posits as absolute the moment when life springs away from its origin into the future, forgetting death and excluding it from its being. His politics is simply the repetition of this gesture. Life is without beginning (anfangslos); its progression toward the future a forgetting of the origin. Alabanda’s life will accomplish itself only with his own selfchosen death. As he explains to Hyperion: “My time is done, and what remains for me is only a noble end” (FA 11:757). For Hyperion, by contrast, death is a positive moment, an emissary (Bote) and witness (Zeuge) of life. It not only announces the coming of life but itself offers (bietet) this, bringing it forth (erzeugt). Indeed, in the future moment that he anticipates without foretelling it, the new church, the “darling of time,” “the youngest, most beautiful daughter of time” will emerge from the marred, antiquated forms. The ruins themselves, in their ruin, will give form to the future.55

3.4 The League of Nemesis Because Alabanda holds death in contempt, not admitting the power that it has over him, death acts on him from the outside. Lacking an inward, essential relation to death, he is struck by it as an accident; it turns his outward form into a ruin. If Adamas is a sculptor, Alabanda is a statue: indeed, a Roman copy of a Greek original.56 Formed of a stony material 55 Hofmann (1996, 53–54), in a similar fashion, argues that Hölderlin, rejecting the idealizing tendencies of classical aesthetics (and indeed: Platonic philosophy) and its attempt to overcome mortality, embraces, through the figure of Dionysus (“the coming God”), mortality and finitude as the positive condition for human self-creation. 56 See Honold 2002, 121–22.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,



Political Personae



149

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

that excludes life and death alike, he is fated to fall prey to time and the elements. When the two friends reunite in the second book, Hyperion is freer and stronger, while Alabanda’s face is wilted (abgeblüht) and he himself knows he’s in decline (herabgekommen) (FA 11:714). Rushing away from death as his origin, Alabanda rushes toward it—toward his own actual death, and, more generally, toward destruction and chaos, whose earthly agent, by joining the League of Nemesis, he has become. Significantly, his confederates appear at the very moment that Alabanda declares Hyperion, who has just finished speaking on the essence of the political, to be a fantast. Alabanda’s own violence, while seemingly directed toward the greater good of a Fichtean humanism, is itself rooted in a different kind of violence. This becomes clearest when Alabanda explains how he joined the League of Nemesis.57 Surviving a shipwreck and his captain’s death, he found himself at the port of Trieste with nothing but his life and his clothes. Discovering a “cheerful society” in the gardens outside the city gates, he sings a song in Greek and tells them of his predicament (FA 11:754). Moved by his song, a “man with a distinguished [ausgezeichnet] face” gathers money for him, advising him to buy a whetstone and 57 Gaier et al. (1995–2003) suggest a connection between the League of Nemesis and the Illuminati Orders, many of whose members were known to Hölderlin and which often appropriated Jacobin ideas (4:83); Prignitz (1976) regards the League of Nemesis as a “revolutionary league” out to change the world, which repels Hyperion because he sees them as “a union of men who alone live for their political goals, strive after them inerrantly, and are therefore without feeling and unscrupulous.” Fanatics, they treat their action (Handeln) as an absolute, and ultimately act solely for the sake of acting (174); Bertheau (2003) likewise identifies the League of Nemesis with the revolutionary program of the Club of the Cordeliers, who later come to be known as Jacobins: “to rule with terror; annihilate all who opposed them” (43). Mieth (1978), by contrast, stresses that the League of Nemesis, rather than pursuing a positive ideal, is concerned with “revolutionary overthrow as an end in itself as it were, the pure negation of what exists” (55). While there is certainly good reason to identify the League of Nemesis with conspiratorial revolutionary activity, I would stress that Hyperion’s apprehensiveness, and the critique that emerges, focuses not on their revolutionary activity as such but the specific manner of this activity qua activity, which appears not as a goal-oriented revolutionary violence but as an absolute compliance with fate and the natural cycle of creation and destruction, or even as violence for its own sake. Hyperion’s repulsion at the sight of the Bund comes not from their having sacrificed too much to the revolution or even forgotten the higher goal of their actions. Rather, he senses and feels in them—his reaction is in fact quite purely visceral and immediate—that they express the chaotic ground of all violence, and even of the violence that strives toward a goal. Such violence, of course, belongs to life itself, and yet it is, as I shall argue, precisely this complicity between life and violence that he does not yet recognize.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

150



Political Personae

wander through the “solid land [das feste Land]” as a journeyman. As Alabanda sharpens knives for others, his own love of freedom is sharpened on the servitude that he experiences. Garden and song alike seem foreign both to Alabanda and to the League of Nemesis. Rather, they suit Diotima and Hyperion. It is as though Alabanda and the League met on a ground that is somehow beyond themselves; the setting and language of paradise—the messianic hope that inspires revolution. Likewise, the shipwreck itself, recalling the first vision of Athens, suggests a movement from the sea as the proper element of the ancient world (here one is absolutely exposed to the ground of Being and heaven’s storms; here, in the words of “Remembrance,” all riches and wealth begin) to the modern, though not as it is but as it might be: the paradisiacal possibility of the garden that, taking root on solid land, exists as the collaboration of the earthly and heavenly (GSA 2.1:189). Alabanda’s craft, serving both agriculture and military violence—sustaining life and reaping death—itself expresses the tension between the League of Nemesis and the garden setting where they first appear. And while it is itself a guiltless work (schuldlos Tagewerk), fit for the light of day, it remains indebted to the League of Nemesis, whose very name suggests repayment and retribution, and thus to a logic of guilt (FA 11:755). Without exactly recognizing its own guilt and debt, it serves the League by sharpening the blades of its militant identity. A revolutionary seeking to use violence to produce a new political order, Alabanda is thus himself indentured, in a servitude he does not fully understand, to forces of a pure violence without goal or end. Whereas Alabanda grants too much room to the state for violence (räumt dem Staate doch zu viel Gewalt ein), the League of Nemesis’s political activity consists only in cleaning up and making space. They “break to pieces” the “hard clumps of earth,” “dig furrows with the plow,” and “grab the weeds by the root, cutting them at the root, tearing them out with the root, so that they will wither away under the burning sun.” Yet none of this is done for the coming harvest (FA 11:616–17). Rather, a member of the league declares, “for us the reward comes too late; for us the harvest no longer ripens” (FA 11:617). They act not for the future—not to bring about a better world—but only to return the world to chaos. As with Alabanda, their way of acting in the world is grounded in a relation to temporality. The essence of this relation, for the League of Nemesis, consists in an errant wagering. The members of the League, their very words suggest, live the life of gamblers, with a poverty of deeds, an excess of hope, and a trust in luck, wagering rather than reflecting (Besinnen). And above all they played with, and were played by fate: “We played with fate and it did the same with us” (FA 11:617). To wager and play with fate means becoming open to its extreme vicissitudes. They submit to

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.



Political Personae



151

the chaos of fate, yet not just by offering no resistance but by themselves becoming like fate, complying with it in their mode of existence. Rather than anticipating and taking action against the contingency of experience, the gambler actively chooses to submit to it, doubling down on it and thereby amplifying its effects.58 Having no need for the “hearts and wills” of human beings—no longer a human action structured through boulēsis (deliberation) and proairesis (choice)—their own activity is nothing else than the action of fate itself in its movements toward chaos. And everyone helps this along. As one of them explains, no one is against them since everything is for them; everyone and everything—the clever and the fools, the simple and the wise, and “all vices and virtues of rawness and cultivation”—stand in their service, helping toward their goal without ever being officially engaged (FA 11:617). They do nothing but what happens of its own accord, and indeed their real aim, their only wish, is not to act themselves but only to enjoy, and yet they don’t even really seek their own enjoyment, but merely that of an indefinite someone: “We only wish that someone would get enjoyment from this.” Whereas for Kant, the enthusiastic interest of the spectator in the French Revolution revealed the moral disposition of humankind, for Hyperion, the deepest depravity of the League of Nemesis consists in the very fact that its terroristic activities, seemingly purposeless in themselves, presuppose a relation to a spectator who would derive a kind of aesthetic pleasure from them. One must not confuse this enjoyment (Genuß) with the happiness that Alabanda has no time for. As one member puts it: “We have stopped speaking of happiness [Glük—also ‘luck’] and ill fate.” Playing and being played by fate, he explains, they were tossed up and down between the beggar’s staff and the crown, swung by fate “as one swings a glowing censer [Rauchfaß], and we glowed until the coal turned to ash” (FA 11:617). Living through the most rapid transitions between the extremes of worldly existence, they no longer care about their particular condition at a particular moment. Replacing happiness, as the goal of action, is pleasure in the glowing, intoxicating experience of transition itself—an experience that grows more and more intense with the ever rapider oscillations of fate. Not simply the unqualified enjoyment of the present moment, this pleasure is taken in time itself as the swinging. Yet this pleasure taken in time does not allow it to be but exhausts it; rather than transforming the present into a garden where the future will ripen, time itself is consumed. Only ash remains.

58 Fichte, in his 1800 Der geschlossene Handelsstaat (The Closed Commercial State), suggests that the characteristic trait of the age in which he lives is a drive to turn everything into a game (Fichte 1845–46 :140).

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

152



Political Personae

3.5 The Living Dead

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

And as regards the general situation, I find consolation in one thing, namely that all ferment and dissolution must necessarily lead either to annihilation or to new organization. But there is no annihilation, and thus the youth of the world must return from out of our decay. —Hölderlin, Letter to Johann Gottfried Ebel

In the last section I discussed how the different political personae embody three contrasting models of political action and existence: a politics of pure inspiration seeking only to create men or find them when creation is no longer possible; a future-directed, future-creating politics of state power and violence; and finally the active submission to the fateful flux of time. In Hyperion, these do not remain isolated but together establish the framework for a theory of political action. The ultimate horizon for this theory is gestural rather than teleological. Each stands in a relation to the gesture of ruination, the nonteleological gesture par excellence, presenting different forms of political existence not in terms of the relation to a telos giving orientation to political life but as ways of comporting oneself toward the ongoing movement between creation and destruction that constitutes historical life. Adamas was not touched by the ruins, by death, or by time—he is untamable—and could only overlook the ruins. Unable to behold the showplace of history, his action finds no home in the present world, the world of ruins, thus compelling him to move on to places that had not yet even entered into historical time. Alabanda, by contrast, doesn’t overlook the ruins, but he also didn’t act toward or struggle against them, and thus, while touched and moved by them, it was only from the outside, as an accident to his being. Finally, the members of the League of Nemesis neither overlook the ruins nor place them outside of themselves, but comply with them from the depths of their being, becoming living enactments of ruination and death. The ruins of Athens stand at the crux of Hyperion—they are the vortex at its center—and the thought of the political arises from the different manner in which each persona holds itself toward them. We might again recall the myth from Plato’s Statesman. The tale of aging and growing young indeed provides a key to how Hyperion thinks the political. Plato’s dialogue, as already suggested, articulates the gesture of history, the interplay of ruination and origination. The future springs forth from the past, and, having sprung forth, falls back into ruin. The three paradigms of political action can, in turn, each be said to reveal this gesture from a different perspective. In Adamas’s case, it appears as a pure forward-springing under the upward pull of inspiration. With the League of Nemesis, it is an unstoppable fall backward into ruin and thus back into the origin. And finally, Alabanda seems almost, yet not quite, to hold the middle between

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.



Political Personae



153

these extremes, with the future ultimately pulling too strongly. Each of these perspectives is only partial, not merely because they only capture one side of the gesture of history but because they are not privy to its ground—the complicity and entanglement of life and death. For neither of these perspectives sufficiently confronts and reckons with death—with the finitude of human existence. They fail to experience the ground of historical time, and thus of all political action, in the tension between life and death. Whether by overlooking death, excluding it from life, or submitting to it without restraint, they fail to hold out in the middle of this strife. They fail to achieve a sense of politics that is properly human—that takes its departure from our paradoxical status as beings that know of our mortality, subjected to this mortality even as we transcend it. We should not suppose that Hölderlin simply appropriates the stranger’s myth from the Statesman to his own ends, treating it in isolation from Plato’s thought as a whole. Hyperion’s relation to the myth is more complex, suggesting that perhaps Hölderlin identified in Plato’s later political thought a broader resonance with his own concerns. Whereas the Republic places the question of politics outside history, offering a static typology of political forms in their original and decadent manifestations while analyzing the genetic links between them, the Statesman conceives of the nature of politics and kingship from a radically historical perspective. The divine, “kingly” politics belonging to the Age of Cronus is no longer appropriate in the Age of Zeus; a new, thoroughly human politics becomes necessary. If formerly divine shepherds watched over human beings, during the Age of Zeus such a stark difference between ruler and ruled is no longer possible; politics becomes a human art, a technē, supplementing the inevitable failings of leaders through written law and organizing all the other human arts, themselves supplements for human frailty, toward a single end and order. The Statesman thus offers an immanent critique of the Republic by in effect “historicizing” and “relativizing” its understanding of politics. The ideal of the philosopher-king, a theory of rule based upon an innate hierarchy of types, appears as a conception of politics suitable for the Age of Cronus but not for our own. The politics of the present, by contrast, must take its departure not from inherent differences among human beings, but from a basic equality. There are, at most, relative differences of capacity and temperament. This indeed anticipates modern political philosophy: Hobbes and Rousseau both presuppose the natural equality of human beings in the state of nature.59 And it also has everything to do with the question, addressed in the letter to Boehlendorff, of the role of inspiration in politics. That inspiration is not “native” to the modern world means that lawgiving cannot be justified through the lawgiver’s 59 See Hobbes 1939, 168; Rousseau 1978, 47–48.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

154



Political Personae

special proximity to the gods. The tragic situation of Hölderlin’s unfinished drama Der Tod des Empedokles (The Death of Empedocles), written between 1797 and 1800, indeed concerns the historical moment at which such a conception of lawgiving becomes impossible. As Empedocles declares in the first and most substantial of the three fragmentary versions: “This is no longer the time of kings” (Diß ist die Zeit der Könige nicht mehr; GSA 4.1:62). In the modern world, the radical equality rooted in human finitude, with technē—the application of finite means to finite ends—as its correlate, becomes the “native” basis of politics. Hence Hobbes likens politics to the crafting of a machine, an “artificial man.”60 Hölderlin seeks neither to negate the role of inspiration nor to return to it in its classical form, but conceives of it as achieved through the order of technē itself: as what is not innate but must be mastered by way of a technique that cultivates human finitude, the realm of feeling, as an opening toward truth. There is yet another dimension of the discussion of love in the first volume of Hyperion. Hyperion recalls to Bellarmin a conversation with his friends in Diotima’s garden, where they speak, among other things, about friendship.61 Here Hyperion first reveals his hope that “such great tones and yet greater must at some time return in the symphony of the world’s course [Weltlauf].” For, he adds, “love gave birth to millennia full of living humans; friendship will give birth to them again” (FA 11:658). These words excite Diotima as never before. She leaps up, reaching both hands out to Hyperion, and shouts: “I have understood it, dear, understood it completely . . . love gave birth to the world, friendship will give birth to it again” (FA 11:658). Whereas Hyperion had immediately offered a historico-philosophical explanation of his words (“The peoples once took their departure from the harmony of children; the harmony of spirits will be the beginning of a new world history”), it is not this teleological philosophy of history that Diotima repeats as her own innermost thought, but his invocation of friendship as the principle of the world’s rebirth. Thus she frees the politics of friendship from the idealistic context in which Hyperion presented it, letting it stand on its own. The significance of this passage and of Diotima’s words only grow as the novel continues. It could seem like nothing more than a subtle attempt to steer Hyperion’s affections toward the sort of impassioned yet chaste 60 See Hobbes 1939, 137. 61 For an analysis of the theme of friendship in Hyperion, see Thiel (2004), esp. 76–146. Thiel stresses the specifically political dimension of friendship. Also suggestive is her observation that the new concept of friendship inherited by Hölderlin synthesizes the sociopolitical friendship ideal of the Enlightenment with the personal-emotional ideal of Pietism; the attempt to resolve the contradictions and tensions between the two models is a central task of Hyperion (13–14).

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,



Political Personae



155

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

friendship to which Lotte tactfully condemned the suffering Werther. Yet their friendship soon blossoms into an open and mutual love, and they are even engaged to one another, though not before consummating their relationship, with Diotima’s mother as a witness (FA 11:706–7). In truth these words have as much to do with Diotima’s understanding of history as with her relation to Hyperion. After Hyperion recounts to Diotima the disappointments brought by his previous friendships, she tells him: “It is a better age [Zeit]; this is what you sought, a more beautiful world. It is this world alone that you embraced in your friends . . . You did not want human beings, believe me, you wanted a world” (FA 11:662). Hyperion’s desire, Diotima recognizes, is not merely friendly or erotic but political. We recall that Adamas, acting in the world through inspiration and thus intimately linked with Plato and Platonic Eros, could not create human beings. Nor was this simply his failure; it reflected the essential character of the present age, the limit of love in the Age of Zeus as a world-creating power. Diotima sees this limitation even more clearly than Hyperion: unlike Hyperion, she doesn’t understand it merely as a consequence of a historical teleology. It’s at the center of her thought. She regards friendship as the fundamental form that political relations assume in the new age, capable of bringing forth a new world. This, moreover, suggests a perspective beyond what we find in the metatheory articulated through Adamas, Alabanda, and the League of Nemesis. Friendship is neither kingship, nor any of the inferior or degenerate forms of political organization. A passage from the “Seven Maxims” hints at what it is instead, signaling, moreover, that we might understand Diotima’s two summonses as the kernel of a transformative critique of Plato’s Statesman, which itself already challenges the erotic philosophy and politics of the Republic, the Symposium, and the Phaedrus. It all comes down to the excellent not excluding the inferior, nor the beautiful the barbaric, too much from itself nor mixing itself too much with it; to them recognizing the distance between them and the others determinately and without passion, and effecting and patiently enduring from out of this knowledge. If they isolate themselves too much, the effectiveness is lost, and they will founder [untergehen] in their solitude. Nor will real [recht] effectiveness be possible if they mix themselves up too much, since they will either speak and act against each other as against their own kind, overlooking the point where they are lacking and which first must be addressed, or follow too closely the lead of these, and repeat the ill manners [Unart] that they should purge, [and] in both cases they effectuate nothing and must pass away, either because they will always flow out into the day without resonance, remaining alone with all their struggles and entreaties, or because they are too subservient in their reception of what is foreign and more common, suffocating themselves with it. (FA 14:71)

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

156



Political Personae

This illuminates the essential difference between a politics of love and a politics of friendship—between love and friendship as two contrasting paradigms for the possibility of political community.62 Love, in the limit form that we may call romantic love, remains trapped in a movement between radical difference and radical identity. Its fundamental formula is: I, who am completely different than You, become one with You. The discourse of romantic love depends not so much on actual differences, which always remain somehow relative, but on sexual difference, difference-assuch; a difference whose very absoluteness presupposes the possibility of its negation, since male and female can only be absolutely opposed to one another insofar as they each seek to reunite, yet this very desire for unity must itself become the source of another difference lest the original difference be undone. A politics of love thus always revolves around binary oppositions that must be posited to be transcended and transcended to be posited. Thus there remains a politics of inspiration: of passive receptivity to the Other’s truth. By contrast, the friendship invoked above involves neither absolute difference nor absolute unity but differences between the better and worse that are recognized, acknowledged, and respected in such a way that a patient effectivity, a gradual bettering of what is worse, becomes possible. If this view of friendship seems odd, it is perhaps because friendship is so often seen from the perspective of love, which, so far as it tends to only allow absolute unity and absolute difference, regards the ideal friendship as a pure equality and a pure sharing in the Good. The textual genesis of Hyperion, and the transformation of the figure of Glycera/ Melite/Diotima, has everything to do with a gradual overcoming of a doctrine of love for which Plato’s Diotima herself served as the first great exponent. With the final version of Hyperion, love is now conceived in terms of friendship rather than friendship in terms of love: the tragic dialectic of the endlessly needy and the perfectly self-sufficient gives way to a polyeroticism in which multiple forms of sexual difference are possible and in which lovers do not become one in love while remaining in fact completely different, but change in response to one another. A politics of friendship, in this sense, would not need absolute boundaries, absolute sovereignty, the purity of the general will, or the opposition between a multitude and a people. This offers another, perhaps deeper, perspective on the limit of the forms of action embodied in Adamas, Alabanda, and the League of Nemesis. In each case, a vestige of the politics of love governs their existence, blocking the way to a fully political friendship, a friendship that could itself lead to political action. The difference between life and death assumes a political significance within the politics of love analogous with 62 Regarding the concept of “community” in Hyperion, see Hartmann 2009.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.



Political Personae



157

and closely related to sexual difference. Life and death, the soul or ruling element and the merely mechanical/corporeal, are absolutely different and absolutely united, and indeed the opposition of life and death motivates the more strictly erotic opposition between love and hatred, with the two oppositions sutured to each other in a complex dialectic that cannot be fully resolved into its elements. Precisely because for all three political personae, the relation of life and death, whichever side they assume, remains one of exteriority, they are unable to realize an effective form of political agency. Incapable either of pursuing life at the price of repressing death, or death to the exclusion of life, their politics necessarily ends in catastrophe. It remains within the tragic order of love rather than friendship. It is never able to internalize, as the structure of its action, the gesture of history—the strife between ruination and origination— but always remains somehow outside of history in the tragic repetition of love. In this way, moreover, their politics still remains within the horizon of teleology, since the very possibility of a telos depends on life and death being external to one another. Even if the final cause or end of a thing is regarded as essential to it, indeed as the realization of its innermost nature, it remains the imposition of a finitude that, precisely as a definition, is exterior to the thing; that defines it in relation to other things, and limits it through its relation to the world. Hence we could even say that this very exteriority reveals itself as the essential gesture of teleology: all teleology rests on the opposition of life to death: of Being to Nonbeing. This determines the limit of a gestural interpretation of the political personae we have discussed. While they reveal the gesture of teleology in its different modifications, disclosing teleology as gesture, they do not allow a gestural thinking of the political to develop that is independent of the dominance of the telos. Yet it also opens the way to a different understanding of politics. The teichos (wall), and the law as teichos, marks a limit to the life of the state, and yet this limitation and negativity belongs immanently to life, creating the space for life. It doesn’t define what life is but allows life to come into being by articulating its inner tension, by intensifying its interior gesture—the tension between becoming and passing away. Such a politics would not conceive of the political through the privilege of certain forms of life over others, or indeed through the exclusion of all those forms of life incapable of subordinating their own life to a conscious purpose, but would intensify and enact the gesture of all life.63 Keeping all this in mind, let us now turn from the political personae to Hyperion himself and the form assumed by his own political engagement. Yet here we face a new difficulty. Whereas the former seem to more or less concretely embody a form of action or comportment toward the world 63 Here I draw on Esposito’s critique of the “normativization” of life (2008, 182–94).

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

158



Political Personae

and history, Hyperion, as epistolary narrator of an unfinished work and the recipient of Diotima’s summonses, does not himself personify a certain closed possibility of being but represents a point of indetermination. He is not a tragic figure; his nature is not determined through his death, but he remains open. Whereas the very gestural concreteness of the political personae is only possible through a tragic finitude marking the limit of gestural thinking, the purity of Hyperion’s gesture requires that it never appear as such, that it never express itself through a single exemplary figure. This does not condemn it to vagueness, but it does demand a very different strategy of reading. While Hyperion concretely engages with the world in the course of the events that he narrates, this engagement, and the ensuing catastrophe, must serve as the beginning rather than the end of our inquiry. Not only can the nature of his engagement only appear through a careful inquiry into those terms—“Arbeit,” “Tätigkeit,” and “Geschäft”—through which Hyperion develops a nonteleological account of agency, but this engagement and its catastrophic issue only prepare the way for Diotima’s second summons and the correction that it offers.

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

3.6 Arbeit—Tätigkeit—Geschäft The conversation with Alabanda considered above would seem to reveal much about the manner of Hyperion’s own political activity. Hyperion responds to his friend with his own political thesis, asserting that the state is the “raw husk around the kernel of life.” Yet it is still not clear how this claim, suggestive and potentially radical as it is, could be developed into a more comprehensive and rigorous theory and indeed realized as concrete praxis. Calling Hyperion to become an educator of his people and, by “sowing” the poetic word, repeat the gesture of natural life, Diotima’s first summons suggests one way. But perhaps revolutionary violence, such as Hyperion engages in when he again comes under the sway of Alabanda, is also needed. It is unclear whether the target of political action is the kernel of life or the “husk.” Should it mainly seek to cultivate life to the point where the violently repressive, as opposed to merely constraining, function of the state becomes unnecessary, or should it try to alter or even eliminate the state in its current form? This is precisely the question Hyperion poses at the end of the first volume, and indeed, as shall now become clear, it is not so much this principal political thesis, as the particular interpretation Hyperion gives to it through his actions, that stands in need of correction. When Hyperion, after receiving Alabanda’s letter, tells Diotima why he must go and fight, we already get a sense for how he will interpret her summons. He is not yet suited (geschickt), he tells her, to lead his people into the Olympus of the divinely beautiful, but he does know how to use a sword, and for now nothing else is needed. “The new league of spirits,”

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.



Political Personae



159

he adds, “cannot live in the air, the holy theocracy of the beautiful must dwell in a free state, and a free state needs a place on the earth and this place we will certainly conquer” (FA 11:701). What the situation of the moment demands is using force to conquer a place for a free state; a space that, kept free and open through militant force, offers a residence for the coming theocracy of the beautiful. Revolutionary violence and state power cannot directly conjure forth the life of the state, yet they suffice to create the garden of life by building a wall, founding the state as the stead of freedom. Violence makes space for inspiration. Hyperion’s political action thus reveals itself as a middle way between Adamas and Alabanda. Revolutionary violence, the violence that creates and destroys states, creates a people by creating its wall and its law, its space. Because Hyperion’s project is doomed to such rapid and catastrophic failure, we never have the chance to see how it might work itself out in the particulars. We can never reach the point where Diotima’s dire prophecy—“You will conquer . . . and forget, for what?”—might begin proving true (FA 11:701). The revolution breaks out into chaos and barbarism almost from the start. And yet we do still gain a sense for Hyperion’s modus operandi. This hint takes the form of the word labor (Arbeit). There is no doubting this word’s importance, especially in connection with the events related in the second volume. It governs Hyperion’s relation to Alabanda and the entire series of catastrophic actions to which this gives rise. Whereas Hyperion uses the word handeln (to act)—a favorite word of Fichte and Goethe—ironically and dismissively, identifying it with the clichés and commonplaces of German “wise men,” Geschäft (business or occupation) and Arbeit (labor, work) seem to speak more adequately to the nature of his catastrophe, with the latter applying in particular to the events narrated in the second volume following his descent into political action. Reflecting back on his past from the perspective of his hermitage, he writes to Bellarmin: “My business [Geschäft] on earth is over. I set to my labor [Arbeit] with all my will, bled over it, and made the world not a penny richer” (FA 11:584). Arbeit also appears often and significantly in the letters written to Diotima in the second volume of the novel. Before reuniting with Alabanda, Hyperion tells her that he is overripe (überreif) for labor (FA 11:712). And when he then walks into his friend’s room, seeing him again after a long separation, Alabanda “had just laid his work [Arbeit] aside, sat in a moonlit corner by the window, and tended to his thoughts” (FA 11:713). And in the days of preparation, before the fighting breaks out, he writes to Diotima: “It is my joy that I live in full work [in voller Arbeit]” (FA 11:716).64 These passages acquire 64 We might compare with FA 11:720: “Now all the melencholy has an end, Diotima, and my spirit is firmer and quicker, since I am in living labor and behold! I now also have a daily routine.”

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

160



Political Personae

yet more weight if we consider that, while Arbeit, along with a number of derivative forms, is mentioned a number of times in the letters of the first volume when Hyperion writes to Bellarmin of his present feelings, nevertheless, in the events that are narrated in these letters and thus take place before the catastrophe, Hyperion never associates labor either with himself or with Alabanda but only with Diotima and the robbers—only with crime or domesticity; only with what falls outside the sphere of heroic action. Before his descent, before his errant fulfillment of Diotima’s summons, Hyperion is of essence arbeitslos: not only is he literally without work but it is foreign to his very nature—he cannot even recognize it in Alabanda, even though it will later reveal itself as among Alabanda’s most fundamental traits. Hyperion’s catastrophic descent into political action is, in germ, a descent into labor. Thus, to understand this catastrophe, we must know what is meant by Arbeit. But precisely with such modest, unassuming, prosaic words there is great danger of injecting our own prejudices into the text. And with Arbeit, the danger is especially great, since it has become so heavily laden with meaning, not only in political economy, but in the revolutionary politics—both Marxist and Fascist/National Socialist—of the twentieth century.65 One of the greatest challenges to reading Hölderlin, moreover, is that his use of an abstract vocabulary, even though situated within and nourished by his intellectual milieu, also has a strongly “hermetic,” self-referential quality. Yet despite this, he rarely clarifies his terminology in the manner of a philosopher. The danger becomes greatest moreover with those words such as Arbeit that are neither obviously philosophical nor poetic; it is easy to hold them of little account, or ignore them altogether. Arbeit belongs within a subtle constellation of words and meanings that spans the whole of Hölderlin’s writings, and must first of all be brought in relation to two terms with meanings that are closely related, and yet acquire fundamentally different valences within Hyperion: Tätigkeit (activity) and Geschäft. Activity is mentioned only twice in the final version of Hyperion: once in a letter to Bellarmin, and again in Diotima’s first summons. In the first instance, Hyperion speaks of the days in Smyrna following his separation from Adamas: “The living activity with which I now cared for my cultivation [Bildung] in Smyrna, and the hurrying progress [I made] softened my heart not a little” (FA 11:599). The activity here clearly applies not to an outward-directed but rather to an inward-directed doing; not modifying the world or directly influencing others, but “tending one’s own garden,” cultivating one’s inner forces and capacities. Still, activity is not the process of formation itself but the form of the agency enabling formation, 65 See Arendt 1958, 79–135.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.



Political Personae



161

an agency that perhaps consists in activating one’s already existing potentialities. Indeed, the present degree of one’s formation and inner cultivation is precisely what gives the lead to future culture and grounds what is possible and impossible in this regard. Hence, the adjective “living” (lebendig) is especially important in this context, serving—Hölderlin often uses adjectives this way—not to delimit a certain species of activity but rather to explicate its essential nature. The activity is vital because it involves the realization of an organism’s capacity for life, not principally in relation to a world but in relation to itself. It is the activation of latent forces, the energeia of a dunamis. The second passage simultaneously affirms and complicates this interpretation, moving energeia outside the realm of Aristotelian philosophy and into the new territories of Hölderlin’s own thought. This time, the word is spoken by Diotima, who tells Hyperion that “had your mind [Gemüth] and your nature grown ripe so soon, your spirit would not be what it is; you would not be the thinking human being had you not been the suffering, the fermenting human being” (FA 11:689). Here activity appears even more clearly as the activation of the forces of the mind, their ripening into the fullness of life, if not yet into a relation to the outer world. But it is also now linked with the three active participles “thinking,” “suffering,” and “fermenting” as the special attributes of a prematurely ripe activity. These associations might seem odd if we regard thinking and suffering as essential qualities of human beings as such while conceiving of fermenting as an attribute of all life. This difficulty resolves itself, however, in a way that illuminates Hölderlin’s understanding of activity. While these three qualities remain essential determinations of the human, nevertheless, by calling Hyperion a thinking, suffering, and fermenting human being, Diotima does not simply mean that he has these qualities but that he possesses them in an exemplary way, and precisely on account of the failure of his activity to achieve ripeness in a timely fashion; the failure of his bloom time to come at the right time, at the ho nun kairos to use the Pauline turn of phrase. Moreover, recalling Hyperion’s discussion of Athens’s greatness—the immediate context of Diotima’s words—we remember that in this passage ripeness denotes the state in which the inner development of a human being or a nation is complete, making it ready to appear on the world stage. So understood, ripeness is the precondition of the timely application of discipline (Zucht) and artifice. When a nation is forced out into the world and into an “adult” activity before it has ripened, the result is ruinous; “The Spartans remained forever a fragment; for he who has not once been a complete child will find it difficult to become a complete human being” (FA 11:677). Overripeness, accordingly, consists in an overdevelopment and overactivation of the inner forces. These continue to develop inwardly when they should instead turn beyond themselves and

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

162



Political Personae

find outlet in the world. While activity seems to refer to a monadic conception of the soul, this holds only for its “childhood,” the first phase of its development. But Hyperion’s underripeness is also a kind of overripeness. Bringing together both points, we see that while thinking, suffering, and fermenting belong to our nature as human beings, we exemplify these qualities only when our activity becomes overripe. These three attributes come to the fore as our defining outward traits—as what sets us apart as human beings—to the extent that our inner activity fails to find timely outlet. This, in turn, suggests the relation between the first two qualities—traditional metaphysical determinations of the human being as a finite rational being—and the last, a word of special significance for Hölderlin. Fermenting here involves an overripeness, an extremity of life that inclines back to its beginnings as rot and waste. Thus it is not merely added on, as one more attribute, to thinking and suffering, but rather thinking and suffering, themselves originating from such extremity, are of their very nature fermenting thinking and fermenting suffering—the outward manifestations of the ferment of life, which appear when life is unable to expel and relieve itself into the wider world. While activity is always of essence vital if not hyperactive—a fermenting, pressing realization of forces—the Geschäft, the business or occupation, is, by contrast, still and restful. It is ein stilles. Thus in the Fragment of Hyperion Hyperion explains how, visiting Rome’s ruins, he feared certain memories: “Our spirit glides so easily out of its path; we often have to avoid the rustling of a tree in order not to disturb it in its still and quiet business [Geschäft]” (FA 10:50). Nevertheless Geschäft is not without movement or direction; not simply the pure preoccupation of the mind enraptured in self-contemplation, it indeed has its path (Bahn), even though it coasts along this rather than eagerly driving forward. Our conscious relation to Geschäft is, moreover, almost purely negative. We do not guide or impel it forward but simply avoid whatever might interfere. The peculiar stance we must have toward our own interior business appears even more clearly in the following passage from Hyperion’s Youth, where he discusses the phase of his life when he tried to dominate and struggle against the irrationality of mere nature, not so much in order to feel superior to it as to “communicate a beautiful unity [schöne Einigkeit] to the lawless forces that move the human breast.” During this time, he proudly rejected the help that nature offers us in all our “occupations of cultivation [Geschäfte des Bildens],” “the ready willingness with which the material gives itself over to spirit.” Not satisfied merely with having nature submit to his will, he wished to tame (zähmen) and compel (zwingen) (FA 10:208). These inner occupations, this suggests, cannot be achieved through taming and compelling but only through the quiet acceptance of nature’s help—the material it offers the mind from its endless bounty. Only in this way, and not by directing the violence of our

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.



Political Personae



163

will inward against ourselves, can we gain a beautiful unity. Moreover, through the genitive construction, Geschäft receives a new determination. It is fundamentally the business of formation. Whereas activity actualizes the forces enabling education and cultivation, and thus even leads to an overripeness and a ferment that turns against itself, the spirit’s business is of essence the still, gliding process of its own formation. Thus the meaning of Geschäft is closely related to both schaffen and schöpfen: it is the occupation (Beschäftigung) through which we shape and create ourselves not by an exertion of will but by drawing on and scooping from (schöpfen) the nature surrounding us. Such an occupation is altogether different from an activity, for whereas the latter merely realizes our nature, the former makes us what we are through the element with which we occupy ourselves. Both passages appear in works that, antedating the final version of Hyperion, bear the mark of an idealist philosophy of history. Schiller’s influence is especially evident when Hyperion contrasts the will’s barbaric discipline (Zucht) and artifice with the quiet business of inward development. Yet while the final version takes a more critical stance toward such teleological notions, Geschäft preserves its close association with stillness and formation, assuming an even greater stature within the text itself. Yet the word also undergoes a significant change of nuance. In the Fragment of Hyperion and Hyperion’s Youth, Geschäft refers to the inner process of the mind, whereas the final version conceives of this inner process as an activity that is vital but not necessarily overvital or in ferment, and thus also includes the possibility of a still and yet living inwardness. As a specifically creative and formative mode of existence, Geschäft, by contrast, takes place principally beyond the subject. This displacement is already partially achieved in Hyperion’s Youth; here Geschäft appears in a special proximity to the house and hearth and above all to Diotima herself. Hyperion speaks of “the one who did what was his busily [geschäftig] at the still hearth, with his mind pure [mit reinem Sinne]” or of Diotima’s “domestic occupations” (FA 10:227–28). In the final version, however, the hearth and house remain the exemplary site of business, which, while preserving its filiation with Diotima and her transfigured domestic sphere, also assumes broader dimensions, naming Hyperion’s residence on earth in the widest sense. Thus he complains: “My business on earth is done [aus]. I set upon my labor [Arbeit] with the whole of my will, bled over it, and made the world not a penny richer” (FA 11:584). This busy residence in and occupation with and of the earth is not simply the interval between birth and death but the business of creating and re-creating the earth as the site of a truly human life, building the earth into a free state for the beautiful. Yet this business is not simply and exclusively human, let alone an exertion of will. Its stillness, in particular, forbids the latter. Rather, as

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

164



Political Personae

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

the creation of a human residence, it includes the collaboration between nature and human beings; or better, between nature in the stricter sense and nature qua human artifice, since human artifice is but an outgrowth of nature. This is, above all, the business and busyness of the busy day, der geschäftige Tag, that approaches Hyperion in the morning, allowing him to forget himself and recall a desire and a task (FA 11:625). It could seem as though the busyness of the day is nothing more than the occupation of human beings as they go about their business during those hours from sunrise to sunset when a natural light is afforded for their labor. Yet this occupation is not simply a human labor directed toward the produce of nature but first and foremost an agricultural labor, which not only provides the raw materials and human sustenance enabling all other work, but is essentially bound up with the sun, organized by its diurnal and annual cycles. The business of the busy day is thus the cultivation of, and collaboration with, nature’s growth, whose own business, even more than ours, is guided by sunlight. It is the “busy life of the earth” (der Erde geschäfftig Leben) which, as Hyperion writes to Diotima, explodes before their eyes when they celebrate the “bliss of morning [Morgenwonne]” (FA 11:749). This suggests a strong affinity with the business of the hearth. In each case there is an essential relation to heat and light, and one could even say that all business, every occupation, is in the last instance occupied with nothing else than these. The earthly business is not simply the occupation filling out the time between life and death but the drawing—schöpfen—of heat and light so as to give them a residence on earth, creating and recreating the earth as the site of openness toward the heavens. This is put beautifully in the poem “Mein Eigentum” (My Property, 1799): From heaven the light glances down mildly Through trees to the busy ones, Sharing the joy, since the fruit did not grow Through the hands of men alone. [Vom Himmel bliket zu den Geschäfftigen Durch ihre Bäume milde das Licht herab, Die Freude theilend, denn es wuchs durch Hände der Menschen allein die Frucht nicht.] (GSA 1.1:306)

And just as the business around the hearth is the essence of domestic life, the earth itself is an oikos. It is a household giving a place to the sun’s rays, just as each individual household envelops the hearth’s fire with life.66 66 The significance of the mediation of the sun’s light through vegetative growth, which distributes heaven’s gifts as nourishment to human beings—the

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,



Political Personae



165

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Since the house is a microcosm of nature, the seemingly mundane household tasks are themselves a holy priestship. Recounting to Bellarmin his last encounter with Diotima, Hyperion explains that he “found the dear girl at the hearth.” Indeed she regarded tending the house as “a holy priestly occupation” (FA 11:704). This domestic occupation, the business of the hearth, recreates the business of the earth’s life. She sets things zurecht, in the right place and pointing upwards, and beautifies (verschönern) the house, allowing everything to shine forth more clearly under the light, and finally gathers the flowers and fruits that still remain late in the year around the hearth’s heat as witnesses to life’s blossoming. Moreover, the totality of life is itself a domestic ordering, for, as Diotima explains to Hyperion, she thinks of the world most fondly “as a domestic life where everything, without exactly thinking about it, accommodates itself to everything else [sich in’s andre schikt] just because this comes from the heart” (FA 11:650). While the Geschäft, properly understood, is nothing but the human being’s and nature’s highest occupation, it also includes several derivative forms. The most significant of these is the needful business (dürftiges Geschäft), which encompasses both the idle business of mere busyness (blosse Geschäftigkeit) and the necessary work (Notwerk) of the understanding. The needful business, in turn, is contrasted to the reizendes Geschäft attributed to Diotima. Whereas the needful business consists of endless, fruitless calculation, “where the solitary spirit turns over and counts the pennies that it has gathered,” the charming occupation (reizendes Geschäft) is still and quiet yet nevertheless vital, composed of pure movements that, no longer bearing the mark of everyday necessity, are also not simply pointless and absurd. When I thus stood before her and kept silent, blessedly overcome with all the homages of the heart, and all my life gave itself up to the rays of the eye that saw only her, comprehended her alone, and then she again regarded me with tender doubt, and knew not where I was with my thoughts, when I often, buried in desire and beauty, overheard her at some charming occupation [bei einem reizenden Geschäfte sie belauschte], and my soul roved and flew around the softest movement like a bee around a wavering branch, and when she then turned toward me in peaceful thought, and, surprised by sun’s rays, as it were, pass through the upward striving trees and into the downward falling fruit—appears in light of Hölderlin’s engagement with Ovid’s retelling of the story of Phaeton, which Schiller, with a certain uncanny pedagogical intuition, assigned to him as a translation exercise. The figure of Phaeton, and the tragic impossibility of a mortal taking direct possession of the light of heaven as his divine patrimony, clearly figures into the conception of Hyperion. See also Laplanche 2007, 41.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

166



Political Personae

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

my joy, had to conceal my joy from herself, and again sought and found her quiet [Ruhe] in her dear labor (FA 11:655–56).

Her movements are themselves likened to slender branches, and, borrowing an image from Plato’s Ion, his own thoughts to bees flying around these.67 This simile is strange yet precise, for just as the branches reach toward the sun, gathering the light, and the bees in turn gather the flowers’ nectar from the branches, his soul likewise gathers together her own movements, which are themselves, just like her occupation, a gathering. And thus his own life—dissolved wholly into the rays of her eyes and her charming movements—itself becomes a quiet gathering of her gathering, her priesthood of nature, in which it seeks and finds its own rest. We could thus regard the charming occupation as that which itself gently tears (reizt) and pulls (reißt) the more everyday and ordinary up toward and upon itself. The needful business, by contrast, is not merely what is done under compulsion and dire necessity (Notdürft) as a necessary work but what, even while retaining a certain connection with the gathering of busyness in the fuller sense, itself remains apart from that which gathers together all occupations into the unitary business of the earth. Every needful business, it follows, can itself be brought into the fold of this higher busyness without losing its own inner nature. As Hyperion explains in the passage from a letter describing the trip to Athens, the divine hen diapheron heautōi, the ideal of beauty, grants the sun of beauty to the business of the understanding, which, without thereby losing itself in enthusiasm—“swarming away” and leaving its Notwerk standing—nevertheless thinks gladly of the festival day when it will wander in the rejuvenating light of spring. Activity and business, Tätigkeit and Geschäft, stand opposed to each other as two poles or axes, with each presenting a fundamentally different “praxological” perspective: on the one hand, the activation of the potentials of a monadic subject or substance regarded in isolation from the world and, on the other, the collaborative activity of nature as a whole. Already this suggests that we will find labor precisely where these opposed forms of action cross each other. Both poles, we indeed find, incline toward labor. As the inner activation of potentiality—of the latent forces of the subject—activity can reach a point of overripeness, an excess of intensity that, lacking outlet, turns against itself and becomes fermenting, suffering, and thinking. When this happens, the activated forces seek labor as a release, discharging themselves of their excessive life. As Diotima explains: “The luxuriant [üppige] force seeks to labor [eine Arbeit]. The young lambs strike their foreheads against one another when 67 Plato, Ion 534b.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.



Political Personae



167

they are sated with their mother’s milk” (FA 11:684). Likewise, Geschäft often appears in close proximity to labor, seeming to refer more or less to the same thing. Yet it is still possible to draw a distinction in meaning beyond ordinary usage. Indeed, the identification of Arbeit and Geschäft occurs only in very specific occasions—only with Diotima. Diotima’s labor, hers alone, is always also an occupation: whatever she does is gathered into the fold of the labor of nature in its entirety, since it itself enacts the gesture of gathering that is nature’s essence. But labor is also not the middle between two extremes: not the halfway point between two poles, but the crossing of two axes—thus precisely what allows for the intersection between the monadic subject and nature in its totality. Neither needs the other, nor is their encounter simply a mutual and complementary fulfillment, the reuniting of two sundered halves. The former is not characterized by a neediness or loneliness: it doesn’t lack a world outside of itself but is sufficient unto itself, and if it nevertheless seeks something beyond, it is only because of its own excessive ripeness and fullness, its overflowing life. Nor is the latter opposed to the human mind as an “objective reality,” but rather it exists as the collaboration of human and merely natural labor. If labor comes into being at a crossing point, this is not a question of a relation between two relata but of the crossing of fundamentally different philosophical perspectives. To better understand the mediating function of labor, consider its most basic qualities as they emerge from the text itself. First is the simple fact that labor is the doing of something in the world. “Alas!,” Hyperion writes, “if only there were still something in the world for me to do! were there only labors, a war for me, that would revive me!” (FA 11:652). This accords with the ordinary understanding of labor not as mere toil and physical exertion but as a mode of action that, directed against the physical environment, does something, transforming nature toward some human purpose. Yet this raises a new question. What is meant by “world”? The aforementioned passage suggests that it doesn’t just denote the physical environment, nor even the entire system of social relations and relations of production, but the field in which it is possible to act historically—to act toward the inner gesture of history. Yet more crucial to understanding the meaning of “world” and its close relation to labor is that, of the three different forms of action broadly conceived, only labor, and not activity or business, is directly contrasted with both dreaming and thinking, with the latter not a mere Nachdenken—an after-thinking—of the understanding but a fore-thinking that dreams up possibilities and projects plans into the future. It’s not just that thinking and dreaming are purely subjective, private events, whereas the world involves intersubjectivity. The deeper ground for this rests in a difference of modality, to which Hyperion

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

168



Political Personae

alludes in the second letter of the novel: “O, the human being is a god when he dreams, a beggar when he reflects [nachdenkt]” (FA 11:586). With dreaming and fore-thinking, all the possibilities of Being stand open to us, and thus we are gods. With the after-thinking of reflection, on the other hand, what is possible depends on what is originally given, and thus it ultimately becomes a question of fate; a lot thrown out by fortune into passive, waiting hands. Labor, by contrast, is neither able to enjoy every possibility through the pure speculation of the dreamer nor is it entirely bereft of possibility, a mere after-thinking untouched by inspiration. Rather, labor belongs to those who occupy the middle between the beggar, wholly subject to the decrees and gifts of fate, and the unworldly and fateless (schicksallos) gods. Moreover, the previous discussion of activity and business shows that we mustn’t take for granted the capacity to act in the world, since activity is always exposed to the danger of being active without actually acting in the world. Likewise, while the earth’s occupations encompass the activity of earthly nature as a whole, this activity is not yet the doing of any particular individual, and when it does appear in such individuation, it is first of all in its neediness, in its estrangement from the true life of nature. Even if this needful business seems to appear as labor, it is not a laboring in the world but a mere fragment of labor. All this suggests that Arbeit, doing-in-the-world in the full sense, is precisely the transition from activity, in its overripeness and overfullness, to the busyness or Geschäftigkeit of the earth as a whole. The world, in turn, is not something given beforehand as the space for labor, but only comes into being at the point of intersection between the two axes. It is, in this sense, the fatherland—man and nature as standing in a particular reciprocal relation of cause and effect, and thus constituting a particular realization of possibilities.68 Finally, because the world does not exist prior to its constitution through labor, as if it lay before the subject as raw material, the transition from activity to business cannot be understood as the realization of an intentional act. Rather, it happens as a discharge and disburdening of forces that have become üppig—wanton and luxuriant in their overgrowth. These forces seek a labor and thus a world, even before it is there to be sought. They indeed create the world in their overflowing: the world emerges as the capacity to take up their surplus, their overflow. This discharge of forces is akin to the inspiration (Begeisterung) that Hölderlin, in “Der Rhein” (The Rhine, 1801–3) and “As on a holiday. . . .” likens to a thunderbolt. Yet, as noted before, Adamas, the figure of pure inspiration, is never affiliated with labor or a daily work but only with a restless wandering and seeking across the face of the earth. Pure 68 See FA 14:174.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.



Political Personae



169

inspiration can only create when acting toward a material of the purest receptivity for the Good, and thus only in the Age of Saturn, when the earth is still new and not heaped over with ruins. Labor’s discharge, by contrast, is no longer lightning-like (Blitzhaft)—momentary and immediate—but patient, even laborious, and thus always subject to the danger of excessive haste. Understanding labor in this way brings the problem of work into a striking proximity to the problem of language. Contrasting the present effort needed to bring himself to words with the ease of speech of those who “chatter gladly like birds,” Hyperion, writing to Diotima from “the depths of [his] soul [aus tiefer Seele],” observes that “language is a great superfluity [großer Überfluß].” The best part always remains for itself, resting in its depths “like a pearl at the bottom [Grunde] of the sea” (FA 11:729). The decided and almost jarring use of the adjective groß forbids us to see in this a mere rejection of language as frivolous and idle. That much more is at stake than a clichéd sorrow too great for words is clear in light of Hölderlin’s reference to superfluity elsewhere in Hyperion and the rest of his poetry. In Hyperion’s Youth, “superfluity” translates Poros, who, the father of Eros, is also identified with the heavenly in opposition to the earth (FA 10:210). And in the later poetry, the superfluity is of life itself as the middle between heaven and earth, and is thus closely connected with the motif of the fountain and source. Without aligning clearly with either of these interpretations, the above passage nevertheless suggests that superfluity in either case is exemplified by human language, which seems, more than any other phenomenon of human existence, to reveal a fermenting overflow—hyperbolic excess—as its constitutive inner possibility. Yet language overflows easily and effortlessly only when a world already exists: “We speak gladly, we chatter like the birds as long as the world blows on us like a May wind” (FA 11:728). The world is like a system of dikes and channels drawing off language’s excess and dispatching it into a smooth and moderate streaming. Without the world, language becomes effort, it becomes labor, not because its source has run dry, but because it has turned against itself; its overfullness falls back against itself and makes its waters stormy and turbulent. And whereas when one chatters into the world, the pearl—“the best,” the ideal of beauty—stays quietly submerged and visible beneath clear waters, remaining effective in its shining even without being made explicit or raised to the surface, when the source is turned against itself and its waters troubled, the pearl disappears and must thus be brought to word just when this is most precarious and difficult. Labor creates a world through canalization, making room for the excess of life while allowing the best and stillest—beauty itself—to hold sway. It repeats the titanic labor of the streams and rivers, which, coursing through the

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

170



Political Personae

earth as they find their way back to the ocean as their origin, give the land texture and make it arable.69 A short commentary, accompanying the translations of one of Pindar’s fragments, illuminates this. These fragments and their accompanying commentary, which Sattler dates to 1804, rank among Hölderlin’s most significant, if also cryptic, engagements with the question of the political. Concerning the Pindar fragment titled “Das Belebende” (The Enlivening), he writes:

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The concept of the centaurs is indeed that of the spirit of a river [Strom], so far as it makes a path and a limit, with violence [Gewalt], upon the originally pathless upwards-growing earth . . . The river had to wander about in such areas before it tore itself a path. In this way form, as on ponds, moist pastures and caves in the earth for suckling animals and the centaur was however a wild shepherd like the cyclops of the Odyssey; the waters sought, yearning, their direction. The more that, from both its shores, the dryer parts formed themselves more firmly and gained a direction through firmly rooted trees and shrubbery and the grape vine [Weinstock], the more that the river, which assumed its movement from the shape [Gestalt] of the shore, also gained direction, until, urged onward from its origin, it broke through at a place where the mountains that closed it in hung together most lightly. (GSA 5:289)

Machiavelli, Althusser notes, observes that “the ancients made the Centaur the political teacher of their great men.”70 The centaur is offered as a model for the prince, “suggesting that rulers should become like this strange being: half-man, half-beast.” The great prince must combine the goal-oriented action of the human being as rational animal with a radically irrational, nonteleological form of existence. Yet Hölderlin offers an even more radical account of the constitutive significance of the centaur by comparing it with the river. The river begins by wandering, moving without direction and without a path or confining limit or border, but in just this way it first creates a path and limit upon the pathless earth. Neither purely chaotic, nor directed toward a determinate end, it opens up the space for a politics oriented around a gesture that is no longer teleological. Direction, shape or form, and the defining limit are not imposed on material from without but arise from it gradually. Labor is above all the labor of bringing language itself, in its overflowing activity, to word; of channeling the flux of speech so that its streaming itself opens up a habitat between the earth and the heavens. This labor is necessary precisely because, in the present age, language can 69 On the significance of canalization for Hölderlin, see Link 2006–7, 141. 70 Althusser 1999, 94.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.



Political Personae



171

no longer come to word through inspiration alone. The earth, with its colossal ruins, already has texture and is no longer immediately receptive. Yet how is it that the poetic word, the word that alone suffices to grasp the pearl of beauty, can become laborious, difficult? The importance of this question for Hölderlin’s poetry appears with greatest clarity in the letter to Boehlendorff we looked at earlier. Making poetic language laborious means learning the free use of what is proper to the modern era: not inspiration but the mechanical and technical. Answering this question, in turn, leads us into the depths of Hölderlin’s poetic theory, and finally to the relation in which this stands to dancing. Yet in Hyperion’s letter to Diotima we already find a hint of what the answer might be. This hint takes the form of the caesura, marked in the text by a long dash and a harsh-sounding “yet” (doch), that separates his reflections on Sprache—not merely language, but, more specifically, speech—from writing, from “what I actually wanted to write to you”; and indeed a writing that announces that he has found a labor for himself in the form of foreign service. The transition from activity to labor, the canalizing of the overflow of the source, is fundamentally the transition from speech to writing. In the labor of writing the overflow of language can come to word by canalizing, and thus re-creating, a world for itself. Writing is the world-belaboring word. In canalizing the world, it creates a frame and place for the overflow of life and language. This, of course, recalls Hyperion’s understanding of the state as the fence around the garden of life. The labor of writing is indeed the highest form of political engagement, and thus—we recall Heraclites’s saying that the “people must fight for the law as if for a wall”—the nomos as the written law, the law that is legislated and preserved, is what founds the city and preserves it as the space of openness.71 In light of this account of labor, the stillness and quiet of the business or occupation now gains new significance as a silence of language that is not the mere dumbness of an inert, lifeless material but rather a state in which language itself flows so smoothly that it never gets tangled up in itself, never bursts at the seams that hold it in, and thus never has to seek after work and words. It is not for nothing that Hyperion likens idle chatter (Plauderei) to the song of birds in May. Nature itself, when most at ease and graceful, is a bubbling, lulling babble. Let us finally observe that like business, labor appears in different forms and with different qualifications. Thus Hyperion opposes the great labor to a mere warding off of flies (FA 11:769). Whereas the great labor brings forth the living, or indeed the world as the site of life and the collaboration of human beings and nature, the paltry work merely defends 71 Heraclitus, frag. B44 Diels-Kranz: “machesthai chrē dēmon huper tou nomou hokōsper teicheos.”

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

172



Political Personae

the decaying remnants of life against the parasites that would cause its further decay. Likewise the free labor is opposed to the labor of the bungler (Stümperarbeit), not only because the latter is done from necessity but because, lacking a sense for the beautiful and its place within the entire earthly business, it remains crippled, fragmentary, and thus, however useful it may be, ultimately fruitless and vain (FA 11:775). The free labor, by contrast, itself opens up a free state and stead for the beautiful as what is highest. Labor finds repose and satisfaction in beauty, without which it is both vain and without cease. Still, the end at which labor aims is not beauty itself but the festival: “It was so clear how everything living desires more than its daily meal, how also the bird has its festival and the animal too” (FA 11:640). The festival, which belongs not only to the human being as zōon logon echon (a living being having language) but to other animals as well, is not mere rest, nor is it some special form of activity. Rather, it is an excessive moment—evident above all in the flight of birds—not reducible to the measure of utility and purpose. It is a kind of play and playfulness, the freedom of movement in a joint. We could speak of this as pleasure, but only if we understand pleasure as an exuberant excess of life.72

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

3.7 Hyperion’s Complicity with Nemesis The political personae that appear in the first volume tried to act politically by acting in and toward history, but they could not. Their action, remaining organized around a telos, necessarily failed to comply with history’s gesture. This itself was their hamartia, their tragic errancy. Labor, by contrast, involves a mode of political action and existence that, no longer subordinated to the specific gesture of the telos, is purely gestural. Rather than creating the polis as finished work, it organizes flows, directs forces, canalizes, and thus it doesn’t matter that a world, indeed a ruined world, already exists. Labor need neither search for a new and purely receptive material, nor clear away the old order through revolutionary violence. Since, rather than imposing form on a purely receptive matter, it canalizes, furrows, and sows, it can act toward a world that has already received historical contour and determination; a world that, already plowed and worked over, has lost its original pure receptivity. Moreover, such labor itself enacts the gesture of history, the overflowing and ebbing of the source. Whereas we already spoke earlier of the garden as the site 72 This suggests Aristotle’s understanding of pleasure in the Nicomachean Ethics as what “perfects” activity, though not as an underlying disposition but as an end that comes into being in addition to what is already there (ouch hōs hē hexis enuparchousa, all’ hōs epigignomenon ti telos), like the hōra—“bloom of youth,” “the springtime of life,” “fitting time”—for those who are in their prime (1174b).

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.



Political Personae



173

of the collaboration of human beings and nature, in which the ferment of life declines into a certain stillness and repose, it now becomes clear that the essence of such collaboration is labor itself, and that, in turn, true labor is always such a collaboration. Yet Hyperion’s and Alabanda’s labor, documented in the second volume, also issues in catastrophe. Their labor, this suggests, is not what it seems; indeed, it itself does not suffice as labor. And since Diotima’s second summons, in turn, itself involves a correction of this tragic errancy, it is imperative to understand its nature and source. The labor of which we speak is not only the labor of both friends but is their communal and common labor, structured by their mutual friendship and their almost chivalric submission to Diotima. Both are engaged in a great and free work, just as both labor beneath the illuminating rays of Diotima’s beauty. Nevertheless, their labor assumes quite different forms. Alabanda’s is modern in character: a living labor that tests (erprüfen) nature, struggling with the ocean and air and all the elements, putting nature on trial, experimenting with it, and then subjecting it to his will (FA 11:712). It is, in essence, the patient, probing manner of the new scientific method, which dominates nature by submitting to its law and finding out its secrets. Hyperion’s labor, by contrast, inclines toward inspiration and enthusiasm. It demands inspiration: the rejuvenation of the spirit (Geist) through the images of those who, like Diotima, offer a vision of beauty as the ground and origin of all Being. Only then does heavenly fire drive it to its deeds; only then is it given its highest goal. This highest goal, moreover, is nothing small and partial, consumed with the care for particulars and involving mere artifice; not a mere reworking of particular beings that fails to get to the bottom of things—to the spirit (Geist) itself, the whole that is the origin of all parts. Rather, it is the revelation of the bliss and rapture of genius (des Genius Wonne); the moment when “all eyes transform themselves into triumphal arches” and when “the human spirit, long absent, gleams forth from all its errors and suffering and, joyous in victory, greets the paternal aether.” Such labor, in other words, consists in the movement of the self-realization of the human spirit, which is first awakened to the fullness of its possibilities through an image that serves as an emissary from its origins in the aether—the universal spirit or spirit as such—and ends with its reunion with that from which it sprang (FA 11:720). While this enthusiastic labor still requires actual instances of laboring, these only provide the mediation between its original inspiration and its final consummation, both of which are concerned not with partial things but only with spirit itself. It cares for and takes heed of the spirit, and not by tending it to the exclusion of everything else but by bringing even the most everyday into a relation to it, extending to all things the rejuvenation that begins with the human spirit. Determined as what they are

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

174



Political Personae

through their isolation from the whole, all things must become “fundamentally different [von Grund aus anders].” They must not merely be turned from this into that through artifice, granting temporary relief and new direction to a human care ensnared in particulars, but transformed into something otherwise than they were in the most fundamental way: namely by restoring them to the ground of their being, so that they arise from this ground and testify, in their determinate existence, to the origin of what they are. This understanding of labor plays itself out in Hyperion’s military command. It might seem that Hyperion’s military failures result simply from his naiveté. Yet he never exactly fails to grasp the difficulty of the task he faces. In fact he sees quite clearly that the mountain-dwelling folk is full of “vengeful force,” lying like a “silent thunder cloud” about to explode with violent energy, waiting only for the “storm wind”—the historical event—that will drive it to unleash itself. Yet if he, no less than Alabanda, senses that the people exists as a wild, raw natural force—an elemental power—Hyperion, rather than trying to exploit a knowledge of the fallen nature of his charges and gaining their submission by intriguing against human frailty and baseness, depends purely on the power of inspiration. It is as though Plato’s Ion had actually assumed the task of generalship for which he supposed himself fit. Hyperion is confident that a moment of inspiration, a single word from the heart—literally breathing the breath of god among them—will be enough to tame the wildness of raw nature. For this, he is sure, scorns reason, and yet it stands in league with inspiration (Begeisterung) (FA 11:711). He has his men—“my hoard [mein Haufe]” as he writes to Diotima—gather around him, rejoicing in the honor that young and old show to him and becoming more intimate (vertrauter) with them, hearing their sorrowful tales, melting their hearts with the talk of better days and entrancing them with the “proud picture of the nascent free state” (FA 11:721). He sees an amazing transformation take place: “O Diotima! thus to see how hopes soften rigid nature and all their pulses beat more powerfully and the darkened forehead blossoms and gleams with projects and designs [Entwürfe].” Only after inspiring them, opening their eyes to the future, does he turn to training their bodies in military formations and weaponry, stressing lightning-like transitions between dispersed and concentrated formations (FA 11:722). Significantly, he refers to these exercises as a weapon dance (Waffentanz), suggesting that his inspired labor consists fundamentally in imparting a dance-like order to the vengeful, chaotic forces of raw nature.73 The version of the letter 73 The weapon dance, or pyrrhic dance as it was known, was an important institution in Ancient Greece. Plato’s Laws divides serious dances into dances of war and dances of peace (814e–815a). Regarding the Greek weapon dance as a

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,



Political Personae



175

from the preliminary stage of the final version lays even more stress on the affinity between dance and the art of war:

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

After that I train them in weapons until midday. Since our studies in Smyrna, Alabanda has thought much about the art of war, and in particular he has summarized the defenses and movements of the armed forces, insofar as they orient themselves according to the topology [Form] of the region and the forces and positions of the enemy, in a few powerful [kräftig] rules, and thus it has been made easy for my understanding to master this material. And it is really beautiful, Diotima, it is more serious and more majestic than dance, when all the terrible forces form themselves into One force [wenn all’ die furchtbaren Kräfte so zu Einer Kraft sich bilden] which, [while remaining] nevertheless the same [immerhin dieselbe], takes on all the forms, and in the lightning quickness in which it works nevertheless always remains calm [still] and correct. Incidentally, the genuine greatness that is manifest in this art is, to be sure, first visible when something is at stake [wenn es gilt]. (FA 11:565)

The art of war appears as the art of choreographing the movement of bodies. While more “serious” and “majestic” than the dance, these very predicates suggest that it differs in the importance and grandeur of its object rather than in its formal properties. Formally analogous, both involve the “forces forming themselves into One force”: a confluence or collaboration of forces that gathers them together into a unity without denying their original multiplicity. Yet there is a tension between Hyperion’s inspirational leadership, which regards the soldiers as human beings blessed with a spark of divinity, and the techniques of military discipline learned from Alabanda, which conceives of them in modern fashion as mere machines.74 If Hyperion tries to communicate Alabanda’s military discipline to Diotima by likening it to dance, it is not just to soften it for her more “delicate” sensibility but because dance offers a way of mediating this opposition: by likening military discipline to dance, he suggests that the movement of bodies in war can itself anticipate a beautiful choric ordering of society. The art of war transforms dance into something more “serious and majestic”: the prefiguration of social reality. rite of manhood, see Lonsdale 1993, 137–68. Lonsdale argues, however, that the weapon dance, closely aligned with a fertility rite, itself undermines Plato’s opposition between civic and Bacchic dance (168). 74 This suggests Foucault’s account of the change in the understanding of what it means to be a soldier that takes place between the seventeenth and eighteenth century (Foucault 1995, 135–36).

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

176



Political Personae

The catastrophic failure of both Alabanda’s and Hyperion’s labor follows from the failure of this synthesis: the identification of war and dance cannot hold. A passage in the preliminary stage of the final version, left out from the final version itself, gives insight into the nature of this failure:

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

I write to you, my Notara. I cannot write to Diotima. The wolf’s nature has once again had a good feast [Die Wolfsnatur hat einmal wieder sich gütlich gethan]. Bestiality has played its games, and it’s over with my projects [Projecten]. I should be still; I should be ashamed; why have I taken it up with this shaggy race: I got what I deserved; why did I approach these bears in order to teach them to dance like human beings! (FA 11:567)

His military failure is at root a failure of dance training, of choreography. His choreographic “projects” shattered against the bestial, wolf-like nature of his subjects. The wolf nature of man, the loup-garou hidden inside the human being, resists dance. For indeed, while the human body, like a bear’s, can be made to dance, or at least made to seem like it is dancing, the bestial, untamed and untamable, inner nature remains untransformed; it cannot be made to act harmoniously—with choric grace—when it matters. When the conflict ensues, when something is finally at stake, some of his troops break rank and, seeking only their own gain, terrorize the local population. The figure of dance does not, or at least not yet, suffice to reconcile the paradoxes in man—the tension between the sovereign, divine principle and his bestial, sensual nature—and provide the foundation for political community.75 Given that both Alabanda’s and Hyperion’s labor fail, and indeed fail to truly constitute themselves as labor, since both remain essentially one-sided, we may hope to find the common cause of their common catastrophe in the horizon and presuppositions shared by both. Both are structured through the opposition of form and material, though in the one the material is an element which is probed and dominated, while in the other it is the raw, vengeful forces of nature that must be formed and guided by spirit. Either way, the condition of labor is the opposition, rather than the deeper union, of these two. And it is precisely the exteriority of form to matter—that form is always imposed as if from outside, as it were violently, on matter—that is responsible for the failure of this labor

75 Regarding the wolf-man as political metaphor, echoed in the Hobbesian homo hominis lupus (man is a wolf to man), see Agamben 1998, 104–11. This is also the subject of what were among Derrida’s final seminars at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences), which include a penetrating critique of Agamben (Derrida 2009, 305–34).

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.



Political Personae



177

and of a politics grounded in it. The wolf nature of man, as it were, will demand a wolf-like sovereign.76 This is most evident with Hyperion’s catastrophe. He not only fails to realize Greek independence but ends up unleashing forces of chaos and brute violence: “Our people have plundered and murdered indiscriminately, and our brothers, the Greeks in Misistra, the innocent, have been struck dead or wander around helplessly, and their dead, miserable mien calls upon heaven and earth to wreak vengeance against the barbarians at whose pinnacle I stood” (FA 11:727). He becomes what he least wished to become—an agent of the League of Nemesis—validating their eerie claim that everyone, regardless of who they are and what they do, serves them. This is not a surprising outcome.77 Indeed, when Hyperion uses the word vengeful (rächerisch) to characterize the raw nature of the masses, he suggests a deep affinity between the League of Nemesis and his own Bund. Nemesis is herself the goddess of retribution and rightful vengeance, and thus Hyperion’s union of raw nature and inspiration is itself a league of vengeance. Here, the violence of the material involves a force, power, and hence form—pure matter would, after all, be merely passive—that, belonging to matter, opposes the violence that forms it from the outside. The concept of matter, as strictly contrasted with and yet receptive of form, derives from an “abstract,” ultimately groundless distinction between two different kinds of force or violence, and hence two different kinds of form. For it is only when a boundary between inner and outer has already taken form that a distinction can then be drawn between the power of self-formation through which matter has the qualities that it already possesses as this determinate matter, and the form imposed violently from without. Yet whereas the other league had bound itself to the chaos of “raw nature” for no other end than chaos itself and its enjoyment, Hyperion tries to bind nemesis to himself for the sake of rejuvenating time and creating a new free state. Precisely this, however, is impossible for a labor that continues to regard matter as something exterior to its own act of form-giving.78 76 Agamben 1995, 104–7. 77 Significantly, Alabanda and Hyperion are fighting first of all for Sparta, suggesting that they lack both patience and a sense for the highest. Diotima, in her second to last letter, recalls Hyperion to the thought of Athens (FA 11:744). 78 From the perspective of the insights gained as he narrates, Hyperion clearly begins to recognize this deeper complicity between his and Alabanda’s relation to the past and the attitude of the League of Nemesis. Describing their friendship, he writes that their thoughts, like emissaries of Nemesis, wandered over the earth and purified it, until there was no trace of any curse (FA 11:608). And indeed when Hyperion, after receiving Alabanda’s letter, announces his intention to join in the fight for independence, Diotima calls out: “O you violent ones! . . . who are so quick to go to extremes, think of Nemesis” (FA 11:700).

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

178



Political Personae

We discover a similarly errant conception of labor in Diotima’s first summons, when she calls on Hyperion to look at the “good, childish Greeks” who console themselves over the shameful violence (Gewalt) to which they are subject with a merry dance and a holy fairy tale. Here, we remember, dance reveals nothing but the malleability of the material; its openness toward being stamped with a form external to itself. Perhaps then it is precisely this concept of action as a labor upon a passive material, itself leading to such catastrophic issue, that Diotima will correct with her second summons by giving the proper turn to the dance. The dance that remains rooted in the possibility of such molding could only come into being in the weapon dance, and then in chaos.

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

* * * The challenge of thinking labor beyond a hylomorphic paradigm has to do, concretely, with the way in which labor is embodied. If the localization of action in the body itself depends on the exteriority of the relation of form to matter, on the opposition of the laboring body to the belabored world, then an embodied labor could not but fail. The true site of labor, this suggests, can no longer be the body in its integrity as agent. Nor, however, could labor be completely disembodied—completely abstracted from the body, and indeed the human body as a privileged site. For then it would dissolve into the general business and busyness of nature, no longer serving as the site of political intervention and the radical transformation of the given. A laboring body is needed, yet it can no longer be embodied as an agent—as the concentrated site of action against the world. Rather, it must assume a different form and possess a different integrity. The root cause of catastrophe, this suggests, is the way Hyperion and Alabanda embody labor. And perhaps nothing less than the possibility of this new body is at stake in Diotima’s second invocation of the dance. In the next chapter I will attempt to develop, through a reading of Diotima’s second summons, the possibilities of this new body and new body politics. This will bring into view a constellation that up till now has only been intimated. This new body—distracted, dispersed, scattered into the metabolism of nature, yet able to find measure and balance within itself—is the body of the virtuosic dancer.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

4: The Politics of Life

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

A

4.1 Diotima

ppearing but once in all of Greek literature, the name Diotima inscribes a moment of pure invention into the Symposium, a text which, like all of Plato’s dialogues, offers itself as the record of an actual conversation. Diotima is the priestess and prophetess (she is from Mantineia, suggesting the Greek word for prophecy) who teaches Socrates the doctrine of love.1 Eros, she explains, is not a god but a spirit residing between the gods and mortals, interpreting and conveying human things to the gods and divine things to humans, and thus supplementing both, such that “the whole is itself bound together in itself.”2 The child of both resourcefulness (Poros) and want (Penia), an attendant to Aphrodite, Eros is ugly, shoeless, and homeless. Still, he strives after beauty with all his great cunning. Yet beauty is itself only the means to fulfill a deeper desire, the desire to have good things always in one’s possession; it is the medium in which to bring forth the good things with which one is pregnant. Love does not belong to human beings alone; all living beings live erotically, striving to overcome the limit of mortality by propagating their species—and they indeed dwell on earth through this unsettling striving. Yet human beings are erotic in a special and emphatic sense, not just because they are more aware of their mortality, more open to the beautiful, but above all because the good that they pursue is not determined by their nature. Rather, it is of their very nature to be torn between fundamentally different goods and ways of immortalizing themselves through their offspring, and indeed to have their nature itself in question and at stake, not given in advance but decided through the good

1 While there are other, more contemporaneous, points of reference for this name—for example, it is the name Hemsterhuis gave to his friend and correspondent Princess Gallitzin—these all lead back to Plato’s dialogue; Regarding the importance of the Symposium for Hölderlin in the composition of Hyperion, see Franz 1992–93, 125–27 and Lampenscherf 1992–93, 128–51. Franz rightly stresses that Plato’s Eros doesn’t involve sympathy between similar beings but a relation between beings that are radically unequal; Firges (2010, 49–50), arguing for the centrality of the theme of Eros, claims that Hölderlin synthesizes and transforms the doctrines of Plato and Spinoza. 2 Plato, Symposium 202d–e.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

180 T he Politics of Life 

that they pursue.3 As the instructor in love, and thus also in philosophy as the love of wisdom, Diotima’s task is to show Socrates the path toward the highest object of erotic desire, the “beauty itself,” “pure” and “unmixed” and “not filled up with human bodies and colors and much other mortal waste.”4 She teaches humans, whose very nature is to transcend their given nature, the highest goal of their striving. This, precisely because it is most beyond, allows them to become, in seeking it, what they most truly are. This suggests the critical point where Hölderlin’s transformative reading of the Symposium will intervene.5 Diotima, Socrates’s fictional teacher, is included within Platonic doctrine only in her exclusion and exteriority, and, moreover, her own ambiguous, contradictory position doubles the ambiguous status of love. For if love can be included in the text of Plato to mediate between the human and divine, establishing the possibility of a relation to the truth as pure presence, love’s transcendence, its hyperbolic tendency, stresses the limits of philosophical discourse. Love always remains a love of other, dangerous things, wagering itself beyond the given objects of its love. As much as philosophy will try to defend its own possibility by situating every other form of love within a hierarchy that leads up toward that One thing (“beauty itself,” “pure” and “unmixed”) that is truly worthy of being loved, love itself, leaping beyond every object—and even the most perfect—can never be ordered and contained. There thus remains a subversive residue in Plato’s doctrine of love. The Jena romantics tried to think through this subversive potential of Eros, and in many respects their theories of love are richer and more fleshed out than Hölderlin’s. One need only think of Friedrich Schlegel’s Lucinde or Novalis’s Heinrich von Ofterdingen. Yet by returning to the Symposium and to the inclusion of Diotima in Plato’s philosophy as an irreducible moment of exteriority, Hölderlin’s Hyperion goes further than the romantics in thinking through love’s philosophical implications. Eros not only challenges the sterility of reason, but is the site in which a rethinking of truth becomes possible. 3 This basic motif of Renaissance Platonism, which continued to exert influence in Germany into the eighteenth century, is exemplified in the writings of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, who draws on the treatment of the myth of Prometheus in Plato’s Protagoras to conclude that man is of an essentially protean nature (Pico della Mirandola 1948, 224–25). 4 Plato, Symposium 211e. 5 For a contrasting account of the role of the Symposium in Hyperion, see Billings 2010. Billings discovers in Hyperion’s reception of the Symposium the model for an “erotics of reception” in which the reflection on alterity “establishes a dialectic of lack and resource that leads to a productive relation to antiquity” (22).

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The Politics of Life



181

Hölderlin names Diotima for the first time in Hyperion’s Youth, which he wrote between January and August of the year 1795, the month when he was offered the position of Hofmeister (the principal tutor in charge of a child’s education) for the Gontard household, where he entered into service in January of the next year.6 Hyperion’s Youth describes the protagonist’s encounter with a man—later we learn he is Diotima’s father—who recounts the myth of love’s birth. Thus it suggests an attempt to repeat Diotima’s doctrine of Eros, situating it in the modern world. Diotima appears principally as a presaging or presentiment (Ahndung—a now obsolete form of Ahnung) of the ideal. The narrator is sustained through the tempests of life by his childhood vision of her, a vision darkly revealing the ideal of his eternal existence. This logic of the ideal, moreover, functions teleologically. At the end of his life, Hyperion, having once dimly sensed the ideal in her physical presence, finally “honors [it] as truth,” grasping it not just aesthetically but theoretically (FA 10:222). This odd expression, “honors as truth,” suggests that the teleological framework is itself embedded within a metaphysical conception of truth as sensate representation of an insensate idea. Diotima assumes an almost purely passive function. She need not do or say anything but is simply the beloved object whose sensate beauty inflames the soul, allowing it to anticipate in a single body’s appearance the beautiful itself, and thus impels it toward purely noetic contemplation. Yet even here a certain critical ambiguity is at work in this conception of the truth. For the ultimate experience of the truth is not just a purely intellectual intuition, as in Plato, but a relation of affect. There is no truth beyond what is honored as true, and it is the affect, attitude, or stance of honoring that secures the truth of that which is experienced only dimly through the senses. Thus one discovers, in what seems little more than a repetition of the Platonic theory of eros, the intervention of a different, and indeed fundamentally modern, perspective. It is not the ideal that saves the phenomena, but the realm of the senses saves itself by discovering in their midst that which could be honored as truth. The ideal is not set off absolutely from the immanent plane of sensuous appearance but is characterized only relatively; only through an appearance that differs from other appearances but nevertheless remains mere appearance. Diotima’s speech in the Symposium at the same time involves a subtle but profound revision of the conception of poiēsis. The beginning seems to conceive of poiēsis as an act of creation that is grounded only in negativity, in the void. Penia (Poverty)—the very one who is without resource, a sort of nothingness and mere lack—proves most resourceful when she sleeps with Poros, who is no longer so full of schemes and strategies when

6

For the history of the genesis of Hyperion, see GSA 3:296–335.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

182 T he Politics of Life 

she finds him passed out in the garden from drink.7 Yet toward the end of Diotima’s speech, poiēsis loses this more original productivity of a creatio ex nihilo, having been reduced to a sort of mimesis. The beautiful is not only the medium or element of creation but provides the model. Sensuous beauty is merely the imitation and illusion (eidōlon) of the truly beautiful.8 Thus, to perform truly virtuous deeds, it is necessary to comprehend beauty itself (auto to kalon), pure (katharos) and unmixed (amiktos).9 A reciprocal relationship between the mortal and the divine is thus no longer possible; the divine becomes the form that must impose itself tyrannically on reality, and it is perhaps all too understandable if the mortal in turn withdraws from this tyranny and tries to find happiness in the fulfillment of its own laws. Poiēsis becomes mimēsis to the degree that the beloved is objectified as a beautiful thing existing separately from the lover and the affects and attitudes of love. Hölderlin’s retelling of Diotima’s myth in Hyperion’s Youth suggests he read it in this way. Thus he translates Poros as Überfluß (overflow, surplus) while stressing that Penia, translated Bedürfnis, is not herself divine—a point of greatest consequence for the interpretation of the Symposium. No less significant are Hyperion’s deviations from the erotics of the Symposium. The Symposium’s famous “ladder of love” begins with the human embodiment of beauty but then leads upward through a process of generalization and spiritualization to the absolutely pure experience of the beautiful in itself.10 By changing Socrates’s Diotima from a teacher of erotics in the abstract to a living embodiment of beauty, displacing the erotic energy of the father (who now takes on Socrates’s role of repeating the speech of Diotima) onto the daughter, Hölderlin transforms the nature of beauty. Beauty still leads up toward the heavens, but only through the (perhaps infinite) detour of nature. Or indeed, nature is itself, in its pulse and metabolism and labyrinthine dance—in its hyperbolic gestures—“die ewige Schönheit,” eternal beauty (FA 11:651). The implications of this shift are tremendous, striking at the heart of Platonism: beauty now is precisely what cannot be abstracted from its embodiment. We cannot hope to experience beauty in an unworldly purity but only in the flux and movements of nature, and precisely because beauty is not what is absolutely simple but consists, as Hyperion himself clearly states in the final version, in the Heraclitean hen diapheron heautōi (FA 11:681). If, however, the site of beauty is no longer the male body, expressing a soul ripe for virtuous deeds, but the female body—if beauty is fundamentally the beauty of the womb, of nature in its changeableness 7 Plato, Symposium 203b–e. 8 Ibid., 212a. 9 Ibid., 211d–e. 10 Ibid., 210b–211e.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The Politics of Life



183

and productivity; if, indeed, it is not Poros, the sleeping beloved, who is beautiful but Penia, then it would no longer be possible to reduce poiēsis to mimēsis. Beauty is no longer to be found in an object outside of and beyond but in the creative act itself, which produces the beautiful, and thus also the divine, through the sheer excess of its desire. The objectification of beauty in the body of Diotima is no longer a symbol or idea; it does not express, in a finite and palpable form, an infinite and ideal beauty. Instead it is a trace or remnant of a beauty that belongs to sublime materiality itself. Returning now to that odd formulation “honor as true,” we get our first sense for a new discourse of truth emerging at the periphery of Hölderlin’s text. To honor as true is not simply affect but attitude. It is to assume a stance toward a certain experience; to relate to a certain experience as a critical experience, allowing other experiences to gather around it and be gathered together through it, in such a way that this experience would coalesce and intensify into the truth of a more general field of experiences. In the first volume of the final version of Hyperion, which Hölderlin worked on while employed at the Gontard family and in love with Susette, the phrase “priestess of love” disappears, together with the more obvious signs of Plato’s dialogue. Yet while receding deeper beneath the surface of the text, the Symposium rules more powerfully from within, as though Hölderlin could engage more deeply with the dialogue only when no longer hanging on its words and images. The beginning of the first letter hints at this transformation—“The dear patriotic soil again gives me joy [Freude] and sorrow [Laid]” (FA 11:583). These words recall the final moment of the Symposium, when Socrates talks with Agathon and Aristophanes into the dawn of the next day, “driving them to agree that it could belong in essence to the same man to know how to make a tragedy and a comedy.”11 In the poem “The Rhine,” Hölderlin alludes to this passage from the Symposium: “A wise man, yet, was able/ to remain clear headed at the symposium / from noon up into midnight/ and till the morning gleamed” (GSA 2.1:148). This alludes not only to Socrates’s famed sobriety but also to how, by hinting at the possibility of a poetics of tonal alternation, he anticipated the passage from ancient to modern poetry. If Hyperion’s Youth had merely sought to repeat and renew Plato’s doctrine, the final version takes its departure from a moment at the end of the Symposium that itself seems to lead beyond the horizon of Greek thought, anticipating what is among the most characteristic aspects of the modern age—the intertwinement of mourning and joy.12 Telling, in this regard, is the name of Diotima’s island—Kalaurea—literally, “beautiful 11 Plato, Symposium 223d. 12 See also the ode “Socrates and Alcibiades” (GSA 1.1:260).

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

184 T he Politics of Life 

air.” Air itself, the “sister of spirit,” mediates between heaven and earth (FA 11:641). It is of its essence erotic, lovely. But perhaps most important is that Hölderlin’s Diotima no longer simply embodies Eros as the beloved and the beautiful but emulates the priestess from whom she takes her name.13 A poem written in Homburg in the early months of 1800 expresses with clarity this new aspect. The first two strophes read: Decline fair sun, they regarded Yours but little, they knew you not, holy one, For toilless and still you arose Over the toilful. For me, you rise and set in a friendly way, o light! And my eye recognizes you well, lordly one! For I learned to love divine stillness When Diotima healed my senses. [Geh unter, schöne Sonne, sie achteten Nur wenig dein, sie kannten dich, Heilge, nicht, Denn mühelos und stille bist du Über den mühsamen aufgegangen.

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Mir gehst du freundlich unter und auf, o Licht! Und wohl erkennt mein Auge dich, herrliches! Denn göttlich stille ehren lernt’ ich Da Diotima den Sinn mir heilte.] (GSA 1.1: 314)

13 For a good summary of the scholarly approaches to Diotima, see Bassermann-Jordan 2004, 13–16. Both Ryan (1965, 111) and Aspetsberger (1971, 154) regard Diotima as the corporeal personification of beauty, and in general most readers of the novel take this more or less as a given. While Janz (1980–81) and Haberer (1991) offer more nuanced and critical accounts of the textual function of Diotima, they in a certain sense merely invert the standard interpretation, conceiving her no longer as an objective given but a subjective projection of Hyperion’s desires or needs; or in other words, they read her symptomatically. They still do not, however, recognize that her words outlive her death, and that these words offer an instruction to Hyperion that points beyond the horizon of his own philosophical understanding, and also in a sense points Hölderlin beyond his own philosophical perspective. Bassermann-Jordan’s (2004) own reading of the figure of Diotima also does not seem to allow this possibility, however; rather she seeks to clarify how the figure of Diotima represents beauty, arguing—oddly, it seems to me—that the lyrical invocations of Diotima succeed where the novel fails, such that the former must ultimately be understood in light of the latter (222).

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

The Politics of Life



185

Here Diotima’s nature appears kindred with the sun. Indeed, at the beginning of the third strophe, the empiricism of aesthetic intellectual intuition had already suggested a move away from a philosophical project of grounding, yet this move beyond philosophy was nevertheless conceived philosophically, through the abstractly articulated indication of a nonconceptual aesthetic experience that would condition the possibility of conceptual thought by granting an anticipation of the ideal. Likewise, in Hyperion’s Youth, the figure of Diotima merely serves as a means for articulating this doctrine. In the final version, by contrast, Diotima leads him beyond philosophy precisely by healing his senses and thus allowing them to be open to the constitutive experiences that ground philosophy as well as art, religion, and politics. The healed senses, as it were, are senses that have become capable of experiencing an experience that cannot be reduced to the so-called “primary” and “secondary” qualities but that is the experience of becoming open to possibilities of experience. Neither an anticipation nor an exemplification of an ideal posited by philosophy, she leads him beyond philosophy by imparting to him, or at least bringing him on the path toward, a different mode of openness to truth.

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

4.2 Diotima’s Path to Language Diotima’s first summons was spoken; her second is written, appearing in the conclusion of her last letter to Hyperion. Belonging to a longer exchange of letters between the lovers, this correspondence consists of two parts. The first set of letters, comprising much of the first book of the second volume, are presented to Bellarmin without intervening narration. These depict Hyperion’s time as a military leader, yet they focus not on the war itself but on his “more proper life,” his own inner existence and Diotima’s love for him (FA 11:709–10). Even though only two letters come from Diotima’s hand, we may still speak of a correspondence or exchange, since, at least at first, the letters seem to answer to each other. In the last four letters, the correspondence begins to dissolve; Hyperion has renounced his love for Diotima after telling her of his troops’ plundering and his enlistment in the Russian fleet. Indeed, the last of Hyperion’s letters answers not to her words but to her silence, yet even this, he tells her, is “also a language of your beautiful soul” (FA 11:732). The second set of letters, which appear in the second and last book of the second volume, are not clustered together but interwoven into and framed by the epistolary narration to Bellarmin, directly contributing to the unfolding action. Wounded in battle fighting beside the Russians and recovering under the care of Alabanda, Hyperion is reborn to life and, renouncing his own renunciation of love, decides to try to preempt the arrival of his last, valedictory letter to Diotima with yet another missive. Yet just as he sits down to write to her, Alabanda announces the arrival of

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

186 T he Politics of Life 

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

a letter from Diotima. We now learn that her own earlier letters failed to reach Hyperion (FA 11:742). He writes to her in response. Several pages of narration intervene, and when Hyperion receives another letter from Diotima, he has already lost his friend Alabanda, who, after telling the full story of his induction into the League of Nemesis, has gone off to meet his death. Arriving alongside a letter from Notara announcing her death, this letter, in every sense final, speaks of her dying. Here her final summons appears. Death, indeed, haunts and shadows these letters—as the silence of and absence of signs from the other; as the sickness of the author; and as an announcement of the resolve to abandon life and love and freely take death upon oneself. It even explicitly conditions their possibility.14 These inner tendencies of the epistolary novel become manifest above all in Diotima’s last letter, since here the letter itself survives its author, arriving at once as a testament of her life and a certification of her death.15 Diotima is the embodiment and exemplification of beauty—of a harmonious, still, effortless life—and hence the survival of her words beyond her death demonstrates how beauty, acting in the world beyond its immediate presence, can leave a testament and sign of itself even when it has disappeared from the world.16 Writing appears as that which holds on to the traces of lost presence.17 Especially telling in this regard are Diotima’s own reflections on how she became beredt, loquacious and eloquent; capable of describing Hyperion’s essence as well as her own, and hence of calling him to what is needed.18 This is what we might least expect of her, since she is characterized above all by her stillness and silence, her quiet labors and graceful movements.19 Earlier, indeed, Hyperion writes that he and Diotima “spoke very little together. One was ashamed of one’s language. One would like to become a tone and unite in a heavenly song” (FA 11:645).

14 Diotima’s death has been the object of several feminist readings of Hyperion, including Janz 1980–81, Rosolowski 1995, and Shin 2000. 15 As Ryan (1965) argues, the separation of Hyperion from Diotima is necessary to free him from dependence on the corporeal presence of her beauty. 16 See Hiller 2008, 41. 17 Shin (2000), drawing on Elisabeth Bronfen’s study of the aesthetics of the female body, suggests that while Hyperion’s representation of Diotima’s death, in his letters to Bellarmin, is the function of male fantasy, at another level the text restores Diotima’s agency by allowing her to stage her own death. By stressing the significance of Diotima’s dying words, which open up a perspective beyond the “idealistic” framework to which Hyperion (and Bellarmin) seems to ascribe, I likewise stress the ultimate agency of Diotima over her apparent passivity. 18 See Haberer 1988–89, 117–33. 19 For the significance of silence in Hyperion, see Siekmann 1980.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The Politics of Life



187

Her own path to writing is, significantly, the opposite of Hyperion’s. Whereas for Hyperion, as seen earlier, writing allows the overflowing life of inner, overripe activity to inscribe itself into the world by canalizing its terrain, suggesting a passage toward greater stillness, Diotima opposes her own dying to the Stoic restraint of Brutus’s wife, who died in utter silence. Diotima has “made many words” in the proximity of death, driven by an indefinite “it” to say many sorts of things, becoming eloquent in death in sharpest contrast with the stillness and quiet of her life (FA 11:766). Death moves her away from the busyness of nature as a whole and toward activity, bringing her to face herself in an individuation and separateness that sharply contradicts her previous oneness with all life. Whereas for those who are at first too ripe, life starts out excessively individuated, with its overflowing overripeness forced out of itself into the world and ultimately dissolving into the absolute, for Diotima death itself serves as a principle of individuation, paradoxically allowing her to feel herself most intensely in her individuality at the very moment when this individuality inclines most strongly toward its dissolution and dispersion in the whole. The following passage of her last letter, located a few pages before the words just cited, describes this inner transformation. With Hyperion’s departure there arose in her a “force in the spirit” and an “inner life, before which the life of the earth paled and disappeared like night lamps in dawn”—an inner, individuated life in the face of which the life of the earth fades into nothing (FA 11:763). Yet while she was filled with enthusiasm, even wishing to build a new temple to Apollo at Delphi, her “mortal limbs” nevertheless became ever more tired and “anguishing [ängstigende] heaviness” pulled her “inexorably down.” Or in other words: just as she begins to feel her own proper life force most intensely, she also feels the pull and gravity of her mortality and earthly nature, indeed of death itself. Thus she comes to feel the deepest separation from the still nature—above all, the world of flowers and plants—to which she was once so deeply joined that she scarcely felt herself in opposition to it or knew her own nature as separate from the whole. She was, in her own words, “a flower among flowers” in which “the forces of the earth and heaven came together peacefully” (FA 11:763). The life of nature to which she once belonged is, as such a meeting of heavenly and earthly forces, not without death or differentiation and yet nevertheless neither violent nor brutal. For life, with all its individuated forms, is so completely fenced in by death that it does not come up against it or feel it as its limit. It is a Frieden and Eingefriedensein—a peaceful fencing in—finding its most perfect expression in the life of plants and, above all else, flowers: fixed in one place, these do not wander but, like the oak trees, belong only to the heaven that feeds and raises them and the earth that bore them, though nevertheless they scatter in their efflorescence the seeds of new life into the wind. This is otherwise with human beings, since their

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

188 T he Politics of Life 

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

life, in its superfluity, is not held in by death as its limit but bursts at the seams of its own mortality and thus feels the convergence of forces, of life and death above all, as intense inner strife. What separates Diotima from the quiet company of flowers, making her a stranger in their midst, and thus inducts her into human loquaciousness, is feeling the strife of the elements within her. For the first time she feels herself to be human. The approach of her death is itself an Untergang—a going under—that leads her to the labors of the word. While Diotima’s second summons ultimately concerns the nature of language itself and above all of poetic language, a somewhat different problematic orients her final reflections, serving as the guiding thread, leading her to express herself in words. This takes form in her second to last letter to Hyperion, which, arriving just as he is about to write her to take back his prior renunciation of their love, prepares the ground for the last letter, itself an answer to the problem raised previously. While we must suppose from her last letter that she was already “wilting” as she wrote the second to last, she does not yet speak of, or ever seem exactly aware of, her own condition or even of herself. The foundation of her answer to the question she poses here, still ignorant of her own nature, will rest in her own intimacy with her death and the strife of forces within her. The letter begins with her speaking of Hyperion’s nature. While she does not yet know herself, she is able nevertheless to discern and name the most essential trait of Hyperion’s being. This happens principally in the following passage—the only one in the final version of Hyperion that is rendered entirely with spaced lettering. He whose entire soul has been injured [belaidiget] once as yours was injured no longer finds rest in single joys; he who, like you, has felt the insipid nothing [das fade Nichts] will only cheer himself in the highest spirit; he who has experienced death as you did will only recuperate among the gods (FA 11:743).

The nothing that Hyperion has felt is flat, dull, tasteless, insipid, or even, and with all the connotations of the slang, lame. It is a nothingness that leads sooner to nausea than fear: not a blackness pure like the night sky, allowing the lights of life to shine all the more splendidly, but the nothingness of the swamp—an absolute flatness without texture and distinction, in which everything is mixed and blended together into an undifferentiated ooze. Not the absence of life but its overabundance in formless ferment and decay. To experience the fade Nichts is, in other words, to experience death not as the dark border of life but rather as a contagion that has infected life from within.20 This suggests the German 20 See FA 11:631; FA 11: 632.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

The Politics of Life



189

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Baroque experience of the world as a creation abandoned by its creator, where, as in Andreas Gryphius’s poem “Es ist alles eitel” (All is vain, 1637), all human creations and deeds must submit to the ruinous effect of time.21 Yet for Hyperion, even the deepest experience of the fade Nichts is joined to both the hope and the need of the highest convalescence (Erholung) and cheering exhilaration (Erheitern). Just as the ruins seldom appear other than among laurel roses and evergreens, mourning is always followed by, or even simultaneous with, a joy of equal intensity.22 The insipid and bland nothing of all-leveling rot and decay is not simply death and ruin but the source and ground of life. Hyperion is, in this way, open to the gesture of history. Indeed, with his “first step into life” he felt (empfand) the entire fate of his time. Neither raw enough to cast it forth from himself, nor weak enough to wash it out with his tears, he felt this fate “so much in a single instant, so much in the smallest point, so quickly, so deeply,” with this feeling (Gefühl) ineradicably cleaving to him and becoming part of his nature (FA 11:744). The adverbial qualifications introduced with the German so are of great significance, for they suggest that he is not simply aware of suffering and misery and the like but of these things as compressed together into a single moment, into the turning point of history—the moment of reversal and interplay between ruination and origination. Or indeed that he descries this gesture of the dispatches of fate (Schicksal) and of history precisely in the antagonistic tensions underlying its movement. He feels what can only be felt through a feeling possessing both speed and depth—taking place essentially in time—since it is, as the inner movement of history, the movement of temporality itself, of revolutionary time. Precisely because he feels the fate of his time and indeed time as such in this way, he is also full of hope and pregnant with the future: “But at the same time you also seemed to me to be greater. You seemed to me a being full of secret violence (Gewalt), full of deep undeveloped meaning 21 Gryphius 1966, 5; Windfuhr (1957, 160–81), in “Allegorie und Mythos in Hölderlins Lyrik” (Allegory and Myth in Hölderlin’s Poetry), suggests that Hölderlin’s poetry is rooted in late Baroque allegory and that allegory plays a role throughout his poetic development. By restoring the shattered unity of “meaning” and “form,” Hölderlin attempts to reverse the process of “allegorization” in an allegorical age, turning mere emblems into living figures. Significantly, as Windfuhr’s reading suggests, Hölderlin, while trying to reverse allegorization, does not reject it in favor of the simple immediacy of the symbolic, untainted by emblematic signifiers. Rather, in this remythologization of allegory, the “skeletal” abstract emblem comes back to life by assuming a fullness of movement. 22 Writing about “Heimkunft,” Heidegger notes that “mourning itself only arises from ‘old’ joys” (HGA 4:19); Nancy’s (1993) essay “Hyperion’s Joy” constitutes the most penetrating analysis of this intertwinement of joy and mourning; See also Wirth 2007.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

190 T he Politics of Life 

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

(Bedeutung), a single hopeful youth. The one to whom fate speaks so loudly may also speak more loudly with fate, I said to myself; the more unfathomably he suffers, the more unfathomably mighty he is. From you, from you alone I hoped for all recovery [Genesung]” (FA 11:744). These reflections, which speak of the realization that came to Diotima while she and Hyperion were in Athens, offer a retrospective account of her first summons. Precisely because his mourning itself was mighty and hopeful, promising nothing less than the rejuvenation of Greece, she had to call him toward the world at the moment he felt defeated by the ruins and sought asylum in love, just as she now casts light on the wider prospects of this summons. She hoped, she tells him now, for nothing less than that he would have made the Greeks, and through Greeks mankind as a whole, into a “festival”—an abiding openness to the “quiet, constant inspiration of nature” (FA 11:745–46). The aporia addressed by her last letter consists in the fact that Hyperion, despite his grasp of history and his hopeful future-creating mightiness, met with catastrophic failure, achieving the opposite of what he had intended. Yet in her view this is not his failure but results from the people’s lack of the very capacity for cultivation to which, in her first summons, she had directed him. As she explains: “You led them to freedom and they thought of pilferage [Raub]. You led them victoriously into their old Lacedaemon and these monsters plundered” (FA 11:746). His failure is not so much a straying from her first summons as the result of this itself missing the mark in an essential way. Her second summons will correct the first by reinterpreting the relation between political activity and the capacity for cultivation.23 In the first summons, dance appeared, together with the sacred fairy tale, as evidence of the capacity for cultivation. It reappears in the second 23 In a feminist critique of Hyperion, Janz (1980–81) suggests that Diotima ends up banished to the role of an ideal image, and thus, even though she assumes consciousness both of herself and the difference between nature and history, this consciousness is not able to translate itself into any form of activity. Unlike the secondary male characters of Hyperion, who all retain a certain independence visà-vis Hyperion himself, for Diotima, her separation from him is identical with her death (142). I agree in many respects with Janz’s reading, yet I would also suggest that, through Diotima’s second summons, which itself outlives her death, Hölderlin attributes a “consciousness” to her that is superior to Hyperion’s—this indeed stands in need of correction—and precisely because it grasps the very possibility of effectual action. The figure of dance, which is not identified with Diotima—as if to turn her into an ideal image of the graceful dancing woman—but is, rather, “put in her mouth,” is crucial to this: qua dance mistress and choreographer, Diotima not only resists the objectifying gaze that would turn her into a mere “spectacle,” but also figures a new form of human agency and political community.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

The Politics of Life



191

summons, yet now it no longer merely refers to a concrete human practice but identifies how human beings exist in the world. In correcting her first summons, Diotima insists all the more emphatically on dance as the central figure for and gesture of political life. What first appeared as a merely naive expression of the still uncorrupted life of people, and then briefly flashed into view as the heroic weapon dance (Waffentanz), is now reconceived as a figure for the reconciliation of human beings and nature. Moreover, it suggests how this reconciliation can be understood as a more concretely articulated mode of political existence rather than a merely abstract speculative postulate.

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

4.3 The Renunciation of a Politics of the Heroic Deed Hyperion transcribes Diotima’s last letter in a sequence of sections, each separated from the next with the word “continuation.” These caesurae not only articulate the letter into a series of moments of increasing intensity but also suggest that neither its original authoring nor its transcription was continuous but was interrupted by intervals when first Diotima, and then Hyperion, reflected and absorbed their content. Diotima’s second summons occupies the last of these sections, and its vast importance is evident: not only is it truly her last word, but an even greater chasm divides it from what comes before. Diotima ends her reflections on her newfound eloquence with a seemingly harsh abstention from language: “Enough!” (FA 11:766). This refusal of language in its flowing excess—of rhetorical eloquence—casts into relief the beginning of the next and last section: “But one thing I must still say to you.” This one thing is her innermost word—the thought that can perhaps only be expressed through her eloquence and yet is not language in its surplus but, to recall an image from before, the pearl sunken in language’s depths. What is this one thing and one word—the culmination of all her other words, and perhaps even of all the words of Hyperion? The passage in its entirety reads: Only one thing more must I say to you. You would have to perish, you would have to despair, yet the spirit will save you. No laurel will console you and no myrtle wreath; the Olympus will [console you], that, living, present, blossoms around all your senses in eternal youth. The beautiful world is your Olympus; in this you will live, and with the holy beings [Wesen] of the world, with the gods of nature, with these you will be joyous. O be welcome, you who are good and true! You deeply missed, misconstrued [verkannt] children and eldest ones! Sun and earth and aether with all the living souls that play around you, that you

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

192 T he Politics of Life 

play around, in eternal love! O take the all-trying [allesversuchend] humans, take the refugee back into the family of the gods, accept them into the home of nature from which they absconded [aus der sie entwichen]— You know this word, Hyperion! You began it in me. You will complete it in yourself and only then will rest. I have enough in this [ich habe genug daran] to die joyously as a Greek girl. The poor ones who know nothing but their needy machination [Machtwerk]; who only serve necessity and spurn genius, and honor you not, childlike life of nature! These may have fear before death. Their yoke has become their world; they do not know anything better than their servitude; [they] shrink from the divine freedom that death gives us! But not I! I’ve raised myself above the piecework that human hands have made, I have felt it, the life of nature that is higher than all thoughts . . . This is not like a market day where the people run together and make noise and go asunder! No! By the spirit that unites us, by the spirit of God that is particular to each and common to all [der jedem eigen ist und allen gemein]! No! No! In the league of nature fidelity [Treue] is not a dream. We separate from one another only in order to be more intimately one, more divinely at peace with everything, with ourselves. We die in order to live. I will be; I do not ask what I will become. To be, to live, that is enough, that is the honor of the gods, and therefore everything living is equal [und darum ist sich alles gleich, was nur ein Leben ist] in the divine world, and in it there are no masters and slaves. The natural beings [die Naturen] live around one another like lovers; they have everything in common, spirit, joy, and eternal youth. The stars have chosen constancy, in the calm fullness of life they forever glide past [wallen] and know not age. We exhibit in alternation the perfected [Wir stellen im Wechsel das Vollendete dar]; in wandering, changing melodies we divide the great accords of joy. Like harp players around the thrones of the oldest, we live, ourselves divine, around the still gods of the world, with the fleeting [flüchtig] song of life we soothe [mildern] the blessed earnest of the sun god and the others. Look up into the world! Is it not like a wandering triumphal parade, where nature celebrates the eternal victory over all corruption? and doesn’t life, for the sake of [its] glorification, lead death along with itself in golden chains, just as the general once led the captured kings? And we, we are like the virgins and youths, who, with dance and song, in alternating figures and tones, escort the majestic parade. Let me be silent. To say more would be too much. We will indeed meet again.—

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

The Politics of Life



193

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Mourning youth! Soon, soon you will be happier. Your laurel has not yet ripened, and your myrtles have wilted, for you should be a priest of divine nature, and your poetic days are already germinating [und die dichterischen Tage keimen dir schon]. (FA 11:766–68)

In the course of this book, I’ve followed out many different threads: dance, politics, writing, temporality and history, the relation of human beings to nature. This passage draws the threads together into a single knot, illuminating the constellation of motifs constituting the choreographic project of Hölderlin’s poetics. Because of its vast importance, it is necessary to go through it line by line, slowly unwrapping the argument developed with such pithy force in the space of a few paragraphs, without either being carried away by its hyperbolic style or regarding this style as nothing more than a veil covering the genuine content. “You would have to perish, you would have to despair, yet the spirit will save you.” This states the nature of Diotima’s “one thing”: the need for splitting apart (Entzweiung) and going under, both of which stand in an intimate connection with the salvation through spirit. The One needs the descent and declension into multiplicity and yet will be saved by spirit as the highest unifying principle. This happens not simply through its dissolution into the absolute but by being held back from its declension into the outermost chaos—its absolute dispersal—and held toward the One. The individual—Du (Thou)—declines into plurality and yet is saved as itself. Yet this apparently dialectical movement between unity and plurality isn’t driven by teleological necessity. The antecedent and consequent, going under and being saved, are not bound together through an inherent causal relation or logical necessity but through a “yet” (doch). This “yet” sunders the continuity of time understood as a sequence of causally related events and, by holding apart the two sides, opens up the space of hope, the possibility of a “but one more thing” and “more next time [Nächstens mehr]” even after the deepest descent. A teleological framework would still seem to reassert itself, however, when Diotima, later on in her letter, presents this salvatory dialectics as the essential movement of nature, the very way of its “naturing.” Yet she reveals this not as a natural law or philosophical principle governing Being and knowledge but as a truth that summons this particular human being, Hyperion himself, into a certain mode of action and comportment toward the world. This truth, moreover, is not known with an absolute certainty that allows it to ground a system of knowledge and ethical conduct that could guarantee its practitioners rightness of thought and deed. It is only glimpsed, descried. This last point becomes clearer if we again consider that Diotima becomes eloquent and talkative, able to express her innermost word, neither by meditating on eternal things nor by introspectively seeking a

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

194 T he Politics of Life 

ground of being in her depths but rather through experiencing within herself the strife of life and death. Nor does this experience involve actively burrowing into herself and sounding out the depths of her psyche. Rather, it is something that strikes her for the first time, pulling her toward time and death and thus allowing her to behold the inner movement of life—a movement that, consisting in the very interplay of life and death, can only be experienced as she inclines toward her own mortality. This movement takes place in time and is indeed temporal to its core; nothing else than temporality itself. Hence it could never be grasped as either the timeless ground of temporal things or an eternal law of movement but only glimpsed in and as its movement. The hoped-for salvation consists not in otherworldly transcendence, whether after death or in life, but in living in the world. It is, in a sense going back to Aristotle, political. Nevertheless, with a single sentence, the nature of and possibility for a world—for politics—immediately receives a crucial specification: “No laurel will console you and no myrtle wreath.” At the novel’s beginning, Hyperion has become a hermit, choosing to seal himself off from the world and attend only to his own nature and the nature around him. He has not only chosen to reject political action and live quietly in the world but has renounced political life in even the minimal sense. Refusing to live with other human beings, he has chosen the form of existence that, for Aristotle, must be either bestial or divine.24 Interpreting the beginning of Hyperion in light of Diotima’s second summons, one must infer that Hyperion’s first reading of this summons led him to withdraw from the bios politikos. Yet Hyperion ends on a very different note: it concludes—or rather simply ceases—in a moment of the greatest suspense and openness. This suggests that, when Hyperion first read her letter, he had himself misunderstood Diotima’s summons and all that followed from this. The understanding that he reaches through narrating his life to Bellarmin—a narration that comes to a climax with the rereading and recalling of her words—is above all else a better grasp of these words and in particular the words of her last summons. He will come to realize that they do not call him away from the political world and history and into nature but rather into a different world and a different politics—a fundamentally different understanding of the nature of political existence itself. Since so much hinges on this sentence, it is worthwhile spending some time with it. One observes, to begin, that the laurel and the myrtle wreath are the crowns not of human might but of human deeds. The deed (Tat) is the first viable birth of human activity: the first capable of surviving beyond its birth and indeed as an “immortal child,” invoking a motif that also appears, even more closely linked to Plato’s Symposium, in Hyperion’s 24 Aristotle, Politics 1253a.27–28.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The Politics of Life



195

Youth (FA 10:224). Unlike labor, it does not lead into busyness, and yet it is also not needful and fragmentary but stands in relation to a world as a whole. A deed is only truly a deed if it can take root in the full life of the polis. Hence the ancient Greek deeds and deed doers that Hyperion names are mostly Athenian rather than Spartan. Despite the superior military prowess and athleticism of the latter, they remain deedless, for indeed, as Hyperion explains in the conversation at Athens, the Spartans, rather than slowly ripening before appearing on the world stage, hurried ahead in wanton, luxuriant force (in üppiger Kraft) and thus required a strict and tyrannical law to discipline their “overbold nature” (übermütige Natur). Rushing too quickly into deeds, their nature never unfolded into its own inner wholeness and coherence. Lacking a full childhood, they have not grown into human beings but only fragments of human beings and are capable only of the fragmentary Notwerk of art and discipline (Zucht; FA 11:676–77). We’ve already seen that true political action for Hölderlin is only possible if one stands in a relation to death and does not oversee—see past, and thus fail to see—its possibility. The site and source of action is the strife between life and death, origination and ruination. This, moreover, is no less true of modern times—when history’s ruins provide the showplace and theater of action—than of ancient. The deed itself is always a deed toward death as an outermost possibility and is only thus capable of acting toward a world in its entirety and achieving not only a more than fragmentary existence but indeed a certain form of immortality. Here, once again, the contrast between Athens and Sparta is telling. Despite the Spartans’ proverbial fearlessness before death and their shame of flight, Hyperion, with one extremely significant exception—an exception that indeed proves the rule—has little regard for their much-celebrated heroism and self-sacrifice.25 It is as though, precisely because they were led to such bravery by discipline and artifice and indeed by a certain violence done to their nature, they never really face death as a free possibility but only as an exigency (Not). Even their death is itself only a needed work (Notwerk) and, as such, necessarily fragmentary, coming originally from the outside, from an accidental cause, rather than from within and from the wholeness of their being. In sharp contrast, the Athenian deeds that Hyperion names, like those which Solon describes to Croesus in Herodotus’s Histories, almost all involve the free sacrifice of life. Perhaps the most striking example is the herald who died not in battle but celebrating the victory at Marathon, and whose death had no outside cause 25 The exceptions are Agis and Kleomenes, the only Spartan heroes of whom Hyperion speaks. Their deed, which came at the end rather than the beginning of the classical Greek world, consisted in the failed attempt at “social reform” (FA 11:705).

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

196 T he Politics of Life 

but resulted from the exhaustion of his vital powers (FA 11:702).26 Speaking of the “Lion Demosthenes,” Hyperion again calls attention to the holy, self-chosen death of the great Athenian orator (FA 11:675). Aristogiton and Harmodius likewise chose their own deaths by making an almost certainly suicidal attempt on the life of the tyrant Hippias and his younger brother Hipparchus (FA 11:657). These examples suggest, moreover, that the Athenian heroes’ free deaths and sacrifices stand in close relation to the constitution and protection of the polis and dēmos. The deed is not a mere outgrowth of a world as a center of political life but is constitutive of it, belonging essentially to the Greek polis exemplified by Athens. It establishes the polis as the condition of the possibility of immortal deeds; the site where the fruits of human grandeur can become manifest and indeed persist in time. Moreover, these deeds all stem from a relation to death, and indeed the greatest of deeds is that which takes death upon itself. The heroic, freely self-sacrificing deed builds the polis as the site of the immortal memorialization of deeds whose very essence consists in self-sacrifice. A likely source for this understanding of the Athenian polis, and of the relation between the heroic deed and death, is Pericles’s famous funeral oration, recounted in Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War. The influence of this speech—a powerful defense of the agonistic and argumentative culture of democratic Athens—is felt throughout Hölderlin’s novel, but above all in Hyperion’s eulogy for ancient Athens in the Athens letter. While the political life of Athens revolves around, and is only possible through, the logos and the agōn—the never-ending rivalry of words and deeds—it is held together at its limit through the strange procession of death and burial. This silent pageant, where the dēmos gathers as a body around the bodies of fallen warriors, provides a paradigm for the reciprocation and exchange between the citizen and the polis at the core of Athenian political life. The burial provides a guide for future actions where words alone must fail, since through the burial it becomes possible to gaze at “the power of the city [tēn tēs poleōs dunamin] in action [ergōi]” and become lovers (erastas) of it, and realize the economy of sacrifice, the exchange of public and private loss and gain, through which the city comes into being: For giving their bodies [sōmata] to what is common, they gained privately [idiai] the praise of ageless [generations of] men and the most significant [episēmotaton] tomb, not that in which they lie, but in which their glory [doxa] remains always celebrated whenever it is a fitting time for word and deed.27 26 Herodotus, Historiai 1.30–31. 27 Thucydides, Historiai 2.43.1.6–2.2.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

The Politics of Life



197

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

4.4 The Gathering of Nature Crowning human deeds, the laurel and the myrtle wreath signify the inner possibility and foundation of the life of the polis: the memorializing of heroic deeds but also of love and the beauty of human form, since indeed the myrtle was sacred to Aphrodite. While the crown of kingly might is made of precious jewels, whose durability and value directly correspond to their inorganicity, the deed is crowned by nature itself in its growth and life and openness to decay. The king’s might is inseparable from the accumulation of wealth by which he maintains a standing army and draws the forces of others toward his own ends, and yet the store of wealth, by binding the citizenry and soldiery into wage servitude, negates their actions, which thus become mere expressions of the king’s magnificence (FA 11:681–82). The deeds of the Greek polis appear, by contrast, as outgrowths of nature’s vitality; the hero as nature’s finest blossom. Thus, as Hyperion explains, nature itself is a priestess of human beings, serving for their glorification. Nature peaks in the virtuous deeds of the human being, with all its manifold forms pointing toward this as its acme. Just as the full development of Athens results from the unhindered unfolding of its nature, so the immortalizing self-sacrificing deed of mortals is not a mere human doing, let alone the product of intention and free will, but an outgrowth of nature. If the myrtle and laurel can no longer console Hyperion, it is because the possibility of life within a polis is shut off to him; the polis cannot provide him with a viable territory for his actions.28 What takes the place of the polis, if this can no longer offer a worldly residence for Hyperion and serve as the site of activity—if indeed there is no hope of a revolutionary re-creation of the ancient fatherland? The answer appears with the words that follow: it will be the “Olympus . . . that, living, present, blossoms around all your senses in eternal youth. The beautiful world is your Olympus; in this you will live, and with the holy beings of the world, with the gods of nature, with these you will be joyous.” The new world, the new site of life and of joy, is the beautiful world. This beauty is not the human beauty of the naked male body—the body celebrated at the Olympic games and whose virtues, revealed through feats of athletic prowess, express a potency and ripeness for deeds. Rather, it is the beauty of nature: a beauty that encompasses the senses with the blossoming potency of life. Unlike the statues of a heroic youth that, having become a ruin of itself, is necessarily the object of mourning—here we might recall the description of Alabanda after the friends’ reunion—the beauty of 28 Hegel, in his early theological writings, was also convinced of the impossibility of re-creating the Greek polis. And as Avineri (1972) demonstrates, this realization was of great significance for the development of his mature political thought.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

198 T he Politics of Life 

nature is living, present, and eternally youthful. It is telling, in this regard, that when Hyperion parts from Diotima, he calls out, standing before her like someone praying to a statue: “O sweet tone from these blissful lips— blow on me once more” (FA 11:708). It is as if, having turned Diotima into a statue by idealizing her, he now seeks, Pygmalion-like, to bring her back to life. Diotima admonishes him: “Don’t speak like this, dear! . . . speak to me more seriously, speak with a greater heart.” There is still something unsatisfactory in this conception of the world. Nature appears as an exception from a disastrous, mournful history—a decline toward ruins that perhaps ceases only with the end of days. But if nature is an exception from history, it could grant no dwelling to humans save that of the hermit who withdraws from the sorrow of historical life.29 Nature likewise appears as an eternal blossoming, existing beyond death and decay and even time itself. The escape into nature would seem to be, ultimately, nothing more than a flight before and overlooking of death. Precisely with respect to these points Diotima reaches a greater insight. The next lines, however, do not yet develop and ground her insights, but rather use an entirely different mode of speech, “welcoming” the beings of nature through a hortatory subjunctive: “O be welcome, you who are good and true! You deeply missed, misconstrued children and eldest ones.” This welcoming is a summons for all of nature to return and gather together, and, indeed, what it bids is accomplished through the very act of bidding, since it is precisely in the “magical” parataxis of a language that does nothing more than name and list that nature’s gathering comes into being, or rather is repeated: “Sun and earth and aether with all the living souls that play around you, that you play around, in eternal love!” This indeed suggests the gesture of gathering— a root meaning of logos and legein—that we have considered already and that is so important to Hölderlin’s poetry itself. Nature is already a gathering and moreover, a gathering around. And yet it must be gathered again through the word, precisely because it is absent, having been misrecognized and misconstrued. Human language, in naming the beings of nature, has misnamed them and misunderstood them, trying to specify and distinguish them and bring them into a hierarchical order of genus and species rather than gathering them together such as they are themselves gathered together—which is to say, through a reciprocal, mutual, equal umspielen; a playful getting and playing around. Diotima’s welcoming gathers together the beings of nature by gathering the word into its inner nature as a logos, a gathering, thus allowing the word to become the site of the repetition of nature’s own collection. 29 For the significance of the hermit motif, see Fitzell 1961 and Schönhaar 1973.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The Politics of Life



199

This re-collection of nature through the word also calls on nature to admit human beings back into its, and their, homeland: “O take the alltrying humans, take the refugee back into the family of the gods, accept them into the home of nature from which they absconded [aus der sie entwichen].” Whereas before nature appeared as the exception to the mournfulness of human history, now the human being appears as a refugee from nature; the being which alone has removed itself from the fold of nature to which it too originally belonged. Human exceptionalness is named with a single word: humans are allesversuchend. This epithet invokes the second choral song of Sophocles’s Antigone, where the human being [anthrōpos] is named as that being who tests and tries the whole of nature.30 Hölderlin translated the first two stanzas of the choral song separately in the early spring of 1800, about two years before undertaking the full translation, published in 1804, of both Oedipus Tyrannos (Oedipus the King) and Antigone. Because this song is so central to Hölderlin’s own understanding of human nature, it is worth looking at the first lines of the poet’s second translation. In their innermost nature and in an emphatic way, human beings are gewaltig and ungeheur, the two translations that Hölderlin gives for the Greek deinos (FA 16:59, 299). Their monstrous violence shows itself, above all, in how they try everything against nature, attempting everything to force it to submit: navigation, agriculture, animal husbandry, hunting, and later also language, thought, and politics—the “pride that rules cities” (städtebeherrschenden Stolz; FA 16:301). These attempts are at once both successful beyond expectation and yet futile, since death itself cannot be conquered. Yet read in the context of Antigone as a whole, it would seem that politics and poetry, in their alliance, do conquer death, by commemorating and immortalizing mortals. Antigone’s freely chosen sacrifice, committed for the sake of her brother’s proper burial, is immortalized through the tragic poem celebrating it. In this sense politics, or indeed more specifically the Athenian polis whose founding is itself commemorated through the Oedipus trilogy, marks at once the culmination of human beings’ attempts and an exception from them. Rather than seeking to force nature to submit, bringing itself up against the limit of nature’s powers, it complies with nature completely and yet overcomes it through this compliance. Precisely this exception, Diotima claims, is no longer possible. Human beings can no longer hope to surmount death through the polis, and thus have no other choice than to try everything and become refugees from nature. Yet this does not preclude all possibilities of community. Taking the place of the koinōnia of the polis is a gathering together of all nature, including, above all, the all-trying human, who, as both a refugee from nature and 30 Sophocles, Antigone 332–83.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

200 T he Politics of Life 

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

as the zōon logikon—the being whose nature it is to gather through the word—is needed for its re-collection.31 Diotima thus calls on the forces of nature to gather together and summons them once more to take back the all-trying human—a call which, as already suggested, is itself the gathering of human beings and nature through the word, the preparation for their festival. The next paragraph continues: “You know this word, Hyperion! You began it in me. You will complete it in yourself and only then will rest.” The word is not a particular piece of wisdom or philosophical doctrine, or even the specific content of her invocation, but rather language (logos) itself as the calling and gathering of human beings and nature and ultimately, indeed, poetic language. And it is, moreover, of its nature to be passed on. It does not belong to human beings as their word. Rather they are only vehicles and receptacles for the word, in which it can take residence and ripen into its full nature. Inverting the figure of pregnancy, the word is conceived and fertilized in Diotima by Hyperion and yet then carried over, with her death, into him, becoming his word to bear.

31 This reading of the political in Hölderlin stands at once in the greatest proximity and the greatest distance from Heidegger’s understanding of the polis in his lecture course on “The Ister.” Understanding the polis in terms of the Stätte, Heidegger writes: “The human being is placed in the site of his historical residence, in the polis, because he and he alone comports himself to the being as being, to the being in its unconcealment and concealing, and in the Being of the being can missee and at times, viz. always when in the outermost districts of this site, must missee with regard to Being, taking what is not being for the being, and the being for what is not being” (HGA 53:108). The polis is, moreover, intimately bound up with das Offene (the open), and hence with truth as the unconcealment of beings in their Being; “This residential character of the human being has its basis in the very fact that Being has opened itself to the human and is itself the very opening that captures the human for itself and determines it to be in a site. We speak here of the open with a view to that which is itself said in the correctly understood word and concept alētheia, unconcealment of the entity” (HGA 53:115). Heidegger’s insight into the alethic dimension of the political, and the central role that it plays in Hölderlin’s poetics, is profound; its significance for my own reading could not be overstated. Heidegger understands Hölderlin’s poetry as a more originary repetition of the Greek conception of the polis: the Stromwesen (essence of the river) “names the locality and migration of the historical human being. These bear the essence of becoming-at-home. Therein lies the historicality of the human being. This historicality is the distinction of that humanity whose poets are Sophocles and Hölderlin—since in Greece something incipient eventuated, and the incipient alone grounds history” (HGA 53:69). Against this I would argue that Hyperion points the way toward a different politics of truth, or perhaps what we might even call an “apolitics of truth,” since it is no longer a question of “placing” or “situating” the truth.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The Politics of Life



201

Yet this doesn’t mean that the word’s completion realizes some sort of final form, after which the word would remain as it is, precluding the need for more words. Rather, as the image of pregnancy already suggests, the word is complete not when it is finished but when it becomes viable, capable of surviving on its own and being born into the world. Indeed, it is not the word, but Hyperion, who may rest with its completion. Likewise for Diotima, her own contribution to the word is enough to allow her to die: “I have enough in this to die joyously as a Greek girl.” Yet for the word itself this completion is not rest but quickening. This last remark, in particular, suggests that the calling and gathering of the word has taken the place not only of the community of the polis but also of the deed itself. The word is itself a way of facing rather than fleeing death, and the correlation between polis and praxis finds its parallel in the relation between the word—which is to say, poetry as a whole—and the singular poetic words. Poetry, itself born into being by the poet who faces death—or rather experiences death as an inner possibility—through his word rather than his deed, is the site in which words take residence and appear as words. Yet this doesn’t mean that the word shares the deed’s purely heroic character. As already seen, it is of the nature of labor—akin to agriculture, to the sowing and dispersing of seed, as well as also to the more violent, yet still unheroic, transformation of nature through its canalization. The poetic word fertilized in Hyperion and carried over into Hölderlin’s poetry, bringing all of nature together into a gathering, is thus itself all-trying, tracing its furrows over the whole of Being. It is not a replication of the Greek polis through a culture of letters, let alone the attempt of a particularly disenfranchised member of the nascent yet impotent German middle class to achieve in the domain of culture those national and democratic aspirations that could not yet find a place in reality. Rather, the poetic word is the re-collection and re-calling of a labor that tries everything and transforms everything back into a collaboration with nature.

4.5 “Die Armen . . . die der Tod uns gibt” The poor ones who know nothing but their needy machination; who only serve necessity and spurn genius, and honor you not, childlike life of nature! These may have fear before death. Their yoke has become their world; they do not know anything better than their servitude; [they] shrink from the divine freedom that death gives us!

With these words Diotima clarifies the relation toward nature of those who are at once pantaporos and aporos; those who, however great their labor and exertion, know only needy and impoverished machinations, remaining poor and bound to necessity, and who are thus worldless.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

202 T he Politics of Life 

These, she explains, may have fear before death. It is not just that their manner of labor is conditioned by their fear of death. Rather, their poverty is precisely what grants them, and gives them the capacity or Vermögen toward, such fear. This subtle inversion is of great consequence, revealing the radicality of Diotima’s reversal of the traditional schema of politics. Critics of modern liberalism such as Rousseau recognized that, whereas the citizen of the ancient polis was committed to values like heroic virtue that transcended individual life, the modern bourgeois is motivated only by the fear of death. Hölderlin goes further: he recognizes that, even if the politēs was not immediately motivated by fear, lifetranscending value remained rooted in a relation to death as something that one is able to fear. In this way, the heroic deeds of the Athenian polis, just like the needy machinations of the “poor ones,” are made possible through fear of death. We can only either face heroically or flee from what we fear. For Diotima, this very fear has itself become groundless, and together with this fear, the possibility of the polis. The impossibility of re-creating the political life of the ancient Athenians, having previously appeared as a consequence of the “tragic” nature of the present age—the inescapable presence of ruins—is now given a deeper, stranger interpretation: it is impossible to live heroically for the very reason that it is no longer possible to fear death, since only a neediness that is itself groundless could grant the capacity for such fear. This does not mean that we cannot stand in a relation to death, but only that it could no longer be a tragic relation. Every true tragedy must itself now prove a needy machination. But how can we hold ourselves to death if not through fear? And why is the fear of death no longer possible? The next paragraph offers an answer to the first question, or at least the start of one: “I’ve raised myself above the piecework . . .” In feeling the childlike life of nature we transcend the piecework. Relieving us of our own fragmentary, needy, servile, and worldless laboring, thus making it impossible for us to fear death, the feeling opens us up to the freedom of the gods. Yet this feeling is neither some sort of pantheistic ecstasy nor an overwhelming pathos in which, if only temporarily, we forget death. Either leads again to the worldless hermitage. Feeling in Hölderlin, one must keep in mind, is not a subjective experience, whether aesthetic or mystical, but the constitutive mode not merely of the relation between the self or individual and the greater world but of the poles across which the relation takes place, and thus, fundamentally, of the coming-into-appearance of a world.32 Hence the feeling 32 Feeling (Gefühle), as Deleuze (1985) has shown, plays a central and unifying role in Kant’s critical philosophy, and especially in the Kritik der Urteilskraft (Critique of the Power of Judgment, 1790). Moreover, Gefühl involves a mode of experience that is not merely or necessarily “subjective,” and yet which is also

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

The Politics of Life



203

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

of nature’s life would not be just another feeling distinguished merely by a new content and different intensity or coloring but an essentially different mode of relation than that which is the basis of the needy labor of the piecework, and one which would in turn prove the foundation for a different sort of labor. But at the same time, this feeling is not opposed here to some other sort of feeling, but rather to a form of existence that is not founded upon any feeling and is for this reason essentially worldless. So far, though, only one hint is given as to the positive determination of this feeling. It is higher than all thoughts. This seems to recall the essay “Seyn Urtheil Möglichkeit” (Being Judgment Possibility, 1795), itself of great importance for the development of German idealism, and specifically the notion of an intellectual intuition of Being prior to all Teilung, to all division into pieces, and especially to the division into subject and object.33 Here, though, we must be cautious, since cognition and thought are not the same, and if the intellectual intuition is beyond all categorically structured cognition, it is nevertheless not beyond all thought, though it is also clear that Hölderlin’s fragment draws a rigorous distinction between the unity of Being that is merely presupposed by judgment—and that therefore remains caught within the divisive logic of judgment—and an understanding of Being in terms of the temporal process of self-differentiation, self-division, and representation.34 This suggests, in turn, the primacy of feeling over thought, and yet of a feeling that is not pure immediacy but that in fact implies within it a structure of mediation and relationality.35 Yet rather than trying to make sense of the feeling of the life of nature on its own terms—a project that may prove futile if the only determination not categorically structured. This becomes especially evident in his discussion of aesthetic judgments, which are, at once, singular and universal. Heidegger’s Stimmung could itself be understood as a radicalization of this aspect of feeling. 33 See Henrich 1964–65; Franz 1986–87; Franz interprets the fragment as presenting a “logic” in which modality (itself conceived in terms of temporality) plays a central role. This points the way to the later fragment “Becoming in Passing Away,” where he “erects a kind of calculus of the logic of history on the foundation of the—temporally interpreted—modalities”; For Hölderlin’s role in the development of German idealism, see Pinkard 2002 and Beiser 2002. 34 Rühle 2010, 71–87. Rühle discusses Hyperion in the immediate context of “Being Judgment Possibility,” yet, reading the novel exclusively in terms of the horizon of a Bildungsroman and not paying attention to the way in which Diotima’s last words themselves exceed this horizon, he is forced to deny that the novel possesses a historical (geschichtliche) dimension (93). 35 This mediated feeling may be understood in terms of the relation between Wirklichkeit (actuality) and Möglichkeit (possibility). (See Rühle 2010, 86: “If possibility continues an actuality, then this continues to act in it, the actuality changes itself in the possibility and is at the same time as bygone actuality itself only a changed possibility.”)

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

204 T he Politics of Life 

of this feeling is its transcendence—we must first get a better sense for the piecework to which it is juxtaposed. The piecework is made by human hands. Whereas the legs and feet carry the body from one place to another, and the mouth and claws tear apart and destroy, the hand, belonging in a special way to human beings, serves above all to give form to matter, and indeed a matter that is lifeless and inert. This is evident from how the words “handicraft” and “handwork”—Handwerk in German—do not primarily designate any activity involving the use of the hands, such as gardening or mining, or even activities demanding an uncommon adroitness and dexterity, such as harp playing or surgery, but only those imparting an enduring and palpable form to a stuff that is itself relatively formless. The feeling of life relieving the piece work of human hands is above all, this in turn suggests, an openness toward a mode of action or labor that is not conditioned by the opposition of form and matter. The feeling of life is a feeling for that which forms itself from within and whose “matter,” being imbued with the capacity for self-formation, cannot properly be spoken of as matter in opposition to form but only as a process of self-organization. It is a feeling for life’s ferment and flowing forth. This upward-surging, flowing ferment is, however, at once origination and ruination, and thus the feeling for life must also be a feeling for death. How would it, nevertheless, raise us above the possibility of fearing death? The answer, already hinted at on several occasions, rests in how the possibility of fear presupposes that its object is, if not necessarily in a physical sense, external to the one who fears. We can only fear death if we regard it as other than and outside of life—as a violence visiting the body from without or a fate coming from the gods. The ground of this very “beyondness,” however, is the form-matter dichotomy, the hylomorphic conception of nature. If life, as organization, consists in a form given to matter, then it exists as essentially apart from matter, and both genesis and destruction are external to it. Here we might recall Alabanda’s final thoughts: “If a potter’s hand made me, he may break his vessel as it pleases him. Yet what lives here [was da lebt] must be unbegotten, must be divine nature in its kernel, raised above [erhaben über] every power [Macht] and all art, and thus invulnerable, eternal” (FA 11:759). Yet his thought is different from Diotima’s. Alabanda feels a life without any relation to death and for which death is neither outside nor inside but simply nothing at all. Because he is not able to feel death, he is also not able to enter into any sort of relation to it. Diotima, by contrast, feels death without fear and indeed as the freedom of the gods. The passage cited earlier, where she speaks of the inwardly felt strife of life and death that brought her to words, also hints at the deeper nature of this feeling: “So mighty was the spirit of life in me! Yet my

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

The Politics of Life



205

mortal limbs became more and more tired, and the anguishing [ängstigend] heaviness pulled me inexorably down” (FA 11:763). This weight and gravity (Schwere) is the pull of death. It does not simply frighten and anguish but confines life at the very moment that life becomes an overbursting fullness. Thus it allows life to feel its own narrowness, impelling life to break through its deathly confinement into a fuller freedom, a fuller life. It lets life feel itself as life. It is not a feeling foreign to life but the more deeply, more explicitly felt feeling of life—indeed the feeling of the essence of feeling, an essence that is inherently bound up with finitude. And hence the new life, and new freedom, is not merely an escape from the confinement of death but a life that more intimately includes death within it. This last insight, though, does not come to her immediately but only emerges in the last section of her letter.

4.6 The Politics of Life

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The Greeks opposed the merely physical existence of the slave and the brute beast, and of the human being qua physical being, to the bios politikos.36 In the words of Aristotle’s Oikonomika (Economics): “nourishment is a slave’s wages [doulōi de misthos trophē].”37 The slave’s existence as slave is mere subsistence, life stripped of all capacity for human dignity. Whereas the citizen, facing death in war, justifies the freedom that is itself the condition of the heroic deed, the slave is bound to slavery precisely because at every moment he chooses his life and the nourishment that sustains it over his liberty. His liberty is never altogether effaced, and yet it could only express itself through the extreme acts of flight or suicide, denying his master the legal possession and use of his body by giving himself his freedom, if only with his own death. 36 See Agamben 1998, 1. Derrida (2009, 316) suggests that this distinction, upon which Agamben’s thought depends, is never as secure and clear as he would have it. Heselhaus (1952), after charting the emergence of the concept of life as the fundamental principle of all Being in the works of Giambattista Vico, Johann Georg Hamann, Oetinger, Hemsterhuis, Herder, Jacobi, Lessing, and Goethe, argues that Hölderlin sought a synthesis of identity philosophy with the idea of life, joining the radical idealism of Being Judgment Possibility to the developmental, empirical historicism of Herder. Crucial to this synthesis is an understanding of the relation to nature as an ecstatic correspondence, an openness of the soul to nature. In this way, Hölderlin develops Hemsterhuis’s concept of the Totaleindruck—an experience of nature that is not mediated by judgment, and hence not divided. The experience of nature, in other words, allows the soul to experience a primordial, originary force (Urkraft)—life as fundamental principle—that governs over all Being and that is also at the origin of the soul itself. 37 Aristotle, Economics 1344b.4.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

206 T he Politics of Life 

For Diotima, by contrast, the mere natural life of the servile piece work—a slavery to necessity, if not exactly to other humans—is opposed not to a life adorned with heroic deeds but rather to the even barer, purer life of nature itself.38 Even becoming a plant, she claims with a rhetorical question, would not be such a bad thing—literally, the harm would not be so great—since she will still be, and in the mere fact of this being belongs to the sphere of life (FA 11:767). Whereas the piece work is bare not only of deeds and even perhaps of works—its works remain fragmentary and barren—but also of the greater life that surrounds the mere life of sustenance, the life of nature does not distinguish between modes of Being and life, and yet, in just this way, it composes a world: an ordering that is political—cosmopolitan—in a broader sense; a basis for political activity. This world of pure nature, of life and Being without qualification, takes the place of the Greek polis. Whereas the polis is bound together through a shared courage in facing a common death, beings within the sphere of life are held together not merely by relations of mechanistic causality—perhaps what is meant by the loose bands of these times (die losen Bande dieser Zeit)—but by the eternal love common to them. The elevation of love to an ontological principle suggests not only contemporaneous tendencies in romantic philosophy and political theory but also, once again, the Symposium and Phaedrus of Plato. It would seem to propose a politics grounded in a metaphysics of erotic striving for immortality, in which death functions only negatively as that which love tries to flee through the act of begetting. Yet these words represent only her first attempt to formulate the nature of the world to which she summons Hyperion, and immediately thereafter Diotima offers a more radical conception of the union binding all beings. This is not like a market day, she explains, “where the people run together and make noise and go asunder.” For in the union of nature—a union founded on the spirit belonging to each separately and yet common to all—faithfulness (Treue) is not a dream: “We separate from one another only in order to be more intimately one, more divinely at peace with everything, with ourselves.” The market day—the day when people gather together to exchange the means of life—recalls not only the markets of Hölderlin’s time such as the Messestadt Frankfurt but also the Athenian agora, the assembly at the center of the colorful chaos of democratic life. Yet whereas Plato’s Republic opposes this to a 38 Suggestive in this regard is Hofmann’s (1996) characterization of the opposition of zoē and bios: “Zoē experiences in the opposition to ‘bios’ death not as limit or telos, but as the rhythmic accent of its movement, which is in itself unrestrained. Bios characterizes the individuated life that perfects itself in death, zoē on the contrary the fundamental liveliness that concretely signals death as the articulated moment of its spontaneous metamorphosis.” (52)

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The Politics of Life



207

life oriented toward the noetic, intuitive grasp of the Good in itself, here the contrast of the union of life with the hustle and bustle of the city with its markets is not so absolute. Both involve the same inner gesture— an alternation of gathering together and drawing apart. In the market day, this gathering together is opposed to the drawing apart, and is also already itself noisy (lärmig)—not a true gathering in the logos but only a closely drawn antagonism—and thus determined in its innermost nature by dispersal. The figure of the market day, so understood, is Epicurean: the streaming of particles that, through the clinamen—a slight deviation from a straight path—bump up against each other, clustering together into all the transient forms of organization that compose the world, and then fall apart. In the union of life, on the other hand, gathering together and drawing apart are not essentially opposed to one another but separation itself only strengthens the gathering. Each is grounded in the other, and the apparent opposition of gathering and dispersal itself gathers the two movements into a single figure. This figure, again suggesting the hen diapheron heautōi, is what Hölderlin understands by Innigkeit—inwardness or interiority.39 With this notion of Innigkeit, Hölderlin could be said to offer a more radical conception of Kant’s concept of unsocial sociability (ungesellige Geselligkeit) from the Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View. A fundamental trait no longer just of human nature, it belongs to all life (KAA 8:20).40 Death, as separation par excellence, takes place for the sake of life: “We die in order to live.” It is the inner movement of life making room (einräumen, chōreō) for more life: the “more next time.” Life is not formed from outside but rather is passed on from being to being through the very act of living in and with death; distributed not from the top down but through the endless interweavings and circumventions of its tributaries. The essence of life’s union is therefore the nemō—a distribution into parts—and thus nomos. Whereas at Athens, Hyperion contrasts the life of nature with the regularity of law (Gesetz), here life is itself rooted in the nomos. Life is nominal, nemetic. Life’s union is itself the union of Nemesis and yet with a turn and twist: for if everything and everyone works toward death, death itself labors for life. The fundamental trait of the sphere of life is equality: “I will be; I do not ask what I will become. To be, to live, that is enough, that is the honor of the gods, and therefore everything living is equal in the divine world, and in it there are no masters and slaves” (FA 11:767–68). Not only is there no essential hierarchy of kinds, but there are not even the most rudimentary forms of dominion and servitude. The explanation 39 See HGA 4:36. 40 Kant’s philosophy of history itself suggests a transformation of Epicureanism that is quite similar to that which Hölderlin attempts (Adler 2012).

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

208 T he Politics of Life 

given for this equality is that all living beings, sharing in life, are equal qua living beings. Yet there is also perhaps another reason: all forms of hierarchy and domination have as the ground of their possibility the fear of death, whether as the ultimate foundation for all compulsion or as the basis of the trial of heroism. Not ordered hierarchically, the union of life allows neither domination nor submission, neither a higher nor lower. But it is not without organization, an absolutely flat swamp-like, insipid nothing, a fade Nichts. Rather: “The natural beings live around one another like lovers; they have everything in common, spirit, joy, and eternal youth.” The multitude of living beings live around and about each other, and thus live lovingly, since love, which includes the possibility of strife, is nothing else than the relation of such being-around-one-another. The life of nature, as the world, is itself an Um-welt—not in the more familiar sense of an environment that envelops and sustains living beings but rather as a grand sphere of beings, each of whose lives enfolds and is enfolded in the lives of the others. Just at this point, with the collapse of every single hierarchical distinction between beings, a new criterion and measure of difference emerges: “The stars have chosen constancy, in the calm fullness of life they forever glide past and know not age. We exhibit in alternation the perfected; in wandering, changing melodies we divide the great accords of joy.”41 Beings distinguish themselves not through their relative height or depth, through submission or domination, but rather through whether they exist in the mode of constancy—a still, constant, ageless presence— or alternation. This distinction between beings is not allotted from beyond—it is not a moira (lot, fate)—but rather is a choice, yet we should not imagine an act of autonomous free will but rather a wallen (bubbling, welling). Beings choose to be what they are simply through welling forth in their particular mode of Being.42 In this sense, all being is chosen. Yet 41 The significance of these words emerges in light of the role that the starry heavens, for Kant a symbol of the moral vocation of the human being, play in the friendship between Diotima and Hyperion. When Hyperion and Diotima part, he tells her: “We will know each other by the starry heaven. It is the sign between me and you, as long as our lips are silent” (FA 11:708). These words are not in vain. She will explain to him, indeed, how, after his departure, “only the field of stars still attracts my eye” (FA 11:725). She has lost her sense for the earthly. All this suggests that her words to Hyperion come as the result of profound reflection: having attended first to the earthly and then to the starry heavens, she sees the difference between them—a difference in their gesture, their way of temporizing—and understands its implications. 42 In The Use of Bodies, Agamben traces the etymology of “manner” back to the medieval philosophical term maneries, used in the sense of “‘mode of welling

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The Politics of Life



209

while this wählen and wallen also applies to us, as humans and as members of the community of ephemeral beings, there is a difference. Since the stars are so momentous, bearing themselves endlessly into the future through the sheer force of their momentum, their present wallen is determined by what has been, and thus their choice belongs to the past. We, by contrast, chose our present wallen, and precisely insofar as our stellen and darstellen—our placing and representing—is itself in alternation. We chose, through our present being, the ever-changing place that we will give to what is perfect and indeed perfected. If the choice is not explicitly attributed to us, this is not because we are less “free” than the stars, but rather because the freedom of our ever-changing choosing coincides so absolutely with our present wallen that one could never even speak of a final, decisive choice or Wahl capable of receding into the past. For this reason, we also have a different, more emphatic, relation to the perfected (das Vollendete). The perfected is another name for the One, the highest unity. The stars are no more essentially complete than we are, and yet they represent this perfect unity through a constant presence that is itself finished, since its choice belongs to the past and its essential possibilities are already exhausted in its previous existence. Their representation, in other words, is not marked by an antagonism but is constituted by the degree of proximity to what is represented. We, by contrast, represent what is perfected precisely through alternation—through a gesture which is never finished, never complete, which always has new possibilities open to it, and where even death is not an end but merely makes way for new life. This is true of all ephemeral, earthly life, and yet it is true in a special and emphatic sense for human beings, since they not only live within the constant metabolism of nature but themselves choose at every moment between essentially different modes of being, between the plant and the half-god. This is so, above all, because human beings choose how to comport themselves toward their own alternation and exchange. They choose, through their various manner of wallen, different ways of living their death. Their Wechsel is of the second power: an alternation in alternatives of alternation. The distinction between these two modes of representation marks the passage from a mimetic poetics to Hölderlin’s theory of tonal alternation. For both Plato and Aristotle, poetic representation is understood as mimēsis—the approximation of the imitation to what is imitated. Diotima’s second summons points toward a profoundly different idea of representation, one that rests not on imitation or expressive correlation but rather on a fundamentally oppositional relation between the representation and what is represented. Here the representation takes place in up [modo di scaturire]’: all these things emanate from the pen in such a way that they seem to have been created in that very instant” (Agamben 2016, 224).

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

210 T he Politics of Life 

alternation. Or indeed, alternation makes room and opens up a place or Stelle for unity.43

4.7 Mimēsis and Methexis

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

While poetry accompanied by music and dance played a more central role in Athenian life and was of deeper concern for political philosophy, it is painting, where the similitude between imitation and imitated is most palpable, that provides both Plato and Aristotle with a central figure by which to understand all other forms of mimēsis.44 This is ultimately because the handicrafts, and the act of poiēsis (making) that they involve, served as fundamental paradigms in the development of Greek ontology: when the Greeks thought of beings and what beings were, they understood them principally as things that were made by imposing a certain form on matter. Much like Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music, Hölderlin’s theoretical reflections on poetry attempt to achieve a different paradigm, not only allowing him to situate his own poetic labors but also find a deeper ground through which to understand the problem of representation; a horizon in which the difference between Greek and modern representation—the fundamental concern of his letter to Boehlendorff—could appear in the clearest light. This new paradigm is musical rather than pictorial, but it is not simply music, let alone absolute music, but the chorus—danced music. And indeed, of the two elements that compose the chorus, neither of which can really be understood apart from the other, dance claims a certain privilege. Let us return our gaze once more to the stars and their constancy. A long tradition stretching from Pythagoras to Plato’s Timaios (Timaeus) and its Neoplatonic reception to Kepler and Isaac Newton conceives of the movement of the heavenly bodies as a dance, a choreia.45 This fig43 Winfried Menninghaus (2003) shows with great clarity how the problem of Darstellung in Hölderlin leads to a theory of Wechsel. 44 In the well-known discussion of mimēsis in the tenth book of the Republic, the painted image of a couch is contrasted with a real couch made by a carpenter and, ultimately, with the idea of a couch (587b). The role of painting as the paradigm for mimēsis is less evident in Aristotle, yet something of its former privilege may be detected in the fourth chapter of the Poetics, where the natural “instinct” for mimēsis is discussed in terms of the pleasure derived from images (eikōnas) depicting things whose actual sight is painful to us (1448b.5–17). 45 For an in-depth survey of the image of the choreia and heavenly dance in Platonic and Neoplatonic sources, see Miller 1986; As Komma (1953) notes, Hölderlin would have found the following lines in Heinse’s Ardinghello and the Blessed Islands, which he read immediately after its publication: “. . . I am entirely of Pythagoras’s belief that the proper element in which spirits exist is pure sound and tone” (109). Uffhausen, in the preface to his edition of the late hymns,

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

The Politics of Life



211

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

ure of speech, however, is not just a simile, and not only because it is hardly clear what is imitating what—whether the earthly dance imitates the heavenly, or the heavenly the earthly. Naming a figure of movement not belonging properly either to the earthly or the heavenly, the physical or the metaphysical, the natural or the linguistic, the very word “dance” renders such a determination impossible from the outset, indicating a figurality prior to that of so-called “figural” language.46 Hölderlin was certainly aware of this tradition. The Timaeus, together with the Phaedrus and the Symposium, were the Platonic dialogues that mattered most to Hölderlin and were especially important for Hyperion.47 And not only does his early poetry in particular abound with references to celestial music and harmony but, as Alexander Honold has recently argued, astronomy—“the rhythm of the stars, the time figures of the planets and the path of the sun as well as the regular annual sequence of the constellations”—plays an important, even constitutive, role throughout his work.48 Moreover, this motif recurs in the final version of Hyperion as well as in earlier versions.49 When Diotima compares the classical mode of representation with the manner of existence that the stars have chosen for themselves, she implicitly conceives of classical mimēsis as itself a particular form of dance. Imitative representation has its deeper ground in a mode of ein-räumen (in Greek: chōreō —“to make room for,” “to give way”) that sets a place for the One through a constancy that approximates its perfection.50 This accords with Hyperion’s account of the nature of Greek political life. The heroic deed chooses constancy in precisely the same way as the stars. By exhausting all his possibilities in death, the mortal human being transforms himself into a hero who lives on through the immortality of his deed. It is significant that for Alabanda the constancy of the stars is provides a concise account of the importance of the Pythagorean tradition for Hölderlin (Uffhausen 1989, xi). 46 For a compelling analysis of the relation between the figure of dance and the figurality of language, see Müller-Farguell (1995). Müller-Farguell is not concerned, in a conventional literary way, with the metaphor of dance but rather with the deconstruction of “the forms of movement of the imagistic structures . . . that first become representable in texts through the dance” (13–14). Müller-Farguell does not, however, consider Hölderlin. 47 See Franz 1992–93, 111–27. Franz calls attention to the role of Ficino in Hölderlin’s Plato reception. 48 Honold 2006–7, 68; See also Honold 2005. 49 See FA 11:588; 638; 672; 708. 50 Grimm (1997, 207–8) suggests the importance of the Timaeus, and the concept of chōra in particular, for Hölderlin’s poetics. Despite the superficial resemblance, there is no cognate relation or etymological link between chōreō and choreuō.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

212 T he Politics of Life 

itself conceived as the writing of the living eternity of the heroic deed. When Hyperion points out the Dioscuri to him, he explains that these are only stars, only letters (Buchstaben) “with which the name of the brother heroes has been written in heaven” (FA 11:619). While these words, with the doubled “only,” seem merely to oppose the vital existence of the heroes in Alabanda’s and Hyperion’s own breasts to the shadowy nature of the mythologized past (the Dioscuri are “living and true, with their courage and their divine love”), they also suggest the peculiar nature of a writing that does not serve, first of all, to refer through written marks to something else. Rather, the heroes are named, in their essential nature, through the nature, the temporal character, of this particular form of writing—through its Beständigkeit—and it is only on the foundation of the first naming and first writing that the stars, in the form of a constellation, can also assume a conventional meaning, referring to the heroes and their deeds as something other than and outside of the astrography itself. Assuming that the manner of the stars’ movement is itself a form of dance, then dance itself, as the paradigm through which Hölderlin would approach the problem of representation (Darstellung), stands in a close kinship with this sort of writing. Dance is itself a dance writing, a choreography, that does not represent something else through either conventional or mimetic signs but puts the One, the completed and perfected (Vollendete) there and in place (stellt es dar) through the manner of the figures that it traces out. Moreover, whereas the dance of the stars, in classical philosophy, involved a pure circular eternal movement contrasted to the rectilinear movement of the perishable subterranean world, the modern, post-Copernican dance of the stars collapses the opposition of the terrestrial and the stellar. The eccentric movement of the planets (Wandelsterne)—described through a geometry of hyperbole, ellipses, and parabola and a complex calculus of gravitational interactions—exemplifies this new cosmic dance, in which the earth and the heavens enter into a much more intimate pas de deux.51 These curves, whose most extreme form is hyperbole, emerge as a central gesture of Hölderlin’s poetry. Mediating between heaven and earth, rivers and trees—the natural beings that concern him most—move and grow hyperbolically: with curves that, in their strangeness, become heavy with sense. And even though the ballet itself turns away from the simplistic mimetic representation of the heavenly bodies, with the arabesque the eccentric curves of the

51 See Grimm 1997: “Kepler’s ‘harmony’ in the sense of a commensurability of the absolute and the earthly-human contributes essentially to the final dissolution of the bifurcated cosmos, and led to the breakthrough of a changed conception of the universe” (200).

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

The Politics of Life



213

heavens, and hyperbole above all, emerge as its paradoxical measure.52 In the following verse from “Rousseau” (1800), the tree develops into an arabesque penchée, in which a dancer balanced on pointe brings her legs into a single line pointing directly to the heavens while simultaneously letting her head and arms fall to the floor: . . . the tree grows from The homeland soil, but its arms, Loving, youthful, sink, and mournfully It dips its head [der Baum entwächst Dem heimatlichen Boden, aber es sinken ihm Die liebenden, die jugendlichen Arme, und trauernd neigt er sein Haupt] (GSA 2.1:12)

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

With this, the converging gesture of Hölderlin’s poetics and the classical ballet comes into view. That the chorus and dance emerge here as the central paradigm through which Hölderlin conceives of the nature of representation appears even more clearly in the second half of the contrast: “We exhibit in alternation the perfected; in wandering, changing melodies we divide the great accords of joy.” Just as the Greek mousikē refers not to some special sort of audible phenomenon, but rather to any and all of the arts over which the Muses preside, the two words that name the innermost essence of music narrowly understood—namely melos and harmonia—originally have a wider meaning, implying dance in addition to something purely 52 Port (2002–3) argues that Hölderlin’s poetry, beginning in the middle of the 1790s, turns away from the Copernican enthusiasm of his earlier work. Contesting the “false” (as Hegel would put it) infinity of the Copernican universe, Hölderlin seeks to center his poetry in the earth and realize a balance between the earth and the heavens. This in turn leads to a regressive tendency in the development of the sense of space and landscape in his poetry. The late poem “Das Nächste Beste” (Whatever is Nearest, 1803), Port argues, involves an aggregative sense of space in which, in sharp contrast to the empty a priori spatial intuition of Kant, locality (Ort) is constituted by bodies in their specific difference. This aggregative space recalls Aristotle, but it also looks forward to the “classical modernism” of Paul Klee. It doesn’t seem to me, however, that there is an absolute contradiction between a Keplerian geometry and this “Ptelomian” turn. Indeed, the hyperbolic emerges in Hölderlin as a figure for the precarious balance between the earth and the heavens, the finite and the infinite. It seems, moreover, that Hölderlin’s Ptolemian turn is itself really just a radicalization of the Copernican problematic. Precisely after Copernicus, it becomes necessary to come to terms with the nature of perspective, including the “finite” perspective on the infinite.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

214 T he Politics of Life 

acoustic. The latter, indeed, has the more primary sense of a “joining” or “fastening”—a Fügung—from which derives the secondary meaning of a “stringing,” while the former originally means “limb.” The wandelnde Melodien are not merely wandelnde musical phrases but wandering, trafficking, exchanging, metamorphosing limbs. Thus when Diotima later speaks of dance and song and of alternating figures (Gestalten) und tones, the dance, itself named first, is not a mere addendum. Rather, both terms, side by side, explicate the meaning of the wandering, changing melodies. Whereas the first mode of Darstellung choreographs what is perfect and complete through a figure of movement most nearly approximating its absolute presence and reality, the latter represents it in alternation and exchange. It sets a place for the perfect in that which is never finished, never complete, but always open for something more and different; not defined by a single heroic death that passes into eternity but always full of twists and turns. The most ephemeral and changing is not a distant approximation of absolute unity but a receptacle and opening for it. Diotima clarifies the nature of this manner of representation when she states that “in wandering, changing melodies we divide the great accords of joy.” “Like harp players around the thrones of the oldest,” she adds, we live, “ourselves divine, around the still gods of the world,” soothing “with the fleeting song of life the blessed earnest of the sun god and the others.” The verb teilen not only recalls nemesis and nomos but at the same time invokes what is the keystone, and also the Achilles’ heel—as Plato himself recognized in his Parmenides—of the philosophy of the forms: the participation (in German: Mitteilung) of ephemeral physical reality in the eternal ideas. With these few words, Diotima provides an alternative to Plato’s account of methexis and thus to a philosophy grounded upon mimetic representation and a correspondence theory of truth. Participation is not to be understood as the imitation of the ideal by the sensate but as the division of the “accords of joy”—the instantaneous presentation of oppositions through a harmonious reconciliation—into a temporal sequence of moments. The attributes of the divine—eternity, timelessness—are, in this way, conceived of as only relatively and not absolutely opposed to human finitude. The “great accords” involve a simultaneity, yet themselves also appear in time. Eternity is not an absolute metaphysical quality, belonging to the ideal as opposed to the material and sensate, but a relative attribute of what is less temporal, less given over to time, in relation to what is more. To describe this participation, Diotima draws on an image that, musical and choric, opposes the paradigm of representative painting. Yet far from invoking music as some sort of vague poetic topos, it names precisely that aspect which sets modern Western music apart from its Greek antecedents. Greek music was fundamentally melodic in character, lacking what is now understood as harmonic structure—the vertical interactions

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The Politics of Life



215

of notes in different melodic lines. Choral music was built around a single sung melodic line, perhaps accompanied by an instrument that, while not always following the melodic line, nevertheless merely provided embellishment and ornament without altering the song’s monophonic character.53 The chord in the modern sense, as the simultaneous accord between notes with separate values within a scale, played almost no role. In his writings on music and language, Rousseau was intensely concerned with the implications and meaning of this difference, regarding it as characteristic of a difference between languages that was at once historical and geographic, separating the ancients from the moderns and the North from the South. Polyphony served to supplement a voice that was “harsh and devoid of accent . . . noisy without being sonorous,” lacking the ability to call forth the passions (“the fire that warms only free souls”) that were at the heart of the Greek polis.54 Hölderlin, a sympathetic and subtle reader of Rousseau, was likely aware of this passage, especially since Rousseau’s polemic, which itself recasts from the perspective of history’s ruinous catastrophe Plato’s own criticism of those tendencies of music of his time that seemed to move away from its austere roots, stands in an intimate relation to the question of the political in Hyperion.55 Like Rousseau, Hyperion seeks to revive the Greek free state and puts his faith in the political function of the passions. Indeed, when Diotima names Hyperion’s innermost nature, she prefigures Hölderlin’s own naming of Rousseau. Diotima’s correction of Hyperion and of his synthesis of the Platonic and the Machiavellian is itself, we might say, a correction of Rousseau. Diotima, moreover, speaks of an accord that is divided and yet nevertheless in a certain way exists prior to its division into separate melodic lines. This is of the greatest significance, since it suggests at once the independence of melodic lines—the fundamental trait of counterpoint or polyphony—and the role of the chord as the foundation of harmonic structure, the basis of homophony. Nor is this mere confusion or vagueness on Hölderlin’s part. Polyphony and homophony are not mutually 53 Hammond and Scullard 1970, 707. 54 Rousseau 1990–2010, 7:329–30. 55 One of the most thorough investigations of Hölderlin’s reception of Rousseau is found in Link 1999, 98–120. Among other things, Link sets out to show that Hölderlin had probably read not only Du contrat social ou Principes du droit politique (On the Social Contract; or, Principles of Political Rights, 1762), Julie and Émile, ou De l’éducation (Emile, or On Education, 1762) but also the two discourses, Les Confessions (The Confessions, 1782, 1789), Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire (The Reveries of a Solitary Walker, 1782), the Essai sur l’origine des langues (Essay on the Origin of Language, 1781), and the musical writings (25). Other significant treatments include Bertheau (2003), Starobinsky (1957), Böschenstein (1966), and de Man (1967–68).

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

216 T he Politics of Life 

exclusive styles, but rather the two poles of a continuum that defines the history of modern Western tonality and stretches from Rousseau’s chaotic confluence of voices, where the accords happen only by accident, to a purely homophonic music based on chords with no true independence of voices. Situated between these two poles is the counterpoint of the late Renaissance and the Baroque, which itself reveals an inner development from the purer polyphony of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, where “two or more lines can unfold simultaneously in the most unrestrained melodic development, not by means of the chords but in spite of them,” to Johann Sebastian Bach, in whose music “the inner dissolution of the linear foundation is shown in the weakening of the melodic independence of the voices.” Bach’s “melodic treatment is more and more determined by the harmonic elements,” with the lines “adjusting themselves to the progression of the chordal structure”; “the play of free melodic invention” reduced “to gentler, wave-like motions”; and “the melodic effects, especially of the middle parts . . . absorbed by the harmonic effects.”56 Through this moment of dissolution, Bach’s music itself marks a point of transition between polyphony and homophony and, without altogether effacing the linear independence, nevertheless reveals a certain “modulatory disposition”: a tendency toward allowing the alternation between different groupings of chords, with different root tones or tonics and different implied melodic characteristics, to give harmonic structure to the whole of a composition. Diotima does not simply blur together two opposed “styles,” but rather names the tension between homophony and polyphony as vital to modern Western music. This is a remarkable moment in Hölderlin’s thought. A theory of ideas based on a mimetic notion of representation exemplified through painting is replaced with a new notion of sharing and dividing, of Teilung or participation, that has, at its foundation, an insight into the essence of Western tonality. The relation of multiplicity and unity is no longer understood as the mimetic participation of the latter in the former but rather as the tension between homophonic simultaneity and polyphonic sequentiality; or, in other words, between the harmonious gathering of notes of different, opposing, values into a single chord and their development into contrapuntal melodic lines. Division in alternation represents the One not by offering a pale imitation of its unchanging nature but rather by opening up a temporality of successive moments as the space

56 Kurth 1917, 123; 143. Cited in Jeppesen 1992, xi. Jeppesen summarizes as follows: “Bach’s and Palestrina’s points of departure are antipodal. Palestrina starts out from lines and arrives at chords; Bach’s music grows out of an ideally harmonic background, against which the voices develop with a bold independence that is often breath-taking.”

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

The Politics of Life



217

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

in which its own inner, simultaneous, tension—its Innigkeit or agonistic gathering—can take place. This suggests both Heraclitus’s hen diapheron heautōi and his polemos as well as a modern, scientific understanding of nature. The connection between Heraclitean politics and the modern scientific world view is most evident in the work of Rameau, in whose theoretical writings the transitional moment in Bach’s music finds its most decisive expression, laying the foundation for a homophonic style based on the modulation between chords and a root progression independent of the actual bass note. Since Rameau was a figure of vast fame in the eighteenth century and the principal, if not always just, target of Rousseau’s later musical polemics, it is plausible to suppose that Hölderlin, himself an amateur musician in his own right, was familiar with Rameau’s revolutionary ideas regarding the nature of harmony.57 Rameau sought not just to advance the practice of musical composition but to ground the aesthetics of music in a scientific understanding of nature, not in order to make it dry and passionless—as Rousseau would accuse—but to expose the true ground of its powers. This natural basis was found principally in harmony. As the only “source” from which melody emanates and “derives its force,” harmony alone can “stir the passions,” relying at once on the physical properties of sounding bodies—the production of a series of overtones—and on human instinct. Opposed to this true source of music’s potency are all the effects, regarded as characteristic of the Italian style, which depend upon “imitation of noises and motions.” If, as Rameau explains, French music typically avoids these effects, it is because its dominant object is feeling, “which does not at all have determinate motions and which, consequently, cannot be everywhere subjected to a regular meter without losing that truth which constitutes its charm.” For indeed whereas “the expression of the Physical is in the meter and the movement, that of the 57 For a biographical account of Hölderlin’s relation to music, see Bertaux 1978, 322–28; Komma 1953, 106–11; Link (1999) addresses the musicality of Hölderlin’s tonal alternation and suggests that Rousseau played an essential role in this regard. While I agree with him on this point—it seems reasonable to suppose that Hölderlin’s theoretical knowledge of music came through Rousseau— Link nevertheless somewhat distorts the relation between Rousseau and Rameau, and Hölderlin’s relation to both. While it is true that Rousseau’s “polemic against Rameau’s dominance of ‘harmony’” should not be understood “simply as a plea for monody or the simplest homophony,” Hölderlin’s search for a calculable poetic law moves in the direction of Rameau rather than Rousseau. The Wechsel der Töne (alternation of tones) has little to do with the modulation that Rousseau advocates in the recitative—a rash, abrupt change of tone evocative of human passions that is quite contrary to what Hölderlin sought either in theory or practice. Moreover though, as I argue elsewhere in this book, Hölderlin rejects an aesthetics of mimēsis.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

218 T he Politics of Life 

Pathetic, by contrast, is in the Harmony and the inflections: which must be weighed carefully before determining what should prevail.”58 With these last words, Rameau would seem to deny that passions have any kinetic character. Yet if the passions are inimitable, it is not because they do not consist in movement but rather because they do not involve a determinate motion, and thus no single determinate motion could imitate them. For Rameau, harmony is not only the source of music but has a far deeper cosmological significance. Following the tradition of Kepler and Newton, and ultimately Plato and Pythagoras, he understands it as the innermost structure of all nature. Thus it is able to express passion precisely because it is itself not a determinate but an indeterminate movement, having neither a definite, simple nature nor a point of termination. Both aspects are exemplified in the overtone series produced by a sounding body. While the series of overtones is itself theoretically infinite, though the human ear has only a limited capacity to recognize them, this infinite series is nevertheless an infinite reproduction of the central tension between the tonic and its descendants and, in particular, the tonic and the dominant, which is at once the first true consonance after the “perfect” consonance of the octave and the first “dissonance.” Whereas earlier polyphonic compositional theory and practice was based on a classification of consonant and dissonant intervals, with Rameau’s theory the possibility of a rigid distinction between the two poles collapses. Even a single tone is dissonant with itself, since it begets a potentially infinite series of overtones, whereas “consonances” are only the nearer rather than farther descendants of the tonic. And thus, while Rameau seems to favor the homophonic over the polyphonic, in fact the harmony of the chord itself comes to be understood fundamentally in terms of the development of the single note, so that in turn the inner nature of the chord is structured through and explicated by the melodic progression. The melodic progression, we might say, represents the perfect in alternation, with the “perfect” itself understood not as a pure and simple unity but rather as the totality of overtones contained in a single note—the totality of harmonic possibilities that, implicit in the very nature of things, can never be revealed all at once but only explicated through the musician’s inexhaustible labor. Whereas Rousseau criticizes Rameau precisely for his ahistorical naturalization of music,59 arguing, against this, that the true force of music comes not from harmony (whose natural basis he does not deny) but rather melody as a specifically conventional language of the passions, Hölderlin conceives of the very nature of the historical existence of 58 Rousseau 1990–2010, 7:175. 59 Rameau, for example, denies that the Greeks were ignorant of what the moderns understand as harmony.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

The Politics of Life



219

ephemeral beings—the “we” of which Diotima speaks—as the unfolding of a harmonic progression. Rameau is transformed into a theory of history and indeed politics. * * *

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

In reading Diotima’s first summons, which is spoken to Hyperion as the two friends walk away from Athens, I stressed how it offers the germ of a choreographic conception of writing. The second summons, which is included as part of Diotima’s letter and is thus more strictly speaking itself a choreographic event, opens the path toward a politics that is itself choric. In the next and final chapter, I will consider the choreopolitics that emerges with a view to a complex of related discourses—Renaissance theories of dance, the regiment of courtly life, and the political-economic doctrines of the Physiocrats—that together comprise what I refer to as the choreographic project of modernity. This choreographic project is itself rooted in an understanding of the poet as choreographic lawgiver that traces back to Plato’s Nomoi (Laws) and that, rather than founding the law on a positive and adequate vision of the Good, inscribes—founds and confounds—the law as the labyrinthine gestures by which the body politic becomes open to an ungiven, merely glimpsed truth.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

5: The Choreographic Project of Modernity

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

T

5.1 The Choreographic Project of Modernity

he kernel of Diotima’s second summons is an account of representation, participation, and communication (Mitteilung) as division in alternation. This is not simply, and indeed not principally, an aesthetic doctrine. Rather, it gestures toward a way of existing, not just individually but above all politically, that, by challenging central presuppositions of Western metaphysics and political thought, offers a new approach to a fundamental philosophical question: the nature of the relation between the opposed terms (ideal and sensate; form and matter; infinite and finite; concept and intuition; freedom and nature; absolute and relative; or even . . . Being and beings), since the peculiar virtue and virtuosity of philosophy, in contrast to mathematics and the natural sciences, is to move fluidly and fluently across the differences that structure thought. Participation and communication in this radical sense involve “unfolding” the more temporal into the more timeless and the more timeless into the more temporal. Nor does this just involve the analysis of a confused content into its moments, since this would imply that there is a continuous relation between all these different levels of analysis, such that ultimately the changing reality of the universe would be reduced to the temporal image of eternity. Instead, participation or communication involves the inscription of this relation of folding and unfolding into two sets of events that themselves belong to different levels. No dialectical necessity justifies this inscription; there is no “principle of sufficient reason” orchestrating the relation between the two sets of events but only the act of choreography itself. In this way Diotima’s second summons answers to the problem of hyperbole—the experience of an extreme absence of every external measure. Lacking reference to anything outside itself that would organize or regulate its excess, language gives way to pure hype. In response to this crisis, Diotima does not propose to restore an external measure but instead gestures toward a new kind of measure, one that, rather than having the chaos of matter measure up to a form beyond itself, finds measure, balance, and equilibrium within itself; becoming open to measure

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The Choreographic Project of Modernity



221

from within. This immanent measure can now be understood in terms of the structural coherence that organizes a set of events, such as those which constitute our temporal existence. Precisely because this measure is immanent—as it were, internal to that which has need of measure—the series of temporal events do not need a transcendent reference to justify or organize themselves. Our relation to the gods, to those who are more still and more timeless—our communication and community with them—involves what we might call a choreographic hyperbole, in which the one measure enters into a relation, born of surplus rather than deficiency, to the other measure. Thus the sense of hyperbole shifts: it is no longer the loss of measure but its superabundance. The choreographic hyperbole opens unto truth: not as a decisive final event, in which all reality would be contained, justified, and consummated but as the measure beyond measure. For Hölderlin, the question of measure is fundamentally political. It asks: how should we organize ourselves in our common lives? How should we guide and orient ourselves? And first of all it is the question of how one should act politically: how one can act toward still unrealized possibilities of human existence. The concept of choreographic writing, suggested in Diotima’s first summons, indicates a “formal” framework for an answer: choreographic writing acts toward possibilities of existence that are not yet adequately given to us—not yet clearly present to us as the ends of our actions. The problem remains of how to give content to this merely formal indication. Each of the political personae reveals a mode of action that must fail, and precisely because, in each case, the notion of a telos, together with the presupposition of the opposition of form and matter, remains in effect. In her second summons, Diotima will present the germ of a positive answer. Her theory of representation and participation suggests how we can act toward a sense of the possibility of political existence that is not given from without as a goal or telos—that does not present itself to us in the clarity of a noetic intuition or as the product of rational inquiry into the function proper to us. As novel and original as it might appear, this theory of representation, as we’ve already seen, resonates with Hölderlin’s contemporaries, and indeed shows a surprising affinity to Rameau’s speculations regarding the nature of music. Continuing in this vein, in the rest of this chapter I will argue that it not only shows an affinity to a few scattered and idiosyncratic moments in the history of ideas but must be understood in the context of two tendencies which, tracing back to the Renaissance, involve a fundamental and radical rethinking of the nature of politics. These are, first, the theory and practice of dancing, and, second, the emergence of modern political economy with the Physiocrats. Together these constitute the choreographic project of modernity. Hölderlin’s Hyperion, and

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

222 T he Choreographic Project of Modernity 

Diotima’s second summons in particular, gather these tendencies into a single luminous constellation. Let us then turn to the first, considering, in some detail, the early history of Western dance, since it is here that the radical potential of the ballet comes into view.

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

5.2 Misura and Fantasmata While the tradition of courtly dancing had already existed among the elite of Western Europe for several centuries, it is not until around 1430 that we find written treatises on dancing.1 Their appearance in quattrocento Italy reflects not only the growing influence of humanism but also the extraordinary social and political importance that dancing had come to assume.2 In addition to practical instruction and specific choreography, these treatises also contained sophisticated philosophical justifications of dance, which was regarded not simply as a charming and healthy form of entertainment and recreation but as a liberal art, whose practice demanded a knowledge of its principles.3 Believing “that a person’s gestures, deportment, facial expressions, and manner of walking . . . were a silent language that carried a rich treasury of meaning,” the dance masters and humanists of the Italian Renaissance invested dance with great ethical and religious significance.4 Dance not only provides a visible display of the harmonious ordering of the soul but manifests and helps realize the hidden ordering of the cosmos.5 It refines the character of those who are already virtuous and upright, while making those who are “ill-mannered and boorish and born into a low-station into sufficiently noble people.”6 The concept of moderation played a key role in the various attempts in the quattrocento to provide a philosophical justification of dancing. Drawing on Aristotle and Latin rhetorical texts, humanists such as Matteo di Marco Palmieri, author of Della vita civile (On Civic Life, 1465), regarded moderation in movement as natural and virtuous. Excessive movement and excessive lack of movement alike were not only ugly and unnatural but a sign of moral vice and a defective character.7 Building on this notion of moderation, the dance treatises of the quattrocento understood it not just as a static arithmetic mean between extremes but as an 1 Nevile 2004, 18. 2 For a comprehensive discussion of the role of dancing in Renaissance society and politics, see Nevile 2004, 44–58. 3 Ibid., 45. 4 Ibid., 84. 5 Ibid., 65. 6 Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro, De Pratica Seu Arte Tripudii, cited in Nevile 2004, 71. 7 Nevile 2004, 10.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The Choreographic Project of Modernity



223

alternation between movements of different qualities that not only keeps the mean but is in concord with the music and appropriate to the context.8 To this end, dance masters began to develop a technical vocabulary describing subtle nuances of human movements that were themselves often invented. Especially suggestive, in this regard, is the notion of fantasmata, a kind of caesura in movement. Paraphrasing the manuscript of Domenico da Piacenza, Jennifer Nevile explains that “fantasmata is concerned with the way in which each step is phrased”: “At the end of every step the dancer must freeze briefly for a fraction of a second, just as if he or she had seen the head of the Medusa, before moving on to the next step with so little effort it is like a falcon taking wing.”9 And Mark Franko observes that “fantasmata is not a quality peculiar to either movement or the pose, but rather one inherent in their interplay.”10 It “denotes movement as the phantom of itself, about to stop but not yet in stasis.”11 And “it also designates the pose as the transition from statue to animation,” defining “dancing as a compromise between movement and the pose, a transitional act in which each seems about to become the other.” “The pose,” he continues, “is animated from within and movement carries the body from one tonic pose to another,” and thus, “paradoxically, the moment in which the most emphatic movement occurs is the moment of its percussive cessation or freezing in the pose.”12 Yet by far the most fundamental concept in the quattrocento dance manuals is misura, which in Italian means “a measure, a rule, a direction, a method, a proportion.”13 The last of these meanings is most decisive for the dance manuals. Misura, as Nevile explains, “embodied the idea of proportion: a proportioning of the space around a dancer’s body through the movements of the body, a proportioning of the ground on which the floor patterns were traced out, and a proportioning of music.”14 And for Domenico, there is a “misura el tereno” or “light measure,” which is “the one that keeps the whole of your body within the mean of the movement.”15 But misura also took on a much more specific, technical meaning, referring to the four tempos whose proper execution and appropriate alternation was of critical importance to the art of dancing.16 Most important was the bassadanza misura, with the other three—the 8 Ibid., 75–104. 9 Ibid., 86; See Franko 1986, 58–66. 10 Franko 1986, 64. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid., 65. 13 Nevile 2004, 77. 14 Ibid., 78. 15 Domenico da Piacenza, De arte saltandi et choreas ducendi (On the Art of Dancing and Directing Choruses, circa 1455) cited in Nevile 2004, 78. 16 Nevile 2004, 80.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

224 T he Choreographic Project of Modernity 

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

quaternaria misura, the saltarello misura, and the piva misura—all derived from these according to ratios which, in Pythagorean musical theory, constitute the harmonious intervals of the octave (2:1), the fifth (3:2), and the fourth (4:3).17 The concept of misura not only provides the basis for the concrete realization of moderation in the movements of the body but is also the key to dancing’s ethical, political, and cosmological significance. The work of Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro draws special attention to these connections. For him, dance is the external and physical realization not only of the harmony of music but of the cosmos as a whole.18 The philosophical foundation for the Italian Renaissance theory of dancing is the Neoplatonism and Pythagoreanism conveyed through the writings of St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, Boethius, and Chalcidus’s commentary on the Timaeus.19 The concept of misura or measure in the choreographic project of the West, one might then suppose, remains beholden from the beginning to a vulgarized and derivative version of Plato’s transcendentalism. Yet a closer reading of Guglielmo Ebreo suggests aspects of the concept of misura that point in a different direction. In his De pratica seu arte tripudii, Guglielmo Ebreo describes measure as follows: Measure, in this part, and as it pertains to the art of dancing, means a sweet and measured accord between sound and rhythm, apportioned with judgment and skill, the nature of which can best be understood through the [playing] of a stringed or other instrument, tuned and tempered in such a way that its weak [beat] equals the strong; that is, the tenor is equal to the contratenor so that one tempo measures the same as the next. Therefore, the person who wishes to dance must regulate and gauge himself, and must so perfectly accord his movements with it and in such a way that his steps will be in perfect accord with the aforesaid tempo and measure and will be regulated by that measure. He must also understand and know which foot should move on the strong [beat] and which on the weak, bearing himself easily, his gestures in accord with the measure and music. [Measure] shows us the timing of passi sempii and passi doppii, and of all your other movements and actions which are fitting and necessary in the aforesaid art [of dancing] which, without measure, would be imperfect. And let this suffice as regards measure.20

17 18 19 20

Ibid., 80; 106. Ibid., 65. Ibid., 105. Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro 1995, 92–95.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The Choreographic Project of Modernity



225

In the above passage, as Mark Franko notes, misura does not just involve the ability of the dancer to keep time through a sense for rhythm and proportion, or the “choreographic principle of rhythmic order.” Rather, the measure of dancing accords with the measure of music, which itself involves “a concordance . . . between the ‘low’ and ‘high’ note and between ‘fullness’ and the ‘void.’”21 In this way, it involves incorporating into the body’s movements the subtle balance existing between the different melodic lines of polyphonic music. Here one already discerns a shift away from measure as the conformity to a transcendental, external standard and toward a concept of immanent measure. Also crucial is the notion of self-regulation: dance (danzare), the “sweet and measured accord [concordanza] between sound and music,” requires that its practitioner “regulate and gauge himself [si regoli et misuri].” Misura is above all the practice of rendering the body submissive to a rule and measure, so that it itself becomes tuned and tempered (concordante & temperato) like a musical instrument (strumento). Nothing less, in other words, than the transformation of the body into an instrument able to fit its movements to the measure of the music. This notion of self-regulation, rendering the body compliant with and submissive to the cosmic proportions of music, need not in itself entail a conceptual break with a Neoplatonic and Pythagorean conceptual framework. Yet since the proportions of Renaissance polyphonic music are dynamic rather than static, the traditional concept of an imitative resemblance with the cosmic order is stressed to its limit. Moreover, the medial quality of self-regulation stands in a certain tension with a transcendental concept of measure. If one is truly regulating and gauging oneself, then the self, it seems, must become the measure, rule, and gauge of itself. The main point of reference for the Pythagorean and Neoplatonic notion of ratio or misura is the movement of the heavenly bodies. The dance of the human body represents the cosmic dance named in Plato’s Timaeus.22 Yet there is nothing straightforward about the translation of celestial movements, and a celestial measure, into the movements and measure of the body. In attempting this translation, the theorists and practitioners of the dance were indeed forced to confront the fundamental incommensurability between the human body, encompassing as it does the movements of biological life, and the heavenly order. The root of this incommensurability, moreover, is the different manner in which heavenly bodies and living, earthly, biological bodies exemplify measure. The movement of the heavenly bodies lends itself to mathematical 21 Franko 1986, 60–61. 22 For a comprehensive treatment of the motif of the “cosmic dance” in the Timaeus and its reception in Neoplatonic and early Christian thought, see Miller 1986.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

226 T he Choreographic Project of Modernity 

analysis, since the relative position of the stars and planets can be measured and quantified. Thus Plato understood astronomy as one of the four disciplines of mathematics—the other three are arithmetic, planar geometry, and solid geometry—that together serve to turn the soul away from Becoming and toward Being, though he insists that the true subject matter of astronomy is not the observable movements of the heavenly bodies but purely geometrical motions that can only be accessed through the intellect.23 Measured against the orderly movements of the cosmos, earth-dwelling living beings, by contrast, appear chaotic, unruly, alogical, resistant to quantitative analysis and description. For Platonism and Neoplatonism, this very unruliness of the body necessitates education in music, dance, and gymnastics.24 Nothing less is at stake than making the human body conform to a rule that is not entirely natural to it. This, moreover, suggests that the idea of measure as a transcendent principle, and the privilege of the cosmic movements as the foremost representation of measure, are closely related to one another. But if, judged from a cosmic perspective, the bodies of human beings and other earthbound animals are chaotic and unmeasured in their movements, one might also find a different kind of measure: not a simple mathematical proportion but a subtle, complex, dynamic equilibrium between movements. By seeking, through the self-regulation and self-measuring of the body, to translate celestial harmony into an eloquent rhetoric of physical movement, the choreographic project of the Italian Renaissance becomes implicated in a curious tension between fundamentally incommensurable discourses of measure. While it will attempt, following Plato, to impose a cosmic measure on the wayward motions of the human body, rescuing the human animal from its bestial errancy, nevertheless, in attempting to gauge itself according to a measure found within the human body, it also finds itself increasingly at odds not only with the pedagogical project of Platonism and Neoplatonism but with its metaphysical presuppositions. It is, once again, a question of a tension and tendency operative within the choreographic project that consolidates itself in the quattrocento. Choreography—dance writing—assumes two widely divergent meanings. It will continue to inscribe the cosmic logos or ratio into the body, but will also inscribe the measure of the body into itself, becoming open to the truth of a different kind of measure.25 23 Plato, Republic 528d–530c. 24 See Plato, Laws 653c–654a. 25 Mark Franko (1986) calls attention to the absence of the dancing body in the Renaissance discourse on dancing. In the conclusion of his brilliant analysis of Renaissance dance, he explains this absence in semiotic terms: “. . .the dancing body was not a subject of discourse on dance because the physical indications of

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

The Choreographic Project of Modernity



227

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Despite their ideological foundations in the Neoplatonic and Pytha­ gorean traditions, the dance treatises of the quattrocento already contain many subtle yet significant signs of this emerging antagonism. The specialized vocabulary of movement, as already seen with fantasmata, involves a range of values that seem little concerned with the rigid, mechanically regular, and seemingly mathematically pure movements of the heavenly bodies. Rather, everything depends on variations, alterations, subtle balances between contrasting movements. Hence Antonio Cornazzano writes that “in the bassadanza . . . sometimes it is not ugly to rest for a tempo and to be as if dead, and then to enter into the following [tempo] in any airy fashion, almost like a person who has risen from the dead.”26 Especially telling, however, is the role of the experimentum. Only through experimenta can the dancer master misura. Experimentum is translated by Sparti as “exercise,” and while this certainly fits the context, the word also suggests, more literally, an “experiment” or an “experience.” In the explanation, written in Italian beneath the Latin title, Guglielmo Ebreo speaks of pruove and experienze: Note that the purpose of all these tests [pruovo] or exercises [experienze] lies in a perfect understanding of mensuration [la misura], which is the foundation of the entire aforesaid art of the dance. Mensuration is learned and put into practice through the aforesaid exercises, wherefore it, above all else, needs to be perfectly understood, since it is something so profitable and necessary, and fosters, besides, every other science where mensuration has a place. Note, therefore, that so great is its virtue and perfection that whoever understands mensuration well . . .were he to take the pulse of someone who is sick or feverish, would know as well as a doctor at what rate the pulse was beating, even without knowing the sort of illness (since that is a science [medicine] distinct from this one [dance]); for it would be sufficient for him to discern whether the beat was regular, as it should be, or fast, or slow.27

Guglielmo Ebreo conceives of these experimenta as tests of one’s skill and knowledge in the art of dancing. Yet the very need for such tests, which involve such things as trying to dance counter to the time of misura, shows that the skill and knowledge of the dance is not merely abstract and theoretical; not just a knowledge of forms imposed on the body, but an experience of the body itself—and indeed of one’s own body. It is not enough just to practice a certain set of patterns, learning to imitate them ‘goodness’ were floating signifiers; their signified vacillated between an absolute and a fiduciary concept of value” (77). 26 Cited in Nevile 2004, 70. 27 Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro 1995, 103.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

228 T he Choreographic Project of Modernity 

and the ratios they contain. One must become aware, through experimentation, of one’s body and the way that it moves, or indeed of the measure belonging to one’s own body as this individual body. The skilled dancer will even be able to measure the pulse of the heart; dancing, as it were, offers training in the technique of time measurement that would later allow Galileo, son of a composer and music theorist, to discover the regularity of the pendulum, thus laying the technical foundation for modern time pieces, including the musician’s metronome. It is a commonplace that the dancer’s instrument is his body, yet this seemingly banal claim has radical implications. In practicing his art, the dancer must depend on an instrument that is uniquely, singularly his own—and that is nothing else than his own singularity, his own measure.28 The experimenta of Guglielmo Ebreo thus contain, if only implicitly and obliquely, a critique of a logic of generality.

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

5.3 Ballet du Cour In Dance as Text: Ideologies of the Baroque Body, Mark Franko, building on his earlier study of Renaissance dance, argues that the anti-Platonic tendencies of fantasmata become the guiding choreographic principle in the ballet du cour of the late French Renaissance, a spectacle combining dance, drama, poetry, elaborate costumes, complex scenography, and music. An essential element of the ballet du cour is geometric dancing, where the attention of the spectator, who views the stage from an aerial rather than frontal perspective, is drawn to the patterns formed by the dancers in unison rather than the expressive eloquence and grace of individual dancers.29 By symbolizing the body politic as “a harmoniously articulated body” in which “each physical member, aware of ‘degree,’ knew its place and function,” geometric dancing would seem to affirm a Neoplatonic world view.30 Thus Balthazar de Beaujoyeulx, the choreographer of the first French court ballet, Le Balet comique de la Royne, “called the entire work ‘un corps bien proportionné’ (a well-proportioned body)” that “could demonstrate measured proportion not only by presenting bodies exemplarily, but also through the ballet’s very organization and its choreography.”31 Yet the sense of harmony operative in Le Balet comique de la Royne, Franko suggests, is not Platonic but Heraclitean: 28 Significant, in this regard, are Agamben’s (2016) reflections, in The Use of Bodies, on the emergence, in scholastic philosophy, of the concept of instrumental causality. Speaking of the body as the instrument of the dancer is not as innocuous or self-evident as it seems. 29 Franko 1993, 21. 30 Ibid., 32. 31 Ibid., 32.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The Choreographic Project of Modernity



229

not a mere blending of opposites but a “harmonia oppositorum”—“inner tension and strife” rather than “fusion and flowing correspondence.”32 While this “more controversial and intellectually demanding concept of harmony as strife . . . had currency in the sixteenth century,” dance also played an important role in its development and theoretical articulation.33 In Le Balet comique de la Royne, harmonic opposition could indeed appear as a sort of organizing—indeed simultaneously organizing and disorganizing—principle of the entire spectacle. The fluid movement of the choreography—patterns form, dissolve into a “seeming disorder of spiraling, intertwining trajectories,” and then form anew—“amounts to a choreographic transposition of fantasmata, that social dance aesthetic which designates a dynamic counterpoint between pose and movement.”34 Moreover, with respect to the total organization of the spectacle as a kind of balletic Gesamtkunstwerk, harmony consists not in the “simultaneous occurrence of, and exchanging forms between, several artistic genres—dance, music, and poetry,” but, rather, “in a serial occurrence of different forms that create intervals between themselves: music, dance, and poetry interrupt, overlap on, and are juxtaposed against each other, concordantly.”35 Nor, however, is harmonic opposition restricted to the formal dimension of the ballet spectacle. Rather, the ballet as a whole serves as a Heraclitean political allegory, elaborating various tensions that constitute the political sphere: order versus chaos; the golden age versus present reality; the divine versus the human; the human versus the animal; continuity versus interruption; theory versus praxis; speech and silence.36 And perhaps most significantly: a Heraclitean concept of harmony determines the logic of representation itself. The dancing body does not directly express harmony: dance does not function as an immanent communication.37 The body functions indexically, not expressively: it is “a sign of harmony, not its true manifestation.”38 Thus the mode of representation that emerges is “similar to the most radical sort of literary metaphor.” Franko describes the nature of this new mode of representation as follows: Thought of in its entirety, geometrical dance stages the appearance and disappearance of writing in space. Writing, of course, must 32 Ibid., 35. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid., 41. 35 Ibid., 43. My emphasis. 36 Ibid., 44–51. This enumeration of oppositions involves an extrapolation. 37 Ibid., 49. 38 Ibid., 47.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

230 T he Choreographic Project of Modernity 

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

disappear in order to reappear: each character is produced by a series of subsidiary motions that themselves cannot accede to meaning. But the vanishing of figure implicit in writing’s temporary disappearance also partakes of textuality. Flight is part of the writing process. Thus, geometrical dance could be thought to provide two different, even opposed, though interdependent, textual models: one founded on the hieroglyph, the other on the labyrinth; one an obedience, the other an escape, one a discursivity, the other a madness.39

Hölderlin’s writings will incant an almost uncanny resurrection not only of the notion of immanent measure but of all these various aspects of the Heraclitean harmonic opposition choreographed and staged in Le Balet comique de la Royne. In invoking the Heraclitean theme of harmonic opposition, Hölderlin doesn’t so much mark a return to the pre-Socratics as a covert engagement with the choreographic project that coalesced into being in the ballet du cour and its precursors.40 It will seem odd to claim that Hölderlin engaged so intimately and powerfully with a theatrical practice with which there is no indication he was more than casually acquainted. Yet the ballet represents an exemplary political art form of European modernity, and indeed plays a role in the emergence of the modern forms of political power analogous in importance, but vastly different in character, to that which, as a growing body of scholarship maintains, tragic theater played in the political life of the Athenian polis. While the theater of the spoken word remains bound up with the destiny of the nation state and the political challenge of forming a people, the ballet, having divested itself of almost everything that could claim an immediate intelligibility for the members of one nation, suggests a politics that for better and for worse has freed itself from those last vestiges of the classical heritage, such as the insistence on the people being present to itself, that inhere in the idea of the sovereign nation state. Whereas the project of a nationalism that is at once political, linguistic, and theatrical, exemplified in the writings of Richard Wagner, seeks to organize political life through the communicative potency of a mother tongue whose affective potential will be fully realized by discovering its elemental sounds, the ballet makes the body a stranger to itself, 39 Ibid., 25. 40 Honold (2006–7, 67–98), writing about the “astronomical” aspect of Hölderlin’s poetics, calls attention to a similar choreography of movement at work, though without making explicit the connection with the aesthetics of the ballet. It is, however, precisely in the ballet, I would argue, that the tensions he discovers in Hölderlin—such as between the cyclic movement and the “singular moment” of the exception, or ultimately even between the heavenly movement of the gods and the earthly movement of mortals—finds a rich exposition.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The Choreographic Project of Modernity



231

only returning it to itself through the detour of a never-ending pedantry; a pedantry transcended only by athletic virtuosity, inspiration, and grace. This will find its correlate in a poetry that demands to be read philologically and even, we might say, pedantically: from the perspective of the one who is not at home, who does not speak a native tongue. If Hölderlin’s poetry is untranslatable as no other poetry, it is not because it reposes on the virtuosity of the native tongue. Rather, it is untranslatable to the very extent that it is only translatable, having taken up within itself the problem of translation in such a way that almost every word is always already given within a nexus of learned languages. The ballet and Hölderlin’s philological poetics, one might say, are two sides of the refusal to privilege the native voice; the refusal to regard the fallen languages left in the wake of Babel as sacred languages. Both contain the realization that the only sacred language that human beings could claim as their own after Babel— after the crisis, perhaps originary, that has sundered us, in our very words and thoughts, from the divine—is an invention and a counterfeit, and not the sacralization of what has already been given to them. It is in this sense that we might also think of both the ballet and Hölderlin’s poetics as biopolitical, or, better, zoepolitical. They both politicize the body and language without the intervention of concrete, rooted forms of life. It is not, however, that they oppose mere, natural life to a formed, fully human life, but rather that they conceive of the political formation of life, the production of forms of life, as a matter of pedagogy, pedantry, choreography—a choreography of the natural life of the body and of words toward the inspiration of truth. Hölderlin, thinking with great intensity about the political from a perspective that was not only disenfranchised but provincial and literary or even “pedantic,” could be said, all his critical incisiveness notwithstanding, to lack a certain concreteness in his engagements with the political traditions of European modernity. This results in a strangely disembodied thought of the body politic: a political choreography without actual dancing bodies. A contrast might be drawn to Kleist. Born into a Prussian aristocratic family and destined from youth for a career as a military officer, Kleist had a direct and formative experience of both the operations of political power in the absolutist state and a military discipline of the body, which itself, in its origins, was closely related to the ballet. There are many points of contact between Hölderlin and Kleist, both of whom were rediscovered in the twentieth century. Yet their writings move in strikingly different directions. Kleist’s dramatic works are theatrically compelling and indeed have a choreographic dynamic almost completely lacking from Hölderlin’s The Death of Empedocles. In Penthesilea: Ein Trauerspiel (Penthesilea: A Tragic Drama, 1808), perhaps most exemplary in this regard, the human body emerges as a site of political power and a locus of human community falling outside the binary logic of discursive reasoning.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

232 T he Choreographic Project of Modernity 

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

It is not surprising, then, that dance itself is treated thematically in his essay on the marionette theater. Mark Franko’s reading of the history of Baroque dance illuminates the relation between Hölderlin and Kleist. In Dance as Text: Ideologies of the Baroque Body, Franko argues that the burlesque dance of the early Baroque would at once radicalize and transform the Heraclitean harmony of the late Renaissance. Not only does it deconstruct “geometrical dance by magnifying the latter’s barely perceptible transitions,” but it also privileges the individual and the heterogeneous and miscellaneous over the “homogenous group.”41 With its cross-dressing male dancers, strange and absurd costumes, contorted and grotesque movements, violent juxtaposition of mood, and obsessive treatment of the maddening powers of love, the burlesque dance of the Baroque allowed the chaotic powers of Eros, chance, and transformation to disorder the geometric dance’s “branl of harmonious ebb and flow” together with its “meaningful pause.”42 Thus emerges an aesthetics of disruption, interruption, fragmentation, irony, and self-reflection, in which text and action are detached from one another and the organic body gives way to the choreographic autonomy of the dancing figure.43 Yet the intention of the burlesque, no less than the geometric dance, is not merely aesthetic but political: staged by the very nobility whose autonomy was being questioned by the rise of absolutism, burlesque dancing involves a purely negative, even nihilist, form of political critique. As Franko writes: Self-conscious theatricality paired with the reduction of text and décor and the experimental distortion of the body’s outlines all point beyond symptoms of moral dissoluteness toward a strategy of subversion of norms. This subversion is explored both in pointed satire and in pure aestheticism as well as in erotic posturing. The noble’s sense of his growing obsolescence in court society induces him to employ burlesque fashions in the interest of an ironic critique of that society. I do not mean critique in any particularly reasoned or systematic sense, but rather as an expression of nihilistic resistance arising in spiteful and vitally negative statements about himself and his sociopolitical status . . . Burlesque ballet is ideologically subversive, and, therefore, politically destabilizing.44

Burlesque dance was short-lived: between 1643 and 1660 it would become diluted with pastoral themes, losing its critical force, and then 41 42 43 44

Franko 1993, 65. Ibid., 76. Ibid., 80. Ibid., 106.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The Choreographic Project of Modernity



233

finally, with the ascendance of Louis XIV to power, the ballet would be submitted to royal surveillance.45 Nobles no longer had the freedom to design and stage their own spectacles in the public sphere.46 Yet the burlesque doesn’t die completely but lives on in a covert transfigured form in the balletic interludes of Molière.47 Moreover, as Franko will argue, the performance practices of twentieth-century dance can be seen, in many respects, as a revival of the burlesque.48 Kleist perhaps belongs to the advanced guard of this revival, being motivated by a political intention similar to that which is found at the burlesque’s origin. In his Penthesilea, the burlesque theme of gender reversal, and the madness of love, finds its most extraordinary, rigorous expression. If Kleist’s Prinz Friedrich von Homburg oder die Schlacht bei Fehrbellin (Prince Friedrich of Homburg or the Battle at Fehrbellin, 1809–10) seems to move beyond nihilism, proposing a certain utopian reconciliation of the distracted, disobedient body of the noble with the all-knowing sovereign, this remains ambiguous and perhaps more illusory than real. Whereas Kleist, following Molière, tries to revive the nihilist potency of the burlesque, Hölderlin returns to the Heraclitean moment of the late Renaissance. Yet this return is only possible by way of a detour of decisive significance for Hölderlin’s poetics. While one could argue that dance throughout the Renaissance had involved some notion of physical discipline, the specific corporeality of dance had always been secondary to a more spiritual, cosmological conception of measure. When Guglielmo Ebreo enumerates the six elements of dance, he puts measure first and bodily movement last. Bodily movement is equivalent, in this sense, to spectacle (opsis) in Aristotle’s Poetics—needed for the full realization of tragedy but not of its innermost essence. The other Renaissance dance manuals leave it out entirely. When the reforms of Louis XIV and the innovations of Pierre Beauchamp instituted the danse d’école—the classical ballet in the sense still used today—the physical aspect assumes central importance. Arguing for the independence of dance from music, the “Lettres patentes du roy pour l’établissement de l’Académie royale de danse en la ville de Paris” (Letters Patent of the King for the Establishment of a Royal Academy of Dance in the City of Paris), issued by King Louis XIV in 1661, emphasize technique over cosmological speculation.49 While the “Letters Patent” refer to dancing’s rhetorical and moral aspects in justifying its independence from and superiority to instrumental music, the focus of the proposed reforms is administrative 45 46 47 48 49

Ibid., 108–9. Ibid., 109. Ibid., 130. Ibid., 13–14. Ibid., 109.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

234 T he Choreographic Project of Modernity 

and technical. As Franko explains: “Technically speaking, dance is isolated from the surrounding spectacle, and the dancing body is singled out as in need of training.”50 This regime of training, moreover, is advocated chiefly as part of military discipline. The dancers’ role in spectacles is not only subordinated to their existence as soldiers but seems to be a mere extension of this primary function: one more way in which the trained body of the subject can be deployed in the service of the king.51 For Hölderlin, physical virtuosity assumes the greatest significance, but precisely as the site of political engagement rather than mere disciplinary compliance with sovereign power.

5.4 Hölderlin’s Virtuosity

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Hölderlin’s most explicit treatment of virtuosity appears in a letter to Boehlendorff, written shortly after Hölderlin’s return in 1802 from Bordeaux. In the areas that lie on the Vendée the wild and warlike interested me, the purely masculine for which the light of life becomes immediate in the eyes and limbs and feels itself, in the feeling of death, as though in a virtuosity and fulfills its thirst to know. The athletic quality of the southern people, among the ruins of the antique spirit, made me more familiar with the actual essence of the Greeks; I came to know their nature and their wisdom, their body, the way in which they grew in their climate, the rule by which they protected the overbold genius from the violence of the element. This determined their popularity, their way of taking up foreign natures and sharing themselves with them. Therefore they have their uniquely individual [quality] which appears living, insofar as the highest understanding in the Greek sense is the force of reflection, and this becomes comprehensible for us when we comprehend the heroic body of the Greeks; it is tenderness, like our popularity. The sight of the antiquities made an impression on me that gave me a better understanding not only of the Greeks, but in general of the highest of art, which even in the highest movement and phenomenalization of the concepts and all that is seriously meant nevertheless keeps everything standing and for itself, so that security in this sense is the highest mode of the sign . . . The nature of the homeland [Die heimathliche Natur] seizes me all the more powerfully the more I study it. The storms [Gewitter], not merely in their highest manifestation, but seen precisely as power 50 Ibid., 109. 51 Ibid., 112.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

The Choreographic Project of Modernity



235

[Macht] and shape [Gestalt] among the rest of the forms of heaven, the light in its effect, cultivating nationally [nationell] and as principle and a way of fate, so that there is something holy for us, its gait [Gang] in coming and going, the characteristic aspects of the forests and the convergence of different characters of nature in one area, so that all holy places of the earth are together around a single place. . . . (SW 10:19–20)52

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

In the South of France, Hölderlin gains insight into the heroic, athletic, purely masculine body that appears among the ruins of the antique spirit. This body feels its potency in the feeling of death, and life radiates outward from its eyes and limbs; it takes in foreign natures and communicates itself to them, yet it does not lose its integrity. Instead, it protects “the overbold genius from the violence of the element.” The welling forth of its own life remains inviolate against the welling forth of nature; its own life distinct from nature’s life.53 This passage should be read together with the previous letter to Boehlendorff, where Hölderlin argues that only by knowing the “proper national” of the German can the poet use it freely.54 Precisely this experience of the southern body allows Hölderlin to become, in turn, more receptive and open to the eigentliche Nationelle (proper national) of the Germans—die heimatliche Natur, the “nature of the homeland.”55 The 52 See Nägele 1999, 245–67, and Hofmann 1996, 6. Hofmann glosses: “The speculative feeling of immortal sublimity yields to the practical virtuosity of the feeling of death.” 53 Link (1999) suggests that the Boehlendorff correspondence should be understood in terms of the opposition, which Hölderlin inherited from Rousseau’s reception of Montesquieu’s climate theory and physiology, between the hypersensitive southern and the insensitive northern body. While I would resist a full-blown biologization of Hölderlin, this nevertheless confirms my interpretation of this passage, since it suggests that the southern body (as the characteristic body of the ancient world) must shield itself from the Wallen of nature, whereas the northern body, precisely due to its insensitivity, not only can but must (if, at least, it is to feel anything) open itself to this violence. 54 The letter to Boehlendorff is discussed at length by Heidegger in his essay on Hölderlin’s hymn “Remembrance.” 55 Regarding the complexities surrounding the concept of Heimath in Hölderlin, primarily with a view to his lyric poetry, see Bajorek 2005, who relates his poetics of homeland both to the rhetoric of the Nazis (and Heidegger’s readings) and to the “Department of Homeland Security” instituted by George W. Bush in the wake of 9/11. For both Hölderlin and Bush, Bajorek argues, the figure of the homeland plays out a complex logic: while only coming into view “under threat and with a view to a certain inherently terroristic futurality” it is “not without opening a fatally vexed and unexpected concept of security” (880). This thesis has only grown more relevant in the fifteen years since the article’s

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

236 T he Choreographic Project of Modernity 

relation between the one and the other may at first seem obscure; we might have expected him to contrast the German/northern body with the southern and Greek. He does this too, yet what is characteristic of the German body, in its specific mode of beauty and integrity, is precisely that it is not heroic; not opposed to the violence of the elements, it is this very violence. The nature of the homeland seizing him all the more powerfully the more he studies it is the German body. Or rather, the human body in its specifically German Eigenen-Nationellen is a gathering of the forces of nature in their collision (Zusammentreffen) and their thronging urgency in coming and going. It appears not as the pinnacle of all nature, but only as a moment that expresses its exchanges and circulations of forces.56 This brings us to the strange expression: “and feels itself, in the feeling of death, as though in a virtuosity.” The simile “as though in a virtuosity” implies the use of the familiar to elucidate the remote, thus associating virtuosity with the homeland. This might seem paradoxical in light of the Italian origin of the word. Yet the virtue of the virtuoso, embodied above all by the musician and the dancer—both servile professions within the polis—stands in starkest opposition to the heroic aretē. The virtuosic body is founded not on a heroic confrontation with the fear of death but on an instrumental mastery of the potencies of nature, particularly those found within the body.57 Moreover, this letter is written not from Bordeaux but from Germany after Hölderlin’s return, precisely when the experience of the foreign brought him a more intimate, masterful knowledge of the proper. There, it seems, Hölderlin gained a deeper understanding of virtuosity as the fundamental character of the proper— the northern and modern—regarding it not simply as an instrumental mastery over the forces of the body and of nature but as the welling and violence of these forces, or, in other words, the heimatliche—homely, homeland, hence domestic—nature. That he regards the Greek body from the horizon of the non-Greek is clear from how, in speaking of the feeling of death, he refers to that which itself is exterior to the body, banished from its pure and immediate outward-radiating life, and felt only as something outside, only as the object of fear. The Greek virtuosity or quasivirtuosity, in which the potency of life feels itself against death, is publication, though, nevertheless, I would maintain that Hölderlin’s political thinking, while not without these resonances, operates in a domain that is no longer, for want of a better word, Hobbesian. 56 We might also recall the end of Hyperion, where the “heavenly spring” (der himmlische Frühling) causes him to remain in Germany right when, repulsed by German people and their contempt for beauty, he is on the verge of leaving. 57 Bernstein gives one of the most theoretically sophisticated academic treatments of virtuosity (1998).

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

The Choreographic Project of Modernity



237

considered as a special case of the modern virtuosity where life and death are felt, at every moment, in their intertwinement and complicity. In this same passage, Hölderlin also refers to the “highest of art” that revealed itself to him through the sight of antiquities: “Even in the highest movement and phenomenalization of the concepts and all that is seriously meant,” this “keeps everything standing and for itself, so that security in this sense is the highest mode of the sign.” Commenting on this passage, Bernhard Böschenstein explains the sense of “security” (Sicherheit) by referring to the first version of the ode “Stimme des Volks” (Voice of the People, 1799), in which it is brought into relation to the path travelled by human beings and entire peoples. This path

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

is first secure when it resists the temptation to return directly into the abyss of the origin and takes detours before itself, guided at once by its two forces: the one impelling it to remain, the other driving it away. The path keeps itself then in equilibrium when it does not withdraw too early from the efforts of a patient temporal succession. To this extent, the concept of the secure is tied to the spirit’s holding out in a foreign earthly material, and indicates, in analog fashion, the task of art, which is not to present everything at once but in a well-calculated sequence. Greek sculpture, as an art of space, is legitimately allowed to transplant such a sequence into simultaneity.58

The path of security, of certainty—a certainty which is not conceived of as absolute stasis, the absolute self-presence of the unchanging and eternal, but as born from the highest movement of the concept—is a path that turns in on itself, moving in curves, resisting the temptation to travel in a straight line; a path that holds itself to the labor of succession. It is a path that takes time, and indeed makes time, by remaining constantly open to the possibility of revolution.59 Or in other words: it is the path of dance and even of the fantasmata, the momentary pause amid movement. The “highest of art” is the successive, turning, pausing movements of the dance. Dance is the schema of art in general. And thus Greek sculpture itself is a sort of spatialization of the temporality of the dance: a “translation” into simultaneity of a more original sequence along with the tensions that it articulates. Dance is the origin of art but it is also the destination. Recalling Hölderlin’s earlier letter to Boehlendorff, where he speaks of freely utilizing the national, it becomes clear that the highest art of a choric interplay of movement and stasis must assume very different forms in the Greek and the modern world. First appearing in plastic form, it must return as 58 See Böschenstein 1967–68, 174. 59 See Schmidt 1969–70, 121–22.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

238 T he Choreographic Project of Modernity 

dance, though a dance that is also different from the purely Dionysian dance at the origin of culture. Whereas the problem for the Greeks was to secure the overpowering experience of divinity by constraining it through the shackles of the law and the representational form of the artwork, the “Hesperian” exigency, by contrast, is to expose their dwellings, made too secure through the dominance of technē—through the constantly twisting and turning path of labyrinthine machinations that contain the danger that is always threatening to break out—to the flashes of lightning through which the divinity is revealed.60 The ultimately static quality of Greek sculpture, the subordination of the diachronic and agonistic to the synchronic and restful shape, is needed to contain the overwhelming power of inspiration. Yet for modern, Hesperian art, this could only be a prison, shutting the work off from the divine and from life. Needed, rather, is a form in which movement, change, death are folded into life: a form and technique that is at every moment exposed. The highest art of dance must emerge, explicitly, as the technique that gives the measure to all art. We find yet another hint that the dance, while remaining unnamed, is the guiding thread of the epistolary conversation between Boehlendorff and Hölderlin. The occasion for Hölderlin’s aesthetic reflections in his letter from December 4, 1801 was Boehlendorff’s recently written Fernando oder die Kunstweihe: Eine dramatische Idylle (Fernando or the Consecration of Art: A Dramatic Idyll). Boehlendorff’s dramatic poem, published the next year by Friedrich Wilmans and soon forgotten, tells of the love between Fernando, a young painter, and Cecilia. And if Fernando, in this all-too-obviously allegorical work, stands for painting and the visual arts more generally, Cecilia, who shares her name—derived from the Latin caecus (blind)—with the patron saint of music, represents music as such. Just as in Kleist’s “Die heilige Cäcilie oder die Gewalt der Musik” (Saint Cecilia, or the Power of Music, 1810), and indeed in a fashion typical for early romanticism, aesthetics is intertwined with religion. Fernando, though a practitioner of the quintessentially Catholic art, is Protestant, while Cecilia, identified with the Catholic saint of the more Protestant art of music, is Catholic. This religious tension is the crux of the rather ponderous plot of the poem, which, though ending happily, is not without a tragic sacrifice: Fernando, for the sake of his love and art, must renounce his own faith, the faith of faith alone.61 Marriage enacts a union, a synthesis. The love and marriage between Fernando and Cecilia is thus an allegory for a higher art synthesizing painting and music, the visual and the auditory. While this union could be taken to signify poetry, this is only possible if we recognize dancing as the schema and essence of poetry. And perhaps Hölderlin, whose own 60 See Böschenstein 1967–68, 175–76. 61 See Böschenstein-Schäfer 1965–66, 110–24.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

The Choreographic Project of Modernity



239

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

response to Boehlendorff’s poem involves a sympathetic, gentle, and tactful correction of a work whose aesthetic failings were all too evident, also saw that the problem with Fernando or the Consecration of Art was its inability to live up to the poetological principle to which, at an abstract and allegorical level, it gives birth. By describing his poem as a “dramatic idyll,” Boehlendorff forced together two stylistic principles—a “captivating dramatic turn of events” and “absolute stasis”—that would seem to exclude each other.62 Yet precisely this “marriage” of opposed formal principles, so awkwardly executed in Boehlendorff’s poem, is not only of the essence of dance, where movement and stillness are given in their antagonistic conjunction at every moment, but Hölderlin, with his concept of the caesura, will come to understand the pause that interrupts movement as an essential structural element of Greek tragedy, just as, with the notion of tonal alternation, he conceived of the poem as a musical sequence of contrasting moods. A note written by Boehlendorff while he was with Hölderlin, Sinclair, and Muhrbeck in Homburg speaks of the “highest and purest inspiration [Begeisterung]”: of “the most intimate collaboration of all human forces” that alone allows an apprehension of human nature in its totality. In this moment of inspiration large and small—earth and heaven would unite—would move themselves through each other—plant, dust, and star would enter into a hovering system of relations—everything would move around its essence, as planets move around the sun, and it [the essence] would feel like a sovereign in the middle; indeed this sovereignty [Herrschaft] would not express itself in reality, in deed—the worlds remain in their place and dust [remains] in the grass—yet for the human being there would develop a comprehension of nature—a capacity for placing himself in its high accord as a resounding sound in the All.63

The inspired experience of human nature, a sort of aesthetic intellectual intuition, is the experience of all of nature dancing around it. Big and small, heaven and earth begin to move through one another—previously distinct and separate, they begin to relate to each other in their movement; they enter into a hovering [schwebend] system of relations. It is not that they move or exist differently, but that a power of comprehension, a different sort of perspective on existence, develops in the human being, who is able to posit himself at the center of their high accord, joining their dance. 62 See Böschenstein-Schäfer 1965–66, 116. 63 Cited in Böschenstein-Schäfer 1965–66, 115.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

240 T he Choreographic Project of Modernity 

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

5.5 The Labyrinthine Dance In the course of its development as a theatrical form, the ballet has come to pose and expose the tension between the teleological, organic body— a body gathered together through a final purpose that grants sense to every part—and the virtuosic, Heraclitean body. A site of forces, metabolic exchanges, conflicts and reconciliations, the latter is not united around a single purpose, nor does it express the highest purpose of the natural order as a process of development. When reformers such as Noverre strove to make the ballet serious by assimilating it to an Aristotelian mimetic poetics, they had to confront the contrary tendencies inherent in the very technique itself, which, instead of merely amplifying the “classical beauty” of the human form, turns it out from within into something uncannily machinelike and at once inhuman, subhuman, and superhuman. Ultimately, this is reflected in the obsession of so many nineteenth-century ballets with the romantic motifs of the Doppelgänger (Swan Lake), the automaton (Coppélia, The Nutcracker), and the erotic proximity of humans and animals: a obsession that is then carried over in the next century into the more avant-garde works of Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, and especially Igor Stravinsky’s The Firebird, Petrushka, and The Rite of Spring. To these two bodies, with their respective forms of potency, correspond two radically different understandings of the nature of the body politic. The teleological body incorporates a nationalist politics that, based on the feeling of a common need, demands elimination of all that is not in accord with this single feeling—an ideal articulated in Richard Wagner’s political writings and closely related to his attempt to put music in the service of drama. For Hölderlin, by contrast, the figure of the dance and of harmonic opposition, as the essence of modern virtuosity, is constitutive for a political ordering founded upon a radical equality that encompasses all beings—nature in its entirety. This suggests the significance of Hölderlin’s invocation of the labyrinthine dance. Whereas Wagner, many decades later, would regard the maze as the figure for the “ideal dance” organizing Mozart’s and Haydn’s symphonic music—a music from which dramatic or rhetorical, and ultimately also political significance, has been rigorously excluded—Hölderlin returns the labyrinthine dance to an archaic and political, indeed archpolitical, sense.64 Inside the Minoan labyrinth, Theseus slaughtered the Minotaur, freeing the Athenians from the burden of paying tribute to a foreign king and thus preparing the ground for the wondrous deed—Theseus’s circumscription of his regal power—that will lay the foundations for democracy. After being rescued, the Athenian youths danced a complex, labyrinthine figure to commemorate the deed, preserved in a Delian dance known as the 64 Wagner 1981, 154.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

The Choreographic Project of Modernity



241

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

“crane.”65 Richard Chandler’s “Travels in Asia Minor, and Greece”—a principal source for Hyperion—draws just this connection.66 Hyperion’s Youth indeed mentions the “happy people [Volk],” who “took high pride and joy in how not one had gone astray in the labyrinths of the Ronneca dance [in den Labyrinthen des Ronnecatanzes]” (FA 10:221). The Ronnecatanz, Beissner notes, is a corruption, introduced through Heinrich August Ottokar Reichard’s 1780 translation of the Count of Choiseul-Gouffier’s Picturesque Voyage of Greece, of the Roméca, which, as Choiseul-Gouffier explains, is not only the most common dance among the modern Greeks but shows a striking connection with the dance of their ancestors, with some claiming to “recognize the image of the Cretan labyrinth in the manifold curves and turns of the dancers” (GSA 3:468). Choiseul-Gouffier goes on to reflect that the Greeks’ taste in dancing remained unchanged: “Misfortune and slavery had no power over their natural tendency to pleasure, and a moment of festivity made them forget all their misery. Such a people, as frivolous as it is lovable, often believes itself to be sufficiently avenged for a new impost through a little song.” The dance preserves an archaic political memory; a memory of past gestures of freedom. Homer also suggests a close connection between the Cretan labyrinth and dancing. The ekphrasis of the shield of Achilles in the Iliad ends with the depiction of a “dancing circle [choron] . . . broad as the circle Deadalus once laid out on Knossos’ spacious fields for Ariadne the girl with lustrous hair”: Here young boys and girls, beauties courted with costly gifts of oxen, danced and danced, linking their arms, gripping each other’s wrists. And the girls wore robes of linen light and flowing, the boys wore finespun tunics rubbed with a gloss of oil, the girls were crowned with a bloom of fresh garlands, the boys swung golden daggers hung on silver belts. And now they would run in rings on their skilled feet, nimbly, quick as a crouching potter spins his wheel, palming it smoothly, giving it practice twirls To see it run, and now they would run in rows, in rows crisscrossing rows—rapturous dancing [himeroenta choron]. A breathless crowd stood round them struck with joy And through them a pair of tumblers dashed and sprang, whirling in leaping handsprings, leading on the dance.

65 Hammond and Scullard 1970, 1061. 66 Beissner 1954, 93–109; see also Claverie 1921, 145–55.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

242 T he Choreographic Project of Modernity 

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

And he forged the Ocean River’s mighty power girdling round the outermost rim of the welded indestructible shield.67

The depiction of the shield of Achilles marks an extraordinary moment in the Iliad, standing at the limit of the epic genre. Abandoning epic circuitousness, it envisions the life of the universe in miniature: the earth and the sky and the sea and heavens; the city at peace (marriage, crime, and justice); the city at war; agriculture, viniculture, and animal husbandry. The figure of the dance, with which the ekphrasis reaches its climax, thus presents the cosmos’s inner gesture; the manner in which the human world and the natural world, the city and the country are intertwined, like boy and girl, in quick, flowing, constantly changing movements. All life’s gestures converge in a rapturous vision of dancing: the movement of the heavenly bodies; the gatherings and dispersings, gentle and violent, that constitute political existence; the furrowed rows of agriculture; finally, the technologies on which human life depends—the spinning of the potter’s wheel and even Hephaestus’s own labors. Moreover, the ekphrasis of this inscription of the dance—perhaps the first instance of choreography in the Western tradition—gather all these other gestures and inscriptions together around poetry, which, despite Homeric epic’s oral character, is envisioned, through the implicit identification of the poet with Hephaestus and Daedalus, as inscription. Just as epic transcends its orality, the proper domain of Hölderlin’s poetry—a poetry of the solid letter and no longer of the spoken word—comes into view. The Laws, Plato’s last and longest dialogue, illuminates the deeper significance of the constellation of motifs evoked by the labyrinthine dance. Returning to Crete as the privileged site for thinking the origins of the political, it also reveals a deep connection between politics and dance. Journeying from Knossos to Mt. Ida, where the Kourētes performed a pyrrhic dance—a Waffentanz—to protect the infant Zeus, the elderly Cretan, Spartan, and Athenian gentlemen discuss the laws for a new city to be founded. Playing on the double meaning of nomos, which can mean both “law” and “melody,” the Laws considers at length the choric practices of the city. Indeed, the Laws, in the words of Steven Lonsdale, presents “the only sustained and comprehensive treatment of dance as a social and religious phenomenon to survive the classical period.”68 Dance appears in the Laws as a fundamental, and perhaps even the most fundamental, form of political existence: . . . whereas all other creatures are devoid of any perception of the various kinds of order and disorder in movement (which we term 67 Homer, The Iliad 18: 590–608 (trans. Fagles 1990). 68 Lonsdale 1993, 23; Adler 2010, 231–64.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

The Choreographic Project of Modernity



243

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

rhythm and harmony), to us men the very gods, who were given, as we said, to be our fellows in the dance, have granted the pleasurable perception of rhythm and harmony, whereby they cause us to move and lead our choirs, linking us one with another by means of songs and dances; and to the choirs they have given its name from the “cheer” implanted therein . . .69

A strange tension, this suggests, marks Hölderlin’s political thought. The labyrinth, as the figure of a radically nonhierarchical politics, is also the figure of sovereign power, and, in particular, of the kingly court or Hof, which, wrought with the greatest resources of human cunning (daidalos, as one says in Greek), protects the sovereign power by making it at once inapproachable and inescapable. The music and dance exemplifying the hen diapheron heautōi, representation in alternation—and thus a politics of natural life—is also the court music and dance of the absolute state. The following sentence from Diotima’s letter, which was introduced in chapter 4, brings out the full strangeness of this contradiction: “Like harp players around the thrones of the oldest, we live, ourselves divine, around the still gods of the world, with the fleeting song of life we soothe the blessed earnest of the sun god and the others” (FA 11:768). The community of life knows no masters and no slaves, no hierarchy; all beings are equal in their divinity. Yet there is a court and a throne, and human beings, together with all ephemeral creatures, are mere courtiers. Stripped of the dignity that Lessing, Schiller, and Ludwig van Beethoven had sought to give them by transforming them into the serious expressions of national-bourgeois consciousness, song and poetry—indeed all the forms of human and earthly labor and endeavor—are once again the baubles and playthings of the king. We are, as in Plato’s Laws, toys of the divine.70 In the context of these courtly images, moreover, the sun god would seem to invoke not only Apollo or Hyperion but also the “Sun King” Louis XIV, who himself utilized the courtly ritual of the ballet as an expression of his boundless sovereign power. This almost grotesque blurring of democratic and monarchic metaphors might seem symptomatic of the political confusions of a poet and thinker who, due both to his own temperament and to Germany’s political immaturity, failed to escape the pull of idealistic, religious, and utopian thought. Yet the figure of the labyrinth also suggests a way of bringing together these seemingly irreconcilable ideas. We might recall the passage in the Athens letter where Hölderlin, anticipating the central theme of The Death of Empedocles, speaks of the “miraculously great 69 Plato, Laws 653d–e (trans. Bury 1926). 70 Plato, Laws 644 d.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

244 T he Choreographic Project of Modernity 

deed [wundergroße Tat]” of Theseus, the renunciation of regal power. This consists in a mastery of the labyrinth, yet this mastery is not positive but negative: it is not a matter of creating the labyrinth as the foundation of sovereign violence but of finding a way out of the labyrinth by retracing its curves and turns without erring. His miraculously great deed, by founding political life in the empty space left open through the renunciation of regal power, repeats his other miraculous deed. And thus the dance, by memorializing the unerring escape from the labyrinth—an escape which consists in undoing the labyrinth by repeating its curves and bends without reinstating the cryptic errancy by which they sought to enslave the bestial nature of the human being under the sovereign ban— also memorializes the miraculous political deed that opens up the space of politics as a negative space. Rather than constituting regal power by inscribing the cryptic mechanisms of power into the body, dance deconstitutes, deconstructs it, turning the errant arabesques of the labyrinth into the opening of a political space. The essence of democracy, accordingly, is an empowering of the powers that enable people not to err; not to lose themselves and their powers in the labyrinth of the state. Theseus didn’t teach himself the labyrinthine art of dancing. We might even suppose, indeed, that he learned it from a girl, Ariadne, the mistress of the labyrinth. And by abandoning Ariadne at Naxos, he also renounced her art: and perhaps his “miraculously great” deed was not quite as miraculous or great as it could have been; it failed to realize the instruction of his own teacher. This suggests that from another perspective, if not the perspective of the Athens letter, the political project of Athens, culminating in democracy, was itself a limited realization of a more radical choreographic project. Yet perhaps Ariadne’s choreographic project was itself passed on to Dionysus, her rescuer: if Theseus had forgotten dance, opening up the space of community only as a polis structured through agonistic oppositions and above all that of friend and enemy, perhaps Dionysus would learn from Ariadne a dance that is measured, labyrinthine, unerring in its errancy rather than simply orgiastic. Dionysus, in this way, would emerge as the one who can recall us to the “highest” in politics: the Athenian deconstruction of the Cretan labyrinthine lawgiving; the giving of the law as the opening of the political. But it is precisely this Dionysian moment that, beginning with Plato, political philosophy will repress and forget. Thus the Laws, while assigning the Dionysian chorus first rank among the three choruses into which the citizens will be divided, excludes discussion of ecstatic, unruly Bacchic dancing, regarding it as of no concern for the polis.71 The practice of Greek dancing itself, as Steven Lonsdale has shown, follows two different paradigms. It serves both as an ordering force, restoring a static cosmic order, and as a 71 Lonsdale 1993 9, 25.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

The Choreographic Project of Modernity



245

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

disruptive force, inverting and subverting the normal order and forging a more radical communitas while at the same time undoing the usual social and political relations.72 Privileging the former over the latter, Plato’s Laws prepares the way for the transformation of the Greek chorus into the angelic choir of Christianity. Without having recourse to the anthropological comparisons upon which Lonsdale’s analysis depends, and more than seventy years before Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music, Hölderlin recognized that the choreographic impulse of Greek politics involves the interplay of both tendencies. Whereas the Athenian polis sought to subordinate the oikos, this “highest” politics is characterized by the absolute dissolution of the polis into the oikos, the house and court. The latter thus comes to encompass nature in its entirety, the entire community of divine natural life, the sphere of busyness, with Diotima, as intimate sunoikos of the life of nature, heralding this new world. A politics of natural life is a politics of the oikos: the substitution of the ecological and economic—gathering, transforming, and distributing—for the polis.73 Unlike so-called “Oriental” despotism, structured around a fine weave of hierarchic relations allowing only lesser and greater degrees of servitude, and unlike the polis, with its simpler but more absolute stratifications, the oikos is organized by and oriented through relations of aroundness—of lesser or greater gatherings; of more central or more peripheral moments. It has the texture of the rippled surface of a river, with vortexes folded within vortexes, and yet unlike the Lucretian flux, these whirlpools are not simply the exception to a more fundamental movement of dispersion but rather the innermost figure of a unity at variance with itself. The oikos is the Um-welt of life.74 72 Ibid., 43–110 passim. 73 Lukács (1947), in his Goethe und seine Zeit, claims that Hölderlin remains uncompromisingly committed to a radical, polis-based notion of democracy rooted in the thought of Rousseau and Robespierre. Such an interpretation, which for Lukács is thoroughly confirmed by Hyperion, ignores the development of thought that takes place in Hyperion, culminating in Diotima’s second summons. 74 While oikonomia is conceived in classical Greek thought in opposition to the political sphere, and thus is very different from the notion of “political economy”—a phrase that originates with the Physiocrats—it is already associated not merely with household management in the strict sense but with natural life as a whole. Thus in Aristotle’s Oikonomia (Economics), the oikos above all concerns women and the relation of the sexes. The community between men and women is especially natural not merely because it is rooted in some sort of instinctive drive, but because sexual union is that form of community through which nature as a whole fulfills itself: “At the same time nature fulfills eternal being with this detour [periodos], since it is not able [to do so] with respect to number but rather with respect to form [eidos]. Thus the nature of each, of the male and female, was

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

246 T he Choreographic Project of Modernity 

The ekphrasis of the shield of Achilles brings yet another aspect of this oikopolitics to light, not only gathering together through the figure of dance the opposition of peace and war, each conceived according to the different ways in which settlements are attained (justice vs. armed conflict), but also drawing attention to that which sustains the heroic world yet is accorded little or no value within it: agriculture and animal husbandry. During the Trojan expedition, the heroes rob and pillage what has already been produced, but they produce little or nothing themselves—save tools of death such as the Trojan Horse. The ekphrasis of the shield of Achilles thus indicates, from within the ancient epic, its limits. Nor is this limit merely ideological; it is also poetic; the failure of epic poetry to represent production, to invoke production, has to do not only with the subject matter and content of epic poetry but with the ancient mode of poetic representation. Ancient poetry, as Hölderlin argues, began with and was most properly at home in inspiration, as that which gave it its subject matter and its sense. If it was able to achieve such a consummate mastery of representation, it was because representation was foreign to it. For us, by contrast, representation is our native poetic element: we must master it—and this, the free use of the proper, is most difficult—so as to become open to inspiration as that which is foreign to us. Ancient poetry—and also ancient politics—took for granted the gift, the originary givenness, and thus could devote itself to ordering and managing what was given. Modern poetics and modern politics, by contrast, must become open to the giving of the given, the gifts that come from beyond human power, by gaining a free mastery of technē. The figure of the labyrinthine dance thus suggests the guiding motif of a politics and poetics that no longer takes originary production for granted; that no longer treats it as a mere gift that has been given in advance. Such stands in stark contrast to Aristotle’s understanding of politics as the supreme science ordering different human ends.75 The labyrinthine dance, like the telos, serves to bring together the different dimensions of human existence. Yet whereas teleological politics orders these around a single purpose, in which the meaning of what is already given would find itself fulfilled, a labyrinthine, choric politics joins together by opening up the space of politics as a negative space: a space in which production, originary givenness, can happen. The telos organizes what is already there; and hence, even if it can justify itself according to rational principles—a natural purpose evident to reason—it remains arranged in advance [literally: fore-economized] with a view to the community” (1243b). The household economy is itself only a part of the larger, preestablished economy of nature as a whole. 75 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1094a–b.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The Choreographic Project of Modernity



247

beholden to a subordinating violence. And when the rational justification disappears, only this violence remains. The figure of the labyrinthine dance, by contrast, creates the space of politics as an opening to what is not there: politics is not the technical imposition of a supreme purpose on nature and human activity but the yielding, through technical discipline, to a yield that is always itself beyond our power.76 This thought stands in an intimate relation to what is among the most significant developments of the eighteenth century: the emergence of modern economic thought, and of political economy, with the accompanying subordination of politics to economics. Hölderlin’s critique of classical politics in favor of an oikopolitics—a politics of production, metabolic exchange, and “environmental” relations—would seem to reflect the radical changes in the conception of the political, of regimes of governmentality, and even of the very nature of human existence that took place toward the end of the eighteenth century. These changes, which Foucault describes in his 1978–79 lectures on the “Naissance de la biopolitique” (Birth of Biopolitics), prepare the way for the rise of neoliberalism in the twentieth century and for the triumphant emergence of the homo economicus as a totalizing paradigm for human existence.77 Yet while Hölderlin’s thought belongs within, and must be understood in terms of, the rise of political economy and biopolitics, it is no mere reflex of contemporaneous intellectual currents. While lacking the specific and concrete analytic rigor of the economists, his appropriation of the emergent problematic of political economy is anything but superficial, casual, or accidental. Rather, it addresses the conceptual foundations of political economy from a perspective that is only possible beyond the limits that economics itself, eager to establish itself as a value-free, quantitative scientific pursuit, has come to impose on itself. In just this way, moreover, Hölderlin’s choreographic oikopolitics represents a powerful intervention in the emergence of biopolitics and the “economicization” of human existence. Precisely by embracing without reserve the politics of natural life, and engaging at a fundamental level with the problem of production, he can preserve a relation to what is highest. Rather than rationalizing and justifying the organizing violence that seeks to dominate what is given and produced, this politics will seek to elicit, to summon or bring forth, production: not by coercing and forcing nature, not by extending the domination more deeply into the given—into the natural environment and even human nature—turning it into a “standing reserve” that is constantly available to increasingly provisional and 76 For an extraordinary meditation on the concept of the yield, developed through an engagement with Kafka’s Zürau Aphorisms, see North 2015. 77 Foucault 2008.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

248 T he Choreographic Project of Modernity 

transient human intentions, but by anticipating the event of giving by keeping open a space for it. Hölderlin’s biopolitics becomes, in this way, politics in the most radical sense. It might seem possible, however, to avoid reading Diotima’s words as political, or at least as political in the immediate sense, by taking them to propose a fundamentally religious form of existence. This “new religion” might, in turn, be understood either in a completely apolitical sense— though such a strategy leads to inevitable contradiction, since the very attempt to depoliticize theological concepts itself belongs to the operations of political theology—or as a kind of political religion which, before it could serve as the “official cult” of a revolutionary society, would have the vital function of preparing human beings for the revolution to come. Bertaux hints at the latter approach when he calls attention to the novel’s “secret doctrine”: a “religion of nature,” inspired by Mirabeau the younger, that was officially introduced in 1793.78 This religious doctrine, Bertaux further claims, is already formulated in Hyperion’s Youth in a passage that is left out from the final version since it sounds too “programmatic.”79 Yet regardless whether religion is placed beyond or put in the service of politics, the very attempt to draw a clear line of demarcation between a religion of nature and a politics of nature is profoundly problematic, and ignores the subtle developments that take place from the novel’s earliest to its final version. There is no secret religious doctrine hidden behind an aesthetic Bildungsroman, but an openly political, if subtle and difficult and in no way obvious, engagement with the question of politics and the truth of politics. This engagement, to be sure, is also an engagement with the problem of the secret, since indeed the truth of politics has everything to do with the relation between the secret and the open. But for just this reason, the concept of the secret cannot be applied to Hyperion as a “neutral” interpretive category; it carries with it the entire baggage of a conception of poetics, tracing back to Greece if not beyond (though this is certainly not its only lineage), rooted in establishing a demarcation, at once political and religious, between the open and the secret, the exoteric and the esoteric. Hölderlin realizes, with stunning clarity, that it is precisely this demarcation that must be overcome. Put simply: the truth of politics must neither be abolished, nor turned into a sacred, priestly vocation, nor allowed to recede into the “inner exile” of interiority.

78 Bertaux 1984, 35–36; See also Bertaux 1969, 64–84. 79 Bertaux 1984, 36–37.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

The Choreographic Project of Modernity



249

5.6 Physiocracy When, however, the busy day Has been ignited, And on the chain, which Diverts the lightning bolt, From the hour of beginning, The heavenly dew gleams, What is high must also Feel itself among mortals. Hence they build houses, And the factory buzzes, And ships fly over the rivers, And, exchanging, human beings offer Their hands to one another. It is Sensible upon the earth and not in vain, Are the eyes fastened to the floor. —Hölderlin, “Die Titanen” (The Titans, 1803)80

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The Physiocratic school, which emerged from the collaboration of François Quesnay and Victor de Riqueti, the elder Marquis of Mirabeau, occupies a crucial place in the history of economic thought.81 By applying 80 “Wenn aber ist entzündet / Der geschäfftige Tag / Und an der Kette, die  / Den Bliz ableitet / Von der Stunde des Aufgangs / Himmlischer Thau glänzt, / Muß unter Sterblichen auch / Das Hohe sich fühlen. / Drum bauen sie Häußer / Und die Werkstatt gehet / Und über Strömen das Schiff. / Und es bieten tauschend die Menschen / Die Händ’ einander, sinnig ist es / Auf Erden und es sind nicht umsonst / Die Augen an den Boden geheftet.” 81 While, to my knowledge, no scholarly literature addresses this connection, Metzger (2002–3, 94) does draw a suggestive link between Hölderlin’s “program of an organization of the aorgic,” which he understands in system-theoretical terms, and a number of experiences at the end of the eighteenth century, including “sociological perspectives that think of communities no longer as a composition of individuals but as a supra-individual system-process” and Adam Smith’s notion “of morality-free economy that rehabilitates egoism as necessary for the commonwealth.” Moreover, the lack of absolutely unequivocal references to Physiocratic doctrine in Hölderlin’s writings doesn’t decisively argue against such a connection. Indeed, there are several paths through which Hölderlin would have become aware of Physiocratic doctrine. First, through his readings of Rousseau, who himself resisted membership in the school and, much as in his polemic against Rameau, criticized their naturalization of social phenomenon (Gide and Rist 1915, 6). Second, through the broad influence that they had on the ideals of the French Revolution, and in particular the affinity of their ideas with the liberal wing of the French Revolution, the Girondists, which, at least as Prignitz (1976)

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

250 T he Choreographic Project of Modernity 

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

mathematical methods to understand the circular flow of economic activity, Physiocracy laid the foundations for quantitative economic analysis, establishing the science of economics as a search for objective laws existing independently of human will and discoverable by human reason.82 The Physiocrats were also the first to attempt to understand the social and political in terms of the economic.83 And perhaps most significantly, they recognized the central relation between the process of material production and the origin of surplus value, laying the groundwork for both the classical and Marxist analysis of capital. As Marx explains: “The Physiocrats relocated the investigation of the origin of surplus value from [the sphere of] circulation to the sphere of immediate production and thereby laid the foundation for the analysis of capitalistic production.”84 Yet while Physiocracy, with the 1758 publication of the Tableau économique (Economic Table), quickly acquired a circle of devoted followers, its fame was short-lived. By the end of the 1760s its influence was already in decline and a decade later “there were still Physiocrats, but they were soon to become isolated; there was still a Physiocratic doctrine, but it was tending toward dissolution. There was at any rate no Physiocratic movement.”85 Moreover, the direct impact of Physiocracy outside France was slight: even in Germany, the only place where Physiocracy found ardent supporters, it failed to have lasting influence. Its principal effect was to provoke the development of strong currents of anti-Physiocratic thinking.86 When subsequent generations of economists did engage with Physio­ cratic ideas, they tended either to ridicule them or regard them as antecedents to their own thoughts, confusing the Physiocratics’ positions with their own.87 From a modern perspective, indeed, Physiocracy could appear antiquated and strange. Whereas both classical and Marxist economics espouse a progressive view of history, Physiocracy’s relation to argues, stood closest to Hölderlin’s own political convictions. Finally, as a result of the unsuccessful attempts of the Margrave of Baden, a disciple of Quesnay, to test out his master’s principles on his own subjects through a series of experiments, the last of which was continued until 1802. Traditionally, Mirabeau has been regarded as a mere disciple, converted almost instantly to Quesnay’s approach in a mythic founding event. Fox-Genovese (1976), however, argues persuasively that theirs was a genuine collaboration, and that Mirabeau contributed substantially to the development of Physiocratic ideas, which, moreover, involve a comprehensive economic, social, political, and philosophical vision. 82 Meek 1962, 19. 83 Ibid. 84 Marx and Engels 1962, 14; See Immler 1985, 301. 85 Weulersse 1910, 1:vi; cited in Meek 1962, 31. 86 Peuckert 2011, 71. 87 See Immler 1985.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The Choreographic Project of Modernity



251

the existing political order of the ancien régime was quite ambivalent: it sought to restore the organic, feudal order suppressed and disordered by absolutism while recognizing that this was only possible through a profound restructuring of economic relations.88 The political solution that Quesnay and Mirabeau would agree upon—a “legal despotism” in which a single, absolute embodiment of sovereign power enforced laws derived purely from the operations of nature—could only appear as a compromise formation, born of the paradoxes of the immediate situation. Physiocracy’s political ambivalence, moreover, found expression in its economic doctrine and above all in the extraordinary privilege it attached to agriculture. Meek explains: “Agriculture was the supreme occupation, not only because it was morally and politically superior to others, not only because its produce was primary in the scale of wants and always in demand, but also—and mainly—because it alone yielded a disposable surplus over necessary cost.” Manufacture and commerce, by contrast, were “unproductive,” “sterile.”89 Quesnay justified this seemingly counterintuitive claim by arguing that, whereas the value of manufactured goods only suffices to cover the manufacturer’s subsistence, the total product of agricultural labor covers not only the subsistence costs and other inputs claimed by the agricultural laborer, but the land rent paid to the proprietor. The agricultural bias of the Physiocrats reflected the low level of industrial development in late eighteenth-century France and also answered to the exigencies of the moment.90 Agriculturists, many of whom were peasants holding small plots of land, were doubly burdened by high taxes and Mercantilist policies that kept the price of grain low and subject to fluctuation.91 It is hardly surprising that at the onset of the industrial age Physiocracy would come to seem irrelevant. Yet precisely the aspect of Physiocracy that is most difficult to reconcile with the analysis of industrial capitalism also contains the germ of a rigorous analysis of capital accumulation: if Quesnay conceives only of agriculture as productive, this is largely because, from the perspective of his age, he could not see how the proprietors of the means of manufacture could extract a profit beyond the production inputs and the subsistence wage paid out to the laborers themselves. Part of the reason why Physiocratic doctrine was so ill received is that, with the ascendancy of various economic orthodoxies—including the neoclassical synthesis now reigning supreme—the horizon has been lost from which to appreciate its more radical implications and possibilities. 88 See Fox-Genovese 1976. 89 Meek 1962, 20. 90 Regarding the very different economic conditions in eighteenth-century France and England, see Wood 2002, 103–5. 91 See Meek 1962, 22–27.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

252 T he Choreographic Project of Modernity 

Hans Immler, in his pathbreaking study of the place of nature in economic theory, traces the systematic misunderstanding of Physiocracy back to Adam Smith, who, in criticizing the distinction the Physiocrats draw between productive and sterile labor, fails to confront their motivations. As Immler explains, he and his scientific successors “overlooked how, in the Physiocratic theory of value, the discussion did not have to do with whether the labor of agriculture or manufacturing was productive, but whether labor or soil was productive.”92 The central question was not whether this or that form of labor, this or that class of the population, was productive or sterile, but whether the income and prosperity of the population was a gift of nature or a product of work.93 Ultimately, this was a question of the nature and origin of value, and, specifically, whether it derives from nature or from human labor. Adam Smith and his intellectual heirs could not even begin to recognize this question since the natural theory of value had already been excluded.94 The true theoretical power of Physiocracy consists not in one-sidedly advancing a natural theory of value at the expense of the various permutations of artificial value, but in recognizing the complex interactions between natural and artificial value playing out in the economy.95 While this often led it astray—the circulation of the Physiocrats was itself an eccentric path—it also opened up a level of analysis completely closed off to classical and neoclassical economic thought. Whereas the latter conceives of the economic process as a “process of value and valuation for which material elements lie at the basis as bearers of value,” the Physiocrats understand it as a “material-natural process of the formation of value which is lent monetary-valuational forms of expression.”96 This is not to say that the economic process, rooted in the gift of nature, comes about only through nature. Rather: agriculture involves the interaction between nature and labor, phusis and technē. And while Marx will come closer to the insights of the Physiocrats, he still neglects the material-natural side of production, reconceiving surplus value, the acquisition of the gift of nature, as purely the result of the labor process.97 In his conversation with Alabanda, Hyperion, we recall, describes the state as a “raw husk around the kernel of life” and a “fence around the garden of life.” This already suggests a reorientation of politics around the productive activity of natural life, likened, through the image of kernel and germ, to agriculture. The state should no longer serve to express 92 93 94 95 96 97

Immler 1985, 299. Ibid., 299. Ibid., 299. Ibid., 300. Ibid., 323. Ibid., 319.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

The Choreographic Project of Modernity



253

the will and power of the sovereign, or to dominate and organize natural life by submitting it to human will, but is conceived principally as a negative force, holding open the space for the life of nature—for its inherent productive powers.98 An even more explicit affirmation of Physiocracy appears in a letter from Diotima. In her valedictory words, the last he will read before battle and before her death, she writes: “Farewell! . . . and, for the sake of peace, don’t let the war last too long—for the sake of the beautiful, new, golden peace, where, as you said, the laws of nature will be inscribed into our book of law, where life itself, where divine nature, which can be written in no book, will exist in the heart of the community. Farewell” (FA 11:726). In the crucial years following the completion of Hyperion and leading up to the turn of the new century, Hölderlin will return to and develop these Physiocratic motifs. In a passage from the second of the three versions of his tragedy The Death of Empedocles, the eponymous pre-Socratic philosopher, explaining to Pausanias the grounds of his self-loathing, declares the proper vocation of the human;

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

With tranquility man, the thoughtful one, Should work, unfolding the life around him He should foster and exhilarate it, for full of high meaning, Full of silent force, great nature Embraces him who anticipates —That he cultivate the world, And that he call forth nature’s spirit His violent yearning, taking deep roots, Strives upwards And he is capable of much, and masterful is His word . . .

98 These same figures also occur in the Württemberg Pietism to which Hölderlin was exposed in his youth, as Hayden-Roy (1994) shows. Thus, for example, J. A. Bengel “conceived of the plan of salvation history unfolding progressively through time according to a divine economy, or Haushaltung” (30). And in Oetinger’s cabalistic theosophy, based on “a dynamic notion of God’s progressive self-corporealization in creation and history,” the image of the generative powers of seed plays a vital role not only in conceiving of the process of nature but also in understanding the nature of scripture and biblical hermeneutics. Moreover, Oetinger compares writing to music, likening good style to an alternation of rhetorical moments in harmonic modulation (48)—an aspect of his theology that Gaier and Dierauer have explicitly linked to Hölderlin’s poetics of tonal alternation. For further treatment of these connections, see Dierauer 1986 and Prill 1983. Agamben (2011, 6) also calls attention, with regard to Schelling, to the importance of the concept of oikonomia for Pietistic circles.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

254 T he Choreographic Project of Modernity 

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

[Mit Ruhe wirken soll der Mensch, Der sinnende, soll entfaltend Das Leben um ihn fördern und heitern denn hoher Bedeutung voll, Voll schweigender Kraft umfängt Den ahnenden, daß er bilde die Welt, Die große Natur, Daß ihren Geist hervor er rufe, strebt Tief wurzelnd Das gewaltige Sehnen ihm auf. Und viel vermag er und herrlich ist Sein Wort . . .] (GSA 4.1:110)

Rather than dominating the life of nature and submitting it to their ends, human beings should foster it and make it more joyous, more heiter. Rather than imposing upon the material of nature a form commensurate with the ideal given by reason, they should auger and anticipate the high meaning of the “great nature” that embraces them, developing not their but its possibilities. In this way human beings are sinnend and ahnend: they perceive the possibilities and act toward the future not by releasing their thoughts from the sensuous world but by thoughtfully sensing what encompasses them. Moreover, this sensing, and the action issuing from it, is not the manifestation of an autonomous mind. Rather, the yearning and striving that brings them to their wirken, to the gradual improvement of nature, is itself violent: it is the yearning of a life that is not independent from, but rooted in, nature. These Physiocratic themes are developed further in a letter to his half brother Karl Christoph Friedrich Gock, dated June 14, 1799. After praising his brother, Hölderlin considers the significance of the capacity for praise and blame, inquiring whether this very capacity, which he feels himself to possess more than most and which indeed, perhaps more than anything else, defines his relation to the world, is itself praise- or blameworthy (SW 7:84–85). This question, as unassuming as it might seem, points toward a deep engagement with classical political thought. For Aristotle, human beings are political animals in a greater measure than bees and ants and other such “gregarious” beings precisely because they possess not merely a voice (phōnē) capable of expressing pleasure and pain, but speech (logos), which exists not primarily for forming assertions regarding the states of affairs in the world but rather for “manifesting [dēloun] the beneficial [sumpheron] and harmful [blaberon], as well as the just [dikaion] and unjust [adikon].”99 If the logos is, in this way, the 99 Aristotle, Politics 1253a.14–15.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The Choreographic Project of Modernity



255

basic capacity for politics, it is ultimately because politics remains oriented toward the good as a unifying telos. What is made manifest through the logos is, most fundamentally, the relation of things and actions to the good. Hölderlin’s question thus cuts at the heart of this teleological conception of politics. If blame, and likewise praise, is itself blameworthy, then teleological politics is ensnared in a constitutive contradiction and we are left to wonder whether the only praiseworthy political act would be the destruction of politics itself. Teleological politics, a politics directed to purposes, is, it would seem, not itself purposive. Thus Hölderlin asks: “Why don’t they live like the wild animals [Wild] in the forest [Wald], satisfied [genügsam], limited to the soil and the nourishment that first comes to them and with which they naturally belong together [von Natur zusammenhängt] like the child with its mother’s breast” (SW 7:86). Hölderlin, however, refuses a simple—and hence either tautological or self-contradicting—answer to the question of the praise- or blameworthiness of praise and blame. Blame, he observes, bears the danger of an extreme, unbounded fanaticism and violence, since when we feel a lack without knowing what is lacking or how the flaw can be corrected, we are impelled to remove it through an activity that is equally indefinite and infinite, with the result that our force ends up in an “indeterminate, fruitless, exhausting struggle [Ringen]” (SW 7:85). And yet without the desire to improve things and exchange a certain present for an uncertain future, for “something else, something better and ever better”—a desire that Hölderlin regards as the basis for everything that the people around him do—we would be nothing more than animals (SW 7:86). Here, however, it is not simply a question of losing a quality that might be worthy of praise but of missing the mark of the unique and decisively human drive that is the source of all our arts and occupations (Geschäfte) as well as our flaws and suffering. This is, namely, nothing else than the drive to be an agent of ferment, a catalyst and accelerant for the life of nature as a whole in its path toward completion (Vollendungsgang). As he explains: To foster life, to accelerate nature’s eternal course of perfection—to perfect what they find before themselves, to idealize: that is everywhere the most proper, most distinguishing [unterscheidendste] drive of human beings, and all their arts and occupations, and mistakes and suffering, arise from that. (SW 7:86)

All the various institutions of modern civilization—gardens and fields, trade and navigation, cities, states, science, art, and religion—exist for the sake of the improvement of the world, and all the “errant streams of human activity” issue from a single root, the root of nature, and return to it as water flowing back into the ocean from where it originated. And thus “all in all everything is good and each fulfills in his way, the one

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

256 T he Choreographic Project of Modernity 

more beautifully, the other more wildly, his human determination, which is namely this: to multiply, accelerate, sunder, mix, divide, and bind the life of nature” (SW 7:86). Despite speaking of completion (Vollendung), a word whose meaning is already complicated by the qualification “eternal,” this conception of politics marks a decisive break with an Aristotelian conception of politics as oriented around a telos. Hölderlin invokes the concept of the good, and yet its meaning and implications are decisively transformed. The good governing politics is no longer a specifically human good, nor is it a paradigm or even a criterion of judgment applicable to the whole of reality and human activity. The good is identified with the good of nature rather than a specifically human or divine good, a work (ergon) proper to human beings or gods. It is the life of nature, joining chaos and order, becoming and passing away, and not identified either with the ordering power of human reason or with a divine immobility, stillness, and absolute self-presence. Yet this doesn’t entail the rejection of normativity in favor of a spurious naturalism: the good remains in effect, but as part of the process of nature. The most fundamental drive of human nature is to idealize, to guide nature toward the good, and yet this drive does not stand in an original opposition to nature, as if the ordering principle of logos were opposed to chaotic materiality, but is nothing else than an acceleration and intensification of nature, since the very life of nature involves a nontrivial normativity. The dynamic rather than static character of nature, its very potency and productivity, is a tendency toward the good. As a result of this transformed understanding of the nature of the political, Hölderlin comes to classify human activity in a way that converges with Physiocracy. Whereas the Aristotelian tradition draws a distinction between actions that are means to an end and actions that are ends in themselves, Hölderlin divides human activity—at once a fulfillment of man’s determination and an outgrowth of nature—into agriculture (the accelerating and multiplying of life) and the crafts (the separating, dividing, mixing, and binding of raw materials).100 Human activity, this classification suggests, is fundamentally economic activity, and the human being, whose essence consists no longer in the rational end sought in actions but rather in an endless striving for the improvement of all nature, is defined not by autonomous potency vis-à-vis nature but by a certain fundamental impotence—the incapacity of the “art and activity of human beings,” for all that it has done and will do, to bring forth something living and actually create (erschaffen) the primordial 100 For the relation of Hölderlin’s “drive in us to form the unformed” to Blumenbach’s Bildungstrieb, see Enke 1996–97, 102–18. I disagree with Enke’s claim that Hölderlin’s Bildungstrieb, in contrast to Blumenbach’s, remains teleological.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The Choreographic Project of Modernity



257

material (Urstoff) that it transforms and processes. Human technē is able to develop the creative force, but this itself remains eternal and is not the “work of human hands” (SW 7:87–88). Philosophy, beautiful art, and religion also issue from this root or drive, and yet this reduction of “superstructure” to “substructure” doesn’t deprive them of their dignity. Rather, it is from this very perspective that we first grasp their true political, or rather politico-economic, function, showing more clearly how human activity can serve to accelerate the normativity inherent in nature rather than subordinating nature to a rational order. It is their task, above all, to show human beings the path that they travel “for the most part blindly, often with dejection [Unmut] and aversion [Widerwillen], and all too often in a common, ignoble way” in order that they can travel the same path with “open eyes and joyousness” (SW 7:87). Together, as it were, they transform the path that humans are driven across blindly by their unconscious erotic striving into an opening. It is a matter of attending to the path, opening one’s eyes to it, such as to become open to the truth revealing itself therein. This joyousness is a free bearing toward our existence, the path that we are on, that allows us, rather than being fully taken in and consumed by the cares that attend this, to free ourselves toward the truth that comes over us and comes about through us. It is not a matter of surmounting our drives by opposing merely sensual nature to rationality, but of entering into these drives, and ultimately the drive of life itself, in such a way that they can become a path toward a truth that does not govern and direct them as a goal but attends on them. Thus philosophy brings the drive to consciousness and shows it its infinite object, rendering it stronger and purer. Beautiful art in turn presents the infinite object to the drive in a living picture, “a represented higher world.” And finally, religion teaches human beings to anticipate [ahnden] and believe that the higher world can be found in precisely “that place where he seeks it and wishes to create it,” which is to say “in nature, in his own world, and the world that encompasses him,” as though it were a “concealed disposition [Anlage] . . . a spirit that wishes to be developed.”101 Religion, beautiful art, and philosophy all issue from the drive of nature and, through them, this drive enters into an opening in which it can become aware of itself, positing the whither of its striving, while simultaneously realizing that this object does not exist beyond the world but is concealed in the world as potencies waiting to be developed. This is not an amor fati, a quiescent acceptance of necessity, but a gathering of human activity back around the source from which it issues; not by regressing into primitive conditions and countering progress but by rediscovering our activity as an outgrowth of nature, our human life as 101 Hölderlin uses ahnden in the sense of ahnen. This usage, which can found in the Der digitale Grimm, is now considered obsolete.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

258 T he Choreographic Project of Modernity 

a function of natural life, with nature thus becoming open to its further possibilities and realizing these through us. Hölderlin was certainly not an economist in any conventional sense: he wasn’t concerned with the empirical quantitative analysis of production, exchange, distribution, and valuation. And yet reading the above thoughts in light of Immler’s revisionist interpretation of the history of political economy, it becomes clear that Hölderlin addresses and develops precisely the aspect of Physiocratic doctrine that will slip from the view of subsequent schools of economic thought: the material side of production. Whereas the Physiocrats seek to understand the processes of economic life in terms of the materiality of production—the collaboration of nature and human beings, phusis and technē—Hölderlin suggests how political thought and indeed philosophy itself could be reoriented around this collaboration; the confluence of the gift of nature and the labor of human beings. The activity of nature and of human beings, in this way, are thought together in a radical complicity; human activity is itself an outgrowth of natural activity. Surplus is understood no longer merely as the “net product” of agricultural tendencies but as the hyperbolic ferment of nature, which, of its very nature, overreaches itself. Whereas Physiocracy, despite all attentiveness to the material side of production, tends to reduce natural productivity to its economic value, and hence to its value for humans, Hölderlin turns the question around, asking, in effect, about the value of human artifice for nature. Yet precisely through this change in perspective, so unsettling for a traditional humanism, Hölderlin preserves the sense for the highest; for the opening to the truth and the “point” of economic life. With extraordinary prescience, Hölderlin recognized that, in the wake of political economy’s ascendance, the sense of life could only be preserved by abandoning the humanistic, teleological, concept of what it means to have sense. Traditional political and philosophical thought, we suggested earlier, takes the given for granted: it takes its departure from the givenness of what is given. Hence it regards the truth fundamentally as what is already there for us to discover. This philosophical premise corresponds to a politics of domination, subjugation, subordination, ordering, discipline, according to which the aim of politics is to give meaning to what is given by ordering it to an end, a telos. The rise of biopolitics and political economy has challenged this: politics itself is subordinated to economics, whose aim is not to give meaning to life but to produce life. The question of purpose tends to fall from view. Mere growth becomes an end in itself. Nor does this necessarily bring an end to the politics of domination. Rather, insofar as production becomes, to an increasing degree, organized through the system of valuation and exchange, domination merely insinuates itself more absolutely into the order of nature, even as final purposes are put out of play. The given is no longer simply taken for granted, but

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The Choreographic Project of Modernity



259

rather it is coerced, compelled, forced to give itself. It becomes a standing reserve. Physiocracy, however, does not merely mark an unstable, ambiguous transition from traditional politics to biopolitics and the complete economization of political life. It opens up the prospect of a politics and philosophy that neither takes the given for granted nor forces the given to give itself to us but instead becomes open to the gift—not by quiescently waiting in expectation of an unfathomable event but by refashioning the state, and the laws of the state, as an opening, a yielding to nature’s yield. It is precisely this aspect of Physiocracy that Hölderlin answers to and seeks to develop. This illuminates the passages cited earlier from Hyperion. To say that the state is the raw husk and the fence around the kernel of life is to understand what is static, posited, and already put in place as the opening for the dynamic, germinal, fermenting giving of the new: it is not a matter of organizing what is given around the static and eternal but of allowing the new, the giving of the gift, to present itself through the organization of what is already there. Here too it will be helpful to take a closer look at the doctrine of the Physiocrats. The political thought of the Physiocrats, as already seen, is marked by the tension between the monarchic and hierarchical structures of the ancien régime and a new conception of social order that, through the confidence placed in the spontaneous organizing forces of nature, itself approaches anarchy. They granted almost no room to legislative activity as an expression of the will of the sovereign or as an attempt to impose a rational order on the material of the state. Rather, they believed that the “most useful work any legislative body can do is to abolish useless laws.” Indeed, they would argue that “if any new laws are required they ought simply to be copies of the unwritten laws of Nature,” since “neither men nor Governments can make laws, for they have not the necessary ability” and “every law should be an expression of that Divine wisdom which rules the universe.”102 Yet nevertheless what they wanted was not anarchy but rather “a minimum of legislation with a maximum of authority,” and they even advocated despotism in a certain form, not as arbitrary will and centralized control but rather as the pure “sovereignty of the ‘natural order.’”103 What they sought, as it were, was a political authority that would exist purely as a ritual instantiation of the natural order. As Gide and Rist explain: This despotism was incarnate in the person of the sovereign or king. But he is simply an organ for the transmission of those higher laws which are given to him. They would compare him with the leader of an orchestra, his sceptre being the baton that keeps time. 102 Gide and Rist 1915, 33–34. 103 Ibid., 34–35.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

260 T he Choreographic Project of Modernity 

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The conductor’s despotism is greater than the Tsar’s, for every musician has to obey the movement of the hand, and that immediately. But this is not tyranny, and whoever strikes a false note in a spirit of revenge is not simply a revolter, but also an idiot. Sovereignty appealed to the Physiocrats in the guise of hereditary monarchy, because of its associations with property under the feudal régime, and since hereditary rights were connected with landed property so must royalty be. The sovereign who best represents the Physiocratic ideal is perhaps the Emperor of China. As the Son of Heaven he represents the ‘natural order,’ which is also the ‘divine order.’ As an agricultural monarch he solemnly puts his hand to the plough once a year. His people really govern themselves; that is, he rules them according to custom and the practice of sacred rites. In practice there will be nothing of great importance for the despot to do.104

Nevertheless, it is hard to reconcile the Physiocrats’ despotism, however enlightened and subservient to the laws of nature, with Hyperion’s apparent liberalism. However committed the Physiocrats were to autonomous spontaneous economic activity and even self-government, their “agricultural monarch” is not a mere fence or husk circling the periphery but a temple at the very center, conducting everything that happens within, even if only at a purely symbolic, ritual level. There indeed seems to be no place in his political thought for the Physiocrats’ earthly sovereign as the static embodiment of a static order. Instead, Hölderlin conceives of a theocracy of the beautiful that would not enforce obedience but rather illuminate and transfigure the spontaneous dynamism of earthly life by gathering it around the inner gesture of divine beauty. Yet this difference is perhaps not as great as it may seem. It merely displaces sovereignty from an earthly representative of the laws of nature to nature itself. As he explains in the letter to his brother: “These three [philosophy, art, and religion] also have this effect—that the human being, to whom nature offers itself as the material of his activity and whom nature, like a mighty Triebrad [literally a driving wheel], contains in its infinite organization, does not think of himself as its master and lord, and, in all his artifice [Kunst] and activity, bows modestly and piously before the spirit of nature, which he bears in himself, which he has surrounding himself, and which provides him with material and forces” (SW 7:87). It is, in other words, simply a purer Physiocracy—or, in other words, Physiocracy as the rule of nature in the most literal sense.105 In 104 Ibid., 36–37. 105 Strauss (1933) doesn’t explicitly address Physiocracy in his monograph on Hyperion. Yet he does argue, much as I do, for the “rule” of nature in Hölderlin, which concretely embodies the power to institute human communities. Against

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

The Choreographic Project of Modernity



261

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

this way, Hölderlin could be seen to point toward the “naturalism” of Adam Smith that Agamben, following Didier Deleule, will contrast to the “providentialism” of the Physiocrats, and perhaps even to a more radical naturalism than that which could have been derived from a Humean empiricism.106 The Physiocrats failed to recognize that the rule of nature cannot be understood in terms of a concept of sovereignty and rule that itself derives from human artifice; from the imposition of a form on matter. Hence they could only conceive of the rule of nature as the domination of a purely formal natural order: of a natural law that could be grasped in quasimathematical terms. Thus even while they attempted to grasp the materiality of production, they could only grasp it as a formal principle. They were not able to grasp the materiality of production in its materiality; which is to say, in terms of the productive power of matter itself, its power of “self-formation”—a power of formation that remains irreducibly material. The fate of Physiocracy, and of the dominant traditions of economic thinking that follow in its wake, rests with this decisive forgetting of materiality. Diotima’s correction of Hyperion, in this way, also addresses his understanding of the state as a “raw husk around the kernel of life,” suggesting that the state cannot be conceived as a mere rigid, static form—protecting and opening up a space for the materiality of life—but that the relation of the static and the dynamic is much more intimate; that they are inextricably bound together and cannot be separated from one another. The rule of nature—the measure of nature—is immanently bound up with its singular materialities. Hölderlin’s understanding of Eigentum or property shows the extent to which he challenges the underpinnings of Physiocratic and classical Strauss, though, I would argue that the “mechanical” nature of the state—the artificiality of law and discipline—is an essential moment in Hölderlin’s political thought; Mieth (1978, 63), also without specifically addressing Physiocracy, suggests that in Hyperion nature appears as the ideal of genuine community, though without turning into a mere metaphor but instead existing simultaneously as reality and ideal. Human perfection, accordingly, can only be reached when the laws of nature are written into the “law books” of human society. Mieth further compares this to the early Marx’s notion of the “naturalizing of man,” but at the same time maintains that Hölderlin grants the “naturalization” idealistic-religious features, positing the perfection in nature as already given. Moreover, even when Hölderlin indicates that nature needs human beings for its perfection, he lacks a sense for the real process leading to this end, seeing the essence of the human in abstract-spiritual rather than concrete activity. Yet for all its considerable dialectical subtlety, Mieth’s interpretation remains too beholden to a somewhat dogmatic dialectical-materialist framework. Reinscribing Hyperion within a teleological framework, it fails to recognize its most radical impulses. 106 Agamben 2011, 284.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

262 T he Choreographic Project of Modernity 

economics while at the same time pointing in a different direction than Marx. For the Physiocrats, the economic and political order depended on the stability of property; landed property was productive of a “net product,” but the dynamism of property was subordinated to its security as something that could belong unequivocally to one person. For Hölderlin, poetry is not so much a stable property as an ongoing transformation, a Wandlung—“a middle condition between rootedness and rootlessness, between a propertied state and a state of dispossession.”107 Moreover, just as Being and life and language are, for Hölderlin, fundamentally overflowing and superfluous, property is intimately related to the possibility of surplus and profit. Property is not a matter of taking possession of what is already in a sense properly one’s own, or legitimating and making proper what one has already come into possession of, but rather of what exists only insofar as it passes over and beyond, from one to the other. Not only is wealth fundamentally social, existing only through circulation and the commerce between human beings, but the source of wealth is a potency of nature that does not involve the actualization of certain already given ends but a surplus production, always producing that which goes beyond itself. Property in this sense is itself hyperbolic, essentially inflationary—involving the inherent impropriety of an expropriating movement beyond itself. Hölderlin rejects what has been the gold standard of philosophy since Plato, the ultimate substance on which rests the value of the truth that the philosopher claims as his one possession. He rejects the idea, namely, that truth, in some way or another—through intuition or through the senses, through native reasoning or even revelation—has been bequeathed to the philosopher. The settled possession of the philosopher becomes an ec-static dispossession. Hölderlin’s thought converges with tendencies in political economy that, almost two centuries before Nixon would inaugurate a new era of floating currencies, could barely have registered.108 Yet, in just this way, Hölderlin calls us to the most critical question, the question that political economy, sensu stricto, still backs away from: is the surplus, the endogenic impropriety of property, qualitative or merely quantitative: does it open onto truth, or the mere, ultimately futile, securing of growth itself as one more factor of production that, regulated and predictable, is always more of the same. The ideology of neoclassical economics amounts, in the end, to this: an extreme foreclosure of the veridical tendencies of surplus, achieved by enforcing the growth of the same as the only possible growth. The human being is at once a surplus production of nature, but also the receiver of nature’s surplus. Significantly, the word for property (Eigentum) in Greek is ousia, and for profit or surplus periousia. The 107 Schutjer 2000, 188. 108 See Graeber 2011, 361–91.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

The Choreographic Project of Modernity



263

ontological ground of Hölderlin’s political and economic thought is an understanding of ousia as periousia; as at once lack and surplus.109 And this also brings us back to the text that stands at the center of Hyperion, offering an alternative to The Republic, the gold standard of Platonic philosophy—Plato’s Symposium. Hölderlin’s Physiocracy merely affirms, again, that human life is situated between surplus and need. Nevertheless, this Platonic eroticism is radically transformed. Penia and Poros both belong to nature and no longer have a separate provenance. Or indeed, nature itself, in its innermost gesture, is nothing else than the co-belonging—the intertwinement—of lack and surplus.110 The significance of this, moreover, is not merely ontological or metaphysical. The Platonic dichotomy that distinguishes lack and surplus at their origins is of the very essence of the ideology of capitalism, insofar as it seeks, by concealing the structural dependence of capitalism on an “original” expropriation, to naturalize capitalist relations by obscuring their historical genesis.111

5.7 Court and Courtliness “Cain was the first courtier, since, through God’s curse, he had no home of his own” —Antonio de Guevara, Cortegiano, cited in Walter Benjamin’s Origin of the German Mourning Play

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Hyperion is political in an unconventional yet radical sense. It doesn’t attempt to describe the ideal form of the state, provide a genealogy of its 109 Kordela (2007) develops a theory of the ontological nature of surplus in Spinoza, Marx, and Lacan (107). 110 Heidegger suggests that Hölderlin’s understanding of nature undergoes a significant transformation after Hyperion and the first versions of The Death of Empedocles, and that eventually it will be “overcome” as “the fundamental word of poetry [das dichterische Grundwort].” As a leading word of Greek thinking, “phusis is the up-rising going-back-into-itself and names the presence of that which tarries in the thus-essencing arisal as the open” (phusis ist das aufgehende In-sichzurück-Gehen und nennt die Anwesung dessen, was im so wesenden Aufgang als dem Offenen verweilt; HGA 4:56). Already in “As on a holiday. . . .” however, Hölderlin will understand phusis as produced out of “holy chaos”—“that gaping, from out of which the open opens itself” (HGA 4:63). I do not believe, however, that it is possible to draw such a clear distinction between Hyperion’s conception of nature and that of the hymns. The term “holy chaos,” after all, already appears in Hyperion. Moreover, though, Heidegger effaces the political dimension of the “opening”; for Hölderlin it is politics that “carries through” the opening, though not a politics of the polis as a fixed site. 111 See Perelman 2000.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

264 T he Choreographic Project of Modernity 

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

origins, justify its legitimacy, determine the limits of its rights, or articulate a balance of powers. It has little to do with the rights and duties of individuals, or the forms of government and the nature of the state apparatus. Nor does it seek to concretely envision or re-envision the form that communal life should assume. Its concern, rather, is to think of politics as gestural, rethink the gestures that constitute and found forms of political life, and finally to conceive of political life, in the most extreme sense, as a choreographing of new gestures, of a new political habitus. Diotima’s summons is of such significance for our reading since it is here that a new kind of gestural politics comes into view, which must in turn be conceived in contrast to the forms of political life presented through Adamas, Alabanda, and the League of Nemesis. In the current chapter I have sought to illuminate the political sense of Diotima’s summons by bringing it into relation to a constellation of discourses, arguing that the choreographic, gestural politics laid out in Hyperion is neither entirely novel nor idiosyncratic. Hölderlin’s originality consists in bringing together a seemingly disparate tangle of motifs into a more luminous constellation, allowing the choreographic project of modernity to come into view. This is nowhere more evident than in the following passage from Diotima’s second summons, which, by gathering together the themes that we have discovered in her letter as well as in Hyperion as a whole, offers nothing less than the summa of Diotima’s first philosophy and first politics. Look up into the world! Is it not like a wandering triumphal parade, where nature celebrates the eternal victory over all corruption? and doesn’t life, for the sake of [its] glorification, lead death along with itself, in golden chains, just as the general once led the captured kings? And we, we are like the virgins and youths, who, with dance and song, in alternating figures and tones, escort the majestic parade. Let me be silent. To say more would be too much. We will indeed meet again.— Mourning youth! soon, soon you will be happier. Your laurel has not yet ripened, and your myrtles have wilted, for you should be a priest of divine nature, and your poetic days are already germinating [und die dichterischen Tage keimen dir schon]. (FA 11:768)

This passage begins by calling Hyperion to look up to the world. It is “like a wandering triumphal parade, where nature celebrates the eternal victory over all corruption,” and where, “for the sake of [its] glorification,” life leads death with itself “in golden chains . . . just as the general once led the captured kings.”112 In contrast to the beginning of 112 Schmidt (1996, 33–50, esp. 37) argues that this passage should be read in the context of Hölderlin’s appropriation of the ethics and pantheistic nature

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

The Choreographic Project of Modernity



265

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Hyperion’s narration to Bellarmin, death is no longer something inessential, something that will disappear in the “eternally unitary” world from the “league”—the union—“of Beings” (FA 11:585). The world, the environment of beings that live and play around one another, is now grasped specifically in terms of the relation of life and death—the victory of life over death. Yet as the motif—Roman rather than Greek and imperial in tendency if not in origin—of the triumph already suggests, this victory doesn’t involve the heroic relation toward death characteristic of the Greek polis: life neither overcomes death, enslaving it as natural life was enslaved to the higher ends of the bios politikos, nor does it exclude death through immortal deeds. Rather life, while still leading death, nevertheless leads death not behind or in front of, but simply with, itself. Whereas the chains of an ordinary slave or prisoner, wrought of a base metal, indicate not only physical submission but also the loss of honor, the golden chains reveal at once death’s bondage to life and its own claim to honor and lordly, sovereign glory (Herrlichkeit). Life leads death, and yet as at once a captive and an equal, and it is indeed only thus that the triumph can serve to glorify (toward Verherrlichung). For life’s own glory can only manifest itself through the glory of that over which it triumphs, and indeed in this way the Verherrlichung itself is necessarily a glorification of both life and death.113 The relation of life to death, constitutive of the world as a community of beings, is not a relation of subordination but of parataxis, consisting in a Verkettung or enchaînement. This already suggests an inner correspondence with those theories of dance and music that stress the role philosophy of Stoicism, transmitted principally by way of Marcus Aurelius and Spinoza. Not only are both Wechsel (alternation) and Wandel (transformation) (in Greek: metabolē) fundamental concepts of Stoicism, but, Schmidt suggests, the aim of the passage is to present the state of composure in which Diotima, certain of the consoling truth that the individual’s death is merely a passage into a different form of being, is able to face her mortality, thus living up to the Stoic ideal of a “beautiful death” (kalōs thanein). While I wouldn’t dispute the presence of Stoic elements in this passage, Schmidt’s reading neglects the political dimension of Diotima’s words, which, in this context, are not intended to record her inner state but to call Hyperion toward a new relation to nature and indeed a new understanding of the political. The word “dance” itself marks a departure from Marcus Aurelius’s conception of the art of living. Whereas for Marcus Aurelius “the art of living is more like that of wrestling than of dancing,” since “the main thing is to stand firm and be ready for an unseen attack,” Diotima suggests that human mortality does not face us like an “opponent.” We cannot stand up to it and fight against it by preparing for its unannounced arrival but must take it into ourselves, into our very limbs (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations vii.61). 113 For an extended discussion of the political and theological implications of the concept of glory, see Agamben 2011.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

266 T he Choreographic Project of Modernity 

of alternating sequences of figures and tones. There is also, however, a historical connection, or rather two such connections, of no small significance. Among the most important roots of both the ballet as a theatrical form and of baroque allegory were the trionfi of the Italian Renaissance, which simultaneously celebrated both the power of the new city-states and the liberation of worldly life from the church’s strictures.114 Moreover, the golden chains also allude to the court (Hof) of the modern absolute state, founded upon the submission of the once autonomous members of the feudal aristocracy to the absolute power of the king. The aristocrats, who once ruled over their own domain, become courtiers, serving the king while retaining outward marks of honor. Essential to the operations of the absolute monarchy was an elaborate system of courtly ceremony that constantly reenacts and reinforces the relations of honor and submission that hold together the court and thus the state as a whole. Whereas his predecessors had emphasized the cérémonial d’État (ceremonial of state), a system of ceremonies gravitating around special moments in the unfolding of state power that fall outside the order of the everyday—the coronation, the “lit de justice” (bed of justice), “l’entrée solennelle” (the solemn entry), and the funeral—under Louis XIV’s rule these older rites of power were neglected in favor of the ceremonialization of the court’s daily life.115 Even when the older ceremonies of state are retained, their political sense is changed: the solemn entry of Louis XIV and MarieThérèse in August 1660 departed decisively from previous rituals, so that it no longer “marked the association of the king and his subjects,” but manifested “the radiance of monarchy and his court” as the exclusive subjects of a public spectacle.116 The cérémonial de cour, in turn, consummates this development. The court and the courtiers surrounding the king are submitted to an etiquette governing almost every aspect of existence. Each “moment in the life of the king, each gesture, and even the most trivial” is ritualized, becomes a spectacle, achieving a permanent system of representation of the absolute power of the monarch in which “the king appears as the center of a spectacular functioning in the service of his own glory,” with “the body of the king” incarnating itself “in an imaginary body that is the expression of a new political order.”117 While dancing was only one aspect of this ceremonialization of the everyday, it could be said to occupy an exemplary place within a system demanding the minute choreography of the rhythms of everyday life within the court, insofar as it instructed courtiers in the self-mastery of the body through which they submitted themselves to the imaginary body of the 114 115 116 117

Kirstein 1935, 128–30. Leferme-Falguières 2007, 4. Ibid., 4. Ibid., 231, 304.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The Choreographic Project of Modernity



267

new political order. Moreover, the balletic spectacles themselves, by turning the court into its own object, become a mise en abyme, exemplifying the paradoxical nature of the system of spectacular representation that emerges with absolutism.118 Drawing on a tendency present since the Renaissance, Louis XIV used the ballet to both cultivate and enact the etiquette and rituals that held together the king’s court, the central organ through which were enforced the relations of power—the complex system of hierarchy, rank, and precedence—holding together the absolute state. The ballet, as it were, served to enchain the life within the court in golden chains, and in the articulation of the nature of this enchaînement—the manner of bodily comportment, of posture and carriage, of walking and performing the movements of everyday life—we find the rudiments of a gestural politics.119 To include the totality of life in the court, held together by golden chains that submit death to life through their mutual glorification, is to transform the entire world into a grand ballet. In his Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels (Origin of the German Mourning Play, 1928), Walter Benjamin drew attention to just this aspect of the court, claiming that it was the “innermost showplace” of the mourning play, and in this sense symptomatic of the fundamental tendency of the Baroque: the secularization or naturalization of history.120 This showplace is essentially choreographic: “In contrast to the temporal and disjoined progression represented by tragedy, the mourning play plays out in a spatial continuum that one might call choreographic.”121 The “organizer [Veranstalter] of its plot, the precursor of the ballet master, is the intriguer.” The intriguer corresponds to an ideal type that, tracing back to Machiavelli, is counterpoised to the other chief types of the mourning play, the tyrant and the martyr. It is not surprising, then, that the baroque drama, Benjamin claims, would ultimately be replaced by the ballet. This, moreover, reveals the ambiguity of choreography’s, and the ballet’s, relation to power. To the very extent that the choreography of the court expresses and realizes sovereign power, even serving as a model for the apparatus through which the quotidian existence of the populace at large becomes dominated through the state, it also exposes sovereign power to the danger of an intrigue subverting and transforming it from within. The choreographic spatiality of the court implicates sovereignty infinitely in an element beyond its control. If the Machiavellian intriguer becomes the 118 Ibid., 265. 119 For a vivid and compelling account of the role of the ballet in the court of Louis XIV, with a special emphasis on its political significance, see Homans 2010, 1–48. 120 Benjamin 1980, 1.1:271. 121 Benjamin 1980, 1.1:274.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

268 T he Choreographic Project of Modernity 

demonic ballet master who exerts a transforming power over the body of the dancer, the dancer’s body, having taken up within itself the choreographic space of the court, marks the point at which sovereign power’s claims shatter against their own apparatus.122 Diotima’s summons invokes this ambiguity. It leads us to ask: what is our relation to the world? What is the place and function of the community of ephemeral beings, and in particular of human beings as those who, in an emphatic way, are open to alternation and exchange, insofar as they have to choose in the present moment ever different modes of existing? If the world itself is a court, we must ourselves be the courtiers, the Höflinge, and our bearing in the world a bearing of courtesy or Höflichkeit. As beings that exist only in alternation, we would bear within ourselves the relation to life and death; the golden chains binding the one to the other are the very sinews of our being, the fabric of our common life. Like Eros we are born of both, and our erotic striving, our yearning, exists as the tension between the two. Yet while life leads and death is led, neither leading nor being led is possible for us courtiers, whose very nature consists in the golden chains. Instead, we geleiten, we escort. We are the Geleit, not of one but of both kings—life and death. Escorting is the basic relation of the courtier to the court, whose function is not first of all to provide supervising protection, as the word “escort” is most often used today, but rather to allow the majesty to appear in, and thus first become, its majesty. The courtiers surrounding the king constitute his sovereignty through the very act of accompanying him as expressions of his might, opening up a space (einräumen, chōreō) for his majesty. Likewise, we ourselves, the maidens and youths (Jungfrauen, Jünglinge), through our dance and song and in a sequence of alternating figures and tones, open up a space, not for any earthly or even heavenly power but rather for the tension between life and death, between the general (the master of the field) and the sovereign, each of which, in turn, enfolds within it the same tension; the tautly stretched sinew of the bios; the interplay between origination and ruination that is the trait, the Zug, of all Being and, as such, the ground for the world as the concatenation of beings and in particular for the community of those beings that exist in change and exchange. This opening is the task of earthly politics. And thus it is of its very essence choric, consisting of a dance and song that, each accompanying the other, fit themselves into the inner gesture of life—the interplay of life and death, becoming and passing away—and thus make way for the earthly appearance, the shining-forth, of natural 122 Many ballets thematize this ambiguity. In Swan Lake, the ballet master himself appears on stage as a magician holding the Swan-Ballerinas under his sway and using them to his ends. In Sleeping Beauty the enchanted court is reawakened through the dance.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

The Choreographic Project of Modernity



269

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

life: for a radiant glory. The state, the human community, is no longer understood as that imposition of form on matter whose external sign is the wall encompassing and delimiting the interior of the city but rather as the unfolding of an opening within all the folds of natural life. This is of the essence of courteousness, which, rather than uniting the people into a single, militant body bound together by a single pathos, joins the inhabitants of the state into a greater intimacy through a gentle play of distance and proximity. It is, perhaps, precisely the free use of courteousness (Höflichkeit) that would hold open the space of the hope (Hoffnung) with which Diotima, having said her one thing, closes the letter: the hope, namely, that melancholy would give way to joy, and that the laurel and myrtle, the very honors whose consolation she had previously denied him, would again grace his head—not as the honor for heroic deeds bestowed by the city but rather as the crown with which nature herself honors her priests, the poets. The poet, whose days are themselves a keimen—a seeding, a dissemination and sowing of the poetic word—marks out the figure of Höflichkeit: of the poetic fugue that escorts the train of nature by complying with and fitting into its gesture. We can hardly ignore the strangeness of this positive appropriation of the image of “golden chains” and this affirmation of courtliness. Louis XIV’s court exemplified much of what the French Revolution, so admired by Hölderlin, had reacted against.123 Rousseau, who famously spoke of the “chains” that had come to bind modern man, himself became a harsh critic of the ballet, which he saw as exemplifying how society “enchained” individuals by replacing their natural goodness with studied, artificial forms of behavior.124 This again suggests that the founding impulse of Diotima’s second summons, and of Hölderlin’s political thought, is not simply democracy but Physiocracy: the rule of the people is to be founded on the rule of nature.125 The court, with its golden chains and rituals and 123 It is worth noting, however, as Avineri (1972) observes, that Hegel, in The German Constitution (1798–1802), regards Richelieu, Louis XIII’s chief minister, as the architect of modern France (52). 124 Homans 2010, 72. 125 Schmidt (1992–93) argues that, while Hölderlin’s image of Greece is political, what attracted him about the Greek polis was above all the idea of a human society ideally bound to nature. In the long and complex hexameter poem “Der Archipelagus” (The Archipelago, 1800), Hölderlin thus takes up the Stoic conception of nature as a universal harmony and proposes a corresponding politics that is “naturgemäß”—in accord with nature. Schmidt further remarks that Hölderlin’s ideal of Greece, as especially evident in the late work, does not lead to the demand for imitation. Greece cannot be recovered, cannot be brought back. Indeed the very existence of the ideal represents a danger, since it releases “uprooting” energies in the present. I would suggest, however, that while

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

270 T he Choreographic Project of Modernity 

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

festivals and gestures, is not dismissed in favor of an authentic, genuinely political form of communal life. Rather, the court is transformed by eliminating the king as the embodiment of a sovereign power founded in divine transcendence. Sovereignty remains, but as a sovereignty immanent to the natural world. This is Physiocracy, the rule of nature, radically conceived.126 The human sovereign remains only as a negative instance—the sovereign renunciation of sovereignty—which, through this paradoxical and self-contradictory act, opens up a space for the giving and yield of nature. The model for this, as mentioned, is Theseus’s renunciation of regal power—a paradoxical act that is also the theme of Hölderlin’s The Death of Empedocles.127 Athenian democracy itself rests on a regal foundation: without a prior act, in which the king created the space for democratic power through a sovereign renunciation, it would not have been possible. And if it had been possible, it would not have been pretty: broken off from its origins, it could not have made manifest the beautiful. Similarly, Machiavelli will speak of the solitude of the legendary founders of states. The founder must be alone and omnipotent, his powers undivided, since the multitude are not capable of instituting anything, since, given their diversity of opinion, they cannot recognize its goodness. For as Althusser explains, as soon as the founder has given the laws to the state, he must resign “his exclusive powers” and join the many; the state endures only “when it remains a matter of concern to many and when it is the task of the many to maintain it.”128 The lawgiver as choreographer, however, does not have a clear and manifest vision of goodness as such, or even the concrete goodness of the order that he is creating. Rather, he glimpses and captures it somewhat in gestures. These gestures embody a measure that is no longer the transcendent measure of goodness that would allow the state to be judged from without, but an immanent measure. In this way a gestural, choreographic politics allows for the dismissal of the embodied sovereign; the Hölderlin already recognizes the impossibility of bringing back Greece in Hyperion, Physiocracy nevertheless represents a modern “inventive return,” as Jürgen Link puts it, to the Greek ideal which, rather than merely trying to restore it, recognizes, without trying to efface, the distance separating the ancient from the modern world. 126 Pott (1980–81, 157) argues that nature, while presented in Hyperion as an ideal, should not be conceived of as mythic, idyllic, or utopian. 127 That the sovereign power would willfully contradict itself—that its act of will is to contradict the very possibility of willing—is of the greatest significance, since political philosophy has almost always taken its departure, as one sees clearly in Rousseau’s On the Social Contract; or, Principles of Political Rights, from the premise, derived from logic, that sovereignty, and the will more generally, cannot contradict itself. In Hölderlin logical contradiction becomes political praxis. 128 Althusser 1999, 64.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

The Choreographic Project of Modernity



271

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

displacement of sovereignty from its embodiment. The gestures of the sovereign body give way to the gestures of the multitude. Indeed: the multitude exists first and foremost as a multitude of singular gestures, irreducible to the One gesture of the sovereign body that would pull everything into its orbit. The choreographic lawgiver has glimpsed the agonistic beautiful life of the multitude in the truth to which it becomes open, and yet while the choreographic lawgiver enjoys a certain relative solitude, lawgiving itself is not a first, originating act: the choreographic gestures become scattered among the multitude; they spread like seeds among a life and world that already exists and already has its gestures.129 Far from choreographing a completely new way of life, the new gestures gather these other gestures around it, in such a way that they would themselves begin to gesture toward the truth. This gesture life is not the antithesis of the court but its absolutization, just as the history of the ballet after Louis XIV is not the history of its depoliticization—going from an organ of state power to a mere pretty aesthetic distraction—but rather of the transformation of the body politic through the disappearance of the king who organized and orchestrated it from within. The virtuosic body, in a word, is the body of a courtier without a king. While there may still be a place for the abstract rights and freedoms of the human being and citizen generally conceived, an abstract and generic concept of natural freedom is not enough to sustain political life. The meaning of freedom, as well as of duty and obligation, must be understood in terms of the concrete entanglement of beings whose bodies, through the promiscuous metabolic exchange of elements, are folded into one another. Freedom is a gesture—a multitude of gestures—before it is an abstract idea. The gestures of dance are the exposition of these multitudinous freedoms. In the English Enlightenment, the group of thinkers gathered around the third Earl of Shaftesbury would discover a similar transformation in 129 Lemke (2012), in a comparative analysis of the figure of lawgiving in Rousseau, Schiller, and Hölderlin, draws attention to the significance of the myth of Lykurgos, recounted in Plutarch, according to which he starved himself to death and had his ashes scattered into the wind in order to bind his fellow citizens to an oath they had made not to change the laws until he returned from his trip to the Oracle. Yet her analysis of Hölderlin, which focuses on The Death of Empedocles, does not recognize the extent to which precisely this complex relation between writing, dissemination, death, and the law comes into play in Hyperion, which, if we focus on Diotima’s words rather than Hyperion’s speech at Athens, points even further than the tragic solutions offered in the various versions of his drama. Lemke concludes by claiming that in the third version, Empedocles “gives the law of death as the modern law of the limit and finitude in a gesture that no longer points to a sense outside of itself, that fixates on nothing more” (2012, 121). Here, once again, the political horizon of Hölderlin’s thought recedes from view.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

272 T he Choreographic Project of Modernity 

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

the understanding of courteousness.130 While the notion of politeness and sociability proposed in the Spectator, the literary journal of Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, opposes a politeness rooted in urban life to the corrupt, contrived politeness of the court, this is not so much a rejection of the courtly mode of life per se as of its confinement to the royal court through a hierarchical organization orchestrated by the king. And here too, dance will play a crucial role in conceptualizing courteousness. John Weaver, the great English dancing master, would indeed ally himself with the editors of the Spectator and their project of civil reform, arguing that dancing could help people to regulate their passions, act toward one another with civility, and thus ultimately serve to create social cohesion by relieving the tensions that constantly threaten to undermine the civic order.131 “The point was not—as it was in France,” as Jennifer Homans explains, “to accentuate social hierarchies, but to quell them.” Politeness transforms the inner nature of human beings; an upright bearing will make them more upright from inside.132 And hence dancing, and a gentlemanly bearing, is no longer the special privilege of a social elite, but something that, in the words of Giovanni Andrea Gallini, should be “recommended to all ranks of life.”133 Friedrich Schiller, leavening English political philosophy with Kantian idealism, offers an even more powerful formulation of the connection between dancing, indeed in the specifically English style, and the ideal form of social life.134 Writing to Körner in 1793, he praises the “welldanced English dance composed of many convoluted tours” as the “most fitting image for the ideal of beautiful social interaction”: Everything is ordered in such a manner that the one has already made room when the other comes; everything is fit together in such a skilled and yet artless way that each only seems to be following his own head, and yet never steps in the way of the other. It is the most appropriate symbol for the assertion of one’s own freedom and the protection of the freedom of the other.135

Diotima’s own summons also follows in the train of this new courtliness, though in turn transforming it decisively. Calling Hyperion to his poetic vocation, she writes:

130 Strauss (1933, 16) suggests that Hölderlin would have encountered Shaftesbury’s ideas by way of Herder, Schiller, and also Rousseau. 131 Homans 2010, 55. 132 Homans 2010, 55. 133 Homans 2010, 55. 134 See Chytry 1989, 83–84. 135 Schiller and Körner 1847, 3:71.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

The Choreographic Project of Modernity



273

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Mourning youth! soon, soon you will be happier. Your laurel has not yet ripened, and your myrtles have wilted, for you should be a priest of divine nature, and your poetic days are already germinating.

The poet is a priest of “divine nature.” Yet this priesthood should itself be understood as a political act conveying the experience of beauty to the multitude. Still, it would be easy to dismiss all this as yet another expression of the cult of nature worship. It hardly seems to present the starting point for a rigorous conception of the political, yet alone one that genuinely engages with the problems of his age. Yet the problem to which Diotima’s words call attention—the relation between death and sovereignty—may in fact be regarded as the central problem of political thought. Contrasting the older concept of sovereignty with the new form of politics that will come to characterize European modernity, Foucault explains that whereas death was once “the manner in which a terrestrial sovereignty was relieved by another, singularly more powerful sovereignty,” “now it is over life, throughout its unfolding, that power establishes its dominion; death is power’s limit, the moment that escapes it; death becomes the most secret aspect of existence, the most ‘private.’”136 Reading Diotima’s words in light of this passage, which contrasts the public pageantry of death from before to a biopolitical form of politics where power becomes a power over life and where death becomes a secret and private limit to power, suggests an intriguing possibility. Diotima proposes nothing less than a third way: rather than rejecting the pageantry of death, she calls Hölderlin to hold on to it, though without simply submitting to death as the highest sovereignty—a submission which itself, as Foucault suggests, serves to affirm political sovereignty. Politics becomes a politics of life, a biopolitics, though without excluding death and its pageantry. Instead of transforming death from a highest sovereignty to the private limit of power, it will include death within itself, thereby subverting the logic of transcendence upon which both the sovereignty of death and its liminalization depend. Pageantry is preserved as the space, at once private and public, in which the celebration of the immanence of death to life, the dispersion of a sovereignty founded in death into the fabric of life, can take place. Diotima’s second summons to Hyperion thus suggests how the politics of life, resisting the reduction of life to mere natural life, can remain open to politics. This other biopolitics is, fundamentally, what we mean by the choreographic project of modernity.137 In the commentary accompanying his translation of a fragment from Pindar, to which Hölderlin gives the title “Das Höchste” (The Highest, 136 Foucault 1990, 138. 137 Hewitt (2005) also draws a connection between dance and biopolitics, though he has in mind only a vitalist “modern dance.”

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

274 T he Choreographic Project of Modernity 

1804), he writes: “The immediate, taken rigorously, is impossible for mortals, just as [it is] for immortals; the god must distinguish between different worlds, in accordance with his nature, because heavenly goodness, for its own sake [ihret selbst wegen], must be holy, unmixed . . . But rigorous mediacy [strenge Mittelbarkeit] is the law.”138 The law is a rigorous mediacy: it rigorously articulates the inner form of all the forms of alternation through which mortals become open to the One—the unmixed, pure, and holy heavenly goodness—thus allowing the mortal and immortal to encounter one another. The laws of both church and state, and the acquired statutes, are what hold on to, but also record, capture, and indeed detail (all possible readings of festhalten) the living relations, in which, with time, a people has encountered and continues to encounter itself. Discipline [Zucht], so far as it is the form [Gestalt] in which the human being and the god encounter one another, the law of church and state and inherited statutes, (the holiness of God, and for the human being the possibility of a cognition [Erkenntnis], of a clarification [Erklärung]), these conduct mightily [gewaltig] the most righteous Right [Recht] with the very highest hand, they hold firm [festhalten] more strictly than art the living relations in which, with [the course] of time [mit der Zeit], a people has encountered and encounters itself. (GSA 5:285)

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

But in just this respect, it is not simply law in the formal sense but Zucht. It is a discipline that gives shape and structure to the ways in which human 138 See Baum 1963–64, 65–76; The interpretation of Hölderlin’s commentary on the Pindar fragment plays a decisive role in Heidegger’s “elucidation” of “As on a holiday . . .” Yet Heidegger goes to great lengths to obscure the clarity with which Hölderlin presents the opposition of immediacy and mediacy: “The immediate all-presence is the mediatrix for all that is mediated and, that means, for the mediable. The immediate itself is never something mediable, but, by contrast, the immediate, strictly taken, is mediation, that means, the mediacy of the mediable, because it allows this in its essence. Nature is the mediacy that mediates everything, is ‘the law’” (HGA 4:62). This is not to deny that nature possesses a Gesetzlichkeit (lawfulness), or that we should follow Heidegger in distinguishing nature in its lawfulness from the holy chaos. The problem is that by distinguishing between the “mediating” and the “mediated,” and then in turn identifying the “mediating” with the “immediate,” Heidegger not only reinscribes Hölderlin within an idealist logic whose filiation he denies, but he indeed turns the poet into a kind of emissary, if not functionary, of the holy, or in other words, though he avoids the word here, Being. “The holy bestows the word and itself comes into this word. The word is the event of the holy. Hölderlin’s poetry is now an incipient calling that is itself called by what is coming, saying this and this alone as the holy” (HGA 4:76–77).

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

The Choreographic Project of Modernity



275

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

beings encounter both other human beings and God, the One; the form through which all the different beings that compose a world are bound to each other. In the words of “Becoming in Passing Away,” it is the reciprocal relation—the Wechselbeziehung.139 The highest task of both the ancient and modern poet is lawgiving, and yet there is this difference. With the former, the discipline follows upon inspiration: discipline (Zucht) is required not so much to lay the foundation for the state as to restrain overripe forces and preserve the state when it is on the verge of dissolution.140 Civil war remains an abid139 In what relation does this discipline stand to Foucault’s surveiller? It would not be wrong to think that while the meaning of Hölderlin’s Zucht (discipline) is not restricted to a specific epoch in political history, it nevertheless includes the elaborate techniques of micro-power that Foucault analyses in Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison (Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, 1975). These, we might say, constitute the form of Zucht characteristic of the modern age—and at stake in them in nothing less than a certain mechanization of the body: a control that seeks not merely to “restrain” the native powers of the body but to bring forth the abilities of the body through a most intimate form of domination. And yet Hölderlin’s Zucht forbids us to follow Foucault in drawing a rigid distinction between a control directed toward the signifying ceremonial function of the body and one directed toward the “economy, the efficiency of movements, their internal organization” (Foucault 1995, 137). Modern Zucht, the intention of a choreographic practice, is both ceremonial and exercise; or exercise as ceremonial—precisely as the signification of nonsignification. In light of this, Foucault’s claim that, with the eighteenth-century projects of discipline and docility, “the only truly important ceremony is that of exercise” gains a deeper sense. This, moreover, confirms our thesis that Hölderlin’s politico-poetic project must be brought into relation to the ballet. The ballet without doubt belongs within the history of discipline that Foucault describes, and it would be easy to demonstrate that, with the eighteenth century, a new way of thinking of the body transforms the ballet. Yet one could argue that these changes do not negate the signifying power of the dancer’s body but, rather, augment it. In a certain way, the dancer never becomes merely docile, but the entire political “poetics” (or we say: choreographics) of the ballet demands that the docile body can assert its resistance to power to the very extent that it not only submits to it but becomes thoroughly dominated by it. It is perhaps for this reason that the great virtuosi of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries could have such an uncanny effect on their audience. 140 In conceiving the relation between inspiration and the disciplining force of the law, Hölderlin, Böschenstein argues, invokes the figure of Bacchus/Dionysus. Dionysus is not, as in Nietzsche, the figure of the purely aorgic and measureless, but is at once both inspiration and its capture and “fixation”; the ground of revolutionary change and the preservation and unfolding of this change in history through the institutions of culture. Böschenstein (1984) further argues that whereas early poems such as “As on a holiday . . .” seek to achieve this mediation between the divine and the mortal, later poems such as “Remembrance”

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

276 T he Choreographic Project of Modernity 

ing preoccupation not only of classical Greek political thought but also of Hobbes. With the latter, by contrast, it is discipline itself that creates an opening for inspiration. In each case, poetry is choreographic, yet whereas epic poetry choreographs the heroic life of the polis through a star writing—a constancy grounded in the heroism of a hero who faces his own death—the modern poet chooses alternation rather than constancy and must allow this alternation, exchange, and transformation to reside in the word itself. The words must be bound to one another through golden chains, implying, in the very bond of each to the other, the strife of life and death. Thus such poetry is elaborated through the sequential concatenation of alphabetic writing rather than the self-presence of speech. It is a writing of writing. The previous discussion of Theseus’s “miraculous deed” illuminates the difference between the choreographic project of modernity and the choreographic project of antiquity. If the Daedelian labyrinth stands for an original constitutive act in which the state emerges as the cryptic expression of sovereign power through which, in its darkness, the bestial nature of the human is confined, the first deed of Theseus, liberating from darkness, creates politics as an opening. Yet even the “miraculous deed,” and the politics that ensues, would continue to operate within the exigency that characterized the ancient world: the need to contain the “fire of heaven” in a formal representation led to dance congealing into the rigid plastic forms of sculpture. Because of this, dance will be unlearned, Ariadne will be abandoned, and political life itself can only assume a rigid, plastic form. When Hyperion, a Winckelmannian enthusiast, sees the ruins of Athens as signs of divine beauty, Diotima reminds him that the modern Greeks are still dancing, knowing that their dance recalls a much more radical and originary sense for the political than the stone torsos half submerged in dust. The aim of choreography is no longer, as it was for Plato, to guide and constrain the savage natural impulses of the child, or, as for Schiller, to present a schematism of an ideal social order in which the freedom of each individual is compatible with the freedom of others, but to make the body, which itself has become a sort of prison and living death, open to nature, community, and to the spirit. Making the body in its naturalness open to the nature beyond itself, it inscribes the fluid, labyrinthine dance into the body politic in such a way that it can become open to the fire of heaven—aether as the Dionysian common spirit, the Gemeingeist. To become a dancer is to master the labyrinthine mechanics of the governmental apparatus in such a way that one thematize its impossibility. Against this, I’d suggest that already in Hyperion the mediation is not understood as something that could be achieved “aesthetically” in the present moment of experience, but is a trace inscribed into the future through choreographic writing.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

The Choreographic Project of Modernity



277

is no longer lost in it. The labyrinth, the very figure for the most intricate political closure, becomes an opening. It is as if Hölderlin took Schiller’s rather too sober anglaise, a schema for a perfected liberal order—for the perfection of the rule of law, of governmental techniques, of the state apparatus manifest through the seamless operation of civil society—and invites Dionysus and his mask, the mourning youth Hyperion, in place of the French Apollonian Sun King, to lead the dance as prince of the festival. Opposed in equal measure to despotism and to the false utopianism of a natural sociability, Hölderlin’s Dionysian political via negativa still insists on sovereignty, but a sovereignty that, negating itself at every turn, holds open a space for the ferment of nature, its hyperbolic surplus, and for revolutionary events. The modern poet, enacting this gesture, is the first dance master and Hofmeister, and the act of poetic writing the work of the highest hand, and thus the highest handwork—a handwork that passes over into a dance of the whole body, holding fast the living relations, and thus keeping the whole of a world from dissolving into fragments. It does this not by organizing everything around a single deed, nor by beating out a common time, but by orchestrating, in the passing of each moment, the enchaînement that passes from word to word and from world to world, in this way figuring out the inner fugue, the Fügung or harmonia, that gathers together all beings around it. The poetic lawgiver, unlike the ancient lawgiver, is rarely alone; his solitude, like Hyperion’s, is only passing. He does not find himself, Prometheus-like, before a virgin material. He creates neither the state nor human beings. Rather, he is always within a world that is already worked over and yet cannot be destroyed so as to start anew. He works over what is given, gathering it together toward a truth that is not simply the truth of the given. The poet of poets, the versifier of verse, is not the only poet and dancer. We can only follow as poets and dancers, choreographers in our own right. The pride of a choreographic poetics can only be that no one, in erring, errs utterly—that no one, in following out the digressive path that is life itself, fails to happen upon truth.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Bibliography Adler, Anthony Curtis. “The Choreographic Writing of the Law in Plato’s Nomoi.” Theorics 2, no. 1 (2010): 231–64. ———. “A Friendship of Words: Philology and Prophesy in Hölderlin’s ‘Rousseau.’” Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies 51, no. 3 (2015): 242–60. ———. “The Intermedial Gesture: Agamben and Kommerell.” Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 12 (2007): 57–64. ———. “The Political Philology of the Artifact: Hölderlin’s Late Hymnic Fragments ‘Luther’ and ‘Der Vatikan.’” Sprachkunst 50 (2020): 37–60. ———. “Sensual Idealism: The Spirit of Epicurus and the Politics of Finitude in Kant and Hölderlin.” In Dynamic Reading: Studies in the Reception of Epicureanism, edited by Brooke Holmes and W. H. Shearin, 199–238. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Adorno, Theodor W. Gesammelte Schriften. Edited by Rolf Tiedemann. 2nd ed. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1984. Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998. ———. Idea of Prose. Translated by Michael Sullivan and Sam Whitsitt. Albany: SUNY Press, 1995. ———. The Kingdom and the Glory: For A Theological Genealogy of Economy and Government. Translated by Lorenzo Chiesa. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011. ———. “Kommerell, or On Gesture.” In Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy. Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen, 77–85. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999. ———. “Notes on Gesture.” In Means without End: Notes on Politics. Translated by Vincenzo Binetti and Cesare Cesarino, 49–60. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000. ———. The Use of Bodies. Translated by Adam Kotsko. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2016. Albrecht, Christoph V. “Über neue Realien des ‘Hyperion.’” Hölderlin-Jahrbuch 29 (1994–1995): 248–61. Althusser, Louis. Machiavelli and Us. Edited by François Matheron. Translated by Gregory Elliott. London: Verso, 1999. Apuleius. Metamorphoses. Translated by J. Arthur Hanson. 2 vols. Revised ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989–96. Arbeau, Thoinot. Orchesography. Translated by Mary Stewart Evans. Mineola, NY: Dover, 1967.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

280 B ibliography 

Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958. Aretin, Karl Otmar Freiherr von. “Reichstag, Rastatter Kongreß und Revolution: Das Wirken Isaaks von Sinclair und seiner Freunde am Ende des Heiligen Römischen Reiches.” Hölderlin-Jahrbuch 22 (1980–81): 4–17. Aristotle. Ars Rhetorica. Edited by W. D. Ross. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959. ———. De Arte Poetica Liber. Edited by Rudolph Kassel. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966. ———. Ethica Nicomachea. Edited by I. Bywater. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1894. ———. Metaphysics, Books 10–14; Oeconomica; Magna Moralia. Translated by Hugh Tredennick and G. Cyril Armstrong. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1935. ———. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by H. Rakham. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1934. ———. Poetics. Translated by Stephen Halliwell. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995. ———. Politics. Translated by H. Rakham. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1932. Aspetsberger, Friedbert. Welteinheit und epische Gestaltung: Studien zur Ichform von Hölderlins Roman “Hyperion.” Munich: W. Fink Verlag, 1971. Avineri, Shlomo. Hegel’s Theory of the Modern State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972. Bachelard, Gaston. La formation de l’esprit scientifique: Contribution à une psychanalyse de la connaissance objective. 11th ed. Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1980. Bacher, Rahel. “Vergleich der Rezeption Homers in Johann Wolfgang Goethes ‘Die Leiden des jungen Werthers’ und Friedrich Hölderlins ‘Hyperion.’” Hölderlin-Jahrbuch 33 (2002–3): 230–44. Bacon, Francis. Bacon’s Essays and the Wisdom of the Ancients. Boston: Little, Brown, 1884. Badiou, Alain. Metapolitics. London and New York: Verso, 2005. Baeumer, Max. “Dionysos und das Dionysische bei Hölderlin.” HölderlinJahrbuch 18 (1973–74): 97–118. Bajorek, Jennifer. “The Offices of Homeland Security, or, Hölderlin’s Terrorism.” Critical Inquiry 31, no. 4 (2005): 874–902. Bassermann-Jordan, Gabriele von. “Schönes Leben! du lebst, wie die zarten Blüthen im Winter . . .”: Die Figur der Diotima in Hölderlins Lyrik und im “Hyperion”-Projekt; Theorie und dichterische Praxis. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2004. Baum, Manfred. “Hölderlins Pindar-Fragment ‘Das Höchste.’” HölderlinJahrbuch 13 (1963–64): 65–76. Bay, Hansjörg. “De revolutionibus: Bahnen und Bahnungen im Werk Hölderlins.” MLN 117, no. 3 (2002a): 599–633.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Bibliography



281

———, ed. Hyperion—terra incognita: Expeditionen in Hölderlins Roman. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1998. ———. “Ohne Rückkehr”: Utopische Intention und poetischer Prozeß in Hölderlins “Hyperion.” Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2002b. Beck, Adolf. “Hölderlin als Republikaner.” Hölderlin-Jahrbuch 15 (1967– 68): 28–52. Behre, Maria. “Deutung der ‘Weisheit der Alten’ bei Bacon, Hamann und Hölderlin.” Hölderlin-Jahrbuch 27 (1990–91): 77–99. Beiser, Frederick C. German Idealism: The Struggle against Subjectivism (1781–1801). Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 2002. Beissner, Friedrich. “Über die Realien des ‘Hyperion.’” Hölderlin-Jahrbuch 8 (1954): 93–102. Benjamin, Walter. Gesammelte Schriften. Edited by Rolf Tiedemann und Hermann Schweppenhäuser. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1980. Benn, Maurice B. Hölderlin und Pindar. ’s-Gravenhage: Mouton, 1962. Bernstein, Susan. Virtuosity of the Nineteenth Century: Performing Music and Language in Heine, Liszt, and Baudelaire. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998. Bertaux, Pierre. Friedrich Hölderlin. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1978. ———. “Hölderlin und die französische Revolution.” Hölderlin-Jahrbuch 15 (1967–68): 1–27. ———. Hölderlin und die Französische Revolution. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1969. ———. Hölderlin-Variationen. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1984. Bertheau, Jochen. Hölderlins französische Bildung. New York: Peter Lang, 2003. Billings, Joshua. “Hyperion’s Symposium: An Erotics of Reception.” Classical Receptions Journal 2, no. 1 (2010): 4–24. Binder, Wolfgang. “Hölderlins Deutung des Menschen.” Hölderlin-Jahrbuch 12 (1961–62): 1–19. ———. “Hölderlins Namenssymbolik.” In Hölderlin-Aufsätze, 9–26. Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1970. Blumenberg, Hans. The Legitimacy of the Modern Age. Translated by Robert M. Wallace. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983. ———. Schiffbruch mit Zuschauer: Paradigma einer Daseinsmetapher. Suhrkamp: Frankfurt am Main, 1979. Böckmann, Paul. “Die Französische Revolution und die Idee der ästhetischen Erziehung in Hölderlins Dichten.” In Der Dichter und seine Zeit: Politik im Spiegel der Literatur (3. Amherster Kolloquium Zur Modernen Deutschen Literatur 1969), edited by Wolfgang Paulson, 83–112. Heidelberg: Lothar Stiehm Verlag, 1970. Böschenstein, Bernhard. “Frucht des Gewitters”: Hölderlins Dionysos als Gott der Revolution. Frankfurt am Main: Insel, 1989. ———. “Geschehen und Gedächtnis: Hölderlins Hymnen ‘Wie wenn am Feiertag . . .’ und ‘Andenken.’” Le pauvre Holterling: Blätter zur Frankfurter Hölderlin-Ausgabe 7 (1984): 7–16.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

282 B ibliography 

———. “Die Transfiguration Rousseaus in der deutschen Dichtung um 1800: Hölderlin—Jean Paul—Kleist.” Jahrbuch der Jean-Paul-Gesellschaft 1 (1966): 101–17. ———. “Winckelmann, Goethe und Hölderlin als Deuter antiker Plastik.” Hölderlin-Jahrbuch 15 (1967–68): 158–79. Böschenstein-Schäfer, Renate. “Hölderlins Gespräch mit Boehlendorff.” Hölderlin-Jahrbuch 14 (1965–66): 110–24. Brauer, Ursula. Hölderlin und Susette Gontard: Eine Liebesgeschichte. Hamburg: Sabine Groenewold, 2002. Briegleb, Jochen. “‘Zwei britische Gelehrte, die under den Altertümern in Athen ihre Ernte hielten,’ Stuart und Revett in Hölderlins ‘Hyperion.’” In Praestant Interna: Festschrift für Ulrich Hausmann, edited by Bettina von Freytag, Dietrich Mannsperger, and Friedhelm Prayon, 418–25. Tübingen: Ernst Wasmuth, 1982. Brose, Ingeborg. “Natur und Geschichte: Studien zur Geschichtsauffassung in Hölderlins ‘Hyperion’ und ‘Empedokles.’” PhD diss. University of Göttingen. 1968. Castellari, Marco. Friedrich Hölderlin: Hyperion nello specchio della critica. Milano: CUEM, 2002. Chytry, Josef. The Aesthetic State: A Quest in Modern German Thought. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. Cicero, Marcus Tullius. Rhetorica ad Herennium. Translated by Harry Caplan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999. Claverie, Joseph. La jeunesse d’Hoelderlin jusqu’au roman d’Hypérion. Paris: Librairie Félix Alcan, 1921. Constantine, David. Hölderlin. Oxford: Clarendon, 1988. ———. The Significance of Locality in the Poetry of Friedrich Hölderlin. London: The Modern Humanities Research Association, 1979. da Pesaro, Guglielmo Ebreo. De pratica seu arte tripudii /On the Practice or Art of Dancing. Edited by Barbara Sparti. Oxford: Clarendon, 1995. Davis, William. “One with Everything: Hölderlin on Acrocorinth.” European Romantic Review 26, no. 1 (2015): 59–73. de Maistre, Joseph. Considerations on France. Translated by Richard A. Lebrun. London: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1974. de Man, Paul. “Hölderlins Rousseau-Bild.” Hölderlin-Jahrbuch 15 (1967– 68): 180–202. Deleuze, Gilles. Kant’s Critical Philosophy: The Doctrine of the Faculties. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985. Delorme, Maurice. Hölderlin et la Révolution Française. Monaco: Éditions du Rocher, 1959. Derrida, Jacques. The Beast and the Sovereign, Volume I. Translated by Geoffrey Bennington. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. Paperback ed. New York: Norton, 1999. Diels, Hermann. Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. Edited by Walther Kranz. 10th ed. 3 vols. Berlin: Weidmannsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1961.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Bibliography



283

Dierauer, Walter. Hölderlin und der spekulative Pietismus Württembergs: Gemeinsame Anschauungshorizonte im Werk Oetingers und Hölderlins. Zurich: Juris, 1986. Dilthey, Wilhelm. Das Erlebnis und die Dichtung: Lessing · Goethe, Novalis · Hölderlin. 8th ed. Wiesbaden: Teubner, 1922. Enke, Ulrike. “Der ‘Trieb in uns, das Ungebildete zu bilden . . .’: Der Begriff ‘Bildungstrieb’ bei Blumenbach and Hölderlin.” Hölderlin-Jahrbuch 30 (1996–97): 102–18. Esposito, Roberto. Bios: Biopolitics and Philosophy. Translated by Timothy Campbell. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008. Fehervary, Helen. Hölderlin and the Left: The Search for a Dialectic of Art and Life. Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1977. Fenves, Peter. “Afterword.” In Werner Hamacher, Two Studies of Friedrich Hölderlin. Edited by Peter Fenves and Julia Ng. Translated by Anthony Curtis Adler and Julia Ng, 165–79. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2020. ———. The Messianic Reduction: Walter Benjamin and the Shape of Time. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011. Fertig, Ludwig. Poeten als Pädagogen: Friedrich Hölderlin der Hofmeister. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1990. Fichte, Johann Gottlieb. Sämmtliche Werke. Edited by Immanuel Hermann Fichte. 8 Vols. Berlin: Veit, 1845–46. Firges, Pascal. Eros im Hyperion: Platonisches und spinozistisches Gedankengut in Hölderlins Roman. Annweiler am Trifels: Sonnenberg, 2010. Fitzell, John. The Hermit in German Literature: From Lessing to Eichendorff. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1961. Foucault, Michel. The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–1979. Edited by Michel Senellart. Translated by Graham Burchell. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. ———. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan. 2nd ed. New York: Random House, 1995. ———. The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1981–1982. Translated by Graham Burchell. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. ———. The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction. Translated by Robert Hurley. Reissue edition. New York: Vintage Books, 1990. ———. “Introduction.” In The Normal and the Pathological, by Georges Canguilhem. Translated by Carolyn R. Fawcett and Robert S. Cohen, 7–24. New York: Zone Books, 1989. Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth. The Origins of Physiocracy: Economic Revolution and Social Order in Eighteenth-Century France. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1976. Frank, Manfred. Eine Einführung in Schellings Philosophie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1985. Franko, Mark. Dance as Text: Ideologies of the Baroque Body. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

284 B ibliography 

———. The Dancing Body in Renaissance Choreography (c. 1416–1589). Birmingham, AL: Summa, 1986. Franz, Michael. “‘Er [. . .] findet in sich selbst viel zu lesen’: Ein Brief über Hölderlins Freund Muhrbeck und seine philosophischen Ideen.” Hölderlin-Jahrbuch 36 (2008–2009): 281–95. ———. “Hölderlins Logik: Zum Grundriß von ‘Seyn Urtheil Möglichkeit,’” Hölderlin-Jahrbuch 25 (1986–87): 93–124. ———. “Hölderlin und der ‘politische Jammer’ I: Die angebliche ‘revolutionäre Verschwörung von 1799/1800.” In Hölderlin: Literatur und Politik (Turmvorträge 2008–2011), edited by Valérie Lawitschka, 9–38. Tübingen: Hölderlin-Gesellschaft, 2012. ———. “‘Platons frommer Garten’: Hölderlins Platonlektüre von Tübingen bis Jena.” Hölderlin-Jahrbuch 28 (1992–93): 111–27. Franz, Michael, and Michael Knaupp. “Zum Delphin: Eine hermeneutische Expedition.” Le pauvre Holterling: Blätter zur Frankfurter HölderlinAusgabe 8 (1988): 27–35. Franzel, Sean. “The Politics and Media of Apostrophe in Hölderlin’s Hyperion.” German Quarterly 82, no. 2 (2009): 155–73. Frye, Lawrence O. “Seasonal and Psychic Time in the Structuring of Hölderlin’s Hyperion.” In Friedrich Hölderlin: An Early Modern. Edited by Emery E. George, 148–79. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1972. Gaier, Ulrich. “Hölderlins ‘Hyperion’: Compendium, Roman, Rede.” Hölderlin-Jahrbuch 21 (1978–79): 88–143. ———. “‘Mein ehrlich Meister’: Hölderlin im Gespräch mit Heinse.” In Das Maß des Bacchanten: Wilhelm Heinses Über-Lebenskunst, edited by Gert Theile, 25–54. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1999. ———. “Neubegründung der Lyrik auf Heinses Musiktheorie.” HölderlinJahrbuch 31 (1998–99): 129–38. Gaier, Ulrich, Valérie Lawitschka, Stefan Metzger, Wolfgang Rapp, and Violetta Waibel. Hölderlin Texturen. 4 vols. Tübingen: Hölderlin-Gesellschaft, 1995–2003. Gaskill, Howard. Hölderlin’s “Hyperion.” Durham, UK: University of Durham, 1984. Gautier, Théophile. Gautier on Dance. Edited and translated by Ivor Guest. London: Dance Books, 1986. George, Emery E. “‘[. . .], das konnte nur ein Grieche finden, [. . .].’: Wer spricht in der Athenerrede?” Hölderlin-Jahrbuch 33 (2002–3): 169–92. Gerlach, Ingeborg. Natur und Geschichte: Studien zur Geschichtsauffassung in Hölderlins “Hyperion” und “Empedokles.” Frankfurt am Main: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft, 1973. Gide, Charles, and Charles Rist. A History of Economic Doctrines from the Time of the Physiocrats to the Present Day. Translated by R. Richards. Boston: D. C. Heath, 1915.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Bibliography



285

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. The Sorrows of Young Werther, and Novella. Translated by Elizabeth Mayer and Louise Bogan. New York: Random House, 1971. Görner, Rüdiger. Hölderlins Mitte: zur Ästhetik eines Ideals. Munich: Iudicium Verlag, 1993. Graeber, David. Debt: The First 5,000 Years. Brooklyn: Melville House, 2011. Grimm, Sieglinde. “Vollendung im Wechsel”: Hölderlins Verfahrungsweise des poetischen Geistes als poetologische Antwort auf Fichtes Subjektphilosophie. Tübingen: Francke Verlag, 1997. Grolman, Adolf von. Friedrich Hölderlins “Hyperion”: Stilkritische Studien zu dem Problem der Entwicklung dichterischer Ausdrucksformen. Karlsruhe: C. F. Müllersche Hofbuchhandlung, 1919. Grunert, Mark. Die Poesie des Übergangs: Hölderlins späte Dichtung im Horizont von Friedrich Schlegels Konzept der “Transzendentalpoesie.” Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1995. Gryphius, Andreas. Werke in einem Band. Berlin: Aufbau, 1966. Guarda, Sylvain. “Hölderlins Kinderspiel Hyperion: Ideologiekritik oder Wahnvorstellung?” Monatshefte 99, no. 1 (2007): 63–77. Gundolf, Friedrich. Hölderlins “Archipelagus.” 2nd ed. Heidelberg: Weiss’sche Universitäts-Buchhandlung, 1916. Haberer, Brigitte. Sprechen, Schweigen, Schauen. Bonn: Bouvier Verlag, 1991. ———. “Zwischen Sprachmagie und Schweigen: Metamorphosen des Sprechens in Hölderlins ‘Hyperion oder Der Eremit in Griechenland.’” Hölderlin-Jahrbuch 26 (1988–89): 117–33. Hamacher, Werner. “Bild und Zeichen in der späten Lyrik Hölderlins.” MA thesis. Berlin, 1971. ———. “Parusie, Mauern: Mittelbarkeit und Zeitlichkeit, später Hölderlin.” Hölderlin-Jahrbuch 34 (2004–5): 93–142. ———. Two Studies of Friedrich Hölderlin. Edited by Peter Fenves and Julia Ng. Translated by Anthony Curtis Adler and Julia Ng. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2020. Hammond, N. G. L., and H. H. Scullard, eds. The Oxford Classical Dictionary. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon, 1970. Häny, Arthur. Hölderlins Titanenmythos. Zurich: Atlantis Verlag, 1948. Hartmann, Pierre. “La communauté selon Hölderlin.” Dix-huitième Siècle 41 (2009): 42–59. Hayden-Roy, Priscilla A. “A Foretaste of Heaven”: Friedrich Hölderlin in the Context of Württemberg Pietism. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1994. Hayek, Friedrich August. The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents. Edited by Bruce Caldwell. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by A. V. Miller. Oxford: Clarendon, 1977. ———. Werke. Edited by Eva Moldenhauer und Karl Markus Michel. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1969–1971.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

286 B ibliography 

Heidegger, Martin. Basic Writings: From Being and Time (1927) to The Task of Thinking (1964). Edited by David Farrell Krell. 2nd ed. New York: HarperCollins, 1993. Heinse, Wilhelm. Die Aufzeichnungen: Frankfurter Nachlass. Edited by Markus Bernauer, Adolf Borbein, Thomas W. Gaehtgens, Volker Hunecke, Werner Keil, and Norbert Miller. Munich: Carl Hanser, 2003–2005. ———. Sämmtliche Werke. Edited by Carl Schüddekopf and Albert Leitzmann. Leibzig: Insel, 1903–25. Henrich, Dieter. Der Gang des Andenkens: Beobachtungen und Gedanken zu Hölderlins Gedicht. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1986. ———. “Hölderlin über Urtheil und Sein: Eine Studie zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Idealismus.” Hölderlin-Jahrbuch 14 (1964–65): 73–96. ———. “Philosophisch-theologische Problemlagen im Tübinger Stift zur Studienzeit Hegels, Hölderlins und Schellings.” Hölderlin-Jahrbuch 25 (1986–87): 60–92. Henry, Madeleine M. Prisoner of History: Aspasia of Miletus and Her Biographical Tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. Herder, Johann Gottfried. Philosophical Writings. Translated by Michael N. Forster. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Herodotus. History. Translated by A. D. Godley. 4 vols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1921–24. Heselhaus, Clemens. “Hölderlins idea vitae.” Hölderlin-Jahrbuch 6 (1952): 17–50. Hewitt, Andrew. Social Choreography: Ideology as Performance in Dance and Everyday Movement. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005. Hiller, Marion. “Harmonisch entgegengesetzt”: Zur Darstellung und Darstellbarkeit in Hölderlins Poetik um 1800. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2008. Hobbes, Thomas. “Leviathan: or the Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil.” In The English Philosophers: From Bacon to Mill, edited by Edwin A. Burtt, 129–237. New York: Modern Library, 1939. Hock, Erich. “Dort drüben, in Westphalen”: Hölderlins Reise nach Bad Driburg mit Wilhelm Heinse und Susette Gontard. Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1995. ———. “Wilhelm Heinses Urteil über Hölderlins Hyperion.” Hölderlin-Jahrbuch (1950): 108–19. Hofmann, Gert. Dionysos Archemythos: Hölderlins transzendentale Poiesis. Tübingen: Francke Verlag, 1996. Hölderlin, Friedrich. Sämtliche Werke: Kritische Textausgabe. Edited by Dietrich Eberhard Sattler. Vol. 15. Darmstadt: Luchterhand Literaturverlag: 1988. ———. Werke–Briefe–Dokumente. Edited by Pierre Bertaux. Munich: Winkler, 1963. Homans, Jennifer. Apollo’s Angels: A History of Ballet. New York: Random House, 2010. Homer. The Iliad. Translated by Robert Fagles. New York: Viking, 1990.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Bibliography



287

Honold, Alexander. Hölderlins Kalender: Astronomie und Revolution um 1800. Berlin: Verlag Vorwerk 8, 2005. ———. Nach Olympia: Hölderlin und die Erfindung der Antike. Berlin: Verlag Vorwerk 8, 2002. ———. “Die Zeit der Himmlischen und ihr Empfang: Hölderlins astronomisches Werk.” Hölderlin-Jahrbuch 35 (2006–7): 67–98. Horowski, Reinhard. Hölderlin war nicht verrückt: Eine Streitschrift. Tübingen: Klöpfer & Meyer, 2017. Immler, Hans. Natur in der ökonomischen Theorie. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1985. Janz, Marlies. “Hölderlins Flamme—Zur Bildwerdung der Frau im ‘Hyperion.’” Hölderlin-Jahrbuch 22 (1980–81): 122–42. Jeppesen, Knud. Counterpoint: The Polyphonic Vocal Style of the Sixteenth Century. Translated by Glen Haydon. New York: Dover, 1992. Johnson, Christopher D. Hyperboles: The Rhetoric of Excess in Baroque Literature and Thought. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010. Kahn, Charles H. Anaximander and the Origins of Greek Cosmology. 3rd ed. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994. Kirstein, Lincoln. Dance: A Short History of Classic Theatrical Dancing. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1935. Koczisky, Eva. Hölderlins Orient. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann:, 2009. Komma, Karl Michael. “Hölderlin und die Musik.” Hölderlin-Jahrbuch 7 (1953): 106–18. Kordela, A. Kiarina. Surplus: Spinoza, Lacan. Albany: SUNY Press, 2007. Körner, Christian Gottfried. Ästhetische Ansichten: Ausgewählte Aufsätze. Edited by Joseph P. Bauke. Marbach: Schiller-Nationalmuseum, 1964. Kurth, Ernst. Grundlagen des linearen Kontrapunkts. Bern: M. Drechsel, 1917. Kuzniar, Alice A. Delayed Endings: Nonclosure in Novalis and Hölderlin. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1987. Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe, and Jean-Luc Nancy. The Literary Absolute: The Theory of Literature in German Romanticism. Translated by Philip Barnard and Cheryl Lester. Albany: SUNY Press, 1988. Lampenscherf, Stephan. “‘Heiliger Plato, vergieb . . .’: Hölderlins ‘Hyperion’ oder Die neue Platonische Mythologie.” Hölderlin-Jahrbuch 28 (1992– 93): 128–51. Laplanche, Jean. Hölderlin and the Question of the Father. Victoria, BC, Canada: ELS Editions, 2007. Lefebvre, Jean-Pierre. “Hölderlin, journal de Bordeaux, 1802 (Auszüge).” Le pauvre Holterling: Blätter zur Frankfurter Hölderlin-Ausgabe 9 (2003): 13. Leferme-Falguières, Frédérique. Les courtisans: Une société de spectacle sous L’Ancien Régime. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2007. Lemke, Anja. “Das Drama der Gesetzgebung: Lykurg bei Rousseau, Schiller und Hölderlin.” In Hölderlin: Literatur und Politik (Turm-Vorträge),

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

288 B ibliography 

edited by Valérie Lawitschka, 97–121. Tübingen: Hölderlin-Gesellschaft, 2012. Levin, David Michael. Gestures of Ethical Life: Reading Hölderlin’s Question of Measure after Heidegger. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005. ———. “On Heidegger: The Gathering Dance of Mortals.” Research in Phenomenology 10 (1980): 251–77. Lewis, Charles. “Boileau and ‘Longinus’ in Hölderlin’s ‘SophoklesAnmerkungen.’” Germanic Review 86 (2011): 114–33. Liddell, Henry George, Robert Scott, Henry Stuart Jones, and Roderick McKenzie, eds. A Greek-English Lexicon. 9th ed. New supplement added 1996. Oxford: Clarendon, 1996. Link, Jürgen. “Aether und Erde: Naturgeschichtliche Voraussetzungen von Hölderlins Geologie.” Hölderlin-Jahrbuch 35 (2006–7): 120–51. ———. Hölderlin–Rousseau: Inventive Rückkehr. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1999. ———. “‘Hyperion’ als Nationalepos in Prosa.” Hölderlin-Jahrbuch 16 (1969–70): 158–94. Longinus, On the Sublime. Translated by W. H Fyfe. Revised by Donald Russel. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995. Lonsdale, Steven H. Dance and Ritual Play in Greek Religion. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993. Lukács, György. Goethe und seine Zeit. Bern: A. Francke, 1947. Machiavelli, Nicolo. The Prince. Translated and edited by Robert M. Adams. New York: W. W. Norton, 1977. Mähl, Hans-Joachim. Die Idee des goldenen Zeitalters im Werk des Novalis. Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1965. Mahoney, Dennis F. “Hölderlins ‘Hyperion’ und der Bildungsroman: Zur Umbildung eines Begriffs.” In Verlorene Klassik?, edited by Wolfgang Wittkowski, 224–36. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1986. Marcus Aurelius. Meditations. Translated by C. R. Haines. Revised ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1916. Martens, Gunter. “‘Das Eine in sich selber unterschiedne’: Das ‘Wesen der Schönheit’ als Strukturgesetz in Hölderlins ‘Hyperion.’” In Neue Wege zu Hölderlin, edited by Uwe Beyer, 185–98. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1994. Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. Werke. Vol. 26. Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1962. Mayer, Gerhart. Hölderlins ‘Hyperion’—ein frühromantischer Bildungsroman. Hölderlin-Jahrbuch 19–20 (1975–77): 244–66. McCall, Thomas. “The Case of the Missing Body.” Le pauvre Holterling: Blätter zur Frankfurter Hölderlin-Ausgabe 8 (1988): 53–72. Meek, Ronald L. The Economics of Physiocracy: Essays and Translations. London: Routledge, 1962. Menninghaus, Winfried. “Geist, Sein, Reflexion und Leben: Hölderlins Darstellungstheorie.” In Friedrich Hölderlin: Neue Wege der Forschung, edited by Thomas Roberg, 49–66. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2003.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Bibliography



289

Metzger, Stefan. “‘Auflösung.’” Hölderlin-Jahrbuch 33 (2002–3): 79–117. Michaelis, Loralea Ann. “Modernity and the Problem of Disappointment: The Political Theory of Friedrich Hölderlin’s Hyperion.” PhD diss.. University of Toronto, 1997. Mieth, Günther. Friedrich Hölderlin: Dichter der bürgerlich-demokratischen Revolution. Berlin: Rütten & Loening, 1978. ———. “Friedrich Hölderlin und Friedrich Schiller—Die Tragik einer literaturgeschichtlichen Konstellation.” Hölderlin-Jahrbuch 28 (1992–93): 68–79. Miller, James. Measures of Wisdom: The Cosmic Dance in Classical and Christian Antiquity. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986. Minder, Robert. “Hölderlin unter den Deutschen” und andere Aufsätze zur deutschen Literatur. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1968. Moenkemeyer, Heinz. François Hemsterhuis. Boston: Twayne, 1975. Mojasevic, Miljan. “Stille und Maß.” Hölderlin-Jahrbuch 13 (1963–64): 44–64. Moretti, Franco. The Way of the World: The “Bildungsroman” in European Culture. London: Verso, 1987. Müller-Farguell, Roger W. Tanz-Figuren: Zur metaphorischen Konstitution von Bewegung in Texten Schiller–Kleist–Heine–Nietzsche. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1995. Nägele, Rainer. “Ancient Sports and Modern Transports: Hölderlin’s Tragic Bodies.” In The Solid Letter: Readings of Friedrich Hölderlin, edited by Aris Fioretos, 245–67. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999. Nancy, Jean-Luc. “Hyperion’s Joy.” Translated by Christine Laennec and Michael Syrotinski. In The Birth to Presence, 58–81. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993. Nauen, Franz Gabriel. Revolution, Idealism and Human Freedom: Schelling, Hölderlin, and Hegel and the Crisis of Early German Idealism. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1971. Nevile, Jennifer. The Eloquent Body: Dance and Humanist Culture in Fifteenth-Century Italy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Kritische Studienausgabe. Edited by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1999. North, Paul. The Yield: Kafka’s Atheological Reformation. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press: 2015. Novalis (Georg Philipp Friedrich von Hardenberg). Werke, Tagebücher und Briefe. Edited by Hans-Joachim Mähl and Richard Samuel. Vienna: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1978. Noverre, Jean-Georges. Letters on Dancing and Ballets. Translated by Cyril W. Beaumont. Facsimile ed. Hampshire: Dance Books, 2004 (first published 1930). Oehler-Klein, Sigrid, and Manfred Wenzel. “Reizbarkeit—Bildungstrieb—– Seelenorgan: Aspekte der Medizingeschichte der Goethezeit.” HölderlinJahrbuch 30 (1996–97): 83–101. Osterhammel, Jürgen. “Stratosphärische Phantasie: Räume, Karten und Sehepunkte zu Hölderlins Zeit.” Hölderlin-Jahrbuch 38 (2012–13): 9–34.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

290 B ibliography 

Pankow, Edgar. “Epistolary Writing, Fate, Language: Hölderlin’s ‘Hyperion.’” In The Solid Letter: Readings of Friedrich Hölderlin, edited by Aris Fioretos, 142–72. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999. Pavel, Thomas G. The Lives of the Novel: A History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013. Perelman, Michael. The Invention of Capitalism: Classical Political Economy and the Secret History of Primitive Accumulation. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000. Petzold, Emil. Hölderlins Brot und Wein: Ein exegetischer Versuch. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1967. Peuckert, Helge. “Johann August Schlettwein (1731–1802): The German Physiocrat.” In Physiocracy, Antiphysiocracy and Pfeiffer, edited by Jürgen Georg Backhaus, 71–96. New York: Springer, 2011. Pfeifer, Wolfgang, ed. Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1989. Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni. “Oration on the Dignity of Man.” In The Renaissance Philosophy of Man, edited by Ernst Cassirer, Paul Oskar Kristeller, and John Herman Randall, Jr, 223–54. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948. Pigenot, Ludwig von. Hölderlin: Das Wesen und die Schau; Ein Versuch. Munich: Bruckmann, 1923. Pinkard, Terry. German Philosophy, 1760–1860: The Legacy of Idealism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Plato. Laws. Edited by R. G. Bury. 2 vols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1926. ———. Opera. 5 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972–77. Plutarch. Moralia. Translated by Edwin L. Minar, F. H. Sandbach, and W. C. Helmbold. Vol. 9. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961. Polledri, Elena. “. . . immer bestehet ein Maas”: Der Begriff des Maßes in Hölderlins Werk. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2002. Porphyry. On Abstinence from Killing Animals. Translated by Gillian Clark. London: Bloomsbury, 2014. Port, Ulrich. “Der Ptolemäer: Über Hölderlins Landschaftskunst.” Hölderlin-Jahrbuch 33 (2002–3): 35–78. ———. “Die Schönheit der Natur erbeuten”: Problemgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zum ästhetischen Modell von Hölderlins “Hyperion.” Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1996. Pott, Hans-Georg. “Natur als Ideal: Anmerkungen zu einem Zitat aus dem ‘Hyperion,’” Hölderlin-Jahrbuch 22 (1980–81): 143–57. Previšić, Boris. Hölderlins Rhythmus: Ein Handbuch. Frankfurt am Main: Stroemfeld, 2008. Prignitz, Christoph. Friedrich Hölderlin: Die Entwicklung seines politischen Denkens unter dem Einfluß der Französischen Revolution. Hamburg: Buske, 1976.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Bibliography



291

Prill, Meinhard. Bürgerliche Alltagswelt und pietistisches Denken im Werk Hölderlins: Zur Kritik des Hölderlin-Bildes von Georg Lukacs. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1983. Quintilian, Marcus Fabius. Institutio oratoria. Translated by H. E. Butler. 4 vols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958–60. Reitani, Luigi. “Ortserkundungen, Raumverwandlungen: Zur poetischen Topographie Hölderlins.” Hölderlin-Jahrbuch 35 (2006–7): 9–29. Richter, Simon. “Heinse, Sexualität und Öffentlichkeit.” In Das Maß des Bacchanten: Wilhelm Heinses Über-Lebenskunst. Edited by Gert Theile, 125– 38. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1999. Ricouer, Paul. The Rule of Metaphor: Multi-disciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning in Language. Translated by Robert Czerny with Kathleen McLaughlin and John Costello. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977. Rosenzweig, Franz. Hegel und der Staat. Berlin and Munich: Oldenbourg, 1920. Rosolowski, Tacey A. “Specular Reciprocity and the Construction of the Feminine in Friedrich Hölderlin’s ‘Hyperion.’” Modern Language Studies 25, no. 3 (1995): 43–75. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Collected Writings. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1990–2010. ———. On the Social Contract: With Geneva Manuscript and Political Economy. Edited by Roger D. Masters. Translated by Judith R. Masters. New York: St. Martin’s, 1978. Rühle, Volker. Verdichtete Zeit: Schöpferische Konsequenz und geschichtliche Erfahrung im Blick auf Hölderlin. Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2010. Ryan, Lawrence. Hölderlins “Hyperion”: Exzentrische Bahn und Dichterberuf. Stuttgart: J. B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1965. ———. Hölderlins Lehre vom Wechsel der Töne. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1960. Salmen, Walter. Goethe und der Tanz: Tänze, Bälle, Redouten, Ballette im Leben und Werk. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 2006. Santner, Eric. Friedrich Hölderlin: Narrative Vigilance and the Poetic Imagination. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers, 1986. Sattler, Dietrich Eberhard. “Einleitung.” In Friedrich Hölderlin, Hesperische Gesänge, edited by Dietrich Eberhard Sattler, 5–6. Bremen: Neue Bremer Presse, 2001. Sauder, Gerhard. “Die Sexualisierung des Ästhetischen bei Heinse.” In Das Maß des Bacchanten: Wilhelm Heinses Über-Lebenskunst, edited by Gert Theile, 77–90. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1999. Savage, Robert. Hölderlin after the Catastrophe: Heidegger, Adorno, Brecht. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2008. Schadewaldt, Wolfgang. “Das Bild der exzentrischen Bahn bei Hölderlin.” Hölderlin-Jahrbuch 6 (1952): 1–16. Schelling, Friedrich. Ausgewählte Schriften. 6 vols. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1985.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

292 B ibliography 

Schiller, Friedrich, and Christian Gottfried Körner. Schillers Briefwechsel mit Körner: Von 1784 bis zum Tode Schillers. Berlin: Veit, 1847. Schmidt, Jochen. “Griechenland als Ideal und Utopie bei Winckelmann, Goethe und Hölderlin.” Hölderlin-Jahrbuch 28 (1992–93): 94–110. ———. “Hölderlins dichterische Rezeption der stoischen Ethik und Naturphilosophie.” Text +Kritik 7 (1996): 33–50. ———. “Hölderlins Entwurf der Zukunft.” Hölderlin-Jahrbuch 16 (1969– 70): 110–22. Schmitt, Carl. Political Romanticism. Translated by Guy Oakes. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986. ———. Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty. Translated by George Schwab. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985. Schönhaar, Rainer. “Pikaro und Eremit: Ursprung und Abwandlungen einer Grundfigur des europäischen Romans vom 17. ins 18. Jahrhundert.” In Dialog: Literatur und Literaturwissenschaft im Zeichen deutsch-französischer Begegnung: Festgabe für Josef Kunz, 43–94. Berlin: E. Schmidt, 1973. Schröder, Thomas. Poetik als Naturgeschichte: Hölderlins fortgesetzte Säkularisation des Schönen. Lüneburg: Klampen Verlag, 1995. Schuffels, Klaus. “Griechenlandbild und Schönheitsideal als Ausdruck demokratischen Denkens: Zu Hölderlins Hyperion.” Études Germaniques 28 (1973): 304–17. ———. “Schiksaal und Revolution.” Le pauvre Holterling: Blätter zur Frankfurter Hölderlin-Ausgabe 2 (1977): 35–53. Schutjer, Karin. “A Ground of One’s Own: Hölderlin, Eigentum and Eigentümlichkeit.” In Rereading Romanticism, edited by Martha B. Helfer, 169–92. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000. ———. Narrating Community after Kant: Schiller, Goethe, and Hölderlin. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2001. Seifert, Albrecht. Untersuchungen zu Hölderlins Pindar-Rezeption. Munich: Fink, 1982. Shin, Yuna. “‘She Would Rather Depart the Earth in Fire’: Reading Diotima’s Death in Friedrich Hölderlin’s Hyperion Or the Hermit in Greece.” Women in German Yearbook: Feminist Studies in German Literature & Culture 15 (2000): 97–115. Siekmann, Andreas. “Die ästhetische Funktion von Sprache, Schweigen und Musik in Hölderlins ‘Hyperion.’” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 54, no. 1 (1980): 47–57. Silz, Walter. Hölderlin’s “Hyperion”: A Critical Reading. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1969. Sophocles. Fabulae. Edited by H. Lloyd-Jones and N. G. Wilson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. Starobinsky, Jean. Jean-Jacques Rousseau: La transparence et l’obstacle. Paris: Plon, 1957. Stiening, Gideon. “Entre Fichte et Schiller: La notion de Trieb dans le Hyperion de Hölderlin.” Revue germanique internationale 18 (2002): 87–103.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Bibliography



293

———. Epistolare Subjektivität: Das Erzählsystem in Friedrich Hölderlins Briefroman “Hyperion oder der Eremit in Griechenland.” Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2005. Strack, Friedrich. Ästhetik und Freiheit. Hölderlins Idee von Schönheit, Sittlichkeit und Geschichte in der Frühzeit. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1976. Sträßner, Matthias. Tanzmeister und Dichter: Literaturgeschichte(n) im Umkreis von Jean Georges Noverre. Berlin: Henschel, 1994. Strauss, Ludwig. Das Problem der Gemeinschaft in Hölderlin’s “Hyperion.” Leipzig: J. J. Weber, 1933. Suglia, Joseph. “On the Nationalist Reconstruction of Hölderlin in the George Circle.” German Life and Letters 55, no. 4 (2002): 387–97. Szondi, Peter. “Überwindung des Klassizismus: Der Brief an Böhlendorff vom 4. Dezember 1801.” In Schriften, edited by Wolfgang Fietkau, 1: 245–366. 2 Vols. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1978. Theile, Katrin. Historizität und Utopie: Quellenkritische und konzeptionellstrukturelle Aspekte des Griechenbildes in Hölderlins “Hyperion.” Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1997. Thiel, Luzia. Freundschaftskonzeptionen im späten 18. Jahrhundert: Schillers “Don Karlos” und Hölderlins “Hyperion.” Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2004. Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War. Translated by C. F. Smith. 4 vols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965–69. Trotha, Hans von. “Der Landschaftsgarten des 18. Jahrhunderts als literarisches Phänomen.” Hölderlin-Jahrbuch 33 (2002–3): 13–34. Uffhausen, Dietrich. “Einleitung.” In “Bevestigter Gesang”: Die neu zu entdeckende hymnische Spätdichtung bis 1806, by Friedrich Hölderlin, edited by Dietrich Uffhausen, ix–xxvii. Stuttgart: J. B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1989. Virno, Paolo. A Grammar of the Multitude: For an Analysis of Contemporary Forms of Life. Cambridge, MA: Semiotext(e), 2004. Vöhler, Martin. “Hölderlins Longin-Rezeption.” Hölderlin-Jahrbuch 28 (1992–93): 152–72. Wagner, Richard. Wagner on Music and Drama: A Compendium of Richard Wagner’s Prose Works. Edited by Albert Goldman and Evert Sprinchorn. Translated by H. Ashton Ellis. New York: DaCapo, 1981. Waiblinger, Wilhelm. Friedrich Hölderlins Leben, Dichtung und Wahnsinn: Mit einer Einleiting von Kurt Oesterle sowie zusätzlichen Quellen und Materialien. Tübingen: Klöpfer & Meyer, 2017. Warnes, Mathias. “Heidegger on Hölderlin’s Festival: The Wedding Dance as the Inceptual Event.” Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 18, no. 2 (2014): 503–24. Weber, Samuel. Theatricality as Medium. New York: Fordham University Press, 2004. Wegenast, Margarethe. Hölderlins Spinoza-Rezeption und ihre Bedeutung für die Konzeption des “Hyperions.” Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1990.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

294 B ibliography 

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Weibler, Elisabeth. “O seelige Natur!”: Bezüge zwischen Hölderlins “Hyperion” und dem idealistischen Denken aus religionsgeschichtlicher Sicht. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1996. Wetters, Kirk. Demonic History: From Goethe to the Present. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2014. ———. “Self-Regulation, Reception and Ridicule in Hölderlin’s Hyperion.” MLN 123, no. 3 (2008): 534–50. Weulersse, Georges. Le mouvement physiocratique en France (de 1756 à 1770). 2 vols. Paris: Alcan, 1910. Windfuhr, Manfred. “Allegorie und Mythos in Hölderlins Lyrik.” HölderlinJahrbuch 10 (1957): 160–81. Wirth, Jason M. “The Role of Language in Object Transcendence: On the Lightness of Thinking; Nancy and Hyperion’s Joy.” Philosophy Today 51 (2007): 166–73. Wood, Ellen Meiksins. The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View. London: Verso, 2002. Zinkernagel, Franz. Die Entwicklungsgeschichte von Hölderlins “Hyperion.” Strassburg: K. J. Trübner, 1907.

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Index absolute, the, 20, 39–40, 50–51, 110, 126, 140, 142, 187, 193, 212; as origin, 96, 143, 148 absolutism, 33, 127, 232, 251, 267 abstraction, 2, 76, 118, 123; Hölderlin’s use of, 159 abyss, 20, 51, 91, 237; and truth, 24, 121 accent, 68, 73; in prosody, 54–55; rhythmic, 206; of voice, 215 Achilles, shield of, 241–42, 246 action, 41, 98, 139, 142, 196, 254; and Adamas, 132, 135; and Alabanda, 141, 143, 146–47; in Aristotle, 19, 60; forms of, 167; heroic, 160; and history, 157; human, 107; and League of Nemesis, 149, 151; and life, 204; and mood, 85, 87; of novel, 84–85, 87; political, x, 11, 96, 135–36, 138, 143, 146–47, 152–53, 156, 158–60, 194–95; right, 70; and teleology, 107–8, 118, 122, 221; and text, 232; theory of, 30, 128, 140, 166–67, 170, 172, 178, 190; and truth, 193 activity (Tätigkeit), 161–62, 166–67, 194, 197; in Aristotle, 172; vs. business, 31, 160, 163, 168; conscious vs. unconscious, 99; and death, 187; human, 31; vs. labor, 171; and language, 170; vs. passivity, 59; revolutionary, 149; vs. work, 127 actuality, 94, 203 Adam, 131 Adamas: as creator of human beings, 131–36, 148; etymology of name, 131–32; identification with Apollo,

133; mode of political action, 130, 132, 135; parting with Hyperion, 46, 137–38, 160; and Plato, 135, 155; as political persona, 30, 122–23, 128–29, 155–56, 177, 264; relation to ruins, 135, 152; and Rousseau, 133, 135; and Schwärmerei, 133, 168 addiction, 21 Addison, Joseph, 272 Adelheid Amalie Gallitzin, Princess, 127 adolescence, 137 Adorno, Theodor, 38, 51 Adorno, Theodor, works by: Dialektik der Aufklärung, 53 Aeschylus, 66 aesthetics, 5, 58; classical, 148; and dance, 28, 230, 232; and depoliticization, 271; Dionysian, 128; of female body, 186; Heraclitean, 32; of measure, 55; of music, 217; of nature, 55; and politics, 9, 113; postmodern rejection of, 13; Romantic, 238; of sublime, 47 afterlife, 139 Agamben, Giorgio, 12, 22, 26, 43, 177, 205, 209, 261; on dynamis and energeia, 105; on gesture, 25; on glory, 265; on instrumental causality, 228; on language, 73; on manner, 208; on modal ontology, 53, 73; on oikonomia, 253; on wolf-man, 176 agency, 86; political, 19, 30, 105, 130, 157–58, 160–61, 186, 190 Agis, 195 agonism, 95, 196, 217, 238, 244, 271

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

296 I  ndex agora, 15, 74, 206 agriculture, 150, 242, 246; vs. crafts, 256; gesture of, 107; as gift of gods, 145; and labor, 201; in Physiocracy, 251–52; and violence, 199 akrasia, 70 Alabanda: and death, 148–49; death of, 185–86; and Fichte, 143; first encounter with, 137–38; and haste, 138; and Hegel, 147; and labor, 173–76, 178; and the League of Nemesis, 4, 149–51; and love, 137–38; as military leader, 175; mode of political action, 143–47, 156, 211–12, 252, 264; as political persona, 30, 122–23, 128–29, 155; relation to life, 204; rift with Hyperion, 141, 146–47; and Sinclair, 63; as statue, 148; and temporality, 90, 144, 148, 152, 177; as thinker, 139–43, 148; and violence, 31, 146–47, 149–50, 152, 158–59; and work, 159–60 Albrecht, Christoph, 81 Alcibiades, 130 alethology, 73 allegory, 15, 41, 118–19, 189, 229, 238–39, 266 Allemann, Beda, 134 alternation, 101, 210, 276; of alternation, 209; and dance, 76, 79, 214, 223, 243, 264; division in, 216, 220; of gathering and dispersal, 207; as gesture, 207; and law, 274; and representation, 32, 66, 209, 213–14, 218, 243; of ruination and origination, 30, 92, 107; in Stoicism, 265; tonal, 46, 183, 216– 17, 239, 253, 264, 266, 268 Althusser, Louis, 170, 270 Ambrose, 224 Amphion, 101 Anaximander, 44 animal, 60, 138, 172, 255; in Aristotle, 125; in ballet, 240; in Epicureanism, 70; and human being, 229; and music, 68; in Plato, 145; and politics, 70; in Porphyry, 70

annihilation, 139, 147, 152; sickness as, 62 antagonism, 87, 89, 91, 209; between nature and politics, 11; class, 97, 99; and democracy, 98; vs. gathering, 207; harmony as, 229; in Hegel, 54; inner, 60, 188; of life and death, 153, 194–95, 204, 276; and love, 208; of origination and ruination, 157; of passion and morality, 61 Antigone, 199 Antonio de Guevara, 263 Aphrodite, 179, 197 Apollo, 8, 104, 133–35, 187, 243, 277 aporia, 24, 190 apostrophe, 87 Apuleius, works by: Metamorphoses, 19, 82 arabesque, 212; penchée, 213 arability, 104, 107, 170 Arbeau, Thoinot, works by: Orchésographie, 74 archē. See origination Arendt, Hannah, 19, 25, 160 Arendt, Hannah, works by: The Human Condition, xi, 18, 22, 82 Aretin, Karl Otmar Freiherr von, 61 Ariadne, 244, 276 Arion, 72–73 Aristogiton, 196 Aristotle, 23, 26, 40, 73, 105, 122, 128, 136, 161, 209, 213, 222, 240, 256 Aristotle, works by: Economics, 205, 245; Metaphysics, ix; Nicomachean Ethics, 42, 124–25, 172, 246; Physics, ix; Poetics, 9, 41, 45, 58, 60, 210, 233; Politics, 19, 125, 194; Rhetoric, 42–43 Arnim, Achim von, 5 art: and beauty, 96–99, 260; highest of, 234, 237 articulation, 73, 98–99, 116, 120–21, 127, 152, 157, 191, 206, 228–29, 237, 267, 274 artifact, 93 Aspasia, 74

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Index

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Aspetsberger, Friedbert, 9, 13, 81, 88, 100, 129, 184 astronomy, 85, 211, 226, 230 Athens, 177, 190; Athens letter, 78, 89–91, 95, 98, 100–102, 104, 106–7, 109–10, 143, 166, 196, 207, 219, 243–44, 271; greatness of, 5, 18, 95–96, 99, 107, 109–10, 161, 197; intellectual life of, 74; political life of, 196, 244; ruins of, 29, 90–92, 94–95, 100–102, 104, 106–7, 145, 150, 152, 276; vs. Sparta, 195; status of poetry in, 66 athleticism, 195 Augustine, 224 authenticity, 270 author, 82; and death, 186; relation to reader, 37, 88 authority, 102, 259 automaton, 240 Avineri, Shlomo, 132, 197, 269 awkwardness, 30, 77, 83, 88, 120, 122 babble. See chatter Babel, 231 Babouvism, 10 Bach, Johann Sebastian, 216–17 Bachelard, Gaston, 113 Bacon, Francis, 93–94 Bacon, Francis, works by: De sapientia veterum, 118–19 Badiou, Alain, x, 12 Baeumer, Max, 120 Bajorek, Jennifer, 235 balance. See equilibrium Balanchine, George, 58 ballet, 26, 56, 58, 213; as courtly ritual, 33, 243; development as theatrical form, 60, 75, 212, 222, 228, 233, 266; and discipline, 275; feminization of, 75; and the inhuman, 240; and military training, 231; as mise en abyme, 267; as political art form, 72, 229–32, 240, 268–69, 271; as total work of art, 229 ballet, works of:; Coppélia, 240; Le Balet comique de la Royne, 228–30; The Firebird, 240; The Nutcracker,



297

240; Petrushka, 240; Sleeping Beauty, 268; Swan Lake, 240, 268 barbarism, 16, 155, 159, 163, 177 Baroque, 32, 92, 216, 228, 267; allegory in, 189; early, 232 Barthélemy, Jean-Jacques, works by: Voyage du jeune Anacharsis en Grèce, 72 Bassermann-Jordan, Gabriele von, 184 Baum, Manfred, 274 Bay, Hansjörg, 12, 20, 85 Beauchamp, Pierre, 233 Beaujoyeulx, Balthazar de, 229–30 beauty: and art, 96–99, 260; of divine, 31, 96, 99, 116, 166, 180, 182–84, 260, 276; of human form, 240; of nature, 5, 138, 182, 197; sensuous, 96, 181–82 Beck, Adolf, 10 Beethoven, Ludwig van, 243 Being, 53, 206; and becoming, 226; history of, 3; and judgment, 203; and language, 50, 73; as movement of digression, 108; and Nonbeing, 157; and ruination, 268 Beiser, Frederick, 203 Beissner, Friedrich, 6, 9, 134, 241 Bellarmin, 8, 30, 80, 83–84, 88–90, 107, 123–24, 126, 128–30, 132– 33, 137, 141, 154, 159–60, 165, 185–86, 194, 265 Bengel, Johann Albrecht, 253 Benjamin, Walter, x, 1, 25, 38, 51, 92, 145, 263, 267 Benn, Maurice, 67 Bernstein, Susan, 236 Bertaux, Pierre, 3, 9–11, 56, 85, 248 Bertheau, Jochen, 10, 149 Biester, Johann Erich, 72 Bildung. See formation Billings, Joshua, 12, 180 Binder, Wolfgang, 94 biology, 55, 59, 225, 235 biopolitics, 33, 105, 231, 247–48, 258–59, 273 blame, and praise, 254–55 Blanchot, Maurice, 22 Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich, 256 Blumenberg, Hans, 91, 93

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

298 I  ndex Böckmann, Paul, 10 Bodmer, Jakob, 54 body, x–xi; vs. corpse, 91; and the court, 266; and dance, 55, 70, 105–6, 223–29, 275, 277; of Diotima, 183; docility of, 275; and equilibrium, 28; and fermentation, 120; of God, 111; as instrument, 228; and labor, 178; male vs. female, 182, 186, 197; and nature, 276; northern, 236; organic, 232; in Pietism, 111; in Plato, 105; political, 32, 69, 196, 219, 231, 269; and power, 33, 244; of the slave, 205; and soul, 54; southern, 64, 235; teleological, 240; virtuosic, 34, 271 Boehlendorff, Casimir Ulrich, 5, 32, 64, 133–34, 153, 171, 210, 234–35, 237 Boehlendorff, Casimir Ulrich, works by: Fernando or the Consecration of Art, 238–39 Boethius, 224 Boileau (Boileau-Despréaux, Nicolas), 46 Bordeaux, 1, 64, 234, 236 Böschenstein, Bernhard, 119, 237, 275–76 bourgeoisie, 21, 75 Breitinger, Johann Friedrich, 54 Briegleb, Jochen, 90 Brose, Ingeborg, 108 Brutus, 187 bureaucracy, 22 burial, 196, 199 burlesque, 232–33 business (Geschäft), 21, 159; vs. activity, 31, 162–63, 166–68, 171–72; of day, 26, 164; of nature, 31, 168, 172, 178, 187; varieties of, 165–68 busyness. See business Butler, Judith, 12 caesura, 171; in dance, 66, 223; Hölderlin’s concept of, 32, 66, 239; in prosody, 66

Cain, 263 calculation, 71 calendar, 4, 18 Campe, Joachim Heinrich, 129 canalization, 107, 169–70, 201 Canguilhem, Georges, works by: Le normal et le pathologique, 43 capitalism, 10, 251, 263; late, 21 catastrophe, 13, 31, 157–60, 173, 176–78, 215 catharsis. See purification Catholicism, 238 centaur, 170 cérémonial de cour. See ceremony ceremony, 275; of court, 33, 266 certainty. See security Cervantes, Miguel de, 82 chain, 78, 192, 249, 268–69, 276; golden, 33, 264–67 Chalcidus, 224 Chandler, Richard, works by: Travels in Asia Minor, and Greece, 90, 241 chaos, 29, 51, 101–2, 114–15, 139, 149–51, 159, 177–78, 193, 206, 220, 229, 256; holy, 263, 274 character, ix, 5, 84–85, 92, 128, 139, 222 Charles Frederick, Margrave of Baden, 250 chatter, 169, 171 chiaroscuro, 101 childhood, 82, 123, 130, 137, 145, 162, 195; innocence of, 129 China, 109, 260 choice. See deliberation choir, 106, 210, 213, 244; angelic, 245; as round dance, 206 Choiseul-Gouffier, Marie Gabriel Florent Auguste Count de, works by: Voyage pittoresque de la Grèce, 90, 106, 241 choreography, x–xi, 30, 34, 73, 78, 111, 121, 176, 193, 212, 214, 220, 224, 226, 228, 230, 232, 244, 247, 267–68, 277; and the court, 266; Diotima as choreographer, 190; and gesture, 89, 264, 2711; in Greece, 245; in

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Index Homer, 242; and hyperbole, 22; and law, 219, 271; as literary style, 77; and modernity, 31–33, 273, 275–76; political, 29, 31, 33, 72, 219, 231, 245, 270; and truth, 27; and war, 175 chorus. See choir Christianity, 29, 93, 109–10, 139, 225, 245 church, 108, 266, 274; new, 147–48; in Württemberg, 109 Cicero, Marcus Tullius, works by: Rhetorica ad Herennium, 41, 43 circulation, 89; of blood, 88; economic, 250, 252, 262 citation, 3, 17, 26 city, 36, 70, 82, 91, 101–3, 112, 123, 171, 196, 207, 242, 269 city-state, 15, 17, 19, 32–33, 70, 74, 102–3, 132, 172, 195–97, 200– 202, 206, 215, 230, 236, 244–45, 263, 265, 276; as autonomous, 21; as mediation of immediacy, 72; and nature, 199, 269 civilization, 79, 255 Cleopatra, 94 climate, 95, 234–35 clinamen, 117, 207 Club of Cordeliers, 149 coercion, 44, 129, 147, 247, 259 collaboration, 35, 118, 164, 171, 201, 258; of forces, 150, 175, 239; of human beings and nature, 105, 113, 116, 167, 173 colossalness, 91–92, 94–95, 107, 143–44, 171 Columbus, 36 comedy, 19, 45, 183 commodity, and measure, 53 community, 9, 66, 69, 176, 190, 221, 246; of ephemeral beings, 209, 243, 268; of life, ix, 22, 32, 76, 145, 156, 201, 209, 231, 243–45, 253, 261, 265, 268–69, 276; of polis vs. nature, 32, 199, 201, 244–45, 265, 269 composure (Besinnung), 52, 56, 72, 76, 265



299

concealment, 15–16, 43, 116, 133, 141, 193; and unconcealment, 23–24, 200 concreteness, 2, 158; of dance, 26, 43, 77; of everyday life, 43, 77; of gesture, 26; Hölderlin’s lack of, 231 conflict. See antagonism consciousness, 50, 59, 110, 190, 257; national-bourgeois, 243; self-, 141–42 conservatism, 13; neo-, 22, 35 consonance, vs. dissonance, 218 constancy, 32, 101; of stars, 100, 192, 208, 210–11, 276 Constantine, David, 89, 108 contentment, 44, 138 Conz, Carl Philipp, 5, 37, 39 Copernicus, Nicolaus, 50, 213 Cornazzano, Antonio, 227 corporeality: of Athens, 91; of dance, 59, 65, 69, 233 cosmopolitanism, 70, 87, 206 cosmos, 115, 212, 222, 224, 226, 242 counterpoint, 215–16; of pose and movement, 229 courage, 100, 212; in relation to death, 32, 206 courtesy, 268, 272; and hope, 269 courtier, 34, 263, 268, 271 courtliness, 269, 272 creation: as abandoned by the creator, 189; and destruction, 149, 152; of human beings, 152 Crete, 136, 242 criticism, and gesture, 25, 27 Croesus, 195 Cronus, 144, 169; Age of, 153 cross-dressing, 232 cultivation, 151, 160, 162–63, 190; inner, 8, 161; of nature, 105, 164 culture, 13, 86, 105, 118, 134, 137–38, 161, 201, 238, 275; and Dionysus, 119–20; inner, 7 curiosity, 27, 90; political vs. epistemology, 92–95 currency, 229

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

300 I  ndex Daedalus, 242, 276 dance: and balance, 28, 54–55, 59, 77, 178, 213, 225; cosmological significance of, 192, 210–12, 222, 224, 226, 242; and Dionysus, 33, 68–70, 73, 106, 120, 244, 277; dramatic, 60; elements of, 233; as essence of domesticity, 83; as expression of freedom, 233, 276; as festival of nature, 68, 190; and figurality of language, 211; geometric, 228, 232; German discourses of, 56–64; as gift, 33, 41, 80, 120, 246; in Homer, 241– 42; in the Italian Renaissance, 55, 58, 222, 224, 226; labyrinthine, 33, 65, 75, 182, 240–42, 246; and malleability, 29, 105, 178; and meaning, 40, 42, 48, 56, 60, 65, 68, 111, 212–14, 222–23, 230, 242, 246, 271; as memory of past freedom, 241; as model for social order, 57, 76–77, 79, 175, 272, 276; of Modern Greece, 106, 120, 241; and music, 63, 65–72, 79, 210–14, 223–26, 228–29, 233, 238, 240, 243, 265; as named vs. represented, 78; in Plato, 174–75, 210–11, 219, 224–26, 242, 244, 276; and representation, 32, 77, 79, 83, 210–14, 229, 243, 246, 276; as schema of art, 237–38; technical vocabulary of, 223; as temporal art, 237; and tragedy, 26, 66, 233, 239 dance, forms of: Anglaise, 277; Carmagnole, 64; contradance, 83; folk, 64; labyrinthine, 79–80; of peace, 174; pyrrhic, 174, 242; Ronneca, 65, 241; round dance, 72; social, 56–57, 76–77, 229; waltz, 76–77; of war, 174 dance master, 26, 29, 41, 66–67, 175, 227, 246, 268, 272, 276–77 danger, 40, 45, 70–72, 87, 94–95, 141, 168–69, 238, 255, 267, 269 danse d’école. See ballet Dante, 7

da Pesaro, Guglielmo Ebreo, 222, 224, 227–28 da Piacenza, Domenico, 223 Davis, William, 98 death: and Adamas, 138, 152; and Alabanda, 139, 148–50, 152; and childhood, 129; common, 32, 206; and Diotima, 184, 186–88, 190, 200, 253; fear of, 192, 201–2, 204, 208; feeling of, 234–37; of Susette Gontard, 1; and Hegel, 20; heroic, 196, 211, 214; and Hyperion, 158; and law, 271; and life, 31, 78, 153, 156–57, 163–64, 189, 194–95, 207, 209, 238, 264–65, 267–68, 276; and nature, 198; overcoming of, 199; of the polis, 70; of Socrates, 15; and sovereignty, 273 decay. See ruination decision, 13; of sovereign, 22, 97 declension, 117, 193 deconstruction, 23, 33, 41, 129, 211, 232, 244 deed: and the polis, 244; of renunciation, 244 Deleule, Didier, 261 Deleuze, Gilles, 202 deliberation, 151, 209 Delorme, Maurice, 10, 137 Delos, 133 Delphi, 187 de Maistre, Joseph, 13, 109 de Man, Paul, 215 democracy, 15–16, 98, 244–45, 269; Athenian, 19, 74, 90; and kingship, 240, 270 demonic, the, 268; in Gundolf, 8 Demosthenes, 196 Derrida, Jacques, 12, 22, 176, 205 Descartes, 62, 93, 127 desire, 5, 28, 44–45, 60, 91, 116, 128, 131, 137, 139, 146, 155–56, 164–65, 179–80, 183, 255; for desire, 49; errancy of, 118 despotism, 97, 245, 251, 259–60, 277 Diaghilev, Sergei, works by: Ballets Russes, 240 Dierauer, Walter, 111, 253

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Index difference, 31, 68, 71, 73, 97, 100–101, 116, 190, 208, 215; and identity, 156; sexual, 74, 123, 141, 156, 167 digression, 25, 31, 58, 108, 277 Dilthey, Wilhelm, 6–8, 10, 13–14, 18 Diogenes Laertes, 40 Dionysus, 11, 18, 33, 47, 65, 68–73, 106, 118, 120, 128, 148, 175, 238, 244, 275–77; as lawgiver, 119 Dioscuri, 212 Diotima, xi, 5, 33, 57, 85, 89, 111, 122–23, 138, 161, 174–76, 198– 99, 208, 243, 271; vs. Alabanda, 137; aliases of, 156; and beauty, 103, 173, 183, 276; and business, 164, 245; critical interpretation of, 88, 100, 184, 190, 245, 264–65; and dance, 29, 63, 73–80, 83, 190–91, 214, 276; and death, 32, 192, 201–5, 253, 273; and domesticity, 163, 165; feminist interpretations of, 186, 190; and fermentation, 116; and friendship, 127–28, 154–55; and garden, 112, 129; in Hemsterhuis, 127; Hyperion’s correspondence with, 83–84; as ideal, 87, 183; and labor, 159–60, 166–67, 171, 173; and language, 169, 171, 185–91, 193; and life, 206, 245, 273; and love, 103, 124, 128, 177, 179–81; and mourning, 90–92; and music, 78, 150, 214; objectification of, 11; origin of name, 179; and passivity, 181; in Plato, 103–4, 116, 179–85; as political teacher, 29, 100–101, 103, 106, 109, 115, 133, 160, 177, 180, 185, 191–96, 248, 261, 264, 273; and politics, 129; and production, 181–82; and ruins, 29, 90–92, 101–2, 145; summonses of, 29–32, 63, 75, 80, 83, 88, 102–7, 124, 126, 129, 155, 158, 177–78, 191, 200, 220–22, 264, 268–69, 272–73; and teleology, 108–10, 193; and theory of representation, 209–19



301

discipline, 195; as artificial, 261; and dance, 233; as external, 131; and inspiration, 275–76; and law, 34, 274; military, 175, 231, 234; and politics, 247, 258; and temporality, 161; of will, 163 disillusionment, 12–14, 16–17 disorder. See chaos dissemination, 29, 105, 108–10, 117, 269, 271 dissonance, 82, 85, 89, 99; and consonance, 218; resolution of, 84, 88; of world, 87 distribution, 76, 164, 207, 245, 258 division: in alternation, 214–16, 220; between subject and object, 203; original, 99, 128; of the people, 97; of potencies, 92 docility, 29, 136, 275 dogmatism, and idealism, 141–42 dolphin, 68, 73 domesticity, 160; choral nature of, 83; of life, 1, 83 domination, 32; of nature, 94, 107, 128, 247, 261; politics of, 258; self-, 275; and submission, 93, 101, 208 dream, 76, 167 drive, 6; and beauty, 173; inner, 140; of life, 105; metaphysical concept of, 108; to ferment, 255; to idolization, 97; to play, 151; to truth, 256–57; and vengeance, 174 dualism: between freedom and sensuality, 142; between spiritual and physical, 127–28; of form and matter, 127 Dülon, Friedrich Ludwig, 67 dwelling, 70; human, 112; and nature, 198; of the poet, 36 earth, 34, 91, 118, 145; and activity, 179; arability of, 170; and business, 163, 166, 168, 172; as chaotic, 226; during Age of Cronus, 169; and dwelling, 36; as ground, 132; and heavens, 15, 54, 103, 150, 169, 184, 208, 211–13, 230, 239, 242; and labor, 243; and life, 112,

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

302 I  ndex earth: (continued) 120, 165, 187, 209, 225, 260; as oikos, 164; openness toward, 16; and politics, 268; receptivity of, 171; and spirit, 237; vs. transcendence, 104 Ebel, Johann Gottfried, 57, 131, 152 eccentricity, 50, 79, 85–86, 212, 252 ecology, 245 economics, 71, 79–80, 113, 245, 249, 251–52, 256, 260–61, 263; classical vs. Marxist, 250; foundations of, 247, 250; political, 247, 250, 258, 262; and politics, 27, 247, 258; as value-free, 247 economy, 26, 252, 275; closed, 1; divine, 253; domestic, 82, 246; market, 34–35; musical, 89; political, 33, 79, 160, 221, 245, 247, 258, 262; of sacrifice, 196; in Adam Smith, 249 ecstasy, 44–45, 53, 68, 202; and music, 72 education, 105, 163; aesthetic, 10, 57; childhood, 129, 131, 181; of Hölderlin, 2, 8, 56; novel of, 85, 87, 122–23; philological, 2; physical, 57; in Plato, 226; and politics, 90, 95, 124–26, 137; in Rousseau, 131 Egypt, 97 ekphrasis, 27, 241–42, 246 elasticity: in Noverre, 28, 56; and irritability, 59; of spirit, 54 elegy, 5, 92 ellipsis, 38–39, 48 eloquence, 226, 228; and death, 187; of Diotima, 186–87, 191, 193 Elssler, Fanny, 74 emblem, 189 Empedocles, 15, 40 emptiness, 25; of heaven, 103; of space, 213, 244 enchaînement, 66, 265, 267, 277 enjoyment, 69, 71, 151, 177 Enke, Ulrike, 256 enthusiasm, 6, 11, 13, 53–54, 57, 77, 111, 147, 166, 173, 187

environment, 107, 167, 208, 247, 265 epic, 19, 67, 81, 84, 242, 246, 276 Epicurus, 70, 207 epistemology, 47–48; and curiosity, 93 equality, 2, 156; and finitude, 154; of human beings, 153; of living beings, 92, 207–8, 240 equilibrium, 104, 108, 237; and the body, 28, 178, 213, 226; and dance, 77; internal, 220; of living organism, 55; loss of, 48; and music, 225; and play, 63; and poetry, 54, 59; of political power, 2, 264; of the soul, 85; and tragedy, 66 Eros. See love eroticism, 103, 127, 130, 263; physical vs. spiritual, 128 errancy, 226; and life, 42–43, 118, 172–73, 244 escort, 264, 268–69 esotericism, 15–16, 68, 96, 248 Esposito, Roberto, 157 eternity, 135, 220; of heroic deed, 212; and time, 103, 214 ethics, 16, 30; and dance, 222, 224; and hyperbole, 42, 47; and imitation, 45; in Kant, 127; and measure, 51; and music, 70; and politics, 75, 119, 125, 129, 131; and self-cultivation, 130; and truth, 193 ethos. See character etiquette, 57, 266–67 Euripides, 72 event, 13, 219, 248; French Revolu­ tion as, 1–4, 18, 21; of history, 146, 174; of the holy, 274; and politics, 15, 25, 96, 121, 250, 259; and singularity, 4, 22–23; and temporality, 22, 145; of truth, 24, 94 exceptionality, of human beings, 199 excess, 168; and desire, 183; and ferment, 118, 166; and hyperbole, 42, 45, 169, 220, 277; and language, 191; and life, 31, 116, 121, 172, 220, 263; and measure, 50, 53, 73, 221; and music, 71;

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Index

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

of nature, 262; and order, 120; in Plato, 182; and truth, 33; value, 250–52 exchange, 83, 185, 196, 214, 240, 247, 276; and community, 268; and dance, 79; economic, 258; of goods, 76, 206; of life, 209, 271; in Plato, 144–45; in Stoicism, 265 exhibition. See representation experience, 20, 69, 91, 183; of beauty, 182, 273; of the body, 227, 235; coherence of, 93, 124, 126; of death, 188; Dionysian, 72; of divinity, 238; finite, 141; of the foreign, 236; historical, 124–26, 135, 153; of hyperbole, 28, 32, 49–50, 220; and immanence, 78; of impossibility of experience, 94, 125–26, 202, 276; interior, 7, 11, 21; of language in its potentiality, 94; of nature, 205, 239; of nothingness, 189; openness to, 12, 136, 185, 194, 205; political, 19; of pure language, 52; of technē, 136; of transition, 151; of truth, 27, 181; of unity, 130; wordless, 88 experimentation: in dance, 227–28, 232; and nature, 173; and poetics, 111 exteriority, 129, 140, 157, 178, 180 faith, 93, 97, 110, 139, 215, 238 fanaticism (Schwärmerei), 53, 133, 137, 255 fantasmata, 32, 66, 223, 227–29, 237 Fascism. See National Socialism fate, 11, 21, 64, 82, 94, 101–2, 129, 135, 149–51, 168, 189–90, 204, 208, 235 fatherland, 168, 197 feeling, 69, 80, 94, 147, 149, 154, 188–89, 202–5, 217, 234–36, 240 Fellenberg, Philipp Emanuel von, 5 Fenves, Peter, 1, 7 fermentation, 118, 120, 128, 152, 259; vs. business, 163; and garden, 30, 116; of human beings, 114–15; and hyperbole, 169; of life, 173,



303

204; of nature, 31, 33–34, 113, 255, 258, 277; and nothingness, 188; and revolution, 114; and Soemmerring, 113; and suffering, thinking, 104, 161–62, 166; and time, 1 Fertig, Ludwig, 57, 129, 131 festival, 26, 28, 98, 166, 172, 190, 200, 277; and dance, 60; vs. drama, 60; as uniting gods and mortals, 64 feudalism, 1, 251, 260, 266 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 3, 9, 50, 82, 96, 107–8, 117, 142, 147, 159 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, works by: Beitrag zur Berichtigung der Urtheile des Publicums über die französische Revolution, 143; Erste Einleitung in die Wissenschaftslehre, 141; Der geschlossene Handelsstaat, 151; Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, 140; Wissenschaftslehre, 127 Ficino, Marsilio, 211 fidelity, 192 finitude, 23, 47, 103, 148, 153–54, 157, 205, 214, 271; tragic, 158 fire, 112, 145, 164; of heaven, 120, 133, 135–36, 173, 276; and passion, 215; and plant, 115 Firges, Pascal, 179 Fitzell, John, 198 flower, 87, 112, 187 Forberg, Friedrich Karl, 140–41 force, 56, 59, 118, 187, 195, 234, 255; balance of, 54; as chaotic, 174; confrontation of, 139; creative, 257; and culture, 86; disruptive, 245; of the human, 130; and hyperbole, 47; latent, 166; of the law, 275; of matter vs. of form, 177; militant, 159, 175; and nature, 32; negative, 253; ordering, 244; originary, 205; and prosody, 65; of the state, 147; worldhistorical, 110 form, vs. matter, 31, 101, 127, 172, 176–78, 204, 210, 220–21, 261, 269

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

304 I  ndex formation, 105, 108, 160–61; artistic, 9; and business, 163; of life, 231; negative, 96; political, 11; self-, 261; of value, 252 Forster, Georg, 11 Foucault, Michel, 18–19, 43, 175, 247, 273, 275 fountain, 113, 169 Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth, 250–51 fragmentation, 88, 100–101, 103, 108, 125–26, 168, 172, 192, 195, 202–4, 206, 232, 277 France, 43, 63, 235, 250–51, 269, 272 Frankfurt, 16, 38, 57, 206 Franko, Mark, 223–26, 228–29, 232–34 Franz, Michael, 179, 203, 211 Franzel, Sean, 12, 87 freedom, 1–2, 5, 11, 20, 47, 150, 205, 209, 220, 271; and childhood, 129; as condition of life, 140; and dance, 111, 272, 276; divine, 202, 204; of human beings, 115; in Kant, 127, 142; memory of, 241; and play, 172; sense of, 97; and the state, 98, 159; of trade, 34 French Revolution, 1–3, 7, 9–10, 14, 18, 21, 81, 114, 140, 146, 151, 249, 269; German response to, 11 friendship, 125, 139, 143–44; chaste, 127; vs. love, 157; and politics, 154–56 Frye, Lawrence, 102, 144 funeral oration, 16, 196 Gaier, Ulrich, 2, 65, 105, 253 gambling, 150–51 garden, 100, 102; of Eden, 117; and fermentation, 30; of life, 112–13, 116, 147, 150, 159, 171–72, 252; as metaphor of self-cultivation, 160; plurality of, 117; and politics, 29; and temporality, 151 gardening, 204; in 18th century, 113 Gaskill, Howard, 81 gathering, 26, 245, 277; agonistic, 217; gesture of, 167, 198; of

human activity, 257; language as, 200; of life, 45, 121, 166, 201, 207, 216, 236, 260; polis as, 199 Gautier, Théophile, 74 gender, 123, 233 genius, 41, 173, 235 geometry. See mathematics George, Emery E., 96, 100 Gerlach, Ingeborg, 10 Germany, 80, 250; as empire, 9; literary canon, 7; national identity of, 16; political immaturity of, 243; political sentiment in, 10; as setting of Hyperion, 87, 92, 137, 236; West, 3 gesture, 51, 56, 222, 224, 266; of agriculture, 107, 111; of beauty, 260; and choreography, 121; and freedom, 241, 271; of gathering, 198, 207; gestural criticism, x–xi, 25; of history, 153, 167, 172, 189; hyperbolic, 182; labyrinthine, 219; and law, 34; of life, 108, 113, 158, 242, 263, 268–69; and politics, 191, 264, 267, 270, 277; and singularity, 25; and teleology, 26, 30, 88, 152, 157, 170, 209; of time, 1, 29, 100, 208; and truth, 27, 89 Gide, Charles, 249, 259 Girondism, 10, 14, 249 givenness, 91, 258; originary, 246 glorification, 78, 111, 192, 197, 264–65, 267 glory, 90, 99–100, 132, 196, 265–66, 269 goal, 42, 86, 99, 206; and childhood, 130; and death, 31; external, 131; and finitude, 157; as happiness, 26; and haste, 148; highest, 173, 180; and history, 110; and human action, 107; of the human being, 87; and labor, 172; and origin, 118; and politics, 152, 221, 246, 255–56, 258; realization of, 137, 146; and revolution, 149–51; of self-fulfillment, 90; transcendent, 132–33; and truth, 257

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Index Gock, Karl Christoph Friedrich, 254 god(s), ix, 110–11; beckonings of, 94; and Being, 23; as creator, 113, 139–40; and fate, 204; and festival, 64; freedom of, 202; in Heidegger, 106; and humankind, 96, 131– 32, 168, 221, 230, 274–75; as immanent to the human, 142; and inspiration, 174; and measure, 50; of nature, 191; new, 34; in Oetinger, 253; in Plato, 144–45, 179, 243; proximity to, 154; in Schelling, 99; and transcendence, 133; work of, 256; worship of, 97 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von: classicism of, 8, 59; dance in, 75–77, 79, 83 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, works by: Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, 28, 47–48, 75–78, 80–81, 83–84, 155; “Urworte. Orphisch,” 8, 18; Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, 21 golden age, 19, 129, 144, 148, 192, 229 Gontard, Susette, 181; as inspiration for Diotima, 57, 63; love affair with Hölderlin, 1, 57, 65, 183 Good, the, 169, 207, 219; and friendship, 156; in Plato, 103–4 Görner, Rüdiger, 51, 86 Görres, Josef, 6 grace, 57, 77, 176, 228, 231 gravity, 54, 56, 59, 141; and death, 187, 205 Greece: ancient, x, 2, 19, 36, 67, 109, 138, 174, 200, 248, 269–70; modern, 40, 106, 108, 120, 126; as setting of Hyperion, 21, 84, 90, 92, 110, 112, 126, 132, 137, 190 Grimm, Jacob, 5 Grimm, Sieglinde, 211 Grimm, Wilhelm, 5 Grolman, Adolf von, 91 groundlessness. See abyss growth, 111; of child, 130–31; and decay, 30, 107, 113, 197; economic, 258, 262; natural, 95–96, 112, 147, 164; and



305

overgrowth, 116, 118; and pedagogy, 132 Grunert, Mark, 47 Gryphius, Andreas, works by: “Es ist alles eitel,” 189 guilt, and debt, 150 Gundolf, Friedrich, 7–11, 18, 64 Guts Muth, Johann Christoph Friedrich, 57 gymnastics, 226 Haberer, Brigitte, 184 Haller, Albrecht Viktor von, 50 Hamacher, Werner, 2, 12–13 Hamann, Johann Georg, 205 hand, 274, 277 Häny, Arthur, 140 happiness, 93–94, 124, 126–27, 140, 146, 151, 182; in Aristotle, 26, 125; of everydayness, 21 Harmodius, 196 harmony, 4, 8, 63, 101, 114, 145, 154, 217–18, 224, 228, 243; celestial, 211, 226; domestic, 82; in Heraclitus, 229, 232; of nature, 5, 269; theories of, 32; with nature, 117 Hartmann, Pierre, 156 haste, 138, 148, 169 Hayden-Roy, Priscilla, 253 Haydn, Joseph, 240 Hayek, Friedrich von, 34 health, 184–85, 222; image of, 62–63 hearth, 107, 112, 163–65 heaven, 20, 103–4, 112, 114, 118, 120, 131, 133, 135, 150, 164–65, 235, 276; and earth, 169, 184, 187, 212, 239 Hegel, Friedrich, ix, xi, 1, 7, 10, 26, 47, 86, 107, 124, 132, 140, 142, 147, 197, 213 Hegel, Friedrich, works by: “Das älteste Systemprogramm des deutschen Idealismus,” 98–99; Die Phänomenologie des Geistes, 20, 50, 54; Differenz des Fichteschen und Schellingschen Systems der Philosophie, 127; Enzyklopädie der

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

306 I  ndex Hegel, Friedrich, works by: (continued) der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse, 50; Fragmente einer Kritik der Verfassung Deutschlands, 269; Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte, 109–10 Heidegger, Martin, 9, 25, 38, 42, 51, 60, 62, 92, 106–7, 113, 134–35, 189, 203, 235, 263, 274 Heidegger, Martin, works by: “Das abendländische Gespräch,” 24; “Hölderlin und das Wesen der Dichtung,” 53; Hölderlins Hymne “Der Ister,” 200; Sein und Zeit, xi, 23–24 Heinse, Wilhelm, 5, 129 Heinse, Wilhelm, works by: Ardinghello und die glückseligen Inseln, 65, 80, 210; Aufzeichnungen, 106, 128; Hildegard von Hohenthal, 65 Hellenism, 70, 74; literature of, 43 Hellingrath, Friedrich von, 7 Hemsterhuis, François, 127, 179, 205 Henrich, Dieter, 64, 142, 203 Hephaestus, 242 Hera, 49, 118, 134 Heraclitus, 15, 32, 98–99, 171, 182, 217, 228–30, 232–33, 240 Herder, Johann Gottfried, 65, 109, 115, 124, 205, 272 Herder, Johann Gottfried, works by: Vom Einfluß der Regierung auf die Wissenschaften, und der Wissen­ schaften auf die Regierung, 96 hermeneutics, 94; biblical, 253; of human existence, 42 hermit, 159, 202; and history, 198; Hyperion as, 84, 88, 123, 194 Herodotus, works by: Histories, 73, 195–96 heroism, 139, 195, 208, 276 Heselhaus, Clemens, 115, 205 Hesiod, works by: Works and Days, 144 Hewitt, Andrew, 57, 273

hierarchy, 153, 207–8; of the absolute state, 267, 272; vs. aroundness, 32, 198; of beauty, 180; and politics, 243, 245, 259; vs. reciprocity, 76 hieroglyph, 230 Hiller, Marion, 99 historicity. See temporality history, x, 1, 10, 15, 27, 29, 35–36, 73, 90, 92, 97, 118–19, 129, 138, 158, 200, 203, 218; of Being, 3; and curiosity, 93; as diasporatic, 108; end of, 86; event of, 146, 174; experience of, 126; gesture of, 152, 157, 167, 172, 189; historicism, 205; idealist philosophy of, 163; of ideas, 221; in Kant, 207; and melancholy, 21, 199; and memory, 79; and narrative, 80, 88; and nature, 4, 190, 198, 267; in Oetinger, 253; and philosophy, 100, 105, 125; in Plato, 153; and politics, 20, 144; and ruins, 102–3, 135, 195, 215; teleological conception of, 89, 108, 117, 130, 155, 250; and temporality, 25, 145; theory of, 55, 219; vulgar understanding of, 18; world, 2, 87, 95, 107, 109–10, 112, 114, 124, 126, 132, 134, 154, 194 Hobbes, Thomas, 79, 153–54, 176, 236, 276 Hock, Erich, 65 Hof, Walter, 134 Hofmann, Gert, 47, 148, 206, 235 Hölderlin, Friedrich: literary style of, 37–40, 81, 84, 123, 160; madness of, 37; musical training of, 67; as philosopher, 52, 140, 142, 148, 184, 205, 207; poetic calling of, 88; as poet of poets, 25; political activities of, 61, 149; as prophet, 7–9, 34; reception of, 6–13; as translator, 165, 199, 273–74; travels of, 89; and Württemberg, 108 Hölderlin, Friedrich, works by: “An die Deutschen,” 16; “An unsere großen Dichter,” 119;“Andenken,” 35, 53, 60, 64, 150, 235, 275;

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Index “Anmerkungen zum Oedipus,” 46, 66; “Anmerkungen zur Antigonä,” xi, 46;“Blödigkeit,” 145; “Das älteste Systemprogramm des deutschen Idealismus,” 98; “Das Belebende,” 170; “Das Höchste,” 273–74; “Das Nächste Beste,” 213; “Das Werden im Vergehen,” 145, 203, 275; “Der Archipelagus,” 269; “Der Einzige,” 49, 55;“Der Ister,” 107, 200; “Der Main,” 79; “Der Rhein,” 92, 168, 183; Der Tod des Empedokles, 10, 94, 140, 154, 231, 243, 253, 263, 270–71; “Die Bedeutung der Tragödien,” 78, 92; “Die Eichbäume,” 112; “Die Titanen,” 249; “Die Verfahrungsweise des poetischen Geist,” 47, 52; “Die Völker schwiegen, schlummerten . . .,” 3; “Die Weisen aber . . .,” 139; Fragment von Hyperion, 49, 74, 80, 85–87, 112, 162–63; “Geh unter, schöne Sonne . . .,” 184; “Geschichte der schönen Künste unter den Griechen bis zu Ende des perikleischen Zeitalter,” 65–66, 72; “Heimkunft,” 189; “Hesperian Songs,” 35; Hyperions Jugend, 33, 64–65, 84, 108, 112, 133, 162–63, 169, 181–83, 185, 194–95, 241, 248; “Mein Eigentum,” 164; “Menschenbeifall,” 106; “Natur und Kunst oder Saturn und Jupiter,” 145; Preliminary stage of the final version of Hyperion, 174–75; “Reflexion,” 28, 46, 51, 55, 59, 68, 137, 155; “Rousseau,” 135, 213; “Schicksallied,” 88, 117; “Seyn Urtheil Möglichkeit,” 203, 205; “Sokrates und Alcibiades,” 130, 183; “Stimme des Volks,” 237; “Vom Delphin,” 28, 67; Waltershausen paralipomenon, 74; “Wie wenn am Feiertag . . .,” 14, 118–20, 168, 263, 274–75 Homans, Jennifer, 76, 267, 272 homeland, 199, 234–36



307

Homer, 7, 134, 241, 246 Homer, works by: Iliad, 242 Honold, Alexander, 57, 90, 137, 211, 230 hope, 14, 137–38, 150, 154, 189, 193, 197; and courteousness, 269 Horace, 74 Horkheimer, Max, works by: Dialektik der Aufklärung, 53 Horn, Fritz, 61–63 Horowski, Reinhard, 2, 64, 67 house: and Diotima, 165; and hearth, 163; of history, 107; hothouse, 112; and polis, 245 household, 30, 82, 111, 164–65; economy of, 246; management of, 245 human being: erotic nature of, 104, 179; essence of, 44, 94, 115–16, 131, 261; exceptionalness of, 199; finitude of, 148, 153–54, 162, 214; relation to divine, 131–32, 144, 168, 179, 221, 256, 274–75; relation to earth, 34; relation to nature, 103; work of, 256 humanism, 57, 59, 62, 94, 117, 149, 222, 258 Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 57, 65 hylomorphism. See form hyperbole, xi, 28, 30, 32, 79, 133, 193; in Aristotle, 42; in Cicero, 43; and dance, 73, 75; and errancy, 42; and fermentation, 169, 258; geometric meaning of, 212; in Goethe, 48; and history, 46, 137; of Hölderlin’s prose, 16, 39; of hyperbole, 52–53, 77; and love, 180; and measure, 50, 53, 121, 213, 220; vs. metaphor, 41; vs. mimesis, 80; as mode of existence, 45, 49; and nature, 182, 277; and property, 262; in pseudoLonginus, 40, 45; in Quintilian, 27, 40, 43–44; vs. sublime, 47; and transition, 47; and truth, 44, 49, 80, 221; and youth, 42 ideal: of existence, 100, 181; vs real, 14, 17–18, 79

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

308 I  ndex idealism, 13, 141, 148, 205; absolute, 140; and dogmatism, 142; German, 50, 52, 80, 98–99, 123, 142, 203; in Kant, 272; subjective, 142; transcendental, 98 idealization, 148, 198, 255–56 identitarianism, 15, 22 identity: and difference, 156 ignorance, 70 Illuminati, 149 illusion, 11, 116, 130, 182 imitation, 50, 69, 99, 103, 216, 269; and action, 60; in Aristotle, 209; of cosmos, 225; and dance, 66, 211– 12, 227, 240; and ethics, 45; in Goethe, 77; vs. hyperbole, 80; and mood, 84; in Plato, 32, 182–83, 209–10, 214; in Rameau, 217–18; and truth, 121; in Winckelmann, 136 immediacy, 19, 72, 81, 84, 112, 189, 203, 274 Immler, Hans, 252 immortalization, 179, 194–97, 199, 206, 211 incommensurability, 26, 226; of human body and heavens, 225 India, 36, 109 infinity: bad, 50; of cosmos, 213 inflation, 48, 262 innocence, 129–30 inorganicity, 50, 197 inscription. See writing inspiration: and Adamas, 131–33, 155, 168–69; and choreography, 231; degrees of, 59; and discipline, 275–76; divine, 100; and Greeks, 134–36, 238–39, 246; and labor, 173; manic, 53; and measure, 51–52; in Plato, 132, 135, 155; and politics, 147, 152–54, 156, 159, 174; and sobriety, 6, 46, 54; and technique, 171 institution, 4, 14, 16–18, 22, 119–20 intentionality, 26, 118, 139–40, 168 interiority. See inwardness interruption, 26, 29, 48, 66, 83, 100, 105, 108, 110, 121, 123, 229, 232, 239

intersubjectivity, 167 intoxication, 60, 68–70, 72, 151 intuition, intellectual, 181, 185, 203, 239; aestheticization of, 98 inversion, 46 inwardness, 6, 8, 84, 163, 207, 248; and epistolary novel, 82 Ionia, 74, 137 irony, 41, 232 irrationality, 10, 44, 71, 147, 162, 170; in mathematics, ix irritability, 59 Islam, 109–10 Italy, musical style of, 217 İzmir. See Smyrna Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich, 50, 141, 205 Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich, works by: Über die Lehre des Spinoza in Briefen an den Herrn Moses Mendelssohn, 142 Jacobinism, 14, 61, 149; in Germany, 1, 10 Janz, Marlies, 184, 186, 190 Jena, 58, 86, 137, 140 Jeppesen, Knud, 216 Johnson, Christopher, 40 journals, literary and philosophical: Aurora, 6; Iduna, 46; Neue Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek, 5; Neue Thalia, 86; Philosophische Journal, 141; Phöbus, 58; Taschenbuch für das Jahr 1805, der Liebe und Freundschaft gewidmet, 37; Thalia, 49; The Spectator, 272 joy, 139, 197, 254, 257, 269; accords of, 214; and dance, 56, 64, 106, 128; and mourning, 183, 189 judgment: aesthetic, 203; as division, 205; faculty of, 71; of the past, 143, 146; and politics, 256 Jupiter. See Zeus Kafka, Franz, 247 Kahn, Charles H., 44 kairos: in Paul the Apostle, 161; in pseudo-Longinus, 46

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Index Kant, Immanuel, ix, 3, 11, 50, 59, 79, 81–82, 87, 107–8, 121, 140, 142, 151, 208, 213, 272 Kant, Immanuel, works by: Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels, 86; “Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?,” 127; Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, 143; Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht, 86, 96, 125, 207; Kritik der Urteilskraft, 202 Karl Eugen (Duke of Württemberg), 2–3, 58 Kepler, Johannes, 86, 210, 212–13, 218 Kierkegaard, Søren, 22 kingship, 96, 155, 197, 240, 243, 259, 264, 266–68, 270–72; and history, 153–54 Klee, Paul, 213 Kleist, Heinrich von, 58, 232 Kleist, Heinrich von, works by: “Die heilige Cäcilie oder die Gewalt der Musik,” 238; Penthesilea, 231, 233; Prinz Friedrich von Homburg oder die Schlacht bei Fehrbellin, 233 Kleomenes, 195 Klopstock, Friedrich Gottlieb, 50, 54, 65 Knossos, 242 Koczisky, Eva, 111 Komma, Karl Michael, 210, 217 Kommerell, Max, 25 Koran, 29, 105, 108–10 Kordela, A. Kiarina, 263 Körner, Christian Gottfried, 28, 57, 64, 272 Körner, Christian Gottfried, works by: “Über die Bedeutung des Tanzes,” 58–61 Kraus, Karl, 61–62 Kronos, 102 Kuzniar, Alice, 38 labor (Arbeit), 31, 33, 88, 159–60, 163–64, 166–70, 173–74, 176–78, 195, 201–2, 204, 243; agricultural,



309

251; free, 172; great, 171; in Hegel, 20; and nature, 107–8, 118, 252, 258; needy, 203; post-Fordist, 105; of succession, 237 labyrinth, 82, 238, 277; and dance, 64–65, 79, 182, 230, 240–42, 246–47, 276; and gesture, 219; and sovereignty, 33, 243–44, 276 Lampenscherf, Stephan, 179 language: fallen vs. sacred, 231; as gathering, 198; as overflowing, 169, 171; pure, 50, 52; and reality, 23, 50; refusal of, 191; and silence, 171 law, 97, 125, 129, 207, 238, 271, 277; and discipline, 275; and errancy, 120; of history, 105; and music, 242; of nature, 173, 193, 253; in Physiocracy, 251, 259, 261; in Plato, 219; poetic, 217; as rigorous mediacy, 34, 72, 274; in Schmitt, 22; tyrannical, 195; and wall, 157, 159, 171 lawgiver, 131, 277; choreographic, 219, 270–71; solitude of, 271 League of Nemesis, 30–31, 122–23, 128–29, 137–38, 149–52, 155–56, 177, 186, 264 Lemke, Anja, 271 Lenz, Jakob Michael Reinhold, works by: Der Hofmeister oder Vorteile der Privaterziehung, 128 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 7, 87, 107, 124, 205, 243 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, works by: Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts, 126; Hamburgische Dramaturgie, 58; Laokoon: oder über die Grenzen der Mahlerey und Poesie, 58 Lethe, 70 Levin, David Michael, 51, 106 Lewis, Charles, 46 liberalism, 20, 22, 202, 260; neo-, 34 life, 11, 145; bare, 32; of body, 231; and death, 31, 148–49, 153, 156– 57, 163, 188–89, 194–95, 204–5, 237–38, 264–65, 267–68, 273, 276; as domestic ordering, 83, 112,

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

310 I  ndex life: (continued) 164–65; of earth, 187, 260; errancy of, 42; feeling of, 204, 236; gesture of, 158; in Heinse, 128; higher, 60; ideal of, 60; of nature, 108, 112, 116, 158, 206, 209, 253, 269; needy, 60; and politics, x, 103, 128, 148, 243, 245, 247, 252, 258–59, 271, 273; and praxis, 60; as selforganizing, 55; and surplus, 169; union of, 207; and violence, 149; yearning for, 254; as zoē, 113 lightning, 4, 15, 118, 174, 238, 249 Link, Jürgen, 81, 113–14, 170, 215, 217, 235, 270 logic: binary, 231; and contradiction, 270; of modality, 53, 203; of singular vs. of generic, 22–25, 228 logismos. See calculation Lonsdale, Steven H., 174–75, 242, 244–45 Louis XIII, 269 Louis XIV, 243, 266–67, 271, 277 love: vs. friendship, 139, 155–56; in Plato, 103, 156–57, 180, 206; romantic, 156; as tragic, 157 Loyola, Ignatius of, 44 Lucretius, 117 Lukács, György, 9–10, 13, 245 Luther, Martin, 111 Lykurgos, 271 lyricism, 19, 184; of Hyperion, 8, 16, 39 Machiavelli, Niccolò, 79, 107, 170, 267, 270 madness. See mania Magenau, Rudolf Friedrich Heinrich, 5 Mähl, Hans-Joachim, 144 Mahoney, Dennis, 8 Maistre, Joseph de, 13, 109 majesty, 94, 101, 139, 175, 268 Mallarmé, Stéphane, 65 malleability. See receptivity mania, 111, 230; of Hölderlin, 6, 34, 67; of love, 233; poetic, 44 manner, in Agamben, 73, 208

Marathon, battle of, 195 Marcus Aurelius, 265 Maria Theresa of Spain, 266 market, 34–35, 192, 206–7 Martens, Gunter, 98 Marx, Karl, 11, 160, 250, 252, 261–63 masculinity, of the body, 234–35 materiality, 183, 256; of language, 111; and politics, 136; of production, 258, 261 mathematics, ix, 85, 113, 212–13, 225, 227–30, 232, 250; in Plato, 226; vs. philosophy, 220 matter. See form Mayer, Gerhart, 129 maze. See labyrinth measure, 2, 4, 23, 39–41, 43–45, 48–49, 51–52, 54, 59, 72–73, 102, 105, 121, 131, 172, 208, 213, 223–24, 227, 233, 238, 254, 261, 277; of body, 111, 178–79, 225–26, 228; external vs. internal, 28, 32, 50, 53, 55, 220–21, 225, 230, 270; and hyperbole, 32, 50, 53, 220; and politics, 32, 221 measurelessness, 27, 45, 50–54, 73, 275 mediacy, rigorous, 34, 274 Medusa, 223 Meek, Ronald, 251 melancholy, 90–92, 101, 132, 135, 190, 197, 269, 277; and joy, 183, 189; personified as Melancholia, 102 melodrama, 84 melody, 68–69, 71, 215, 217–18; in Greek music, 214; and harmony, 32, 216; as nomos, 242; in polyphonic music, 225 memorialization, 244; of heroic deeds, 197; of the polis, 196 memory, 80, 84, 91, 120, 138; of the highest, 106; of history, 79; political, 241 Menander, 72 Menninghaus, Winfried, 210 mentorship, 46, 123, 130, 133

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Index mercantalism, 251 merchant, 108, 110; as model for poet, 36 messianism, 26, 150 metabolē. See exchange metabolism, xi, 8, 55, 146, 178, 182, 209, 240, 247, 271 metaphor, x, 27, 40–42, 229, 261; in Aristotle, 43; dance as, 211; political, 243 metaphysics, ix, 7, 15, 17, 23, 25, 38, 44, 95, 108, 121, 148, 162, 181, 206, 211, 214, 220, 226, 263 metapolitics, ix–x, 122 meter. See prosody metonymy, 41 Metzger, Stefan, 55, 249 Michaelis, Loralea, 11–13 Michels, Wilhelm, 134 middle class. See bourgeoisie Mieth, Günther, 11, 86, 114, 142, 149, 261 Miletus, 74 Miller, James, 210, 225 Minos, 240 Minotaur, 240 Mirabeau, Honoré Gabriel Riqueti comte de, 248 Mirabeau, Victor de Riqueti marquis de, 249–51 Mirandola, Giovanni Pico della, 180 misura, 32, 225, 227; varieties of, 223–24 mockery, 141 modality, 167, 203; of Being, 59; modal ontology, 53, 73 moderation, 41, 54, 106, 169, 222, 224 modernity, xi, 11, 17, 20, 36, 39, 93, 106, 221, 231, 273; choreographic project of, 31–33, 219, 264, 276 modulation, 217, 253 Mohammed, 29, 105, 108–10 Mojasevic, Miljan, 50 Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin), 233 monarchy, 2, 33, 76, 243, 259–60, 266



311

monstrosity, 91 Montesquieu (Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu), 235 mood, 28, 48, 61, 93; and action, 60, 85, 135, 141, 232; and character, 85; festive, 60 morality, 5, 60–61, 87, 124 Morgenstern, Karl, 6 Moritz, Karl Philipp, 28, 54, 86 Moritz, Karl Philipp, works by: Versuch einer deutschen Prosodie, 55 mortality. See death mourning. See melancholy mourning play, 267 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 240 Muhrbeck, Friedrich, 28, 61–64, 239 Müller, Adam, 58 Müller-Farguell, Roger, 211 Müllner, Adolf, 6, 39 multiplicity, 98, 175, 193, 216 multitude, 270–71, 273; vs. few, 97; of living beings, 208; ontology of, 121; vs. people, 156 muse, 66, 68, 101 music, 27, 31, 55, 64, 79, 213, 216, 228; absolute, 210; bad vs. good, 72; celestial, 211; and dance, 29, 36, 63, 65–67, 69–70, 223–25, 229, 233, 243, 265; and drama, 240; and education, 226; Greek vs. modern Western, 214, 221; in Oetinger, 253; and painting, 238; and pharmakon, 72; in Platonism, 226; and pleasure, 70–71; in Plutarch, 68–70, 72; and poetry, 19, 65, 67, 229; and Protestantism, 238; in Rameau, 217–18; and rationality, 70; in Rousseau, 215 mysticism, 10, 14, 202 myth, 73, 101, 117, 145; in Bacon, 118; of the birth of Eros, 181; of Lykurgos, 271; in Plato, 144, 152–53, 182; of Prometheus, 180; of Theseus, 33 Nancy, Jean-Luc, 12, 22, 27, 38–39, 189

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

312 I  ndex narrative, 48, 81, 85, 87–89, 110; structure of Hyperion, 38 National Socialism, 3, 9, 160 nationalism, 230; economic, 35; German, 3; in Heidegger, 24; literary, 82 naturalism, 256, 261 nature, xi, 6, 29, 35, 39–40, 48, 70, 92, 96, 111, 123, 162–63, 173, 194, 197, 199, 205, 209, 236, 240, 245–47, 257, 263, 265, 276; alienation from, 86; alterity of, 105, 180; beauty of, 5; business of, 178, 187; and dance, 79; divine, 9, 17; in economic theory, 251–53, 262, 270; eternity of, 135; festivity of, 61; and flux, 182; and freedom, 220; free life of, 97; gathering of, 198, 200–201; gesture of, 108; harmony with, 117; in Hegel, 50; in Heidegger, 274; and history, 190; house as microcosm of, 165; and human beings, 103, 116, 118, 164, 171, 191, 193, 258; and hyperbole, 46, 53; infinity of, 50, 112; labor of, 108, 167; and lawfulness, 274; laws of, 82, 253, 260; life of, 168, 202–3, 206–8, 235, 254–56; and music, 107; mysticism of, 10; philosophy of, 98; as phusis, 113; as plantlike, 115; in Plato, 102; and politics, 11, 21; politics of, 248; priesthood of, 166; raw, 174, 176–77; and reason, 128; religion of, 248; rule of, 16, 34, 261, 269–70; in Schelling, 98; scientific concept of, 217–18; as self-organizing, 142; state of, 61, 153; in Stoicism, 269; submission to, 88; surplus of, 262, 277; and writing, 121; yield of, 259 Nauen, Franz Gabriel, 140 necessity, 80, 140, 165–66, 172, 192– 93, 201, 206, 220, 257 Neckar, 1 negation, 34, 96–98, 100, 131, 140; determinate, 50; and labor, 20; via negativa, 23

Nemesis, 143, 177 Neuffer, Ludwig, 5, 15, 86, 102 Nevile, Jennifer, 223–24 New York City Ballet, 58 Newton, Isaac, 210, 218 Niethammer, Friedrich Immanuel, 141 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 7, 22, 45, 65, 275 Nietzsche, Friedrich, works by: Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, 62; Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik, 17, 210, 245 nihilism, 232–33 Nixon, Richard Milhous, 262 nomos, 72, 171, 207, 214 North, Paul, 247 North, the, 97 nothingness, 94, 181, 187–89, 204, 208; nothing-but-words, 49–50 Novalis (Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg), 111 Novalis (Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg), works by: Heinrich von Ofterdingen, 73, 180 novel: of education (Bildungsroman), 6–8, 11, 13–14, 17, 20–21, 30, 48, 80, 95, 123–24, 129–30, 203, 248; epistolary, 27, 80–84, 88, 186; and the generic, 18; as genre, 13, 17–18, 21, 25; Hellenistic, 19; Hyperion as political novel, 6, 9, 11–12, 17–21, 31, 127 Noverre, Jean-Georges, 240 Noverre, Jean-Georges, works by: Lettres sur la danse, et sur les ballets, 28, 56, 58 Nürtingen, 14 ocean, 36, 91, 139, 143, 170, 173, 255; as source of wealth, 64 Odysseus, 53–54 Oetinger, Friedrich Christoph, 111, 205, 253 oikopolitics, 246–47 oikos. See household Olympieion, 90

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Index ontology: Greek, 210; and love, 206; modal, 53, 73; in Plato and Aristotle, 136; and politics, 142; in Spinoza, 121; of surplus, 263 opening, 12, 16, 22, 97, 105, 164, 171, 174, 178, 190, 194, 197, 200, 204–5, 214, 216, 235, 246, 259, 261, 269; democratic, 15; and politics, 33, 244, 263, 268, 276– 77; to fiction, 111; to inspiration, 136; to the absolute, 51; to the other, 136; to truth, 31, 80, 94, 121, 154, 185, 258 opposition, harmonious, 32, 48, 99, 214, 229–30, 240 orality, 242 order, 72, 85, 97, 103, 108, 120, 140, 147, 153, 172, 174, 198, 206, 225, 230, 257, 262, 266–67, 270, 272, 276–77; and chaos, 102, 229, 242, 256; of nature, 46, 80, 115, 121, 240, 259–61; perception of, 242; political, 76, 102, 150, 251; static, 244, 260 organicity, 39; of language, 40 organization, 86, 141, 152, 204, 207– 8, 259–60, 275; of the aorgic, 249; of ballet, 229; and disorganization, 120; hierarchical, 272 Orient, 109–11 Orientalism, 111 origination, 21, 36, 72–73, 92, 95–97, 110, 113, 116–18, 143, 149, 170, 173–74, 205, 237; of ancient Greece, 135; of culture, 238; forgetfulness of, 148; of the human being, 115; of politics, 33; and revolution, 8; and ruination, 30, 146, 152, 189, 195, 204, 268; and ruins, 100 Osterhammel, Jürgen, 91 Ottoman Empire. See Turkey ousia, 262–63 overflow. See surplus overtone, 217–18 Ovid, 165 paganism, 9, 110



313

pageantry, 196, 273 painting, 62, 90, 210, 214, 216, 238 Palestrina, Giovanni Pierluigi da, 216 Palmieri, Matteo di Marco, works by: Della vita civile, 222 Pankow, Edgar, 12, 82 pantheism, 7, 17, 202, 264; in Bruno, 98; in Spinoza, 98, 141 parataxis, 48, 198, 265 Paris, 63 parousia, 38; democratic, 16 participation, 32, 104, 214, 216, 220–21 passion(s), 46, 60, 134; communication of, 81; and domesticity, 83; kinetic character of, 218; in Rameau, 218; vs. morality, 61 pastoral, 61, 232 pathos, 38, 202, 269 patience, 26, 84, 155–56, 169, 237; of nature, 112; politics of, 20; and science, 173 Patmos, 36 Paul the Apostle, 161 Pausanias, 253 Pavel, Thomas, 13 peace, 50, 253; of childhood, 123; of city, 242; and war, 246 pedanticism, 231 pendulum, 228 perception, 69, 125 Perelman, Michael, 113 perfection, 20, 32, 45, 88, 91, 130, 180, 192, 206, 208–9, 211–14, 218, 224, 227, 255, 261, 277; of activity, 172; of human form, 136; and self-sufficiency, 156 Pericles, 16, 74, 196 persona, political, 129, 152 Petzold, Emil, 65 Phaeton, 165 philology, ix, 2–3, 9, 15–16, 56, 75, 87, 94, 231 philosopher, 15, 51–52, 70, 75, 88, 95, 103–4, 106, 126, 141, 143, 160, 253, 262

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

314 I  ndex philosophy: and beauty, 98; continental, 12, 22; of gesture, 51; of love, 7; ordinary language, 94; philosophy of nature, 98; political, 6, 35, 80; in postwar French, 43; as symptom of sickness, 61 Physiocracy, 16, 33–34, 219, 221, 245, 249–54, 256, 258–63, 269–70 Pietism, 3, 111, 154, 253 Pigenot, Ludwig von, 65 Pindar, 7, 15, 28, 34, 40, 66–68, 70, 72, 170, 273–74 pivot, of history, 140, 189 Plato, 7, 14–15, 17, 24–25, 32, 69–70, 74–75, 109, 127, 133, 136–37, 148, 156, 175, 209, 215, 218, 228, 262, 276 Plato, works by: Ion, 53, 166, 174; Laws, 52, 174, 219, 226, 242–45; Parmenides, 214; Phaedrus, 86, 102–3, 115, 155, 206, 211; Republic, 43, 103–4, 132, 135, 153, 155, 206, 210, 226, 263; Statesman, 144, 152–53, 155; Symposium, 102–3, 155, 179–83, 194, 206, 211, 263; Timaeus, 210–11, 224–25 Platonism, 14–15, 210; in Germany, 180; Neo-, 224, 226; Renaissance, 180, 224 play, 21, 63; of fate, 94, 102, 150; free, 59, 216; of proximity and distance, 76, 269 pleasure, 21, 26, 60, 68–70, 87, 106, 124, 126 plot, 6, 84, 122, 238, 267 Plutarch, works by: Table-Talk, 67–72, 271 poet: as aesthetic educator, 9; great, 52–54, 59; as herald, 9; as lawgiver, 119, 219, 277; as priest of divine nature, 273; vocation of, 2, 9, 38, 88 poetics, 25, 27, 39–41, 43, 48, 55–56, 72, 99; in Aristotle, 26; choric, 67; classical, 49–50; of experimentation, 111; imitative,

209; model-symbolic, 113; modern, 47; in Plato, 32 poetry: ancient vs. modern, 17, 67, 183, 246, 276; organic vs. mechanical, 55; of words vs. of nature, 40 poiēsis. See production polis. See city-state politeness. See courtesy politics: and choreography, 29, 31, 33, 245, 270; classical vs. modern, 22, 34–35, 230, 246–47; as gesture, 29, 148, 170; as grounded in virtue, 132; and history, 18, 35, 126, 135, 146, 153, 194, 219; philosophy of, 6, 22, 35, 79–80, 99, 103, 121, 128, 132, 135, 153, 155, 206, 210, 244, 258–59, 263–64, 270, 272; as technē, 246; of truth, 24–25, 33–34, 103, 200, 248 Polledri, Elena, 50–51 polyphony, 215–16, 218, 225 polytheism, 109 Porphyry, works by: On abstinence from animal food, 70 Port, Ulrich, 55, 213 positivism, philological, 75 possibility, vs. actuality, 203 postmodernism, 13 potentiality, 26, 94, 105, 166 potentialization, 40 Pott, Hans-Georg, 270 poverty, 150, 179, 202 power: feeling of, 60; over life, 111, 273; regal, 33, 96, 240, 244, 270; of the state, 5, 22, 152, 159, 231, 266, 271, 276; subversion of, 58, 267 praise, 196, 254; and blame, 255 praxis. See action pregnancy, 200–201 presence, 16, 27, 78, 91, 95, 97, 102, 180–81, 186, 202, 208–9; absolute, 103, 214; self-, 22 Previšić, Boris, 55 Prignitz, Christoph, 108, 149, 249 Prill, Meinhard, 10, 253

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Index privacy, 19, 69; vs. publicity, 72 private tutor (Hofmeister), 2; and castration, 128; Hölderlin’s employment as, 1, 7, 57, 63, 181; Hölderlin’s principles as, 131 production, 6, 183, 251–52, 256; of materiality, 261; natural, 258; originary, 246; politics of, 247; relations of, 167; surplus, 262 productivity, 6, 183, 256 Prometheus, 180 property, 261; expropriation of, 76; impropriety of, 262; landed, 260, 262; right to, 34, 77; and surplus, 262; women and children as, 145 prophecy, 3, 7–9, 26, 34, 108, 121, 159, 179 proportion: of cosmos, 225; and dance, 223, 228; mathematical, 226 prosaicness, 10, 20, 24–27, 39, 52, 54, 160 prosody, 28, 54–55, 65 Protagoras, 15, 51 Protestantism, 238 providentialism, 261 Prussia, 231 Pseudo-Longinus, works by: On the Sublime, 28, 40, 45–46 psychology, 6, 47, 81, 140 publicness, 69, 74, 266; and private, 19, 21, 72, 196, 273; public sphere, 233 pulse, 108, 182, 227–28 purification, 139; in Aristotle, 9; of the earth, 177; of past, 143–44, 146; of reason, 72 Pythagoras, 210, 218 Pythian Games, 68 Quesnay, François, 249–51 Quintilian, Marcus Fabius, 27 Quintilian, Marcus Fabius, works by: Institutio oratoria, 40–45, 48 Rameau, Jean-Philippe, 32, 217–19, 221, 249 Rastatt Congress, 61



315

ratio, 225–26 rationality, 70, 121, 257; limits of, 53; practical, 71 realism, literary, 77, 83 receptivity, 48, 105–6, 135–36, 156, 169, 172 reciprocity, 76, 112, 168, 182, 196, 198, 275 reflection, 54, 81, 88, 98–99, 168, 180, 208, 234; self-, 8, 38, 61, 124, 137, 232 regulation, 262; and dance, 224–25, 227–28; and hyperbole, 220; of passion, 272 Reichard, Heinrich August Ottokar, 241 Reitani, Luigi, 54 religion, 97, 185, 238, 255, 257, 260; esoteric and exoteric, 96; of Germans, 16; natural, 109–10; revealed, 108; revolutionary, 10; of the state, 18, 248 Renaissance, 32, 219, 221, 225, 267; French, 228, 233; Italian, 55, 58, 66, 111, 222, 224, 226, 233, 266; late, 216, 232 rent, land, 251 repetition, 86–87, 148, 198, 200; citation as, 26; eternal, 11; of event, 18, 21; rhythmic, 83; tragic, 157 representation, xi, 41, 60, 203, 221, 266–67, 276; in alternation, 32, 66, 192, 213, 243; and ballet, 212, 229; of beauty, 99; of dance, 27, 65, 77; of divine, 9; and inspiration, 246; of measure, 226; mimetic, 50, 214, 216; modes of, 209–11; poetics of, 79; tragic, 83; and truth, 44, 181 republicanism, 6, 10, 18; Swabian, 3 resignation, 11, 20, 95 resourcefulness, 169, 179, 181–83, 263 revelation, 50, 98, 173, 262; as counterfeit, 29, 110 Revett, Nicholas, works by: The Antiquities of Athens, 90

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

316 I  ndex revolution, 2, 4, 8, 104, 127, 149–50, 159, 237, 248; and counterrevolution, 3; and Dionysus, 119; as event, 1, 110; as gesture, 1; poetic, 52 rhetoric, 46, 191, 222, 240, 253; classical, 27, 39–43; dance as, 226 Rhine, 36 rhythm, 39, 48, 66–69, 71–72, 77, 128, 224, 266; and dance, 225; in Hegel, 54; of passions, 83; in Plato, 243; of stars, 211 Richardson, Samuel, works by: Clarissa; Or, The History of a Young Lady, 80 Richelieu (Armand Jean du Plessis, Duke of Richelieu), 269 Ricouer, Paul, 43 Right. See law rights, 264, 271; hereditary, 260; human, 10; political, 132 Rilke, Rainer Maria, 65 Rilke, Rainer Maria, works by: Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge, 38 ripeness, 115–16, 151, 161, 167, 182, 187, 195, 197, 200 Rist, Charles, 249, 259 rite. See ritual Ritter, Carl, 57 ritual: of court, 243, 266–67, 269; and dance, 76; of fertility, 175; in Physiocracy, 259–60 river, 107, 118, 139, 143, 169–70, 200, 207, 212, 245, 255; in Hölderlin’s late hymns, 36 Robespierre, 10, 245 Roman Empire, 18, 109, 265 Romanticism, xi, 5; in ballet, 240; German, 7–9, 14, 27, 39, 47, 144, 180, 206, 238; political, 93; postJena, 6 Rome, 18, 43, 90, 109, 148, 162, 265 Rosenzweig, Franz, xi, 98 Rosenzweig, Franz, works by: Stern der Erlösung, ix–x Rosolowski, Tacey A, 123

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 3, 24, 32, 129, 135, 153, 202, 216–18, 245, 249, 269, 271 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, works by: Du contrat social ou Principes du droit politique, 131, 215, 270; Émile, ou De l’éducation, 215; Essai sur l’origine des langues, 215; Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse, 80, 82–83, 128, 215; Les Confessions, 215; Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire, 215 Rühle, Volker, 12, 203 ruin, 4, 21, 27, 135, 143–46, 148, 169, 190, 197–98, 202, 234–35; of Athens, 5, 29, 78, 89–95, 100– 102, 106–7, 110–11, 276; of Delos, 133; different relations to, 152; of earth, 171; of Greece, 8, 40; of history, 103, 195; of Rome, 162 ruination, 29, 103, 107, 148; and origination, 30, 92, 135, 143, 146, 152, 157, 189, 195, 204, 268 Russia, 185 Ryan, Lawrence, 8–9, 11, 13, 38, 65, 80–81, 88, 101, 122, 129, 184, 186 sacredness, 111, 134, 190, 197, 231, 248; of dance, 64 sacrifice, 5, 9, 149, 196, 199, 238; and history, 126; self-, 195 Salmen, Walter, 76 salvation, 93, 111, 193–94, 253 Santner, Eric, 38 Sattler, Dietrich Eberhard, 35, 67, 170 Saturn. See Cronus Sauder, Gerhard, 128 Savage, Robert, 24 scale, 59, 182, 215 Schadewaldt, Wolfgang, 85 Schelling, Friedrich, 1, 7, 27, 39, 47, 50, 80, 96, 99, 107, 127, 140–41, 253; philosophy of identity, 98; philosophy of nature, 98 Schelling, Friedrich, works by: Abhandlungen zur Erläuterung des Idealismus der Wissenschaftslehre, 142; “Das älteste Systemprogramm des deutschen Idealismus,” 98

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Index schematism, 76; and dance, 60; of social order, 276 Schiller, Friedrich, 3, 7, 96, 165; and aesthetic education, 9, 13; and dance, 57–58, 60, 65, 243, 272, 276–77; and drive, 108; and history, 107, 117, 163; and Kant, 86–87; lawgiver in, 271; naïve in, 129; and play, 59–60; as political reformist, 11; and sobriety, 46; and the sublime, 47 Schiller, Friedrich, works by: Die Räuber, 47 Schlegel, Friedrich, 47, 81, 111, 180 Schlegel, Friedrich, works by: Gespräch über die Poesie, 39 Schmid, Siegfried, 5 Schmidt, Jochen, 264–65, 269 Schmitt, Carl, 93 Schmitt, Carl, works by: Politische Theologie, 22 Schnurrer, Christian Friedrich, 109 Schönhaar, Rainer, 198 Schröder, Thomas, 51 Schubart, Christian Friedrich Daniel, 3 Schuffels, Klaus, 11, 96 Schulze, Gottlob Ernst, 140 Schwab, Gustav, 6, 8 science, 16, 23, 90, 101, 227, 246–47, 255; human, 7; natural, 56, 173, 217, 220 scripture. See writing Second World War, 3, 9 secularization, 51, 110–11, 248, 267 security, 63, 94–95, 234–35, 237, 262 seed, 96, 108, 201, 253 Semele, 118 sense(s), 50, 56, 94, 118, 125, 184, 212, 240, 246; for the beautiful, 98, 172; of Being, 23; common, 69; of the event, 21; for the highest, 98, 177; of life, 258; for the political, 70, 153, 221, 276; of truth, 23, 34; of vision, 94 seriality, 126, 229, 237 servitude, 106, 150, 197, 201, 205–7, 241, 245



317

Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley-Cooper 3rd Earl of, 271 shame, 10, 69, 72 Shin, Yuna, 12, 186 shipwreck, 17, 25, 149; ruins of Athens as, 91, 100, 150 sickness, 61–63, 186 Siekmann, Andreas, 186 signification, 29, 48, 78, 92–93, 230, 246, 258; of dance, 56, 60, 65; and hyperbole, 137; of life, 95; and nonsignification, 275 signifier, 11, 27, 78, 136–37 silence, 9, 71, 78, 108, 186–87, 229; of language, 171 Silz, Walter, 81, 83 Sinclair, Isaak von, 1, 5, 10, 28, 61, 63, 124, 239 singularity, 4, 18, 22–26, 110, 228 Siren, 53, 71 Smidt, Johann, 61 Smith, Adam, 252, 261 Smyrna, 137–38, 160 sobriety, 21, 27, 34, 38, 46–47, 52, 59, 106, 134, 183 socialism, 22 sociality, 21, 82, 167, 175, 245, 249–50, 259, 262, 277; in Arendt, 19; in English Enlightenment, 272; in Goethe, 77; in Schiller, 57, 276; unsocial, 207 Socrates, 15, 17, 70–71, 74–75, 102–3, 115, 130, 145, 179–80, 182–83 Soemmerring, Samuel Thomas von, 57, 113 solitude, of the lawgiver, 270–71, 277 sophistry, 15 Sophocles, 15, 40, 66, 199–200 soul, 49, 54, 68–69, 71, 85, 111, 132, 157, 181, 226; in Aristotle, 105, 125, 128, 205, 222; beautiful, 84; as gathering, 166; as house, 82; as monad, 162 sovereignty, 33–34, 97, 156, 176, 233–34, 239, 243, 253, 259–61, 265, 267–68, 270–71, 273, 276– 77; of nation state, 230; sovereign

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

318 I  ndex sovereignty: (continued) ban, 244; and violence, 244; as wolf-like, 177 space, public vs. private, 74 Sparta, 136, 177, 190, 195 Sparti, Barbara, 227 spectacle, 69, 71, 190, 234, 266; in Aristotle, 233; ballet as, 228–29, 233; pleasure of, 68; ruins as, 29, 100 speech, 44, 106, 169–71; in Aristotle, 254; hyperbolic, 45; and presence, 276; vs. silence, 229 Spinoza, Baruch, 98, 128, 179, 263, 265 Spinoza, Baruch, works by: Ethica, ordine geometrico demonstrata, 141–42 spirit, 55, 80, 101, 116, 136, 173, 176, 193, 206, 237, 276; absolute, 51, 99; antique, 234–35; business of, 163; as demon, 179; elastic, 54, 56, 59; vs. flesh, 128; harmony of spirits, 114; in Hegel, 50; of life, 62; of nature, 260; poetic, 52; of river, 107, 170 spiritualization, 118, 182 spontaneity, 34, 96–97, 259–60 Starobinsky, Jean, 215 stars, 226, 239; constancy of, 208–10; dance of, 212; in Kant, 208; rhythm of, 211; in Rosenzweig, x; time as, 92; writing of, 276 stasis, 63, 76, 223, 237, 239 state, 1, 20, 34, 96, 98, 132, 157–58, 244, 269–70, 275–76; absolute, 33, 231, 243, 266–67; apparatus, 264, 277; and beauty, 163; and church, 274; and freedom, 147, 159, 172, 174, 215; ideal, 108, 263; and life, 147, 171, 252, 261; nation, 230; of nature, 61, 153; as opening, 259; organic vs. mechanical, 9; power of, 5, 22, 152, 271; in Romanticism, 9; and violence, 150, 152 Steele, Richard, 272 sterility: of labor, 252; of manufacture, 251

Stiening, Gideon, 12, 80–81, 108 stimulus. See drive Stoicism, 187, 265, 269 Strack, Friedrich, 86 Strauss, Ludwig, 9, 260–61, 272 Stravinsky, Igor, 240 stream. See river strife. See antagonism striving, 20, 42, 49, 149, 165, 180, 254; for the better, 131, 256; erotic, 179, 206, 257, 268; for immortality, 206; infinite, 59; unconscious, 257 Stuart, James, works by: The Antiquities of Athens, 90 style, 38, 45, 52, 55, 77, 79, 193, 253; affected, 40; hyperbolic, 27, 39, 47–49; Italian, 217; late, 9, 15, 37, 67, 145; romantic, 39 subjectivity, 81–82, 85, 88; political, 122 sublimity, 47; in Kant, 86; in pseudoLonginus, 28, 40, 45 submission, 11, 20, 174, 265–66, 273; chivalric, 173; vs. domination, 32, 93, 101, 208; to flux, 152; to nature, 88 substance, 17, 166, 262; in Spinoza, 142 substructure, and superstructure, 257 subversion, of norms, 232 Suglia, Joseph, 7 summons, 75, 78, 83, 88, 102, 105, 107, 111, 129, 155, 206; of Bellarmin vs. of Diotima, 30, 80, 89, 124, 126; Diotima’s first, 29, 103, 158, 160, 185; Diotima’s second, 33, 63, 117, 173, 186, 188, 194, 209, 220, 222, 245, 264, 268–69, 272–73; first vs. second, 31–32, 79, 178, 190–91, 219; as toward dance, 29; toward gathering, 198, 200; and truth, 193 sun, 116, 131, 135, 164–66, 211; Hyperion as, 104; kinship with Diotima, 185; and planets, 239; in Plato, 14; sun god, 192, 243

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Index

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

superstructure, and substructure, 257 surplus, 39, 104, 113, 116, 118, 120, 138, 150, 166, 168; of desire, 183; gesture of, 121; and hyperbole, 42, 45, 50, 73, 221, 277; and lack, 263; of language, 169–70, 191, 220; of life, 31, 167, 171–72, 187– 88; and measure, 53; and music, 71; in Plato, 182; surplus value, 250–52, 262; and truth, 33 surveillance, and ballet, 233 Swabia, 1, 3, 10 swamp, 188 Switzerland, 36, 89 synthesis, 45, 205, 215, 238; failure of, 176 Szondi, Péter, 38, 51, 134 tameness, 162, 174; in Plato, 145 taste: bad, 40, 48, 71; good vs. bad, 71; taste in dancing, 106, 241 technique: and dance, 33, 233, 238, 240; vs. inspiration, 134, 136; and truth, 154 technology, as domination of nature, 107 teleology, 26, 38, 73, 86, 88, 95, 108, 117, 155, 157 temporality, 12, 143, 147, 150, 189, 193–94, 203, 216, 237 tension, 89, 143, 157, 176, 217, 226, 243, 268; and relaxation, 59 Terpander, 72 terrorism, 176, 235; of French Revolution, 4, 10, 149; and League of Nemesis, 151 textuality, 12, 230 Thales, 44 Thebes, 101 Theile, Katrin, 40 theocracy, 35, 97, 159, 260 Theseus, 33, 96, 240, 244, 270, 276 Thiel, Luzia, 154 thinking, 29, 40; after- vs. fore-, 167; and fermenting, 161–62, 166; gestural, 157–58; historical, 80; musical, 100; poetic, 49, 102; of politics, 79, 236, 242;



319

representational, 41; and suffering, 104, 161–62, 166 Thucydides, works by: History of the Peloponnesian War, 16, 90, 196 time, 148–49, 151, 172, 177, 194, 196, 198, 206, 237, 259, 277; between life and death, 164; condensed, 12; continuity, 193; and dance, 225, 227; debris of, 91; vs. eternity, 214; etymology of, 4; evental, 22; good vs. bad, 137; in Heidegger, 23; historical, 2–3, 25, 29, 145, 152–53; of kings, 154; measurement of, 228; psychic, 144; revolutionary, 1, 13–14, 16, 18, 21–22, 26, 29, 31, 108, 145, 189; as ruinous, 92, 189; seasonal, 144; and truth, 15 Tinian, 36 Titan, 140 tonality, 67, 101, 216 totalitarianism, 22, 129 tourism, 27, 89 tragedy, 11, 15, 72, 202; in Aristotle, 26, 233; of beautiful soul, 84; birth of, 19; and dance, 66; Greek, x, 239; and mimesis, 45; as mode of signification, 92; vs. mourning play, 267; in Plato, 183 transcendence, 62, 94, 99, 103, 126, 132–33, 137, 153, 156, 180, 194, 202, 204, 224–26, 270, 273 transition, 48, 85, 96, 151, 168, 216, 259; from speech to writing, 171; and hyperbole, 47; as metabolē, 144; in Plato, 144 Trieste, 149 trionfo, 266 Trotha, Hans von, 113 Troy, 246 truth, x, 15–17, 26, 35, 40, 124, 180, 183, 193, 217; abyssal ground of, 121; and appearance, 103; and choreography, 27, 89, 121, 271; as correspondence, 23, 44, 214; and dance, 73; desire for, 45; event of, 80, 94; of the given, 277; and hyperbole, 41–44, 221;

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

320 I  ndex

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

truth: (continued) and inspiration, 156, 231; and literature, 83; and measure, 226; and openness, 31, 33, 154, 185, 258; and Platonism, 14, 262; as play of concealment and unconcealment, 24, 200; of political economy, 79, 258; and politics, 25, 34, 103, 248; as representation, 181; and revelation, 50, 111, 257; in Schelling, 99; and singularity, 18 Tübingen, 2, 51 Tübinger Stift (Tübingen Theological Seminary), 2, 109 Turkey, 4, 29, 79, 110 tyranny, 182, 195, 260 Uffhausen, Dietrich, 67, 210–11 unconcealment, 23–24, 200 understanding, faculty of, 20, 35, 52, 60, 147, 165–66; vs. reason, 98 union, 37, 72, 112, 128, 176–77; free, 143; of life, 206–8, 265; sexual, 76, 245; with the highest, 118 unity, 97, 175, 210; absolute, 214; beautiful, 163; of Being, 203; desire for, 156; vs. difference, 100; dissonant, 99, 245; dramatic, 58; highest, 209; illusion of, 130; and multiplicity, 98, 193, 216; in music, 218 universalism, 87 untimeliness, 129–30 Valéry, Paul, 65 value, 202, 227, 246; economic, 258; of manufactured goods, 251; natural vs. artificial, 252; surplus, 250; of truth, 262 vehemence, and youth, 42 velocity, 139 Vendée, 234 vengeance, 177 Vico, Giambattista, 205 Viganò, Maria, 57 Villaume, Peter, 57

violence, 178, 195, 199, 204, 234–35, 247, 255; of elements, 236; of Eros, 127; of the king, 96; of material vs. of form, 177; negative, 147; of the people, 31; of revolution, 127; revolutionary, 146, 149–50, 158–59, 172; sovereign, 244; of state, 152; of will, 162 Virno, Paolo, 105 virtue: in Aristotle, 42; and dance, 71; feminine, 75; heroic, 202; hyperbole as, 43; and music, 71; of philosophy, 220; and politics, 125; of state vs. of citizens, 132; and virtuosity, 236 virtuosity, 32, 105, 235–36; athletic, 231; modern, 237, 240; of philosophy, 220 Vöhler, Martin, 46 voice: in Aristotle, 254; native, 231; political, 19; pure, 68, 73; in Rousseau, 215; and self-presence, 16 vortex, 48, 121 Wagner, Richard, 230, 240 Waiblinger, Wilhelm, works by: Phaeton, 6 wall, 269; in Heraclitus, 171; and law, 159; and state, 147, 157 war, 13; art of, 175; and the body, 175; civil, 275; and dance, 176; and peace, 246; and slavery, 205 Warburg School, 55 Warnes, Mathias, 106 wastefulness, 94, 100 wealth, 150, 197, 262 weather, 22, 77, 174; of heavens, 150; and language, 169; revolution as, 1, 3; and time, 4 Weber, Sam, 25–26 Wegenast, Margarethe, 142 Weibler, Elisabeth, 98 Wetters, Kirk, 8, 12 Wieland, Christoph Martin, 58 will, freedom of, 97, 140 Wilmans, Friedrich, 238

Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Index

321

and law, 271; and music, 253; in Pietism, 253; and speech, 171; of writing, 276 Württemberg, 2, 58, 108–9, 111, 253 Xenophon, works by: Symposium, 106 yield, 34, 247, 259, 270 youth, 6, 61, 130, 138, 147; eternal, 191–92; and hyperbole, 42; and truth, 105 Zeus, 90, 104, 118, 120, 135, 144– 45, 242; Age of, 153, 155 Zimmer, Ernst Friedrich, 6, 37 Zinkernagel, Franz, 75 Žižek, Slavoj, 12

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved.

Winckelmann, Johann Joachim, 109, 136, 276 Winckelmann, Johann Joachim, works by: Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums, 96 Windfuhr, Manfred, 189 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 61–62 Wolters, Friedrich, 7 world: ages of, 115, 144; beautiful, 191, 197; canalization of, 171; as court, 268; and labor, 168; and language, 169; natural, 129–30; old vs. new, 146; way of the, 12 writing, 89, 111, 187, 193, 220, 277; of body, xi; choreographic, 29–30, 32–33, 72–73, 75, 121, 212, 219, 221, 226; and dance, x;



Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,

Copyright © 2021. Boydell & Brewer, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Adler, Anthony Curtis. Politics and Truth in Hölderlin : Hyperion and the Choreographic Project of Modernity, Boydell & Brewer,