Navigating the Ister
An Exploration of Hölderlinian Poetology
In his eighteenth century poem, Der Ister, Friedrich Hölderlin explores the river Ister as a representation of the living bond between the light of Greece and the German “land of evening,” in conjunction with ideas of ancient and the modern, and – perhaps most important of all – the mundane and the divine. In this poem, Hölderlin masterfully weaves images of Greek mythology, Christian theology and a profound appreciation for the power and beauty of the earth, offering a holistically integrated vision of humans, gods and nature. Within the framework of this poetic vision, Hölderlin presents the reader with a series of questions on the nature of the divine, man’s relationship to the sacred power of the kosmos and the poet’s responsibility in navigating the limits between them.
Beginning the poem with the invocation, “Now come, fire! / We are desirous / To look upon Day,” Hölderlin directly conjures up imagery from nature and pagan Greek mythology while faithfully incorporating some of the most powerful themes in the Christian tradition. With only one line of poetry Hölderlin is able to summon a range of ideas for the reader to consider: humanity’s physical and psychological need for the rising sun, the gift of sacred fire from Prometheus, the descending Holy Spirit at Pentecost and the apocalyptic Day of the Lord. It could be inferred that the early inclusion of these ideas subtly frame the theme of the poem as a work supplication. Turning his attention to the river itself, Hölderlin curiously refers to the river by its ancient Greek name: the Ister. In Hölderlin’s time, the late eighteenth century, the river Ister had – in a sense – been separated into two halves: the eastern half retained its ancient Greek name, whereas the western was renamed the Danube by the Romans and subsequent European cultures. By rejecting the name “Danube,” Hölderlin also rejects a separation in the symbolic value of the river, thus overcoming the separation between the west and east and, essentially, restoring an ancient tie between Greece and Germany. Equipped with a belief that the ancient world – ancient Greece specifically – represented a light-filled golden age of divine presence, Hölderlin incorporates a spiritual dimension to the Greek geographical idea of Hesperia (“the land of evening”): the Greek name for all European lands to their west. It may be fair to say that Hölderlin, in viewing ancient Greece as a paragon of communion between humans and gods, wants to poetically emulate Greek mythos as a means to retrieve this sacred communion for Germany.
In any reading of the poem it would be difficult to overlook the abundant references to the cycle of day and night, as Hölderlin provides a chronological key to the poetic cryptograph of kairos time. Including, in the third stanza of the poem, another indirect reference to the sun, he notes that the river moves from west to east – in contra-flow to the sun: “Yet almost this river seems / to travel backwards and / I think it must come from / the East / Much could / be said about this.”[1] Peering into the natural world through the lenses of Heraclitean philosophy, Hölderlin does not appear to be disturbed by the contradiction between the movement of sun and river. Instead he seems to apply the opposite movements to the idea of a chiasm: an intersection of natural powers where truth may be found. Perhaps it is this exact intersection – this threshold – that Hölderlin believed the human race was approaching when he wrote, “day is due to begin.”[2] With continued allusions to the movement of the sun – a cyclical representation of day and night – Hölderlin’s belief in a cosmic cycle of immanent divinity and absconding divinity begin to gain focus.
The idea of the absconding god – deus absconditus – is another important theme that permeates Der Ister. This idea, that the presence of divinity on earth follows a similar cyclical pattern as the days and seasons, appears in a number of Hölderlin’s poems. One might also say that within this pattern of journey and return Hölderlin attempts to link mortals and gods with physis itself. The obviously natural imagery in his poetry should be integrated, not contrasted, with Hölderlin’s understanding of Christian and Greek mythology. Indeed, one might also suggest that separating Greek mythology from the Christian narrative is, in many ways, unfaithful to his worldview. Hölderlin viewed the gospel narrative as an extension of Greek mythology rather than a departure from it, claiming that Jesus was the last Greek demigod – son of the god Zeus, brother to Dionysus. With the sudden departure of Jesus from the earth,[3] Hölderlin believed that the entire kosmos entered into a spiritual Hesperia, anxiously waiting for that first beam of light to break the horizon on the Day of the Lord: that glorious reappearance of divine presence. This dawning of the Day, an impression of kairos time revealed with the language of chronos time, is announced with the “cries” of physis in the first stanza of the poem: the sights and sounds of life, birthing and rebirthing its own theophany in a series of ever-increasing concentric cycles.[4]
Navigating Der Ister in light of the pattern of deus absconditus and theophany, Hölderlin places himself in limbo between the mundane and the threshold of the divine. From this worldview of Hesperia, Hölderlin sought to concentrate his poetic energies on heralding the return of divine presence on the earth. Perceiving that the poet was a herald to the divine power of physis, it would not appear that Hölderlin claimed for the poet any power to affect its manifestation; the poet had no more power to affect theophany than he did to hasten the rising of the sun. Hölderlin’s vision of the poet, very similar to the prophet of old, simply prepares the people for the return of the divine. As with the gospel narrative, John the Baptist did not cause Jesus to appear, but he did have the responsibility for preparing the way for Jesus. Similarly, Hölderlin writes in the fifth stanza of Der Ister, that the poet is able to “hear the commotion” of daybreak only if “he is contented,” seemingly rejecting any impulse to coerce the theophany itself.[5] Evidently learning from the lesson of Semele in ancient mythology, Hölderlin understood all too well what dangers await the mortal that provokes a premature revelation of divine power.[6]
Retaining a healthy respect for the separation between gods and man did not mean that they were fundamentally separated in their being or activity. The gods, the mortal and, indeed, nature itself all journey away from the “source” and eventually return to it.[7] A student of Sophoclean tragedy, Hölderlin understood that this process was ananke - “that which must be.”[8] This process, like so many others within his poetry, is indicated in the different patterns of physis. By observing this progress of epic time the same way the he understood the progress of a day, Hölderlin believed that ancient Greece represented – as Nietzsche might later put it – “the great noontide” of divine presence. Conversely, modern Germany symbolized the darkest hour before the dawn: almost wholly devoid of divine presence, yet anxiously awaiting its return. Noting the physical connection between southern Germany and northern Greece via the river Ister, Hölderlin undoubtedly interpreted this geographical detail as a symbiotic tether between Hellas and Hesperia, linking not only land, but a common destiny as well. This fundamental anticipation of a new spiritual dawn can, perhaps, be seen best in the fourth stanza of the poem where he writes, “The day is due to begin / in youth, where it begins.”[9]
The imagery of the river as a threshold should also not be overlooked. At the end of the first stanza Hölderlin writes, “But here we wish to build / For rivers make arable / The land. For when the herbs are growing / and to the same in summer / The animals go to drink / There too will human kind go.”[10] In this vision of the river as both a gathering place and a boundary, Hölderlin shows that all of physis is at the river for cleansing and purification, renewal and rebirth, for sustenance and sanctuary. So, too, does the poem behave as a vehicle for gathering and limiting. Not only does the logos of human poetry call out in longing for a return of the divine, but it also calls out to man and nature alike to gather in preparation for its return. Furthermore, the poem is also meant to draw the anthropos psyche into the heavens to meet the return.[11] Incorporating a vision from his poem Patmos, the poet is also to prepare the high places of this meeting as well; he is to navigate the dangerous heights on “bridges frailly built,” but not to transgress them.[12] In the middle of the fourth stanza of Der Ister, Hölderlin deliberately uses the symbol of the river and the act of poetry itself interchangeably. In tying the poem and river together, Hölderlin may have been suggesting that the poet, himself, is a kind of demigod: giving form and life to the river-poem that both gathers and limits. Perhaps this understanding provides new meaning for the poet’s seemingly Übermensch-like ability to traverse the dangerous heights and straddle the limits of the human and divine spheres.
Hölderlin’s bold exploration of poetry as a way to link the ancient and modern, the mortal and divine, the east and the west, should not be understated. The poet-as-prophet – observing and heralding the “natural” cycles of absctonditus and theophany – opened many doors in the modern world to a deeper integration of logos and physis, wherein mortals may approach the divine without attempting to breach its perilous mysteries. In suspending himself above the treacherous chasms of divine presence on “bridges frailly built,” the poet occupies a deinos position in physis: neither one to be envied nor pitied, but that which must be.
[6] Wie wenn am Feiertage (As on a holiday), Friedrich Hölderlin, Selected Poems and Fragments, p. 173
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