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Arts & Communication Reading Hölderlin in an exhibition

(“sing,” 96), “sprechen” (“speak,” 77), and “sagen” after 1805 have not survived; Beißner’s edition lists fewer
(“say,” 72), or those related to its elementary object poems than Sattler’s; errors may occur in text capture as in
like “leben” (“live,” 113), and “lieben” (“love,” 81). text recognition; when searching for word stems, one does
Of 9639 adjectives that occur with Hölderlin, 2005 not recognize words that belong to the word family but
are among the most frequent 20 — all of them are use the stem (for example, “sprechen” and “gesprochen,”
positively occupied in the context of these poems, “speak” and “spoken,” “gold” and “gülden,” “gold” and
which are characterized by the longing for a simple “gild”), and one finds words that have the same sound
and ideal, ancient world, and its renaissance: “schön” but different content (for example, the color gold and the
(“beautiful,” 198), “heilig” (“holy,” 191), “still” (“silent,” precious metal gold), whereby in the poetic language it is
149), “hoch” (“high,” 137), “lieb” (“dear,” 124), “groß” often precisely the associations between these words that
(“large,” 113), “süß” (“sweet,” 104), “gut” (“good,” 103), shape our imagination (Ovid’s “Golden Age,” named after
“ewig” (“eternal,” 91), “glücklich” (“happy,” 87), “voll” the precious metal, is, for example, associated with “golden
(“full,” 82), “alt” (“old,” 81), “freundlich” (“friendly,” light“) and the appeal of metaphors lies in their ambiguity
81), “rein” (“pure,” 71), “neu” (“new,” 69), “stolz” (if, for example, the “swan“ is used as an image for the poet,
(“proud,” 67), “lang” (“long,” 67), “fern” (“far,” 65), it is nevertheless also a swan in our imagination).
“herrlich” (“wonderful,” 64), and “frei” (“free,” 61). Such forms of reading not only combine macro- and
(iii) Poems have two strong vertical lines — the beginning micro-analysis and close and distant reading but also
and the end of a verse line. One hundred and one of abstraction and sensual experience. They allow this
Hölderlin’s 424 poems are rhymed. Most frequently, precisely by excluding interpretation and reflection for a
he rhymes with “Leben” (“life,” 38), “an” (“at,” 29), while, so that we do not immediately relate everything we
“wieder” (“again,” 26), “Natur” (“nature,” 24), and read to ourselves and thereby possibly also falsify it, but
“nieder” (“down,” 22). Sixteen times Hölderlin rather engage with a different system. Counting words can
rhymes “nieder” to “wieder,” 4 times to “Gefieder” lead us to say them in front of us, to enumerate them, like a
(“plumage”). Twelve times “Brust” (“breast”) and child learning a language. Language becomes experiential,
“Lust” (“lust”) follow each other. Ten times “Flügel” this side of the question that many of us are familiar
(“wings”) and “Hügel” (“hills”) rhyme, seven times with in excess from our German lessons: What does that
“Liebe” (“love”) and “trübe” (“gloomy”), six times mean? The language of literature, however, first of all,
“Liebe” and “Triebe” (“drives”). Five times “Hülle” means nothing; it does something to us. Just as we can do
(“cover”) follows “Fülle” (“abundance”), three times something with it. This is made possible by this scaling and
“Stille” (“silence”). “Leben” (“life”) gladly rhymed with also playful reading, which at the same time still contains
“geben” (“give”), but also with “schweben” (“floating”) the magic of numbers and words of old worlds that are
and “beben” (“quake”). Of the 13989 lines of verse in poetic for us today. The digital text analysis is — like
Hölderlin, most (12199) begin with “und” (“and”), other formalistic and structuralistic ways of looking at
followed by the female and male articles “die” (556) texts — a corrective for ourselves; it irritates us and gives
and “der” (498). 164 lines introduce with “aber” us a peculiar, esthetically ordered picture, in which text is
(“but”), a contradiction or restriction, 162 begins contained in one way, but of course, also lacks dimensions
with an “o” as a sign of an exclamation or invocation. that we can add through other ways of reading. It is one
In contrast to these simple and short words that are way of reading, but not the only one.
strung together, enumerated, opposed, pointing,
and calling, the nearly untranslatable words of the 3. Collecting. Reading Hölderlin Word by
beginning of the verse, which occur only once in this Word
position, attract all attention and immediately form In almost all rooms of the Literaturmuseum der Moderne,
their own rhythmic unit. “Zaubergesänge” (“magical visitors can collect cards with words from Hölderlin’s
chants”), “Wolkenumnachtete” (“she, who is benighted best-known poem Hälfte des Lebens/Half of Life and their
by clouds”), “Weltenumeilenden” (“he, who rushing text usage and text field stories, 36 of them in total, from
around worlds”)...
“gelb” (“yellow”) and “Birnen” (“pears”) to “sprachlos”
For these analyses of signs, forms, and words, the (“speechless”) and “klirren” (“rattle”). There are also three
curatorial team searched all 424 poems in Friedrich Beißner’s examples here:
so-called Stuttgarter Hölderlin edition, including plans, (i) “Birnen” exists in Hölderlin only in this poem.
fragments, family album pages, and dubious attributions, Likewise only once there are: “Apfel” and “Äpfel”
with the computer. The results are approximations and not (“apple” and “apples”), “Feige” (“fig”), “Limonenwald”
absolute numbers: Many of the poems that Hölderlin wrote (“lime forest”), “Birnbaumblätter” (“pear tree leaves”),

Volume 1 Issue 2 (2023) 3 https://doi.org/10.36922/ac.1467