In Lieblicher Bläue”

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size NotesMartin Heidegger, Erläuterungen zu Hölderlins Dichtung Frankfurt a. M., 1951), pp. 31 ff.F. W. Waiblinger, Phaëthon, Zwey Theile (Stuttgart, 1823), hereafter cited as Ph. I have used a microfilm of the copy in the Yale library. “In lieblicher Bläue”—as the text is usually called—appears in II, 153 ff. The novel was reprinted once (Dresden, 1920) under the editorship of Arthur Schurig, but the text is not reliable. “In lieblicher Bläue” can be found in Hölderlin, Sämtliche Werke, ed. Friedrich Beissner, Vol. II (Stuttgart, 1951), Part 1, pp. 372 ff., and in Hölderlin, Sämtliche Werke, ed. Norbert von Hellingrath, Friedrich Seebass, and Ludwig von Pigenot, VI (Berlin, 1923), 24 ff. In the latter place a division into verses is attmepted. In both places (although Beissner places it in the section “Zweifelhaftes”) spellings have been changed to conform to Hölderlin’s orthography.Wilhelm Waiblinger, Die Tagebücher: 1821–1826, ed. Erwin Breitinger and Herbert Meyer, “Veröffentlichungen der deutschen Schillergesellschaft,” XXII (Stuttgart, 1956), VII, 22. The references here and throughout this paper are to the original volumes and pages of Waiblinger’s diary, given in op. cit. in the margins. Subsequent references to the diary here will be preceded by Tb.Wilhelm Waiblinger: sein Leben und seine Werke (Aarau, 1904), pp. 136 and 274. A list of discussions of the problem is given by Beissner, op. cit., Part 2, 992. Ludwig von Pigenot makes the strongest statement for Hölderlin’s authorship (op. cit., p. 491), Wilhelm Böhm in his biography, Hölderlin (Halle a. d. Saale, 1928 and 1930), II, 528 f., the strongest statement against it.The live hymns studied were Die Wanderung, Der Rhein, Patmos, Andenken, Friedensfeier. The figures for Phaëthon are based on a sample made up of the first 100 words from every fifth page in the edition by Schurig and of the first three sentences on every fifth page (but omitting p. 260, which is in the disputed passage). A cursory count of some of the later versions and fragments of Hölderlin shows that there would be even more difference between “In lieblicher Bläue” and these.These differences may seem unimpressive. However, the frequency of finite verbs is a relatively stable figure for longer samples (say, over 500 words). For the live late hymns (in the order mentioned above) it was 10.7, 10.8, 12.1, 11.1, 11.1 per cent. The only long poem of Hölderlin from after 1800 that I have found to have a frequency of finite verbs as high as “In lieblicher Bläue” is Heimkunft.Cf. also Tb., VIII, 170; IX, 129, and Ph., I, 28; 92, 106, 122; II, 72, 73, 89.E.g., in Ph., I, 10, 14, 21, 29 (twice). 52, 74, 133, 143, II, 26, 56, 58, 87, 106, 129, Tb., IV, 113; V, 35; VI, 102; IX, 133.The sky, the blue sky and so on appear so frequently in Phaëthon in this connection that it is unnecessary to do more than cite one instance: “So heiter ist noch ihr Blick und so unbewölkt, wie der blaue Himmel” (1, 5)

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• Poetics of History, Logics of Collapse

  Open Access•John Hoffmeyer, John W Hoffmeyer•The German Quarterly•2020

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