Content area
Abstract
It is often assumed that Holderlin's later hymns are to be understood as the poets attempt to tether his poetic word to the "narrative rhythms" of a World-Historical Spirit as it unfolds along a path of epiphanies from Asia, to Greece, and finally to Hesperia. In my study I characterize Holderlin's desire to inscribe his poetic practice in the unfolding of this mythopoetic narrative as a certain narrative vigilance; we may sense an underlying anxiety on the part of the poet in the face of concrete particulars, details, which do not figure in the narrative of redemption. I show that Holderlin's later hymnic style may be understood in light of the poets attempt to relax this narrative vigilance: it becomes possible to create images which remain autonomous, which are there for their own sakes.
In the introduction I show what is at stake in the narratization of experience--transforming temporal moments into structural moments of stories--but even more, what is at stake in attempts to refrain from that activity. In Chapter One I discuss various lyric and prose writings of Holderlin which provide the outlines of his mythopoetic narrative. In Chapter Two I discuss the poet's own pronounced desire to descend from his omniscient narrator's vantage point and adopt a more "literalist" mode of poetic imagination. The word Nuchternheit in Holderlin's writings signifies, among other things, this turn to the concrete particulars at the expense of the overarching narrative.
In Chapter Three I give close readings of several of Holderlin's later hymns. I show how this "turn" or shift of poetic modes enters into the rhythms, syntax, and overall texture of these poems by way of various forms of what I call paratactic composition. In these poems Holderlin begins to juxtapose images without subordinating them to any overarching narrative syntax; the movement of the poems is guided more and more by an associative linking of images. In my concluding remarks I explore possible connections between this "relaxation" of narrative vigilance and the outbreak of Holderlin's psychosis.
