Hölderlin’s Hymns
“Germania” and “The Rhine”
Studies in Continental Thought
EDITOR
JOHN SALLIS
CONSULTING EDITORS
| Robert Bernasconi | William L. McBride |
| Rudolf Bernet | J. N. Mohanty |
| John D. Caputo | Mary Rawlinson |
| David Carr | Tom Rockmore |
| Edward S. Casey | Calvin O. Schrag |
| Hubert L. Dreyfus | †Reiner Schürmann |
| Don Ihde | Charles E. Scott |
| David Farrell Krell | Thomas Sheehan |
| Lenore Langsdorf | Robert Sokolowski |
| Alphonso Lingis | Bruce W. Wilshire |
| David Wood | |
Martin Heidegger
Hölderlin’s Hymns “Germania” and “The Rhine”
Translated by
William McNeill and Julia Ireland
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
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Published in German as Martin Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe 39: Hölderlins Hymnen “Germanien” und “Der Rhein,” ed. Susanne Ziegler
© 1980 by Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main
English translation © 2014 by Indiana University Press
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Heidegger, Martin, 1889–1976.
[Hölderlins Hymnen “Germanien” und “Der Rhein”. English]
Hölderlin’s Hymns “Germania” and “The Rhine” / Martin Heidegger ; translated by William McNeill and Julia Ireland.
pages cm. — (Studies in Continental Thought)
ISBN 978-0-253-01421-4 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-253-01430-6 (ebook) 1. Hölderlin, Friedrich, 1770–1843. Germanien. 2. Hölderlin, Friedrich, 1770–1843. Rhein. I. McNeill, William Hardy, [date] translator. II. Ireland, Julia, translator. III. Title.
PT2359.H2A7433713 2014
831’.6—dc23
2014006761
1 2 3 4 5 19 18 17 16 15 14
Translators’ Foreword
This text makes available an English translation of Martin Heidegger’s first lecture course on Hölderlin’s poetry, devoted to an interpretation of the hymns “Germania” and “The Rhine.” Delivered in Freiburg in the winter semester of 1934–35, this course marks Heidegger’s first sustained engagement with Hölderlin’s poetizing, and is particularly important for understanding the works of Heidegger that follow in the mid- to late 1930s and beyond. Key works such as the Introduction to Metaphysics (1935), “The Origin of the Work of Art” (1936), and the Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event) (1936–38) receive essential illumination from the first Hölderlin course, as does the 1936 essay “Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetry.” Prominent themes of the lecture course include not only the turn to language and poetic dwelling, as well as an engagement with the Hölderlinian themes of the Earth and of the flight of the gods, but also issues of politics and national identity. The scope and significance of the course are thus by no means limited to Heidegger’s encounter with a poet.
The lecture course on “Germania” and “The Rhine” was the first of three major lecture courses that Heidegger devoted to Hölderlin, the other two being a course on the hymn “Remembrance,” delivered in winter semester 1941–42, and a course on “The Ister” directly following in summer semester 1942.1 In addition, Heidegger published a collection of essays entitled Elucidations of Hölderlin’s Poetry, a volume that originally appeared in 1944. Its current, expanded edition contains essays written between 1936 and 1968.2 The course on “Germania” and “The Rhine” was first published in 1980 as volume 39 of the Gesamtausgabe or Complete Edition of Heidegger’s works, and subsequently in a second, slightly revised edition in 1989. A third, unaltered edition was published in 1999. The translation presented here takes into account the minor revisions of the second edition.
Translating Heidegger’s lectures on Hölderlin is especially challenging, given the fact that his interpretations themselves constitute a unique and original “translation” of Hölderlin, an emergent and ongoing dialogue of the thinker with the poet. Thus, Heidegger’s interpretations placed certain constraints on the translation of Hölderlin’s poetry and prose, frequently requiring a somewhat more literal rendition of the German than might otherwise be ventured. In our attempts to render Hölderlin’s work into English in a manner befitting Heidegger’s readings, we have consulted and greatly benefited from the existing translations of Hölderlin by Michael Hamburger, adopting or adapting certain of his solutions on occasion.3 Also of great assistance has been the French translation of Heidegger’s lecture course by François Fédier and Julien Hervier.4
Of the particular translation difficulties posed by Heidegger’s text, two merit special attention at the outset. First is the use of the German Seyn, an archaic form of Sein (“being”) that was used by Hölderlin and that Heidegger appropriates to mark a non-metaphysical sense of being.5 Fortunately, English also preserves a parallel archaic form of being in the word beyng. Thus, in the present volume we have rendered Seyn as beyng and Sein as being throughout; the few instances of das Seyende we have rendered as beyngs, retaining beings for das Seiende. A second and greater challenge is posed by Hölderlin’s use of the word Innigkeit and the associated adjective or adverb innig, a central and key term of Hölderlin’s thinking and poetizing. There appears little choice but to translate this word as “intimacy,” which Innigkeit typically conveys in everyday German, and this is, for the most part, the solution we have opted for in the present