Text fragments from Hölderlin's novel Hyperion or The Hermit in Greece
But erring and wandering helps, like sleep; distress and the night make us strong
till in that steel cradle enough heros have been fostered, hearts in strength can match heavenly strength as before.
Thundering then they come. [poem Bread and Wine st. VII, transl. M. Hamburger]
Fortunate the man whose native country flourishes to rejoice and strengthen his heart!
For me, it is as if I were cast into a swamp, as if the coffin lid were being nailed shut over me,
if anyone reminds me of mine,
and whenever I hear myself called a Greek,
it is as if I were being bound with a dog collar.
I have nothing of which I may say that it is mine own.
Distant and dead are my loved ones,
and no voice brings me news of them anymore.
My business on earth is over.
I set to work full of determination,
I gave my blood to it,
but made the world not a penny the richer.
Unknown and alone,
I have returned
to wander through my native country,
which lies about me like a vast graveyard.
Often, lost in the wide blue, I look up into the ether
and down into the sacred sea,
and I feel as if a kindred spirit were opening his arms to me,
as if the pain of solitude were dissolved in the life of the Divinity.
To be one with all -
this is the life divine, this is man's heaven.
Ah! the lost valleys of Elis, Nemea and Olympia!
There I sat, playing sadly beside him, scraping the moss from a demigod's pedestal,
digging a marble hero's shoulder out of the rubble,
I move through the past like a gleaner over the stubblefield
after the landowner has harvested;
you gather up every straw.
Like a howling north-wind,
the present blows
over the flowers of our spirit,
blasting them even in the bud.
Like a howling north-wind, the present blows over the flowers of our spirit, blasting them even in the bud.
You dirty scumbag ...
Leave him alone.
And you get lost.
Come with me.
At the foot of the mountain
I spent the night
in a hospitable hut,
among myrtles
and the scent of the labdanum-bearing cistus,
where in the golden stream of Pactolus the swans played beside me,
where an ancient temple of Cybele
looked out from the elms,
like a shy ghost into the clear moonlight.
I had set out with the morning.
By noon I reached the summit of the mountains.
I stood, looking happily about me,
relishing the purer airs of the sky.
They were blessed hours.
# When my darling has her wedding-day, [Mahler: Songs of the Wayfarer no. 1]
# her joyous wedding-day,
# I will have my day of mourning.
# I will go to my little chamber,
# my dark little chamber,
# and weep, weep for my darling,
# for my dear darling.
Some animals howl when they hear music.
Wolves run away when you strike a fire.
At last I grew weary of wasting myself, of looking for grapes in the desert
and flowers on a glacier.
Even the swallow seeks a more hospitable country in winter,
the wild beasts run here and there in the heat of the day,
their eyes search for the stream.
Who tells the child that its mother will not deny it the breast?
And yet it seeks for it!
Alabanda!
What's this?
What've you been up to?
When I see a child
and think
how shameful and stultifying is the yoke that it will bear,
and that it will starve as we do,
look for men as we do,
search, as we do, after truth and beauty,
will waste away in barren pining because it is alone as we are,
O take your sons from the cradle and cast them into the river
that at least they will be spared your ignominy!
I will take a shovel
and throw the dung into a pit.
A people among whom spirit and greatness no longer engenders any spirit and any greatness
has nothing in common with other peoples who are still men,
has no more rights,
and it is an empty farce, sheer superstition,
to go on honoring such will-less corpses as if a Roman heart beat in them.
Away with them!
It mustn't stand where it stands, the withered, decaying tree.
It steals light and air from the young life
that is ripening for a new world.
Oh! let someone light a torch for me
that I may burn the weeds from the field.
Let someone lay me the mine
with which I can blast the dull clods from the face of the earth!
This is another age,
this is no voice from my infantile century,
this is not the soil on which the heart of man pants under the oppressor's whip.
Yes, yes, yes
by your glorious soul, O man,
we will save my fatherland!
So I will,
or perish.
It shall not stand where it stands, the withered, decaying tree
Why're you doin' this?
I dunno.
It's no use ... look here
Wanted [RAF] Terrorists
I can't pull myself together, I only get frightend.
But you're not forced to.
- You shouldn't ... - I'm always laughing my head off ...
You've still got your brains, old boy.
What's up?
You accord the State far too much power.
It must not demand what it cannot extort.
But what love gives, and spirit, cannot be extorted.
The State must not touch it,
or we will take its laws and whip them into the pillory!
- ... rubbish - ... totally pissed
By Heaven! He knows not what his sin is who would make the State a school of morals.
The State has always been made a hell by man's wanting to make it his heaven.
The coarse husk around the seed of life, nothing more is the State.
It is the wall around the garden of human fruits and flowers.
But is the wall around the garden of any help when the soil lies parched?
Only the rain from heaven helps then.
- O inspiration! - that's it ...
Death is a messenger of life,
and that we now lie asleep in our infirmaries testifies that we shall soon awaken to new health.
He knows not what his sin is who would make the State a school of morals.
??? quante Christian
la fessa di Romani ???
??? morya
domani San Antonio ???
buona sera, cari amici ???
Putana ???
con diche ???
???
you're whores, ???, Nazis
Faschists
Bravo, bravo
He, too, is one of those who would see the world a better place.
It is no joking matter to better the world.
Are you of the same mind as I?
Ask what we are doing.
And if I asked?
We would tell you we are here to purge the earth,
that we clear the stones from the field,
and break up the hard clods with the mattock
and draw furrows with the plow,
that we grasp the rank growth by the roots,
cut it through at die roots,
and tear it up by the roots, so that it shall wither in the burning sun.
We do not go begging for mens' hearts.
For we need neither their hearts nor their wills.
For men are in no case against us,
since everything is for us.
But if no one wants to live where we have built, it is neither our fault nor our loss.
These are traitors!
He must be conspiring with them
against you!
But what did he want with you?
What could he have been trying to get from you, the dreamer?
O eternal erring!
When will man tear off your chains?
We want to grow upward,
and spread wide our branches and twigs,
yet soil and weather bring us to whatever is to be,
and when the lightning strikes your crown
and splits you to the roots,
poor tree!
What part do you have in it?
And you? Why do you concern yourself?
That now and again something rises up in you,
and your heart, in one instant, with such power, opens itself to you and closes again,
that is precisely the fatal symptom.
There is a forgetting of all existence,
a hush of our being,
in which we feel as if we had found everything.
There is a hush, a forgetting of all existence,
in which we feel as if we had lost everything,
a night of our soul,
in which no glimmer of any star
nor even the fire from a rotting log gives us light.
I still sought for something,
but I did not dare to raise my eyes in the presence of men.
there's more of that stuff ...
there I sit ... evenings
Attica ...
there I sit ...
gazing ...
- infinite - the ground has turned greener
infinite
- wider the fields, infinite ...
with joyfull ...
cornflowers
cornflowers, cornflowers
with joyful cornflowers, mingled with ...
the golden wheat ...
That's beautiful.
there I sit all evening ...
the open field ...
... rejoice ...
there I sit all evening ...
???
there I sit all evening ...
???
my oath ???
It is better to become as the bee and build one's house in innocence, than to rule with the masters of the world and howl with them as with wolves.
Such freedom from wants,
such divine content
I have never found before.
Men say that beyond the stars the battle will die away,
I have taken the shorter way.
I stood before her ...
It is a better age, that is what you seek,
a more beautiful world.
It was that world alone that you embraced in your friends,
with them you were in that world.
In Adamas it rose for you;
with him it set for you.
In Alabanda its light appeared to you for die second time,
but more fiercely and searingly,
and so it was like ...
like midnight about your soul when you found him gone.
It was no man that you wanted, you wanted a world.
The loss of all golden centuries, crowded together,
in one happy moment,
as you felt them,
you wanted one man ...
stop it, man!
you ??? you can mess around elsewhere
get lost!
... to take their place for you!
Do you not see now how poor, how rich, you are?
You get lost!
You can ill endure the destiny of this age.
You will yet attempt many things,
you will -
Oh, God! and your last refuge will be a grave!
Now you've had your say, now you can go home.
Oh look, look
Hyperion
I beg you,
look at the men
walking among the ruins,
who console themselves with a merry dance and a pious tale
for the infamous oppression that weighs upon them.
Can you turn your heart from those who are in need?
What can I do for them?
Give them what you have within you.
Not another word,
All shall be changed.
From the root of humanity
the new world shall spring!
A new divinity shall rule over them,
a new future brighten before them.
In the workshop, in houses, in gatherings, in temples,
there will be a change everywhere!
??? Hybrid
In the workshop, in houses, in gatherings, in temples, there will be a change everywhere!
enthousiasm ...
feast of reconciliation among the nations
Greeks ??? priceless deed
spirit
Well?
Now ...
it will be different.
Hyperion.
It will be
and I tell you, dear heart,
heart,
it will be quite a fire.
War has been declared.
The Greeks shall be free
if they join and rise with us.
We have now won three battles in succession.
Navarin is ours,
and we are now before the fortress of Misistra, that remnant of ancient Sparta.
The volcano is erupting. In Coron and Modon the Turks are besieged
and we are pushing on with our mountaineers against the Peloponnesus. Now ...
all depression is ended.
We let resistance arise as suits our purpose; we lure the enemy into actions for which we are prepared.
Or we bide our time and appear to be afraid,
and let him come nearer until he exposes his head to our blow,
or we utterly disconcert him with our speed,
and that is my panacea.
I do not know,
it can be but a few days longer before Misistra must surrender,
but I wish we had advanced further.
Here in the camp I feel as if I were in the atmosphere of a brewing storm.
I am impatient, and my men are not to my liking.
There is a recklessness among them that is terrifying.
???
It is over.
Our men have plundered,
murdered,
indiscriminately,
even our brothers were killed,
the Greeks in Misistra, the innocents,
It was indeed a remarkable undertaking,
with a pack of thieves, to build my Elysium.
This grieving soil whose nakedness I wanted to clothe
with sacred groves!
I am banished, cursed,
like a common rebel ...
# ari siamo io lo diche ???
# e glial pugnale l'ama sogno que ride ???
a pity
that things are not now better among mankind!
Otherwise, I'd gladly remain upon this goodly star.
But I have grown used, forcibly,
to shaking off outside things
like flakes of snow.
But they will doubtless throw me into the sea,
and I am content to have my remains sink down.
Farewell!
O Nature, do a good deed ???
Everyting sacred, the patriotic fool, the madman, you cannot improve him ???
Men are made to provide for their necessities;
all else is freely given.
And yet -
I cannot forget how much more I wanted.
I want to rest.
# To me no one bade farewell. [Mahler: The Two Blue Eyes of My Darling]
# Farewell! My companions
# were love and sorrow!
I have pushed it to the utmost.
I have dealt most ungratefully with Mother Earth;
my blood and all the gifts of love that she gave me,
I have thrown away like the base wage of a serf,
and ah! how many thousand times more ungrateful have I been to you, O sacred maiden!
Oh come! And we shall sit by the spring,
and in its mirror behold our world,
the sky and house and garden
and ourselves.
But to us it is given nowhere to rest, suffering men falter and fall blindly from one hour to the next, like water flung down from cliff to cliff, yearlong into uncertainty
But O sweet voice!
again I heard you,
once again, like the air of May, the speech of the beloved touched me,
Hyperion. Ask not how;
seek not to explain this death to yourself!
Am I to tell you that grief for you has killed me?
Oh no! Oh no!
It was welcome to me,
that grief,
it gave the death that I carried within me form and grace;
"You die to honour your beloved,"
I could tell myself now.
Or did my soul grow overripe in all the enchantments of our love?
and is that why, like a restive youth, it will no longer stay in its humble home?
Speak!
Was it my heart's exuberance
that divorced me from mortal life?
Did my nature, having known your glorious self, become too proud to be content on this mediocre star?
But if you taught it to fly,
why do you not also teach my soul to return to you?
If you kindled the ether-loving fire,
why did you not guard it for me?
Hear me, beloved!
For your fair soul's sake!
Do not accuse yourself of my death!
continuation
I will tell you exactly what I believe.
Your fire lived in me,
your spirit had passed into me,
but that could hardly have harmed me,
and only your destiny made my new life deadly to me.
My soul had grown too strong for me through you,
yet through you it would have grown quiet again.
You drew my life away from the Earth,
but you would also have had power to bind me to the Earth;
you would have conjured my soul, as into a magic circle, into your embracing arms;
Ah,
one of your loving looks would have held me fast,
one of your loving speeches would have made me a happy, healthy child again;
but when a unique destiny bore you away to solitude of spirit,
as waters are borne to mountain peaks,
oh then,
when at last I believed that the storm of battle had burst open your prison
and my Hyperion had soared up into his old freedom again,
only then was all decided for me,
and now must soon end.
I have used many words,
My life was silent; my death is loquacious.
Enough!
You!
Oh, Diotima!
Diotima!
And you valleys of my love,
and you brooks that once saw her blessed form,
you trees where she rejoiced,
you springtimes in which she lived, lovely with her flowers,
depart, depart not from me!
It is a hard saying,
and yet I speak it because it is the truth:
Come here. Sit down.
I can think of no people
no, thanks
more at odds with themselves than the Germans.
You see artisans, but no human beings,
thinkers, but no human beings,
priests, but no human beings,
masters and servants,
youths and adults,
but no human beings,
Cold, yes?
Pernachne ???
Is this not like a battlefield on which hands and arms
and every other member are hacked off and scattered about,
while the life-blood flows from them to vanish in the sand?
There is nothing sacred that is not desecrated,
that is not debased to a miserable expedient among this people;
and what even among savages is usually preserved in sacred purity,
these all-calculating barbarians pursue as one pursues any trade.
And when it makes holiday,
and when it loves,
and when it prays,
and even when spring's lovely festival,
when the season of reconciliation for the world dissolves all cares,
when the caterpillar itself grows wings and the bees swarm,
even then the German sticks to his petty tasks
and scarcely deigns to notice the weather!
For were they but modest, those people,
did they but not make themselves a law unto the better among them!
Did they but revile not what they are not!
The earth's springs and the morning dew refresh your forests;
Can you too do as much?
Ah! You can kill,
but you cannot bring to life,
unless it is done by love,
which proceeds not from you, which you did not invent.
You worry and contrive, that you may escape Fate,
and cannot understand it
when your childish arts are unavailing;
and meanwhile the stars move innocently on above you.
You degrade and mangle, where she tolerates you ... - Look!
patient Nature.
Oh, she must indeed be divine,
since you are permitted to destroy and she grows not old
and despite you Beauty remains beautiful!
"Everything on earth is imperfect," goes the Germans' old tune.
Look!
If only someone would once tell these God-forsaked people that everything is so imperfect among them only
because they leave nothing pure uncorrupted, nothing sacred untouched by their coarse hands,
that life with them is stale and burdened with cares and full of cold, silent discord,
because they scorn the Genius, which brings power and nobility into human endeavor,
and serenity into suffering, and love and brotherhood to towns and houses.
And that too is why they are so afraid of death,
and, for the sake of their molluscan existence, bear every indignity,
for they know nothing higher than the bungling job that they have made of things.
There men grow ever more sterile, even more empty,
servility increases and with its insolence, intoxication grows with troubles,
and, with luxury, hunger and dread of starvation;
the blessing of each year becomes a curse, and all gods flee.
And woe for the stranger who journeys to such a people
and three times woe for him who comes as I came, driven by great grief
a beggar as I was a beggar, who comes to such a people,
into all the dead order of these men!
O Sun,
O you breezes,
by you alone my heart still lives, as among brothers!
Diotima, where are you?
Where are you?
O you, with your gods, Nature!
I have dreamed it out, the dream of human things,
and I say, only you live,
You springs of earth,
you flowers,
and you woods and you eagles
and you brotherly light.
How old and new is our love!
We are free.
O Soul! Soul!
Beauty of the World!
You indistructible one,
you ravishing one!
With your eternal youth.
You are.
However it seems often to me it's better to sleep, than to be without comrades, than to tarry, and what to do and what to say in the meantime, I know not, and who need poets in lean times? [Bread and Wine, st. VII]
But they are, you say, like the wine-god's holy priests
But they are, you say, like the wine-god's holy priests who roamed from place to place in holy Night.
[Bread and Wine, st. VII].
Wanderer through the night: Wilhelm Menne
Sportsmen: Arnim Baumert, Andreas Eisenschenk, Thomas Fölsch, Wolfram Götz, Hans-Peter Jäggi, Heiko Neumann, Hans Joachim Schulze, Martin Szafranski,
In front of the Anhalter Bahnhof Paul Burian, Gerd Davin, Rüdiger Hacker, Jan Kauenhowen, Michael König Wolf Redl, Gerd Wameling
In the tents: Eberhard Feik, Günter Lampe, Felix Prader, Werner Rehm
in the cemetary: Otto Mächtlinger
girl in a parka (gate-keeper) Sabine Andreas
singer: Libgart Schwarz
Apparition: Tina Engel
chorus of the emigrant women: Grischa Huber, Christine Oesterlein
Jeep driver: Manfred Dittrich, Burckhard Rode
directed by Klaus Michael Grüber
assistant: Hannes Klett
stills: Antonio Recalcati
costumes: Moidele Bickel, Dagmar Niefind
dramaturgy: Bernard Pautrat, Ellen Hammer
A performance of the Schaubühne on the Hallesches Ufer, Berlin
The film was made during the performances in the Berlin Olympic Stadium between 1. and 13 December 1977.
camera: Wolfgang Knigge
assistant: Uwe Schrader
sound: Hieronymus Wuerden
editor: Ursula Höf, Klaus Neumann-Osterheld
film direction: Klaus Michael Grüber Ellen Hammer
We thank the administration of the Olympic Stadium for their generous support of this project.
Engl. subtitles: serdar202 @ KG 2018 (using the translation by Willard R. Trask)