The Death of Empedocles

Friedrich Hölderlin, David Farrell Krell

Description

On the eve of his final odes and hymns, Friedrich Hölderlin composed three versions of a dramatic poem on the suicide of the early Greek thinker, Empedocles of Acragas. This book offers the first complete translation of the three versions, along with translations of Hölderlin's essays on the theory of tragedy. David Farrell Krell gives readers a brief chronology of Hölderlin's life, an introduction to the life and thought of Empedocles—including Hölderlin's Empedocles—detailed explanatory notes, and an analysis of the play and the theoretical essays, allowing for a full appreciation of this classic of world literature and philosophy.
Preface
Friedrich Hölderlin: A Brief Chronology
General Introduction

1. The Frankfurt Plan

2. The Death of Empedocles, First Version

3. The Death of Empedocles, Second Version

4. Essays toward a Theory of the Tragic

The Tragic Ode
The General Basis of Tragic Drama
The Basis of Empedocles
The Fatherland in Decline

5. Plan of the Third Version of The Death of Empedocles

6. The Death of Empedocles, Third Version

7. Sketch toward the Continuation of the Third Version

Facsimile Pages from Der Tod des Empedokles
Notes
Analysis

Sujets

• Philosophy
• Poetry

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 06 juillet 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780791477335
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 6 Mo

Extrait

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The Death of Empedocles

SUNY SERIES IN C ONTEMPORARY C ONTINENTAL P HILOSOPHY

Dennis J. Schmidt, editor

The Death of Empedocles

A Mourning-Play



F RIEDRICH H ÖLDERLIN

A New Translation of the Three Versions and the Related Theoretical Essays with Introduction, Notes, and an Analysis by D AVID F ARRELL K RELL

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

© 2008 State University of New York

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu

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Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data

Hölderlin, Friedrich, 1770–1843. [Tod des Empedokles. English] The death of Empedocles : a mourning-play / Friedrich Hölderlin ; translated with introduction, notes, and analysis by David Farrell Krell. p. cm. — (SUNY series in contemporary continental philosophy) Published: Leipzig : Insel-Verlag, 1910. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-7914-7647-5 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Empedocles—Drama. I. Title. PT2359.H2A6613 2009 832'.6—dc22 2008019674

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Preface

Contents

Friedrich Hölderlin: A Brief Chronology

General Introduction

The Frankfurt Plan

The Death of Empedocles, First Version

The Death of Empedocles, Second Version

Essays toward a Theory of the Tragic

The Tragic Ode The General Basis [of Tragic Drama] The Basis of Empedocles The Fatherland in Decline

142 142 144 153

Plan of the Third Version ofThe Death of Empedocles

The Death of Empedocles, Third Version

Sketch toward the Continuation of the Third Version

Facsimile Pages fromDer Tod des Empedokles

Notes

Analysis

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Preface

F RIEDRICH HÖLDERLIN’S Der Tod des Empedokles,composed in three incomplete versions from 1798 to 1799, but never published during the poet’s lifetime, is a masterpiece in fragments, a masterpiece in ruins. Hölderlin was an accomplished poet before he began his tragedy or “mourning-play,”Trauer- 1 spiel, and he had already made a name for himself through the publication of his novelHyperion;yet in the three fragments or ruins of his play we have the monuments that mark the progress to his mature style. In the third version, abandoned as the year 1799 came to an end, we hear the prosody of Hölder- lin’s great odes and hymns, the poems written from 1800 until about 1806 for which he is best known and loved, among them, “As on a Holiday,” “Bread and Wine,” “The Rhine,” “Celebration of Peace,” Mnemosyne,” and “Patmos.” Portions of the Empedocles tragedy point toward Hölderlin’s extraordinary translations of Sophocles’Oedipus the TyrantandAntigone,published in 1804. This is the first published English translation of all three versions ofThe 2 Death of Empedoclesas far as I am aware. Between the second and third versions

1. The German wordTrauerspielmay most often be taken as synonymous with Tragödie.Yet because mourning,die Trauer,constitutes such an important motif for Hölderlin’s work, from his early novelHyperion,through his dramaDer Tod des Empe- dokles,to his late hymns, it seems best to use the English wordtragedyonly when its German cognate appears. I accept the risk of offending the English/American ear with the more literalmourning-playforTrauerspiel. 2. Michael Hamburger included translations of versions two and three in his dual-language anthology, Friedrich Hölderlin,Poems and Fragments,3d ed. (London: Anvil Press Poetry, 1994), first published in 1966. See 283–386. I have also benefited from Friedrich Hölderlin,Œuvres,ed. Philippe Jaccottet (Paris: Pléiade, 1967), 465–559, 656–68, with translations by R. Rovini and D. Naville.

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THE DEATH OF EMPEDOCLES

in the present volume appear four essays toward a theory of the tragic, essays in which Hölderlin tries to clarify for himself the meaning of his own “mourning- 3 play.” Those essays are as difficult to read and understand as the versions of the play themselves are pellucid. Together the essays and the play demonstrate that Hölderlin was not only one of the greatest poets of the German language but also one of Germany’s greatest thinkers. His importance to German Idealism and Romanticism—and, well beyond these movements or periods, to thinkers and poets of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries—is doubtless guaranteed by the late hymns. YetThe Death of Empedoclesis a work that stands on its own, surviving on its own merits. It is not to slight the late hymns that Max Kom- merell asserts that the third version ofThe Death of Empedocles,“in the sustained pace of its language,” contains “the very best of Hölderlin” (MK 348). Whoever reads the mourning-play, along with the essays surrounding it, especially “The Basis of Empedocles” and “The Fatherland in Decline,” will find both the play and the essays uncannily relevant for our own place and time. It will be clear to readers that the translation and explanatory notes treat Hölderlin as both poet and philosopher, a man of magnificent language and astonishing thoughts. His language stands alongside that of Goethe; his thoughts alongside those of Schelling and Hegel. Better said, both his writing and his thinking are incom- parable, and one may here with justice paraphrase D. H. Lawrence on Whit- man: ahead of Hölderlin—no one. A word about the oddities of punctuation and the gaps in the text: everywhere in Hölderlin’s manuscript are signs of haste, and no presentation of the text or translation of it should try too hard to hide them. Hölderlin often neglects to punctuate his lines, as though his thoughts will brook no pause; at the end of a line he very often skips punctuation altogether. In addi- tion, when readers see gaps in the text of this English translation, they should assume that the gaps occur in Hölderlin’s holograph—although nothing will substitute for checking with the various German editions. Jochen Schmidt’s edition for the Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, which serves as my principal Ger- man text, resists the temptation to constitute a finalized text, and that resis- tance requires that the text have lacunae in it. Finally, because Hölderlin’s syn- tax becomes increasingly complex, involuted, convoluted, and distended as the versions proceed, often stretching over many lines of verse, a line-by-line translation has very often been impossible: English wails when forced to go without its subjects, verbs, and objects all lined up in a row. I have tried above all to capture the sense of Hölderlin’s lines, and also to respect his meters and

3. See Friedrich Hölderlin,Essays and Letters on Theory,trans. Thomas Pfau (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988). “The Ground for Empedocles,” in the present volume called “The Basis of Empedocles,” appears at 50–61; “Becoming in Dissolution,” in the present volume called “The Fatherland in Decline,” at 96–100.