Thought for the Day - Jan 18

Subject: Thought for the Day - Jan 18
From: Peter T.
Date: 18 Jan 00 - 08:31 AM

This is about the saddest and most beautiful poem I know, especially as the poem ends. It was written by the German poet Hölderlin in the depths of his madness. While he was still young and sane, he had fallen in love with a woman (married to another), and they fell deeper and deeper in love, but they were never able to make a life together. She died, still young, in early 1802, and by June of that year, he had become hopelessly stricken with grief and went completely insane, which lasted for the rest of his life (into the 1840s). He wrote reams of mad material, only a tiny fraction of which ever broke the surface into coherence or quality, and only one about his secret love. This poem is written as if it were a letter from his dead beloved to him, from the world after the grave, after many years. I have translated it as carefully as I can, but parts of it do not make clear sense, yet in some ways they are even more powerful, as an unclear voice from the underworld works towards and through the poet.

If from the distance where we went our separate ways
I am still recognisable to you,
If the past can still mean something good to you,
O you who shared my suffering,

Then tell me, how does your beloved wait for you?
In those gardens, where after all these terrible, dark years, we meet again?
Here. By the rivers of the holy primordial world.

What I must say is that there was something good in your eyes
Once -- in the way you glanced back at me, happily,
You who were always so quiet, so gloomy, so

Dark. And how the hours flowed on, as my soul became quiet
Dwelling on how I had been so distant.
Yes. And I confessed I was yours completely.
And just as you want to recall, in
writing all about the familiar things, so I also
find myself giving away the whole past.

Was it -- spring? Summer? The nightingale
with sweet song mingled with the other birds,
and the surrounding smell of the trees,
the formal walkways sprinkled with hyacinths,
tulips, carnations, violets.

Against the house and on walls green ivy grew,
green too was the high blissful gloom of stately avenues,
And evenings, mornings we were there, talking, looking at each other.

And in my arms that youth, so desolate,
came back to life, from the fields he had showed me with such sadness,
and still today he keeps the names of rare places,
and all things that flower upon the blessed shores of home,
or hidden on a high place where one can look out at the open sea,
but no one wants to be.

Let it all rest, and think of her who is still happy
because we were brightened by that magic day
that began with confessions or the pressing of hands, and brought us together at last.
Oh those were such beautiful days. But dusk came after, so full of terrible grief.

You always say that you are so utterly alone in this beautiful world,
But, Oh my beloved, you cannot know that for sure....

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day - Jan 18
From: katlaughing
Date: 18 Jan 00 - 09:19 AM

Whew! Peter that is beautiful! Thank you and nice to see you are able to start threads, again.

katlaughing

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day - Jan 18
From: Little Neophyte
Date: 18 Jan 00 - 01:35 PM

If I think I am alone in this beautiful world I will surely feel pain. The loss of a lover can cause a life time of suffering, but it can also spark the discovery that you are not alone and that you are always loved in the presence or absence of your lover.

BB

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day - Jan 18
From: Neil Lowe
Date: 18 Jan 00 - 02:27 PM

Peter T., you'll never know with what an uncanny sense of timing you are imbued. I hope there are no others out there today who feel as if you had held up a mirror. After having read this poem, today of all days, I feel like I'm sifting through the aftermath of a train wreck. Not your fault, of course. Poignant and beautiful, as always, and full of echoes.

Regards, Neil

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day - Jan 18
From: JenEllen
Date: 18 Jan 00 - 03:22 PM

Ah, Peter! Once again you SHINE!!!

"The more thoroughly reflected the despair is, the more rarely it occurs in the world. But this proves that most men have not become very deep even in despair, it by no means proves, however, they are not in despair...They have not learned to fear, they have not learned what "must" means, regardless of what it may be that comes to pass. Therefore they cannot endure what even to them seems a contradiction, and which is reflected from the world around them appears much more glaring...as a froward madness which crazily fills up time with nothing.".....Kierkegaard "The Sickness Unto Death"

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day - Jan 18
From: JenEllen
Date: 18 Jan 00 - 11:41 PM

madness that crazily fills up time with nothing...kinda sounds like the threads of late....Elle