Hyperion, Or the Hermit in Greece - Hölderlin E-Book

Friedrich Hölderlin

• Herausgeber: Lebooks Editora
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 392

Beschreibung

Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin (1770 — 1843) was a German philosopher, lyric poet, and novelist who managed to synthesize the spirit of ancient Greece in his poetic works. The novel "Hyperion, or The Hermit in Greece" can be considered an autobiography in letters sent by the character Hyperion primarily to his friend Bellarmin and to Diotima. The text is set in ancient Greece, but even 200 years after it was written, the words describing invisible forces, conflicts, beauty, and hope remain relevant. Who has not felt Hyperion's utopian longing for harmony with nature and God, free from alienation? "Hyperion" is part of the collection "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die," edited by Peter Boxall.

Leseprobe

Friedrich Hölderlin

HYPERION,

OR THE HERMIT IN GREECE

Original Title:

“Hyperion; oder, Der Eremit in Griechenland”

Contents

INTRODUCTION

HYPERION, OR THE HERMIT IN GREECE

Volume One

Book One

Book Two

Volume Two

Book One

Book Two

Afterword

A Novel in Letters

The Foreword

'Not to be constrained by the greatest ..

‘…return whence he came'

Englishing Hyperion

Acknowledgments

Index of Proper Names

INTRODUCTION

Friedrich Hölderlin

1770 – 1843

Friedrich Hölderlin (born March 20, 1770, in Lauffen am Neckar, Württemberg, Germany – died June 7, 1843, in Tübingen) was a German lyric poet who succeeded in naturalizing the forms of classical Greek verse in German and melding Christian and classical themes.

Hölderlin was born in a small Swabian town on the banks of the River Neckar. His father died in 1772, and two years later his mother married the mayor of Nürtingen, where Friedrich attended school. After the death of his stepfather in 1779, his mother, a woman of simple and rigid piety, wanted him to pursue a clerical career. He was sent to the monastic schools of Denkendorf and Maulbronn and later to the theological seminary at the University of Tübingen (1788-1793), where he earned a master's degree and qualified for ordination.

However, Hölderlin could not follow a ministerial career, as contemporary Protestant theology, a compromise between faith and reason, did not provide him with spiritual stability. His devotion to Greek mythology also made it difficult to fully accept Christian dogmas. For him, being a poet meant exercising the priestly function of mediator between gods and humans.

In 1793, through Friedrich Schiller's recommendation, Hölderlin obtained the first of several tutoring positions, though without much success. He published some of his poems and a fragment of his novel "Hyperion" in Schiller's magazine, "Neue Thalia." In 1795, he accepted a tutoring position in the house of banker J.F. Gontard in Frankfurt, where he fell in love with Susette, his employer's wife. This mutual love, however, ended abruptly, forcing Hölderlin to leave Frankfurt in 1798.

In the following years, Hölderlin continued to write intensely, producing notable works such as the elegies "Menons Klagen um Diotima" and "Brod und Wein." In 1801, he accepted a tutoring position in Switzerland but soon returned to his hometown. In 1802, after a brief stay in Bordeaux, he walked back to Nürtingen, completely destitute and in an advanced stage of schizophrenia, exacerbated by the news of Susette's death.

Despite a brief period of improvement, his mental health severely deteriorated. From 1802 to 1806, he wrote poems with apocalyptic visions and translations of Sophocles. In 1805, his friend Isaak von Sinclair secured a librarian position for him, but after Sinclair's imprisonment, Hölderlin was admitted to a clinic in Tübingen and later moved to a carpenter's house, where he lived for 36 years until his death in 1843. His literary legacy was only fully recognized posthumously, influencing numerous writers and thinkers.

About the work

"Hyperion, Or the Hermit in Greece" is a novel by Friedrich Hölderlin that explores the life of Hyperion, a Greek in the late 18th century. Growing up during a time when Greece is under Ottoman rule, Hyperion is deeply influenced by the beauty of nature and the glory of ancient Greece, which help him transcend his bleak surroundings.

Hyperion's first mentor is Adamas, a sculptor who introduces him to Greek antiquity and instills in him the belief in the divine presence within humans. His relationship with Alabanda, a member of a radical society, introduces Hyperion to the revolutionary ideals, but he ultimately rejects their destructive approach.

Hyperion's love for Diotima, a woman who shares his reverence for nature and unity, further shapes his worldview. Through Diotima, he learns to see nature as a harmonious whole rather than a hostile entity. Their relationship underscores the novel's Platonic themes of love and beauty.

Motivated by a call to action from Alabanda, Hyperion joins the struggle to liberate Greece from Ottoman rule. However, the harsh realities of war and the failure of his comrades to uphold their ideals lead to disillusionment. Diotima's death and her poignant letter criticizing his abandonment of poetry for war deeply affect him.

The novel ends with Hyperion's return to Greece as a hermit, reflecting on his experiences and the lessons learned. Despite his trials, he retains a sense of hope and potential for future growth, encapsulated in his final words, "More soon." The bildungsroman structure of the novel highlights Hyperion's evolving consciousness and the necessity of embracing both beauty and suffering in the journey toward enlightenment.

HYPERION, OR THE HERMIT IN GREECE

Volume One

Book One

Hyperion to Bellarmin [I]

The beloved soil of my fatherland gives me joy and grief once more.

I'm up now every morning on the heights of the Isthmus of Corinth, and often, like the bee from flower to flower, my spirit flits back and forth between the seas to right and left that cool the feet of my glowing mountains.

One of those two gulfs would specially have delighted me, had I stood here some thousand years ago.

Then, like a conquering demi-god between the glorious wilderness of Helicon and Parnassus, where the rosy light of dawn plays on a hundred snow-covered peaks, and the paradisal plain of Sicyon, the shining gulf surged in towards the city of joy, youthful Corinth, pouring forth before its favorite the accumulated bounty from all corners of the earth.

But what is that to me? The howl of the jackal, singing its wild dirge amidst the rubble of antiquity, jolts me from my dreams.

Happy the man for whom a flourishing fatherland gladdens and fortifies the heart! Being reminded of mine is like being pitched into the mire, like having the coffin lid slammed shut over me, and whenever anyone calls me Greek, I always feel I'm being throttled with a dog collar.

And see, my Bellarmin! whenever I'd burst out with such remarks, as often as not with tears of anger in my eyes, along came the wise gentlemen who so delight in gibbering among you Germans, those wretches for whom a grieving disposition is such a welcome opportunity to unload their maxims; they were in their element, and made so bold to tell me: 'Don't moan, act!'

Oh, that I had never acted! how many hopes I'd now be richer by! — Yes, just forget that men exist, starving, vexed and deeply harassed heart! and return whence you came, into the arms of nature, never-changing, beautiful and tranquil.

Hyperion to Bellarmin [II]

I have nothing I might truly call my own.

Far away and dead are those I loved, and through no voice I hear from them, nothing ever more.

My business on earth is done. I set about my work with a will, bled over it, and made the world not a penny richer.

I return alone and unrenowned and wander through my fatherland, stretching about me like a vast graveyard, and it may be that what awaits me is the knife of the hunter who keeps us Greeks for sport like forest game.

But you still shine, sun of heaven! You still green, holy earth! Still the rivers rush into the sea, and shady trees whisper in the height of day. Spring's blissful song sings my mortal thoughts to sleep. The plenitude of the all-living world nourishes and fills with drunkenness my starving spirit.

O blissful nature! I can't tell what comes over me when I lift up my eyes before your beauty, but all the joy of heaven is in the tears I weep before you, the lover before the beloved.

My whole being stills and listens when the gentle ripple of the breeze plays about my breast. Often, lost in the immensity of blue, I look up into the aether and out into the hallowed sea, and it's as if a kindred spirit opened its arms to me, as if the pain of isolation were dissolved in the life of the godhead.

To be one with everything, that is the life of the godhead, that is the heaven of man.

To be one with everything that lives, to return in blissful self-oblivion into the all of nature, that is the summit of thoughts and joys, that is the holy mountain pinnacle, the place of eternal peace where noon loses its sultriness and the thunder its voice and the boiling sea becomes like a waving corn-field.

To be one with everything that lives! At these words virtue lays aside its wrathful harness, the mind of man its sceptre, and all thoughts melt away before the vision of the world's eternal oneness like the toiling artist's rules before his heavenly Urania, and iron fate renounces its dominion, and from the covenant of beings death disappears, and indivisibility and eternal youth blesses, makes beautiful the world.

On this height I often stand, my Bellarmin! But a moment of reflection casts me down. I begin to think, and find myself as I was before, alone, with all the pains of mortality, and my heart's sanctuary, the world's eternal oneness, is no more; nature's arms are closed, and I stand before her like a stranger and cannot comprehend her.

Oh! had I never gone into your schools. It's learning that lured me down into the pit, in my youthful folly I thought to find in it the proof of my pure joy, and it has ruined everything for me.

Amongst you I became so very rational, learnt to distinguish myself perfectly from what is around me, and now I'm set apart in the beautiful world, expelled from the garden of nature in which I grew and bloomed, and shrivel under the noonday sun.

Oh, man is a god when he dreams, a beggar when he thinks, and when inspiration's gone he's left standing there like a delinquent son, cast out of the house by his father, staring at the pitiful pennies given as alms to help him on his way.

Hyperion to Bellarmin [III]

I thank you for asking me to tell you about myself, for making me remember former times.

That's what really drove me back to Greece, wanting to live nearer to the playground of my youth.

As into quickening sleep the laborer, so my beleaguered being often sinks into the arms of the innocent past.

Peace of childhood! heavenly peace! how often do I stilly stand before you in loving contemplation, and think to grasp you! Yet we can only conceive of that which once was bad and has been made good again; of childhood, innocence we can have no conception.

When I was still a tranquil child, knowing nought of all that is around us, was I not then more than I am now, after all the heart's travail and all the mind's toiling and striving?

Yes! a divine being is the child as long as it's not been dipped in the chameleon colors of men.

It's wholly what it is and that's why it's so beautiful.

The force of law and fate can't touch it; in the child alone is freedom.

In the child is peace; it's not yet at variance with itself. Richness is in the child; it's still to know its heart, the penury of life. It is immortal, for it knows nothing of death.

But this men cannot bear. That which is divine must become like one of them, must learn that they too are there, and before nature expels the child from its paradise, men cajole and drag it out onto the ground of the curse, that it may, like them, grind away its life in the sweat of its face.

But the time of awakening is beautiful too, if only we're not woken out of season.

Oh, they are hallowed days in which our heart first tests its wings, when full of quick and fervent growth we stand there in the glorious world, like the young plant when it unfolds to the morning sun and stretches up its slender arms towards the endless heaven.

How I felt impelled to roam amongst the mountains and along the shore! oh, how I often sat with throbbing heart upon the heights of Tinos, and gazed after the falcons and the cranes, and the doughty sprightly ships as they shrank below the horizon! 'Down there!' I thought, 'down there you too one day will wander,' and I felt like one who, parched with heat, plunges into the cooling pool and splashes the spumy waters on his brow.

Sighing I'd then turn back towards my home. 'If only my school years were over,' I often thought.

Dear boy! They're far from over yet.

That in man's youth he thinks the goal so near! That is the most beautiful of all illusions with which nature helps our weakness.

And often when I lay amongst the flowers and basked in the soft spring sunlight, and looked up into the bright blue that embraced the warm earth, when I sat under the elms and willows, in the womb of the mountain, after a quickening shower, when the branches still quivered from the caresses of heaven and golden clouds moved above the dripping woods, or when full of peaceful spirit the evening star rose with those ancient youths, the other heroes of the heavens, and I watched as the life within them propelled itself through aether in eternal effortless order, and the peace of the world enfolded and elated me, so that I roused and listened, not knowing what came over me — 'do you love me, good father in heaven!' I'd then silently ask, and felt so blissful and sure his answer in my heart.

O you whom I'd invoke as if you were above the stars, whom I called creator of heaven and earth, amiable idol of my childhood, you won't be angry I've forgotten you! — Why is the world not so wanting as to make one seek an entity outside it?{i}

Oh, if she's the daughter of a father, glorious nature, is the daughter's heart not his heart? her inmost self, is it not He? But do I possess it then? do I know it then?

It's as if I saw, but then again I take fright, as if it were my own image I'd seen, it's as if I felt him, the spirit of the world, like the warm hand of a friend, but I awake and think it's my own fingers I've been holding.

Hyperion to Bellarmin [IV]

Do you know how Plato and his Stella loved each other?

That's how I loved, how I was loved. Oh, I was a lucky lad!

It's a joy when like and like are joined, but when a great man raises lesser to his level, it's divine.

A kindly word from a brave man's heart, a smile that conceals the consuming glory of the spirit, is little and much, like a magical password hiding life and death in its innocent syllable, like living water welling up from deep inside the mountains and conveying to us in each crystal drop the secret energy of the earth.

But how I hate all the barbarians who think themselves wise because they no longer have a heart, all the vulgar brutes who find a thousand different ways to kill and destroy youth's beauty with their stupid petty principles of manhood!

Good God! This is the owl wanting to drive from the nest the young eagles, wanting to show them the way to the sun!

Forgive me, spirit of my Adamas! for recalling these people before you. That's what we gain from experience that we can imagine nothing excellent without its malformed opposite.

Oh, would that you were ever present to me, with all that is akin to you, grieving demi-god I cherish! Those you enfold with your tranquility and strength, conqueror and warrior, those you confront with your love and wisdom, let them flee or become like you! What's ignoble and weak stands no chance beside you.

How often you were near to me when you were long since far away from me, you glorified me with your light, warmed me that my frigid heart began to stir again, like a frozen stream when it's touched by the ray of heaven! Then I felt like fleeing to the stars with my bliss, so that it not be debased by the world around me.

I'd grown up like an unpropped vine, and the wild tendrils spread aimlessly across the ground. As you well know, there's many a noble energy that perishes with us because it isn't used. I flitted about like a will-o'-the-wisp, grasped at everything, was gripped by everything, but then only for the moment, and my clumsy energies exhausted themselves to no purpose. Everywhere I felt wanting, and still couldn't find my goal. So he found me.

For long enough he'd practiced patience and art on his material, the so-called cultivated world, but his material had been and stayed stone and wood; it might, when occasion demanded, outwardly assume the noble human form, but that's not what my Adamas was about; he wanted human beings, and to create them he'd found his art too poor. That those he sought had once existed, those his art was too poor to create, this he clearly saw. Where they'd existed, he also knew. That's where he wished to go, to probe beneath the rubble for their genius and with it while away his lonely days. He came to Greece. So I found him.

I still see him approaching me in smiling contemplation, I still hear his greeting and his questions.

Like a plant when its peace soothes the striving spirit and simple contentment returns to the soul — so he stood before me.

And I, was I not the echo of his quiet inspiration? did the melodies of his being not reverberate in me? What I saw I became, and it was divine what I saw.

How feeble is even the most honest human industry compared with the sheer power of unbroken inspiration.

This doesn't linger on the surface, doesn't merely touch us here or there, has no need of time or means; nor does it need command, compulsion and conviction; it takes hold of us in one moment on all sides and on all levels, low and high, and before we know it's there, before we can wonder what is coming over us, it turns us through and through into its blissfulness and beauty.

Happy the man whose path has thus been crossed in early youth by a noble spirit!

Oh, these are golden unforgettable days, full of the joys of love and sweet activity!

Adamas led me now into the world of Plutarch's heroes, now into the magical land of the Greek gods, now he used number and measure to bring to my youthful impetuousness order and composure, now he took me up into the mountains: by day to see the flowers of field and forest and the wild mosses of the rocks, by night to see the holy stars above us, and understand them after the manner of men.

There is a luscious feeling of well-being within us when our inner self can thus draw strength from its material, separating from it to bond with it more faithfully, and step by step the spirit becomes empowered.

But with threefold force I felt him and myself when, like shades from the past, in pride and joy, in anger and grief, we journeyed up as far as Athos and from there shipped eastwards to the Hellespont, then down to the shores of Rhodes and Taenarum's mountain chasms, through the silent islands all; when longing drove us inland from the coasts, into the somber heart of ancient Peloponnese, to the lonely banks of the Eurotas, oh! the desolate valleys of Elis and Nemea and Olympia; when leaning against a pillar of one of forgotten Jupiter's temples, hugged by laurel roses and evergreens, we gazed into the wild riverbed, and the vibrance of spring and the ever youthful sun reminded us that man too had once been there and now is gone, that the glorious nature of humanity is barely there any more, like the fragment of a temple, or in memory as the image of one dead — then I sat playing sadly beside him, plucking the moss from a demi-god's pedestal, digging some hero's marble shoulder out of the rubble, and cutting away the brambles and the heather from the half-buried architraves, whilst my Adamas sketched the landscape that fondly held the ruins in its comforting embrace, the corn-covered hill, the olives, the herd of goats clinging to the mountain crag, the forest of elms sweeping down from the peaks to the valley; and the lizard frisked at our feet, and the flies buzzed about us in the stillness of noon — Dear Bellarmin! I'd love to give a point-by-point account in Nestor's manner; I range through the past like a gleaner through a field of stubble, when the lord of the land has reaped; one picks up every piece of straw. And the time I stood beside him on the heights of Delos, what a day it was that dawned for me as I climbed with him the ancient marble steps up Cynthus' granite face. Here once dwelt the sun-god, amidst the heavenly festivals where, like golden clouds, assembled Greece glowed all around him. It's here the youths of Greece immersed themselves in floods of joy and inspiration, like Achilles in the Styx, and like the demi-god emerged invincible. In the groves, in the temples their souls awoke, each sounding in the other, and all faithfully preserving the rapturous chords.

But why am I speaking of this? As if we still had an inkling of those days! Oh! not even a beautiful dream can thrive under the curse that weighs upon us. Like a howling north wind the present blasts the blossoms of our spirit and sears them in their bloom. And yet it was a golden day that enfolded me on Cynthus! We reached the summit with dawn still breaking. Now he rose in his eternal youth, the ancient sun-god; serene and effortless as ever, the immortal titan with a thousand joys of his own soared upward, smiling down on his wasted land, on his temples, his pillars that fate had tossed before him like withered rose petals, mindlessly ripped from the bush by a passing child and scattered over the earth.

'Be like him!' Adamas cried out to me, grasped my hand and held it out towards the god, and I felt as if the morning winds were carrying us away, bringing us into the train of the holy being that now rose up to the summit of heaven, kindly and grand, and wonderfully infused the world and us with his spirit and his power.

Still my inmost self grieves and rejoices over every word Adamas spoke to me then, and I can't understand my privation when often I feel as he must have then. What is loss when man thus finds himself in a world which is his own? In us is everything. If a hair should fall from his head, what is it to him? Why does man so strive for bondage when he could be a god! 'You will be lonely, my dearest!' Adamas also said to me then, 'you will be like a crane, left behind by his kin in the harsh season whilst they seek out the spring in distant lands.'

And there you have it, dear friend! That's what makes us poor for all our wealth, that we cannot be alone, that as long as we live the love within us will not die. Give me back my Adamas, and come with all my kindred that amongst us may renew itself the ancient world of beauty, that together we may gather and commingle in the arms of our godhead, nature, and you will see, then I'll know nothing of need.

But let no one say it's fate that parts us! It's we, we ourselves who do it! we take our delight in plunging into the night of the unknown, into the cold alien terrain of some other world, and were it possible, we would quit the sun's realm and storm beyond the bounds of our wandering star. Alas! for man's wild breast there can be no home; and as the sun's ray sears the plants of earth it first unfolded, so man murders the sweet flowers that flourished at his breast, the joys of kinship and of love.

I might seem to bear a grudge against my Adamas for leaving me, but I bear him no grudge. Oh, he was going to return!

Hidden in the depths of Asia there's said to be a people of rare virtue; it's thither he was driven by his hopes.

I kept him company as far as Nios. Those were bitter days. I've learnt to suffer pain, but have no strength in me for such a parting.

With every moment that brought us closer to the final hour emerged more clearly how this man was woven into my being. As a dying man to his fleeing breath, so clove my soul to him.

At Homer's grave we passed a few more days, and Nios became for me the most hallowed of the islands.

Finally we tore ourselves away. My heart had worn itself weary. By the last moment I was calmer. I lay on my knees before him, clasped him for the last time in these arms: 'Give me a blessing, my father!' I softly cried up to him, and he smiled grandly, and his brow widened before the stars of morning, and his eye pierced the spaces of heaven — 'Preserve him for me,' he cried, 'you spirits of a better time! and raise him to your immortality, and all you friendly powers of heaven and earth, be with him!'

'There is a god in us,' he added more calmly, 'who steers our fate like rivers of water, and all things are his element. Be this god with you above all!'

So we parted. Farewell, my Bellarmin!

Hyperion to Bellarmin [V]

Whither could I flee from myself, had I not the dear days of my youth?

Like a spirit that finds no rest by Acheron, I revisit the deserted scenes of my life. All things age and renew themselves. Why are we excluded from nature's beautiful cycle? Or does it hold for us too?

I'd gladly believe it, but for one thing in us that boils up from the depths of our being like the titan in Etna, the monstrous striving to be everything.

And yet who'd not rather feel it in himself like seething oil than own that he was born for the yoke and the whip? Which is nobler: a rampant battle-steed or a droopy-eared nag?

Dear friend! there was a time when my breast too basked in great hopes, when for me too the joy of immortality throbbed in every pulse, when I would wander amid grand designs as if in some vast sylvan night, when, like the fish of the ocean, I'd happily press on and ever onwards in my shoreless future.

How boldly, blissful nature! did the youth leap from your cradle! how he rejoiced in his untested arms! His bow was ready strung and his arrows rustled in the quiver, and the immortals, the sublime spirits of antiquity, were his leaders, and his Adamas was in their midst.

Wherever I was or went, these glorious forms kept me company; like flames heroic deeds from all the ages mingled in my mind, and just as those gigantic shapes, the clouds of heaven, merge together into one exultant storm, so merged in me the hundredfold triumphs of the Olympiads, became one single endless triumph.

Who can withstand it, who is not floored by the terrible glory of antiquity, like young woods flattened by a hurricane, when it seizes him as I was seized, and when, like me, he lacks the element in which to gain a firming sense of self?

Oh, like a storm the greatness of the ancients surely bowed my head, it blasted the bloom from my cheek, and often I would lie where no eye could see me, under a thousand tears, like a fallen fir when it lies by the stream and hides its withered crown beneath the waters. How gladly I'd have bought with blood a moment from a great man's life!

But what help to me was that? The fact is, no one wanted me.

Oh, it's pitiful to see oneself so crushed; and let him who finds this hard to understand not trouble himself further, and give his thanks to nature for having like the butterflies created him for joy, and go and in his life speak nevermore of misery and pain.

I loved my heroes as a fly loves the light; I'd seek their dangerous nearness and flee from it and seek it out again.

Like a bleeding hart into the stream, I would often plunge headlong into the whirlpool of joy, to cool my burning breast and wash away the glorious raving dreams of fame and greatness, but what help was that?

And often when at midnight my heated heart drove me down into the garden beneath the dewy trees, and the burn's lullaby and the balmy breeze and the moonlight soothed my senses, and so tranquil and free the silver clouds above me stirred, and the ebbing voice of the surging sea sounded faintly from afar, how fondly all its love's great phantoms played then with my heart!

'Farewell, you heavenly ones!' I often spoke in spirit, when over me the softly sounding melody of morning's light began, 'you glorious dead, farewell! Could I only follow you, shake off all this age has given me and set forth into the freer realm of the shades!'

But I languish parched in my chains and snatch with bitter joy the beggarly bowl that's offered for my thirst.

Hyperion to Bellarmin [VI]

My island had grown too strait for me since Adamas's leaving. I'd been bored in Tinos for years. I wanted to get out into the world.

'Go first to Smyrna,' said my father, 'learn there the arts of seamanship and war, learn the speech of polished peoples, learn about their constitutions and opinions and manners and customs, prove all things and hold fast the best! — Then for my part go on as you will.'

'Learn a little patience too,' my mother added, and I accepted the advice and thanked her for it.

It's rapturous to take the first step beyond the bounds of youth, and when I look back to my parting from Tinos, it's like thinking of the day of my birth. There was a new sun above me, and I relished land and sea and air as if for the first time.

The living activity with which I now pursued my education in Smyrna, and my rapid progress, did much to soothe my heart. And from this time I can recall many a blissful evening, my labors done. How often would I stroll beneath the evergreen trees on the banks of the Meles, by the birthplace of my Homer, and pick sacrificial flowers and cast them into the hallowed stream! Then in my peaceful dreams I trod the path to the nearby grotto where, they say, the venerable poet sang his Iliad. I found him. Every sound in me stilled before his presence. I opened his divine poem and it was as if I'd never known it, so wholly new the way it came alive in me now.

I also have fond memories of roaming through the country around Smyrna. It's a glorious land, and a thousand times I've wished for wings to fly just once a year to Asia Minor.

From the plain of Sardis I made my way up through the crags of Tmolus.

I'd spent the night in a friendly hut at the mountain's foot, amid myrtles, amidst the fragrance of the rockrose bush, with the swans playing beside me in the golden waters of the Pactolus, and an ancient temple of Cybele, like a bashful ghost, glancing out from between the elms into the bright moonlight. Five lovely pillars stood mourning over the rubble, and a regal portal lay toppled at their feet.

Now through a thousand blooming bushes my path grew upwards. From the craggy slope whispering trees bowed, showering their gossamer flakes on my head. I'd set out in the morning. By noon I'd reached the crest of the range. I stood there, gladly gazing, relishing the purer airs of heaven. Those were blissful hours.

The land from which I'd climbed lay before me like a sea, youthful, full of living joy; it was with a heavenly unending play of colors that spring greeted my heart, and as the sun of heaven found itself again in the thousandfold changes of light given back to it by the earth, so my spirit knew itself in the fullness of life embracing it, besieging it from every side.

To the left the torrent, exulting like a giant, plunged down into the woods from the marble cliff that beetled above me, where the eagle played with its young and the snowy peaks glistened up into the blue

aether; to the right storm clouds came rolling over the forests of Mount Sipylus; I didn't feel the gale that carried them, only the breath of a breeze in my hair, but I heard their thunder, as one hears the voice of the future, and I saw their flames like the distant light of dimly sensed divinity. I turned to the south and wandered on. There it lay open before me, the whole paradisal landscape through which the Cayster flows with many a charming wimple, as if it couldn't linger long enough amidst all the affluence and loveliness surrounding it. Like the zephyrs my spirit fluttered blissfully from beauty to beauty, from the nameless peaceful hamlet, huddled deep below at the foot of the mountain, out to where the range of Messogis looms.

I returned to Smyrna like a drunk man from a banquet. My heart was too full of delights for me not to endow mortality with something of its surplus. I'd too happily absorbed as bounty nature's beauty for me not to fill with it the gaps in human life. My shabby Smyrna was clothed in the colors of my inspiration and stood there like a bride. I found myself attracted by the sociable city-dwellers. The absurdity in their manners amused me like a child's buffoonery, and since I was by nature beyond all their established forms and customs, I toyed with them all, donning and doffing them like carnival costumes.

But what really added spice for me to the vapid fare of everyday communion were those good faces and figures that merciful nature here and there still sends like stars into our darkness.

What hearty joy I took in them! how full of faith I read those friendly hieroglyphics! But it was much like my erstwhile experience with the birches in spring. I'd heard about the sap of these trees and had extravagant expectations of the delicious drink their lovely stems must yield. But it lacked both strength and spirit.

Alas! and how utterly hopeless was everything else I heard and saw.

Sometimes, when I went about among these polished people, it really seemed to me that human nature had broken down into so many species of beast. Here, as everywhere, it was the men who were especially degenerate and corrupt.

There are animals that howl when they hear music. But when talk turned to beauty of the spirit and youthfulness of heart, my more mannerly humans laughed. Wolves slink off when someone strikes a light. When these people saw a spark of reason they'd turn their backs like thieves.

When I spoke the odd warm word of ancient Greece, they yawned and opined, it was this day and age we had to live in; and another added weightily, good taste was still alive and well.

And sure enough, this was soon in evidence. One of them japed like a deckhand, the other puffed out his cheeks and spouted gobbets of wisdom.

Or there'd be one who'd act enlightened, snap his fingers at heaven and proclaim: he'd never worried about the birds in the bush, give him the bird in the hand anytime! Yet mention death to him and he would at once clasp his hands, and in the course of conversation observe that it's a dangerous thing our priests now count for nothing.

The only ones I sometimes had a use for were the tellers of tales, the walking roll calls of foreign cities and countries, the talking peep boxes in which one can see spires and marketplaces and potentates on chargers.

I finally grew weary of throwing myself away, looking for grapes in a desert and flowers on a field of ice.

I now lived more determinedly alone, and the gentle spirit of my youth had almost wholly vanished from my soul. The incurableness of the age had become plain to me from so much I tell and leave untold, and the beautiful consolation of finding my world in a single soul, embracing my kind in but one friendly figure, this too was denied me.

Dear friend! what were life without hope? A spark that leaps from the coal and perishes, and like a gust of wind heard in the dreary season, it soughs for a moment and then it's gone — should we think that's the way it is with us?

Even the swallow seeks friendlier climes in winter, the hart runs around in the heat of the day and its eyes seek streams of water. Who tells the infant its mother won't withhold her breast? And look! it seeks it still.

Nothing could live if it had not hope. My heart now locked its treasures away, but only to keep them safe for better times, for the one, the holy, the true that at some period of existence should surely meet my thirsting soul.

How blissfully I'd often cling to it in hours of forefeeling when it gently played like moonlight around my soothed brow? Already then I knew you, already then you looked upon me like a spirit from the clouds, you who'd one day rise for me, in the peacefulness of beauty, out of the dismal wave of the world! Now this heart would never more battle and burn.

As a lily sways in a silent breeze, so stirred my being in its element, in rapturous dreams of her.

Hyperion to Bellarmin [VII]

Smyrna was soured for me now. My heart had grown altogether weary over time. Now and then the wish might rear in me to wander round the world, or find some war to fight in, or else seek out my Adamas and burn away my rancor in his fire; but wish was all it stayed, and my futile sapless life refused to be refreshed.

Summer was now coming to an end; already I could sense the dreich dank days and the whistling of the winds and the brawling of the rain-swollen streams; and nature, which like a foaming fountain had swelled up in every flower and tree, stood already now before my darkened mind, dwindling and closed down and turned in upon itself, like me.

I wanted to take with me what I could of all this fleeting life; all I'd grown to love without I wanted to make safe within, for well I knew that the returning year would find me no longer amidst these trees and mountains; and so now, more than before, I walked and rode about throughout the region.

But what mainly drove me abroad was the secret longing to catch sight of one I'd encountered daily for some time, passing beneath the trees before the city gates.

Like a young titan the glorious stranger strode amongst this race of pygmies who with timid joy drank in his beauty, sizing up his strength and stature, feasting with furtive glance upon the glowing bronzed Roman face, as if upon forbidden fruit; and it was a glorious moment each time this man's eye, for whose gaze the vastness of the aether seemed too small a bound, so laid aside all pride and searched and strove until it felt itself in mine, and blushingly we passed each other by, looking all the while.

One day I'd ridden deep into the forests of Mount Mimas, and didn't turn home till late evening. I'd dismounted and was leading my horse down a steep, broken path, over tree-roots and stones, and as I wound my way down through the scrub into the hollow that now opened before me, I was suddenly set upon by Karaburun robbers, and at first, I struggled to fend off their two drawn sabres, but they were already weary from other work, and in the end I coped. I calmly got back on my horse and rode on down.

At the foot of the mountain, amidst the woods and the piled-up crags, a small glade opened up before me. It grew light. The moon had just risen over the gloomy trees. From a distance I saw horses stretched out on the ground and men beside them in the grass.

'Who are you?' I called out.

'That's Hyperion!' cried a hero's voice, joyfully surprised. 'You know me,' the voice went on; 'I see you every day under the trees by the city gates.'

My horse flew to him like an arrow. The moonlight shone bright in his face. I knew him; I jumped down.

'Good evening!' cried the gentle strapping fellow, giving me a look both wild and tender, and his brawny fist squeezed mine and made me feel his meaning through and through.

Oh, now my bootless life was at an end!

Alabanda — this was the stranger's name — now told me that he and his servant had been set upon by robbers and the two that I'd encountered had been sent packing by him, that he'd lost his way out of the forest and hence had been forced to stay put till I came by. 'This has cost me a friend,' he added, pointing to his dead horse.

I gave mine to his servant and we proceeded on foot.

'It serves us right,' I began, as we made our way out of the forest arm in arm; 'why did we have to hold back for so long and pass each other by, so that it took this misadventure to bring us both together.'

'But I must tell you,' replied Alabanda, 'that you were more to blame, you were the colder one. I rode after you today.'

'My glorious friend!' I cried, 'just you wait and see! you shall never surpass me in love.'

Each moment brought us closer, more joyfully together.

As we approached the city we passed a well-built caravansary, resting amid murmuring fountains and fruit trees and sweet-scented meadows.

We decided to spend the night there. We sat up late together, with the windows open. A sublime spirit of stillness enfolded us. Earth and sea were sunk in blissful silence, like the stars that hung above us. Barely a breeze floated into the room from the sea and gently played with our light, and perhaps the more plangent tones of distant music drifted to us, while the thundercloud lay cradled in the aether's bed and sounded fitfully through the stillness from afar, like a slumbering giant when he sighs more deeply in his dreadful dreams.

Our souls were bound to be all the more powerfully drawn together, because they'd been unwillingly closed off from one another. We met like two streams that come rolling down the mountain and hurl aside the ballast of earth and stones and rotten wood and all the sluggish mess that holds them back, clearing their way to each other and bursting through to where, embracing and embraced with equal force, they mingle into one majestic river and begin their wandering course into the vastness of the sea.

He, by fate and men's barbarism driven from hearth and home and hunted hither and thither amongst strangers, from early youth made savage and embittered, and yet also with an inner heart full of love, full of longing to break out of the coarse husk and into a congenial element; I, so inwardly detached from everything already, so wholly alien and lonely amongst men, in the dearest melodies of my heart accompanied so grotesquely by the world's clanging cymbals; I, for whom the blind and lame were hated of my soul, yet myself too blind and lame, so utterly encumbered by all I had in common, be it ever so remotely, with the sophisticates and pedants, the barbarians and the wiseacres — and so full of hope, so full of single-hearted expectation of a more beautiful life —

How could these two youths not rush to embrace each other in temptestuous joy?

O you, my friend and brother-in-arms, my Alabanda, where are you? I could believe you've gone across into the unknown land, to peace, and have become again what once we were as children.

Sometimes, when a thunderstorm passes overhead, dispensing its divine energies on forests and seeded fields, or when the waves of the surging sea disport themselves, or a chorus of eagles soars around the mountain peaks where I wander, my heart can stir as if my Alabanda were not far away; but more visibly, more vividly, more palpably he lives within me, just as once he stood before me, a fierily stern and terrible accuser when he rehearsed the sins of the age. How then my spirit awakened in its depths, how the thundering words of remorseless justice rolled over my tongue! Like harbingers of Nemesis, our thoughts scoured the earth and cleansed it till not a trace of any curse remained.

We also summoned the past before our tribunal; proud Rome didn't daunt us with its glory, nor Athens seduce us with its youthful bloom.

Like storms when they, exulting and relentless, blast their way through woods and over mountains, so our souls forged ever onwards in their colossal projects; not that we, like milksops, brought forth our world as if by incantation, callowly expecting to encounter no resistance — Alabanda was too astute and too manful for that. But often even effortless enthusiasm can be soldierly and shrewd.

One day I recall with particular vividness.

We'd gone together out into the countryside, sat in intimate embrace in the dusky shade of the evergreen laurel, looking together in our Plato where he speaks so wonderfully sublimely of ageing and renewal, and now and then resting our eyes upon the muted leafless landscape where heaven, more beautifully than ever, with cloud and sunlight played about the trees in their autumnal sleep.

Then we spoke much of present-day Greece, both with bleeding hearts, for this same dishonored soil was fatherland to Alabanda too.

And he was indeed uncommonly moved.

'When I see a child,' he cried, 'and consider how demeaning and corrupting is the yoke that it will bear, and that it will languish, as we do, that it will search for human beings, as we do, and ask, as we do, after the beautiful and the true, that it will fruitlessly waste away because it will be alone, as we are, that it — O Greeks, just take your sons from their cradles and cast them into the river, so that at least they'll be spared your shame!'

'Surely, Alabanda, things will surely change!' I said.

'How?' he retorted; 'our heroes have lost their fame, our sages their disciples. Great deeds, without a noble people to heed them, are no more than a hefty blow to a numb skull, and lofty words that find no lofty hearts in which to echo are like a dying leaf rustling down into the dung. What will you do about it?'