...

Hölderlin Today
Author(s): André du Bouchet, Beatrice Cameron and Madeleine Hage
Source: SubStance, Vol. 4, No. 10 (Autumn, 1974), pp. 5-13
Published by: University of Wisconsin Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3683941
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 ... HOLDERLIN TODAY

duBouchet
Andr6

Stuttgart, I do not know the language which was, which

March 20, 1970. is that of HIlderlin today. This lack of know-
Delivered on ledge to which I must, in the open, admit, does
the occasion not seem to me, at first thought, of a nature to
of the second hinder the movement of a poem, independent as it
centenary of is, sometimes, of the language into which it will
HOIderlin's have inscribed itself. I am here because I did
birth. not let myself be blocked, in translating Hilder-
Dedicated today lin, by an obstacle of language, this at the
to Paul Celan, price of multiple misconstructions. But neither
who in the same can I identify myself entirely with the word
hour read some which I am now in process of uttering: this is
recent poems. also, I observe, partly foreign to me, even to
the same extent that it is perhaps--certainly--
instant by instant disjoined from you. Along a
fracture, inherent, then, as it were, to the act
of speaking, and which each of us can sense in
his own language, in the language, I must immedi-
ately add, which mere hazard will have designated
as being one's own--along a fracture, then, if we
happen to perceive that a hazard makes of each of
us a speaker of one language rather than another--
along a fracture it is sometimes given to us to
glimpse, close up, something which every word
one grasps, beginning with that of the language
which one does not question, labors to obliterate
in part.
Aside, suddenly, from the signification--
through the medium of those significations* which
are indicated to me or to which I am referred,
*Commentof the author on this usage:" 'through
the medium of those significations...' might con-
ceivably be taken as meaning 'thanks to the medi-
um, or via the medium'--but au travers meme
emphasizes that the medium is broken through,
that hearing is a break through the medium of
meaning..." Letter to the translator Aug. 8, 1974.
SUB-STANCE No. 10, 1974 5

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6 Andre du Bouchet

I hear a word. Independent, sometimes, provided

I listen, of the one I understand. I hear, then,
exactly.as in the moment I am speaking (I myseZf
am speaking), that which escapes me...there nothing
can be lost, even when, in speaking, a manifest
meaning is affected. The gamut of the word is
inexhaustible--whether it is brief or not, some-
times it is brief. And--I am speaking, here we
are speaking, our breath is at stake--even if,
in the thick of one or the other of those langu-
ages from which we do not dream of disjoining our-
selves, we should suffer from the distortion which
a distance at which we see ourselves kept inflicts
on our own daily speaking--even if that word which
one hears should proclaim itself entirely foreign
here, clamourously uttered...always too loud...
or too soft...hubbub... whisper... and--surrounded
by a silence. Ein Zeichen...deutungstos... A sign...
Word of rupture, as if through the medium of the void of
inherited language which each of us possesses, meaning...
it were the point, then, among others, of the
irruption, the dispossession from without--of that
dispossession upon which the outside does not cease
to manifest itself, with all speed, as such. Ein
Zeichen...deutungslos: a sign, as though void of
meaning...This is said--on an obscurity, at first
glance--in all languages, when such a word comes to
light, and allows itself, for a fraction of an in-
stant, to be perceived distinctly. Word of a for-
eigner, yes--of one who, arriving from without,
speaks badly, or rather does not employ, as was
agreed upon, the language which "ought" to be his,
the one an only "true" language...
In an English edition of the poems of HOlder-
lin, procured during the war, and through which for
the first time that poem which seems withdrawn from
its language came to me, I point out the following
sentence: "Some remarks by Goethe about these trans-
lations"--the translations of Sophocles by
H1lderlin--are known, he considered them ludicrous..."*
As if outside the word, indeed, and already in
the language which is their own, these are word-units
which detach themselves, scarcely comprehensible at
times, eluding any grasp, but distinct nevertheless--
the vocabulary of the outside...rauschen... rustling...
Geschrei.. .Waldgeschrei, and even where with the outcry...
forest the obscurity of the forest has disappeared cry of the
--upon a rising into light--Freudengeschrei-- forest...
which dazzles... striking the ear for which the cry of joy

,1n English in the original

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 ...HOLDERLIN TODAY 7

hubbub or the silence of such an interruption is no

foreign tongue...
When Cassandra, in the drama which it was not
given toH5lderlin to translate, breaks her long-held
silence, her voice appears so distinctly, for whoever
seeks to grasp what she is uttering, only as a dis-
tinctly unintelligible murmur, or pure vociferation,
mutism still, a sealed letter... "Yet I know how to
speak the Grecian tongue..." "The Oracles of the Sun,
they too: obscurely though..." retorts the chorus to
the single voice which has just detached itself, to that
word of annunciation, that distinct word whose clair-
voyance remains without bearing on what it announces,
since it is precisely the annunciation of the disappear-
ance of the one who speaks--later, of the one who hears--
but first, of the one who speaks--of, to begin with, the
death, quite close at that moment, of Cassandra.
Arriving upon a silence, it is that sign--deutungslos void of
--irreducible, as soon as perceived, to any amalgam meaning
of language, but which, through the medium of language--
still--and through it alone--comes to light...Word with-
out bearing, word of Cassandra, word from which no lesson
is to be drawn, a word each time, all in all, with
nothing to say, and which we merely register when we have
heard it. And this distinct word, whose corporeality
one grasps as it passes, is itself only an indentation
in meaning, an enclave in our language of that disjoined
future, inaccessible to each of us--the impression each
time of the time to come, imminent, when, once more,
necessarily, we shall part company--as when, this word
once pronounced, the mutism or hubbub of the air, its
support, gains the upper hand, and for another ear
always...This, which opens, as if to the detriment of
the primary signification, upon an instant of afterwards,
a part of us is determined to refuse. Inaudible, asserts
the mingled voice of all and sundry, or illegible
syllables, evoking the sounds of the wild animal one
has just captured and is exhorting to use gestures,
rather--if indeed one does not wonder to oneself "whether
she has not some unknown barbarian tongue, like the
swallow"... XhXL66voq 6tbrv. But the word of
Cassandra is not in the domain of meaning, of a vouloir
dire,* wishing-to-say... To open tne mouth, then, is
homologous to a time anterior to the word--to the mute
--barbarian gesture of the hand ioapf&vq Xept of one
who lacks those means of expression which one possesses

*A problem of translation has been solved, for the moment, by the

inclusion of the original expression, here foreign, flanked by
its idiomatic and literal glosses. Elsewhere it will be seen that
the English word is used as though its semantic field were identi-
cal to that of the French parole.

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8 Andrd du Bouchet

in a different sense from that in which one possesses

the hand... "Yet I know how to speak the Grecian
tongue"... But whatever is uttered in this manner
can have in the permitted, devolved, instated order
which it is destined to rupture, no import but that
of the irreceivable silence.., distinctly heralded...
Word of annunciation... singular... strident some-
times... sharp... evaporating upon utterance...
swallow-word...
And here all these foreign words are met,
right away, by another:Schwalben... or Geschrei swallows
von Schwalben... Schwalben Geschrei... and, in cry of swallows
order to localise it outside, where upon inter- cry of the
ruption by such cries, or calls--coming from swallows
without--from instant to instant a single homo-
geneous expanse recomposes itself, planished,
waveless at the top... almost a silence, or a
watersurface pierced once more by a gliding word...
umschwebet... Den umschwebet Geschrei von glides...
Schwalben... In which, with all speed, upon the Around it glides
discovery of the disparity peculiar to the word the cry of the
of augury withdrawn, in part, even at the moment swallows...
of utterance, from acquired meanings, there can
be glimpsed in the language--whatever our langu-
age may be--that abyss which the plurality of
language shows forth, precisely, today, like a
geological fault--or the daylight through a lacuna
in perpetual formation which, planar--but such
planarity is none the less abyss--crops out through
the devolved meaning, in order to translate a
morrow already in progress, already present, repre-
sented by the silence... Ein stilles Leben ist then silence
es... is life...
...upon the scooping-out of such depths--
whether I speak, as here, or read somewhere else
in silence--I find, with all speed, support...
This--to speak, or read, as they emerge or fleet-
ingly alight--is to speak or read the words with
a noise or with a silence, too loudly or too softly,
always--it is to read, it is to speak blindly...
It is also, when one advances with as many pre-
cautions as possible--gropingly--to translate...
Upon a disparity, now manifest, enlarged, between
at least two languages, foreign, no longer one to
the other, but one like the other... (and it is
not the sense which most often forms the obstacle
here--it is myself, before the sense forms,
syllable after syllable, opaque, as through a
medium...) round the
rauscht so um der Thrme Kronen/Sanfter battlements
...es how the cry of
Schwaliben Geschrei..
...with barbarian hand... gentle swallows
The daylight of this surface, of this sounds

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 .. TODAY 0
.IHOLDERLIN

support contiguous to the word, which is not a

surface, but which, through the medium of every
inscribed word, like an intonation which escapes
us, deepens constantly forward towards us, will
be spoken perhaps, in lieblicher Bl"ue, where it in lovely
will have cropped out... the daylight... blueness
Schwalben Geschrei... still more words--ours... cry of
"us": "ein Zeichen sind wir, deutungslos... swallows
upon our disjuncture, our mutism still to come. we are a sign
But of the daylight itself against which, with void of
which the words that we are wheel, turn over and meaning
are obliterated, like vocal and volatile indices
of the endless aperture which surrounds us, it
can still be said, upon a word then broken off--
in suspense: "Nein, wahrhaftig, der Tag/ Bildet No, truly, the
keine/ Menschenformen"... And once more "we" daylight molds
appear referred to a silence. On the spot where no human forms
it appears, to inscribe itself--deutungslos--a void of
word vanishes. Reemerges--herauskommt--and goes meaning
back in, without letup, effaces itself in the comes out
whiteness of a support infinitely close to us,
nameless... For a time. Along a fracture.
And from the ever-overhanging depth upon which
what receives the name poem must open... "die then the form
Bildsamkeit herauskommt dann des Menschen.. ." of the human
Here--going back in--is what reemerges. For a emerges
time... Here, in the coolness of a disparity in-
cessantly reestablished, is this word in per-
petual formation, partly withdrawn from its
meaning, hermetic, that is to say open to an as
it were mute value to which any signification,
each time, momentarily, is superadded. The word--
a layer, or the vehicle, perhaps--nothing more--
and half carried off, as we go, proceed, by the
very breath which utters it, even to this common
breath, or an interval which, in a generality
which from then on no longer appears that of
language alone, opens up--ahead of what is said
--infinitely close to us...
Upon a cessation, each
time, of significations, brought back to the word
which one hears--when the hearing suffices, as
it seems... Word of Cassandra... swallow-word...
Pronounced only at the price, almost immediately,
of its disappearance, as the blue of the air re-
flected returns into the blue. Which says at
every instant what coies afterwards, even if that
afterwards would have to be translated by the same
word still, and this too is a fault-line in our
own language... But the future uttered is itself
forgotten, as with all speed a word passes--here
I help myself out, against the meaning, blindly,
with the first-come assonance--upon le bl~ue, blue
l'oub li... oblivion

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10 Andr6 du Bouchet

And yet it is the word, where it comes to light,

of an annunciation as it were foreign to this language
to which a hazard will have ended by joining, we be-
lieve, indissolubly, each of us---and from which we will
nevertheless, it tells, it toreteils, irave to uisen-
tangle ourselves... It is against the annunciation,
always--upon a silence--of a silence, like this one,
sprachlos, and of the cold which follows, sprachios speechless
und kalt that everything we mean and wish to say, speechless
every word that would be exclusively meaning--with- and cold
out being conformable, for all that, to our wish--
revolts, it is such an annunciation which it attempts
to discredit: word of a barbarian.., word without
meaning... swallow-words, yes...
...ein stilles Leben ist es... and, at the end, this life
of this poem (doubtful, held in suspicion... 'This is
poem cannot be ascribed to Hilderlin with certainty'" silence
--to recall the foreign terms, the terms of non-recog-
nition linked to an already long-ago first reading of
HO1derlin)--at the end of this poem around which I
linger today--in Zieblicher BZaue--the word which de-
taches itself is surely the word of one who may well--
each of us may--against the background of the ever
imminent interruption--take up again the apostrophe
of the last line but one... armer Fremdling in poor
Griechenland!-- Thus, in Aeschylus, upon a word foreigner
called into question--a word, there, in the air... in Greece!
where, when the air which carries it carries it away,
it goes back into the aperture which it will have
marked--that is, to its place denoting also a void--
when the breath which carries this word already mingles
with the air which the one who speaks will not be
breathing,: 'Yet I know how to speak the Grecian tongue.'
Xd 4?v Myxv y EThCXXv 4
Eaxp&G-Va cptv.
But where the corporeality of that word, distinct,
retains us, blindly retains us, I pass. Speaking al-
ways too low, or too loudly--if I speak.
"I regard certain spoken or written words," ob-
serves Diderot in a letter-fragment, not dated, but of
a year adjacent to, if not identical with, the year in
which Hi5lderlin is to be born, "I regard certain spoken
or written words as holes pierced suddenly in my door,
by which I see the whole interior of the dwelling, as
by a ray which suddenly illumines the depth of the
cavern and then goes out." Such a hole in our langu-
age is that of a word which sometimes illumines when it
desists from its meaning. And what is outside langu-
age--on the other side of that door, or that wall, a
word of interruption says it--without meaning to.

;In English in the original.

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 ...HOLDERLIN TODAY 11

Whether it goes back into the interior, or reemerges,

its movement is still the same. And where the in-
terior and this outside which a wall separates for
a time intersect, there is no longer a word, it
seems, but a lacuna... This word, written or spoken,
which is a lacuna, a hole, and in the warp of our
language as it were a blinding interstice, sign of
outside and inside, I see it--Hblderlin says blaIue--
where it illumines, like a whiteness... a whiteness,
in the farthest distance, as of a support in the
expectation of a word which will alight on it for
a time... Here enlarged beyond measure, through the
medium of those already inscribed, in order to bring
the depth of the cavern back--in broad daylight--
to the foreground. To the air of this foreground.
And all the air which we must--even outside the
word--sustain, a word, again, renders it, along a
defect as it were inherent. And this is to return
the written word to the uttered--the word inscribed
in its will to eternity, to the subversion, the
insolence of the uttering breath--the written word
to the unconstraint of the uttered--which is lost...
The hermetic word is the word that inscribes
itself as one speaks--without even waiting, upon
the whiteness similar to the air of lost breaths
on which it takes its place, for any mouth to open,
pronouncing it... Word destined, written though it
is, to be lost, like the very breath of the one
who speaks--in its turn... Against the daylight of
this fracture, I speak... And what our language,
at a loss, here admitted, illumines, is an un-
grasped obscurity, it is also for each one his own
singular portion withdrawn--and lost--from the
generality of language, and emerging, upon the
breath of a word of rupture, into the daylight.
There, in lieblicher Blaue, a terminal line
finds, in that confusing space in which every word
in motion inscribes itself only to disappear--
finds, as each of us, whatever his language, may,
upon a silence, or upon a word pronounced too low
or too loud, find--equilibrium for a moment: living is death,
"Leben ist Tod, und Tod ist auch ein Leben"... and death is
the accent placed on Leben, which is the first also a life
and the last word, the elusive vacuity of death
coming to mark always, midway, the very aperture
of what is disjoined from the word, and what the
word, as if broken open by its center, will then
say.
I speak--but here where it seems to me that
I begin to speak, where I have just begun to speak,
I am really short of time--we are short of time...
Nothing can change the fact, as to the depth in
which, speaking or not, in lieblicher Bl~ue, we

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12 Andre du Bouchet

find ourselves immersed--that it is still by surfaces

with all speed re-employed, as though exterior, fleet-
ing, in retreat from what they transmit, translate,
or reflect, that we must continue to travel... On
the paper, wall of the inscribed word... das Blech-, the corru-
in Zieblicher Blhue, or the corrugated iron... gated iron
transitory coverings, and always as it were ana-
chronistic... tracks of that disaffection which
accentuates a movement... blinding parallels of
the rails by which all and sundry here, without
necessarily meeting, will have arrived close to
here--or that bulging of the asphalt of roads which,
by means of the conjunction of speed and the sun,
will produce, just as well as the motionless corru-
gated iron--das Blech--of a roof's surface fused with
the air, a sort of arid blue watersurface in front
of us...
Languages--and routes, roads -still... bifur-
cations, at top speed... plurality of our con-fused
languages where brusquely they intersect only to
divide once more at some point--call it, here,
Hblderlin--apparently motionless of a commonlocus
withdrawn, even as in the thick of each language,
from the route of speech... the breath, or that void,
for lack of time, without going into what element of
the illusory the color of such a qualification might
imply, which will here be called blue... Bltue...
like Leben, first and last word, or ouZli, for the life
promptitude of some wingstroke... On the periphery oblivion
of that oblivion--ein stilles eben--always in for- a life in
mation, as though plural to infinity, a word un- silence
ceasingly doubles and multiplies itself, finding,
before it disappears, upon a--blinding--afterwards,
which in every instant it precedes only by a little,
that support in which each wingbeat, past all
counting, will make a thousand...
Here, no birth is memorable, we are all, when
it comes to saying this, without a native language,
the surface which contains a word passes above it
and carries it off, a leaf of paper which one turns
is not the surplice of a celebrant, the corrugated
iron, the rooftop, of the escheated place returns
today into the blue which is oblivion, to speak does
not constitute an ascendancy, poetry as priveleged
function, privileged word, unique word--of the unique
and sovereign language, is revealed here as useless
and even placeless... There is no longer a place to
stop, we can no longer stop, we do not wish to, we
too are going back, going back in--to where the silence
can perhaps be perceived as a compact thing--outside,

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 ...HOLDERLIN TODAY 13

as here, and we shall have arrived, each of us, along

the fracture of a halt which is not an interruption.*
Andre du Bouchet

translated by Beatrice Cameron

(with the assistance of Madeleine Hage)

*The French version of this essay was published in

L'Ephemere, Etd 1970.

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