CELEBRATION OF PEACE

(1801)

I ask only for the reader’s indulgence. In which case, these lines will by no means prove incomprehensible; still less, objectionable. But should some folk, nevertheless, find them too unconventional in style – then let me confess: I cannot help it. On a fine day there should be room for almost every sort of song. And Nature, whose bounty they express, will accept them all.

The author intends to lay before the public a whole collection of such pieces. So, let this one serve as a sample.

  

  Soothing, melodious reverberations wreathe

Themselves around the breeze that airs the custom-

Hallowed, antique hall; whilst, over

Soft green carpets, coiling clouds of fragrance

Fold and drift; and glittering tables, piled

With chalices of patterned gold, platefuls of ripest fruit,

Stand splendidly arrayed, to frame, beneath,

In lengthy vistas stretching all around,

A spacious level floor.

For now, as evening falls,

From far and wide

The eager guests arrive.

  

  And there, already, in the dark

I think I see him, smiling now, the day’s hard slog

Complete: that Prince, whose Feast it is.

Such loftiness is yours, O Prince, although you opt,

With lowered gaze, to disavow your higher origins

And, tired (it seems) of heroism, play the role

Of being, self-forgetfully, at home with us,

Yet we incline to you on bended knee.

Bewilderment exclaims, this is no mortal!

Wisdom’s good whatever way it comes, but when

A god’s involved, there shines

Another quality of light.

  

  So many hopes are clustered here, from ages past!

Nor could we help, in retrospect, but be amazed

At what you have achieved, you great Subduer

Of our bickering pettiness, whom neither fire nor flood

Could quell. And only now can we discern

The long maturing work which brought us where we are.

The echoes of millennial thunder sink, immeasurably

Distant, underneath the rolling toll of bells,

The lullaby, which sings out our release!

And you, O happy childhood days, when we

Remember you, it brings a sweet nostalgia to the Feast.

O friends, let age give way to agelessness!

Grey hair is no excuse, the time has come

To see to garlands and to merriment!

  

  And of the many guests one might invite,

You surely must come first, grave advocate

Of friendship: whom now I see beside the well,

Out at the city’s edge, beneath a Syrian palm.

The cornfield rustles round about, a gentle coolness

Breathes from shadowed sacred slopes.

On high, the clouds with intimate affection circle you

With shade, as if to veil and civilize

The sharp prophetic desert-glare you radiate, O holy Youth.

But even as you speak, the crisis looms!

That deadly, swelling dark! So swiftly come and go

The gifts of heavenly grace. But not in vain;

  

  For no god ever oversteps the mark.

And it’s to spare us, they curtail

Their various rare incursions here below,

Since these will always risk a crass response.

Rough-fingered louts despatched from who knows where,

With crazy spite may desecrate the sanctuary.

Such, after all, is revelation’s price. No one, indeed,

Shows proper gratitude for grace.

Therefore, we need to ponder this:

How, had the giving been too urgent,

Then, long since, our hearth’s heaped up excess

Would have had everything ablaze: walls, roof and all.

  

  And we’ve received great blessings,

Even so: one gift was fire;

Another was the prospect of the sea;

Then, too, the sky at night.

These wonders speak to us,

Continually,

Of otherness.

Until – at last – we had God’s Son.

Fresh from the song-filled court above,

He’s heaven’s representative,

Plenipotentiary,

Whom now we welcome. Whereupon,

Whilst we in festive mood applaud him,

He, majestically, draws near,

To greet us.

  

  Many ages long he waited, sovereignly

Aloof, until the time was right. Yet then,

Since Truth ideally demands the empathy

That springs from shared exposure, he came

Down, to make his home within the everyday

Domain of mundane need. And now,

Let’s take this as an invitation:

Our own chance to have a say. So let me,

Personally, add how good it seems to me that,

Self-renewed by Art, the Artist, exiting

His quiet studio, should find this loving way

To revolutionise the world’s affairs.

  

  For, see! It breaks: the race’s second dawn.

First, we were made a conversation;

Now, we’re called to be a song!

The slow unfolding work of history reveals

A primal pact between the spirit of Humanity

And all the other natural powers.

Thus, God’s indwelling-everywhere is finally

Made manifest; much as the growth of flora signifies

Not just what light and air have done, but also Mother Earth.

And these are, then, the sign of our response to you,

You holy ones, the proof that we

Still hold you dear:

  

  Our liturgies. Where we commune

With you, close up. And you draw near,

Not now in magic, or in thunder,

But in lift and surge

Of music; pleasure found in

Neighbourly communion, friendship, welcoming

The stranger; everything that, gentle Youth, you for example

Typically inspire. And so it is that, as the time draws near

And all is readied for the Feast,

I’ve placed you by the Prince’s side.

Not that we’ll ever,

Humankind, attain fulfilment till

You sacred spirits all

Descend together, as our guests,

To make us whole.

  

  Light-breathing winds

Already promise this. Fresh signs of hope

Appear like lifted steam above the dale.

The land’s astir with thunderous echoes

And our cheeks are flushed.

Pure mother-love,

it seems, is now

Enthroned, ascendant

Over Death. And it’s as though

Those at the very end of life now also sense

Some new-emergent bounty

In the light of dawn.

  

  Indeed, the richest joys

Depend upon the scheming, troubled

Down-thrust of the Spirit.

Everything within this hall

Is beautiful. The rarest beauty, though,

The most desirable of all,

That golden fruit

From Eden’s orchard,

By historic tempests felled, yet

Nonetheless, somehow, preserved intact,

Still redolent of the Beyond:

A truly honest soul.

  

  You, Mother Nature,

Like a lioness, with mighty roars,

Lamented your lost children, when you found

That one you’d fostered as your own

Had then gone on

To steal them: causing gods,

Alas, to mix with satyrs.

Drastic remedies were thus required.

And all because that mad sophisticate

Whom you’d incautiously empowered

Had nothing, in reality, but hatred

For your rule. Now, though, you see it.

So, you wait. For courage

Is slow-growing here on earth; and, as it grows,

It needs the shelter of some suitable routine.

  

  

Only discovered, in fair copy form, in 1954, this poem was originally a response to the signing of the Peace of Lunéville in February 1801. In retrospect little more than an early blip in the Napoleonic Wars, to Hölderlin however, at the time, this evidently appeared much more significant. It was a treaty between the French Republic, then under the rule of Napoleon as First Consul, and the Holy Roman Empire under the Austrian, Hapsburg Emperor Francis II; following the military defeats of the Austrian army at Marengo and Hohenlinden.

There has been much debate among commentators as to the exact identity of the ‘Prince’ introduced in strophe 2: is this Christ? In strophe 9, where the poet is addressing Christ, the ‘Youth’ of strophe 4, we read: ‘darum rief ich … dich zum Fürsten des Festes’; literally, ‘therefore I called … you to the Prince of the Feast’. This is ambiguous. I’ve dis-ambiguated it: ‘And so … I’ve placed you by the Prince’s side’; taking the poet to be in the role of master of ceremonies, concerned with place-settings at table. But it might mean something like: ‘And so … I’ve hailed you as my Prince’; with the poet, simply, in the cheering crowd. In the context of strophe 9, the latter is perhaps more natural. Yet, when Christ is first introduced, as the ‘Youth’, in strophe 4, he appears to be quite a separate figure from the ‘Prince’ of strophes 2 and 3. Actually, I do not think there is any truly fundamental contradiction here. The Prince, in the first instance, is none other than the personification of Peace, as a divine principle. As such, he is indeed a manifestation of the divine Logos; just as Christ is, who may of course also be called ‘Prince of Peace’. Only, in the context of this Feast, the Prince is a post-Enlightenment, essentially philosophic, trans-confessional, manifestation of the Logos; closely related, as such, to the third major divine figure here, Mother Earth / Mother Nature (strophes 8, 10, 12, 13).

Strophe 12 speaks of a child of Mother Nature who has disastrously turned out, after all, to hate her. The catastrophe involves ‘causing gods / … to mix with satyrs’. This is surely a reference to the Jacobin Terror, in its character as an aberration of the spirit of Enlightenment; accompanied as it was by an attempt to replace Christian worship with new, revolutionary sacred festivals. (My phrase ‘mad sophisticate’, here, is a gloss on Hölderlin’s original text, to this effect.) The Jacobin ‘Cult of the Supreme Being’ is indeed a key part of the background to Hölderlin’s sense of new religious possibilities being apocalyptically opened up; but very much as a warning, a demonstration of what this opening-up does not mean.