Ever-beautiful youth, before it withers

(Holderlin, The Death of Empedocles)

One point on the poem is it is not to be read as imagery combine with indication in the poem about how to interpret the imagery.

[I]t presents difficulties and in the end is thoroughly mistaken if we seek to introduce a distinction between strophes that are descriptive and those that are explanatory. For even the strophes that forgo supplying any image relating to the river (the second part of strophe III and strophes VII, VIII, and IX) are not some kind of philosophical elaboration of what has been told by way of images in the preceding strophes. Rather, what we have in each case is an ongoing telling or, better, a telling that goes back and forth, and that in itself presents the fact that what is to be told is, in its essence, manifold. (Heidegger, Martin. Hölderlin’s Hymns: “Germania” and “The Rhine” (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 261). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition.)

The new “truth” being shown is not truth “as” certainty (free from doubt), but the great truths of the human condition, more specifically the great truths of the German condition that are being created, as opposed to the great truth of fate of the restlessness of the Greek world.  The imagery of the river is not nature imagery meant to evoke feelings, or a sign like an example, analogy, metaphor, or allegory, rather it is meant historically.

[A] new fundamental experience of beyng. Such an experience entails, first, a transformation in the essence of truth; and second, a transformation in the essence of labor. This fundamental experience will have to be more original than that of the Greeks, which expresses itself in the concept and word φύσις. Whenever we hear talk of the river and of waters here, we must therefore set aside our contemporary representation of nature, insofar as we still have one at all. Earth and homeland are meant historically. The river is historical. For this reason, it is not, for instance, a mere sensuous image borrowed from nature that symbolizes the beyng of the demigods, but the reverse: The poetic thinking of such beyng first of all creates, in an anticipatory manner, the condition for experiencing river and homeland in what they are—that is, historically. The poet, therefore, not merely can, but must tell alternately of the river and of destiny. In so doing, he means by river not a visual image, and by destiny not an accompanying abstract concept; he means one and the same thing by both. The river Rhine is a destiny, and destiny comes to be only in the history of this river. Every attempt to separate out image and concept here necessarily misses the poetic truth.  (Heidegger, Martin. Hölderlin’s Hymns: “Germania” and “The Rhine” (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 262-3). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition.)

Restlessness is key to the ancient outlook.  Holderlin writes “He departed and wished to wander, and impatiently To Asia he was driven by that kingly soul.”  Heidegger comments “It was the entire ancient world from which its soul—its restless, magnificent and superior soul, thinking in the direction of being as a whole; that is, its kingly soul—hoped for fulfillment… Moreover, this ‘other,’ toward which the impatiently wandering one was driven, was not even foreign, for according to the poet’s opinion, the German race had already migrated there in ancient times.  (Heidegger, Martin. Hölderlin’s Hymns: “Germania” and “The Rhine” (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 272-3). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition).    

We see this in the case of the great hero Achilles who suffered when there was nothing to do.   Heidegger comments “The Greeks: long since the people who established measure and rank, without whom Western history cannot be thought, yet to whom our contemporary historical Dasein can no more return than can the river return into its origin.”  (Heidegger, Martin. Hölderlin’s Hymns: “Germania” and “The Rhine” (Studies in Continental Thought) (pp. 274-275).  We thus see an element of the river imagery.  But the Rhine is not fate.  Rather “Precisely the Rhine—this demigod—is a destiny.”  (Heidegger, Martin. Hölderlin’s Hymns: “Germania” and “The Rhine” (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 276). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition.).  Regarding destiny, the being of the poet/demigod, we read: “Hölderlin is the poet of poets and of poetizing. (2) Hölderlin is, together with this, the poet of the Germans. (3) Because Hölderlin plays this concealed and difficult role of being the poet of poets as poet of the Germans, he has not yet become a force in the history of our people. Because he is not yet such a force, he must become such.  (Heidegger, Martin. Hölderlin’s Hymns: “Germania” and “The Rhine” (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 285). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition.)

Holderlin says of the poet “Yet what remains, the poets found…. Heidegger comments “as a telling and as something said, to place it as a myth [Sage] into the Dasein of a people… a remembrance to which a people must think its way ever anew…. history—as history, that is, as a people… to become historical, which means to be able to be a people… Full of merit, yet poetically Human dwell upon this Earth.  (Heidegger, Martin. Hölderlin’s Hymns: “Germania” and “The Rhine” (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 285-9). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition.)

The poet establishes what is really real, and so for the Greeks the real was the true, e.g., like a true friend, as opposed to the world of becoming.  Presence as houseness was the really real, while the particular house only offered as a look a limited aspect.  But why do we consider the inpermanate the unreal?  Because the constant calms our restlessness.  For Holderlin there will be new true beings as destiny (contra fate with the Greeks – man is fated to go from the fire of youth to the tedium of old age) and history of a people, “Poetizing as founded is what is real, and so-called reality is the unreal that is continually disintegrating. (Heidegger, Martin. Hölderlin’s Hymns: “Germania” and “The Rhine” (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 289). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition). Heidegger comments “But everything modern is always already out of date before it has even seen the light of day” (Heidegger, Martin. Hölderlin’s Hymns: “Germania” and “The Rhine” (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 291). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition.) The modern age knows nothing as calm since fading is the nature of it, going from one distraction to the next. 

Holderlin is not just a German poet, but one who poetizes what German is, “But this is not what we mean. ‘Poet of the Germans’ is meant not as genitivus subiectivus, but as genitivus obiectivus: the poet who first poetizes the Germans.  (Heidegger, Martin. Hölderlin’s Hymns: “Germania” and “The Rhine” (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 293). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition.).  What is the poet’s task? “The task, rather, is to take seriously the flight of the gods that has long since begun and, from out of such seriousness, to open up an intimation of their coming anew, to contribute to their return, and in this way to creatively transform the Earth and the land.  the issue is what kind of status this people will conquer for itself amid the pressing distress of our Dasein, that it should once again venture the gods, so as in this way to create a historical world.  (Heidegger, Martin. Hölderlin’s Hymns: “Germania” and “The Rhine” (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 294). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition.)

Again, we have to keep in mind the abandonment of the gods, what this means, and how the new gods arrive which has nothing to do with the commonplace meaning of theology.  We noted the flight of the gods with Calasso previously, and with Holderlin Habit is a goddess, and the Rhine/poet is a demigod.  The separation between demigod/human and god/demigod is maintained. So there is not athanatizein/Godliness of Theoria (the contemplative life) in Aristotle’s sense.

There is to be a new labor to build a new world, “Hölderlin’s poetry is neither for everyone nor for aesthetes. Hölderlin is a herald and proclaimer for those concerned: those who are themselves directed to the calling of builders building a new world. This historical world can come about only if poetizing first becomes a force within its essence, and this poetizing takes the form of a severity and definiteness of a thoughtful, questioning knowing.  (Heidegger, Martin. Hölderlin’s Hymns: “Germania” and “The Rhine” (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 295). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition.).  Specifically, “the Holy mourning is a distress that opens itself. It turns toward the gods that have fled, preserves their flight, and awaits the gods to come.”  (Heidegger, Martin. Hölderlin’s Hymns: “Germania” and “The Rhine” (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 297). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition.”  For example, the really realness of Truth as certainty, free from doubt fades as we see it fully planted in its foundation from the theology of Thomas and Luther because what had to be certain, in the sense of free from doubt, was the salvation of the soul.  This is truth “as” history rather than truth “as” goddess.  Such history reflects a decision for truth as certainty whereby mere correctness, true friend, great truths of the human condition, and the truths of a people get marginalized.  Heidegger notes “The need of the homeland and of the Earth gives rise to the nature and direction of his thinking, which is concerned solely with finding the truth of the people.”  Heidegger, Martin. Hölderlin’s Hymns: “Germania” and “The Rhine” (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 301). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition.   

Heidegger comments that “Since the flight of the gods, the Earth has been pathless. The human being cannot find the way, nor do the gods point the way directly. Yet in the rushing, self-assured course of the river, a destiny fulfills itself, land and Earth are given limits and shape, and the homeland comes into being for humans and thereby truth for the people.”  (Heidegger, Martin. Hölderlin’s Hymns: “Germania” and “The Rhine” (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 298). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition.).  What is involved here is a new understanding of history:

We are accustomed to think, under the long dominance of a quite specific ‘logic,’ that the essence is everywhere the ‘universal’: the rule and law. Among the confusions of the nineteenth century was the view that in order to be a proper science (i.e., like mathematics and natural science), historiography, which has as its object, after all, the unique course of history, had to seek out the universal and whatever followed given laws. Spengler, for example, and all ‘morphologies’ and ‘typologies’ of history, think entirely in this direction. The object of historical knowledge is neither what is individual as individuated, nor the universal and the rule, but that which is individual “as” singular. Singularity is the essence of what is great, yet also the corrupted essence of what is lowly and fallen. Singularity is the configuration and objective character belonging to the essence of history…  All too frequently we continue to think all history in the categories of the natural sciences, in particular biology and the sociology that is determined from there.” (Heidegger, Martin. Hölderlin’s Hymns: “Germania” and “The Rhine” (Studies in Continental Thought) (pp. 302-303). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition.). 

For example, the Greek determining of Being “as” presence (Parousia), houseness is present in the house like the goddess presences through the young woman, was such singular poetizing, as was Homer’s point the gods don’t appear to everyone in their fullness. For example, Niagara Falls may presence/appear “as” noise pollution for the local resident.

For the Greeks, the folly of unknowing was grounded in the fact that the everyday person is caught up in life and so doesn’t have the perspective of distance to perceive it, like a boy in a toxic romantic relationship who is too close to it to see the relationship for what it is and what his friends can see.  This folly/delusion was similar for the Germans, although it had a modern lens:

This knowing is based upon cunning and calculation. It is purely resourceful, and finds only whatever is of use to it and promotes its own enterprises. It becomes widespread as a knowing that, when it wants to know, takes refuge in standards and numbers, in machines and apparatus, which it inserts between itself and the things. And yet despite the telescope and the most sophisticated mechanisms of distance vision, it sees in the end nothing more than its own cleverness, before which it grovels. The folly of this knowing, for all its success, remains a kind of impotence; for all the fawning amazement over what is each day supposed to be something unprecedented, it remains a kind of delusion… The poet must persevere in this other knowing and telling—that is, in one that is different in kind and in its standards: He must be “Fearless” (Heidegger, Martin. Hölderlin’s Hymns: “Germania” and “The Rhine” (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 307-8). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition).  

Everyday thinking wants to reduce thinking to the lowest common denominator with examples, metaphors and analogies which is why poetizing historically is something else entirely.