Hyperion, or the Hermit in Greece

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.

2 [Hölderlin’s note] It should go without saying that such utterances, as mere manifestations of the human mind, ought properly to give no grounds for offence.

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 tranquillity 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 practised 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 sombre 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!