THE RECALCITRANT ART

SUNY S  C C P

D J. S, 
THE RECALCITRANT ART

Diotima’s Letters to Hölderlin

and Related Missives

edited and translated by

Douglas F. Kenney
and
Sabine Menner-Bettscheid

with a foreword by
David Farrell Krell

State University of New York Press

 Published by
State University of New York Press, Albany

© 2000 David Farrell Krell

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Data

Gontard, Susette Borkenstein, 1769–1802.

The recalcitrant art : Diotima’s letters to Hölderlin and related missives /
edited and translated by Douglas F. Kenney and Sabine Menner-Bettscheid ;
with a foreword by David Farrell Krell.
p. cm. — (SUNY series in contemporary continental philosophy)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0–7914–4601–8 (alk. paper) — ISBN 0–7914–4602–6 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Gontard, Susette Borkenstein, 1769–1802—Correspondence. 2. Hölderlin, Friedrich,
1770–1843—Correspondence. 3. Authors, German—18th century—Correspondence.
4. Hölderlin, Friedrich, 1770–1843—Relations with women. 5. Gontard, Susette
Borkenstein, 1769–1802—Fiction. 6. Hölderlin, Friedrich, 1770–1843—Fiction
I. Kenney, Douglas F., d. 1999. II. Menner-Bettscheid, Sabine, d. 1999.
III. Title. IV. Series.
PT2359.H2 G585 2000
831'.61—dc21
[B] 00–022250

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 für

M I
E T
M A

What we have to suffer cannot be described;

but why we suffer it also cannot be described.
— Susette Gontard to Hölderlin, 1799
 C

F
by David Farrell Krell / ix

T’ P
Diptych / xi

T’ I
The Gontard-Hölderlin Correspondence / 1

L  D  H / 51

F V
Johanna Gok, Hölderlin’s Mother
Jacob (“Cobus”) Gontard, Diotima’s Husband
Friedrich Heinrich (“Henry”) Gontard, Diotima’s and Cobus’s Son
Sophie LaRoche, a Novelist
Dimitri Tsiboulis, a Gardener

T’ A
Children of Penury / 199

About the Translators / 257

vii
 F

There are stretches of road that should be driven only in daylight. One of
these is national road 315/27, which rises steeply from Landeck, Austria, into
the Swiss Upper Engadine. Doug Kenney and Sabine Menner-Bettscheid were
killed on that road on the night of August 19–20, 1999. Their car went off the
road at a tight bend near Scuol/Schuls, where the road surface was under
repair. According to the Alpine Rescue Team that eventually located the wreck-
age, the two were probably dead before their car reached the Inn River at the
foot of the ravine.
Doug Kenney had mailed the manuscript of The Recalcitrant Art to the
editors at SUNY Press several months before his death. He had mailed me a
card and brief letter from Salzburg, where he was meeting with Philip Glass
and Wilhelm Rihm: he had completed a libretto based on The Recalcitrant
Art and wanted to convince either or both of the composers to collaborate on
an opera. (Charred remains of a notebook—presumably containing the li-
bretto—were found near the scene of the accident; no other copy of it, to the
best of my knowledge, exists.) Kenney told me that he was joining an “old
friend” in Salzburg, and that the two of them were going to set off from there
in order to “pay homage” to Nietzsche in Sils-Maria, Upper Engadine. Pre-
sumably, that old friend was Sabine Menner-Bettscheid, whom I did not know.
Accompanying the shock that came with the news of his death was the surprise
that Menner-Bettscheid was his companion: I knew that the two of them had
quarreled bitterly about The Recalcitrant Art a year before the accident and that,
in the end, Doug Kenney alone had submitted the manuscript to the Press.
When the publishers asked me to see the book through the production
process, I immediately agreed. The Gontard letters have always seemed to me

ix
F

to possess immense historical (though modest literary) importance. I myself

would have deleted the (very strange) recto pages of the book and let Doug
Kenney’s wonderful translation of the correspondence stand on its own. As
the editors at SUNY reminded me, however, Kenney himself had asked that
the book appear in its present form, and the Press had agreed.
I therefore have restricted my involvement to the bare minimum, cor-
recting the occasional errors that I found in the manuscript and seeing it
through copyediting and two stages of proof. My thanks—in the name of the
deceased editors—to Dana Foote, who designed the book, and to Denny
Schmidt, the series editor. Schmidt knew Doug Kenney much better than I,
and it was he who þrst encouraged Kenney to translate the Gontard-Hölderlin
correspondence. David Thomas, of DePaul University, assisted me through-
out the production process, and I am grateful to him. Thanks, þnally, to Bettine
von der Seele, who served as Sabine Menner-Bettscheid’s assistant in Weimar,
for her responses to my many confused queries.

—David Farrell Krell

In der Strobelhütte, St. Ulrich

x
T’ P
Diptych
I
n the end the editors could not agree on the form that this English-language
publication of Susette Gontard’s letters to Friedrich Hölderlin should take.
Thus the book is a diptych, split down the middle, and the sewing of the
fascicles at the spine is unfortunately no more than a ruse. On the left-hand or
verso page appear the letters, translated by both editors, but with Kenney
having the þnal word and Menner-Bettscheid still raising unanswered objec-
tions. Footnotes on the verso pages are all by Kenney.
Sabine Menner-Bettscheid believes that the letters should not be exhib-
ited and examined as objects of historical scholarship and literary curiosity.
She gives her reasons in her commentary on Kenney’s introduction and
afterword and in her own meditation on the Gontard letters, the commentary
and the meditation both appearing on the right-hand or recto pages of the
book. The most controversial aspect of the book doubtless derives from
Menner-Bettscheid’s decision to add a number of þctional responses to her
meditation on the Gontard letters, believing as she does that these voices are
essential to a nonlinear, nonintrusive, caring, and antipatriarchal reading of
the Diotima letters. The þctional voices are those of (1) Hölderlin’s mother,
Johanna Gok, (2) Susette Gontard’s husband, Jacob Gontard, called “Cobus”
by his family, and (3) their son Henry; these familial voices are joined by those
of (4) Sophie LaRoche, a novelist and salonist active in several eighteenth-
century German lands, and (5) Dimitri Tsiboulis, the Greek gardener at the
Gontards’ summer home.
All of the historically validated letters and texts reproduced on the verso
pages of the book appear in a larger font size in order to highlight their impor-
tance. Likewise, all letters and other original eighteenth-century documents
that appear as indented extracts on the recto pages appear in that larger size.
Finally, there is no agreement between the editors as to how the book
should be read. Kenney insists that Diotima’s letters should be read straight

xiii
T’ P

through, interrupted only by the footnotes on the verso side; Menner-Bettscheid

suggests that the reading proceed normally, that is, from verso to recto, inas-
much as the þctional and historical materials she has added do not so much
interrupt Susette Gontard’s discourse as clarify some of the complications of
the correspondence and our relationship to it. Whereas Kenney insists that
these pages of the preface are the last in the book that should be read in the
habitual way, recto-verso, page by page, Menner-Bettscheid recommends that
the book continue to be read the way it is being read now—that, in a word,
granted the topic, it is a perfectly normal sort of book.
Because each editor signed a binding contract with the publisher, who
has been marvelously patient throughout all this, it was possible to settle the
dispute in this way alone—presenting Susette Gontard’s letters to Friedrich
Hölderlin as one panel of the diptych, with þctional voices as the other. The
alternative was to refuse to let the letters see the light of day in the English-
speaking world. Neither editor is happy with the way things have turned out,
but neither was able to resolve the absolute split between their conceptions of
the project. Our þnal act—for we will never be able to work together again—
is to beg the reader’s indulgence.

—D. F. K. and S. M-B.

Chicago and Weimar

xiv
 T’ I
The Gontard-Hölderlin Correspondence
S
eventeen handwritten letters from Susette Gontard (“Diotima”) to
Friedrich Hölderlin were discovered in the literary remains preserved
by Hölderlin’s stepbrother Carl Gok. Four or þve of her letters to
Hölderlin were no doubt lost somewhere along the way. None of Hölderlin’s
letters to Diotima survive, although we do possess drafts of four of them.
According to Adolf Beck and Michael Knaupp, whose editions of Susette
Gontard’s letters serve as the two principal textual bases for the present volume,
the descendants of Carl Gok, the family of Court Justice Dr. Arnold, retain
Susette Gontard’s extant letters in a private collection in Heidelberg.1
According to the report of Hölderlin’s nephew and godchild, Fritz
Breunlin, the family knew nothing of Hölderlin’s love affair with Susette
Gontard during the years it transpired, 1796–1798, in Frankfurt. Only when
Hölderlin’s mother opened the trunk that her son had arranged to have sent
to him from Bordeaux in the summer of 1802 did she þnd Diotima’s letters, all
from the years 1798–1800, locked away in a tiny casket. Johanna Gok sent for
a locksmith, read the letters, secured them once again in the casket, and re-
stored the casket to the bottom of her son’s trunk, as though nothing had been
touched. In the ensuing years, Hölderlin continued to keep the letters in a safe
place. We know that he had them in his possession in 1807, the year after his
release from the Autenrieth Clinic, because he sketched a poem on the back of
one of them, a poem we can date with some conþdence. Wilhelm Waiblinger,
in his essay “Friedrich Hölderlin’s Life, Poetry, and Madness” (1827), notes:
“Even during the years of his insanity, easily more than twenty years later,

1. Our þrst principal source is Hölderlins Diotima Susette Gontard: Gedichte—Briefe—

Zeugnisse, ed. Adolf Beck (Frankfurt am Main: Insel Taschenbuch, 1980); our second is Friedrich
Hölderlin, Sämtliche Werke und Briefe, ed. Michael Knaupp, 3 vols. (Munich: Carl Hanser
Verlag, 1992), vol. 2. The latter work will be cited by volume and page, the former by page
number alone, in the body of our text. See Beck’s commentary on the letters and his afterword,
193–97, 209–10, and 287–310; see Knaupp, 3: 506.

2
I
don’t mind telling you I am angry about being reduced to mere commen-
tary on you—it’s always the same old thing—but I have no one to blame
but myself. I’m the one who refused to have anything more to do with
this charade. And I won’t change my mind. I’ll do no more than help you with
“a few corrections and suggestions,” as you requested—I owe you at least that
much, I know, you don’t have to get on your high horse. But if you say “con-
tract” to me one more time I’ll roll it up and beat you over the head with it: no
contract in the world is going to bind me where I won’t be bound, and I won’t
be bound here by you or any other man. You all strike the impressive scholarly
pose, adopt the historian’s cool, detached manner, but I warn you that only
your male readers will be fooled by the disguise, and with Susette Gontard’s
letters it is the female readership you care about. You are all just like Hölderlin
and Neuffer, with their journals for “educated ladies.” Well, you’d better believe
it: we are educated, though we are no longer your ladies, and we won’t be so
easily fooled; you’ll succeed only in alienating us because of what you are
doing here—or not doing here. And what is that? You are being dishonest
about your motives. Why does this project interest you? What are you getting
out of it? I told you right from the start what was in it for me: a chance to see
once again what happens to a woman who loves courageously and writes well—
she gets herself killed. You found my view “extreme.” Read around a little.
You protested your innocence, you blamed it on Cobus her husband, you
blamed it on Gok his mother—you say you hate her cloying, suffocating piety,
but you have imitated her by breaking into Hölderlin’s casket of letters—you
blamed it on anyone who could be located safely back in the eighteenth century
in order to leave you shiny white and scholarly bright, but no one will be
fooled, my friend, no one you want to fool will be fooled. Listen to me. Read
me several times over, make an effort to understand, and then burn these
letters. All of them. You want corrections? That is my correction.

3
T’ I

letters were found to be in Hölderlin’s possession that had been written to him
by his Diotima, letters he had kept concealed all those years” (3: 506). Pre-
cisely when he released them or when they were taken from him we do not
know; before his death they were already in the possession of his sister; shortly
before her death they came into the hands of Carl Gok.
The story of Hölderlin’s and Susette Gontard’s love is quickly told—at
least in the cool and distant form of an outline of the chronology of events.
We may therefore be justiþed in limning in some of the essential background
of Hölderlin’s éducation sentimentale before we proceed to the events and the
letters in question.
No one was as ill-prepared for such a love as Hölderlin was. He was
born in 1770 in Lauffen am Neckar into the Pietist household of Heinrich
Friedrich Hölderlin and his young wife Johanna Christiana Heyn. Hölderlin’s
father died of a stroke at age thirty-six, when the boy was only two; his mother
remarried two years later, taking Johann Christoph Gok as her life-partner.
They moved to the town of Nürtingen, farther south in the Neckar Valley.
Gok, Hölderlin’s “second father,” was much loved by his stepson. A son, Carl
Gok, Hölderlin’s stepbrother, was born to the couple in 1776.
In the spring of 1779 Johann Gok had to help his fellow townspeople
þght a ÿood of the Neckar River. He caught a severe cold and bronchitis and
died a week before his stepson’s ninth birthday. Hölderlin attributed his “pro-
pensity to mourning” to the deaths of his “two fathers” and to his mother’s
demonstrative and bitter mourning, which continued unabated for many years.
Hölderlin was now raised by his mother and maternal grandmother.
In 1780 he began to study piano and ÿute. He played these instruments
all his life, apparently quite capably: he would later join Susette Gontard and
her sister-in-law Margarete in chamber music concerts at the Gontard resi-
dence and summer home in Frankfurt and would continue to play during the
many years of his conþnement in the Tübingen tower. In the local Latin school
of Nürtingen the boy studied Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and German. He be-
friended a newcomer, F. W. J. Schelling, þve years his junior, and defended
him from the school bullies. At age fourteen he moved on to the strict Pietist
cloister school at Denkendorf, where all the pupils studied theology and were

4
 T Go-H C

The story of Hölderlin’s and Susette Gontard’s love is not quickly told, and
the “objective,” “impartial” manner you adopt throughout is a subterfuge, an
escape, a sham. More: it is complicit with the violence against her. There are a
few little mistakes and oversights in your text—for example, you forget to
mention the birth of Heinrike (“Rike”), Hölderlin’s sister, with whom Johanna
is pregnant when Hölderlin’s father dies; you forget Rike, even though you are
careful to include his younger half-brother Carl. Yet these little errors pale
before the big one, the violent one, which is not knowing or not telling why
you are prying into a one-sided correspondence that has no historical or literary-
critical value as such, why you are combing Susette Gontard’s letters. Are you
not scavenging her letters for signs of the loving you crave? Yes, that’s it. Choke
on it. Hate me for writing it. Deny it if you can. You cannot, I know you, it
hasn’t been that long.
I have no problem with your “thumbnail sketch” of Hölderlin’s life. Yet
why assume that this book is to be about Hölderlin? Are Susette Gontard’s
letters to be remembered simply because of their addressee? We read hers only
because we don’t have his? And her entire life is to be reduced to a footnote to
a man’s career, precisely as I am being reduced now to commentary on you?
Don’t get me wrong, don’t fault me for not respecting Hölderlin or for not
knowing what his poetry is: I know his letters, essays, and poems better than
you ever will, and I love them with a depth that would collapse your lungs.
Do you want to have a þght about this? You wouldn’t dare, you know me, it
hasn’t been that long.

5
T’ I

expected to become clergymen—his mother’s undying wish for him. Hölderlin

was sixth in his class of twenty-nine. Johanna Gok began to register all the
expenses paid out on behalf of her son, maintaining the record with great
diligence until her death.
Hölderlin’s earliest poems and letters show that his Pietist schooling and
home life achieved the desired effects: piety toward his elders and rigor in the
examination of his afÿicted conscience were the principal traits of the youth.
He assumed responsibility for his younger stepbrother’s education, since Carl
was destined to be a burgher, not a pastor. Hölderlin read aloud to him and
instructed him—their þrst textbook was Klopstock’s Hermann’s Battle, which
they read in the woods near Nürtingen. By his þfteenth year Hölderlin was
writing poetry regularly, preferably out in the meadows and woods along the
Neckar. By his sixteenth year, now in the gloomy Cloister Maulbronn, his
ways were set.
At age sixteen he met Louise Nast, the youngest daughter of the cloister’s
secular administrator. His affection for her was deep, and it was returned. Yet
for him love was, and would always be, a matter of tension and turmoil. The
lover was in his eyes the ridiculous þgure of the compromised poet or the
philosopher run amok; it would always be Plato enamored of Stella, the hetaira
with whom the gossips of antiquity had the father of philosophy consorting.
We unfortunately know the answer to the rhetorical question the young poet
poses to Louise Nast: “Am I a happy youth, Stella?” (1: 41). And in a sister
poem, “To the Nightingale,” which along with “To Stella” is the þrst of
Hölderlin’s extensive series of Alcaic odes, the poet shies away from the love of
woman as from a mortal danger. For while the miseries of love give birth to
poetry, the delights of love kill it. The enthusiast can therefore only pass her
by, and, in a gesture that accompanies Hölderlin all his life, pass her on to a
friend:

O Stella! say it! say it! — I shall not quail! —

The delight he felt in being loved killed
The enthusiast. — Though weeping, still shall I
Bless your fortunate beloved.

6
 T Go-H C

This traipsing out of “Hölderlin’s women,” his mother, his girlfriends—Louise

Nast, Elise Lebret, and all the rest (though you skip the Wilhelmine Maisch
episode, why is that?)—as though this will explain something about Susette
Gontard: forget it, it won’t, women are as different from one another as they
are from you, and your lumping them all together is artless and pointless.
Perhaps you don’t know of Wilhelmine Maisch? The documents are
slim, I know, but they show that the two poets were tender toward and intimate
with each other. She was an independent spirit, and her independent spirit
cultivated an independent body: she kissed him whenever and wherever she
liked. Perhaps for the þrst time in his life—and long before he met Wilhelmine
Marianne Kirms—he was able to touch a woman and allow her to touch him
without his mother smothering him. And you skip it. You choose to be igno-
rant of her. Why? Is it the fact that she too was a poet? That she was beautiful
and uninhibited is threatening enough, I know, but that she could also write!
Confounds your categories, doesn’t she? Perhaps now you are beginning to
understand my anger. Though I doubt it.
A word about “Hölderlin’s Stella,” Louise Nast. You make Hölderlin’s
squeamishness sound heroic—the agitated adolescent sacriþces his fetid lusts
on the high altar of poesy. It isn’t heroic, however, it’s squeamish. I like him

7
T’ I

At about this time, Hölderlin fell into a profound melancholy, aggra-

vated by his waxing hatred of the cloister. He had already asked his mother
whether he might leave the seminary, but there could be no question of that:
because it made her happy, he told a friend, he was prepared to allow the best
years of his life to go sour. He began to cough up blood. It was not the onset
of tuberculosis, but clearly a psychosomatic symptom, a sign from his tortured
daimon. During his seventeenth year, as the melancholy continued without
relief, Hölderlin began to understand that he was above all else a poet, and
that poetry would make its own demands on his life.
In the fall of 1788 Hölderlin commenced his studies at the University of
Tübingen, joining a circle of poets there led by Rudolf Magenau and Christian
Ludwig Neuffer. He received his mother’s consent to become engaged to Louise
Nast, inasmuch as marriage and a family belonged to his mother’s plans for
him. In the spring of 1789, however, he dissolved the engagement with Louise
Nast: his unsatisþed poetic ambitions, the uncertainty of his professional or
vocational future, and his moody and melancholy nature all spoke against
marriage. They did not speak against his growing involvement in politics,
however, as the local duke, made jittery by the proximity of Revolutionary
Paris, tried to enforce strict ideological control and discipline among the stu-
dents of the Tübinger Stift. By November, after a number of episodes that left
him feeling frustrated and rebellious, Hölderlin was desperate to leave the
Stift in order to study law. Near the end of November he wrote his mother in
Nürtingen, “Oh, my dear Mama, my blessed father used to say that his uni-
versity years were the most enjoyable of his life; will I one day have to say, ‘My
university years soured my entire life’?” (2: 452; cf. 476). To be sure, if he is
referring to the þrst of his two fathers, Hölderlin can have heard no such
thing: he was only two when Heinrich Hölderlin died. Be that as it may, in a
letter to his stepbrother Carl nine years later he declared himself shipwrecked,
and he blamed his misfortune on the university: “By the third year of my
sojourn in Tübingen it was all over” (2: 682). Yet in January 1790 he capitulated
once again to his mother’s wishes for him: “At all events, a parent’s advice
calms one down” (2: 455).

8
 T Go-H C

better when he is insanely jealous—jealous of his friend Bilþnger, who he

thinks is also in love with Louise Nast. He has it out with Bilþnger, then
writes a long letter to Nast about Bilþnger’s perþdy. When the two of them—
Louise Nast and Hölderlin—meet in a secret place (the places are never secret
enough) she asks him nervously what his letter was all about—she didn’t un-
derstand a word of it—and he gets all confused, then she gets all confused,
and it is a blessed and all-too-brief hour of confusion for them both (2: 414).
I love him better when he lets her redoubled confusion overwhelm his own:
only then does his squeamishness abate, only then does he learn the taste of
saliva and tears. Would you know about that? If not, what are you doing with
your wagging tongue in these letters?
Alas, the greatest pleasure he experiences in his relationship with Louise
Nast is in the breakup. He tells her how much pleasure it gives him to know
that when she is making her future husband happy (and how will she do that?
does he think about it in detail—as a poet should?) she will think back to the
friend of her youth: his oppressive self will have vanished and the cheerful
ghost of him will surround both her and her betrothed. He doesn’t pause to
ask whether this would be too much ghostly togetherness for Nast. He assures
her that she will not be being “unfaithful” to him and that she would in fact be
conþrming the fact that Hölderlin’s love was not of this world (2: 447). As if
she couldn’t tell. His love was never of this world. Susette Gontard’s was. That
is why this book is, or ought to be, about her.

9
T’ I

In the summer of 1790 he met Elise Lebret, the university chancellor’s

beautiful and thoroughly spoiled daughter. He also studied philosophy, espe-
cially the works of Leibniz and Kant. The coquettish young aristocrat became
the “Lyda” of his poems, while Leibniz and Kant, along with Rousseau and
“the rights of man,” occupied his study hours. When he learned of Louise
Nast’s decision to marry someone else, he vowed never to take that step: “My
peculiar character, my mood swings, my addiction to my projects, and (to tell
the whole truth) my ambition . . . leave me no hope that I could ever be happy
in the tranquil marital life of a quiet little parish” (2: 473). The ÿirtation with
Elise Lebret had already cooled, although the relationship did not end until
Hölderlin’s departure for a tutorship at Waltershausen in 1794.
Once again in November 1791 he was plagued by health problems, expe-
riencing pains in his stomach and head. Once again he expressed his desire to
leave the Stift. Once again, for his mother’s sake, he endured. At the same
time, he became increasingly aware of his need to achieve manhood; he craved
the maturity that he identiþed with enlightened, Revolutionary Europe’s own
coming of age.
Early in April 1792 Hölderlin met some Greek acquaintances of Chris-
tian Ludwig Neuffer’s mother—herself a Greek—in Stuttgart. Among them
was the young woman who þrst inspired the þgure of Diotima in his novel
Hyperion. (In the earlier versions of the novel she is called “Melite,” or “the
fair Ionian maiden”: see the afterword at the end of the present book for a
more detailed discussion.) In August he saw the young Greek woman once
again in Stuttgart. Their enthusiasm for Greek independence and for one
another grew apace. He was still shy and awkward but he managed to “beg
very gently to be her friend.”2
On May 28, 1793, Charlotte von Kalb of Waltershausen requested
Schiller’s help in þnding a suitable tutor for her nine-year-old son Fritz. Through
the mediation of a mutual friend, Hölderlin was interviewed by Schiller and

2. Knaupp, 2: 492; quoted by Adolf Beck, Hölderlin: Chronik seines Lebens mit zeitgenössischen
Abbildungen (Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1975), 43. The earliest reference to “the fair
apparition” appears at Knaupp, 2: 483–84; see also 2: 495.

10
 T Go-H C

Traipse traipse traipse. All the spoiled little girls are chasing after your hero.
Eat your heart out.

11
T’ I

was granted the post soon after his graduation with a Master’s degree from the
University of Tübingen. He took up his duties in Waltershausen (Franken) in
January 1794. At þrst, things seemed to go well with his tutoring. Hölderlin
also became a friend to Charlotte’s companion, Wilhelmine Marianne Kirms.
Kirms borrowed Hölderlin’s copy of Kant’s Religion within the Limits of Reason
Alone, a solid basis for any friendship. By April, however, he began to sense
that his pedagogical principles, culled from Rousseau and Kant, had met their
match. The relationship with little Fritz deteriorated daily, while the friend-
ship with Kirms deepened. By October the tutorship had run aground. As for
Kirms, biographers do not agree on the question, but some aver that the rela-
tionship of the two became intimate, and even that Kirms became pregnant
with Hölderlin’s child. We do know that soon after she left the von Kalb
household she had a baby girl (Louise Agnese, “Agnes”) in Meiningen, who
died soon after her þrst birthday. Kirms, who remarried happily in Meiningen,
never indicated—at least certainly not to Hölderlin—who the father of the
child was. There is also speculation about a relationship between Hölderlin
and Sophie Mereau, Schiller’s beautiful friend and personal secretary (the future
wife of Clemens Brentano), whom Hölderlin had met during his visit to Jena
in October and November of 1794. Hölderlin tried to squelch the speculation
about Sophie Mereau, but his references to Kirms remained sympathetic and
even warm.
In mid-January of 1795 Hölderlin resigned his post as tutor in Walters-
hausen. With Charlotte von Kalb’s help, he achieved a new level of under-
standing and independence vis-à-vis his mother: Johanna Gok agreed to stop
pressuring him to marry and become a pastor in Swabia; she also agreed to
send him regular payments from his patrimony. Not long after a meeting with
Fichte and Novalis in the house of the philosopher Immanuel Niethammer,
Hölderlin left Jena quite suddenly, as though in ÿight. Whether this was due
to the overwhelming presence of Fichte and Schiller, or of Kirms and Mereau,
or because of the haunting, nasty little ghost of Fritz von Kalb, we do not
know. Susette Gontard herself would later remind Hölderlin of the desperate
state he was in when he ÿed Jena for his mother’s house in Nürtingen—where
he spent most of the summer in the depths of depression.

12
 T Go-H C

Spare us your rollicking humor on Kant. Don’t even try. For nothing within
the limits of reason alone will lighten him up. As for Little Fritz—no, not
Hölderlin, the other Fritz, Little Fritz von Kalb—you are making both too
much and too little of him. You should be getting your reader out of Walters-
hausen and on to Frankfurt: this is supposed to be an introduction to Susette
Gontard’s letters, not to the life and hard times of an overtaxed tutor. At the
same time, you are happy to mix in the story of Wilhelmine Marianne Kirms:
you are ecstatic to speculate about intimacies and pregnancies. If Louise Agnese
Kirms truly was a Kirms-Hölderlin, his only child, his own little girl dead at
age one, it merely seems to titillate rather than horrify you. Doesn’t Agnes
need to be mourned? And who is Mother Kirms for you, anyway, if not the
maternal Diotima who would teach you all the toils and coils of secret love? (I
know, you call Susette Gontard “Diotima,” because that is what Hölderlin
calls her; but in your own heart of hearts, and maybe in Hölderlin’s too, Kirms
is the great Diotima. Is that why you “forget” Agnes? Sibling rivalry?) Ah, the
magniþcent Kirms! Have you read Hölderlin’s letter to his sister about her?

The companion of the major’s wife [i.e., of Charlotte von

Kalb, namely, Wilhelmine Marianne Kirms], a widow from
the Lausitz region, is a lady of rare spirit and heart. She speaks
English and French and she just now borrowed from me Kant’s
latest book. In addition, she has a very interesting þgure. But
do not worry, dear Rike, about your excitable little brother,
because (1) I have grown smarter by ten years now that I am a
tutor, and (2), which is far more important, she is already
promised, and she is a good bit smarter than I am. (2: 518)
Have you read the way both Peter Härtling and Peter Schünemann have her
stealing into Hölderlin’s bedroom nights? She is taller than he, almost too large,

13
T’ I

Through Johann Gottfried Ebel, a physician friend of the Gontard family

whom Hölderlin had met in June 1795, the poet received the offer of another
tutorship. His new chargeling would prove to be considerably more tractable
than Fritz, though his employer would be far less congenial than Major von
Kalb had been. The Gontard boy’s mother would be less inÿuential in social
and literary circles than Charlotte von Kalb had been, but far more inspiring
in substance.
On December 28, 1795, Hölderlin arrived in Frankfurt am Main, staying
at the Gasthaus “Zur Stadt Mainz.” Two days later he received a visit from his
future pupil, Henry Gontard. On the following day Hölderlin himself visited
the entire Gontard family at their palatial winter residence, White Hart. The
initial impressions were quite positive all around. On January 11, 1796,
Hölderlin wrote his stepbrother Carl that he now had “the best human beings
as his friends” (2: 609). With his friend Neuffer, in a letter composed four
days later, he was somewhat more guarded:

It seems I am living among very þne and, properly speaking,

relatively rare people; they could be something more, but even
so I wouldn’t have to retract what I’ve just said.
You will surely understand me when I say that our hearts
must always to a certain degree remain impoverished. I shall
also become more accustomed to getting on with less. I shall
direct my heart to seek a greater approximation to eternal
beauty more by its own striving, more by its own labors, than
by expecting something like it from destiny. (2: 611)

By the end of June those reservations had vanished. Hölderlin enthused, once
again to Neuffer:

I want to know how things are going for you at this very
moment. I hope they are going for you as they are for me. I
am in a new world. I used to think I had insight into what is
beautiful and good, but now that I see what all my knowledge

14
 T Go-H C

Härtling says, and deep-breasted (not large-breasted? you ask, deep? our apologies:
it happens: gravity), silent and uncomplaining, and O so generous. Of course,
the two Peters are men, but they are also novelists. You shouldn’t be so inquisi-
tive, you shouldn’t be so desirous—not if you want to be faithful to your own
self-image—at least, that is what you say to yourself. Dream on, if you will,
but not in the public space of a scholarly book. (It is yours, not mine, I’ll have
no more to do with it!) And yet, for all your scholarly posing, for all your
research and your German thoroughness, you tiptoe right on by the letter that
tells us what was up with “nasty” Little Fritz—up all the time, it seems. It is
Hölderlin’s remarkable letter of January 16, 1795, to his mother. To his mother!
He is seeking independence from her by means of increased þnancial dependence
on her (þgure that one out), and in the midst of this confusion he tells her all
about nasty Little Fritz. Little Fritz is stupid, yes, and Little Fritz is spoiled.
Little Fritz has a verwilderte Natur, yes, he is a little wasteland all by himself.
But why? Because, as Major von Kalb informs Hölderlin—for the tutor’s own
protection—tiny ten-year-old Fritz has discovered a vice (at ten?!) “the traces
of which are sometimes to be observed in the child” (2: 560). Hölderlin now
has to shield his mother, just as the boy’s father protected Hölderlin: “It is
impossible for me to make this any plainer for you,” Hölderlin says to his
mom (ibid.). And you? You protect (y)our readers in turn. A serious researcher,
it seems to me, would ask whether ten isn’t a bit early. When did you start, for
example? Somehow, I cannot imagine it—certainly not at ten, anyway, even
with your own verwilderte Natur, in which I wandered for so many years!
Härtling has Hölderlin reading Klopstock’s play Hermann’s Battle aloud
to the boy—that was the play that had introduced Hölderlin’s stepbrother
Carl to the straight and narrow path of his education—while Little Fritz is
engaged in battles of his own. Artillery þre everywhere, earth-to-air missiles
by day and by night. Especially nights. Charlotte von Kalb assigns her boy’s
tutor the unenviable task of nocturnal vigilance, “night watch.” Little Fritz is
stroking so proliþcally by summer’s end that it is robbing Hölderlin of his
health and happiness, and even of his productivity. (I thought masturbation
was supposed to be unhealthy for the little boys who practice it, not for the
masturpolice who try to enforce abstinence. Or do the police know more than
they are letting on?) They send Little Fritz to Jena and Weimar for dancing

15
T’ I

amounts to, I have to laugh. Dear friend! there is a being in

the world on which my spirit can and will dwell for millennia,
and still it will live to see how puerile all our thinking and
comprehending turn out to be in the face of nature. Loveliness
and loftiness, tranquillity and vitality, spirit and heart and
form—they are all blessedly one in this one being. You can
believe me when I say how rare it is to have even a premonition
of such a thing, and then again how much more difþcult it is
to þnd it in this world. You know, of course, how I was—how
completely I had disabused myself of every form of familiarity,
you know how I lived without faith, how austere I was with
my own heart, and therefore how wretched. Could I have
become what I am now, as happy as an eagle, had this one,
this very one, not appeared and transformed a life that had
become pointless to me, rejuvenating, encouraging, cheering,
and glorifying it in her vernal light? I have moments when all
my old troubles seem entirely foolish to me, as incomprehen-
sible to me as they would be to children.
It is actually often impossible for me to think the thoughts
of mortals when she is in front of me. That is why so little can
be said of her.
Perhaps I will be able to capture here and there in a fe-
licitous line an aspect of her being, and then nothing would
be held back from you.
Yet it would have to be an hour without disturbances
of any kind, an hour of celebration, were I to write of
her. — . . .

Oh, be happy, my brother! Eternal beauty cannot bur-

geon in us if we walk without joy. Great pain and great plea-
sure give shape to human beings best. Yet the cobbler’s life we
lead, squatting on our stools and bending over tasks we can
perform in our sleep, drives our spirit to an untimely grave.
(2: 624–5)

16
 T Go-H C

lessons, hoping to give the other parts of his body some exercise, but while
Hölderlin attends Fichte’s lectures on the Wissenschaftslehre Little Fritz pursues
his own Wichsenschaftslehre. Here is Hölderlin on the nightmare of night watch:

By means of unspeakable efforts, almost constant night watches,

the most menacing pleas and warnings, and a rigor justly
applied [durch gerechte Strenge: how would you translate this?
the poet in black leather?], I succeeded for a time in reducing
the frequency of this evil, so that progress in the boy’s moral
and scientiþc formation [there’s that Wissenschaft again] be-
came quite impressive once more. Yet it didn’t last long. The
complete impossibility of making any real impact on the child,
the impossibility of helping him, attacked my health and my
inmost disposition most bitterly. The nerve-racking watches
by night destroyed my head and made me almost entirely
incapable of work during the daylight hours. (2: 561)
Hölderlin’s night watches are not at all like Rembrandt’s. Wake up and smell the
elixir! In an early poem, “Books of the Ages,” Hölderlin envisages the “hollow-
eyed cripples” who are “diabolical victims of their onanistic shame” (1: 60);
earlier still, in “The Night,” he sees the “slaves to vice” who “wallow in anxiety
unto death upon their soft beds, / Where voluptuosity itself holds the whip”
(1: 11). It was the contrast between Little Fritz’s perfervid freedom and his own
squalor and squeamishness that disquieted Hölderlin. Even without Kirms
nearby he ought to have had something better to do nights. Instead, he had to
watch. When life offers you such delectable ironies, Douglas dear, do not run
away from them. — But here we are at last at White Hart, dear heart. “In a new
world,” as Hölderlin says. We know how he fared there. Let us see how you do.
In this letter to Neuffer Hölderlin doesn’t offer to pass Susette Gontard
on to his chum—at least, not just yet—but he does look for the felicitous line
that will communicate her to him, so that nothing would be held back. A little
later he will wish that Neuffer could see her image, so that not even a felicitous
line would be necessary for that communication. Why do men always insist
on possessing their women only in order to give them away? Adoring their
images, clutching them, then selling them like holy cards on St. Peter’s Square?

17
T’ I

Hölderlin was once again working on Hyperion with buoyant energy.

Schiller had already arranged for Cotta to publish it, but Hölderlin asked the
publisher to return the manuscript to him, explaining that his conception of
the book had in part “gotten lost” (2: 618). He had the afternoons entirely free
for his work, since he was required to instruct young Henry only during the
morning hours. Susette often joined the two scholars, especially after the fam-
ily moved to a rented summerhouse east of Frankfurt on the Pþngstweid.
Often she stayed on after Henry was dismissed. Her companion, Marie Rätzer,
who tutored the two older Gontard girls, Jette and Lene, expressed her worry
to a friend early in the summer of 1796, only six months after Hölderlin’s
arrival: “Frau Gontard is with Hölderlin all morning long up in the pavilion
and in her private quarters; the children leave them alone there, while the
servants and housemaids are all over the house at their chores; and if he came
home and noticed it, things wouldn’t go well.”3
Early in July Napoleon’s armies were advancing on Frankfurt. On July
10 Susette and the four children, along with the two tutors, Hölderlin and
Marie Rätzer, escaped to the northeast, traveling by coach via Hanau and
Fulda to Kassel. Susette’s husband Jacob (“Cobus”) remained in Frankfurt in
order to protect his bank’s affairs, until he too þnally had to ÿee eastward to
Nürnberg. After an intense bombardment of the city, Frankfurt capitulated to
the French, on Bastille Day 1796. Meanwhile, Susette, the children, and the
tutors were safe in Kassel, where they remained until August 9. While in Kassel
they were joined by the author of the novel Ardinghello, Wilhelm Heinse.
They moved in artistic circles as well, befriending the curator of the Kassel art
gallery, Johann Heinrich Tischbein (Goethe’s friend in Rome), and admiring
paintings by Rubens, Rembrandt, and Claude Lorrain, along with sculptures
from Greek and Roman antiquity. Hölderlin continued to work on his novel.
By the summer of 1796 “Diotima” had become the central þgure in Hyperion.
She had already given her name to a number of lyric poems, among them the
þfteen stanzas of the “middle version” of “Diotima,” which Hölderlin sent to
Schiller on July 24. The third stanza opens with these words (1: 172):

3. Quoted in Beck, Hölderlins Diotima, 125.

18
 T Go-H C

His “conception” had “gotten lost”?! No! . . . weil mein Concept mir zum Theil
verloren gegangen ist merely means that part of his own copy of the manuscript
has been misplaced—recall our modern word Konzeptpapier, meaning scrap
paper, or paper for rough drafts. Hölderlin has not lost anything of his “con-
ception,” but is merely deliberating on Cotta’s suggestion to compress the two
volumes into one—and trying to get a copy of his own ms. back from the
publisher. Correct this!

We don’t know exactly when Cobus did come home and notice, but we have
evidence that the Frankfurt gossip machine kicked into high gear not long
after Marie Rätzer’s discreet warning. What good is discretion when the ru-
mor machine is revved up and eager to churn? From one Frankfurt gossip
(and, incidentally, this gossip is a man) to another, on September 30, 1797:

Frau Susette is nowhere to be seen all morning long, and in

the afternoons, when there is so much to talk about, she wants
no talk about her, if you see what I mean. I only wish I could
shoo away from my mind the one thought that just won’t
leave me alone: the roast beef when Frau Susette is hungry,
the dog she pets, the þnch she feeds, and I when I tell her
stories—we all get the same friendly smile from her, which
inexplicably fades if by some regrettable oversight Frau Susette’s
gaze should fall upon her husband.

When Cobus þnally comes home from the bank he poses the husband’s clas-
sic question—in the words of Leopold Bloom, “What shall we do with our
wives?” Teach them Italian, Bloom proposes, but Dedalus demurs. Bloom
also dreams of a farm, if I’m not mistaken, probably with the intention of
turning Molly (and maybe Milly too) into a milkmaid. A long and dreary

19
T’ I

Diotima! Blessed creature!

Splendid one, through whom my spirit,
Convalescing from the anxieties of life,
Promises itself the nascent life of gods!

On August 9 the Gontard party, accompanied by Wilhelm Heinse, headed

farther north to the resort town of Bad Driburg, located in a “romantic valley
full of brooks and surrounded by an amphitheater of forested mountains.”4
Hölderlin described it to his stepbrother Carl as “Germany’s Boeotia,” and he
did not fail to mention that on their hikes through the region the Gontard
party visited the site where the ancient Germanic chieftain Hermann had
defeated the Roman legions of Varus—the scene of Klopstock’s Hermann’s
Battle (2: 628). Hölderlin also took the curative waters at Bad Driburg and felt
himself to be reinvigorated. It was there, where the party seemed to be un-
troubled by the Napoleonic Wars—although Susette was still preoccupied by
the siege of Frankfurt and Hölderlin by the Republican invasion of Württem-
berg, close to his mother’s home—that according to some biographers the
two confessed their deep affection for one another. Ironically, their concern
for the safety of their absent family members, a concern they shared, brought
them closer together than ever before.
Hundreds of miles to the south, in Switzerland, Hegel was composing a
poem dedicated to Hölderlin. “Eleusis” laments the disappearance of Demeter,
the goddess of the mysteries at Eleusis: “Yet your halls have reverberated to
stillness, O goddess!”5 Several weeks later, Agnes Kirms, the daughter, died;
she was mourned by her mother alone.
Meanwhile, the siege of Frankfurt had lifted. The Gontard party re-
turned to Kassel on September 13, and then, at the end of the month,
home to Frankfurt. “Cobus” was still in Nürnberg. The consequences of
the French siege of Frankfurt were everywhere to be seen. On October 13,

4. Quoted by Beck in Hölderlin: Chronik, 62.

5. G. W. F. Hegel, Theorie Werkausgabe: Frühe Schriften (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,
1971), 1: 231.

20
 T Go-H C

book could be written on you men “educating” your wives; it would be about
Continuing Education, because like Stalin’s purges once it starts it never stops.
Right up to the very end Cobus is trying to distract Susette Gontard with
activities of one sort or another, in order to get her mind off the poet. When
Cobus’s mother dies and he inherits the Lersner Gardens, he encourages his
wayward wife to engage in all sorts of bucolic frolics. She tells Hölderlin about
it in her very last letter to him: it seems as though she has bought into it.
Cobus writes to Rüdt von Collenberg and asks him to fulþll his wife’s intense
desire—he attributes that desire explicitly to her—for two milk cows! He
speciþes that one is to be already lactating (that is how you farmers prefer your
cows, isn’t it, voluminously lactating, just as Rousseau wanted them, and just
as they are featured in the restaurant scene of The White Hotel ?), while the
other cow is to be gravid (no comment). He writes: “My wife would like to set
up a little farm, which will be of little use, but may provide some diversion.”
Hope springs eternal in the cuckold’s breast. Ten years later Goethe will be
writing the classic text on the relationship of landscape gardening to loving
someone who is not your spouse. Those sexual-chemical “afþnities” that are
anything but “elective” determine the Gontards’ life as much as they do Goethe’s
novel—it is almost as though Weimar Classicism pored over the Gontard þle
in order to produce Die Wahlverwandtschaften—which Benjamin calls Goethe’s
daimonic book. Nothing would divert or distract the daimon that overwhelmed
Susette Gontard and Hölderlin in the amphitheater of those forested moun-
tains near Bad Driburg, in the wilds of Boeotia.
Do you really want to push this Eleusinian connection? Do you really
want to conÿate Hegel’s “Eleusis,” and the Demeter-Kore or Ceres-Proserpina
story, with Hölderlin’s daughter? Do you feel you can toy with Little Agnes
because she dies before she learns how to speak, because she’s a daughter instead
of a son? What do you know of Demeter’s grief, the grief of the Earth, the grief
of a woman? I don’t wish it on you—don’t get me wrong. All I want you to
understand is how silly and pompous you sound here. And are you sure that
Hölderlin knows nothing about this child he has fathered on the woman who
befriended him? Have you forgotten that in March of 1797 the merchant
Ernst Schwendler visits the Gontard household? Schwendler knows everything
about Hölderlin’s relationships in Waltershausen: he knows that Kirms has

21
T’ I

1796, Hölderlin confessed to his stepbrother Carl (somewhat paraphrastically)

that he was now in a “less revolutionary state” than before, and that he would
rather not talk about the “political calamity” that surrounded them (2: 629).
He helped to arrange a tutorship for his friend Hegel in the house of the
highly cultivated wine merchant Johann Noë Gogel. From January 1797
onward Hölderlin would have the comfort of Hegel’s intellectual stimulation
close by; when Hölderlin was forced to leave the Gontard household, both
young Henry and his mother for a brief time tried to use the author of “Eleusis”
as a middle man in order to reach Hölderlin. Meanwhile, the hours spent
with Susette, and the intensity of their love, waxed from day to day. Marie
Rätzer, one of the few human beings the lovers had taken into their conþdence,
faithfully and anxiously concealed the affair. Yet soon all Frankfurt was
buzzing. Hölderlin’s letter to Neuffer on February 16, 1797, was unparalleled
in its erotic energy and joy. Hölderlin had become the Vasco de Gama of love,
with a bust of the Madonna as the maidenhead beneath his brave ship’s bow-
sprit:

Since we last wrote I have circumnavigated the globe of joy. I

would gladly have told you how things are with me had I
been able to stand still for an instant, had I had a chance to
look back. The wave swept me forward. My entire being was
so absorbed in life that it didn’t have a moment to think about
itself.
And it is still that way! I am still entirely happy, as I was
in the þrst moment. It is a friendship—eternal, joyful, and
holy—with a being who somehow strayed into this poor,
dispirited, disorderly century of ours. My sense of beauty is
now secure from all disruption. For all eternity it will be ori-
ented by this bust of the Madonna. My intellect attends her
school and my riven heart of hearts daily þnds repose and
good cheer in her all-sufþcient peace. I tell you, dear Neuffer,
I am on my way to becoming a truly good boy! And as far as

22
 T Go-H C

moved to Meiningen, and that she has had and has lost her baby. (She is one
of the bravest women we know; not only her þgure is “interesting.”) It may
well be that she hasn’t said a word to Hölderlin about his daughter; certainly
there are no letters, there is no paternity suit. But are you entirely sure that
Schwendler says nothing to Hölderlin? What else would or could he say, other
than that the poet should be in mourning? And are you entirely sure that
Hölderlin, in the midst of his lessons with Henry, is not thinking of the daughter
who is truly like him, the poetic voice that he will never hear? Susette Gontard
too knows the power of little girls’ ghosts: she surely fears that her own Molly
could become the ghostly daughter she wants to have conceived by Hölderlin.

Hello? the Vasco de Gama of love? the maidenhead under his brave ship’s
bowsprit? Why don’t you beat us about the ears with it?! And as for your claim
that “some biographers” locate Bad Driburg as the site where Hölderlin and
Susette Gontard declare their love for one another: I suspect you are getting
this not from Beck or Bertaux or any other biographer but (again) from Peter
Härtling’s novel. Härtling has Hölderlin reading the racy parts of Wilhelm
Heinse’s Ardinghello to Susette Gontard in Kassel and then later in Bad
Driburg—the sensual parts that Susette spurns. Härtling’s Hölderlin wants to
light a þre under the reluctant goddess. After the party moves on to Bad
Driburg, Härtling has the frigid goddess—Susette Gontard as Artemis—turn
the tables on the timid tutor: Gontard now reads to him, because she is out of
patience with his high-mindedness, and she chooses the sexiest parts. Sexy
writing in Ardinghello ? Well, try this on your current ÿame, if she be timid
and you be your usual impatient self: “You should see her!” Susette Gontard
begins, reading off the page of Heinse’s novel the very words that Hölderlin
had written to Neuffer about her. The “she” in this case is “Fiordimona,” the
daimonic, erotic ÿower of the south, Blancheÿeur (the medieval “Blanziÿor et
Helena”), who haunts all your dreams. Gontard, Härtling, and Heinse continue:

The proud protuberances of her slender body [Das stolze Gewächs

ihres schlanken Leibs: you may þnd my “proud protuberances”

23
T’ I

the rest of me is concerned, I am also a bit more content with

myself. I write very few poems and philosophize almost not
at all. Yet what I do compose has more vitality and þner form
to it. My fancy is more supple, and better able to embrace all
the world’s shapes. My heart is full of desire. And if holy destiny
preserves me in my happy life, I hope to do more in the days
to come than I have done up to now. I can readily imagine,
dear brother, that you crave to hear me say more about my
happiness, and in greater detail. Yet I dare not! I have often
enough wept and berated our world, where the best thing in
it cannot be named on a piece of paper one will send to a
friend. I shall enclose a poem written to her toward the end
of last winter.6
I spent the summer in Kassel and in a small Westphalian
resort town in the region where in antiquity Hermann fought
and won his battle.7 For the most part we were in the com-
pany of Heinse, whom you know as the author of Ardinghello.8
He is a splendid old man. I have never found such limitless
intellectual culture joined to such childlike simplicity.

I had so much I wanted to write you about, my good Neuffer!

but the few poor moments in which I have to do it won’t
enable me to communicate what prevails in me, what lives in
me! Besides, it always means death for our silent felicity when

6. This was apparently the earliest draft of the poem “Diotima”; see 1: 161–64; 3: 84.
7. The resort town was Bad Driburg. The battle, to repeat, was that of the barbarian chief-
tain Hermann, who ambushed and defeated three Roman legions in the Teutoburger Forest in
.. 9, during the þnal years of the reign of Augustus. We also recall that Klopstock’s dramatic
poem, Hermann’s Battle, was one of the þrst texts Hölderlin taught his young stepbrother Carl
to appreciate.
8. Wilhelm Heinse (1749–1803), a family friend of the Gontards, was the author of the
Romantic—and for its time rather scandalous—novel, Ardinghello.

24
 T Go-H C

a bit of a stretch, as it were, or a slight over-translation, but

trust me to know how to embrace all the world’s shapes, trust
me and read on—think of yourself as Härtling’s Susette
Gontard reading this to a difþdent Hölderlin!] swelled so ex-
citingly under her dress that one wanted to tear off that dress
in a frenzy. Her breasts thrust themselves forward, hot and
luxuriant like rising suns in springtime. . . . Oh, how her
brown curls bounced in a Bacchant’s dance, how her heav-
enly visage glazed over sweetly under the impact of the music
and the movement, and how her well-formed legs rose with
youthful energy—like bolts of lightning they ÿashed and van-
ished and ÿashed again!

Caught up in the rhythm of all that upward ÿashing, downward bouncing,

and forward thrusting, even a timid tutor would soon capitulate, don’t you
think? Perhaps you þnd me irreligious, but all I’m doing is translating Härtling
and Heinse (“He is a splendid old man”), and they are men just like you—
albeit a tad more honest about their cravings. I þnd the contrast—the child-
like simplicity of their rapture, if you will—refreshing.

Note 7 is redundant. Don’t repeat, delete.

25
T’ I

it is forced to come to language. I’d rather drift as I am, in

joyous, sweet peace, like a child, without calculating what I
have, what I am—inasmuch as what I have cannot be embraced
entirely in any thought. I only wish I could show you her
image, and then I wouldn’t need any more words! She is beau-
tiful, as angels are beautiful. A tender, intelligent face, with
all of heaven’s charms! Oh! I could gaze on her for a millen-
nium, forgetting myself and everything else: how inexhaust-
ibly rich is the silent, undemanding soul in this image! Maj-
esty and tenderness, gaiety and seriousness, sweet playfulness
and lofty mournfulness, life and spirit—all this is united in
her, in her it all becomes one divine whole. . . . “Great joy
and great sorrow come to those whom the gods love.” It is no
art to sail a brook. Yet when our heart and destiny plunge to
the seabed and then soar into the sky—that is a pilot’s edu-
cation.

In early May the entire Gontard family—by now Cobus had rejoined
them—moved to a new summer residence, this time to the north of the city:
the Adlerÿychtschen Hof, named after a distinguished aristocratic Frankfurt
family. Cobus traveled to the Frankfurt Kaufhaus every day, leaving Susette
and Hölderlin alone with their love. Marie Rätzer worried more than ever.
Another series of poems “To Diotima” was sketched during these months.
One of them has the following among its never-completed lines (1: 183):

And the steamy valley with its ÿowers and seed,

And the garden before us,
Things near and far, all steal away, lost in happy confusion,
And the sunlight is extinguished.

26
 T Go-H C

“I only wish I could show you her image. . . .” We have photographs of busts
of Susette Gontard by Landolin Ohmacht. The bust I know you prefer (on
the right, as I see, where the drapery has done what all drapery must do) was
destroyed in a bombing raid in 1944 (a disastrous year all around, don’t you
agree?), so that all we have now is the photograph. What do you make of this
“image”? I grant you that the marble seems to turn her into a Greek, but her
nose exposes her as a Roman copy. So many things about her face, as rendered
by Ohmacht, displease me. The thin lips and the tiny mouth are far too small
for that nose and those wide-set eyes. The chin seems to be exerting a down-
ward pull on the face, lending it a prissy aspect. Yet I know you are gazing on
that glorious chest! Yes, and behind the alabaster skin of that chest are the
lungs that will be the death of her. Lucky for you you go only skin deep. All in
all I prefer the tiny oval portrait of her that is so rarely reproduced—painted
by Margaretha Elisabeth Sömmerring, “the Pearl of Frankfurt,” one of Susette’s
best friends and herself renowned for her beauty. The nose still dominates, the
chin recedes (proþles are merciless!), but those eyes, and that hair! Don’t you
want to lose yourself there! Isn’t that what this is all about! And speaking of
loss, my friend Marianne Schütz of the Württembergische Landesbibliothek
in Stuttgart tells me that the original color miniature has gone missing. All
they have of it too is the photograph. Yet the original still exists, of that she is
(almost) sure. Painted when Susette was already ill, in the winter or spring of
1801–1802, then handed down through generations, þrst in the Sömmerring
family, then by Susette’s own descendants, treasured by the women of the
family (who, they say, still look like Susette: lucky girls), this most precious
memento of her has vanished. Marianne is hoping we can help locate it, trust-
ing that þction will reach readers whom scholarship never touches. What do
you say to that? Yet if you found it, would you ever give it up? That hair!

27
T’ I

However, by the time of Marie Rätzer’s wedding at White Hart on July

10, 1797, matters had taken a critical turn. Cobus, who could not have been
unaware of the talk, was treating Hölderlin more like a servant than a tutor.
Even though Marie was Hölderlin’s friend too, so that he would certainly
have planned to attend the marriage ceremony, he was ordered to remain at
the Adlerÿychtschen Hof while the rest of the Gontard family hosted the
wedding. Hölderlin wrote Neuffer on Marie’s wedding day, and this time the
tone was remarkably different:

How often I miss you, my best of friends! I can talk politics

or philosophy with many people, but it isn’t so easy to dupli-
cate the person to whom one can reveal one’s weakest and
strongest sides. I’ve almost forgotten how to open myself in
full conþdence to a friend. I wish I could sit myself down
beside you and warm myself on your þdelity—then it would
all go by heart! O my friend! I say nothing, I say nothing, and
so a burden is heaped up in me, which in the end almost
crushes me. At the very least, it will irremediably cloud my
mind. And this is my curse—that my eye does not see as
clearly as it used to. I confess to you that in the past I have
been more capable of deliberation than I am now. When I
was twenty-two years old, and lived in your company, my
good Neuffer, my judgments of others and of myself were
more solid than they are now. Oh, give me back my youth! I
am torn asunder by love and hate.

On September 11 Susette returned with the three girls to White Hart for
the winter. The Frankfurt Fair was under way, and she had to do much enter-
taining. Again Hölderlin was ordered to remain at the Hof, this time with

28
Susette Gontard (1769–1802). Bust by Landolin Ohmacht, ca. 1798. In the Manskopf family
archive, destroyed in 1944. Print by Joachim Siener, Württembergische Landesbibliothek,
Stuttgart.

29
T’ I

Henry. By October the lovers were reunited, but now Susette’s brother Henry
Borkenstein and his wife descended on White Hart. It proved to be an ex-
tended visit, and Susette had to entertain them. In a letter to his mother
Hölderlin complained, “This whole year we’ve been having visitors, parties,
and God knows what else! At these sorts of functions your son, The Insigniþ-
cant, suffers most unbearably, because everywhere in Frankfurt tutors are taken
to be þfth wheels, and yet good form requires them to be present” (2: 674).
In this same letter he comes much closer than ever before to revealing to
his mother the source of his discontent. He writes of the “contradictory im-
pressions” concerning his own character that the people of the house commu-
nicate to him; perhaps he should leave such a house, “where two parties form,
the one for and the other against” him; the one makes him almost “impudent”
in his boldness and conþdence, while the other makes him “gloomy, depressed,
and sometimes even bitter” (2: 673). To his stepbrother, on February 12, 1798,
Hölderlin adds that his artistic life, or at least his life as an author, is also in
crisis. His life has been “shipwrecked,” shattered by “ruinous reality,” inas-
much as it strove too early for too much, thus damaging the maturation pro-
cess that demands its own time. All he can seek now is repose, tranquillity,
Ruhe (2: 681). “Do you know what the root of all my suffering is? I want to
earn my living from the art on which my heart is set; instead, I have to go
jobbing among human beings, so that often I am sick at heart and weary of
life. . . . I am a weak hero, am I not? . . . We do not live in a climate that is
conducive to poets” (ibid.). His sense of alienation from the entire Frankfurt
circle is by now extreme: he tells his sister that with few exceptions he lives
among “monstrous caricatures” instead of human beings; the aristocrats of
Frankfurt are parvenus whose new wealth affects them “as new wine affects the
boor, making him giddy, asinine, coarse, and impudent” (2: 687).
The summer of 1798 at the Adlerÿychtschen Hof was unbearably tense.
Hölderlin felt himself to be a menial, a lackey, and not even Susette’s love—

30
T’ I

expressed only clandestinely and ever cautiously—could alleviate the humili-

ation and helplessness. “There are so few who still believe in me,” he lamented
to Neuffer in a letter that for the þrst time mentions (in a roundabout way)
the rumors that are stinging him (2: 689). His þnal letter to Neuffer from
Frankfurt, accompanying a sheaf of poems that Neuffer wanted to publish in
his Pocket Book for Educated Ladies, is an amalgam of failed love and frustrated
ambition:

I am delighted, O best of friends! that you have accepted my

little items so generously. At a time when destiny, which has
caused me to love unhappily, may also compensate me for
this love by granting me calm and good cheer, I want to serve
you too with greater energy. You must know that I want to
and have to give you everything that men can give one another
in spirit and deed and heartfelt sympathy, for you are the one
who þrst taught me the meaning of the happiness that lies in
true and deep friendship. Dear friend, do you esteem the period
of our tender, mutual friendship as I do?—I believe that
human beings who have loved one another as we have are
thereby prepared for all that is beautiful and grand. . . . Well
I know that I am still nothing, and that perhaps for all time
shall be nothing. Yet does that abrogate my faith? And is my
belief mere conceit and vanity? I think not. I would say that
if here below nothing seems to be going well for me it is be-
cause I have not rightly understood myself. To understand
ourselves! that is what elevates us. For if we are wrong about
ourselves, mistaken about our heÀov [divinity] or whatever
else you want to call it, all art and all effort are futile. There-
fore it means so much if we can hold on to one another and
tell one another what is in us, and the gravest harm we can
inÿict on ourselves is to let petty rivalry or some such thing
separate us and drive us apart. For the call of a friend is indis-
pensable if we are to be at one with ourselves once our own
soul, our best life, has been ruined for us by the folly of vulgar

32
 T Go-H C

Castanean brown, they say it was, with auburn highlights. That undone chest-
nut hair! Undone hair of the lover undone! Lost!

This paean to male friendship troubles me at many levels—but not for the
reasons you think. First of all, it worries me because Neuffer was eventually to
disappoint Hölderlin: their correspondence and their friendship are almost at an
end, and very soon peter out. Secondly, because of the devastating self-image
that Hölderlin perceives in the mirror of Neuffer’s “friendship”: Hölderlin
says, “I know well [change your translation, make it more readable] that I am
nothing as yet, and that I shall be nothing perhaps for all time.” His prediction
proves to be mistaken, but the desperation is real.
He demanded so much of himself ! He called it “ambition” sometimes,
but it soared well beyond any ambition I ever heard of—he was struggling to
come to terms with the “divinity” in him, and with him that word was not a
cliché or an empty epithet. (Who in our time can afford to take such a measure
of herself?) But at other times he called it “friendship,” and he sought it even
among the gods. This is apparently a guy thing, as your nation likes to say:
men trying to make friends with their male gods while they all conspire to
mistreat women and goddesses. Thus the frustrations and mistakes of Hyperion,
thus the bitter hybris of Empedocles, both of whom chased after gods because
they were in mortal fear of the women in their lives—their mother and wife
Rhea, their all-goddess Panthea, and even their instructress Diotima.

“ . . . and the gravest harm we can inÿict . . . is to let some petty rivalry . . .
separate us.” Wouldn’t it be the icing on the cake if this were our story—our
having been reduced to some petty rivalry? I know I complained about being
reduced to your commentator, but it isn’t because I want to compete with
you; it’s because you’ve gotten all the important things wrong and I have to try

33
T’ I

people and the self-centered pride of others who have already

made something of themselves. (2: 696).

We cannot know who this last group includes. Among “those who have
made something of themselves” are we to count not only both Goethe and
Schiller but also Susette Gontard? During the last week of September 1798
there is a terrible scene between Cobus and Hölderlin. The tutor is told he
must leave White Hart immediately. To her instant regret, Susette, confused
and panicky, accedes to her husband’s desire to banish Hölderlin. Soon after
Hölderlin’s dismissal, his pupil—who has been told nothing—writes Hölderlin
the following letter, dated September 7, 1798, perhaps the most poignant of
Hölderlin’s entire correspondence:

Dear Hölder!

I can hardly stand it now that you are gone. Today I was at
Herr Hegel’s place, he told me you had been planning for a
long time to leave. On my way home I met Herr Hänisch,
who came to us the day you left, looking for a book, which he
found. I happened to be with Mother when he asked Jette
where you were, and Jette said you had gone; he then wanted
to go to Herr Hegel’s with me in order to ask about you. He
accompanied me there and asked why you had gone and said
he was really sorry about it. At supper, Father asked where
you were. I said you had gone, and that you sent him your
best greetings. Mother is healthy and sends lots of greetings,
and says you should think of us really quite often. She has
moved my bed into the room with the balcony, and she wants
to go over once again all the things you taught us. Come back
to us soon, my Holder; who else is there who could teach us?

34
 T Go-H C

to stop you, even if I don’t know how to get all those things right. . . . Or are
we rivals over something else, something out of our own past?

Maybe you are right to wonder whether Susette Gontard is, as far as Hölderlin
is concerned, a member of that elite group (Goethe, Schiller, etc.) from which
he feels himself excluded. Don’t you sometimes hear strains of strident envy in
his letters? If he feels as though Cobus treats him as a menial, isn’t that partly
because he so acutely fears this demotion to a lower class? And he does have to
fear this demotion, because he is a member of the priestly caste—an impover-
ished appendage to the nobility rather than the nobility as such—and because
he has no money: his pathetic efforts to edit a popular journal just so he can
earn enough cash to remain close to her, his dependence on a patrimony ad-
ministered by his mother—these things are telling! these things are crushing!
Sometimes he does loom tall, sometimes he is a proper Jacobin, an admirable
revolutionary: he tells his sister Rike how useless the aristocracy is. Yet Cobus
is no aristocrat—his religion and his capital make him the perfect bourgeois,
whether one is a Marxist or a Weberian. Cobus’s wife, however, is a problem,
if only because Cobus dresses her up like an aristocrat. From a Jacobin point
of view, Hölderlin experiences Susette la Parvenue as a far more painful thorn
in the eye than Cobus. When she joins her husband in banning Hölderlin
from the house—whether out of panic or calculation—she becomes a suppu-
rating thorn, a poisonous barb, to him. I wonder whether we can even imag-
ine what Hölderlin must have felt as he hurriedly packed his bags? To be
accused of that kind of betrayal—I believe in your quaint country it is called
fucking the boss’s signiþcant other—to be accused of the sensual, sexual mis-
conduct his mother has been warning him against all his life, and then to have
his presumptive accomplice in sin join in her husband’s condemnation of
him—what must this do to a human being? It must have curdled his blood,
mashed his marrow, addled his brains. And how deeply young Henry’s inno-
cent letter must have lacerated him! He must have been more fearful of dis-
covery by Henry than by Cobus. He must have felt he would lose his brother,
his son, his daughter, his own voice—the portrait of the artist as a young
woman. (I wonder whether Henry’s corruption as a result of this entire af-
fair—I mean the affair as accusation, inasmuch as we do not know whether

35
T’ I

I’m sending some tobacco with this letter and Herr Hegel is
sending you the sixth volume of Posselt’s Annals.
Fare well, dear Hölder.
I am
Your Henry

Frankfurt am Main.

Hölderlin found refuge in the small town of Homburg vor der Höhe (or
Bad Homburg), in the Taunus mountains north of Frankfurt. His friend Isaak
von Sinclair arranged lodgings for him there and set some money aside for his
day-to-day expenses. At the end of the month Hölderlin visited Hegel in Frank-
furt but did not see Susette. She wrote the þrst of her letters to him in early
October, over a period of several days; in the course of the writing she saw him
one evening at the theater. Hölderlin then stayed overnight in the guesthouse
at Weidenhof an der Zeil from Thursday to Friday; on that Friday afternoon
they met secretly in her room at White Hart; they met again on the þrst
Thursdays of November and December.
In Bad Homburg he was working intensely on the þrst version of his
tragic drama, The Death of Empedocles. (The þrst volume of Hyperion had
already been published, and work on the second volume had already been
completed.) During these days of reÿection on the life and death of the great
Greek thinker of Love and Strife, which were also the days in which he met
ÿeetingly with Susette, Hölderlin’s thinking went as far as anyone’s thinking
in the era of German Idealism and Romanticism had gone—including that of
his teacher Fichte and his friends Hegel and Schelling:

The transience and mutability of human thoughts and sys-

tems strike me as well-nigh more tragic than the destinies
one usually calls the only real destinies. And I believe this is
natural, for if a human being in his or her ownmost and
freest activity—in autonomous thought itself—depends on

36
 T Go-H C

any of this really happened—isn’t the most scandalous subplot of this story:
his teacher proves a scoundrel, his mother a whore, his father a martyr with
horns on his head—no wonder Henry dies an early death, without children of
his own.) “At supper Father asked where you were.” As if Father didn’t know
best. “Mother is healthy and sends lots of greetings.” Lots. Whenever I read
Henry’s letter, I’m relieved that I’ve given up on this project altogether, and
I’m angry that you haven’t yet seen the light. That’s as close as I come to being
a moral creature. Too close, you’ll say, I know.

Secretly they meet. What do they secretly do? Can you keep a secret?

37
T’ I

foreign inÿuences, if even in such thought he or she is modiþed

in some way by circumstance and climate, which has been
shown irrefutably to be the case, where then does the human
being rule supreme? It is also a good thing—indeed, it is the
þrst condition of all life and all organization—that in heaven
and on earth no force rules monarchically. Absolute monarchy
cancels itself out everywhere, for it is without object; strictly
speaking, there never was such a monarchy. Everything that
is interpenetrates as soon as it becomes active. . . . Of course,
from every þnite point of view some one of the autonomous forces
must be the ruling force, yet it must be observed to be prevail-
ing only temporarily and only to a certain degree. (2: 723)

Himself caught up in the daily, weekly, and monthly interpenetrations

of Qilía and VeÀkoc, that is, of Empedoclean Love and Strife, Hölderlin saw
that every dream of solitary rule, every phantasm of the absolute, is bound to
dissolve. Nietzsche will experience the evanescence of the dream in his own
way, and will become famous for that experience; Heidegger will occupy that
þnite point of view in which the temporary and temporal announce them-
selves as the horizon of the only being that gives itself to mortals. Yet Hölderlin
arrived at that conclusion a century or more before them. And when he gazed
back upon the most familiar texts of his youth, Hölderlin again saw þnitude:
the Achilles of Homer’s Iliad was no longer the intrepid warrior, modeled on
Diomedes, but the vulnerable lover who stood weeping on the shore, crying
out to his mother, “blue-hued Thetis,” in order that she rise and assuage his
grief. For the “insolent ones” (Agamemnon’s Achaeans or the nouveaux riches
of Cobus’s Frankfurt) had deprived the hero of his beloved Briseïs. “If only I
were like you, splendid youth, so that I could as conþdently as you lament to
one of the gods . . .” (1: 198–99).
Hölderlin and Susette came together again brieÿy on March 11 and April
5, 1799. Susette suggested that during the coming summer months at the
Adlerÿychtschen Hof she and Hölderlin exchange letters through the hedge
that surrounded the property. The þrst exchange occurred on May 9.

38
 T Go-H C

“In heaven and on earth no force rules monarchically.” Would I be right in

hearing this as a declaration of the irrefragable end of all patriarchy? For the
monarch has always been a man, even when the crowd yells “God save the
Queen!” The end of patriarchal government, society, religion, and what I think
you call “metaphysics.” Empedocles proclaims the coeval rule of Love and
Strife in the sphere. Of course, once Strife is introduced, no reign of Love will
ever quell it entirely. The and in “Love and Strife” means: “Love—and that
means Strife.” You can understand that, can’t you? You have learned from me,
haven’t you? Remember, you used to ask me, “Why must we always quarrel,
why do we always have to þght?” In heaven and on earth no force rules monar-
chically. Doff your crown, my friend, doff your crown.

Frankly, “Briseïs” was a name that never meant anything to me, but I went
back and re-read the entire Iliad after Hölderlin þrst directed me to her. Now
she has become like a sister to me, though still a great mystery. Everyone talks
about Helen, all the poets and orators over two millennia singing her ambigu-
ous praises. Yet what is she to Achilles, the hero of Troy? To him, Helen is the
seductress of a weak king (Menelaos), herself seduced by an even weaker prince
(Paris). But this beautiful Briseïs! Is that her father’s name, or is it her own?

39
T’ I

In early June Hölderlin wrote Neuffer of his plan to edit a monthly

journal of poetry and criticism, to be published by Neuffer’s own publisher,
Steinkopf, in Stuttgart. It was to be a journal for educated women, “aesthetic”
in its contents, and was to guarantee Hölderlin a modest income—enough to
enable him to remain in Susette’s proximity. Christoph Theodor Schwab re-
ports the following about Hölderlin’s proposed title for the journal:

He oscillated in his choice of a suitable title. . . . The name

Hebe [i.e., the personiþcation of blossoming youth, called by
the Romans Iuventas, daughter of Zeus and Hera] had already
been used by someone else. He thought of calling it Sympo-
sium, for, like Plato, who calls love a child of Póroc and Pevía
[Resource and Need], he believed that art and poetry should
be a child of Wealth and Poverty, inasmuch as they come to
the fore from both the plenitude of the idea and the destitution
of real life. That is the way he justiþed his original choice of
the title. Yet Hölderlin dropped this idea and determined upon
the name Iduna.9

The principal motivation for the journal, to repeat, was that it would provide
a steady source of income for Hölderlin, enabling him to remain in the vicin-
ity of Frankfurt and Susette. Hölderlin gathered sufþcient material from friends
and acquaintances for the þrst year of the proposed journal. For the lapidary
Steinkopf, however, there were not enough “stars” represented among the au-
thors; Hölderlin was to engage Goethe, Schiller, Schelling, and others of rank
and fame. He undertook the humiliating—and eventually frustrated—task to
get the “names” of the day to support his project.

9. Michael Knaupp cites the second volume of Christoph Theodor Schwab’s edition of
Hölderlin’s works (1846), 299, at 3: 391. Iduna is the Old Nordic equivalent of Hebe, the god-
dess of eternal youth and immortality, the consort of Bragas, god of language and of the art of
poetry.

40
 T Go-H C

Who is she and where does she come from? Is she too from Thebes, like
Chryseïs, the Thebes that is home to tragedy? Is she the only woman who has
touched Achilles’ body, the only one at his heel—the only one besides his
mother Thetis to get that close to him?
Men þghting other men in order to possess women—how boring, how
very much our entire history; but a mere slip of a girl, herself absent from the
action of the epic, driving the hero into a rage and a sulk—how interesting,
how very much the backroom of all our history!
Now, about this backroom journal, intended “for educated women.”
You conveniently obscure the fact that what Hölderlin has in mind is some-
thing like a magazine I have seen in the United States: The Ladies’ Home Jour-
nal. Or maybe Cosmopolitan. (See his letter of June 4, 1799, to Neuffer; 2:
764–66.) Don’t object to me that his journalistic motives are higher than that.
Because it is still the age-old challenge: What shall we do with our wives?
Hölderlin promises to improve their ethics. Had Cobus been able to laugh,
imagine how he would have guffawed at that! The poet promises at the same
time to provide “genuine entertainment.” The Death of Empedocles for enter-
tainment? Entertainment for the ladies? The ladies who have been extruded
from the play because they are the mere “accidents” in a man’s life? Or, if that
drama is too “essential” for the “accidental” ladies, Hölderlin proposes some
entertaining and “universally comprehensible” (he italicizes this) prose essays,
“not too dry,” he pledges, “on the life and character of Thales and Solon and
Plato.” I can hardly wait. Hold me down.
The entire journal project is so pathetic—I shouldn’t be mocking it here.
Just look at Hölderlin’s invitation to Schiller to contribute to the journal. No
wonder the invitations to all his friends are met with such resounding yawns!
The letter to Schiller ends with the best—and perhaps sole—reason why
Hölderlin’s better-known colleagues should hasten to his rescue: “. . . because
up to now as a writer I’ve not really had much luck” (2: 795). His college
roommate Schelling replies with some suggestions about other possible con-
tributors to the journal, but doesn’t offer anything of his own. It is wretchedly
sad.

41
T’ I

After Susette met Hölderlin and exchanged letters with him in early
July, she set out on a journey to Thuringia, traveling via Kassel and Gotha to
Weimar and Jena. On July 27 she and Sophie Brentano were received by Schiller.
In spite of her keen desire to help Hölderlin win over Schiller to the journal
project, Susette was overawed by the great man and was unable to speak:
Sophie frittered away the entire meeting with small talk. Back in Frankfurt,
Susette met Hölderlin secretly once again at the Adlerÿychtschen Hof on the
þrst of August. The money Hölderlin had managed to save in Frankfurt was
now exhausted. He asked his mother for further modest support, and received
it. Hölderlin and Susette exchanged letters on September 5, then met secretly
in Frankfurt twice during the month, and once again, brieÿy, on October 31.
On November 7 he presented her with a copy of volume two of Hyperion,
which he had inscribed, “To whom else but you.”
By mid-January Hölderlin’s Bad Homburg friends were dismayed by his
profound dejection. On February 6 he met furtively once again with Susette.
After his brother-in-law’s death in Blaubeuren on March 2, 1798, Hölderlin
began to entertain the thought that he ought to leave Homburg for
Nürtingen—well outside the vicinity of Frankfurt. He delayed. The battles
between Napoleon’s armies and the Coalition forces in northern Swabia en-
couraged that delay. Susette realized nevertheless that Hölderlin would soon
be gone. Their last meeting and exchange of letters—hers is in pencil, hastily
scratched—occurred on May 8, 1800. Early in June Hölderlin headed for
home, passing through Stuttgart. His friends there saw how agitated his psycho-
logical state was; they also noted how his once “blossoming body” now bore
the scars of his inner turmoil.
A proper biographical sketch would have to report in detail how much
magniþcent poetry was being produced during these troubled months. Yet let
us hasten to the end of the story.
After his brief sojourn in 1801 as a tutor in Hauptwil, Switzerland, and
after his bootless requests to Schiller and Niethammer to arrange for him a
lectureship in Greek literature at the University of Jena, Hölderlin accepted a
post as tutor in the house of Daniel Christoph Meyer, the consul of the Hansa

42
 T Go-H C

When you coolly tic off the dates of their clandestine meetings—trysts you
sometimes call them, is that from Tristan?!—my heart sinks in dejection. I can
hear the gossips chattering all over Frankfurt, it is like something out of the
tabloids. From a second Frankfurt gossip to yet another, on June 29, 1799:

The King of Prussia’s ball is over at last. He spoke with every-

one, just as he did when he was Crown Prince. The Queen
and her sisters wore Greek-style gowns, they drifted across
the dance ÿoor like four Wechswood þgurines. None of the
Bethmanns were there because poor Metzler had died just
the day before, and so Susette had Herr Thurneysen all to
herself for the entire evening, you can just imagine how pleased
she was with herself, you could tell because she stayed almost
to the very end of the ball. How lovely for her: she always
manages to þnd an ersatz companion, doesn’t she?

My contempt for them doesn’t silence them: their vacuous, insipid talk, their
smug and impudent sarcasm, their lousy spelling (Wechswood!) invariably
detract from Gontard’s and Hölderlin’s love. It is unfair, but it is so. It is as
though every love, no matter how seaworthy, founders under the weight of its
own ballast on the high seas of public life. It collapses in on itself, ruining
everything. I can’t prevent love’s succumbing, I am powerless to stop it, or
even deny it. Shit.

“ . . . how much magniþcent poetry.” Yes, this is the other side of my com-
plaint: if you will not give me the book on Susette Gontard that I want, why
don’t you give us the book on Hölderlin that everybody wants? That would be
a book, not about how he loved or failed to love, but about his mouth and his
hand, his ear and his pen, and all the weird and wild noises they made—the
noises in his head about gods and titans, rivers and streams, the recurrence of
love and strife in the cosmos? These noises, these rumors in the night, these

43
T’ I

city of Hamburg in Bordeaux. On or around December 10 he struck out on

the journey from Nürtingen to Bordeaux—on foot. He arrived at Bordeaux
on January 28. In mid-May he resigned his post and walked home, arriving in
Stuttgart at the end of June or early in July. His friend Landauer had difþculty
recognizing him. Hölderlin himself wrote of this last journey and þnal home-
coming, and of the news that intercepted him in Stuttgart, “I have seen the
sad and lonely Earth . . . , and, as one says of heroes, I believe I may well say
that Apollo has struck me” (2: 920–21).
On June 30, 1802, Isaak von Sinclair had written Hölderlin a letter. Not
knowing Hölderlin’s address in Bordeaux, Sinclair sent it to their mutual friend
Landauer in Stuttgart for addressing. Hölderlin stumbled across the letter at
Landauer’s house. It was as though he had marched in solemn procession all
the way from Bordeaux to Paris to Strasbourg to Stuttgart simply in order to
receive this news (2: 918–19):

Homburg vor der Höhe, June 30, 1802

Dear Hölderlin!

As terrible as the news is that I have to communicate to you,

I cannot leave it to chance to inform you of something for
which even the aid of friendship is too meager. I am all the
more prepared to tell you the news, since a similar fate has
befallen me, a destiny I did not expect, and one that has made
me profoundly sick at heart. The noble object of your love is
no more. Yet she was yours, and if it is more terrible to lose
her, it is more galling when one is found to be unworthy of
love. The þrst is your destiny, the second mine. I don’t know
how to console you, except to state the consolation that is
already yours. You believed in immortality while she was alive;
surely you will believe in it now more than before—now that

44
 T Go-H C

vague stirrings of the nothing are what drew Susette Gontard to him. They are
also what drew you and me to him, don’t you remember, back in the days we
sat in on Beck’s lectures? These noises are what we still want to hear. “Few are
like you,” she writes to him, and she has her reasons. But they are reasons of
the mouth and the ear and the pen. Decode them! Declare them!

I was going to say that you introduce the end too abruptly, but I’ve changed
my mind. The end can come only too abruptly. I want to stop it or retard it
but I can’t. In this morning’s paper I read about the ruptured pulmonary vein
of a woman in a car crash in Paris; the doctors were able to repair the vein,
there was some hope she would revive, but her heart abruptly stopped. They
massaged it for an hour, but it would not pick up the beat. It was a good thing
it did not—they had gone far beyond the fateful eight minutes of nonlethal
interruption of oxygen ÿow to the brain: she would have revived as a member
of another species. As it is, she died. She was another woman made wretched
by a man, by men—not by the doctors, by others, before the crash. Can you
promise it will never happen to me . . . again?
And so you have taken us to the end before the letters have even begun.
Massive internal bleeding, the doctors said, from the damaged pulmo-
nary, with subsequent cardiac arrest. “Cardiac arrest”? That’s what Cobus would
have directed the sheriff to write on the warrant to be put out on Susette
Gontard and her friend Hölderlin.
You arrive at her death so dramatically. Is a death ever to be used for a
story in this way? Is that ever permissible? Is her death an episode in your little
drama? First Hölderlin’s daughter, and now his lover? Why can’t you be a little
more candid here, a little more straightforward? Susette Gontard’s life and
death are not grist for your scholarly or narrative mill.
How, then, to handle this terrible, terrible death? As you begin to re-
count it, don’t forget Henry von Lilienstern’s letter to Rüdt von Collenberg
(see Beck, Hölderlins Diotima, 158–59). Lilienstern complains about the treat-
ment that Dr. Sömmerring administered to Susette Gontard. He says that
Sömmerring had killed his own wife that past January with his newfangled

45
T’ I

the life of your love has departed from this world of tran-
sience. And what is more grand and more noble than a heart
that has survived its world, a heart that early on was attuned
by destiny to that earnest feeling in which alone life, peace,
and eternity are bestowed on us. I want to give you courage,
and I do so with an intrepid heart. Because I am not afraid, I
dare to speak the truth about love.
On the 22nd of this month, G. died of the measles, after
ten days of illness. She had her children with her; happily,
they survived her. During the past winter she suffered from a
severe cough that weakened her lungs. She remained equal to
herself up to the very end. Her death was like her life.
It has moved me deeply, and I weep as I write this. I had
not seen her again after the time of your separation, and I felt
that it would be unworthy of me to try to þnd out about
someone who was living the immutable life of the Godhead.
The news was therefore entirely unexpected, but I also re-
ceived it with a heart that was made all the purer by its unsus-
pecting state, and I am telling it to you in a way that will not
be unworthy of her.
Since you last saw me I have suffered some reversals of
fortune. I have grown quieter, colder, and I promise you that
you can seek repose in the bosom of your friend. You know
all my faults. I hope that none of them will cause another
disturbance between us. I therefore invite you to come to re-
side with me for the length of my stay here. If circumstances
should call for a change in my situation, we can think things
through together and make a collective decision; if destiny
decrees it, we will be as two going together, faithful to one
another. I can manage to set aside 200 ÿorins a year for you,
and I can set you up in an apartment with whatever you need.
Do not take this merely as my plea to you, but also as my
advice—even though I do not know what sort of state you
are in, and it is difþcult for me to advise you. It could be that

46
 T Go-H C

notions, and now Susette Gontard is his latest victim. I’m not certain what
notions he’s talking about, but it reminds me of the accusation made against
Schelling at about this time for having treated (and lost) Caroline’s daughter.
It may be that Sömmerring too was a follower of Dr. John Brown of Edinburgh,
and that he was treating Gontard on the basis of the physiological theory of
“sensibility, irritability, and reproduction.” She was hypersensitive, but unable
to act, “asthenic.” Sömmerring may have treated her for insufþcient irritabil-
ity. She could not “act out,” as we would say, so that the reproduction or
regeneration of tissue diminished in her—þrst of all in her lungs. What would
Sömmerring have done to her? Surely he would not have bled her? She had
had enough men in her life tapping her life’s blood. Lilienstern reports that
one of the children brought measles into the house—he doesn’t say which
one, but I think I know. The other children all got them, he says. Susette
nursed them all back to health, then came down with the measles herself.
According to Lilienstern, Sömmerring wouldn’t give her any medication to
drive them out. Newfangled homeopathic notions? Or was he taking advice
from Cobus? Was he trying to treat “the whole person,” as Brown urged? Or
did she herself refuse to take her medicine?
The illness settled in her lungs, which had already been weakened by a
severe bronchitis that past winter. She had been complaining of a stabbing
pain high on her left side, near the heart, but no one took her seriously—just
another hysterical woman, cramped up and miserable inside, no ÿow no go
“beneath the skin,” as Barbara Duden says. Professor Weidemann was called
in: he took one look at her and knew that she was on her deathbed. He said
that even if she had survived the measles, tuberculosis would soon have killed
her. Sömmerring, Ebel, and Weidemann—the useless medical triumvirate—
looked on while Susette Gontard died.

“Faithful to one another. . . .” You should be citing Susette Gontard’s letters

to Marie Rätzer-Rüdt von Collenberg (Beck, Hölderlins Diotima, 154–55). Marie
is more than the tutor of Susette Gontard’s girls: from the start, Susette Gontard
has taken her into her conþdence about her love for Hölderlin. The very last
letter of Gontard’s correspondence, a letter to Marie, is perhaps the most doleful
letter—don’t let it fall into oblivion. She speaks there of “a past that for me is

47
T’ I

you will þnd down there the peace you need. Let me know
your decision. I’ll also travel down to Bordeaux, if you like, in
order to bring you back.
Our friend Ebel sends greetings. Since January he has
been in Frankfurt. He was with G. during her illness and
consoled her during her þnal hours.

Yours,
Sinclair

48
 T Go-H C

preeminently full of objects of mourning.” She continues: “I will not touch

on my irreplaceable loss. To open up my feelings in this regard would be more
than I can bear; gladly I would conceal them in holy darkness. May an imper-
meable shield veil them forever.” Gontard closes by saying that the emotion-
ally stormy winter that has just passed (1801–02, her last) has left her feeling
“somewhat paralyzed,” although she insists that her health has become “much
more stable.” That is the last we hear from her. “Much more stable.”
She has become inþnitely more stable. But do not memorialize, do not
monumentalize her. Do not bury her in your dusty crypt, do not forget her in
the barren chambers of your scholar’s heart. Where would your desires be
without her?

49
 L  D  H

F V

Johanna Gok, Hölderlin’s Mother
Jacob (“Cobus”) Gontard, Diotima’s Husband
Friedrich Heinrich (“Henry”) Gontard, Diotima’s and Cobus’s Son
Sophie LaRoche, a Novelist
Dimitri Tsiboulis, a Gardener
 I

[Frankfurt, September/October 1798]1

I have to write you, my darling! My heart can no longer be silent

toward you. Let my feelings speak to you one time more, and
then, if you þnd it better that way, I shall gladly be still. Gladly.
How arid and empty everything around me is—around me
and in me—now that you are gone; it is as though my life had lost
all meaning. I can feel a life living in me only through the pain. —
How I love this pain now. When it abandons me, when every-
thing in me goes numb, how longingly I start looking for it again.
Only my tears, shed on account of our fate, can give me joy now.
— — — And they ÿow abundantly when, already at nine o’clock
in the evening, in order to shorten the day, I lay down to rest with
the children, where everything is quiet and no one can see me.
How can it be! That is what I am often thinking during these
hours. What is to become of this beloved love, this pristine love of
ours? How can it go up in smoke and dissolve in thin air without
leaving behind a single lasting trace? — I felt in myself the wish to
erect a monument to it in written words, words for you, a monu-
ment that would preserve that time unaltered and inextinguishable.
How I would like to paint it, this noble love of the heart, paint it
in all its ardent colors, down to its most minute shadings; how I
would like to get to the bottom of it—if only I had the solitude
and the tranquillity! The way things are, distracted and torn as I
am, I can feel it only piecemeal; I am seeking it constantly, and yet
it is whole in me! —

1. All dates and place-indications within square brackets are additions by the editors.

52
Not everyone I write has to be you. Not everything I write has to have you as
its destination. Should my whole life be one long epistle to you, a repetitive
paean to you? I refuse to believe it. You are not the only one I have to write. I
look into the mirror and see the many morsels of me, all the bits and fragments,
each writing someone else. The suspicion and hostility in my eyes write my
mother. Suspicion and hostility—but also cunning. Every mother a canny
woman, midwife as well as mother, dragging her infant into the world and
never letting go. My mother’s eyes in me see Hölderlin’s mother now, the
pious Gok, twice a widow, thrice a mother. Lady Gok, guardian of virtue,
champion of the faith, chancellor of the exchequer. My mother’s eyes in me
uncover her discovering letters written in a woman’s hand to her “darling.”
Why and how are these intimate letters in her timid son’s possession? Incon-
ceivable that he should be some woman’s darling, some other woman’s darling!
How can it be! Yet there they are, these letters, bound in a bundle by a faded
lavender ribbon—a kind of monument. Widow Gok reads them. The swel-
tering summer afternoon fades to a storm-troubled evening. That night Gok
writes her pastor and spiritual advisor. For more than one reason, her soul is
agitated.

Johanna Gok to Christian Nepomuk Kugel in Nürtingen

Nürtingen, July 15, 1802

Most reverend and esteemed Pastor Kugel!

Piety—devotion—religion—these all say the same thing in different words.

Piety comes þrst because it is of the heart. Devotion sometimes cultivates
external appearances alone, as my dear Father, Pastor Heyn, used to tell us,
but true religion is of the order of piety and piety is the grace that surrounds
this noble love of the heart. All my life I have sought it. My children have

53
L  D to H

Things go best for me out in the open, out in the liberating

þelds, and constantly I long to wander to the place where I can see
the lovely Feldberg, the mountain that keeps you gently from ÿee-
ing any farther from me—wicked fellow that you are!2 Yet when I
return to the house, it is no longer the way it used to be. It used to
do me so much good to come back and be close to you; now it’s as
though I were coming back to a gigantic cage and letting myself
be locked up in it. It used to be that when my children rushed
downstairs to me they were coming from you. How it gave me
strength when I was mournful! They would have a gentle blush on
the cheek, a deeper seriousness and a tear in the eye, things that
exhibited your inÿuence on them. Now they no longer have this
meaning for me, and often I have to admonish myself concerning
my feelings for them. — — —
The above lines I wrote during the þrst week of your absence,
and my heart struggled with my powers of reason over whether I
should really send them to you or not. My heart won out in this
case, and I determined to seek an opportunity to give you an
accounting of it all, an accounting of all the various ways we used
to be with one another, ways that were cut off when you left. For
the very thought that two people who are as close as we are could
live on and, after such intimacy, hear nothing from one another,
or wish to know nothing about one another, was something I could
not let happen; it would have been impossible for me to rhyme
that kind of renunciation with tenderness of heart, and I almost
think that you must have expected these lines from me, and that if
I had remained silent you would have had good grounds to accuse
me of the very opposite of tenderness. You couldn’t be the þrst to
write, I sensed that, of course, because I was always the one who

2. Homburg vor der Höhe, or Bad Homburg, where Hölderlin resided after his departure
from Frankfurt, lies between Frankfurt and the Feldberg, a foothill of the Taunus range. The
Feldberg thus serves as a common horizon—an enclosing wall, as it were—for the parted lovers.

54
 V

heard nothing else from my lips, except for my lamentation of my deceased

husbands, though that too was piety. Piety toward my spouses, piety toward
my children, piety toward my Pastors, and piety toward our good God.
My son’s trunk arrived today from Bourdeaux. I opened it—only be-
cause I feared his clothing might be musty and moldering from the long jour-
ney. At the bottom of the trunk, beneath the travel books and the journals, lay
a small metal casket, the kind for documents. It was locked. Fearing that the
documents too might be damaged by mold and mildew—what a summer we
are suffering! have you ever felt anything like it before?—I sent for locksmith
Schweißer. The box contained a packet of letters, nothing else. They were
damp from the voyage, but from more than that. Let me explain. For my faith
is at stake. A Christian woman raises Christian sons, otherwise she does noth-
ing at all. I have told you about my Fritz. You have read his novel. I have
shown you his poems when he sent them to me. You know that they are lofty,
not the common run of verse, not the vulgar drivel of our times. I have already
explained to you that all his life I have prayed that he take up the ministry of
our dear and good God, precisely as you have done. For it is his patrimony—
through my own beloved Father. I lost him so soon after the death of the boy’s
own father, my dear Heinrich, that these two deaths seemed to me but one all-
encompassing loss, one compressed agony and woe. Fritz was two years old
then. And even though years later I married my beloved Gok, who cared for
the boy as though he were his own, Fritz never had the continuous paternal
guidance a boy so desperately needs. He was only ten when my good Gok
passed on to Glory, so that when the period of a young man’s trials and tribu-
lations began for him there was no one to take him by the hand and lead him
through that perilous country. He practiced no vice, that is certain: my de-
voted Mother and I (may the Lord have mercy on her soul!) searched for signs
of it and they would not have escaped us. Piety—devotion—religion—all as
acts of renunciation—marked his life as much as they did ours, we saw to it.
Yet we knew something was wrong when even though he was in the seminary
at Maulbronn he declared that he would never wear the Cloth. Reasons he
gave none, other than his poetry, which was no real reason. The letters I read
today betray the real reason. My son has lost his faith. He has squandered it in
immorality. He has wasted his soul over a woman. A married woman. I knew

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L  D to H

was against it. These thoughts made up my mind for me. Don’t
hold it against me, then, that I have written you and that I send
you my lament. I realize, of course, that if this lament were not
undiluted proof of my feelings, you would not even hear it.
Henry just received your letter, which gave me much solace.3
Up to now I could þx my mind’s eye only on your new freedom
and independence, your daily life, your quiet room with a green
tree outside the window. Your letter, a lovely token of consolation,
I held in my hands for all of þfteen minutes—then Henry consci-
entiously demanded it back from me in order to show it off, and
so I never got another look at it. I don’t know what was forbidden
Henry on account of it, but I found him afterwards very much
changed, and he was reluctant to speak of you by name.
You came to Frankfurt . . . and I didn’t catch a glimpse of
you, not even from afar—that was hard for me! I was counting
on Saturday the whole time, but I must have had a premonition
you were coming, because on the evening when you passed by, at
about 8:30, I opened the window and thought—what if I should
see him in the glowing arc cast by the street lamp? Some time
afterwards, when I wanted to send Henry to Hegel, he told me
he wasn’t allowed to go; I replied, very earnestly, that he would
prove to be possessed of an ungrateful heart if he made no objec-
tion to his having been forbidden, and I asked him if it did not
make him very sorry, but nothing would help—he said he had to
obey.

3. Henry was Susette’s oldest child, named after her brother, Henry Borkenstein. It is clear
from the following lines of Susette’s letter that she and “Cobus,” her husband, discussed at least
to some extent her feelings for Hölderlin, and that Susette agreed that the poet had to leave
their household. Hölderlin himself complained that during his employment Cobus had treated
him more like a hireling than Henry’s tutor. Whether or not Cobus’s treatment of Hölderlin
was related to his awareness of Hölderlin’s love for Susette, and hers for Hölderlin, cannot be
determined. Hölderlin’s letter to Henry is not preserved.

56
 V

such things went on in the wicked world, but not in my house; with others,
but not with my own. Let me explain. Don’t hold it against me. He wrote me
that one party in the household in which he was tutoring favored him, while
the other opposed him. He did not mention that it was a she who was favoring
him and her husband who was opposing him, a detail that changes the whole
meaning, don’t you see?

Not everyone I write has to be you—or my mother or his mother. Again I

look into the mirror, scan the morsels of me. This nose—too long too thin
too avid, the cartilage too prominent too blanched, revealing the skull be-
neath—my banker’s nose smells the moldy, reassuring smell of bank notes.
Several days after the death of his son Henry, fourteen years after Susette
Gontard’s death, Jacob Gontard writes his brother. No one calls Jacob “Cobus”
anymore. He is in Paris with his third wife, negotiating with the Rothschilds
after Napoleon’s þrst banishment. Henry was only twenty-nine, a good age
for a poet to die, but not a banker; it is frivolous for a banker to die so young,
irresponsible for a banker not to see to it that his father’s investments reach
full maturity. Henry had too much of his mother in him; he purged himself of
her by giving birth to the death in him. That is too complicated a thought for
Henry’s father, however; too mixed up for an entry in the ledger that is the
Great Book of Reason. Jacob sets aside his ledger for a moment in order to
write his brother.

Jacob Gontard to Franz Gontard in Hamburg

Paris, November 1, 1816

My dear Franz,

You came to Frankfurt. It was kind of you, good brother, to travel all the way
down from Hamburg for Henry’s funeral. A father can þnd comfort in such
lamentable circumstances only among his own kin, only among his own broth-
ers and sisters, who are the sole surety to him. I had to return to Paris imme-
diately after the funeral: the situation here is heady, as you can imagine, with

57
L  D to H

Now that all our paths of communication have been cut off—
and I am simply irate about this—I am hoping to see the man that
you once sent to our house from the inn.
If you think it is all right, and if Sinclair should come this
way some time soon, you could ask him if he might visit me, as
long as you don’t put this visit in a false light for him; through him
you can send me your Hipperion, if you’ve already received it.4 It is
not possible for me to buy it with vulgar coin. And if you send it I
will have news of you once again. How happy that will make me,
if things are going well with you! —
People greet me as I have always known them to, very cour-
teously, offering me novelties, pleasantries, soirées. Yet to accept
even the smallest pleasantry from someone whom the heart of my
heart does not embrace would be like poison to me, as long as the
sensibility of this heart of mine endures. For who would want to
assure herself of some “lovely days,” as people call them, when her
friend has fallen from favor? How could such a person claim for
herself the qualities of tenderness and sensitivity? Given this
state of my feelings, I am living more simply than ever before, and
gladly so. I am inclined to limit my needs: this pride, this feeling,
is dearer to me than all the Earth’s goods. God! my love! preserve
me in it.

4. We do not know whether Susette Gontard at this time already possessed the þrst volume
of Hyperion, published on April 17, 1797 (that is, some eighteen months before the present
letter was written), and was waiting for the second volume (not published until November
1799, that is, over a year after the present letter), or whether she had not as yet seen any of it.
Her strange spelling of the name implies that she has seen none of it. It may be, however, that
she is writing the title the way Hölderlin himself probably pronounced it, in modern Greek,
emphasizing the third, long syllable: §Uperíwv. Note the correct spelling at the end of letter V,
from February 1799, in anticipation of the second volume; but once again, in Letter VI (in the
section dated March 19), the incorrect spelling. In the end, it seems highly unlikely that Susette
could not have been in possession of volume one, and her anticipation of volume two—which
was a year late in appearing—seems the more likely case.

58
 V

the Emperor overthrown and the Coalition enforcing an uncertain peace.

Some say Bonaparte is not quashed forever, but I don’t believe it—the com-
mon weal dictates it. I will know more about it after my meeting with the
Rothschilds tomorrow, and I shall keep you informed. The banks rule here as
everywhere, now as for all times. The fact that John Law, a Scotsman serving
under the English ÿag, founded the Banque Générale de France shows that
banks are more potent than nation-states; one day the foolishness of national-
ity will end and the earnestness of Protestant religion and rational þnance will
prevail. The fact that John Law’s bank had to be suppressed after the bubbles
abroad had burst proves only that rulers tremble before the bench—not the
bench of law but the bench of bankers. Did you know that the word banque
comes from the Spanish banco and the Italian banca, which refer to the bench
on which a group of men sat at the market place, trading in vulgar coin and
tallying up the values of the sundry commodities, in general sustaining law
and order in those motley circuses of banditry and mean dealing? A banker is
originally a bencher, and that is why, to return to my point, rulers tremble
before the bench. Whether I (or the Rothschilds) am at work in Frankfurt or
Paris or London makes no difference: no one on our bench hoists a ÿag. Yet I
believe I will eventually reside here in this luxurious Paris, even though I am
inclined to limit my needs. Frankfurt is nothing to me now but a graveyard,
the real estate of the moribund.
Besides, here I am among the people who gave us our name and our
original tongue, which we have almost lost in foreign lands. I think often of
Henri IV’s sagacity: the Edict of Nantes gave us our protection and France her
one and only chance to join the modern world. I think too of the foolishness
of Louis XIV, who revoked the Edict: the sun king suddenly went behind the
clouds, as twenty thousand men sworn to Reform and Thrift abandoned France
for more promising investment opportunities elsewhere. The Great Elector of
the Holy Roman Empire (which of course was neither an empire nor Roman
nor holy), Friedrich Wilhelm of Brandenburg-Prussia, welcomed the Hugue-
not families, the DuBoscs and the Gontards, into all the German lands. (Did
you know that Madame de Staël writes of us in her diary? She says, “Francfort
est une très jolie ville; on y dîne parfaitement bien, tout le monde parle le Français
et s’appelle Gontard.” I swear it is true. Her memoirs are published: you can

59
L  D to H

I am almost always alone with the children. I try to be as

useful to them as I can be.
How often I have regretted the fact that when we parted I
advised you to leave as quickly as possible. I still cannot grasp
what feeling it was that made me implore you to do that, but I
think it was fear in the face of the overwhelming sensation of our
love, which came to a crescendo in me and opened a terrible wound.
The violence I felt made me capitulate immediately. How many
things we could have arranged for the future—that is what I
thought afterwards—if only your parting had not taken on such a
quarrelsome color. Then no one could have forbidden you to set
foot in this house again. But now? Oh, tell me, my good friend,
how can we arrange matters so that we may see one another again,
at no matter how great a distance? — I cannot renounce it alto-
gether! It remains my dearest hope! — — Think on it.
I won’t be able to write you often, for this is something I can
dare but once at most. You will receive a few lines in return through
Sinclair. Further, I don’t think that we can meet at the Comic
Opera very often: people would soon notice, because they are not
accustomed to seeing me attend bad plays, and we don’t want any
spectators. Further, it would hurt me to know that you are having
to travel in bad weather. If you þnd it agreeable, we will make the
following arrangement: you shall come on the þrst Thursday of
each month, and if the weather is bad, you’ll come the þrst lovely
day after that when there is a performance at the Opera, and I’ll
adapt myself accordingly.
Now, I’ve had to release a ÿood of words over you, and yet I
would gladly have told you so much more that I cannot properly
express. It all lies buried deep in my heart; only tears of melan-
choly can say it, only they can nurse it, allowing me to grow calm
once again. You see perfectly well that I can’t þnd the words! —
I’ve changed so much: this powerful blow of fate has turned me
inward entirely; a profound and holy solemnity pervades my whole

60
 V

look it up.) The Great Elector welcomed our families with tax incentives and
superÿuous instructions. “Make a proþt!” he commanded. For more than a
century now we Huguenots have been obeying the Great Electors, trying to
be as useful to them as we can be. And France? I have been perusing the
volumes of the vast Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et
des métiers, in order to reacquaint myself with the culture, and the writer of
the article that recounts the revocation of the Edict of Nantes says, rather
wryly, I think, “Never was such a great sacriþce offered up to religion.” He
means to the papacy of course. France has never emerged from the shadow of
England, the Low Countries, and your own illustrious Hansa city. And Napo-
leon? A mere excursion. It will mean nothing in the long run, you will see. As
backward as glorious France is, however, there is money to be made here.
Paris is quite different from Frankfurt. Here wealth is measured by the
possession of luxury items. It is as though the Revolution changed nothing,
nor the costly Wars, which now at last will come to an end. We make moun-
tains of money during wartime, it is true, but affairs are too rushed and too
unstable. There is no substitute for steady trade and commerce. But to return
to my point, which is Paris: often these luxuries, these mere baubles and trin-
kets, adorn a family of þnancial corpses. Women in high-bodiced, deep-cut,
well-nigh transparent Empire gowns—with ÿeshless bones beneath. These
people have no substance. Yet life here is pleasant, and I’ll adapt myself ac-
cordingly. If my new wife is agreed, and I am certain she will be, we shall live
here some day. For the moment, Henry’s death leaves me no choice but to
return to Frankfurt for an extended period: I now have his branch of the þrm
as well as my own to run. We Huguenots all marry our own cousins, and so
our children do not last. It is an unproþtable venture. Think on it.
Dead at twenty-nine. At þrst the doctors thought it was the measles, but
I told them that he had had the measles just before his þfteenth birthday. He
brought them into the house when he came back from Hanau for the summer
holidays. They were a grave danger to him—he was well into his coming of
age. Yet they were a graver danger to his mother. No, it wasn’t the measles that
swept Henry away: it was a simple cough and cold, a catarrh that wouldn’t
quit his lungs. He had no stamina. I think he lost heart when he was eleven

61
L  D to H

being. It’s just that most of the time I feel so stiÿed, and I have no
capacity to think. If I try to read, my thoughts grind to a halt,
refusing to advance; I can perform only the most necessary duties
and have become so lethargic that people are astonished. My
health is otherwise þne—it’s only that I am lacking courage and
activity. It’s as though I were a bit paralyzed. All I want to do is
lounge about and daydream! Yet my imagination often won’t do
even that much. Oh! things will surely go better with me if only I
am assured of receiving news of you, and if I have ahead of me a
particular window, a day of hope, inasmuch as hope alone keeps
us alive. — — It is a matter of certainty that in this I will never
change. — — —
Thus far written on Wednesday.

Friday morning, 9:30

Since I saw you yesterday only one wish ÿourishes in me: that I
will be able to speak with you face to face.5 If you dare to risk it,
and if you are not obligated by other appointments, come this
afternoon at a quarter-past three. Go straight to the back door,
which is always open, proceed quickly and quietly up the stairs as
you used to do; the door to my room, near the stairwell, will be
ajar for you; the children will be having their lessons at that hour
in the blue room at the back, and they won’t be able to see you
outside if you walk along the garden wall. Wilhelmine will be tend-
ing Molly in the parlor,6 and we can hope to have an hour to
ourselves for quiet talk. If you þnd it unwise, however, or if there
are other reasons why you can’t make it, I promise to respect them,
and we certainly don’t have to change anything, we can let the old

5. Apparently, Susette Gontard had seen Hölderlin the previous evening at the Comic Opera.
6. That is, Susette’s maid, Wilhelmine Schott, will be tending her infant daughter Amalie,
called “Maly” by the family—here “Molly.”

62
 V

and I had to tell him about his mother. A boy’s mother is inþnitely important
to him, my dear Franz, no matter what she has done. The death of our own
sweet Mother, who was so innocent and pious all her days, was such a power-
ful blow of fate—do you remember? Henry was þfteen when his not-so-inno-
cent mother died, and only eleven when she lost her soul. It could not be
helped: I had to explain to him that his tutor had lured her into something
wicked, something that could not be uttered; if Henry wanted to continue
living in the House of his Father he would have to denounce the interloper,
renounce the tutor, whose name he must never again allow to cross his lips
and whose letters he must burn. He obeyed me of course. Yet he grew listless
and lethargic, as though he were a bit paralyzed. His mother shrank in stature
before his very eyes—I saw him gazing on her at supper while he pretended to
be wiping his mouth with his serviette, thinking no one would notice. Fathers
notice. That is what we are for. All our existence is a watch. Exactitude and
decisiveness are our watchwords. I know that I was a good father. The girls’
tutor, Marie Rätzer, a beautiful, large-breasted young woman, once said of
me: “The best, most tender father could not be more faithfully devoted to the
care and well-being of his most beloved child than good Herr Gontard is to
me.” I should have married her.
We never talked about it again, Henry and I, not even after her death.
Yet it seemed to be on his mind all the time; it sapped his conþdence and
strength. I was loyal to her, far more so than she had ever been to me: “Do not
taint your mind,” I warned him, “but leave her to heaven.” He didn’t listen.
He brooded. He tried to conceal his despair behind a mask of insouciance. I
believed his marriage to Cäcilie Marianne would alleviate matters, but his
own marriage seemed to aggravate the unannealed wound of doubt. I am sure
he never risked telling Cäcilie about it. He seemed to fear it as though it were
a contagion running in the family—would she do the same to him? Perhaps
that is why they had no children of their own, even after þve years of marriage.
It was unnatural; it was unproþtable. She left the door to her bedroom ajar for
him, but to no avail. Children are a couple’s only real surety, generally speak-
ing, although you see what has become of my þrstborn.
You wrote me, dear brother, that you had heard rumors of the affair all
the way up in Hamburg. That is no surprise. Rumors against such as we

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L  D to H

arrangement stand. You can organize things any way you like; you
will always þnd me.
And even if somebody does see you, it really doesn’t matter.
Why should it be conspicuous if persons who have lived under the
same roof for three years spend a half-hour together? The opposite
would draw more attention.

64
 V

abound, and they are always motivated. The House of Gontard is strong, and
if our competitors cannot breach our þnancial walls and attack the þscal cita-
del they must elaborate other strategies. They must foment subversion within
the walls of the House, at the very heart of the House, in the bedroom—they
will search it out, invent it if they cannot þnd it. It makes their own lackluster
lives and inconspicuous successes slightly more palatable to them. It would
therefore be unwise to believe anything you may have heard. Lend it all no
credence. Grant it no credit. For I will tell you the whole story here and now,
with the tranquillity that my years and my two further marriages have enabled
me to accumulate.
Yet one last word, if I may, about the motives of the rumormongers,
who are related to þshmongers or mongers of any stripe. If we knew Iago’s
bank balance (“Put money in thy purse,” he tells Roderigo over and over
again) all the rest of the play would become transparently clear. No one is
interested in what are called amours. What people are interested in is power, if
not to achieve something for themselves then to remove it beyond the reach of
others. For this is the logic of power in every economy of scarcity. The gleeful
asseverations against my wife were attacks on me—and on you and Father
and Uncle and Grandfather, on the entire House of Gontard. Not the stench
of lust but the ashen odor of impotent envy and smoldering greed emanated
from them. And to the extent that my þrst wife lent credence to these assev-
erations she purposed the ruin of our House.

65
L  D to H

II

Evening7

My letter8 saddened you, my darling, whereas yours gave me such

inexpressible joy, it made me so happy, it showed so much love!
Oh! when I read it, how it responded to every tone my heart can
sing, how ardently my inmost soul clasped your own. And you?
Are you perhaps doubting my love? Could it be that my letter,
which was so cold and arid, troubled you? How wrong you are! If
only you could see my pain and the tears I shed at the thought,
surely you would not think that. Yet ultimately it isn’t this at all
that tortured you. You are afraid that my heart is dying in me, and
that for this reason I can no longer love you.
I can’t imagine what sort of impression my words made on
you, but I saw your tears ÿowing, they fell burning onto my heart,
I could not dry them! — — — Anesthetized and mute, I sat there
the whole evening until I found the moment that alleviated my
oppressed heart. I found it because I was alone. Oh! if only I could
come to you and give you consolation. I keep no secrets from you,
O my soul! My love too is so full that the heart in me cannot die.
If I am silent, if I am sere, do not doubt me, for in the depths of
me I am burning, and like you I must preserve myself from pas-
sion. Grief lacerates me sometimes, to be sure, but a sweet and
healing melancholy ÿows from heaven at the right moment and
pours its blessings on my heart, so that I will never despair of
nature. For even if I felt my own death at work in me I would say
that nature will rouse me again, she will restore to me all the feel-
ings that are mine alone, the feelings I have preserved so faithfully,
feelings that only an oppressive fate could take from me. Yet win
she shall, this nature, she will prepare from the raw materials of

7. It has proved impossible to assign a more precise date to this letter than the years 1798–99.
8. Apparently one of the four or þve lost letters.

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 V

My gaze returns from my banker’s nose to my mother’s eyes. First one eye,
then the other: impossible to look into both of them with both of mine. The
mirror refuses to see me, gives me back only morsels of me, all that is left of
me. Ragged edges of guilt, jagged edges of cunning and bitterness. Mothers.
So cold and arid. Mothers are always right because mother is always right.

Do not ask me, my dear and faithful Pastor Kugel, how it is that piety, devotion,
and religion are of the order of love, whereas love also seems to be the culprit in
those very conspiracies that destroy piety, devotion, and religion. It is not easy for
lay persons and simple folk such as I to make the necessary distinctions. These
letters from the woman to my son, I confess, confuse me. On the one hand,
which is the hand of dishonor and duplicity, they show a vixen scheming to trap
a younger man, an innocent, my son, my own tortured ÿesh and blood; on
the other hand, which is the piteous appendage of a frail humanity, they show
a woman whose heart is dying in her, a woman whose sole crime is loneliness.
For it is always loneliness that spurs infatuations and illicit loves, don’t you see?
Let me explain. Sometimes I wanted to cry out against her—I, who lost
two husbands, fearful of ever taking a third even though there are many who
urge me to accept their pleadings, could tell her about the true taste of loneliness.
She had a healthy husband, or at least a living one, and four bouncing babies—
only one son, but even so. I had the babies but not the consolation of a spouse
and helpmate. I was alone with my grief. I was therefore furious at her self-
indulgence. Yet the more I studied the letters (it was my obligation as a Christian
Mother to read them: our task is not accomplished until we are laid to rest
and have gone to our Eternal Reward!) the less certain I was about her crime.
Do not misunderstand me: it is clear to me that she is the seductress of my
son. Even in her letters she does not shy from tickling him under the chin, she
does not try to conceal her jealousy but dangles it before him like an adornment,
she does not try to soften her hardness of heart against her husband. She revels
in the most passionate language. She schemes openly, she cajoles and lures, all
in the name of “nature.” Only my son could have been so easily fooled. He
never took an interest in these things, dear Pastor Kugel, but was a virgin soul
every day of his life. He had no experience. Of course, I saw less of him after
he set out for Denkendorf and Maulbronn; boarding schools, as you know, are

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L  D to H

death a new and more beautiful life for me; for the seed of love lies
deep, is ineradicably planted in my being. I say this out of experi-
ence, because I know how my heart has always prevailed against
the world’s oppression, rising up each time more vital, more alive,
than before.
Oh, dearest, I do not know if I am þnding the right tone. I
had nothing to tell you, but a great deal to say to you. Yet what
oppresses me is nothing other than the fact that I cannot be with
you. If only I could grant you certainty, but I am afraid that my
passionate language will not convince you. Oh, please, let it do so!
and be happy again in your love! This evening I still take joy in the
thought that I actually saw you. My God! If you walked away
buoyed by the joyful mood that was my own, why, then, don’t you
see, I would pray in gratitude to the Genius of Love for having
guided me to you there so invisibly! And with these thoughts I
want to go to sleep, wishing you blessings. — — —

Morning

I slept well, most excellent friend, and once again I have to tell you
how much joy your letter brought me. I must thank you for all the
serene happiness you have bestowed on me. Oh, don’t read my
letter any longer if it troubled you, and hold onto the previous
one, which was so dear to you. Yesterday I had to reÿect for quite
some time on the matter of passion. — — — The passion of supreme
love will never þnd its satisfaction on Earth! Feel this with me! To
look for such passion would be the epitome of folly. — — — To
die with one another! — — — I know it sounds like sheer fanati-
cism on my part, but even so it is true. — — — It is our way of
attaining peace. — — Nevertheless, as far as this world is con-
cerned, we have sacred duties. Nothing remains for us but our
most blessed faith in one another and in the omnipotent essence
of love, which will guide us invisibly forever and bind us together
ever more inseparably. — — —

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 V

the very seedbeds of vice. Yet he remained pure, I am certain of that, a Mother
knows these things. All he talked about in his letters were the sermons he was
expected to deliver on St. John the Baptist’s day or at Easter, they made him so
nervous, he was so anxious to do well—he had no time for girls. St. John’s was
his favorite, because that’s when the Father announces, “This is my Beloved
Son, in whom I am well-pleased.” All he ever desired among earthly goods
was coffee—I sent him packets of it every time he wrote home—so that his
sermons would be stimulating and occasionally some demijohns of sacramental
wine, very dry, but only when the Prelate was scheduled to visit the school.
Besides, Louise Nast was the sweetest thing, you know her family, she would
never have surrendered her precious jewel to him and he would never have
thought to ask her for it. His poems to her were full of sweet nothings. They
all declared that he never really wanted to be near her, he only wanted to weep
over her at a distance.
It is probably at the university that he fell. In spite of the Duke’s valiant
efforts to enforce the proscription of forbidden books, the students always get
their hands on them—French books, Republican books. They hide them under
the boulders on the riverbank so they won’t be caught with them in the dormito-
ries. The books and the fraternities, the drinking and fencing and gaming, the
evil companions—all this dragged him down or so weakened him that the wafting
fragrance of a woman laid him low. It was a matter of passion. The shame is mine,
however, I know that, and it is wicked of me to cast blame elsewhere when the
þnger points at me alone. I am his Mother, I raised him, I should have known.
I never truly got through to him. During all the months and years of his
childhood he never spoke to me of what was in his heart. Perhaps I wept too
much: I remember him turning away from me in disgust after Gok died and
the tears would not stop. Later he wrote me that I had made a secret pact with
pain—that made me cry, I can tell you! He said that in 999 cases out of 1,000
people who suffer want to suffer—did you ever hear anything so stupid and
so un-Christian as that in all your life? He said that suffering was their way of
attaining peace, imagine! A boy should never feel disgusted with his Mother,
Pastor Kugel, don’t you think it’s ungodly? He wanted me to get over it, he
said, as though he himself had ever gotten over those two deaths, the deaths of
his two fathers. He thought that grieving ought to be easier the second time

69
L  D to H

Serene devotion! Trust in the heart and in the victory of the

true and the best, to which we have surrendered ourselves utterly.
And we could perish? — — — Yet if the very spirit of harmony
and love that sustains us did not sustain the world, then every-
thing, absolutely everything, would be out of kilter, and the world
transformed into chaos. That spirit lives eternally in the world.
Why would it abandon us? How could it abandon us? Surely we
may compare ourselves to the world! And so it cannot be other-
wise in us—as in the larger world, so in our smaller one. And we
should lack trust? We who have daily proof of the splendid nature
that keeps us alive, that shows us love alone, we should harbor
strife and rebellion in our breast when everything calls us to the
tranquillity of beauty? — — — Oh, surely not, my most excel-
lent friend! We cannot become wretched, for this soul lives in us.
And I know that the pain will only make us better and bind us
together all the more intensely.
Therefore, do not grieve, not even now that you have made
me sad. Don’t you see, the grief passes once one has grown calm,
and, as for me, I have been feeling strong these days. I must tell
you now that my conþdence in you, just the way you are, has no
limits: however you arrange matters, they will meet with my silent
accord. I, for my part, will not ask why. Last week you failed to
come, you didn’t tell me yesterday that you wanted to come by
again, that you wanted to come once again this morning, even
though my letter to you had proposed that right at the outset. I
can assure you that it didn’t disturb me in the slightest. Your letter
had made me so happy, and I thought, this is most certainly love,
and I didn’t ask for anything else. With faith in this, one must
respect what cannot be explained. Oh, best of friends, my dearest!
be calm once again, be cheerful, and communicate to me the single
feeling that will make me happy, the feeling that you are content.
Give me back my peace of mind as well, for then I shall most
certainly be happy. — — —

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 V

around; it only gets harder, as you yourself, alas, now know. If only there were
something I could do!
He lacked serene devotion. He never felt genuine piety in his heart, and
therefore could never be fully content and conþdent. He never surrendered
totally to the truths of our faith, and that explains why he had such a difþcult
time in the seminary. He never believed in the perfect harmony of the world,
but he never realized that it was because he himself was hitting the sour notes.
He never felt complete conviction or the force of total commitment. He felt
that the spirit that rules the world had abandoned him. He lacked trust. He
harbored strife and rebellion in his heart, even when he was out in the splen-
did þelds that God turns green every spring and summer. He was, in a word,
wretched, and the pain did not make him a better person. He made me sad,
and I am his Mother. I always had to be strong enough for the two of us. I
always had to oversee things for him, he was never able to take care of himself,
he always needed his Mother. He never showed me the compassion a widow
deserves, but I never held that against him, it didn’t disturb me in the slight-
est. Yet there was something else, something worse, which did disturb me.
There was a trace of cruelty in him—it hurts me to have to write this
but I have to tell you the truth—it must have come from his Father’s side,
God rest his soul. He was short with me. He never stayed about the house but
took his Klopstock out into the þelds. He sat on stone walls or lay in the tall
grass before hay harvest from morning till night. “Never lie in the grass before
hay harvest!” I would tell him, but he ignored me. Yet the farmers never scolded
him, out of deference to me. Everyone left him alone. All his life he has been
alone, drifting on by my Mother and me (may she rest in peace!) as though he
were a shadow of cloud on those þelds. I never asked why. He ignored Rike,
his own sister. Carl he took under his wing only when he was older, and he
treated him more like a pupil than a brother. He must have spilled his feelings
to the þsh in the brook and bared his heart to the beetles in the grass—none of
us ever knew what he was thinking. His feelings showed only when he turned
away and scowled, but by then it was too late. No boy should ever scowl at his
Mother, he cannot know the wound he inÿicts on the one who gave him life,
it is ungodly. He snatched away my peace of mind, he deprived his own Mother
of her only chance at happiness.

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L  D to H

III9

Tomorrow after 10 o’clock I shall be waiting for you. Join in my

prayer to the Genius of our Love that he grant us a tranquil hour.
——
If it should prove impossible, you know the sign; then come
after 3 o’clock. I await the hour with longing! — Sleep peacefully,
and may my image hover about you. Take courage. I am ready for
anything. Surely all will go well. Tomorrow you will also receive a
long letter from me, and you will surely bring me some treasure.
Already I take joy in it — —

9. Once again, no more precise dating than “Frankfurt, 1798–99” is possible for this letter.

72
 V

If I abandon my eyes and go once again by the nose, advancing blind, by scent
alone, I go as my own father. He taught me thrift before he died. He cannot
have been as talented a banker as Cobus was; he certainly was not as wealthy.
Whatever his faults, Cobus held the secret of longevity: three wives and two
banks he had.

I know you would prefer me to be more speciþc, dear Franz. The storm clouds
began to gather long before that hypersensitive lunatic arrived at White Hart.
It all started with Henry’s birth—yes, with the birth of the one who is so
recently dead and buried, and at such incredible expense. After the long-dreaded
birth, I say, my wife slipped into a dangerous melancholy, then plunged into
a bottomless depression. I assured her that all would go well, but she would
not listen. She would not leave her bed; she soiled the sheets; she refused to
eat. The surgeons called it “nursery room hysteria.” She could not nurse our
little treasure, even though she had talked about nothing else for months prior
to the birth—I had told her it was beneath our station, but she retorted that
Rousseau had taught her all she needed to know about both station and lacta-
tion and that milk in any case was none of my affair. (I shall return to our
good Jean-Jacques in a moment.) Because of the mother’s hysteric þts, the
child suffered egregiously from neglect. Indeed, his debility may have stemmed
from this þrst betrayal by his mother rather than the second. When I tried to
enter the room in order to make her obligations clear to her she screamed at
me: it was a voice I had never heard before, a voice that did not belong to her,
and it did not cease until I closed the door and moved entirely away from that
part of the house. She was insensate. Insane. This went on for sixteen days.
Then one þne day she rose from her bed and took up her duties, acting as
though nothing at all had happened. She dismissed the nursemaid and per-
formed the disagreeable task herself. Somehow, during the weeks of her mad-
ness, she had managed to keep up the production and ÿow of milk, a mystery
to the doctors and to me.
It was never the same after these þts. She began to resent my profession.
One of the things she had shouted at me when I tried to enter her sickroom
was “Abacus!” She shouted out the word over and over again.
“You, Abacus! Get out, Abacus! Damn you, Jacobus Abacus!”

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L  D to H

IV

[Frankfurt, early February 1799]

We shall not see one another tomorrow, dearest darling! We have

to be patient and wait for better times. We have now received in
our home the long-dreaded visit.10 I cannot describe how crushing
it is for me that I cannot tell you face to face how much I love you.
Do you love me too, love me always, faithfully and ardently, and
do not allow ruthless fate to rob me of anything! — —
All the stormy weather in the sky has gathered once again
over my head! The evening after our last encounter our coach broke
down and I received a contusion on my arm that kept me home
for a long time. The next morning I learned that my brother, who
was out hunting, had shot himself through the leg. And both your
letters wound up in the wrong hands—though both were soon
turned over to me without further incident; there were no conse-
quences other than my having to wait a full week for our next
meeting. Even so, that meeting assuaged my suffering.
Do not think, my darling, that the fate our love has suffered
angers me or depresses me utterly! It is true, I weep often; and they
are bitter, bitter tears. Yet it is these tears that sustain me. As long
as you are alive, I do not want to perish. If I could no longer feel, if
love were to vanish from me, then what would my life be—what
would my life be without love? I would founder in night and death.
As long as you love me, I cannot be whelmed, you will keep my
head above water, you will guide me to the shores of beauty! Be-
lieve in me, and build your life upon my heart.

10. From Marie Rätzer-Rüdt von Collenberg and her husband Ludwig. There was no reason
to dread this visit from old family friends (especially since Marie had always been privy to the
secret of Susette’s and Hölderlin’s love), apart from the fact that it made Hölderlin’s visit to the
Gontard household—and the exchange of letters between the lovers—impossible.

74
 V

I had told her months before that one of the most interesting etymolo-
gies of bank, back beyond banca and banco, which I’ve already told you about,
was the word abacus. I confessed I did not know whether it was a Latin or
Arabic or Chinese word. She seemed interested at the time.
I believe she blamed the pregnancy on me, which was doubtless correct.
She also held me accountable for the birth pangs, which was surely exagger-
ated. Be that as it may, from those weeks on, I was alone. I knew I would have
to be patient and wait for better times. They never came.
She began to thirst after other men. I saw it at every tea, at every formal
dinner, at every ball. Each guest at White Hart was a potential paramour. She
was of course irresistible, with her alabaster glow and her hair of jet. Nor did
she ever have to stoop to coquetry or ÿattery of any kind. Instead, she feigned
an interest in letters. Perhaps there was some genuine interest there. It was
clear to me nevertheless that she cultivated poets over poetry, spirited men
over men of spirit. She no longer heeded me: I had lost her ear. I had lost her
other oriþces as well, and it was a miracle that Jette, Lene, and Molly were ever
conceived. I studied them closely when they were born. It isn’t always easy to
tell, is it?
It may well be that my conþdence had suffered a blow. Conþdence, as
you know, is decisive: the entire ediþce of credit is constructed on its founda-
tion. Credit in turn is the power to make use of another’s powers. More pre-
cisely, in þnance and commerce it is the faculty of the borrower to impress
considered opinion—that is to say, to impress the lender, that is to say, dear
Franz, to impress you and me—with assurance of repayment. Thus the lender
multiplies his resources by employing another’s talents at a distance, as it were.
Now, the surety against which credit is rendered may be either real or per-
sonal. Real surety, in effect, is real estate: buildings, furnishings, and the like.
Personal surety is measured by the amount of indubitable utility that remains
after the borrower’s capacity to impress us has been subtracted: the borrower’s
skills, prudence, thrift, and exactitude constitute this remainder. These quali-
ties are neither constant nor certain, to be sure. For when men follow their
natural liberty they often obey their passions rather than the Great Book of
Reason. (In the Great Book of Reason, which is nothing other than the Book
of Calculation, credit is marked on the verso side, while debts are entered in a

75
L  D to H

Well, then, farewell for now, my very best and dearest darling,
and believe as I do that our most beloved and inmost essences will
remain unalterably the same and will belong to one another.
Next month I am sure you will risk it. Perhaps you can þnd
out through Hegel whether I am once again alone.

76
 V

neat hand on the facing recto. With a steady eye on the crease of the Great
Book, where the fascicles are sewn, the lender or creditor can discern instanta-
neously how much credit—if any—remains in the case of any given bor-
rower.) A creditor often makes mistakes about where surety may potentially
be but actually is not, or about where surety once ÿourished but now is barely
keeping its head above water. Credit therefore has natural limits, even if it is
impossible to determine with precision what exceeds those limits. One should
not for that reason, however, my dear Franz, spurn personal surety altogether:
the borrower who possesses the designated qualities will over time earn real
surety, a signiþcant portion of which will accrue to the beneþt of the lender. I
grant you that on occasion enormous risk is involved: the creditor must there-
fore be assured of the good faith of the debtor. Religion is the normal guaran-
tor of good faith, though not if the debtor is an inþdel or a fool. If the sum of
the amassed debts reaches a certain point, and if circumstances arise that di-
minish conþdence to a marked degree, then the value of the belief and hope of
the lender with regard to the borrower will be less than the value they repre-
sented at the outset of the transaction. Unfortunately, a þrm’s or an individual’s
discredit draws in its wake the entire citizenry’s contempt for the common-
wealth. Some nefarious individuals will be cold-blooded enough to speculate
on this very contempt, hoping that when credit is restored they can resell
dearly what they have acquired at a steal. It is best, then, never to lose conþdence
in ourselves and in the community, so that our actions may always be decisive
and exact.
Exactitude and decisiveness: these are the virtues of a wise creditor—but
also of a wise debtor. Imprecision and indecisiveness are contemptible, imbe-
cile. If banks are to be creditors, as well they must be, the public must have
conþdence in them. Yet conþdence is never given without reserve. A bank
must hold a stated amount of its assets in liquid, otherwise conþdence will
disintegrate; a bank must ÿoat actions for the remainder on the rough seas of
commerce. To the extent that conþdence animates the citizens, they will em-
brace these actions and deposit their cash in the bank in exchange for a nicely
calculated interest. When conþdence fails, revolutions ensue, and the nation
goes begging. General discredit is a situation of violence from which every
citizen tries to ÿee. The bank must quell such violence by offering a new credit

77
L  D to H

[Frankfurt, end of February 1799]

How gladly, my darling, I would tell you as faithfully as possible

how I have been spending the unhappy days of our separation, if
only the recounting of these days were not so painful to me. I have
been alone for several days now, and already things are a bit better.
The worst part of it all was that I could not guarantee for myself a
single solitary quarter-hour. And even when I was alone I had to
suppress my feelings violently, in order that my tearful eyes not
betray me and give rise to nettlesome questions. Yet the þrst soli-
tary hours I did manage to þnd were terrifying to me. I wanted so
much to give myself over entirely to my feelings. Yet I couldn’t do
it even then, because my longing for you became so intense that I
didn’t know how to save myself. A powerful struggle arose in me.
With all my powers I tried to call back to life the dream image of
you that was starting to evaporate in me. I tried to paint it again
on my imagination in the most vivid colors. But, oh, I couldn’t do
it! I felt my desire and my powerlessness at one and the same time!
I focused my thoughts on your letters and books, on the lock of
your hair; but I didn’t want that kind of help, I wanted to renew
my image of you entirely from within me; but my foolish heart
soon had to stand red-faced before my powers of reason, begging
pardon. Several days later I gathered up all those beloved things
from earlier days, along with the letters, tokens that meant little to
me as long as I had you, items that did not yet have a place in my
memory. What a treasury of tender words, what a consolation,
what a lovely image of you I found in those letters, how they lured
amorous tears of tenderness from my eyes, how they strengthened
my heart, how I cling to them now during every wretched hour!
But, oh, all that is bygone! — What is my present? — What is my
future? — — — — Every day now I ask myself, “How must a
being who is alone subsist in itself, and through itself, after love

78
 V

based on real surety—there will always be some credible and creditable surety
in even the most ravaged nation—which is to say by painstakingly rebuilding
what a moment’s panic was sufþcient to dash. Eventually, fears and suspicions
will dissipate: for the bank inspires conþdence.
Now, in order as faithfully as possible to set a realistic value on the surety
of land, real surety being real estate, one must know the land’s dimensions, the
degree of its fertility, the manner in which it is to be cultivated, the ameliora-
tions of which it is susceptible, and the populations of the livestock and the
men working it. The tastes and the means of the consumers must also be
taken into account. Some people doubt whether any bank can guarantee such
a close calculation; they even aver that banks are “useless” in this respect. Such
people have never had dealings with our bank. Yet they are right to be con-
cerned: for at all times and in every nation the ruin of credit implies the
devastation of the body politic. But I digress.
Actually, I only seem to digress. For the conþdence I had felt in my
wife’s personal surety began to dwindle until it reached the nadir of the esteem
in which I held the lunatic with whom she had become infatuated. Both of
them lacked exactitude and decisiveness, both maintained an excess in liquid
and failed to preserve real surety.
Whereas credit is transferable, conþdence is not. Conþdence, which is
the very gift of inspiration, is exposed to every contagion wind and is vulner-
able to the formidable powers of infection, degeneration, and demise. When
nettlesome questions arise, they undermine the very substance. When the
modicum of real surety is further depleted, and conþdence plummets below
the critical threshold, animalcules of deleterious inÿuence ÿourish and credit
is doomed.
In a word, my dear brother, the commerce between my þrst wife and me
soon diminished and grew infrequent, as a result of either her wandering eye
or my insight. Every now and then I would awaken in my room—I slept
alone—and recall the smell of her like a disagreeable memory. Without com-
merce no institution or body politic can ÿourish. When a man can no longer
taste in his mind’s mouth the bittersweet of the woman he lives with, that is a
telltale sign that the commerce between them has mortiþed. For the essence of
commerce is reciprocal communication. One-sided communication is no com-

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L  D to H

has already elevated that being in the direction of a noble and

beautiful other? — I would like to dream on forever, but dream-
ing is self-destruction! Self-destruction and cowardice! — — —
To feel! — In these squalid and moribund times my heart still
feels alive and warm; it longs for reality, longs for love to echo
back to it, longs to share words, longs for accord and harmony!
Longs for happiness! Shall I scold my heart? Yet every feeling in
me summons back to me all my longing, a longing laced with a
thousand pangs.
Even in my deepest thoughts I þnd nothing more desirable
than the most intense relation of love. For what else can conduct
us through this ambiguous living and dying of ours, what else
than the voice of our better natures, which we have committed to
one and the same soul of love, this voice that we cannot ever
hear out of ourselves alone? Bound to one another, we are strong
and unalterable, secure in the beautiful and the good, beyond the
realm of thought, in belief and hope. Yet this loving relation sub-
sists in the real world, the world that surrounds us, and not through
the spirit alone. Our senses too (not sensuality) belong to it. A
love that would transport us altogether beyond reality, a love
that we could feel in spirit alone, a love that could not be nurtured
and that could give itself no hope would in the end be a vacuous
dream. It would go up in smoke before our very eyes. Or, it would
remain, but we wouldn’t know it any longer, and its salutary ef-
fects on our very being would cease. When all this is so clear, when
it hovers right before my eyes, and yet when it is so hard for me to
þnd my way out of the morass I am in, should I then deceive
myself and rock myself to sleep? — — Should I dream? Should I
harden my heart? Should I learn to think otherwise? — — Why
do I ask all these things, my darling! — “For I still have you.” Oh!
because from the very day we parted an anxiety is in me, the fear
that some day all relations between us will disintegrate; because
nothing about the future is certain for me, nothing about what
will become of you. I tremble in the face of the revolutions we

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 V

munication at all. Divine Providence, which created the nature about us that
is so varied and rich, the nature that bestows on us all real surety, wanted to
make human beings dependent on each other. The Supreme Being therefore
shaped certain lines of relationship to preserve the contact between peoples,
so that they would remain at peace and multiply and repay to the Divine
Order the debts recorded in the Great Book of Reason. These original lines of
communication were of course trade routes, lines of commerce; all along them
women were traded (as the Borkensteins traded Susette), sons were offered up
(as the DuBoscs and Gontards offered me), and the work of God carried on.
Food and clothing are the only two real needs, all others being needs of opin-
ion, as when a man or woman longs to enjoy the luxury item he sees another
enjoying, for example, when a man covets the very jewel of another man’s
crown. Commerce embraces the communication of anything at all that may
contribute to the satisfaction of real or imagined needs, whether staples or
luxury items. Crucial to commerce, communication, credit, and conþdence
alike, however, is justice: justice is the requirement that the debtor offer an
equivalent value for goods and services received from the creditor, that the
debtor, in a word, pay. Not that he pay with mere words or ÿowers, however,
which is what the absurd poets do. Commerce is exchange, or, as I said, recip-
rocal communication. Justice demands that only those who have the means
should procure the satisfaction of their needs. Gold and silver have long been
established and recognized as secure legal tender, the sole means of exchange,
strong and unalterable, employed by civilized peoples. One no longer barters
or pays by exchange of chattel. Commerce, which is exchange, therefore makes
change. It makes change in legal tender, which is the only form of tenderness
that a man of commerce can countenance; gold and silver touch our very
senses, are utterly sensuous, though not sensual. Further, commerce founds
colonies, inasmuch as no single climate on Earth can support a nation’s every
need. The fatherland thus acquires not so much a motherland as a colonial
concubinate or harem of dependents. Yet commerce will not endure affairs
the other way around, if you catch my drift, for this is an unequivocal law of
God and nature.
Now, the man engaged in commerce buys and sells with a view to proþt,
not loss. There has been proþtable commerce as long as there have been men,

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L  D to H

may soon have to confront, because they may tear us apart for-
ever.11 How often I þnd fault with you and me both, because we
were so proud, because we made every other relationship impos-
sible for ourselves by relying solely upon one another. And now
we have to go begging to fate in search of a single thread that will
guide us through a thousand detours back to one another. What
would become of us if we were to vanish from one another’s
sight? — — — —
Nor could I ever be at peace if I were forced to think that I
had been swept away entirely from the reality of you, and that you
would be happy to make do with the mere shadow of me, with the
thought that maybe I was not right for you, and that you would
never let me hear from you again, would never give me repose. If it
has to be, if we have to be victims of fate, then promise me that you
will liberate yourself from me fully and live in a way that will
make you happy, according to your best lights, so that you can
best fulþll your obligations in this world and not let the image of
me be an obstacle to you. Only this promise can calm me and put
me at peace with myself. — — — No one will ever love you the
way I love you; and you will never love anyone else the way you love
me. (Forgive me this selþsh desire.) Yet do not harden your heart,
do it no violence: what I cannot have, I dare not destroy by my
envy. Do not think, best of friends, that I am speaking for my own
sake: things are altogether different in my own case, I have ful-
þlled my destiny, at least in part, and I have had enough to do in
the world. Through you I have received more than I could ever
have expected, my time was already foregone, whereas you should
begin to live your life now, to act and to have the impact that you
certainly will have; don’t let me be a hindrance to you, and do not
dream your life away in hopeless love. The nature that gave you all

11. Susette Gontard is referring to the aftermath of the French Revolution and the incipient
tendency to political, economic, and social revolution in the larger German cities, especially in
the northern German lands.

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 V

since Adam and Eve had children. Cain cultivated the earth, Abel herded
sheep, their specializations give rise to trade and commerce. For if Cain had
not been able to buy sheep from Abel he would have failed to make the requi-
site blood sacriþces to Yahweh. Had sheep not been available to him, he would
have been forced to sacriþce his brother Abel, as though the shepherd were
himself a sheep, a stratagem that would not have accrued to the beneþt of
Providence inasmuch as it would have reduced by twenty-þve percent the
sources of sacriþcial income, that is to say, the increments rendered by Adam,
Eve, and their son(s). Interestingly, this is apparently what indeed happened:
Abel was slaughtered, and commerce suffered its þrst setback. Religion thus
continues to preserve its mysteries. They say that the lunatic originally studied
theology, which explains a lot of things.
Rousseau and his epigones claim that originally all human beings were
equal and that they bartered with one another for the satisfaction of their
identical needs. During these years of innocence and peace, according to them,
men did not dream of putting a value on their material exchanges; their ener-
gies were devoted to helping one another, practicing a perfect though
unreÿective charity. Relations began to disintegrate, according to this giddy
view, with commerce, that is to say, when societies began to distinguish among
various properties. For this brought modiþcations to the absolute equality
that putatively had reigned hitherto among human beings. The children, vic-
tims of fate, inherited their parents’ property unequally; some parts of the
land were less productive than others, some of the children less industrious
and less keen to fulþll their obligations. Superÿuity of goods and superabun-
dance of needs alike came to divide them. Subjected now to the reign of injus-
tice, with all things out of kilter, they established legislators and judges, men
of power, pluck, and panache. Thus innocence and Paradise were sadly lost.
Yet I say again that as long as there have been human beings with belly buttons
(excluding therefore Adam and Eve, though not their children) there has been
commerce, reciprocal though asymmetrical communication. But again I di-
gress, or again only seem to.
It became impossible for her to meet my gaze at table. The children
rescued her. Not all of them, not Henry; the girls rescued her. She tried des-
perately to compensate Henry for the miserable welcome she had given him at

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L  D to H

those formidable powers, your elevated spirit, and those profound

feelings has determined you to be a noble, outstanding, and happy
man, and you must prove to be this in all your endeavors.
And yet hope for our much-loved love still burns bright for
us. Let us nurture it and preserve it as long as we can. One hour
þlled by the felicity of our having met again, and hope in our
breast—these are enough to keep it alive for months at a time. Let
us not shut our eyes, however, and allow ourselves to be the fools
of fate; let us do what is most necessary, and let us do our best.
Reassure me, if you can, about the future. In mid-May my brother
is coming (he is quite recovered by now), if the wars do not pre-
vent him. I do not yet see how it will be possible to preserve the
contact between us during the time he is here, because I don’t
know when I can be alone, and this would keep me in constant
tension and cause endless worry. If you can think of a way we can
write back and forth without its causing too much anxiety, with-
out its being too daring, you would be doing me a great kindness.
For I cannot be at peace unless I know how you are faring in your
life.
When I am alone once again (for in no case will I let myself
be talked into a journey, unless it is a very brief one, a trip that in
any case wouldn’t prevent us from seeing one another), then we
shall do as we have done before. You spoke of one and a half years.
I tremble when I think that more than six months have already
passed. What will happen, how can we go on like this? What would
be best for you? — If you could let me have your intuitions con-
cerning this! I can see only black before my eyes, and the most
terrible thing would be if our tender love suffocated under this
harsh fate of ours, if þnally it had to be stiÿed in our breast; our
lives would be over, and the only thing that would remain for us
would be a consciousness without solace. Forgive me, best of
friends, if I draw you into these darkling thoughts of mine. For
you, everything should be sweet. I would like to give you a piece
of heaven, to remove everything that could disturb you. Yet I can

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 V

the start of his life. Jette and Lene she put up with more or less patiently, in the
latter years more generously than had been her wont. Molly she seemed to
love: she dressed her up like a mechanical doll, turned the key, and watched
her walk or knit. To be sure, she left the care of her to Wilhelmine.
What she did with the rest of her time is a mystery to me. She was
certainly of little use in running the household. She had no talent for it. She
performed even the most necessary duties perfunctorily, and she became less
and less efþcacious as an ornament to the House, which was the purpose for
which she was originally acquired. She began to display her boredom quite
openly, though she was careful never to be outright rude. Yet she radiated a
grand indifference to both the affairs of the bank and the state of the domestic
economy. Indifference to economy, however, is a fatal illness. Indifference to
economy kills credit and commerce alike. Credit and commerce, for their
part, are but subsidiary facets of economy, a subject of such importance that
the editors of the Encyclopédie invited none other than the Citizen of Geneva
himself to compose the article on it. After supplying the etymons oîkoc and
vómoc, which indicate that economy originally meant the sage and legitimate
governance of a household or dwelling place, our Jean-Jacques says: “On do-
mestic economy, see the Father of the Family.” Which command I of course
dutifully obeyed. (If only my wife had done so.) Alas, that article, clearly not
by Rousseau, droned on interminably about the Fathers of the Church, though
not before outlining a few choice truths concerning paternity in general, which
it calls “the most intimate relation in nature,” supporting that claim by quota-
tions from the Brahmin and from Bacon. The latter revealed the profound
truth that one never knows either the pleasures of fathers (who do not know
how to express their joy) or their pains (since they are loathe to speak of
them). It is true, as you well know, dear Franz, that fathers are bound to suffer
in silence. They are the veritable fools of fate: “A wife, children—so many
hostages to fortune for a man.” And: “The husband is considered to be the
chief of his wife, i.e., the master of conjugal society. This power is the most
ancient, prior to paternal authority, to the rule of masters over slaves, and to
the governance of princes over their subjects. It is founded on divine Law: sub
viri potestate eris, et ipse dominabitur tui.” I then perused the article on adul-
tery, which seemed the logical place to go after the disquisition on husbands,

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L  D to H

feel that our love is too holy for me to be able to deceive you: I owe
you an account of every sensation in me, you know that I tend to
dejection; maybe things will begin to get better, and how grateful
to fate we should be for every ÿower that we þnd in one another’s
company.
If only it weren’t so difþcult for me to write you. Whenever I
am planning to write a letter, an entire world opens up to me as I
take up the pen, a world full of thoughts and feelings. I want to
say everything at once, and I can’t put it all into order, I’m afraid
I’ll write nonsense. If my words are sometimes too prosaic, my
fancy wants to leap into the fray, and then I’m afraid that what I
am saying is no longer true, and so in the end I want to tear it all
up and throw it away.
You doubtless understand me better than I understand myself,
and also can feel whatever I do not say. — — —
I still have to tell you something about the children. You
already know that they have lost much stature in my eyes since
you are no longer instructing them, no longer having an impact
on them. I no longer þnd them as promising as I used to. It is very
hard for me to struggle against the false impressions that I know
they are being given, and often I have to let it go, depending, as
though by way of consolation, on their powers of reason, which
are maturing and up to now are quite unspoiled, hoping that these
powers will guide them back from all the errant ways into which
they might wander. Often I think too that if their moral edu-
cation were excessively reþned, they would not þnd a conducive
element even in their own world; it seems to me that such educa-
tion has to adapt a little to one’s situation. What upsets me most
about my son Henry is that he suddenly feels he can take all
sorts of liberties: he likes to play the lord and master, is always
impertinent, chases after every form of sensual gratiþcation—but
otherwise, in his work, is somewhat lazy and careless. One has to
stand over him and prod him all the time, because he seems to
have lost all his ambition. I wish he could get away from here.

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even though it too is by another man of letters unknown to me, and not by
our J-J.: “We rightly judge, in conformity with the sentiment of all the na-
tions, that adultery is, after homicide, the most punishable of all crimes, be-
cause it is of all thefts the most cruel and an outrage capable of occasioning
murders and the most deplorable excesses.” Frankly, I had not contemplated
the nature of the deed as theft. Only after reading this article, adapting it a
little to my own situation, did I comprehend the gravity of the deed, as inju-
rious to commerce, credit, and economy as a whole. He got off easy.
To be sure, our own J-J. does commit one grave folly at the outset of his
article on economy. For he distinguishes political from domestic economy by
the supposition that the father of a family can keep a watchful eye on every-
thing that occurs in the household, whereas a prince needs the advice and
counsel of many ministers and minions in order to oversee the affairs of his
domain. Alas, there exist households in which it is also necessary to engage
intelligence agents. Barring that one serious error, however, the article is full
of much good sense. “A father’s duties are dictated to him by natural senti-
ments, and in a tone that rarely permits of disobedience.” They say that J-J.
himself was one of those rare cases, to be sure, and that he closed the doors
and windows of his natural sentiments to his many bastards. Yet when it comes
to the essential matters our Genevan is truly wise: “The principal object of all
the work that goes on in a household is to conserve and increase the patri-
mony of the father, with a view to his distributing it one day among his chil-
dren, in order not to leave them in poverty.” Yet the lines of Rousseau’s article
I admire most are these: “For many reasons drawn from the nature of things,
the father should command in the family. First, authority should not be dis-
tributed equally between father and mother; it is necessary that the govern-
ment be one, and that when there is a divergence of views one voice should
prevail and decide. Second, the indispositions peculiar to women, however
lightly one wants to take them, still condemn them to periods of inactivity,
and this is sufþcient reason to exclude them from primacy: because if the
scales are otherwise perfectly equal, the addition of a straw sufþces to make
one side plunge. Further, the husband ought to perform an inspection of his
wife’s behavior, inasmuch as it is important for him to ascertain whether the
children he is compelled to recognize and support belong to someone other

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L  D to H

That would be best for him: this is bad soil for him, for here he is
always being coddled and ÿattered, and he has too little opportu-
nity to hear the truth, even gently put. I’d like to hear your opinion
about this! —
The two girls have also become somewhat rougher around
the edges, but even so they are good children. I often build my
hopes on little Molly: given the fact that we are rearing her last, we
will see the mistakes we made with the others. Then again, I hold
it against myself that I am giving this sort of nourishment to my
preference for her, but she really is a plucky, lovable child. She has
begun to walk again these past two weeks, and this makes me so
happy. We’ve hired Herr Hadermann as the new tutor, a very bor-
ing, empty-headed theologian. I can’t listen to him for more than
þfteen minutes without losing my patience. In him the children
will get enough talent, but as far as the formation of their charac-
ter and of their genuine inner worth goes, I have to worry consid-
erably. I won’t be strong enough to counteract his inÿuence, even
if I were always capable of helping them distinguish for the best,
but even this much is practically impossible for me.
Now, at the end, just a word about how I plan to devote my
time in the near future. Perhaps it is a good thing that I was so
seldom alone this winter, for often I have days when I am alto-
gether out of kilter. All I have to do is think about you and tears
start streaming from my eyes. I’ve had to compel myself to join in
the activities here, and have often sought company in order to
keep myself calm. I frittered away the entire winter, so much so
that I became a burden to myself. But now that has to change. I
couldn’t even read a serious book, because my head was heavy
with weariness.
I shall try to see if I can’t take up my music once again with
greater dedication. Spring will provide me with some lovely occu-
pations in the garden (though I’ll þrst have to get used to that
kind of work), and your dear Hyperion will enliven my spirit, how
I look forward to it! — You also promised me some guidelines!

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 V

than him. The woman, who has no similar worries, does not have the same
right over her husband. Third, the children ought to obey their father, at þrst
out of necessity, but later out of acknowledgment.”
The article on adultery—if I may take the liberty of reverting to it once
again, and I believe I may, inasmuch as J-J. has revived the issue—was par-
ticularly insightful about the harm done to the children: “Adultery can be
utterly ruinous for the children that proceed from it, because the adultery
does not look forward to them, and they will receive nothing of maternal
tenderness, since the woman will see in them nothing more than the objects
of her disquiet or the proofs of her inþdelity.” Yet there can be a far more
subtle case. Imagine, dear brother, a woman who commits adultery precisely
with the man whose sacred duty it is to serve her and her husband’s children,
the man who is charged with educating those plucky, lovable little ones, the
man who acts in loco parentis and is thus well-nigh a surrogate father. I know
that such cases of inþdelity are common enough: in polite society it is called
die Hofmeister Krankheit, “tutorial prostration,” “schoolmasterly visitation,”
“instructorial indisposition,” inasmuch as when the father cat is away the
mother mouse will play. Common enough, to be sure. But not Susette, surely,
I hear you cry. True, the woman had character and principles—so many of
them that early on I tired of negotiating with her. She was to all appearances
utterly untouchable. But allow me to return to the children, her children, by
me. It must have torn at her insides or at least disquieted her to think of them
as being by me when she wanted them to have been by him. I wonder if when
she eased him into her (such a pusillanimous imbecile could never have come
up with the requisite investment by himself ) it was with this confusion, ulti-
mately a confusion concerning time: she wanted all her children to be and
thus to have been by him, retroactively, as though adultery could warp or loop
time and rewrite the birth certiþcates. Imagine if she had succeeded: Henry,
Jette, Lene, and her beloved Molly all deprived of the patrimony that has
sustained them during all the intervening years since her own untimely death.
What would they have inherited from him instead? Poverty and ignominy
would have been all their patrimony. The confused ramblings of a third-rate
poetaster gone mad, a ÿighty volume or two of verse that never sold. They say
he sits in a tower in Tübingen banging on a clavichord and reinventing roses

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L  D to H

You’ll keep your word, won’t you?12 — You also asked me to for-
mulate in words some of my thoughts and ideas. Dear friend! all
my utterances belong to you alone. My spirit and my soul are mir-
rored in you. You give whatever can be given in this regard, and in
such a beautiful form that I myself could never achieve it. And the
enjoyment I shall take in the plaudits that everyone will have to
bestow on you will give me more satisfaction than all the self-love
I possess.

12. Knaupp (3: 511) suggests (no doubt because of the lines that now follow) that Susette
Gontard is requesting a Briefsteller from Hölderlin, that is, a handbook for letter-writing. We
þnd the suggestion highly unlikely under the circumstances. Perhaps her word Recepte refers to
certain homeopathic prescriptions or “recipes” that may have interested them both? Or perhaps
some helpful hints or “guidelines” on journal-writing?

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 V

are red violets are blue poets go balmy fornicators too. He signs his bavardage
with “Papageno.”
I believe that at the end she knew how rash she had been to wish the
children his. When she had to face the possibility of losing them once and for
all, she realized the risk she herself had so foolishly taken. She tried to excul-
pate herself by sharing the illness that afÿicted them—the children she had in
effect disowned and alienated, the children she had in effect willed over to
him, notwithstanding the fact that they would have died paupers within a
year. This way at least Henry has had a dozen years and a funeral of pomp and
circumstance. A father can never express his grief. He can only convert all the
self-love he possesses into inheritable capital.

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L  D to H

VI

Tuesday, March 12, [1799]

Your lovely letter of yesterday, and the wish you expressed there,
gave me to think that I too should write a kind of journal for you.
If only I could carry out the intention! It’s just that I am so seldom
on my own: since I have to do it clandestinely, a kind of anxiety
gnaws at me and prevents me from þnding the right words; I am
so often torn away from my thoughts, and then I easily sink into
despair. Still, I shall try, and I’ll devote every quiet minute to it.
But don’t expect it to be coherent.
Yesterday, after you had gone, I felt through and through that
familiar mixture of pain and joy, and I had a dolorous premoni-
tion about the future. I took up your letter straightway, but could
only read isolated words; my heart was pounding so hard, I couldn’t
make sense out of anything, and so I had to put it away for a more
tranquil hour. I went out into the fresh air in order to come to my
senses again. During the afternoon the sun shone so sweetly into
my room, calming me, as though speaking to me in order to bring
me to myself, nursing me. I felt my perseverance rising strong in
me. I read your letter word for word. I sent the children out to
play in the yard, and so was left alone with you. It was a fortunate
hour! — Nor did my grateful heart lament the tears your letter
called forth from me; I could only hear a voice in me calling out,
“He is alive! He is close to me! He loves me truly! Today is a happy
day!” — — — — — If the worrisome future began to trouble me
afterwards, I scolded myself and said, “People who have a child-
like religion would take it to be a sin that I am losing my sense of
trust to such a degree, and that I am not building my life on their
God. Why should there not be for us too a secret power unknown
to us, steering our fate too toward the best, a power beneþcent and
consoling? Why must we always despair? — — — Is it at all proper

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 V

Self-love has never been an issue for me: the mirror always gives me back so
many pieces of me—which ones should I select, which ones should I love? My
eyes look back at me with the suspicion I feel toward the entire masquerade:
the hack lines, the bit parts, everything for show. The show that mothers put
on for other mothers when they pick up their children at kindergarten. The
show that mothers put on for the local pastor at parish fêtes. The show that
mothers put on for a man whose interest it is in their interest to awaken. But
don’t expect it to be coherent.

There were young women besides Louise who took an interest in my boy, of
course. One chased after him in a shameless way, but praise God he had enough
shame for them both. It is hard for them to resist him, he is so beautiful. I
mean, if he were a woman, he would be beautiful. Instead, he is a very un-
happy man, and I do not know the cause of it, unless it is this woman of the
letters who has caused him to sink into despair. Or perhaps the blame lies
with his dead Fathers, whom I still lament (though not excessively, as before),
may they rest in peace. The cause cannot lie with my Mother and me (eternal
rest grant unto her, O Lord!), who surrounded him with Christian love and
reared him in unÿagging piety, devotion, and religion. Something happened
to him in Frankfurt, however. She was that something.
I remember his poems from that time, þrst in Frankfurt, then later in
Bad Homburg. They began to take a strange turn, I couldn’t make sense out of
anything.

The Lovers

We decided to part, thought it a good thing, the smart thing;

The deed done, why did it terrify us, like a murder?
Oh! Little do we know ourselves,
For a god holds sway in us.

There was talk of God, but it was not the God on whom we build our life.
There was also talk of chaos and beauty and hurricanes. Her name was Diotima,

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L  D to H

to think only the gloomiest thoughts? — — For cannot things turn

out even better than we think they will? — Or is our intellect
sufþciently prescient for us to know our fate ahead of time? —
Does not serendipity often sufþce to decide our happiness or our
misery? — To be sure, we are still subject to contingency in this
world; yet might it not also be a fortunate contingency? We had to
þnd one another, and so many times we took intense joy in this.
Should we not þnd one another again, and so be joyful once
again? — — — —

Afternoon

I can’t get the word contingency out of my head now that I have
written it down. It doesn’t please me, it sounds so petty, so cold,
and yet I cannot þnd another word. Could one not also say that
the secret concatenation of things is shaping for us something that
we call contingency but that instead is necessity? Because of our
myopia, we cannot know anything about its providence, so that
we are astonished when things turn out differently than we
expected. Yet the eternal laws of nature pursue their course for-
ever, we cannot plumb the depths of them; that is precisely why we
should take consolation in them, because things of which we have
no inkling, things we couldn’t even remotely hope for, can still
happen to us.
This morning I found in a French novelette a beautiful passage
that went straight to my heart, and so I will copy it out for you:
“Religion would surely have come into existence out of misery, if
more gentle souls had not discovered it in gratitude.” — — — —

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I believe she was a Greek, but what strange contingency would have steered a
Greek woman to a French household in German Frankfurt?

Diotima

Come and mollify me, you who once reconciled the elements,
Delight of the heavenly Muse who reconciled the chaos of time.
Tame the raging battle with sounds of the peace of heaven,
Until in the bosom of mortals all the fragments unite,
Until the ancient nature of man, serene and magniþcent,
Rises cheerfully and powerfully out of a time in ferment.
Return to the destitute hearts of the people, O living beauty!
Return to the hospitable table, return to the temples!
For Diotima lives as the tender blossoms in winter live,
Abundant in her own spirit, yet even so, seeking the sun.
But the sun of spirit, the more beautiful world, has set,
And in the icy night hurricanes quarrel, that is all.

He never saw a hurricane in his life, but he read travelogues. He always wanted
to go far away, east or west, it didn’t matter, to the Aegean or the Atlantic. He
should have gone, gone anywhere, even to Copenhagen—anywhere but to
Frankfurt. Cities are traps for young men. At balls the women dress only to
the waist, at the Comic Opera the most sacred matters are ridiculed. How
long can a boy hold out who up to then has spoken only to þsh?
Just at that time a preceptorship opened up here in the local school and
I tried to get him to come home. He replied that he was very happy where he
was, that Nürtingen had made him miserable that past summer—he called it
“your fatal Nürtingen,” imagine!—and that he wanted to take Carl away from
me too, sending him to the university and leaving his own Mother abandoned
and helpless. He said he was going to be the poet he had always dreamed of
becoming. Schiller turned my boy’s head long before he went to Frankfurt.
Schiller is a great man, of course, I don’t mean to take anything away from

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March 14

I have rediscovered the landscape I painted for you, my darling! I

did not want to abandon altogether the pain I felt after our þrst
separation: it was dear to me, and welcome. Two days after you
left, I stepped once again into your room with the intention of
crying my heart out and then gathering up a few sweet mementos
of you. I opened your secretary and found there a few scraps of
paper, a little sealing wax, a tiny white button, and a piece of
petriþed rye bread. I bore them away to my room as true relics.
The lock on one of your dresser drawers had broken, so that I
couldn’t get it open. I returned—and Henry crossed my path di-
rectly before your door. He said in a melancholy voice, “You have
already lost a great deal that used to be in this room! First, your
mother, and now your dear Hölder too! Surely, you won’t be able
to take much more!” — — — That hit me hard, but for a mo-
ment I was consoled by the thought of your life, which offered my
fraught soul something sweet, and with this I retreated from your
room. — — A few days later I managed to open the drawer, and
there I found the landscape. Oh, how it made me mourn! For in
my simplicity I had sketched a tomb into it, back at the time I
presented it to you, when the two of us were leaþng through all
the copper plate prints; what felicity and what hope were in me
then, and they seemed inþnite to me! And now it is supposed to be
all over! — — — — — I don’t know whether I will be giving the
landscape back to you. What happened to me yesterday evening
may also happen to you: all these thoughts may seize you and
agitate you in a quiet hour! — — — — —

March 19

I went walking with the children several times once again; it al-
ways strengthens me and makes me more cheerful. At one point I
saw my beloved Homburg on the hillside, bathed in the light of

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him, but he turned my boy’s head. My Fritz worshipped Schiller, looked on

him as a third Father. It must have been very convenient for Schiller to be
assisted by such a brilliant boy, and Fritz hadn’t felt so useful since the time at
school when he wrote a poem for the Duke’s jubilee. Schiller is a great man,
but he would have told my boy anything just to keep him in Jena. He promised
to publish all my boy’s scraps of paper in his Horen (now there is a suspicious
name!) but he didn’t keep his word. Worse, he made my Fritz feel as though he
belonged in that circle of poets, made him forget the landscape of his home
and his family where his fathers are buried, made him forget his place. From
that time on, my son began to put on airs, he started talking artsy to his own
Mother. He said he was looking for his voice, what nonsense, he hardly ever
used the one God gave him. He said that the boy he was tutoring in Frankfurt
(his name was Henry) was a mirror image of himself, that he couldn’t aban-
don the boy to melancholy, and also that there was a “lovely friendship” in the
house. I had no idea what he meant. I would have hastened to Frankfurt
myself and dragged him back by his ear. Lovely friendship! In her lavender
loneliness she was waiting for him. He must have been the most beautiful boy
she had ever seen.
Always and always, dear Pastor Kugel, I reÿect on my life. “Always reÿect
on your life and see how you may better dedicate it to the Lord,” my sainted
Father, Pastor Heyn, told us children, and I have never ceased obeying him. I
knew my duty to my Mother (may the perpetual light shine upon her!) and
my obligations to my children; these I have fulþlled with God’s unwavering
help to the best of my poor ability. Yet I never truly understood my obliga-
tions to my husbands, who abandoned me for the tomb so early in our life
together. How did I fail them? Night and day, day and night, I struggled to
serve them. I cooked, I washed, I ran a proper household, though it was never
clean enough, you can never keep ahead of the dust, the powdery ash from the
stove, the splatterings of lard high on the kitchen walls. And the nights? I was
so patient, face-to-face I never ÿinched, I knew that Swabia needed sons and
daughters and I complied without complaint. I worry sometimes that I was
too slow to learn—but men are so þnicky!—not all of them, rest assured, and
my husbands were the kindest and most gentle of men (God rest their souls).
Yet we children of God are strangely constructed, dear counselor, and strangely

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L  D to H

the gentle sun. How this peaceful countryside blessed my eye, and
how my thoughts rushed to you in that little room you occupy
there, a room I do not know! Surely my thoughts touched you, for
I felt that on such a lovely spring day you must have been thinking
about me too, feeling closer to me than usual, just as I was feeling
closer to you! — — Yet, oh, how my thoughts then affrighted me!
Soon I will have to be leaving this spot that is so dear to me, my
eyes will no longer be able to turn so joyfully toward you, they will
have to avert their gaze from you, and then everything will vanish!
— I don’t even have an idea of your dwelling place! Don’t you see,
my darling, things are so much better for you: you know where
you can always þnd me again, you know all the details that sur-
round my life; whereas whenever I think of you, your image will
loom out of an impenetrable fog, and only for an instant, if in the
meantime you don’t paint me a portrait of your surroundings and
also of the human beings with whom you come into contact. Al-
ways do that for me whenever you can. I wish for nothing so much
as for you to þnd a friend wherever you may be, a friend with
whom your heart is not bound to silence, one in whose company
you will þnd conversation and nourishment for your spirit. For,
my darling, you are too rich in powers and always too overÿowing
to remain locked up in yourself, relying solely on your own com-
pany. You need to communicate what is in you and to speak out
the very best elements of your essential being. If you þnd yourself
ÿoundering in bad moods from time to time, it is only because
you are not understood; at those times you þnd it hard to see
yourself clearly and you despair of yourself. Yet in your exigency
you will be in grave danger of choosing the wrong people, and
that is all I want to warn you about: don’t take it badly from me,
for surely it comes from a good heart.
You also wanted to hear from me something about how I
occupy myself all day long: this will be a simple tale to tell. I am
almost always in my quiet little room where I work and sew or

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are we conjoined and strangely parted. Sometimes I feel that I am only half a
human being, torn down the middle, jagged edge exposed. And that by being
only half a person I could help my son only by half. Rike was so much more
tractable and Carl always does what I tell him.
Did I do something wrong in the night? Was eternal forbearance not
enough? The doctor told me that my gallant Heinrich burst a blood vessel in
his brain. He was so high-strung! Could I have altered that? Sometimes I
think he expected me to change his nature, to take off the edge, but I had as
little impact on the vessels of Hölderlin’s brain as on the ÿood that caused my
poor Gok’s death. He was soaked through the night he came home from the
sandbagging, he looked so exhausted and haggard, I had a premonition and it
came true. Sometimes I even feel guilty about the premonition, as though
what I most feared I myself had inadvertently done! We too are strangely
made, we women, we are rose petals swept up in a storm. I can no longer sort
out what I am responsible for and what I must leave in the hands of our gentle
and good God. Someone must tell me this. You must tell me this. You know
where you can always þnd me again.
Believe me when I say that I never begged my son to apply for that
preceptorship or the pastorate here at home, never pleaded with him to study
less philosophy and more theology. A Mother doesn’t beg. I simply let him
know the Lord’s wishes. When he was seventeen he wrote me the most beau-
tiful letter, he said that being a country pastor was the most useful thing in the
world and that he would never change his mind about this. But his poetry
kept getting in the way. Poetry is not a profession, I told him.
“You can be a pastor and a poet,” I said.
But he didn’t listen. He felt himself misunderstood, he ÿoundered in
bad moods, he wallowed in despair. He invented a conÿict where there wasn’t
any, he made life hard for himself and for all those who loved him, I mean my
sainted Mother and me. But also for her—also for that well-born but ill-
begotten Frankfurt woman: I know he made life oppressive for her as well.
Behind her seducing and scheming, behind all her aristocratic airs, her taking
the waters, her hedges and pavilions, her open windows, white towels, and
lavender gowns, there is some helplessness there, and I know she loved him

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L  D to H

knit; the children, if they don’t have any lessons in the room next
door, cavort around me, but soon they no longer disturb me in my
thoughts, which are often with you, or rather, are always bound
up with you, often I write you entire letters in my mind! But then
my head begins to spin in such a way that nobody could make
sense of it all on paper. Often I feel compelled to go to the lectern
and write, but I am afraid, and þrst have to wait for a moment of
strength; often my inner being closes in on itself so severely that I
cannot make a sound. Thus I cannot write as often as I would like.
For I take profound enjoyment in this activity, and afterwards I
am much more tranquil, so that everything goes easier for me for
days at a time. The society of other human beings means very
little to me; yet often my loneliness becomes such a burden to me
that I prefer the most indifferent conversation to the silence. In
the end, however, it proves to be a deception: again and again I
have to concede that my heart rejoices when I am alone once again
without constraints of any kind. I still can’t seem to get the read-
ing going, though! For serious reÿection, I believe, one has to have
a completely serene disposition, an inner being that is þrm and
unrufÿed! What I now need most of all is to lull myself to sleep,
and therefore an interestingly narrated novel suits me better than
the most beautiful writings of our times. (As I look this over it
occurs to me that you too call your dear Hipperion a novel, but I
always think of it as a beautiful poem.)
Even the things that I respect so little that I don’t have to
make myself think about them, even what I view as mere enter-
tainment and diversion, are more companionable to me these days.
That is why I þnd myself picking up the novels of M. la Fontaine
from time to time. If a passage doesn’t please me, I don’t blame
myself for throwing the book across the room. — — To leaf
through excellent, beautiful books in a mood that is not condu-
cive to them, and to read with less than complete attention, I take
to be a sacrilege. Such books belong in the hands only of those
who can feel them, and can understand them, whole and entire.

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not altogether unlike the way a Mother loves a son. In fact, the boy he was
tutoring is mixed up in all this: they both loved him and they became con-
fused about whose son he was. I know, I know: they could have checked the
parish registry. But it isn’t about names, it’s about natures. I imagine that their
eyes þrst met over the boy at his books or that their hands touched at his
temple when his little head ached. How shocked they must have been: an
eight-year-old boy as their þrst child! Henry did not ward off their love, as he
should have, he invited it out of the sky like one of those newfangled rods they
put on rooftops now. Is electricity þre and brimstone, or is it the pure radi-
ance of Heaven? The death of two husbands did not manage to shake my
faith. And now this.
My soul is agitated. I am not thinking clearly. For serious reÿection, I
believe, one has to have a completely serene disposition, an inner being that is
þrm and unrufÿed. I will never forgive her, but will God forgive me when I
say that sometimes I believe I understand her? Yet what is understanding but
the þrst step toward forgiveness? None of this is clear to me, my dear Chris-
tian (may I call you that, forgive my presumption, I am desperate), and so I
beg you for spiritual advisement. In spite of your recent loss, which I more
than anyone else in the world can understand (I know you need consolation),
I beg you to recapture my soul for the Lord. Would you be able to come to the
house tomorrow evening? A heart should not hate but love. I must be shriven!
Tomorrow?
Because her love is about pain and tears, not pleasure and murmurings.
It is about the pouring and raining down of tears rather than rebellion against
Heaven. I know what some would say: “The tears of separation and the pain
of isolation are a just punishment for the excessive nearness they enjoyed—
throw the book at them!” And I know that the lovers are rightly punished for
their forbidden intimacy. They brought on their own misery, they have no
one to blame but themselves. Yet if we are so certain of their misery, if the
sadness moistens every page of these letters, and it does, must we not say that
here they are punished enough—that the punishment þts the crime, þts it
perfectly from end to end, because it began with the þrst look, the þrst touch?
What have we to add to this? Why throw the book? What condemnation
would not be a stupidity and a cruelty? Are they not transþgured?

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L  D to H

That’s as much as I had written when I was interrupted. Since

then, I couldn’t get back to it.

March 26

We’ve survived the Easter holidays! And that always makes me

happy, because after that things are quieter around me. Sunday
morning I once again went to the local church. Naturally, the ser-
mon could not capture my attention, and so I thought only of
you, and I conjured up your image; I ruminated on a plan that
would allow me to see you in the future whenever we leave the
city.13 I think I have discovered the best way to do that, and I’ll tell
you about it at the end of this letter. In the afternoon we went out
to our Gardens14 with a small group of not very interesting people.
The air was so clear and cheering, just as it is within me when joy
reverberates there or when I am animated by a hope that I can put
my trust in, except that this time it was cheerful only outside of
me! — — Each time I prepare to leave the house I automatically
look out the side window, and I always prefer it to be closed, so
that it doesn’t deceive me.15 There were also several people from
Hamburg in our company; they are here for the fair. They steered
the conversation toward my brother; they said that he would be
leaving here for Pyrmont on account of his health and that he
would leave his wife here. Does that mean he wants me to go with

13. The Gontard family was accustomed to leaving its Frankfurt residence, “White Hart,”
each May in order to spend the summers in a country house. Since 1797 they had made the
“Adlerÿychtschen Hof,” north of the city, their summer residence. Hölderlin had lived in the
Hof during the two previous summers and knew it and its grounds well.
14. Susette is referring to the Lersner Gardens, one of the “Gardens at the Windmill,” which
belonged to Cobus’s mother. See note 58, below.
15. Susette Gontard would give a signal at that open window if she were able to meet Hölderlin
at the appointed time; she would apparently then close the window before going down to meet
him in the garden. That is why she prefers the window closed. Yet when she is on her way
downstairs at other times, on ordinary days, the closed window seems a cruel deception. See the
section of the letter dated “April 4,” below.

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I cannot be blind to the suffering here. I fear I am blind to the crime. I,

who never in my life had a thought of inþdelity. I, who waited two full years
(it was excessive, it was impious, now I know better, don’t you be so stub-
born—if you’ll let me advise you) before I submitted to my dear Gok’s plead-
ings to marry him, and not until Herr Bilþnger and my confessor your prede-
cessor assured me that it was my solemn duty to the boy. Never a shadow of a
shade of inþdelity in thought, word, or deed. I, who knew that the Kingdom
of God and the Kingdom of Man alike hang on the thread of honest and
upright marriage. I, who never questioned it, never doubted it, am brought
now to this impasse. I fear I do forgive her. Even if she did not shy from
scheming in church about how she might meet him, daydreaming during the
Sunday sermons, at the very instant when she should have been following her
Good Shepherd’s guidance, when she should have been walking the straight
and narrow, utterly lost in devotion. Even if she cajoled and cozened him (she
would have had to), even if she destroyed his innocence (how I despise her for
that!), even so, I am unable to come up with a decent Christian hatred of the
deed in me. Am I simply too tired, too weary of it all? I do not think so.
Sometimes at the end of the day I feel more alive than I ever felt as a timid girl
or as an awkward bride that þrst time. I am not simply giving up. I am þghting
for my son and for my soul.
Tomorrow, then? Carl doesn’t live at home any more, as you know, and
my sweet Rike retires by half-past seven, she is always so tired. And, as you
also remember, my revered Mother passed on to her eternal reward this past
Valentine’s Day, may her soul and the souls of all the faithful departed rest in
peace. Amen.
For this woman was not seeking passion, as I þrst suspected she was. She
was ÿeeing a raging þre. I thought at þrst it was only her wiles, but it was her
way. There was a healthy portion of death in her love. “To die together!” was
her expressed desire. “May Heaven only grant it!” It was not ÿeshly consum-
mation that she sought but consummation of another kind. Would it be her-
esy if I remembered here the cry Consummatum est ? But I do remember it! She
was loving and writing for Eternity, not for this vale of tears! Perhaps I am one
of those gullible people she is thinking of when she writes that some are pos-
sessed of a childlike religiosity, but I do not mind that at all. “Unless ye be-

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him? — — If the circumstances are such that I cannot see you in

any case and don’t know how to get in touch with you, then I
would consider it; but if I went away, and if fate then separated us,
cutting the thread that connects us, I wouldn’t know how to con-
sole myself, I would rue every step I had taken along the way.
Thoughts of journeys often cause great consternation in me, and
yet by no means do I want to hurt my dear Henry, not for any-
thing. My brother’s plans would be the only thing that could take
me away from here, where I much prefer being, rather than out
there in the wide world, the world where you are not with me; and
the pain I feel16

gladly willing to wait a long time if that is the price I must pay, if
only every now and again I can hear from somebody that you are
in good health. Don’t call me suspicious, I am certainly not that.
But you know well, my darling, that one cannot protect oneself
enough against mistrust. In order then that we can see one an-
other again, and in order not to leave us both with mere news of
one another, I have to make out a day with you from which I can
begin to calculate. Even if you can come but once a year, you will
still be so present to me that I won’t be frightened to death when
you do appear. — — — — —

Sunday, the 31st, at 9:00 ..

I am quite alone and cannot go to sleep without saying good-

night to you, my best friend, my dear heart. If only you could feel
how intensely I am feeling you now, how the holiest moments of
our love hover before my soul! If only I could know that you feel
it! — Sleep peacefully and sweetly. May my image hover about
you! — — —

16. At this point, two sheets are missing from the letter, which then picks up in midsentence.

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come like little children, ye shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” She
herself is struggling to have faith and conþdence in the goodness of God. I
imagined at þrst that she was hoodwinking my Fritz by means of an affected
piety. After reading more and more of her pages I cannot help but take her at
her word. She is trying to þnd Providence, struggling to give thanks and praise.
She is a terrible sinner, to be sure. Yet is Providence only for those who never
sin? And who might they be? You see the way my thoughts are tending.
What a terrible chastisement it must have been for her when she realized
that her own children were able to see the obvious—that she missed my son
beyond all telling. Imagine a boy declaring to his own Mother that he sees
how much she misses her lover! Would not the Heavens open up and disgorge
the most horrendous retribution upon her? Would not the Earth rend and
swallow her whole, plunging her into the þery abyss? Yet if her longing is
monstrous, and it is, she nevertheless cannot hide the monstrosity from her
own children and from herself. She does not need the sky to explode or the
Earth to gape to know that she is a terrible sinner and that she is terribly
punished. She knows that the Last Day is coming, the Day of the Lord God of
Terrible Judgment. She cannot hide from the monstrosity that she is and that
shows itself to her in her own ÿesh and in her own ÿesh-and-blood. She is
therefore less a monster than I thought.
Yet what I cannot understand—what tortures my mind—is how my
boy could have been so careless. Did he really think that her husband would
take all this sitting down, or that he was so opaque that he couldn’t see what
was going on in his own house? How could my boy have subjected her to such
mistrust? How could he have put her in such jeopardy? Did he really think
that her husband would refrain from torturing her with questions and hints
and innuendoes? It is not as though she had no responsibilities. The woman
had four little ones of her own to feed, and with my dear heart that makes þve,
because he’s never been able to take care of himself, he’s always needed his
Mother. He needed me to remind him over and over again that the ministry
of the Lord is the most important profession there is (I don’t have to tell you
that, my dear Christian!), and that next to the ministry poetry cuts a paltry
þgure indeed! He toyed with the idea of law when he went to the university
only because the Revolution distracted him for an instant, but I convinced

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L  D to H

April 2, Evening

Once again I am quite calm, quite alone. I want so much to speak

with you, except that I don’t know how to start; I wanted to say so
many things to you that are hard to put into words. The more one
has to say, the less one can say: that is how I feel once again, and
I’m constantly thinking, “Oh, do be quiet, that isn’t it at all.” So,
let me tell you stories! During the three weeks we have not seen
one another I’ve been living very domestically and serenely; I was
not out in society even once; I sat almost always quietly, hard at
work, and (because you will wish to know every tiny detail) my
favorite occupation was to make a dress for myself, from material
given to me by my good brother. It is altogether to your taste:
lavender and white. I received the material on the day when you
were last with me here, and for that reason too it is a wonderful
memento for me. I’ll be so happy to wear it.
I’ve also been teaching my little Molly how to knit, and have
enjoyed watching her busy little þngers.
I’ve been counting the days and hours till we can meet again,
and I scolded the heavens because of the sudden chill that de-
scended on us. I never fail to notice whether the sun is out, though
I know you would come even if the weather were inclement. Yet I
can’t stand to think that you will be out in the rain, or that you are
freezing, and you really must conceal these things from me if I am
not to suffer on your account even more than you yourself do.
Make no mistake, heart of mine, I am writing you in such a child-
ish way because I really want to tell you something, and yet I don’t
want to rouse all those sensations in you and in me that my tone is
always on the verge of arousing, and so I often fool or fuss instead.
Now, even that says a lot! — — — Wilhelmine just brought me
my soup. I shall be thinking of you until slumber steals over my
eyes.

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 V

him that the law is a demeaning profession if it isn’t the Law of Moses and of
the Church. He soon dropped the idea of law, but where would he have wan-
dered off to next, what would he have done without his Mother hovering over
him? I think the Frankfurt woman must have become a kind of second-hand
mother to him. But even if second-hand, four times a mother already, as pa-
thetic as she was, even so, I still do not see her as a monster.
He wrote me from Tübingen about his decision never to marry. He
wanted to be quite alone. I thought at þrst it was out of disappointment over
Louise’s marrying someone else, but I soon realized that he meant it. He said
he had to follow his “nature,” but that made no sense, because it is a man’s
nature to marry. Women simply did not interest him, except as þgures in a
story or poem. He warmed up to their souls, not to their bodily selves. Per-
haps he grew ardent over this Frankfurt woman’s soul, and she misinterpreted?
That sort of thing happens often, since all love is akin, and is difþcult. He
wrote me that he was seldom sad, but seldom happy, and that he possessed
very little vitality. Even if he had possessed the character for it, which he cer-
tainly did not, he would not have had the energy for a ÿing, if you will forgive
the expression, dear Christian. The ardor of his youth went the way of melan-
choly, he told me, and if misery loves company, melancholy craves solitude.
How could he have been so careless? Who can understand it? I yearn for
an answer. He was always so cautious with women, he knew their wiles and
ways, their silks and satins, their pinks and lavenders, or if he didn’t know
them (and he didn’t, how could he, he was so shy) he at least had an intuition
about the danger. How then could he have fallen? He was such a thoughtful
boy, he never did anything rash in his life, he always consulted me about every
decision. To allow himself to be trapped by a woman with four children! He
could at least have chosen someone who wasn’t second-hand; with his beauty
he could have selected spanking new merchandise. Why this older woman? (I
have no idea how old she is, but this case has all the earmarks of the older
woman about it.) He would never have been swayed by beauty, of that I am
certain. Oh, I know, he writes about beauty everywhere in his poems, but you
have to in poems, and it has nothing to do with women—in his poems he
means the disinterested beauty of the countryside, of the Church, and of the
Family. No, I do not believe she is beautiful, and if she is, her beauty has

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L  D to H

April 4

I want to tell you now how I think we can arrange matters this
summer so that we ourselves can be our own letter carriers. For to
entrust our missives to someone else is truly a risky decision, and
each of us is somehow repelled by the idea. Well, then, you will
come on the þrst Thursday of each month, if the weather is þne; if
that proves to be impossible, then you should come on the next
one, and so on, always on a Thursday, so that the weather doesn’t
cause confusion in this regard. You can leave Homburg in the
morning, and when 10 o’clock chimes in the city, you will appear
near the low hedge by the poplars; I’ll be waiting at my window
upstairs, where we can see one another. As a sign, rest your walk-
ing stick on your shoulder, and I shall be holding a white towel. If
I close the window after a few minutes, that will be the sign that I
am coming down; if I don’t close it, that will mean that it is too
dangerous. If I am coming down, you should walk to the top of
the entrance drive, not far from the little pavilion, for behind the
garden we won’t be able to reach one another on account of the
ditch, and also we are more likely to be seen there; this way, the
pavilion will cover me, and you’ll easily be able to see if anyone is
approaching from either side. That way we’ll have plenty of time
to exchange our letters through the hedge. When you return home
the following day, you can take a chance and come by at the same
time, if something should have gone wrong on the þrst try, or if
the letters need to be answered right away. As unpleasant as it is
for me to concoct such plans and engage in such intrigues, I don’t
have to tell you that your tender soul too will surely þnd all this
repulsive, and you will suffer with me. Yet you cannot think ill of
me, because I am doing it with the sole honorable intention of not
allowing the most beautiful and best thing that exists for human
beings to perish. — — If the weather is good, we shall be out in
the countryside already on the 2nd of May, or most certainly on
the 9th (my brother is coming on the 15th). If you do not þnd me

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nothing to do with his having fallen for her. Probably she read his poems and
ÿattered him about them. Even that tiny gesture would have struck his weak
spot, the vanity he could not overcome. He was not vain about his good
looks, I had to beg him to curl his hair or buy a wig, had to plead with him to
visit the barber and the peruquieu, had to send him new clothes all the time so
that he would wear something other than holes, and because he was not vain
about his own beauty he paid no attention to it in others. No, she is probably
very homely, one of the Lord’s own, and he feels sorry for her. Not ugly, mind
you, not a monster even in the physical sense, but woefully plain and pathetic,
the kind of waif and stray that you feel like taking home to feed a bowl of soup
to, otherwise he wouldn’t have been so careless, he wouldn’t have done such a
thing to his own Mother, don’t you see?
He became a tutor because he always wanted to instruct—he never al-
lowed his poor brother Carl a quiet moment—but the truth is that he was too
timid to teach. He took everything to heart, even a schoolboy could terrify
him. It was tutoring that ruined his disposition and made him ripe for the
plucking. That vicious brat in Waltershausen (I told you about him after my
son wrote me all about it, he didn’t spare his poor old Mother!) almost killed
him, and although Fritz was polite about the Frankfurt boy, who was much
better behaved, I know how much stress and strain the tutoring caused him.
For one thing, he was always over-prepared for his lessons, always too consci-
entious about his work. And all the while he was laboring over the boy’s edu-
cation and moral upbringing, the boy’s mother was sending him signals and
unmistakable signs, hovering over him, descending on him, encircling him,
cornering him—the wickedness of it appalls me all the more! My boy was her
child’s teacher! Once again I will have to learn how to forgive her. This is
entirely her fault!
How could he have been so careless? He used to complain about feeling
too dependent on the families he worked for: he found his employers repul-
sive, felt secretly despised by them, they must have been jealous of his mind.
But why then did he cleave to a woman on whom he was already dependent?
It makes no sense! This is entirely her fault!
For there are truly shocking things written in the notes she tossed down
to him from her window. There were pages in these letters that should have

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L  D to H

at the window, that will be a sign that unanticipated hindrances

are keeping me in the city, and so you can come the following
Friday at 10 o’clock to the familiar corner.17
Today is the day on which you would be coming! I am so
happy that the sky is clear. I’ll have a restless evening, because I
know that soon you really will be coming; right now I cannot
make up my mind whether I should go to the Comic Opera or
not, because you believe that it exposes us to risk, and you are
right.

17. Susette Gontard means, to repeat, that the family will be moving to its summer resi-
dence, the Adlerÿychtschen Hof, in early May, weather permitting. If she is detained in Frank-
furt, Hölderlin is to come to the “familiar corner” am Weißen Hirsch, that is, at “White Hart,”
the family’s main residence in Frankfurt. Only one kilometer separated the Adlerÿychtschen
Hof from the Weißen Hirsch.

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 V

been read only in a downpour—I felt them smoldering in my hands. I re-

sealed all those pages in their leaden casket, but several of them need purging,
they cry out for the purifying þres of Purgatory, and I still have not decided
whether or not I should remove them. The problem is, of course, that if I
purge them by so much as a single sheet he will know it and he will never trust
his Mother again, and a boy must always trust his Mother, don’t you see? On
this point too—the expurgation of the letters, which exposes me to risk—you
must advise me, and I will submit utterly to your counsel, my dear Christian,
my valiant and grieving Friend.

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L  D to H

VII

Thursday morning, the 9th [of May]18

I must add a few words more, best of friends. Yesterday evening

we moved out here to the country; as we drove past the Weidenhof,
I thought I saw you at your window there.19 — — My eyes now
gaze with longing on the poplar-lined avenue. — — If only you
would come! — We’ll want to wait for two months now; in July
you can surely risk coming to the hedge.20 Maybe then we’ll be
able to see one another, and we will learn whether in the mean-
time the two of us have been in good health. If it is at all possible
for me to come down, I shall do so. If I don’t appear, it will have to
be because we had to go out on a jaunt that very day. — — —
Now I must tell you, in order to reassure you, that it means
nothing at all that I wanted to say some things to you face to face
should you come into town. And also, to reassure you, I ought to
tell you that you were not observed on your most recent visit there.21

18. This is the concluding fragment of a larger letter, once again in the journal style of letter
VI. This concluding part was written in pencil, in a hasty hand, on the morning after the family
moved out to its summer residence north of the city, the Adlerÿychtschen Hof. It was written
in haste in anticipation of Hölderlin’s impending ten o’clock visit. Oddly, Knaupp dates the
letter April 9, 1799; yet the previous letter, in the section dated April 4, says that the family will
be at the Adlerÿychtschen Hof by the ninth of May. May 1799 therefore seems the more likely
date.
19. The Weidenhof was a well-known inn not far from the Adlerÿychtschen Hof; Hölderlin
overnighted there whenever he made the three-hour walk from Homburg vor der Höhe to
Frankfurt, either to visit Hegel or to see Susette Gontard.
20. The two-month pause was due to the visit of Susette’s brother, Henry Borkenstein, and
his wife Eugenie.
21. That is, at White Hart, on April 5.

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 V

I return to the mirror, scanning my face for the cruelest part of me. I look
down my nose as Cobus must have looked down his at the poet and the poet’s
beloved, his wife. My nostrils ÿare in an expression of scorn and contempt. I
see Cobus looming over the lovers, and then, when Hölderlin is expelled from
the house, over her alone, alone with her letters—not the ones she has written,
but the ones she has received. They are letters from Hölderlin, now entirely
lost to us but for four brief drafts and fragments. I can smell Cobus at a slow
burn as he reads the letters never intended for his eyes, letters to which he is
unequal, inasmuch as they were written at white heat.

Friedrich Hölderlin to Susette Gontard in Frankfurt 1

Homburg, April 1799

There is inexpressible gratitude in me, my love, for the fact

that this heavenly spring still gives me some joy,

I never told you, my dear Franz, what I did when she died. I knew I would
never be able to survive the mockery of the funeral and the mourning pe-
riod—with every society hag in Frankfurt hanging on my every word and
scrutinizing my every expression. And so I ÿed to Kassel. I know you never
forgave me for this: it was unseemly, and it left you with a lot of explaining to
do to our investors, who might have doubted the wisdom of our House. Why
Kassel? Because she had confessed to me that Kassel was where it all began. I
decided to make a sort of pilgrimage to the scene of her undoing, not to

1. Above this draft of a letter—the þrst of the four we possess—stands the title and þrst line
of a poem—likewise abandoned and left as a fragment:

Rejuvenation

Sunlight stirs past joys in me,

That is all there is—the title and a fragment of the þrst line.

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L  D to H

Farewell for now, dear heart, and be always assured of my most

tender feelings toward you —

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 V

celebrate it at the moment of the Judgment upon her, for that would be impi-
ous, but to see for myself what had snatched her away to her ruin. It was not
my þrst trip to Kassel: my most recent visit there, in her company, had lasted
for three days. That was not long after the affair was over—if it was ever over.
Yet at that time I paid the city no mind. Now, after her death, quite alone, I
was attentive. I went to the Museum Fridericianum, which was precisely where
it happened—the unlikely place where their lust þrst ignited. It had been
harmless puppy love up to then. I was aware of it from the very start, of
course: I saw the googoo eyes and the heaving bosoms, heard the sighs, inter-
cepted all those most tender feelings, caught the stolen glances and the covert
touching of hands, all those busy little þngers, all the foolishness of hapless,
helpless, harmless lavender love. Yet Kassel introduced something new, some-
thing more damaging to our commerce—and at the very time I was in mortal
danger from the siege of Frankfurt. One evening she and I had a sort of þreside
chat about it, and I made her tell me everything. It wasn’t difþcult; she seemed
almost relieved.
“We were looking at some Roman copies of ancient Greek statues. When
we came to the Venus he was so shy he wouldn’t look up. I made him.”
I found the statue, all breasts and thighs. The marble seemed as soft and
smooth as ÿesh. I touched it. It was cold. I felt reassured. And he? She told me
he couldn’t take his eyes off his shoes. Such an absurd creature, unþt for life.
Why did she make him look up? The poor, absurd creature, without sense
enough to come in out of the þre.
Afterwards, in Bad Driburg, he aroused her by reading to her from a
novel, Heinse’s Ardinghello. Heinse was with them in Kassel and in Bad Driburg,
you see, so that it seemed appropriate enough to be reading his work. He was
a friend of the family, a true and faithful friend, even if he wrote scurrilous
novels. Indeed, Heinse probably never knew the key role he had played in her
undoing. He was devastated by her death, as were so many, even Dr. Sömmerring.
I had never seen physicians cry before, didn’t think they were capable of it.

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VIII22

might be able to, makes me very happy, though I’m being careful
not to show how important the carrying out of this plan is to me,
because it is not yet altogether certain. You will most probably
þnd me back here on the second Thursday of August. After that,
my brother wants to take us on a small Rhine cruise up to Coblenz;
from there we are to accompany his wife to Bad Ems, where she
will be taking the waters. He also advised me to take the Pyrmont
waters cure. The entire journey would surely take no more than
four weeks. I will then try to place in your hands a little travel-
ogue—just think of its lovely contents! That way you will share
everything with me; how sweet it will be for me in this way to
avoid receiving company, which has become so oppressive to me,
and to live for myself with my good siblings. Leaving here always
hurts me, of course, because I realize that here is the þxed point of
our union.
I would also very much like to tell you something with regard
to the matter of your future vocation—since that is what you have
challenged me to do. Yet how difþcult it is for me in every respect
to advise you. And will I not always be too nervous to choose on
your behalf? A faithful and experienced friend would be able to do
far more in this respect. I know that you cannot take a single step
that your soul would not afþrm; even if my spoiled heart, coddled
by your nearness, should strive against it, my better convictions
must win out; and if you should enter upon a career that promises

22. The preserved part of this letter was written between the end of June and July 3 or 4,
during Henry Borkenstein’s visit. The missing pages may have informed Hölderlin of Susette’s
son Henry’s being sent to Hanau to study with Pastor Hadermann and of her brother’s plan to
leave Frankfurt for Pyrmont. It may also have informed Hölderlin of her plan to travel to
Weimar and Jena that summer—a plan that may have pleased them both because of the possi-
bility (which never became a reality) that she might talk Schiller into contributing to Hölderlin’s
proposed “mensural journal of poetry,” which Hölderlin hoped would provide a livelihood for
him in the Frankfurt area.

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 V

Wilhelm Heinse to Dr. Samuel Thomas Sömmerring

Aschaffenburg, June 27, 1802

If only we too had vanished into divine eternity at the time

when we were blossoming with youth! Only the ceremonies
of the bereaved make the moment of its arrival sad. It is cer-
tain—certain!—that those whom the gods love die young.
Once one has achieved the beauties of this earthly life and all
its joys—I do not want to conjure up the long tale of the
sufferings that usually follow upon that moment.
Now, of course, would be the perfect time for us to climb
the Feldberg and observe the chaos of the world at our feet;
but I simply can’t get away, it can’t be done. Oh, how gladly I
would spend some days with you, days as cheerful as the burn-
ing blue sky above the clouds! We would meditate on the
sweet and sad memories of earlier pilgrimages there. Ah, the
fair angels who accompanied our labyrinthine wanderings
through the world were snatched away from us far too soon!

I don’t remember much about Kassel apart from the art gallery and the
breasts and thighs of stone.
“She’s as cold as that now,” I shuddered, “but not as durable.”
Nor did I ever tell you about the letters. He had written dozens of them
to her. The knowledge of their existence had become so oppressive to me that
I determined to þnd them and read them. The chief groundsman at our sum-
mer house, my loyal Angelo, a faithful and experienced friend, was never able
to discover how the lunatic got his letters to her, but receive them she did. I
was certain that she was hiding them in the pavilion, so I had it dismantled.
Nothing. I had the rabbit-keeper interrogated—a witless, lazy Greek who never
saw anything—and I ordered the rest of the staff to be on the lookout. Can
you guess where she kept them? In the laundry. Isn’t that one for the Comic
Opera? Something so dirty kept in a room devoted to cleanliness. One night
in the middle of May I was returning home from a meeting with the

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L  D to H

you fame and the world utility, then all my tears for you would
surely be transformed into tears of joy. I would have to hear from
you, however, and my hopes in this regard dare not be deceived.
Take your true friends and men of experience into your counsel
with an eye to your future. If a secure path does not open itself to
you, then stay precisely where you are and get along as best you
can. Do that rather than risk being overwhelmed and thwarted by
fate once again; your forces would not enable you to hold out, and
you would be altogether lost to the world and to posterity, for
which you also silently live. No, you dare not do that! You dare
not put yourself at risk. Your noble nature, the mirror of every-
thing beautiful, dare not shatter in you; you also owe the world
something, something that radiates through you; it is as though
the world were transþgured in you and assumed more elevated
forms. You have to think especially hard about your survival. Few
are like you! — — And whatever does not meet with success now
will be held in reserve for future times. Couldn’t you also in the
future allow young people to come to you for instruction? Forgive
me this idea if it doesn’t please you. Yet I know that at one time
you thought about giving lectures, and certainly this would not be
difþcult for you. Just make sure you never act on the basis of the
false conception that you must somehow do me honor, or that
anything you do and achieve behind closed doors would not be so
dear to me, or that you have to justify my inclination toward you
in some exceptional way. Your love does me sufþcient honor, and
will always satisfy me; I do not ask for what people call honor;
great men already honor you; I þnd you in every depiction of
nobler natures, and I don’t need some wretched testimony from
our world to know about that. Just today I was reading Tasso, and

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 V

Bürgermeister’s Council: they needed to ÿoat another bond issue in order to

refurbish the Rathaus. As the carriage approached the Adlerÿychtschen Hof I
saw candlelight ÿickering through one of the windows on the ground ÿoor—
the laundry room. At two o’clock in the morning. I told the driver to stop,
alighted, and made the rest of the way on foot. I entered by the side door, not
far from the laundry. I removed my boots and slipped down the hall. The
door was ajar. I squeezed into the room soundlessly. She did not give a start
until I was standing directly over her.

Friedrich Hölderlin to Susette Gontard 2

Homburg, Summer 1799

Daily I must call upon the vanished godhead. When I think

of great men in great times, and of how they spread holy þre
on all sides, transforming into ÿame everything wooden and
defunct, all the straw of the world, so that it soared heaven-
ward with them; and when I think of me, of how often I drift
about like a ÿickering little lamp begging for a drop of oil so
that I can shine a while longer through the night—behold! a
wondrous shudder passes through all my limbs, and softly I
utter to myself a terrifying phrase: the living dead!
Do you know what the cause of it is? Human beings are
afraid of one another, afraid that the genius of the one will
consume that of the other; that’s why they gladly provide one
another with food and drink, but nothing that nourishes the
soul. And they can’t bear it when something they say or do
inspires someone else to the point where they start up like a
ÿame. The fools! As though anything human beings might
say to one another were more than kindling, which burns

2. Knaupp dates this second drafted letter “end of June 1799” (2: 779) “or in the second half
of August” (3: 517). He is thus more or less in agreement with Beck (228).

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L  D to H

I found unmistakable traits of you—you should read it again your-

self.23

July 3

I want to devote a few more moments of solitude to you. My

visitor has gone out to pay his respects to the neighbors, and to-
night Frau Sömmerring is coming over to our place: may heaven
only grant that she does not interfere with Thursday morning.24
The thought that I will not be able to þnd my way to you often
rages like a þre in my head. I must have faith in the Genius of
Love, because not everything has gone according to plan since our
separation. Yet things will go well in the future. Now I must ask
you once again to come on the þrst Thursday in August. If our
journey has not yet come to an end, which is highly unlikely, would
you then please come on the next Thursday. If we do return earlier
than planned, however, we will have to be away again in order to
take the waters, and I dare not postpone this second trip. My
brother wrote yesterday to say that we could be traveling already
on the 12th.

23. Goethe’s Torquato Tasso, depicting the life of the sixteenth-century Italian poet, was
published in 1790. The legends surrounding Tasso’s love for Princess Leonore of Ferrara, along
with Tasso’s eventual madness, lend Susette Gontard’s reference a particular poignancy. Her
sister-in-law Margarete, to whom Susette was quite close, would later make the same connec-
tion between Tasso and Hölderlin.
24. Margaretha Elisabeth Sömmerring (ca. 1769–1802), the beautiful and artistically gifted
wife of Dr. Samuel Thomas Sömmerring (1755–1830). They were intimate friends of the Gontards,
and Margaretha was Susette’s closest conþdante—though apparently she knew nothing of Susette’s
love for Hölderlin. Hölderlin too was on good terms with Dr. Sömmerring, a well-known
professor of anatomy, formerly at Mainz. Margaretha Sömmerring died some þve months be-
fore Susette. Her husband Samuel treated both women during the days of their fatal illnesses.

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only when ignited by spiritual þre, inasmuch as it came to be

out of life and þre. And if only they grant one another suste-
nance, both parties live and cast their light, and neither con-
sumes the other.
Do you recall our unrufÿed hours, when we alone were
rapt to one another? How triumphant! The two of us, so free
and proud and alert, blossoming, beaming in soul and heart
and eye and face, each of us alongside the other in such heav-
enly bliss! Even then I sensed it, and said it: one could travel
the world over and still not þnd anything remotely like that
again. Daily I feel this, and ever more gravely.

Yesterday afternoon Muhrbeck came up to my room. “The

French have been beaten in Italy again,” he said.3 “If only
things are well with us,” I replied, “then the world is doing
þne.” He hugged me, and we kissed one another, our joyful
souls upon our lips, and our tearful eyes met. Then he left. I
still have such moments. Yet can they replace an entire world?
And that is what makes my þdelity a matter of eternity. Many
people excel in this or that respect. Yet a nature like yours,
where all is gathered in an intense, indestructible, living union,

3. Friedrich Muhrbeck (1775-1827), a member of the radical democratic student group at

Jena, “The Confederation of Free Men,” became a close friend of Hölderlin’s during the sum-
mer in which this letter was written. Muhrbeck’s news helps us to date the letter: the Second
Coalition (Britain, Austria, and Russia) achieved a series of early successes against the French
during the spring and summer of 1799, at the battles of Cassano (April 27), Trebbia (June 17-
19), and Novi (August 15). These defeats of the French led to the 18th Brumaire of Napoleon
Bonaparte, that is, since you and your countrymen feel there is no need to read Marx any more,
to his coup d’état on November 9, 1799. Within a year’s time the military situation in Europe
was entirely different, and students in the German universities, while remaining faithful repub-
licans, began to abandon their support of Revolutionary France—which was soon to become
Imperial France. By the way, why do you report so little of the political life in which Hölderlin
is caught up? — Does he disappoint you because here at least he is not sentimental? Or is
politics precisely the most sentimental thing in the world to you—pure nostalgia—which would
only show how very much you are shaped by your own national culture?

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Thursday morning

How happy I would be to entertain myself quietly with you just a

little longer, but the thought Someone is coming! disrupts every-
thing in me, and it is also the reason why I haven’t written you
nearly as much as I wanted to—how much I had to say about your
lovely letter! Just be cheerful, my sweetheart, and have a bit more
trust in people than you do; sometimes they are better than we
think. Yet because we always hold them up against the highest and
best of things, things we see in one another, how could they not
almost always disappoint us? Let compassion rather than contumely
and disgust dwell within you as far as they are concerned. Forgive
my harping on this once again, but it always seems to me that I’ve
forgotten to say it, and I wanted to be sure to tell you that. Fare
well! Fare well! — —
The journey is now properly planned. We shall be able to
leave on the 12th.

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is the pearl of our times. Whoever has known such a nature,

and whoever knows that her happiness, born of heaven, is
also her profound unhappiness, he too is eternally blessed
and eternally wretched.

The þrelight—for it wasn’t a candle at all: she had kindled a þre in the
stove beneath one of the wash cauldrons—must have made me an eerie appa-
rition. She was feeding the ÿames with pages torn from a book. Not exactly a
book, but a leatherbound album of letters sewn together with a lavender rib-
bon. She would tear a leaf from its binding, read it slowly, turn it soundlessly
to the reverse side, then place it deliberately into the dying ÿames, rekindling
them. The gasp that issued from her lips when she saw me looming over her
was not yet a scream. There was no proper terror in it. It was almost as though
she had sensed that someone was coming. Not yet a scream, even though I can
imagine what my bushy brows must have looked like in the þery footlights of
our uncanny little theater. No proper terror, but a silent despair. Discovered at
last. History at last. Acceptance and reconciliation at last. Or so she thought.
I said not a word, squatted, while she tried—slowly, with deliberate grace—to
slip the remaining letters into the þre. I singed the hairs on the knuckles of my
þngers and on the back of my hand as I rescued them from the hungry blaze.
I saved them as though they were Holy Writ. There were only a dozen or so
unscorched pages remaining. I began to read them but I didn’t þnish them.
Then, together, we placed them along with their leather cover into the stove.
We had to blow a bit to start the þre up again, but soon it made a great light.
Two weeks later Henry came back from Hanau with a fever, and measles
descended on the House. She nursed the children and was herself infected.
She burned with fever. Then she cooled. She withered. In ten days she was
dead. During her illness I worked at the bank only in the mornings and spent
the afternoons and evenings with her. That was the time of our deepest inti-
macy, since not even the þrst days of our marriage were carefree. It was always
difþcult to break the silence. Yet when the doctors became too plentiful—
Sömmerring was joined by Dr. Ebel, Professor Weidemann, and an entire
crew of assistants—I felt squeezed out once again, bereft, bankrupt, or what I

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IX

About the 8th [August 1799] 25

How difþcult it will be to break the silence again! — And yet it is

always as though I can þnd tranquillity and peace through writing
alone. How painful it so often is for me when, day after day, I
wander about without þnding the quiet time in order to write; if I
could entreat heaven for but one wish with regard to my current
situation, it would certainly be to grant me a single hour every day
all to myself, an hour I could then dedicate to you, my darling,
with all my heart. You cannot believe how oppressive it is for me
to keep sealed within me the entire burden of feelings that I bear,
and not even to be able to entrust them to the pen. And so here I
am, meandering on, and yet have so much to tell you. I have to
speak to you about the last time I saw you!26 That same morning I
was undecided about whether or not I should come down to you
even without a letter, or whether I shouldn’t rather let you be de-
ceived and pretend as though we had not yet returned, and then
wait for you on the next Thursday. I was very tired and tense, and
was very much afraid that this would give you the wrong impres-
sion; yet I was also afraid you might have heard about our return
and wouldn’t be able to account for my staying away. And so I
risked it. Yet how shall I describe to you the unnamable mood into
which I slipped that evening? I thought I caught a glimpse of you
down in the avenue. Was it really you? — or not? — — I wasn’t
alone; the Sömmerrings were with me. The vision of you struck
me like lightning: my face ÿushed red, then went cold, and soon
the others noticed that I wanted to be alone, and they left me. It

25. Begun, according to Beck, circa Thursday, August 8, 1799, at the Adlerÿychtschen Hof,
about ten days after Susette Gontard’s return from Weimar and Jena; Knaupp dates it more
vaguely as “August–September 1799.”
26. This was the visit of August 1, during which, however, it proved impossible to exchange
letters.

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imagined bankruptcy must be like. On the morning she died, I exited by way
of the laundry room and left Frankfurt, intending to go to Hamburg. I was
thinking of coming to see you, to lay my head in the bosom of my older
brother, without anxiety or reserve. I went to Kassel instead, as I said, to see if
perhaps I could surprise the ghost of her love in that haunted space. For those
few days not even adultery mattered. Nothing mattered. I slipped into an
unnamable mood. Not much about Kassel is clear in my mind, except for the
things I have already told you about, the breasts and the thighs of chill marble,
and so I will not dwell on it.

Henry von Lilienstern to Ludwig Rüdt von Collenberg

July 6, 1802

Gontard was said to have been beside himself with grief: he

ÿed Frankfurt an hour after her death, originally intending
to travel to Hamburg, but then settling in Kassel, in order to
avoid the corpse and the mourners. The gossips, who are al-
ways ready to talk because they don’t have enough pain in
their lives, found his absence suspicious. . . . I have not seen
him yet, he has buried himself in his work. He lost a great
deal, people can say what they like, and if they weren’t as
happy in their life together as the two of them should have
been, the one who has this on his conscience knows damn
well who he is.

After I returned from Kassel I went through all her things. She had
become a shade; only her things were real. I touched the vestiges of her; my
face ÿushed red, then went cold. I was all thumbs, my thoughts froze. But I
persisted: I wanted to see what Jette, Lene, and Molly should have and what
should be thrown away or given to our sister Margarete. Margarete was her
favorite, as you know. They made music together on the long winter evenings,
most often together with the lunatic. He did play the ÿute well, I concede the
fact, though I must say I’ve always felt that the ÿute is a suspicious instru-

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seemed to me then that you really were there, that some kind of
anxiety had driven you to me, you had to come, and so I went to
the window and stood there with unwavering eyes, eyes that once
again deceived me. For soon I was seeing your face peering through
the bushes; you leaned against a tree and looked up at me. I knew
that my fancy was playing tricks on me and I convinced myself
that the earlier vision of you also was fanciful. Pain now gripped
my heart with a gelid hand and threatened to squeeze it to death,
my thoughts froze, it was as though I wanted to embrace you and
you had become a shade. Your dear shade still could have com-
forted me—even though, if my powers of reason had demanded
it, that shade too would have vanished from me, and there would
have remained, if such a thing is thinkable at all, a nothing.
I had to get a grip on myself and escape from this soundless
terror. Now there rose from the depths of my being a moan, a
whine, a ÿood of tears that had long been impending. I couldn’t
stop them. Since then I have been in such profound dejection: it’s
as though in your heart you were holding something against me. I
can’t focus on anything else. A carpet of dark moss has smothered
every recollection of my trip, and I will have to struggle in order to
be able to tell you anything about it. O God! Do not appear to me
this way again! Oh, never doubt my love! — — — — — It will
be yours alone—yours!—for all eternity. — — — —

The 10th [August 1799]

Then something surprised me in the midst of this indescribably

melancholy mood. I blamed it on the fact that I was suddenly left
alone after a long and pleasant diversion, and because my siblings
had gone. Yet the mood spoke all too truly, and what it meant was
something new and different; after several days, because my sad-

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ment, it does something perverse to the mouth. Sometimes they read aloud,
usually Goethe. I wouldn’t be surprised if Margarete knew what was going on
between the two of them. She never came to me about it, however, never
seemed to be troubled by her lack of loyalty to her own brother and to our
House, which is the only sanctuary available to us in this life. Most of the
clothes were too splendid for Margarete: they would only have showcased the
inþrmity of her pockmarked face and neck.
It took me a week to go through all the things—never before had I
appreciated the true extent of our wealth, most of it, as you know, earned
rather than inherited. Among her keepsakes from the lunatic I found the two
volumes of the novel called Hyperion. I opened the þrst volume and read its
dedication. Vacuous words, mere phrases!

“The inÿuence of noble natures is as necessary to the artist as

daylight is to plants. And just as daylight is found once again
in the plant, not as itself, but merely in the gay play of earthen
colors, so noble natures will þnd, not themselves as such, but
dispersed traces of their excellence in the artist’s manifold
conþgurations and plays.”
— The author.

Thus the hopelessly pompous twaddle of a myopic pedant (“the artist,” “the
author”) who does not even know yet that he is in love (with a “noble na-
ture”). The dedication to the second volume was rather more capably done,
rather more succinct:

To whom else
but
you.

Whatever had happened between them happened between the sheets and covers
of those two volumes—I became convinced of that. I examined them more

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ness perdured, others attempted to offer some more cogent expla-

nations for it. One among these persons was completely convinced
by the thought that certain relationships were continuing and had
given special occasion to my mood. It was very hard for me to be
as faithful to the truth as possible. I was given to understand that
your þrst visit to the house27 did not remain a secret. I admitted it,
but said that here in this house28 you had never again set foot, and
that I would certainly not do anything that would ruin me and
everything else. It all went very quietly, and it left no noisome
aftereffects. Yet now I must admit to you that the future frightens
me. I can see no way out, and without you I can do nothing. In
the future, when I am back in the city again, will we be able to live
without hearing from one another? — — If I make that sacriþce,
will I ever regain peace where you are concerned? Would not a
thousand phantoms torture me just as much as my disquiet does
now? — And even if I did nothing, would not the identical suspi-
cion fall upon me, and would I not have to suffer that suspicion
without receiving any boon in return?
My thoughts are adrift. So tell me what you think and don’t
let the heavy burden of decision rest on me alone. Whatever you
think best is what I too want, and even if you believe that a total
separation between us is what we really must have, I won’t take it
wrongly from you, the invisible relations will go on and on, and life
is short. I feel cold! — Because life is short, should we forfeit it? —
— Oh, tell me, where will we þnd one another again? — — —
Darling! My beloved soul! — — — Where can I þnd peace? —
— — Let me face up to my duties with all possible rigor, let me
forget about myself; and, even if it should be ever so difþcult, help

27. That is, to the main residence in Frankfurt, White Hart.

28. That is, in the Adlerÿychtschen Hof, the summer house north of Frankfurt.

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carefully for the signs of her ruin. He had underlined a number of passages in
each volume—the ink of the underlinings was the same as that of the inscrip-
tion, and so I knew that it was his work I was reading, his in a double sense,
but also hers, hers by contamination, hers in a wickedly proliferating sense.
My thoughts were adrift: this was the work of a thousand phantoms.

if fate should henceforth seize me and toss me from one abyss

to another, and if all the forces in me drown, and so too all
my thoughts, one single thing will survive in me, and illu-
mine in me, and rule in eternal, indestructible clarity!
Once I was happy Am I still happy If I were
not, if also the holy moment when I saw her for the þrst
time it would have been the last.
What is all the technical know-how in the world, what
is the entire proud maturity of human thought, against the
unsought reverberations of this spirit that did not know what
it knew, did not know what it was?
I stood before her and heard and saw the peace of heaven,
and, in the midst of sighing Chaos, Urania appeared to me.
How often have my laments been stilled before this im-
age! how often have impetuous life and the striving spirit
mellowed, when, sunk in blessed contemplation, I looked into
her heart
She was my Lethe, this soul, my holy Lethe, from which
I drank oblivion of existence; so that I stood before her as an
immortal and joyfully upbraided myself, and, as though after
oppressive dreams, I had to laugh at all the chains that had
fettered me.
May your rose not blanch, O blessed youth of the gods
May your beauties not wither under the cares of the Earth.
For that is my very joy that you carry within yourself the
carefree heavens.

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me to carry out my obligations. Yet I still don’t know what they

are. Self-preservation—without that I can do nothing. And to forget
about myself ÿatly contradicts this, for everything that I might
undertake to oppose my love seems to me now to entail my cor-
ruption, my destruction.
What a recalcitrant art it is, this loving! Who can understand
it? And who can do anything else but obey it? — — — Call upon
all your powers of reason and talk to me, convince me, I need it so
much, and whom else can I ask other than you, my one and only
friend. — — — —

8 o’clock in the evening on the 15th [August 1799]

I’m alone! — — I would like to tell you something about our trip,
but other matters seem more pressing and always compel me; I
want to give my suffocating heart some air now in the beautiful
serenity of the evening. — But, oh, how melancholy I am! I want
to do nothing but cry, I yearn for an answer from your soul, to
which I have an afþnity. Everything is so lovely! so harmonious!
and yet, for me, so dead, whenever the signs of your being here are
missing, whenever the certainty that your heart is speaking to mine
is lacking. Oh, the beloved, the felicitous, the heavenly love that
once I felt! What emptiness such separation leaves behind in the
heart: nothing can þll it, and anything that tries to do so makes
me feel the emptiness all the more.
I have to confess to you this one thing: I cannot carry out my
resolution to hear absolutely nothing from you this winter. And so
it occurred to me that if you remain in the region you could come
every other month on that particular Thursday evening at nine
o’clock under my window—with the greatest possible caution. Then
I could see that you are still here and that you are well. Even that
tiny gesture would mean so very much to my heart! And I could let a
little slip of paper drift down to you, but I will have to give up
receiving letters from your hand, because I don’t think it is advis-

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human beings are a cloak that a god wraps round his

shoulders from time to time, a chalice into which heaven pours
its nectar, thus granting its children a taste of the best.

More such sentimental nonsense echoed in the second volume, my dear

Franz, and I shall not spare you, just as she did not spare me. What a recalci-
trant art it is, this settling of accounts. Who can understand it? And who can
do anything else but obey it? I owe you an account of every sensation in me,
since you and I are bound by familial afþnity. That is why I am happy to have
an opportunity to give you an accounting of it all.

Beneath my mother’s eyes and my father’s nose is the mouth I always hope
will release my own voice. I open it to launch the words that I hope will come
gushing over my tongue and lips, out of control, answering to no one, waving
back to me as they ÿy. Even that tiny gesture would mean so very much to my
heart. But the þshbowl mirror gives me back nothing more than a mouthing
of platitudes, bubbles, air pockets. I will never be able to write, certainly not
publishable writings. Not even letters. Especially not letters. I am one among
many bundles of fragments—an inþnity of women who have never found a

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able for you to come into the house, at least not at þrst. I would
then have to glean your published writings to þnd out how you
are faring, and I would surely know you in them. Give me the
address where I can order your journal, as soon as it becomes a
reality.29
Next spring will þnd us here again, and the þrst song of the
newly alighted larks will be the sign of our approaching union. I
am writing in the dark: the sun has gone down, depriving me of
her beams of light. Many things are dark, are they not, until our
sun shines upon them again—it is coming, surely it is coming
again? — — — — Oh, benevolent nature! Teach me how to trust,
and soothe this heart! — —

18th [August 1799]

Now I’d like to give you a brief overview of our little trip, putting
this moment to use—now that I’m alone. It will be brief, because
I am not really in the mood to tell stories, and I hope you’ll forgive
my dry-as-dust language. I only want to give you an idea of what
we did, so that your imagination þnds a basis in fact. We departed
a week late,30 and the trip lasted only ten days. We left early in the
morning. My sister-in-law, along with the youngest Brentano,31

29. This is the literary journal mentioned above in note 22 and discussed in the introduction
and afterword. Hölderlin had been planning it for several years. An interested publisher wanted
contributions from all the famous writers of the time; he imposed on Hölderlin the task of
contacting them and convincing them to contribute. The project failed. See Hölderlin’s second
letter (in draft form) to Susette Gontard, dated approximately September 1799, in Knaupp, 2:
824–26.
30. That is, a week after July 12, on July 19; the visit with Schiller, described below, occurred
on July 27.
31. Gunda Brentano (1780–1863), the youngest sister of the poet and writer Clemens Brentano.
Gunda was no doubt anxious to visit her sister Sophie and their grandmother Madame Sophie
LaRoche, who were visiting at Oßmannstedt, the country residence of the poet, satirist, and
novelist Christoph Martin Wieland (see note 34, below).

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speaking voice or a writing hand. Women like Sophie LaRoche only make
matters worse. They þnd a moralizing mouth always at their disposal and
raise a pedantic hand to deliver a homily.
Susette Gontard met Sophie LaRoche when she went to Jena. She was
hoping to see Schiller, to plead with him to help her lover by letting one
crumb fall from his table, one crumb from the master’s banquet for the sur-
vival of the wretched. She praises LaRoche for her hospitality and generosity,
but she must have felt her own voicelessness echoing back to her in the old
woman’s virtuous chatter. She must have suffered under LaRoche’s shower of
moralisms—all that bubbling optimism concealing a dark despair, all that
sanctimony concealing a lifeless and bloodless morality.

Sophie LaRoche to Princess Elise of Solms-Laubach

August 8, 1799
Still in Oßmannstedt, at Wieland’s house!

But, alas, all too soon to be heading home, my dear and generous Princess! An
old woman is no longer fresh þsh, and I’ve overstayed my three days by three
weeks! How wonderful it has been to walk with my Wieland again: in þfteen
days it will have been exactly þfty years since our long walk together in Biberach,
when we talked of love (we had just heard a dreadfully boring sermon on the
theme “God is love”) and declared ourselves secretly betrothed. And now, half
a century later, we sit at the supper table graced by the presence of his wife,
seven grown children, four grandchildren, and all the gray hairs on our heads!
All I have to show for my and LaRoche’s efforts are my granddaughters Sophie
and Gunda Brentano—Sophie is a sweetheart, but she never stops talking for
a minute, and Gunda is so shy she never opens her mouth. Even so, I’ve lost so
many children over the years that I know how to appreciate family of any
kind. Losing Maxie eight years ago was the last straw. I began to lose her long
before that, of course, when she and her sister Luise went off to Strasbourg for
their schooling: I missed them so dreadfully that I compensated by making
my “paper dolls” to play with—I mean, the young women in my stories! As

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and I were accompanied by none other than our Jacob. In Giessen

we met Director Tischbein,32 who was visiting his sister there and
who was expecting us. He has aged considerably by now; a num-
ber of fate’s strokes have turned his hair gray. He hadn’t been on
German soil for twenty years, and his fatherland is rejuvenating
him; even when he’s praising Italy, he is always talking about the
Germans. Whenever we were out riding in the coach he would
exclaim, “No! We don’t have such beautiful green trees in Italy!”
At an earlier period of his life, this man was quite a þne painter.
He put his art and his own personal interests aside in order to
study Greek antiquities. The Greek poets, especially Homer, had
made him an enthusiast. If you could hear him speak, you would
notice how intimately and faithfully he has taken up Homer, and
you would þnd joy in the fact that even at his age the intoxication
and warmth of feeling have not abated. He also recognized me
right away, and showed me great respect. You will soon see his
published works; some other time I’ll tell you more about him. (I
presume I will some day see your “Observations on Homer” too?
—)33 We stayed in Kassel for three days. On the morning of our
þrst night there, I woke up quite early. Because my traveling com-
panions were still asleep, I took your beloved poems from my travel
bag; they served as my matins, veiling my loving heart in a deli-
cate and touching melancholy. They took me straight to your heart,
and so I went to rejoin my life with greater courage, the beautiful

32. Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein (1751–1829), painter and classicist, was a nephew of
the director of the Kassel Art Academy. He had spent many years in Italy and was befriended by
Goethe in Rome, where he composed a number of the most famous portraits of the poet.
Tischbein later became a leading member (and eventually the director) of the Academy of
Naples before returning to Hamburg, Germany.
33. Apparently an article or series of articles planned for the ill-fated journal. A number of
Hölderlin’s observations on Homer—and his translation of the þrst two songs of The Iliad—do
survive: see 2: 62–71, 119–47; 3: 391–95, 405–8.

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much as I missed my girls, however, I vowed I would not perpetuate my

father’s tyranny over me. How I begged him to let me study Latin—I had
become a real enthusiast!—but he wouldn’t hear of it. I’ve spent my entire life
cobbling together the education my father denied me. Now, if I had married
Wieland, how painless my education would have been, and how thorough!
It really was quite naughty of you to take up my reference to Aspasia the
way you did. When Wieland and I spoke of her and of the ancient Greek
mores and Muses—and why shouldn’t we have done so? we were young and
foolish!—all we meant was that love must go hand in hand with the highest
intellectuality and spirituality. You tease me when you remind me that Aspasia
was hetaira, that she was Pericles’ woman of pleasure, but I shall tease you
right back by reminding you that she wrote Pericles’ speeches for him. Wieland
told me that even Father Plato made her the spokeswoman for an entire dia-
logue of his—he said the name, but I didn’t recognize it—in which Plato
explains that women imitate the Earth, that we are the verdant source and the
nurture of all that is. So you see, even when we were young and gay (and
Wieland was three years younger and more jolly than I!) we devoted our pas-
sions strictly to virtue and knowledge.
It has been such a nostalgic stay for me here at Oßmannstedt—it has
veiled my loving heart in a delicate and touching melancholy. The highlight,
of course, was the supper party Goethe threw for me. I’ve already told you
about it, I know, but I forgot to mention the toast he delivered: he called me
“the þrst woman of letters in all the German lands,” and praised my Pomona:
The Magazine for Germany’s Daughters as the “unfailing guide of young women
through their most tender, budding years.” He also confessed that my History
of Fräulein von Sternheim had gone straight to his heart already as a young
man. He even hinted that my wisdom in matters of love—my wisdom and, of
course, my sweet Maxie, who was the great ÿame of his life—had rescued him
from the fate of young Werther. Imagine how proud I was!
Speaking of Pomona and Sternheim reminds me of one of our visitors
here at Oßmannstedt, the most beautiful and most mysterious of them all.
She is the wife of the merchant-banker Jacob Gontard of Frankfurt—you

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sun rose over Kassel, and once again the sight of all these beloved
regions delighted me. — — — —
While we were at the breakfast table, a dear old friend of ours
from Hamburg surprised us. He had traveled there in order to
rejoin his children, and in the evening we all came together. We
spent three happy days in their company, but I never had a mo-
ment to myself. — — — —
Our path took us away from our Hamburg friends, and we
continued on our journey to Gotha. Tischbein too we left behind.
We arrived at Gotha in the evening, after two days’ journey. It was
raining hard, and we saw precious little; the next morning we drove
to Weimar, arriving there at four o’clock in the afternoon. We
wanted to leave right away for Wieland’s country estate, in order
to join Madame LaRoche and her grandchild, but we heard that
they were all in town, so we sent a visiting card in order to let them
know we had arrived, at which point Sophie Brentano came and
invited us all to their apartments.34 All the notable scholars of the
region were assembled there, and so we got dressed quickly and
went with her. The elderly LaRoche greeted us in a most amiable
manner, entirely unaffected and full of life, and quite happy to see
us. She introduced us to the company: Wieland was there, and
Herder!35 (Goethe was absent.) And there were also several other

34. Madame Sophie LaRoche (1731–1807) was the grandmother of Gunda and Sophie
Brentano. An early love and a long-time conþdante of Wieland, she had composed a number of
very popular moral-sentimental novels, including The History of Fräulein von Sternheim (1771).
She had also befriended Goethe at the time of the gestation of The Sorrows of Young Werther,
only a few years after Sternheim was published. Goethe fell in love with her daughter Maximiliane,
who thus assuaged his rejection by Charlotte Buff. Christoph Martin Wieland (1733–1813), one
of the most important novelists and satirists of his age, edited the inÿuential journal Teutsche
Merkur from 1773 to 1810.
35. Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) had been the General Superintendent of Weimar
since 1776. He was one of the leading intellectuals of the “Sturm und Drang” era, having
written an important work on the origin of language (1772) and an inÿuential multivolume
study entitled Ideas toward the Philosophy of the History of Humanity (1784–91).

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know the name, if not that branch of the family. Madame Susette, for so she is
called, brought my young Gunda with her, so that both her sister Sophie and
I were indebted to her. Madame Susette spent the earlier part of our þrst
evening together talking with Herder about Goethe’s friend Tischbein, but
later I discovered what was on her mind. Our þrst exchange was so strange—
she questioned me quite closely about Pomona. I þnally had to interrupt her
interview of me—because an interview is what it was.
“Forgive me, Madame Susette, but why does Pomona interest you so
much? It’s been almost thirty years—and ladies’ magazines have such a short
life span!”
“I have a . . . friend . . . who is thinking of starting up a journal of that
kind—a literary magazine for women.”
“Bravo! There cannot be enough of them—the education of Germany’s
daughters is still in our hands, you know. Tell me about your friend. What is
her name?”
Such an intense reddening of the cheeks and brow I have never seen,
dear Princess, her ardor transþguring the alabaster of her skin. She talked
excitedly about her friend’s plans. He (for it was a he, and that gave me pause,
as you can imagine!) wanted our leading writers as contributors—she ges-
tured in the direction of Herder, who was across the room absentmindedly
stufþng his pipe and thinking no doubt of some obscure moment in the his-
tory of our unenlightened species, and Wieland, who stood by the door un-
able to take his eyes off her, since his good daimon also has a touch of the
demon about him. Madame Susette told me any number of things about the
magazine, except, of course, what I most wanted to hear.
“Do not keep me in suspense, dear. Who is this mysterious editor of
yours?”
“He is practically unknown, he has published almost nothing, you
wouldn’t have heard of him.”
“But how can we solicit Wieland’s help—and Herder’s and Goethe’s,
and the help of everyone else you’ve mentioned—unless we can tell them who
they are to be writing for?”
“It is . . . too great an imposition. These men have so much to do, and so
little time.”

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less well-known men. My sister-in-law occupied Wieland in con-

versation right from the start; Tischbein had given me some mes-
sages for Herder, and so the þrst half-hour passed. When tea was
served my sister-in-law’s conversation with Wieland was still go-
ing on, and I interrupted only a couple of times, thinking over
what I had to say quite carefully each time. When we left, Wieland
took my hand and said in a heartfelt way, “The few words you
spoke make me wish I could see you more often.” That made me
very happy, for your sake, and on the way back I was thinking
only of you. The next day, Wieland, who had been praising my
sister-in-law quite effusively to young Sophie, apparently asked
her which of us two, my sister-in-law or me, she would choose to
spend time with; she chose me, whereupon Wieland replied, “For
that, young lady, you deserve to be kissed on the hand.” Excuse
the vanity of my telling you all this, but of course I’m telling it to
you alone, and even if it is wrong of me to do so, I still cannot
conceal from you the fact that it made me feel quite proud. The
next morning we drove to Jena, with a letter of introduction to
Madame Mereau.36 We went straight to her and asked her to help
us get in touch with Schiller. We left our visiting card with her,
asking Schiller if he could see us for an hour. She gave us no hope,
however, because Schiller is living in great isolation now, and sel-
dom meets with strangers. The others were ready to give up on the
plan to visit him; but Sophie and I decided we would risk every-
thing to get to see him.

36. Sophie Mereau (1770–1806), a poet, and Schiller’s co-worker on the Muses’ Almanac, also
served as a personal secretary to Schiller. In 1803 Sophie Mereau—famed for her beauty and
erotic power, a woman whom local gossips had brought into connection with Hölderlin, much
to his annoyance—married Clemens Brentano.

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“Nonsense! For Germany’s daughters they should take the time, child!
Now, tell me, who is he?”
She would not reveal his name to me, however; she darted this way and
bolted that way, until I tired of the chase. Frankly, her secrecy and difþdence
began to irritate me. I began to suspect the worst, even though everything
about her pleased me.
“We’ll talk about it tomorrow afternoon,” I said.
But we didn’t. For the next afternoon she spent with Schiller, guided
thither by my brave Sophie. No doubt Madame Susette bent Schiller’s ear,
speaking quite effusively on behalf of her mysterious friend. On the following
day we sat out in the garden—the fragrance of lavender was intoxicating, the
bees were ubiquitous!—and talked intensely about you’ll never guess what:
The History of Fräulein von Sternheim ! What made it so strange was that she
somehow reminded me of the image of my own heroine. To be sure, she was
too mature, a splendid creature in the full bloom of womanhood—she al-
ready had four children—and too classic a beauty. Yet there was also nobility
in her carriage, intelligence in her eyes, and goodness in her heart. Wieland
clearly preferred her to the others; he told me so, and I told her! She was the
very picture of my Sophie von Sternheim!

She was above medium height, beautifully wrought, with an

oval face that was replete with soul; her magniþcent brown
eyes were full of spirit and good will; she had a lovely mouth,
with þne teeth, and a high forehead, perhaps too broad to
suit the prototype of perfect beauty. And yet hers was a face
in which no one would have wanted to change anything. There
was so much grace in her every facial feature, so much nobil-
ity in her gestures, that when she walked into a room every
gaze was drawn to her. Everything she wore complimented
her, and I heard Milord Seymour say that in every fold of her
gown one of the Graces made her dwelling. . . . Her voice too
invited one in; her way of expressing herself was reþned, with-
out being forced. In short, her spirit and character were the

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L  D to H

23rd [August 1799]

Once again I must take advantage of the moment—the others

have gone out for a coach ride. I wanted to write quite a lot, and
then, as luck would have it, along came a bee and stung me on my
right hand. I am completely miserable—having already had to
confront so many obstacles on the path of my writing. Surely a
great deal of love lies behind the considerable number of lines I
am eking out for you here.
I now want to conclude my account of the journey with just
a few more words.
In the afternoon, Sophie and I went once again to Mereau in
order to receive Schiller’s answer: our request had been granted,
and we were told to be there at 4 o’clock. At about this hour, a
servant accompanied us through the gate into the garden, where
Schiller now has his dwelling. How nervous we were, how wildly
our hearts throbbed! I can’t tell you how melancholy I then be-
came: I felt all too keenly at this moment how brief the time allot-
ted to us was, one half-hour for me to see the man I thought of in
such grandiose terms, a man to whom my feelings surely could
have spoken. I was unable to show him by my gaze the way I felt
drawn to him; and I didn’t want this beautiful soul before me to
be a mirror that would be forced to reÿect such a minuscule image
of me, and so I could only appear submissive. I didn’t have the
heart to say a single word, and so I left it to Sophie to lead the
conversation. We had our presence announced, and stood waiting
at the garden gate; we soon espied his noble þgure at the end of a
long avenue, his wife accompanying him, with their two energetic
boys leaping about in the grass. We asked him to forgive our per-
sistence. He led us to a shady pavilion. We sat next to his wife,
while he remained standing before us in a majestic attitude. He
said a great deal to Madame LaRoche’s granddaughter, speaking
of LaRoche and Wieland, so that I had time to look him in the eye

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things that lent her an inimitable essence, noble and gently

stimulating.

Her years of maturity, her children, the stress of married life—all this
had contributed something else, however, something I envisaged my Sternheim
possessing only by the end of the novel: there was a gravity to Madame Susette’s
beauty, which was a beauty of sadness. She was precisely what Sternheim dreamt
of being—a researcher into the narrowest corridors of the human heart.
This beautiful soul before me began to interrogate me as closely about
the novel as she had about the magazine. I didn’t know whether I felt ÿattered
to have such a devoted reader or irritated to be subjected to questions about
something forty years in my past! And such tendentious questions! Was she in
fact trying to rewrite the book that had opened my career? By her intensity—
for the furrows never quit her broad brow—I knew that she was reshaping my
story in order to narrate her own life, and so I was more cautious with my
replies than I had been earlier. She began, looking me in the eye quite can-
didly.
“You remember how Milord Derby tricks Sophie by means of a fraudu-
lent marriage. Would the story have changed if their marriage had been legiti-
mate?”
“I don’t understand. She was only trying to escape the Prince’s improper
advances, and that’s how Derby was able to trick her.”
“Yes. But I’m talking about reversing the roles of Derby and Seymour.
What if she had really married the calculating scoundrel? Would she have
been able to þnd gentle Seymour in the end?”
“What do you mean, ‘þnd’?”
“I mean, if she had truly married Derby, who only wanted to use her,
would she have been justiþed in spurning her legitimate husband and . . .
living with Seymour?”
“You can marry only once, my dear!”
“Then Sophie von Sternheim would have had to die as a result of that
beating Derby’s man gave her. There would have been no way for her to þnd
happiness.”

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quite directly. We had to hurry because of the others in our own

company whom we had left behind. His very kind and goodly
wife offered to see us home. We didn’t want to trouble her but
Schiller said, “It won’t do my wife any harm to walk with you.”
He then added softly, “It wouldn’t do me any harm, either — —
—.” After thinking it over, however, he returned to his garden
house. We walked with his wife to the city gate. When we said our
good-byes, his older son came to us, along with a servant: Schiller
had sent them, and they conducted us all the way to our inn,
where the post–coach horses were already hitched up and were
pawing the ground. That same evening we drove to Weimar. From
there we passed through Fulda and then returned to Frankfurt,
where we were thrilled by the beautiful countryside.37
Our planned journey to Ems fell through. Perhaps this com-
ing Friday we will travel via Mainz to Coblenz, returning by way
of the baths. By Monday, however, we have to be back here.
My brother will be staying until the end of October. After the
fair, I’ll be moving back into the city. If you should be planning a
trip or have other plans that I really ought to know about, it would
surely be possible for you to send me a letter through someone’s
good graces, but then it would have to be on the morning after that
particular Thursday between 10 and 11 o’clock, so that I can be on
the lookout. Any time you won’t be able to come, you could ex-
plain it to me in such a letter, but only in an emergency.

37. Susette Gontard’s visit with Schiller occurred between Hölderlin’s letter of July 5, 1799,
which requests Schiller’s participation in his proposed journal Iduna, and Schiller’s delayed
refusal (which is friendly, fatherly, but þrm) on August 24. Because Susette allowed young
Sophie Brentano to talk the entire time about a dinner Goethe had given in honor of Sophie’s
grandmother, Madame LaRoche, Schiller never got a clear idea of who she was. He certainly
did not learn of the complicated connection between the Gontard household and Hölderlin.
Susette Gontard came away from the meeting no doubt frustrated and upset that she could do
nothing to improve Hölderlin’s position in Schiller’s eyes or to promote Iduna.

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 V

“I could have invented some emergency. I could have had Derby fall
from his horse.”
“But that would have been an accidental solution, not an essential one.”
“What are you suggesting? That Sophie would have been able to reject a
legitimate marriage simply because her husband was a scoundrel? No, that
was not her way. She was a woman of virtue and moral strength. She would
have abandoned herself to good works.”
“She wouldn’t have lasted a year! No resolve in the world, not even the
decision to practice charity, could have rescued her if she had abandoned her
love!”
“How felicitous our resolve can make us, if only virtue, wisdom, and
probity approve it!”
“Wisdom is the problem. Wisdom commands survival. Survival com-
mands love.”
“And love commends adultery?”
She turned silent. She did not blush as before; the color drained from
her face. I immediately regretted having pushed her so hard in spite of my
resolve to be on the lookout, but before I had a chance to back down she took
up her cross-examination once again, quietly, calmly, deliberately.
“Can you be certain about her moral strength? Could it be something
else?”
“What could we ever confuse with fortitude of will, staunchness of heart,
steadfastness of character?”
“Derby writes to his friend that Sophie responds to his ardent embraces
like a frosty matron.”
“How else should virtue go to meet proÿigacy?”
“But what if frost always warms itself on dreams of virtue? What if we
are all raised to be fearful of what keeps us alive, and call our fear virtue?”
“Alive for how long, my dear? That is the question. The love you are
talking about is selþsh and egotistical. How twisted the path of our virtue
becomes because of this selþshness!”
So the debate went on, my dear Princess, back and forth, forth and
back. Yet as she was rewriting my Sternheim for the worse, tarnishing its vir-
tue, she gave me cause to reconsider whether novels should be written or read

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Thursday, September 5

You will þnd these leaves of mine fairly gloomy, best of friends,
and therefore I have to tell you that I am much more cheerful
now, and whenever I see you my whole being changes! — — —
Oh! preserve me in your love! And if our love is unrewarded for
ever, it is still so beautiful on its own, so entirely serene within us,
that it will always remain our most lovely love, our only love—is
that not so, my good friend? That is how matters stand for you
too, I know, and our souls will always go to meet one another for
ever and eternally! — — —

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 V

at all. I suppose it is too late to hinder it. I used to think that it would be
enough to insist on novels in which the protagonists act on the most noble
motives. Now I see that the reader’s eye can distort these motives into sheer
rationalizations and self-serving maxims. What shall we do? Shall we forbid
young people to move in society? Shall we stamp out all knowledge of what
our most unlovely love is doing down in the streets or, heaven forfend, in our
own homes? Sometimes I feel that our prospects are bleak.
You will þnd these leaves of mine fairly gloomy, best of friends, at least
now that they are sere and ready to drop. You see that I am tired! Let me then
slip off to silence and slumber before I disturb the dreams of my sweet Princess!

Yours for ever and eternally,

Sophie LaRoche

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L  D to H

[Early October 1799]

For me it is a proof of your love that you are coming to see me,
dear one, if only in order to receive a few lines from me. Yet how
painful it is for me now that I know you are so close, and still I
have to renounce receiving something from your hands. I couldn’t
go out into the garden, not under any circumstances, because, as
bad luck would have it, that was precisely the day we began the
apple harvest, and the weather wouldn’t have given me any excuse
to go out in any case. The last time you came I was able to go to
my room downstairs without raising any suspicions (but only be-
cause we had company the next day, and so it was natural for me
to be undertaking some chores there). But that can be done only
on the rarest of occasions. Forgive this coldly calculative language,
and for heaven’s sake, please don’t think that the chill comes from
me. It’s just that I am convinced that if I am to provide myself
with some occasion for joy, then I must do so without raising sus-
picion—intelligence and duty alike demand it.
If there is a compelling need for me to receive into my hands
some leaves of yours, then send them to me between 10 and 11
o’clock in the morning; have the courier ask for me by name and
tell him to deliver the papers to my person, and I will certainly be
most happy to receive them. (But please don’t let them knock at
the wrong door). If my grave apprehensions should have proved
groundless up to that point, then you should appear at the corner
at about 10 o’clock, and that will be a sign that I no longer need to
wait. I will use some stratagem to get hold of your wonderful

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Friedrich Hölderlin to Susette Gontard 4

Homburg, September 1799

Dearest!

The only reason I haven’t written until now is the uncertainty

of my situation. The project of a journal, which I wrote you
about so conþdently, not without reason, now seems to be
about to fall through. I had invested a great deal of hope in it
and had come to count on it as the best way to have some sort
of impact, as a way to make a living, and as a means to con-
tinue residing here, close to you. I’ve had some miserable ex-
periences, what with all these hopes and all these vain efforts.
I had developed a sure plan, a modest plan; my publisher
wanted it to be ÿashier. I was assigned the task of engaging a
whole group of famous writers—whom he took to be my
friends—as co-workers on the journal. I didn’t have a good
feeling about this at all, but, fool that I am, I let him talk me
into it, so as not to seem stubborn. My heart, which is always
bent on pleasing everybody, has brought me to this revolting
impasse, and I have to tell you about it—unfortunately!—
because my future situation, thus to a certain extent the life I
am living for you, probably hangs in the balance. So far they’ve
all left me hanging without a reply—not only those men with
respect to whom I’d have to call myself more an admirer than
a friend, but also close friends, people who are dear to me,
people who could not refuse to participate without displaying

4. Fragment of a draft of a letter—the third—written presumably in September 1799—

according to Beck, “September 12, 1799, at the latest” (229); according to Knaupp, “shortly
before September 12,” but not actually sent until “the second half of September” (2: 824, 832
lines 3-14; 3: 524). Susette Gontard’s reply to this letter is therefore not Letter 10 (as you’ve
claimed several times during our exchanges) but Letter 11 in her series of seventeen letters.
Actually, I suspect he never sent this letter in precisely this form. . . .

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Hipperion, which must be published by now, as soon as I have the

leisure to read it.38
My brother has not lost anything in the great revolutions that
are taking place in Hamburg’s mercantile class, and it may be that
he is closer to his goal, which is to stay with us for a length of
time.39
I am quite healthy and am looking forward to a quiet winter.
I will spend the evenings reading through your writings, which are
so dear to me—your poems and your letters. They will no doubt
coax many sweet tears from me, but these tears will be my strength,
for they will ÿow from the reservoir of noble, faithful love alone;
they will be a blessing to my arid everyday life. In that way I shall
go forward with serenity along my path, and things will go in-
creasingly well for me.
Act in such a way that your own best interests are served, and
don’t let quotidian cares concerning your future existence squelch
and suffocate your best powers before their time. Rest assured that
I am supporting you. — — Things will go on as they have up to
the present for all eternity. Fare well! Fare well!40

38. The present letter was written in early October, after Diotima had returned from the
Adlerÿychtschen Hof to White Hart, in the city. Beck surmises that the reference to “grave
apprehensions” suggests that Hölderlin has told Susette Gontard of his decision to leave the
Frankfurt area and to break off their relationship. An equally plausible cause of the apprehen-
sion, of course, is her unrelenting fear of discovery. The reference to Hipperion almost certainly
relates to the second volume of the novel, published after a year’s delay in November 1799.
39. Hamburg had remained neutral in the Coalition War against Napoleon and so had
become quite wealthy. Yet the afÿuence led to speculation and to þnancial crises in many of the
merchant and banking houses of the Hansa city. Henry Borkenstein’s business—wine-selling—
presumably escaped these crises unscathed.
40. Susette Gontard’s reference to everyday cares and troubles may indicate that she is re-
sponding to the letter from Hölderlin that we know as the third draft, dated September 1799, in
which he recounts his worries about his future existence. Both her request that he pursue his
own best interests and the echoes of farewell lend credence to Beck’s surmise that Hölderlin has
informed her of his plans to leave Homburg vor der Höhe. Even so, she now goes on to invoke
without apparent trepidation the coming November as the month for their next meeting.

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 V

ÿagrant ingratitude to me. I’ve been holding out and hoping

against hope for a full eight weeks now, and to a very real
extent my existence depends on this. God only knows the
reason for this state of affairs. Are people so entirely ashamed
of me?
That this cannot reasonably be the case is what your judg-
ment declares to me, my noble friend, along with the judg-
ment of a few others who have joined in my efforts with true
þdelity—for example, Jung, in Mainz, whose letter I enclose.5
It is only the famous, those whose participation was to serve
as the vanguard for your unfamous friend, who have left me
out in the cold—and why shouldn’t they? Everyone who makes
a name for himself in the world seems to have to break with
those around him; for he þnds that he is not the one and only
idol out there; to put it bluntly, in those members of our
guild to whom I may consider myself an approximate equal, I
þnd an element of envy holding sway. Yet this insight does
me no good. I’ve lost almost two entire months to prepara-
tions for the journal. There is nothing left for me to do—
unless I want to allow my publisher to lead me around by the
nose—but to write him and ask whether he won’t accept the
pieces I originally earmarked for the journal, publishing them
separately, a solution that in any case would not exactly sufþce
to make my existence secure.

5. Franz Wilhelm Jung (1757-1833), court counselor in Homburg vor der Höhe—and a
convinced republican. At the time, between 1798 and 1802, Jung was in the service of the
Republic in French-occupied Mainz. Mentor of Hölderlin’s faithful friend Isaak von Sinclair,
Jung was also the translator of the pseudo-folk poet Ossian; Jung’s translation spurred the devel-
opment of lyric poetry in the Sturm und Drang period. Jung’s letter to Hölderlin disappeared
along with the rest of Susette Gontard’s literary remains. I wonder if Cobus would have rescued
it from the ÿames if he had spotted it—if there were ÿames, because (as you have reminded me
in ten hyperbolic and self-righteous missives) we “know nothing” about the disappearance of
Hölderlin’s letters. It’s just that I know a great deal more of that nothing than you do, since I
have never escaped it unscathed.

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L  D to H

In November you can come again, and we’ll agree on a time,

or respond to the situation as it is then.
Myriad sweet names, myriad sweet words! —

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 V

And so, what I have in mind is to devote all the time

that remains to me to my mourning play.6 It could take about
another three months. I would therefore have to head for
home or for a place where I could hold private lectures—
something that is not practicable here—or þnd some other
part-time work that would support me.
Forgive, dearest, this blunt talk! It would have been all
the more difþcult for me to tell you of these necessities after
having allowed my heart to speak openly to you, my love,
and it is practically impossible, living out a destiny such as
mine, to preserve the necessary courage without losing for a
time the delicate tones of the life that lives deep inside me.
That’s the very reason why up to now I haven’t

6. The Trauerspiel mentioned here is, of course, The Death of Empedocles. The þrst sketch
toward Hölderlin’s mourning play was written in the summer of 1797 in Frankfurt; by Septem-
ber 1799, in Homburg, he had already advanced beyond the second version of the play. He was
caught up in the theoretical lucubrations that would undergird his third and þnal attempt. In
letters to his mother from this time he says that The Death of Empedocles will be his last chance
to succeed at literary creation. If it ÿops, he tells her, he’ll go home and preach to the farmers.
It ÿopped three times—in his own view, though not in mine—but the farmers were spared.

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L  D to H

XI

[Thursday, October 31, 1799]

My premonition that you would be deceived by the calendar guided

me correctly, because only today have we reached the end of the
month.41 — Now I am well again, but I was ill, my dear, on the
day when you last passed by. I caught a kind of cold with fever and
had such a terrible headache that I had to lie still for several days.
I took my usual medicine (an emetic), along with quinine, but the
cold hung on for over fourteen days; I was thankful to heaven that
I was able to wait for you, and wished only that this time I would
be healthy again when you arrived. Words cannot say how very
much I thought of you and felt close to you when in the evening I
was by myself and all was quiet (for I couldn’t bear to have anyone
around me). My lively fancy painted such wonderful scenes of our
past together, especially the felicitous hours of our love when it
was þrst new, the time you once said, “Oh, if this happiness can
last but a half a year!”

During these weeks, a sweet, heavenly feeling came over me, and
afterwards I was so full of longing. I thought: if only you were
with me, I would be healthy again. I then mulled matters over as
hard as I could, trying to invent a way it would be possible to
come together with you in the real world in a natural and suitable
way; when I fell asleep, I dreamed that I would meet you by chance

41. Hölderlin was apparently already thinking ahead to November, on the þrst Thursday of
which he was to see Diotima.

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“Up to now I haven’t.” With that phrase the third fragment breaks off—tell-
ing the story of my life. Up to now I haven’t. I return to the mirror. Neither
the poet nor I ever mastered those basic life skills. No wonder Cobus felt such
contempt for him, even before jealousy fanned the ÿames. Cobus the cruel.
Yet the contempt and the cruelty were forced to rage even closer to home.
Among those who never mastered the basic life skills was his only-begotten
son. Among the fragments of my face, among the morsels offered back to me
by my mirror sans merci, on either side of the cutting nose, I see the cheeks of
a little boy who was at þrst under the wing of his mother but then under the
þst of his father. A little boy entirely destined for an early death.

Henry Gontard to Jacob Gontard in Paris

White Hart, October 18, 1816

Esteemed Father:

The doctors say that I am failing fast, that I will not last half a year, that I will
never be healthy again. Yet here I am, sitting at my desk, writing with a steady
hand whenever the coughing þts grant me a reprieve. The doctors will be
sending for you soon. They will urge you to come home, but don’t you do it.
Both our þrms hang in the balance: what you are negotiating in Paris will
make all the difference to Jacob Friedrich Gontard & Sons and to our ÿedgling
Heinrich Gontard & Co., which it has been my privilege to direct this past
year. You must see these negotiations through, no matter what should come to
pass. First things þrst: this is what you have always taught me, and I expect
you will follow your own instruction. Commerce waits upon no man.
During my bouts of delirium these past two weeks I have mulled over
matters, revisiting many events of our past life together. My lively fancy—too
lively—has brought my Mother to me many times, always with tears stream-
ing down her cheeks. Yet they are tears of sadness, not of accusation; it is as
though she were trying to release me from my terrible responsibility; it is as
though she were saying It is all right now, I am dead, I died of natural causes,

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L  D to H

in some sort of company out on a promenade. I then saw you

coming up the stairs as free and easy as you used to do, and I
opened the door to you, we were together, completely without
anxiety and with a carefree heart, and my eyes took such joy in
coming to rest in yours. When I awoke, my heart was so tenderly
moved, and for several hours I really did feel stronger; but after-
wards I didn’t know what I felt. I felt very intensely that without
you my life would wither and slowly die, and at the same time I
knew most certainly that every step I might take toward seeing
you in a secret and anxiety-producing way, with all the conse-
quences this could have, would gnaw away at my health and my
serenity every bit as much. I almost have to believe in miracles,
because I do not see how we can come together again, and this is
my most intense desire, day in and day out, but without anxiety,
carefree, as in the þrst days of our love.
Things have gone better for me, especially in the past few
days, now that I am alone again. I am in my old room once again,
where it is easier for me to þnd a quiet hour to write. I have more
order around me here; bouquets of ÿowers grace the window. They
are the only things that can cheer me now: I can hardly even touch
your dear poems and letters, they affect me so strongly.
How overwhelming my need is to hear something deþnite
about your situation. Yet I do not know how I can receive some-
thing from your hands today. If you should þnd it necessary and
good to meet tomorrow, as we last agreed, then your absence around
10 o’clock today will serve as a signal for me. Next Thursday evening
I could come to the downstairs window (because we have the laun-
dry in the downstairs rooms); at about 8:30 the laundry people
leave the room, and I can be on the lookout for you. I’ve thought
it through, and have decided that when I see you I’ll go down, and
you will be very careful. If I fail to come, then it is impossible, and
you will have to take refuge in the only sanctuary available to us,
sending me your letters through someone else’s hands.

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 V

anyone could have infected me. No, not always in tears: sometimes I catch brief
glimpses of her smiling, even laughing, completely without anxiety and with
a carefree heart. I rush down the stairs to tell her about the morning’s lessons:
she smoothes my hair as I explain to her the gerundive of necessity or the
difference between tense and aspect. Or I follow her into the laundry, rattling
off all the forms of to be. After Hadermann took over she showed no interest
at all in these things. Neither did I.
It seems uncanny to me that I still occupy his room, sit at his writing
desk, in what used to be Grandmaman’s quarters, then his, then þnally mine,
as though I had inherited a room in your house from him. In the hallway
outside that very door I caught her weeping; I helped her to pretend it was
over her mother. That was not long after you had forbidden me to visit Herr
Hegel in order to þnd out where he had gone. She begged me to go anyway, in
secret, but I obeyed you. In the months to come I tried very hard not to be
harsh with her, to leave her to Heaven. Yet sometimes I could not help but
stare at her pallid, troubled face—you wouldn’t have noticed—and wonder
what demon had possessed her. He had taught me the sanctity of nature and
of persons, but he besmirched the sanctity of the person who, apart from you,
meant the most to me. I do not believe that he was insincere, but I do believe
that he was confused.
Do I remember aright, esteemed Father? Did they have the same eyes?
The same color and shape of eye? My memory commingles the one look with
the other. I cannot keep them apart. Nor could you, I suppose. No one could.
It wasn’t until I married Cäcilie that I understood. I was appalled. I was re-
pelled. I am well out of it.
They came together over me—that was the only thing that was deþnite
about my situation. I remember at Bad Driburg that summer, when you had
stayed behind to brave the dangers of the war, how the three of us walked
together through the thick woods. Sometimes I would run ahead and hide in
a copse, spying on them till they sauntered past my ambush, then sneaking up
on them from behind. They would always laugh and chase me. They were
happy. I was happy. I had no idea what I was spying on. He was for me
perhaps what Uncle Franz is for you: an older brother who grants sanctuary
and is thus more like a father, a father without the reserve, without the stern

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L  D to H

I would like to say something to you about the state of your

future—if only I could have a clearer picture of the ideas you are
currently entertaining about it. If destiny calls you to go farther
down some honoriþc path, and if it must be, then follow. Yet there
is one thing concerning which I want to counsel you and admon-
ish you: do not go back to that place where you were before you
came to me with your feelings all in tatters, having to rescue your-
self in my arms. — — I can only confess to you that it frightened
me a little when you wrote that you wanted to follow the advice
and counsel of Schiller in a certain respect. Will he not try to
bring you closer to him? — — Will not this ÿattering invitation
seduce you? — If that should ever happen, oh! then think of love!
and of its countless tortures!42

How I wish I could be by your side just once again! My dear and
good darling, O my lovely boy! — Forgive me, O best of friends,

42. Here too Diotima is presumably replying to the third letter from Hölderlin that we have
in draft form. There he alludes to a plan to follow Schiller’s advice and return to Jena, where he
had resided for some months prior to his arrival at Frankfurt, and where he hoped to earn a
modest income by lecturing. Diotima is concerned about a liaison Hölderlin is said to have had
there. She is probably not troubled by the rumors concerning an affair between Hölderlin and
the poet Sophie Mereau, Schiller’s assistant, whom Diotima had met during her visit to Jena.
Rather, as we indicated in the introduction, she seems to be referring to an affair Hölderlin
himself may have recounted to her. Beck surmises that it was with Wilhelmine Marianne Kirms
(1772–?), a companion of Charlotte von Kalb in Waltershausen. Concerning Kirms, a young
widow and, according to Hölderlin, “a woman of rare intelligence and heart” (2: 518)—on
whom, it was rumored, Hölderlin had fathered a child (a daughter, Louise Agnese) who died
soon after her þrst birthday—Hölderlin wrote to Neuffer on January 19, 1795: “In the house at
Waltershausen I had a friend I was unhappy to lose. . . . She is an extremely bright, serious, and
kind woman” (2: 566). Whether there is any truth to the rumors, either concerning the child or
the liaison in general, is not known; what we do know is that Diotima felt that she had grounds
to fear it, and that she therefore urged the poet not to return to Jena—not knowing that Kirms
had meanwhile remarried and left Jena for Meiningen. (One must note, however, that other
editors and biographers of Hölderlin are more cautious, insisting that the identity of the Jena
friend is unknown.) See also note 49, below, and the introduction, above.

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 V

restraint—though also, admittedly, without the responsibility. In the woods,

from my refuge, I saw her lower her head slowly to the side as they ambled
down the path, so that her hair lightly brushed his shoulder. He could smell
her hair.
Later on I became bolder. I did more than merely stare at her. I had
come to understand the betrayal better—not hers of you but his and hers of
me. I never threw it in her face, not in so many words, never told a soul, not
even you, not even my own esteemed Father, who bore all the responsibilities.
You will continue to carry them long after I am gone. Yet in my own way I did
confront her. I let her know my will: she hated it when I went squirrel hunt-
ing, and so I decimated the squirrel population at the Adlerÿychtschen Hof;
she did not like to see animals suffer, and so I subjected the local cat popula-
tion to countless tortures; she told me that sweets would ruin my teeth, and so
I gorged myself on marzipan and pralines; she lectured me on discipline, and
so I let my socks sag. In short, I began to make trouble for her. Whatever
trouble I knew how to make I made, because she had driven him from me and
had put me under your thumb. Winter and summer, trouble; trouble indoors
and out. Until in desperation she packed me off to the boarding school in
Hanau. I came home for spring holidays with a wretched sore throat, not a
single spot yet showing.
Her cool hand upon my brow. I was able to sleep. I wanted to say Do not
touch me, not with that hand, not with the hand of betrayal. But it was cool and
I was able to sleep.
Sometimes I worry that my moral education was excessively reþned,
and that it prevented me utterly from adapting to my situation. What exactly
was my situation? Conþdante to my Mother, once removed. Ally and business
partner to my aggrieved Father. A shuttlecock high in the air, back and forth,
forth and back, on the crazy winds of love and jealousy and contagion. My
situation? Twiceborn in love, by the same mother but by two different fathers.
I was the prize in their competition, the feather in their caps, the arrow in
their quivers. My situation? It is as unclear to me now in my exhaustion as it
was in the fullness of my youth. Only one thing is clear: I never wanted to
touch a woman after that. I never wanted a woman to touch me. That made it
difþcult for Cäcilie and me to have children.

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L  D to H

for saying it outright. It’s just that when I feel your presence and
when I have seen your image, I feel the full weight of my loving
heart. Often I am astonished at myself: I reached the age of reason
so long ago, and yet I still seem so young. And then I think: better
to be a victim of love than to live without it! Who knows what will
happen next? The paths of destiny wend their way into obscu-
rity. — — — Let us never sin against love, however, and let us
always be true to one another. Empty words! For if we acted in any
other way we wouldn’t love one another any longer. Have faith in
the love that a propitious nature placed in our hearts, letting it
ripen there toward its supreme purpose, which is still a mystery to
us poor myopic creatures! Yet this ennobled love causes us to feel
and to strive after something great, and it is incapable of nurtur-
ing any unworthy feeling! And in this belief we will surely be pre-
served from every contamination by the wicked world.
Now, I have to tell you that since the last time I wrote I haven’t
had the slightest bit of unpleasantness on account of you, and I
should also mention that my illness was nothing more than a cold.
I should also warn you that across the way from our apart-
ments groups of wretched émigrés are moving in and out; they
arrive at the house almost every day. They are up on the third
ÿoor, and during the evenings they draw their curtains—but be
careful during the daylight hours.43
Now, fare well, my one and only heart, of course you will
come again next week, though not if the weather is bad. Fare well,
and sleep well, O best of friends. — —

43. Diotima is referring to visitors entertained by her husband’s uncle, Johann Heinrich
Gontard, the owner of White Hart, who invited many Huguenot guests for protracted stays.

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 V

This will have been a matter of some frustration to you, I know, espe-
cially if the doctors are right about my faltering lights. You will have to invest
all your hopes in your daughters, who will doubtless be more proþtable than
their older brother. Forgive me for saying it outright. Eventually, you will lose
the name, but you will keep something of the blood. Something on the debit
side, to be sure, but also something on the side of credit.
When Mother turned against you, making no effort to conceal it from
me, you made every effort to win me back. You explained everything to me,
showed me how I had been deceived. I hope that in retrospect you will þnd
that all your efforts were worth the trouble. My hope is doubtless inÿated.
What can I say? Empty words! What can I do? Regret seems pointless, boot-
less. I didn’t mean for any of it to happen. I didn’t mean for you to have the
slightest bit of unpleasantness on account of me. As for her, my Mother, I
didn’t mean to take her self-respect, I didn’t mean to take her life. Sometimes
she comes to me in order to comfort me, these past few weeks with greater
frequency, have I mentioned this to you already? and she says It is not your
fault, I died of natural causes, anyone could have infected me, and my dead
Mother with tears streaming down her cheeks reaches down with an alabaster
hand as though to place it on my brow, but I am afraid of her coolness now,
afraid to death of her chill.
You did not do this to me. She did not do this to me. No one did this to
me, not even he, it was not his fault, she was so very beautiful.
Fare well.
Stay where you are. Do what must be done.
Let the past go.
Let me go.

Your faithful son,

Henry

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L  D to H

XII

Saturday [November 2, 1799]

I can set only a few words to paper, my darling, about the one
thing that echoes in me like a soft and lovely melody now that I
have seen your dear image both while awake and in my dreams. —
— — On that evening when my words of love passed over into
your soul, when I could paint in my mind’s eye in a life-like way
the splendid þre that they must have ignited in your angel eyes,
how content my heart was, and how buoyant. Once again my lips,
so long closed to song, mumbled absentmindedly their favorite
old airs, and this singing went on for a long time, until I noticed it
and smiled. — — — O! you fortunate, fortunate birds, I thought
to myself then! — — — And I felt so ineffably content that I lis-
tened to the voice of nature in me, and I thanked her with all my
heart. — — — — —

Monday

Imagine! Yesterday evening I received from Frau Sömmerring the

completely unexpected news from Bern that Zeerleder (the man
who copied out for me þve years ago that fragment of yours) had
just been to see her.44 That stirred my otherwise tranquil mood
and went straight to my heart; although this phenomenon should
not cause you any sort of concern, it did set me on edge quite a
bit. But for heaven’s sake, my one and only, don’t be troubled by it,
that would be utterly unnecessary, I swear to you once again: he
was never more than a brother to me, and a friend! And he can
never be more to me than that. But then you know me already,
44. Ludwig Zeerleder (1772–1840), who had fallen in love with Diotima during the years
1793–1794, copied out the “Fragment of Hyperion” from Schiller’s Thalia for her as a token of
his affection. Diotima had clearly told Hölderlin of Zeerleder’s affection for her, and had sought
to assuage Hölderlin’s jealousy by stressing her feelings for Zeerleder as a “brother.”

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 V

Cobus the cruel? Cobus the helpless. He puts the letter from Henry aside. It is
important, it will have to go into the archive. He thumbs through the second
volume of Hyperion, noting once again all the underlinings in ink. Again he
takes up the pen. He must lay it all out for his brother Franz—Susette Gontard’s
shameless shame, the poet’s blameless blame, and all literature’s hopeless vacu-
ity. He would like to ignite it all, enkindle another splendid þre.

In order to settle accounts once and for all, my dear brother, and in order that
you may know all, I will show you all the lunatic’s underlinings. I have res-
cued them too as though they were Scripture:

You preserve the sacred ÿame, you preserve the beautiful in

the silent, so that I may þnd it again in you.
For the longest time, O nature! our life has been at one
with you, and we wandered in your groves as though in heaven,
and we were like you; we sat alongside your springs and we
were like you
When we were far removed from one another, when like
a whispering harp our incipient rapture þrst sang to us, when
we found one another, when we could no longer sleep, when
every musical sound in us woke to the full chords of life,
divine nature! when we were always like you, and now too as
we are parting and our joy is dying, we are, like you, full of
suffering and yet we are well
O Diotima! O noble and quietly magniþcent creature!
how must I perfect myself in order not to ÿee from my hap-
piness, ÿee from you?
O you with your Eleusinian serenity, can we ever create
what you are?
It is my ultimate joy that we are inseparable, even if no
sound returns from you to me, even if no silhouette of the
gracious days of our youth returns!
It is impossible, and my inmost life rebels, when I try to
think as though we were lost to one another.

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L  D to H

and you have had myriad proofs that I have surrendered my heart
to you alone, and you also know that when one sins against love
one wounds oneself most of all. Believe þrmly in me and do not
let these words of mine deceive you into thinking that they are
wrestling with some abyssal necessity in me: I have not spoken in
order to wound your heart. — — —
I saw Zeerleder once again on Sunday evening. He had a rela-
tive of ours, Brevillier, announce him to me as “an old friend.” I
found him quite changed. He too said that he had expended his
fair share of the energies one owes one’s fatherland, and that now
he wanted to let others bear this burden. He told us that he de-
sired to spend some time with us, but that þrst of all he must
travel to Hamburg.45
If only it doesn’t disturb you, I am happy at least in this one
respect, that once again I have in my vicinity a human being with
whom I can talk without reserve and in conþdence. How gladly I
would speak with him about you, and how very much that would
relieve my heart. To be sure, I would never go to encounter him in
such a way that the distance between us would vanish altogether,
for this wouldn’t be good, for more than one reason, but I would
go to confront him with all my feelings and with the pride of my
love intact, and he would be certain to honor them.

Wednesday

The sky is so clear today, tomorrow you will surely come. If only I
can receive news of you—good news! How dark the future is to
me, but whatever comes, I will never leave you. You will always
þnd me again! — — —

45. Zeerleder was a leading banker in Bern and had served as a diplomat in Vienna; he had
many business acquaintances in Frankfurt—the Gontards among them—and in the Hansa city
of Hamburg.

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 V

I have become that much like you in what is ownmost in

you
I have þnally learned to pay heed to what is good
and what is intimate with the Earth.
Our life, ours, is still intact in me.
O Diotima! your trees, where she took encouragement,
your vernal seasons, where she came to life the gracious
one, bearing blossoms, does not part, she parts not from me!
the ancient unbudging word of fate that a new fe-
licity burgeons in the heart if only it can hold out, if only it
can bear patiently the midnight of gnawing pain.
Nor are we, Diotima, nor are we parted, and the tears I
shed for you fail to understand this.

Frankly, I had no experience with such ÿuff, ÿuff from the feather of a
lunatic. No experience, because I was accustomed to reading the prose of the
world inscribed in the Great Book of Reason. Reason, to repeat, is Calcula-
tion, and the prose of the world is nothing other than number, cipher, digit,
value, and credit. Yet it struck me that the two volumes ought not to vanish
altogether: they might some day command a high price, if only from the likes
of a Zeerleder. Among all her suitors and paramours, Zeerleder came closest.
We needed the cooperation of his bank in Bern, you remember, and so it was
essential that I assume the risk. Now, Zeerleder had copied out by hand a
fragment of that very novel, a fragment that had been published somewhere
in a journal. He tried to seduce her with a fragment from the hand of the very
lunatic who would eventually descend upon my House and squeeze Zeerleder
himself out. Having won her heart, if not her bed, by means of that fragment,
he unwittingly paved the way for the future disaster. I never understood why
Zeerleder did not capture her fancy. He was a man of substance, and ruggedly
handsome. He even had a weakness for poetry. How she could have chosen
that simpering idiot over him heaven only knows. Zeerleder continued to
visit the house in later years, even after it had become clear that his chances
were nil. I began to lose conþdence in his capacity to gauge personal surety.
Gogel too held the novel in high esteem, perhaps because he is a wine

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L  D to H

Thursday—11:00 .. [November 7, 1799]

O! dear heart! how I thank you! you are here! — — I was already
beside myself with fear, thinking you were ill, because I knew very
well that the bad weather wouldn’t prevent you from making sure
I heard something from you today! How I implore heaven to grant
me a favorable moment of time, so that I will hear good news, and
you will look cheerful. May you be able to see how deeply touched
I am, and from my beating heart may you feel how much joy the
news of you has brought me! — — — However, my news will
not upset you, will it, my good one? — Oh! please don’t let it. —
— — Who knows what will happen, who knows what good it
will do if I reveal my pain to a tried and true friend, if I tell him
the whole truth about the agony that comes of my living so far
from you and so close to you! — — — — You must believe and
hold it certain that I would tell him only the most necessary things,
precisely as you would have me do, and that the loveliest part of
our love would be known to us alone and would remain secret,
sacrosanct, forever. You can count on me to exercise the greatest
delicacy. So, don’t worry about a thing! Don’t you see, I certainly
wouldn’t tell you so much about this—for it always seems to me
that I am insulting our love—if I didn’t know you, and if I didn’t
know how quickly your imagination runs off with you, causing
you to represent these things to yourself so differently from the
way they really are. That’s why I am telling you about it. Don’t
read anything else into it.
You were holding a book in your hands! How I look forward
to it!46 I can’t say anything more about our future arrangements,
the ones by which we may have news of one another, except to say
that it will remain as it always has been, unless your news changes
things. Me you will always þnd! — — And I will be yours as long
as I live, my unforgettable love! — — — — —

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 V

dealer. And these two particular volumes certainly had the surplus value of
notoriety attached to them—dedication and underlinings by the author to his
lover. I therefore did not burn them, but put them in a large chest along with
her lavender dress, her hair combs, her sewing kit and knitting needles, and
the nightdress she wore when she died. The stains on the bib wouldn’t wash
out entirely. They were an ugly orange, the blood of ancient history, a relic of
foreign wars. It had been two weeks.
Our treacherous tutor clearly had won over Henry to his cause early on
during their time together: the boy was devoted to him until it all came out in
the open, at which point the truth had to turn his devotion to hatred and
contempt. I told him only the most necessary things—that the tutor had also
won over his mother, apparently for years and years. First there were the clan-
destine trysts. About these I know nothing; they exercised the greatest deli-
cacy. Then there were the letters. The ones I had read by þrelight (she indi-
cated that they were the most recent ones, the þnal ones) were so entirely odd.
I observed the usual my-darlings and dear-hearts and tremulous-heartbeats
and I-will-never-leave-yous and how-I-implore-heavens but these triÿes were
interspersed with bizarre invocations of the gods—most often in the pagan
plural—and bitter laments about erstwhile friends who had disappointed or
abandoned him. These letters were clearly the ramblings of a crank, an eccen-
tric well on his way to becoming something considerably worse. They would
often slip into his clownish Swabian dialect, a mush-in-the-mouth that lent
them a comic tone, a touch of country-bumpkin buffoonery, all the more so
as he was trying to be serious. Their syntax was too much for me, their or-
thography the most inventive I have ever seen. And they were vague. You
could read anything at all into them.

Friedrich Hölderlin to Susette Gontard 7

Homburg, early November 1799

Here, my darling, is our Hyperion! This fruit of our soulful

7. Doesn’t it strike you as an absurd irony that I, who am the one who is devoted to Susette
Gontard, whose letters you are editing, am the one who has taken custody of the drafts of letters

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L  D to H

I cannot write any more. My eyes betray how deeply moved I

am. Perhaps this afternoon I can write a few words more. —

Oh, no! This will not have been the last time I see you! No! I can’t
think that, I don’t want to think that! Oh, let me hope! — — —
Let me banish these thoughts. — — Heavens, what weather! How
restless it makes me. Don’t go back home if it stays like this: you
could catch your death. Oh, just take care of yourself, best of friends!
When will I be able to hear from you again in the future? If only
the evening were already here, if only I held your news safely in
my hand, it would give me so much joy. What we have to suffer
cannot be described; but why we suffer it also cannot be described.
Before you came, I was thinking about whether or not during
the winter days to come (if there is a future for us) you might want
to arrive at the corner at 11 instead of at 10, or, if you prefer, at 3 in
the afternoon. For I think I saw you hurrying today, and I don’t
want you to have to set out while it is still dark. I still have so

46. The second volume of Hyperion had recently been published. Diotima had been looking
forward to it since their separation. Hölderlin gave a copy to her that evening with the inscrip-
tion, “To whom else but you?” The phrase was a quotation from the Thalia fragment published
in the summer of 1794 and copied out for Diotima by Ludwig Zeerleder. (In the Thalia frag-
ment, the “you” who is addressed in the quotation is Homer—not Diotima.) Accompanying
the copy of his book was his letter based on the fourth extant draft, the last of the drafts of
Hölderlin’s letters to Susette Gontard.

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days together will surely give you a little bit of joy. Forgive me
that Diotima dies. You’ll remember that back then we couldn’t
come to a perfect agreement about it. I believed that it was
necessary for the sake of the work viewed as a whole. Dearest!
take everything that is said here and there about her and about
us, about the life of our life, as a sign of thanks, a gratitude
that is often all the more true as the expression of it is artless.
Had I been able to sit at your feet and develop little by little
as an artist, in serenity and freedom, I truly believe I would
quickly have become what my heart longs to be in all its suf-
fering, lost in dreams even during the light of day, and often
in silent despondency.
It is surely worth all the tears we have shed over the years
now, tears wept because we were not to possess the joy we
could have given one another; yet it cries out to heaven that
we must suppose that the two of us may well perish, together
with the best energies in us, because we are languishing for
one another. Surely you can see that it is this that so often
makes me go taciturn: I have to be on guard against such
thoughts. Your illness—your letter—once again it came to
me so clearly, right before my eyes, no matter how blind to it
I wanted to be, that you are suffering always and always—
and like a little boy, all I can do is cry over it!—Tell me what
is better, should we keep quiet about what is in our hearts, or
should we tell one another!—I have always played the cow-
ard in order to protect you—always acting as though I could
adapt myself perfectly well to all things, as though I were the
perfect plaything of people and circumstances, and had no
staunch heart in me, a heart that beats as hard as it can for the
sake of þdelity and freedom, my darling, my life! Often I

by Hölderlin to her? If you are the one in charge of this project, and you are, since I am þnished
with it, explain to me how that happened?! Meanwhile, here is the fourth and last draft.

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much to tell you, but I become so downhearted so quickly, and

afterwards I don’t know how to help myself. Just let me tell you
this one thing—that I am once again completely healthy. Fare
well! Fare well! For all eternity I will be true to you.

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 V

have denied you and renounced the very thought of you, my

most beloved love, in order for your sake to survive this fate
as tranquilly as possible. — The same is true of you: a woman
of peace, you have always had to wrestle to gain a moment’s
serenity; you have shown heroic strength, you have been pa-
tient, and you have remained silent in the face of what can-
not be changed; you have concealed and buried deep inside
you your heart’s eternal choice. And so dusk all too often
descends on the two of us and we no longer know what we
are and what we have, we scarcely even know ourselves. This
unending struggle within, this internal contradiction—it will
kill you, slowly but surely. And if no god can alleviate it, I
have no choice but to languish over you and me; or else there
is nothing I must heed other than you, seeking with you a
way to put an end to our struggle.
I’ve been thinking that we might be able to survive on
repudiation too, as though perhaps a decisive farewell to hope
would make us stronger,

You know that I write many letters, dear Franz, both to family members and
to clients—letters of credit, missives that merchants or fellow bankers can
send to their confrères in other cities and countries. Such letters of credit too
are always risky, especially when they are hand-delivered by a third party, and
so I always restrict the amount of credit in them, in case the third party turns
out to be a fox; I also always try to describe the person of the third party quite
precisely, so that no possibility of betrayal arises. And speaking of betrayal, it
is of considerable interest to me that the word that follows upon credo in the
Encyclopédie is credulity.
Now, credulity is that weakness of spirit by which one grants one’s as-
sent to propositions or supposed facts without having weighed the proofs of
them. Many persons confuse credulity with belief (with piety, devotion, and
religion), but precisely they are the credulous ones. No, if we act in good faith

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L  D to H

XIII47

How much joy, O best of friends, your last letter brought me! I
cannot say enough about it: such a rich reward for the anxiety I
felt when I went to receive it. For I cannot describe the fear that
gripped me when I couldn’t see you down below my window. I
thought the bright moonlight had betrayed you. As I crept from
window to window, and still you were not to be found, my knees
began to shake so badly I could scarcely stand. It was terrifying to
me to remain in such uncertainty. The whole time I was thinking
that someone would burst into the room through the door behind
me, and I too would be betrayed. Just then, by great good luck,
you appeared. Then I hurried with my treasures to my quiet little
room, but my heart was pounding so hard and I was so ÿushed I
couldn’t read a word. That evening I started to read your letter
backwards and forwards, but I couldn’t grasp its true meaning until,
during the days that followed, I grew calmer. But then your words
thrilled and strengthened my heart, and my silent gratitude blessed
you, taking wing and þnding its way to you.
My fear has almost made me decide that this winter we should
not again try to receive news of one another in this way, all the
more so because in just a few months spring will be with us. If it is
altogether necessary for you to tell me something, it will be less
hazardous if you enclose the letter with some old books and send
the packet to my address, letting me know when you plan to do
this during our last meeting previous, so that I will know the hour
of the packet’s arrival.

47. Beck dates this letter “end of December 1799 or early January 1800,” noting that New
Year’s Day occurred on a Wednesday; Knaupp dates it “circa November 10, 1799,” that is, only
three days after the þnal section of the preceding letter. The internal evidence is inconclusive,
but the Beck dating seems more likely.

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 V

and weigh all the proofs, the truth will not hide itself from us. Truth sneaks up
from behind and bursts through the door of all deception. The truth in the
present case was that a lunatic was tutoring my son and dallying with my son’s
mother. A lunatic—but also a fox, ferret, or weasel.
What does one do with such a beast? One prevents it from propagating.
Is that not the ultimate purpose of true religion and a properly policed civili-
zation? To weed the garden, to nip the proÿigate plant in the bud, to eliminate
the retrograde animal whose characteristics will harm the breed?
I’ve always felt that we Gontards are descended from a particularly prac-
tical strain of Huguenot, and that our story goes back beyond even the
Albigensians—to Canon Fulbert of Nõtre Dame. Canon Fulbert? Do I digress?
Or do I only seem to? If the Albigensians were crypto-Calvinists, then Canon
Fulbert was a crypto-Cathar, a proto-Albigensian, a latter-day Manichaean
like you and me, wise to the ways of good and evil. We have all received the
sacrament of Consolamentum, the laying on of hands that removes us from the
ranks of mere Catechumens and elects us to our place among the Perfect.
Fulbert, you may remember, or you may not (I am reminded of it every
day by my proximity to Nõtre Dame), hired Pierre Abélard as the theology
tutor of his niece Héloïse. Abélard taught Héloïse virtually everything she
ever wanted to know about divinity and vanity alike. Héloïse soon began to
put on weight, and the hour of the packet’s expected arrival grew nigh. Fulbert,
who did not agree with Abélard in this respect as in so many others, hired two
rufþans as itinerant surgeons. These avengers of Fulbert’s honor, forsworn to
punish Abélard for his vanity and vacuous love, entered his chamber by night
and saw to it that the tutor would never titillate again. They nipped him in the
bud, as it were.
Now, the Catholic Church has always celebrated Pierre as one of its
most stalwart theologians, even though his ballast had been considerably light-
ened for him. I, by contrast, have always felt that we Huguenots should take
up the injured Canon Fulbert’s part. His would be the Consolamentum I’d
prefer, his the laying on of hands that would most please my mind and satisfy
the requirements of justice. Fortunately for me, and also for our ex-tutor,
lunacy put a stop to his little gallantries and amusements, unmanning him as

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L  D to H

You wanted me to tell you whether I am content with the

company we have here!48 Well, then, I have to be honest and tell
you that I don’t really have any company; last summer I didn’t
leave the house more than half a dozen times. I didn’t þt in. Even
my brother and his wife were seldom with me. They both found
neighbors with whom they could enjoy their little gallantries and
amusements. Spoiled as they are by the fatal style of society that is
now current in Hamburg, they did not agree with me in this re-
spect as in so many others. I often sat here alone, with my noble
love locked away in my heart, indignant that our kind of love
should count for nothing, while vanity and vacuous love make
their way in the world with perfect aplomb.
However, it is easy for people to live and let live, especially
when it is a matter to which they pay no particular heed; they wish
to disturb matters only when they are envious of them. And only
the creature who incites true love will be plagued on account of
another’s love. I feel it more and more: I don’t þt in well where
mundane matters are concerned. I am better off living alone with
my silent soul.
A few hours later on the same morning when you passed by
again, Zeerleder came to us, dressed in traveling clothes, and asked
whether I couldn’t think of something I wanted him to bring back
from Hamburg. In the meantime, he has arrived in Hamburg and
will spend a few more months there in order to be more available
to help his brother—who is in America—with some business affairs.
Now, I must tell you the source of my disagreement concern-
ing your plan to reside in Jena, so that you aren’t mistaken about
my motives. For I didn’t have the foggiest notion of the things you
wrote me about, nor had anyone told me anything at all about
them. The whole problem is that Weimar is only a half-day’s journey
from Jena. Quite by accident this summer, I arrived at a certain
48. Susette Gontard’s brother Henry Borkenstein and his wife Eugenie were visiting; Diotima
complains about their breezy and vacuous style of life.

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 V

effectively as Fulbert’s fell swoop would have done, and rather more daintily.
But I digress.
Actually, I only seem to digress. For the apt Canon of Nõtre Dame
brings me back to Paris and to our business affairs here, which is where this
letter began. It is time for me to retire: the Rothschilds will have an army of
clever people for me to meet across the table tomorrow—clever but bank-
rupt—and I shall endeavor to focus all the more on their bankruptcy as their
cleverness seeks to distract me. Such negotiations and estimations of surety
are the sole pleasures that remain to me in my life. So much hangs in the
balance. And yet who is better equipped to conduct these negotiations than a
Gontard, inasmuch as we have the language, if not the vices, of these people.
I do wish you were available to help me, if only to lend moral support,
as you used to in the old days when I was your Poor Little Brother. At least,
that is what you used to call me, if only to make me cry with indignation.
Since then I’ve outstripped you—in my knowledge of political economy, my
cynicism, and my decrepitude. I know you’ll grant me supremacy in at least
two of the three.
I trust that your own dear Barbara is well (how have you managed to
retain that excellent woman in your life over all these years? your pauvre frère
cadet never learned the knack) and that Hamburg continues to prosper. I shall
attend to affairs here over the next ten days, returning then (reluctantly) to
White Hart. After affairs in Frankfurt are once again in order, I will return to
Paris, perhaps to reside here in perpetuity. I shall of course let you know where
our apartments are, so that they will not be unknown to you. White Hart
holds so many unpleasant memories for me, as you can imagine, and I’d rather
they did not stalk my newest venture into what I believe the credulous call
conjugal bliss.

Your faithful brother,

Cobus

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L  D to H

woman’s house, a vacated house, to be sure, where Madame

LaRoche and her granddaughter had been given lodgings.49 I be-
lieve these apartments cannot be unknown to you. Now, a short
time ago, I heard reliable reports that Schiller would be moving
into this house in Weimar come winter. You wouldn’t be able to
avoid visiting him there, and that is something that would not be
pleasant for you, and what I would feel under these circumstances
I already felt when, quite by accident, but with an agitated heart,
I spent several hours there. I didn’t write you about it back then,
because I knew nothing of your idea to return there, and so it was
simply irrelevant. Yet now I think I owe it to the two of us to
uncover for you this weakness of mine. I realize of course that in
the face of the exalted ideal of love such weaknesses count for noth-
ing, and they deserve to be condemned, but in the face of the
human sensibility, where love is concerned! An ounce of preven-
tion—you understand what I mean! — — — —

49.This was the house of Charlotte von Kalb, whose obstreperous son Hölderlin had tu-
tored before coming to the Gontard household in Frankfurt. Charlotte von Kalb had rented
out the Weimar house that summer to Madame LaRoche and her granddaughter Sophie. Dur-
ing the winter of 1799–1800 Schiller did in fact rent the house, as Susette Gontard here predicts
he will. Nevertheless, the “weakness” that Diotima soon confesses is surely not her nervousness
about Hölderlin’s meeting Schiller; rather, it is her jealousy or anxiety concerning the fact that
either Charlotte von Kalb or Wilhelmine Marianne Kirms (whom she wrongly believes is still
in nearby Jena) will come between her and Hölderlin. See note 42, above.

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 V

P. S.: Henry Borkenstein—a wine dealer in your ÿourishing Hansa city—has

defaulted on his debts to Jacob Friedrich Gontard & Sons for some years now.
We have been more than patient with him: he is a foppish fellow, as you know,
chasing his neighbors’ wives rather than seeing to their husbands’ business.
Frankly, I never could stomach him, and I put up with him only for my wife’s
sake. She worshipped the ground he walked on, but you know how much her
judgment was worth. Henry Borkenstein is perhaps the sole instance in my
life in which I allowed family affairs to interfere with business matters: I think
I owe it to the two of us to uncover for you this weakness of mine. Susette’s
death, now a distant memory, cancels whatever relationship-in-law that ob-
tained between the Borkensteins and us. I ask you therefore to put the screws
on him for what he already owes us (“put the screws on” is a rather rough
locution, albeit quite colorful; it is current in America these days, Zeerleder
informs me), and by all means to refuse any further requests for loans. An
ounce of prevention—you understand what I mean.

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L  D to H

XIV

Friday, January 30 [1800]

I must think about getting a little letter ready for you now, be-
cause you may come by next Thursday, and the days between now
and then may be too short and too hectic. If only I could know for
certain whether you’ve really been back in the city of your birth,
and whether you are still there with your family. How happy I was
to grant you and yours—those good people—this heartfelt joy!50
—
Last week some people from your part of the world had sup-
per here with us, and I couldn’t help imagining that they must
have seen you, and for that reason I felt quite content to be in
their company. Their dialect too pleased me, and I felt the whole
time that if they could have been alone with me they would have
spoken of you—how very much I wanted to talk with people who
know you and esteem you as I do. In my thoughts I was often with
you, and I was conþdent that my dwelling upon you in this way
would not disturb you, not even in the circle of your family, and
that my tender feelings of love for them too would provide still
more nourishment for you, because these days you need more
people with whom you can share your feelings, and also because
you have become more attentive to the needs of others.
Is it possible that you have arranged something with your
family for the future as well, and that you have found something
that will be suitable for you? I would like to know so many things,
and yet I shall have to be patient a while longer! I took pleasure in
calculating, with the help of those people who were here, the fact

50. It is certain that in the winter of 1799–1800 Hölderlin was not yet back in Nürtingen, at
his mother’s house, but still in Homburg vor der Höhe.

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Now that Cobus, the faithful brother and husband, has laid himself to rest,
my mirror offers me a þnal look at Hölderlin’s mother, my mother, our moth-
ers. They are still uncannily canny, these mothers, still entirely cunning. Yet at
long last they are softening, at long last they are mellowing. Or is this the
effect of the ridiculous tears my mirror also bestows on me?

Alongside the shocking lines of the letters, however, are other lines that reveal
something like—perhaps only like, but nevertheless remarkably like—true piety,
true devotion, true religion. She says—and I almost believe her—that she
would be happy to see him return to the circle of his family. When a group of
Swabians comes to visit her and her husband, she says she likes the sound of
their voices. She does not say they sound as though they have mush in their
mouths or as though they are stupid farmers—which is what the rest of the
world says. She is happy to think of him safely back in the land that nurtured
him. She is willing to surrender him to his sister Rike (who had just been
widowed, poor soul, exactly as her Mother had been, twice over) and to the
rest of his family, that is, to his Mother. Sometimes she is very much like a
Mother. Sometimes she is very much like me. She worries about him walking
in the rain, she worries about him looking so haggard, she worries about him
wandering off to God knows where; she worries about his uncertain future,
his joblessness, his joylessness, the company he keeps. Sometimes, however,
she is very different from me. Sometimes she is very much like a woman:
sometimes she worries about only one thing—that they may never come to-
gether again. I should embrace those thoughts of hers that are the wishes and
worries of a Mother, and repudiate the selþsh desires of the frail woman. I am
almost certain I do.
At one point she confesses her debility, admitting to a particular weak-
ness in her character, although she is very unclear about it. I thought at þrst it
was lust she had in mind, but then it seemed to me it was something more
substantial. I believe she was jealous of someone who had been close to my
boy. She feared she might lose my Fritz to someone in the north, a woman in
Thuringia—in the city of Jena, I believe. She felt she had to prevent my boy
from leaving her for this other woman. I’m sure she was mistaken in this, but
she seemed truly desperate—in the midst of all those professions of þdelity,

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L  D to H

that they were not farther from home than our dear Kassel is from
here, and the last time I was in Kassel it seemed to me only a brief
outing away!
You won’t be going any farther from me, will you? — — —
And you’ll never go away altogether? — — — You will always
return, and you will always return to me! You can imagine how
happy I would be to see you in a place that would be good for you.
Yet choose carefully, and don’t latch onto something that isn’t right
for you. In the near future I won’t be able to have any news of you
unless you decide to send me a little packet. If in your view it is
completely necessary, go ahead and do it, things will go well. If
you yourself should come by, I will take it as a sign that I can wait
calmly, and so I will have some sort of recompense. If I dwelled on
the fact that news from you actually means separation from you, I
wouldn’t yearn for news as much as I usually do. I can see you
now! And you are close to me. I cannot and must not achieve
anything more than peace of heart.
Also I have to tell you right away that from now on I will not
toss my notes down to you. Last time I thought I attracted suspi-
cion (though I may have had no reason to feel this way). If the
weather is decent this coming month, and if it isn’t raining, so that
I can leave the house in a way that seems quite natural, I ask you
to appear at 10 o’clock, so that at 11 o’clock I can be at our familiar
place. If this is not possible without raising suspicion, then you
will see me only at a distance. I can easily explain to you why it
means so much to me to hear from you this next month: at the end
of March my brother is coming once again, and from that point
on I will be less often alone. He, along with his wife, will be spend-
ing the summer with us again. If you want to send me something,
please do it before they arrive. It may be that disturbances due to
the wars will prevent my taking walks with them; in that case, do
send me something, as we agreed, and I will also give to whoever
brings your package a book in return. In order to be certain that
each of us has received the right package, you can appear at the

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 V

confessions of helpless jealousy! She begged for proofs of love from him, scraps
of paper, letters he was to send to her concealed in a little packet. Perhaps her
jealousy was a punishment for the illicit þdelity she was seeking from him, a
punishment once again devilishly suited to the crime. Yet my piety þnds no
nurture in it, and her jealousy seems almost a lovable trait. She must have
found my Fritz irresistible, forgive these words of mine if you can. You see the
state of my soul. Tomorrow?
Why irresistible, how irresistible? Because of his exquisite beauty, which
is not of the ÿesh, but of some angelic sort. Because of the beauty of his eyes
and mouth. On his school certiþcate one of his professors described him as
venusta, and while I was irate at þrst, I came to accept it as true. However, it
wasn’t Venus who touched him, it was the Seraphim.
Why lovable, how lovable? Because when the woman’s jealousy burns off
it reveals a generosity underneath, and generosity is of the heart, and the heart
is of love, and love is of God. Of the things and people he needs most in his
life she is not jealous. She simply does not want him to lose faith in her—she
does not want him to wallow in sin with someone else.
At another time, a more frightening time, she begins to have spiritual
visitations from my son, spectral interludes that terrify her and leave her all a-
tremble. It frightens me to read these pages, they turn my son into a ghost.
(After his recent visit here, however, I can only conþrm that I felt a mounting
anxiety in my heart: the world is losing its hold on him, or he his on the
world; he is a mere shadow of his former self, and his former self was always
the shadow of a bird on the wing or a cloud scudding by. He wanted to
comfort me, but he was unable to hear anything I said, he drifted through the
rooms like a specter, no walls obstructed him, and I thought to myself he is
lost. He left without telling me where he was going.) Yet is not a specter in
touch with the spiritual world? Is not a ghost a visitor from Beyond, and is
not the only Beyond the Heaven of our hopes? Was he perhaps in contact
with his Fathers there, or with the Father of us all? Were his Fathers giving him
instructions? It is as though the separation from this woman drove him to the
realm of the spirits, as though this woman of the indubitable ÿesh were herself
a spirit. Her ghost seemed to rise off the shimmer of the white page between
the inky lines, troubled and restless, desperately searching for some peace and

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L  D to H

corner at 11 o’clock, just for a moment, although I must advise you

not to tarry too long there, inasmuch as one of our neighbors who
lives close by is ill and is desperate for something to do. If it is
impossible for me to come out, I will hang a towel out the win-
dow.
Now, a few words more from me, just to let you know how
I’ve been living my life. I am completely healthy, and the solitary
peace and quiet of my comfortable little room is good medicine to
me. I am so happy to sit there among the ÿowers and do my work;
no one comes to disturb me, nothing passes by my silent window
to disturb me. Only a sparrow alights every now and then to pick
at a few bread crumbs on the window sill, while the clouds drift by
overhead. Often in the evening I follow their path behind the
cluster of trees on the horizon, where a few rays of the setting sun
shine through, and I am content! The gentle melancholy and
mourning in my heart of hearts, which will never be quelled en-
tirely, and which should not be quelled, attunes me in such a way
that I feel more receptive to every little joy, and more grateful for
it! My heart will never grow haughty, tears of compassion and
benevolence are always welling up in me, and that is the way I
want to remain! That is the way you are too! — — — This winter
I was somewhat more companionable, and from time to time I
visited our old friends. My protracted solitude and the novelty of
the visits brought me more enjoyment from them than I used to
þnd in them, and people seemed happy to see me again. A few of
them even told me I was looking much better and more cheerful,
so that you can believe what I say when I tell you that my health
has been altogether restored. If only I knew the same concerning
you! — — —

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quiet, some genuine peace of mind, and I feared that I myself was losing
hold—like son like Mother. But I chased away these sinister thoughts, and
through assiduous prayer kept my Christian composure. My mind was play-
ing tricks on me. For she says right in the letters that she is completely healthy,
so that my thought of her as a ghost was simply morbid. I chased it away like
a phantom.
My boy has such grandiose dreams and expectations, he mixes up the
heroes he reads about in books with real people, confuses the dreamy charac-
ters of his own stories and poems with ÿesh and blood. No one in the real
world is like his made-up people, and so he is constantly disappointed. That is
exactly what the Frankfurt woman tells him—that the two of them always
expect too much of people. They hope that every person they meet will please
them as much as they please one another. But the very meaning of love is that
someone is special, so special that nobody else lives up to the lover’s expecta-
tions. You know that, and so do I. But my son? He takes his disappointment
out on the others and also on himself. Either he worships people and puts
them on a pedestal—that’s what he did with Schiller—or he spurns and dis-
dains them. He never learned to be patient. I’ve seen him turn away in disgust
a thousand times, seen his face grow livid, his eyes go hard and lifeless, his
mouth clench grim and silent and merciless, and I tell him that this is the
single gravest ÿaw in his moral character. “Pride goeth before a fall.” — How
many times have I told him that? All his life I have been telling him that, and
she tells him the same thing, almost in my own words, except that she is more
gentle about it, no one can instruct a boy the way a Mother can. Even so, she
is trying to do right by him, she remonstrates with him. How can I upbraid
her for that? She is trying to raise him properly, just as I have been trying, and
if I had done a perfect job of it I wouldn’t be needing her help now would I?
She takes such joy in him! She is so full of hope! It is hard for me to hate
her. I mean, hard for me to hate her deeds, inasmuch as we may never hate the
person but only the wickedness in them. And I do hate the wickedness, when-
ever I get an unobstructed look at it, but that is the problem. I do not have a
clear look in—the room is dark, I cannot make anything out, cannot tell up
from down, inside from out. In other words, the problem is that I do love this
person, but I fear it is for the wrong reasons. Every now and again my heart

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L  D to H

Thursday

You really have come! — I didn’t dare to hope! Were you not away
at all? Surely you did not deprive yourself of that joy merely on my
account? — You good soul, you best of souls, may you þnd joy,
and may I yet be able to give you joy! — — I don’t know, I am so
nervous, constantly fearing that we may be betrayed; and the ob-
stacles that are already almost too much for us seem to be increas-
ing. If only you can receive my words this time, then I, for my
part, would gladly be willing to go without. For I know that you
love me, as I love you; no one can take that away from me.
You looked so pale, am I right? You weren’t sick, were you?
You are taking care of yourself, I know, for my sake. — — — And
do not deprive yourself of any joy that comes your way. You do
not go looking for any, do you? All right, but do not be brusque,
do not spurn any joy that does come, all right, my dear? — —
If you should come tomorrow, I will be able to remain calm!
Surely I will be able to, and I have cause enough to be joyful.
Fare well, fare well, whether you be near or far you are always
at my side. And you are so interwoven with me that nothing can
take you from me; no matter where we are, we are together. I hope
to see you again soon.
Tell me as clearly as you can how things are going with you.
— And take care of yourself, for my sake.
Zeerleder is still in Hamburg, and I don’t know when he will
return, or whether he will stay with us for a while when he does.
However, I believe he will stay for a time if he can.
I’ve read all your poems with a joy that cannot be uttered! I’ve
bound all your letters together as though in a book, and if I should
not hear from you for a long time, I will read in them, imagining
that things continue to be the way I am reading them! You should
do the same, and believe this one thing: as long as we remain true
to one another, the things that conjoin us will last. I shall never be
able to surrender the belief that we will þnd one another again in

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swells with anger against her, but then too, I fear, for the wrong reasons. For in
the end she tries to send my son away, she says she will þnd no peace of mind
if she knows that he will be returning with a letter for her. Peace of mind?!
Since when is a woman supposed to have peace of mind?! She should have
known that when she pushed my boy away she pushed him toward his death.
She should have known that to separate the mind from the heart means death,
death to her, death to him. It is a kind of terrible suicide, a terrible suicide
drawing in its wake a terrible homicide. It will kill my boy, or drive him mad.
A double violence, a double evil, to herself and to him, and I cannot counte-
nance it.
In the end I cannot blame my boy. He never understood anything of
love, not a blessed thing. And if I was ill-prepared for it, even so, I loved
sufþcient for two dear husbands, I improvised what I did not know, I kept to
the side of life, I clove to the side of the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Perhaps
I will burn for it, I do not know, you must tell me. But if love covers a multi-
tude of sins, as the Apostle says, then she should have had more Faith and
Hope in Love, she should have wrapped herself in concealment and taken my
boy under her wing. She worried about him walking through the rain, but she
didn’t seem to mind the storm she had unleashed over his head. She worried
whether his love would last, but she didn’t seem to realize that he himself will
last only as long as she does. She worried about his looking so pale and getting
sick, but she did not know that she was the poison. She worried about him
not þnding a position that would satisfy him, but she didn’t think how to
satisfy him otherwise. I don’t mean illicitly, don’t misunderstand me: my boy
only wanted the friendship, the companionship, at least she could have given
him that, but she was too cold.
I don’t know what to say. I only know it is wrong to let death walk off
with the laurels. She should have been a more abundant friend. Do not talk to
me of her husband. I have already forgotten him. He probably started it.
What happened to my son is his fault, he should have understood my boy’s
position. And now it is too late. I can tell from her letters that she is gone, out
of his life, never to return. What does my boy have left? He has his Mother,
who will never abandon him. But he is a man now, and his Mother cannot
save him. Mothers pass on to Glory. Who will save him? He has wandered too

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L  D to H

this world, and that our joy still awaits us. Be happy (in the sense
that we mean that), and believe that no matter what you under-
take, if it works for you, it will surely be my desire too. Just don’t
choose something that isn’t suitable for you. If only you could feel
how vibrantly your exquisite image comes to ÿower in my mind,
then you would also feel the way everything—and I mean every-
thing—that surrounds me must bow to that image, and the way
every tiny sensation in me merely rouses that single, magniþcent
feeling for you, causing me to surrender completely to you! — —
Therefore, do not be timid of heart, and believe as I do that we
belong to one another for all eternity, and to one another alone.

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 V

far from his homeland. He has lost his Fathers and his Faith, a Faith held in
escrow for him by his Mother, an endowment and a surety more precious
than the lands and the assets. He lives by those assets even now, assets I care-
fully administer for him in order not to diminish the principle. The bounty of
his Faith he himself has squandered, he has let it go to foul rot, and there is
nothing I can do for him. Because of my soul’s confusion, I fear I may not
even be able to pray properly for his recovery. Because of my soul’s confusion,
I want to pray for her as much as for him, and that is unnatural, sinful, a
Mother cannot love a woman who has destroyed her son’s morality and his
chances for life.
You see, my dear Christian, that I love her for the wrong reasons and
hate her for the wrong reasons. I know I am not hating enough, I am trying to
close my eyes to her wickedness, may a merciful God forgive me! My confu-
sion is unadorned, gives itself out as it is, the original confusion of all confu-
sions, wayward and unredeemed. Shrive me! Give me Faith and Hope, for I
have too much of the other. Do not be timid of heart. You shall bless me and
I shall bless you. Fare well!
Tomorrow?

Your
Lady Gok

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L  D to H

XV

[Wednesday, March 5, 1800]

He will move into your room upstairs, and he will sit at your writ-
ing desk.51 How happily then I will mount the stairs. With tran-
quil joy I will see how the dwelling that was once yours is honored
by his presence—I wouldn’t have allowed anyone else in it, nor
would you have, is that not right? From time to time he will see a
tear in my eye, a tear wept in secret, when I go to him. He will feel
for me, understand me, and in his soul I will þnd peace.
How I look forward to tomorrow! I shall hear from you once
again. Whatever you tell me will be right for me; you will surely
arrange things in the way that is best for me, and I have faith in
destiny; I believe that things have to go well for you. Once again I
will garner nourishment for a long time, but you will have to be
patient yet again. You won’t hear anything from me over the com-
ing months. I simply don’t know what to do. Because my relatives
are coming soon, and because there will probably be other changes
in the ofþng as far as the family is concerned, you had better not
come at all.52 Yet because I am unable to learn about your future
plans, I don’t want to give you any instructions. If it is at all pos-
sible for me, I will abide by your instructions completely.
Doubtless we will have no news of one another, however, until
the family is living once again out in the Gardens.53 The þrst Thursday
in May falls exactly on the 1st of the month, and if I remember

51. The þrst page of the letter is missing; it therefore begins in medias res. The “he” is
unknown. It might have been Ludwig Zeerleder, returned from Hamburg, were it not for the
observation in Letter XVII that Zeerleder is “still in Hamburg.” Perhaps Susette’s son Henry
has returned from Hanau on spring holiday? We do not know.
52. The “other changes in the ofþng” for the Gontard family may refer to the fortunes of
Cobus’s mother, who at the time of the letter is mortally ill.
53. That is, in the present instance, at the Adlerÿychtschen Hof, which the family also often
refers to simply as “the Gardens.”

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 V

As Lady Gok fades to oblivion, I look—beneath my eyes, nose, and cheeks—

to my writing hand. It is a rodent burrowing blindly, or a rabbit on the run.
Cobus had enlisted the help of Angelo, the groundsman at the Adlerÿychtschen
Hof, in his search for the letters, and he got it. He also requested the assistance
of a witless Greek, the rabbit-keeper, but he did not get it. Yet this man, the
keeper, knows something. He had seen.

Dimitri Tsiboulis to Eftychia Tsiboulis in Pelion, Hellas

Thursday, May 8, 1800. Frankfurt, Germania

My darling Eftychia!

Rabbits are better than people. They are softer to touch. Except for you, my
little cottontail. And prettier too, except for you, my little twitchnose. And
more efþcient. Except for you, mother of my twin bunny beauties! We have so
many rabbits in the hutch now, and it was brand new in March. They waste
no time. Very efþcient. I can’t wait till I get home.
One got away from me this afternoon. I opened the hutch as usual to
throw in the outer lettuce leaves and sorrel stems and carrot tops when she
slipped out without my spotting her. When I turned to go back to the rose
garden behind the pavilion there she was, and soon to be a mother, hopping
big and wide for all she was worth toward the hedge.
“Rabbits are stupid,” I said, as I took off after her. “Once she’s into that
hedge,” I said to myself, “we’ll never get her back.” So off I went chasing her,
learning once again how slow humans run. “If rabbits are stupid,” I said to
myself, “what do you look like right now, Tsiboulis?”
I hopped over rakes and spades, after her like a ferret. But when she
reached the hedge she stopped in confusion, turned, and ran right back into
my outstretched hands! I scooped her up, soothed her, tried to convince her to
take her nails out of my forearm. Then I looked up and saw what had made
her stop at the hedge.

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L  D to H

well, we were not yet out there last year by that date. And if I
should take a long walk by myself it might seem odd to the others.
If you would therefore count on the second or third Thursday of
the month, that would surely be safer. Some time ago it occurred
to me that in the future, in cases of emergency, we might be able to
stay in touch through Landauer.54 He is your friend, and recently
he showed me too the most gracious deference and courtesy. Yet
that would have to be arranged with the greatest caution and with
all possible safeguards, also so that he himself does not fall under
suspicion. It’s just a thought, and if you don’t like the sound of it
we won’t say a word more about it. But you can always receive
indirect news of me through him. He will surely come to Frankfurt
for the next fair. If you should see him, you could suggest that he
simply mention your name to me. I can’t tell you how anxious I
am to learn something deþnite about your future vocation; if only
the hours of endless waiting were already past! I can write no more.
Fare well! Fare well! You are unalterable in me! And you will last as
long as I last. — —55

54. Christian Landauer (1769–1845), a cloth merchant in Stuttgart, and therefore a regular
visitor at the trade fair, the Frankfurter Messe, was a faithful friend of Hölderlin’s. Although
Landauer may have regularly reported back to Hölderlin his impressions concerning Diotima,
he apparently never delivered letters back and forth.
55. Knaupp notes that on the reverse side of Susette Gontard’s þfteenth letter Hölderlin
wrote a poem—presumably in 1807 after his release from the Autenrieth Clinic, having been
diagnosed there as “incurable.” The poem is a textual indication that Hölderlin had Susette’s
letters in his possession in the Tübingen tower at least during the early years of his madness, and
perhaps for many years after that, as we heard Waiblinger attest (see the opening pages of the
introduction, above). The sketch of a poem, untitled, reads in translation as follows:

What is the life of man an image of the godhead.

As though under heaven all the earthbound wander,
Seeing heaven. Yet they see as if gleaning, as though
From a script, they ape inþnity and abundance,
These humans. Is, then, the simple heaven
Abundant? Yes, for they are like blossoms,
The silvery clouds. And from them shower down

188
 V

It was her worship, the Madame of the house. She and her family moved
out here just a couple of days ago. She stood with her back to the hedge. She
was dressed all in white, with her hair bound up on her head with white
ribbons, and white slippers on her feet. How did she keep the slippers so
clean? She stood facing me, not moving, frozen. She was holding a letter. I saw
a hand pulling back slowly into the hedge with the greatest caution. “So hedges
have hands?” I said to myself. “With white shirtsleeves, under a dark blue
daycoat?” I said to myself. It was a delicate hand, not accustomed to work, but
a man’s hand for all that. I tried to avoid her eyes, I looked at the rabbit. She
was panting. I had to say something.
“I was feeding the rabbits like I do every afternoon at three, and she
slipped out.”
“You had better get her back home. She’ll be terriþed.”
I had to look up then. I saw her face as I had never seen it before, with
color in it, not only in the cheeks but up to her forehead and down to her
throat, which was bare and deep. Everywhere roses. Tournefort lists þfty-three
separate species. They are not like simple ÿowers, they have their parts apart,
they are more like rabbits than ÿowers. Never try to raise a rose from seed.
Vermillion rose, pale rose, white rose—a lily washed in the waves of the god-
dess. The old stories tell about her and about her apples and pomegranates
and roses. Tournefort says “incarnate rejouissante,” but I’m not sure what he
means. They call her Ladyship “the Greek,” but she’s not Greek. No olive in
her skin. Normally she’s as white as a gardenia, like everyone else up here in
this nation of ghosts. She wears dresses they call Greek but they aren’t Greek
they’re too fancy, they’re tied too high, and they’re almost invisible. But I
swear, Eftychia, today she looked like a Greek (do not be jealous, twitchnose,
I’ll be home soon), maybe like that same goddess in the stories—yesterday I
would have said Athena but today I thought to myself Aphrodite.
“Yes, Madame, I’ll get her back to the hutch.” I turned to go.
“Tsiboulis?” I turned back again.
This time I looked right at her, and met her gaze. The sweet look of a
frightened child. I should have felt shame, but I felt no shame, I felt like a
rabbit.
“Thank you,” she said.

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L  D to H

XVI

[March 13, 1800]

My mother-in-law died yesterday. I can tell you nothing further

today. Fare well fare well and keep well — —

Dew and what is still more moist. Yet when

The blue is extinguished, the simple, which shines,
Shines dully, like stony marble, or like ore, which is
A sign of wealth.

190
 V

Angelo is the chief groundsman, our foreman. He gives us our orders

from the master, he’s like a messenger boy. I work for him but I don’t have to
like him. One day last fall Angelo gathered all the workers out at the pavilion.
He had just come from the master of the house. He told us we should be on
the lookout for the children’s tutor, I mean the one who used to be the tutor
here. I never mentioned him to you before. He was as shy as a rabbit. But I
used to tell him about the countryside in Pelion. He could never hear enough
about it. I told him about the peaches and þgs bursting in the heat of the
summer, the apples and pears heavy in the fall. About the mountains that
wear the sea like a blue skirt. About October when I wash the empty wine
barrels in the sea and rinse them in the brook and then collect clumps of resin
from the pines for the new wine. And about the festivals, the dancing among
the plane trees on the beach, remember? Evohe! Iakhe Bakchai! Sometimes he
would scribble a note onto a folded piece of paper with the stub of an English
pencil he always kept in his daycoat pocket. He seldom said a word. But his
rabbit eyes burned very bright whenever I spoke of Greece and the girls and
you, my good fortune, my rabbit, my rose.
And Angelo? The big fat grin across his fat face wouldn’t let us miss his
meaning.
“The master is worried about his ladyship,” he said.
I felt very ashamed. Not of her, my darling Eftychia, but of fatface Angelo
and the master. And maybe of all men. Why do any of you have anything to
do with any of us? I decided right then and there that I would keep my eyes on
the rabbits and the roses and nothing else. I’ll be home soon. Things here are
coming to an end, I can see that, it’s as though the spring were already fall.
Kiss little Semele and little Sophia for me. Tell them their papi will be home
soon, and even if he’s not rich yet he will give them each a rabbit with a pink
nose and sweet eyes like the eyes that will soon be smiling up at them from a
baby sister.

love
your Tsiboulis

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L  D to H

XVII

[Wednesday, May 7, 1800]56

Will you come tomorrow, my darling? I believe you will, and yet I
cannot depend on it; my yearning would grow too violent were I
not to see you again. Your resolve to live in the circle of your fam-
ily and to be of use to them is as though taken by my own soul,
and because of the circumstances it has now become a kind of
vocation for you to do everything you can for your good sister.57 It
will do your own heart so much good to have someone nearby
who feels intense love for you, somebody you can trust. How could
I not take joy in such a thing! — I shall always hear from you, and
I shall see you again, as soon as it is possible for you. We couldn’t
have gone on hearing from one another as often as we’ve been able
to recently, certainly not once a month. I was going to suggest
anyway that we exchange our papers by post only every six months,
but also that whenever we experience a moment of happiness we
write it down for one another, recounting every single thing that
pops into our heads, saying it from the heart, getting it off our
chests, because sometimes we are þlled to the brim and it all be-
comes too oppressive. That is what we shall do now. You will come
whenever you can, and I will await you without anxiety. Some
day, surely, you will come to me. I shall see you again! No one will
take this certitude away from me. I will remain unrufÿed; I will
receive your gaze and your hand. I will not melt, not even after

56. Beck describes this last letter to Hölderlin—and the penultimate letter of Susette Gontard’s
entire correspondence—as follows: “The letter is written in pencil over four sides; there are
signs of haste and nervousness. Especially in the second half, the letter exhibits ‘tension and
disquiet.’ Because of folding and wrinkling, the þnal side becomes more and more difþcult to
read, until in the end it is scarcely legible.” Beck, Hölderlins Diotima, 226.
57. Hölderlin’s sister had recently been widowed.

192
 V

I gaze one last time into the mirror of these correspondences. I see my body,
my breasts and belly, thighs and mound, knees and feet. Everywhere scars of
love, my body a map of campaigns, of costly victories and close defeats and
horrendous routs. Scars of love? I see on my face and neck and gorge the
pockmarks of that exquisite woman, Margarete Gontard. She was a great beauty
in her youth, they say, until smallpox disþgured her. She made music with
Hölderlin and Susette Gontard, her sister-in-law. Margarete knew of their
forbidden love, yet never took up her brother’s part, never betrayed them to
him. Hers is the most stirring document, written when she learns of Hölderlin’s
madness, and I have saved it until the very end. I want to live to see it im-
printed on my skin, this testament of ultimate generosity.

Margarete Gontard to Dr. Johann Gottfried Ebel

December 8, 1803

The news you send concerning our poor unhappy Hörderling

hurts me deeply. Why did there have to be such a perfect
dovetailing between his destiny and that of Torquato Tasso?
For a long time I have felt that it would have to end this
way—oh, but why did it have to turn out like this? — Why
couldn’t these two human beings, who in themselves united
so great a sense of true happiness, be guided toward a better
fate? The outcome should have been a piece of perfection!
But now that outcome wreaks pain and destruction on all
who knew of their relationship. — This grandly elevated be-
ing, whose fancy was constantly aroused, who strove eter-
nally for perfection, even when on all sides his striving ran
afoul of the most mundane matters, had to end this way! (I
still cannot get shut of this thought.) — She who died is bet-
ter off: for in every single twist and turn of her destiny she
found misery and disharmony. May gentle rest be hers!

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L  D to H

such a long separation; I will be able to survive yet another such

separation. And I shall give you the courage to do the same.
Now a few words about my life of late. I am quite healthy
and am keeping quite busy, so that I have pleasant distractions
and my energies are engaged in worthwhile ways. You know that
we have now come into possession of the Gardens on the Main
River.58 As you know, I have always wanted to plant some trees, to
arrange an estate according to my own taste, and to have a little
farm. As you predicted it would, it gives me great pleasure to be
out there these days. I’m arranging it all in the simplest way, which
is my own way. I’ve got 25 acres of arable land to look after and
enjoy, and that is quite enough to occupy me in the manner I like.
I have a full year to arrange everything, because we will be living
here until next summer, by which time everything will have to be
done.
We moved out here only yesterday.59 My brother will be arriv-
ing on Saturday. Zeerleder is still in Hamburg and we haven’t heard
a peep out of him. When you think of me in the coming weeks,
you should always picture me involved in some sort of enjoyable
occupation. And I shall think of you as engaged in something that
will do your heart good. Thus we shall think of one another cheer-
fully. And we shall go forth with courage to meet the time that is
rushing by until our next encounter, let it come when it will, but
we shall beseech destiny to let the happy moment come soon and
we shall have faith in the secret powers that guide our footsteps. I
ask you only not to allow our relationship to disturb any other
relationship in your life; let me always be your conþdante; you
will never lose anything that way, for your joy is also my own.

58. Cobus had inherited this extensive and handsome property from his mother. See note
14, above.
59. “Here,” that is, to the Adlerÿychtschen Hof.

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 V

I am so far from surrender, and yet I don’t know whether, why, or how to go
on. Capitulate, my eyes tell me, be a good girl for once. Love doesn’t pay, my
nose tells me, it’s a losing proposition. Be a good girl for once, my mouth
mouths, as my cheeks cascade with tears. As for the rest of the morsels of me,
my feet itch, my lower belly aches, my breasts tremble for the touch, my sex is
eloquent. She tells me not to wait much longer, not to spurn even the most
laughable love. She says that at the very moment when I least expect it a
simpleton lover will take me up and embrace me, engage me in some sort of
enjoyable occupation, and whisper all the simpleton clichés of love as the
most profound poems. My sex has been wrong before. Famously wrong. Yet
she tells me that now she has at long last got it right. She says she has been
reading the letters. She says her lips have been silently mouthing the letters
and the syllables of all these missives, says she now knows all the signs, the
indelible and unmistakable marks of love, says she cannot be fooled this time.
She tells me to do my heart good. She tells me to put on a white dress and
white slippers. She tells me to reach through the hedge. She tells me to try
once again to give myself to ecstasy, to dance the eccentric orbit, to let in a
friend.
Here at the end, I want to copy out one of Hölderlin’s poems to Susette
Gontard. It is the poem that best gives her back to me, the third version of his
“Diotima.” He had been working on it throughout all the years of their love.

Diotima
(third version)

You turn silent and are patient, for they do not understand you,
You noble life! You look to the earth and turn silent
In the beautiful day, for it is always in vain that you
Seek out your own in the sunlight.

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L  D to H

If in the near future you should come to our city and see a
white towel hanging from my window, don’t send your letters, but
come again the next morning. If you see nothing in my window,
send the letters right away, and then return once again to the place
of our sign.

Thursday morning

If only you would come! — — — The entire region is lifeless and

vacant without you! And I am so full of anxiety: how will I enclose
and preserve in my breast once again the overwhelming feelings
that rush out toward you? — if you don’t come? — — — —
And if you do come! Then too it will be hard for me to pre-
serve my equanimity and not to be overwhelmed by my feelings.
Promise me that after we exchange our letters today you will not
come back, that you will leave the house in peace. For if I do not
know that you will stay away today when you leave, I will not be
able to quit my window, will not be able to abandon it from the
dawn of day onward, and I will be in the most terrible tension and
disquiet. In the end, we shall have to þnd peace once again. Let us
therefore tread our path conþdently, let us feel happy in our pain,
and let us hope that the pain lasts a long, long time, because that
way we will feel entirely ennobled, and it will strengthen us
Fare well! Fare well! Blessings
upon you. — — —

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 V

The princely ones who, very much like brothers, and

Like peaks accompanying the mountain meadow, once
Took joy in love and homeland and
The sky that always embraced them,

In their resounding hearts thinking still on the origin;

The grateful ones, these ones I mean, the only faithful ones,
The ones who brought joy to the gates of Tartarus,
Those free ones, those divine humans,

The tenderly magnanimous, who are no more;

My heart still weeps for them, has done so
As long as the year of mourning has endured,
Urged daily by the antecedent stars

And this lament for the dead never abates.

Yet time heals. The celestial ones are strong now,
They are ÿeet. Is not nature already assuming
Once again her ancient, joyous prerogative?

Look! an instant before our mound, O Love, collapses,

It happens, and yes! my mortal song will live to see
The day, Diotima, when you are named among heroes
Who are close to gods, the day that is like you.

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Children of Penury
L
etters are written and sent to the absent one. They are the very signs of
absence, separation, longing, and mourning. Letters are traced in ash,
as cenotaphs, “sepulchral monuments to one whose body lies else-
where,” says The Oxford English Dictionary, “empty tombs.” Perhaps every
letter is therefore also an elegy, for even if the addressee is not among the
hallowed dead, he or she nevertheless seems as remote as death. Missives mea-
sure out the distance of departure and death as they conjure phantasms of full
presence and perfect intimacy.
Has there ever been a love affair without letters of one sort or another?
Do the illiterate miss something other than books, newspapers, timetables,
epistles, and greeting cards? The proof is in the negative: how many infatua-
tions have run afoul of the law of letters, how many loves-at-þrst-sight have
plucked out their own eyes in the face of a dull and insipid correspondence?
More positively, how many vague inclinations have gone rapturously to free
fall, how many mere notions have become the very concept of love, under the
impact of a scintillating correspondence? Yet how can these inky traces of
absence produce such palpable effects of love? What is love, that it feeds on
the stains of wetted ashes? If absence makes the heart grow fonder, letters are
the cardiograms that chart such growth. Does it matter, then, that the Gontard-
Hölderlin correspondence pertains entirely to the aftermath of their love—
that it is, as Susette herself says, a monument to a piece of elegiac history?
Would we prefer to hear the letters panting? Would sighs and inarticulate
scribbles better conjure up phantasms of immediacy?
It is not easy to say what such letters are or are about. In this afterword
we will try to take a few tentative steps toward this particular correspondence—
largely one-sided, except that Susette Gontard’s letters do seem to make the
absent poet palpably present to us, precisely because she suffers so much on

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L
etters are written and sent to the absent one—but corrected manu-
scripts are sent back to one who is still far too present. Far too present
to me, who feel no loyalty to the project, and far too present to your
readers, who are trying to get closer to the Gontard letters, not to your version
of them, which is weighted excessively on Hölderlin’s side. (Hölderlin would
have been the þrst to object to this, and much more vociferously than either
she or I.) I admit my ambivalence: sometimes it seems to me that all this fuss
over Susette Gontard’s letters is excessive, and that these missives are without
importance. Bettine von Arnim says that she doesn’t understand why people
should fault Hölderlin for having fallen in love with a woman just so he could
write a book. She means Hyperion, of course, but the problem is that this isn’t
the only book or poem to which Hölderlin seems to have owed his love.
When he signs his poem “To the Aither” in Schiller’s Muses’ Almanac with the
letter D (see 2: 669), can anyone doubt that Diotima is meant? No, not after
he had encoded her name in his poems (see 3: 101). Doesn’t Hölderlin indeed
fall in love with a woman so that he can write not only Hyperion but also The
Death of Empedocles and an entire series of odes? She held his hand. He didn’t
write with her hand; no man can do that. But he couldn’t have done it with-
out her. Yet if Gontard haunts the entire literary production of Hölderlin, as
I believe she does, then the “fuss” over her letters can never be fussy enough,
can never do her justice. And so I am devoted to her and to her letters—and
also absolutely opposed to the way you are exhibiting them here. How can I
make this clear to you? “Phantasms of immediacy,” “sighs and scribbles”: per-
haps this is what you yourself are suffering from, without making these things
thematic. Stop protecting the reader! Stop protecting yourself !

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T’ A

account of his absence. As editors and translators of the correspondence, we

have torn these letters of Diotima’s out of their concealment; as readers, how-
ever, we see them withdraw from us again and slip back into their own secret
space. Perhaps a look into Hölderlin’s novel, Hyperion, and his tragic drama,
The Death of Empedocles, works that span the years 1792–1800, will offer some
clues concerning these multiple presences and absences. Let our focus in both
cases fall on þgures of “Diotima.” Her principal doctrine, at least as it is pre-
sented to us in Plato’s Symposium, which is the source to which we always
eventually have to return, is the daimonic nature of love: love hovers between
heaven and earth, communicates between immortal and mortal. And yet, as
inÿuential a messenger as love may be, it is always “in between” all positive
and negative qualities. Speciþcally, Eros is forever somewhere in between Abun-
dance and Need, Resource and Penury.
The earliest drafts of Hyperion, ultimately published in two volumes,
have received considerable scholarly attention. We will eschew a summary of
the extensive scholarship and focus exclusively on the characterization of
Diotima in Hölderlin’s novel.
The earliest sketch toward Hyperion is now acknowledged to be the frag-
ment “I was sleeping, my Kallias,” dated April 1792. Already here we þnd a
concealed reference to Diotima: “In childlike dreams I played with the fair
creature.”1 The fair creature in question was the daughter or companion of a
Greek merchant who was visiting Christian Ludwig Neuffer’s Greek mother
in Stuttgart that spring. Hölderlin’s infatuation with her, along with the polit-
ical discussions of the entire group concerning the Ottoman domination of
Greece, were perhaps the initial seeds of the novel. The reference to The Iliad
in Hölderlin’s brief text, invoking the hero Diomedes, points ahead to the
heroic deeds of Alabanda and Hyperion in the war of liberation against the
Turks—deeds, it is true, that are soon corrupted in very un-Homeric fashion
by the greed of the Greek retinue. Hölderlin elsewhere, however, in the poem
“Achilles” and the metrical version of Hyperion (1: 199–200, 522), acknowledges
a second, less heroic aspect of The Iliad. There he celebrates Briseïs, the fair
prize that Agamemnon snatches from Achilles, thus precipitating Achilles’

1. 1: 485; 3: 301. Cf. the Kinderträume of the þrst Diotima poem, at line 33, 1: 162.

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 C  P

We have torn the letters from their context? We, who? Misery loves company,
and so does the scholar whose conscience has begun to prick him, you should
pardon the expression—but, no, you are entirely on your own here. Seek
companions for your guilt elsewhere. There is so much that is completely
wrong about this Afterword—this is my second time through it—that I don’t
know where to start or þnish. Once again it is the matter of your motives, the
matter you take pains to fudge and smokescreen and obfuscate. For Hyperion
isn’t about Diotima at all, no matter how much you try to divert your readers’
attention in that direction. It is about Hölderlin, about what’s wrong with
Hölderlin. He is far more honest than you are. You skip the “Penultimate
Version” of the novel in your commentary, but listen to what it says:

What did I want, then? What is it I did not succeed in doing?

What will people reply when you are gone and they ask:
What was wrong with him?
Ah, they won’t ask, and they won’t answer.
But then, what is it I wanted to do? —
The fact that I saw what the mortal eye does not see, the
fact that love once appeared to me in a blessed dream—should
that be what slew me?
The fable says of human beings that they would have
killed divinity if it had presented itself to them. — Yes! Now
I understand it. The fable is truth.
But do not tell anyone! They won’t believe you, and if
they do believe you it will be the death of them—a slow and
silent death! Oh, mock me when I’m gone, mock me and say:
he died because a dream he had was not fulþlled. (1: 569)

You should also read letter 27 of the þrst volume of Hyperion. Here
Diotima is (þnally!) talking to Hyperion: “Dear—dear Hyperion! You certainly
are a difþcult person to help” (1: 671). She asks him if he knows what is miss-
ing from his life, what in all his grieving he is actually mourning. “You did not
want human beings,” she says; “believe me, you wanted a world” (ibid.).
Hölderlin as much as admits it. In a letter to his friend Ebel on January 10,

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T’ A

wrath and his abandonment of the Achaean cause. Briseïs is the catalyst of the
events depicted in The Iliad—Briseïs, “the fair creature,” even more than fabled
Helen, brave Achilles, and indomitable Diomedes. Perhaps the oldest concep-
tion of Hyperion projects the work as a “Briseiad,” rather than as an Achillean
epos of war and heroism.
The second universally acknowledged fragment on the way to Hyperion
is the text that begins “I should have let the past sleep” (1: 487–88; 3: 302). It is
written in the hand of Marie Rätzer, Susette Gontard’s household companion
in Frankfurt and a friend to both Susette and Hölderlin. It seems certain that
Marie copied out the fragment from the abundant materials that Hölderlin
brought with him to Frankfurt in January 1796, materials written between
1792 and 1794, which he clearly shared with his newfound friends. The frag-
ment opens with a reference to “the image of the Ionian maiden,” the “fair
creature” of “I was sleeping, my Kallias.” It continues to develop the theme of
unrequited infatuation: the heroine must travel her path alone, so that the
hero’s dreams of possession are futile, grounds only for self-recrimination:
“Why did I have to think of myself, wretched fool that I am! Why did I have
to demand that this splendor should be mine, when clearly it had no need of
me?” (ibid.). The text is prophetic with regard to Hölderlin’s love for Susette,
except that in real life the infatuation would be mutual. Perhaps it is this
desperate, prophetic character that induced Marie Rätzer to copy out the text,
which breaks off with the following lines:

Ah, life is short, very short. We live only for moments and see
nothing else than death around us.
There are still moments when a splendid feeling ele-
vates me far beyond myself, the feeling that man is not created
for the sake of the particular [nicht fürs einzelne geschaffen].
(1: 488)

The “Fragment of Hyperion,” published by Schiller in Thalia, was com-

posed in the summer of 1794 and forwarded by Charlotte von Kalb in
Waltershausen to Schiller in Jena. In this text, the “fair creature” does not

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1797, while he is still high on the cresting waves of love, he writes that “it is
lovely to þnd in oneself and in a few other individuals an entire world” (2:
643). In a few individuals—or in one woman? He wanted to recuperate in her
all the losses since the Golden Age, since Achilles lost Briseïs; he wanted them
all to be recuperated in “one happy moment,” and that moment of recupera-
tion would be she. This is the desire of his Empedocles, with his one full and
perfect deed at the end: to leap into the crater—with a woman! Even if she has
better things to do, he will make her jump. And from what I know of your
buddy Nietzsche, he has his Empedocles do exactly the same thing. But back
to Hyperion. Diotima tells him, “Do you see now how poor, how wealthy, you
are?” She thereby identiþes him as Eros itself, the child of Penury and Re-
sourcefulness. At the same time, she doesn’t give him much of a chance: “I am
afraid for you: it will be hard for you to withstand the destiny of these times”
(1: 672).

No. The für does not refer to a “for the sake of.” It is therefore not “. . . not
created for the sake of the particular,” but rather: “ . . . not created one by one,
not created to be alone.”

In order to let your readers see what is wrong with Hölderlin you need to give
a clearer picture of his dependence on Schiller, which is the dependence of an

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T’ A

make her appearance until the poet laments his “feeling of a lost Paradise” and
his “pining away in the land of transience” (1: 491). Moreover, she appears
under the name Melite and in the guise not of a maid but of a priestess—the
þrst direct allusion to the Diotima of Plato’s Symposium:

Ah, me—in this painful state of my loneliness, with my joy-

less and lacerated heart—she appeared to me; fair and holy,
like a priestess of love she stood there before me, as though
woven out of light and wafting fragrance, so spiritual and so
tender; above her smile, so full of serenity and heavenly good-
ness, her large, inspired eyes were enthroned with the majesty
of a god, and like ÿeecy clouds in the light of morning her
golden locks, tossed by vernal winds, kissed her brow. (1: 492)

Here the priestess of love is in fact not a mere minion but an equal
partner in divinity. If Melite is a “heavenly creature,” that is because she is
related by blood to the god. Yet the god in question is not always happy, not
always self-sufþcient: “Ah, the god in us is always lonely and wretched. Where
will he þnd all those who are akin to him? Those who once were there and
who some day will be there again? When will it convene, the magniþcent
rendez-vous of spirits? For once upon a time, as I believe, we were all united”
(1: 493). Once again, however, in the “Fragment of Hyperion” it is a matter of
Hyperion’s self-laceration: “Often I cursed the hour I found her and raged in
spirit against the heavenly creature, for she had called me back to life only to
crush me with her majesty” (1: 496). In some way Melite is the inverted mirror
image of the poet’s own misery, the eternal irony of man’s transience and inad-
equacy. The proper tension of the “Fragment” arises from the poet’s disquiet,
gloom, and even rage in the face of an apparently self-possessed, tranquil beauty.
When he passes by her house it is with the slouching gait of a murderer—“it
was as though I had murder on my mind” (1: 498). Hyperion’s longing for the
priestess of love is a murderous languor and languishing—dieses tödtende Sehnen
(ibid.). The proper theme of the “Fragment” is thus the poverty or even penury

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orphan on an ersatz-father, an unreliable foster-father. You should cite the

letter to Schiller of July 23, 1795: “I was always tempted to go to see you, but
when I did, I could only feel that I can never be anything for you. . . . [B]ecause
I wanted to be so much for you, I had to admit to myself that I was nothing to
you” (2: 589–90). And also the letter of June 20, 1797: “ . . . but I depend on
you in a way that I will never be able to overcome” (2: 655). When Susette
Gontard went to Jena but failed to talk to Schiller, she hurt Hölderlin in a way
that neither she nor we can understand. She got mixed up in something be-
tween a boy and his dad. But there is no help for that, there is nothing she
could have done to ease the situation. In mid-August 1797 Hölderlin responded
to Schiller’s desire to have him closer—Schiller had written that he would like
to have him in Jena—in a way that would have pleased Susette Gontard:
“Believe me when I say that I have to tell myself that your proximity is some-
thing I cannot allow myself. Really, you animate me too much when I am in
your vicinity. . . . Near you I am like a plant that only recently has been trans-
planted: one has to cover it in order to protect it from the midday sun. You
may laugh at me; but I speak the truth” (2: 665). On June 30, 1798, he was
perhaps more forthright: “ . . . I have to concede that in the meantime I am
engaged in a secret struggle with your genius, in order to rescue my freedom
from it, and that the fear of being dominated by you through and through has
often prevented me from approaching you with good cheer” (2: 690). I’ve
always wanted to ask you: who is your Schiller? And mine? Can you guess who
my Schiller is?

Melite was an Oceanide, a Nereiad, or a Naiad, and the playmate of Persephone:

Hölderlin was certainly clear about putting his darling in closest possible prox-
imity to death. No wonder Hyperion slinks past her house like a murderer! In
“Hyperion’s Youth, Part One,” he writes: “Tremulous, unthinking, I walked
past her window—no! no! you will not ascend, I thought, and I plunged
toward home and locked the door behind me when I got there. Yet wherever
I looked, there her image hovered, and all the friendly words I once heard
from her mouth reverberated about me” (1: 554). You are all like this, haunted

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T’ A

of love, the wretched condition of the forlorn lover. As the Diotima of Plato’s
Symposium teaches us, the mother of love is Pevía, penury, squalor, need,
resourcelessness. Hölderlin’s Diotima—better, his Melite—if only by glori-
ous indirection, teaches the same. For Hyperion, espying the glory in her,
experiences only the rage in himself:

And I became enraged with this heavenly creature? But why?

Because she was not poverty-stricken, as I was; because she
still bore heaven in her heart and had not lost herself, as I
had; because she did not need another creature, did not need
foreign wealth, in order to replenish the empty coffers; because
she could not feel fear as I could feel it, the fear of going
down, of hanging desperately onto another person on account
of this anxiety unto death. Ah! precisely what was most divine
about her, this serenity, this heavenly contentment, my de-
jection caused me to blaspheme. With an ignoble resentment,
I was envious of her Paradise. Could she have had anything
to do with such a ruinous creature? Did she not have to ÿee
me? Certainly! Her genius had already warned her about me.
(1: 499)

What a contrast to this adolescent adoration and condemnation of the

Eternal Maiden the love shared by these two human beings—Hölderlin and
Susette Gontard—would be! For this speech of Hyperion’s could as easily
have been spoken by Susette’s lips as by Hölderlin’s.
Is it possible to discern between the two volumes of the completed novel
something like a transformation of Diotima from the transcendently diapha-
nous, transcendentally celestial Melite to the woman of ÿesh and blood and
self-doubt who is Susette Gontard? When in the “Fragment” Melite demands
that Hyperion cease his endless self-castigation (“You must become differ-
ent!”), we know that such a change in him is the only thing that will enable
Melite to develop into the human being she herself longs to be. If Hyperion
persists as he is, hearing all around him the howling of jackals, feeling himself

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by ghosts of your mother and anxious to make a preemptive strike against any
woman you meet. You are all like Achilles—Christa Wolf calls him “Achilles
the Stockyard Animal,” but there is nothing bovine, nothing beneþcent, about
him. For Achilles cannot decide whether Briseïs is a sweet gift to be cherished
or a stuffed toy he won at a carnival. Kleist’s Achilles is even worse: he cannot
decide whether he wants to suck from Penthesilea’s breast or put a spear through
it. So he does what comes natural to him—he adopts one of the two preferred
ways of killing a woman (see Nicole Loraux) and seizes his trusty weapon.
When Hyperion slinks past Melite’s house he is participating in a long and
hallowed tradition of men “loving” women. More’s the pity.

“. . . anxiety unto death.” Imagine how enriched your beloved Heidegger would
have been if he had read all of Hölderlin!

“What a contrast”? What contrast? What do you really know about their rela-
tionship? “Adolescent adoration and condemnation” sometimes sounds about
right—whatever you may be dreaming.

This “diaphanous” quality in Diotima (or Melite) that you keep writing about:
it offends me, it sounds like a word you picked up from Playboy, it turns the
young woman into a nightie. Shouldn’t she rather be described as “oneiric,”
“dreamlike”? Hölderlin says to Neuffer (April 28, 1795; 2: 584), “Probably I
shall never love except in dreams. Hasn’t that been the case for me up to now?
Whenever my eyes are opened up [und seit ich Augen habe: and from the
moment I have eyes], I no longer love at all.” Are you so certain that the love

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to be the animal that is about to be slaughtered by the pack (1: 501), we know
that the humanization of Diotima will not be achieved easily. If the Diotima
of Hölderlin’s early drafts of Hyperion “cannot give what she does not have,
[namely] your poverty and your love” (ibid.), Susette Gontard will prove to be
richer in poverty—more abundant in the penury that is love—than any liter-
ary Diotima will ever be.
For the moment, Hölderlin’s “priestess of Dodona” (1: 505) remains a
remote and delicate creature, even if the weightiest of metaphysical doctrines—
the recurrence of all that is bygone, of all that is transient—is attributed to
her, and even if the Apollonian maiden is also celebrated as “the mother of all
life, incomprehensible Love” (1: 508).
Perhaps the greatest single advance in the conception and characteriza-
tion of the priestess in the metrical version of Hyperion (along with its draft in
prose) is Hyperion’s realization that the “school of destiny and of the sages”
has caused him to underestimate and even to scorn the world of the senses and
the realm of nature. If Melite is so fragile and diaphanous, so transparently
spiritual, so very much on the hither side of puberty, that is because Hyperion
has no eyes to see or hands to touch her. The wizened sage, the stranger who
now communicates the doctrine of Plato’s Socrates in Symposium (for Diotima
is not yet invoked by name), speaks with a more human voice than the alter-
nating angelic and strident voices we have heard hitherto:

Allow me to speak in a human way. When our originally

inþnite essence þrst came to suffer something, and when the
free and full force encountered its þrst barriers, when Poverty
mated with Superÿuity, Love came to be. Do you ask when
that was? Plato says it was on the day Aphrodite was born. At
the moment therefore when the world of beauty commenced
for us, when we became conscious, we became þnite. Now
we profoundly feel the conþnement of our essence, and inhib-
ited force strains impatiently against its fetters. Yet there is
something in us that gladly preserves the fetters—for if the
divine in us were bound to no resistance, we would know

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of Hölderlin and Susette Gontard is entirely different? You think she was able
to make love to him with his eyes open? I wish I were as sure as you seem to be.
As sure as you proclaim yourself to be. Think about your reasons for seeming
to be so sure. Declare them if you can!

If Melite needs Hyperion’s eyes and hands in order to make her a woman, to
allow her to be a woman, then we are back at the oldest clichés and ordinances
of patriarchy. Can’t you hear what you’re saying? The alternative to Hyperion’s
squeamishness is not ogling and fondling. The alternative to the transparently
spiritual is not the transparently manipulative. That all comes in the same
package. So, I fear, does the ascription of eternal recurrence to “the mother of
all life.”

Poverty and Superÿuity are always on Hölderlin’s mind—perhaps because of

his dependence on his mother for support and his inability to keep a job. Even
when he writes to Schiller (presumably about Hyperion) he cries, “Why must
I be so poor and yet so interested in the abundance of a mind [or spirit: eines
Geistes]?” (2: 526). Yet there is another sense of poverty, one that brings Hölderlin
closer to you. In a letter to Neuffer he says that Hyperion is supposed to rescue
him from the arid shores of philosophical abstraction in which he has allowed
himself to get lost. Sound familiar? Think of someone you know very well,

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nothing outside ourselves and therefore nothing about our-

selves either. And to know nothing of oneself, not to feel that
we are in being, and to be annihilated—these are one and the
same. (1: 513)

Diotima’s invocation of Pevía in Plato’s Symposium seems a gesture of

the proud þnitude that loves its penury, if only because penury is the grand
Aphrodisiac. What Fichte and Schelling call inhibition (Hemmung) Hölderlin
calls gladness. Such happy þnitude unites the two drives that constitute hu-
man nature, balancing the drive to ennoblement and inþnitization with the
drive to receive determination or deþnition, the drive to conceive. Conception
requires both a resourceful father and a penurious mother, both afÿuence and
dereliction, although we may be certain (and we will come back to this) that
the attribution of penury to the mother and plenty to the father is problem-
atic. According to the metrical version of Hyperion (1: 519, lines 167–68):

Love does not scorn its poverty,

But it too wanders manifold ways.

And its wandering ways are always both dolorous and fecund:

It suffers the painful sensation of poverty in itself,

Yet þlls heaven to the bursting with abundance.

The essential characterization of love’s maternal line, the line of penury,

appears once again in the next phase of the project, with “Hyperion’s Youth,
Part One” (1: 525–26). Here Hölderlin is close to the mature thought of “The
Rhine,” which asserts (“if to say such a thing / Is allowed”) that the most
blessed ones, the celestial ones, “feel nothing by themselves” and thus “need
the mortals” (1: 345). In “Hyperion’s Youth,” written early in 1795 in Jena, the
sage elaborates: “Think, if such be possible, of pure spirit! It has nothing to do
with matter, so that no world springs to life for it; for it no sun rises and sets;
it is everything, and therefore nothing, for itself. It renounces nothing, because

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trained as a philosopher, who for all his vaunted nietzscheism is closer to his
soul than to the soles of his feet, someone who has always existed only above
the eyebrow line, someone who has always thought it is enough to dance with
the pen!

Yes, you’d better come back to this! Do you come back to this? Where?

You are certainly right about the maternal line of love being the line of Penury—
we are all her ragtag children. But you yourself have shown that hers is also the
line of cunning intelligence. In “Hyperion’s Youth” Hölderlin writes: “How
clever the inexperienced heart becomes when it loves!” Incidentally, you ig-
nore an essential phrase from the sage’s discourse in that text. Not only is
absolute spirit deprived of life, which remains somehow inert and abstract, it
is also deprived of its masculinity: “Ihre Männlichkeit [d.h. die Männlichkeit
der Liebe] ist hin: Its masculinity/virility/prick is gone” (1: 527). Why do you
skip over this deprivation—even though it may be a minor one for absolute

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it can wish for nothing; it does not suffer, because it does not live” (1: 525).
Here too, as later in “The Rhine,” Hölderlin must beg forgiveness for these
nefarious thoughts. For he knows that if gods are in the family way, if they
descend from matrilineal as well as patrilineal societies, superÿuent power
will inevitably bow to its own superÿuity, glory will surrender to helplessness
and even ignominy, and immortal life will capitulate to love and to death
without resurrection. If the youthful Hölderlin can afþrm that “the poverty of
þnitude is united inseparably in us with the superÿuity of divinity” (1: 526),
the mature poet will come to realize that “pure spirit,” divine superÿuity itself,
is indeed superÿuous. And this Hölderlin is the youth whose mother hoped
he might become a country pastor!
What is perhaps most disturbing to the present reading, however, is that
when Diotima is þnally introduced into the text and named as such for the
þrst time (1: 540, line 25), she is as holy, fair, and diaphanously spiritual as she
was in the earlier “Fragment of Hyperion” (compare 1: 539, lines 23–27, with 1:
492, lines 28–33). It will not be so easy for Hölderlin or for us to liberate the
sages from their tradition-bound School of Destiny, in which the absolute is
absolutely absolute.
We may perhaps now without undue violence hasten on to the pub-
lished version of Hyperion. We shall take up Hölderlin’s text at the moment
when Diotima herself threatens to become ÿesh.2 It is important to note that
both volumes one and two of the published version of Hyperion were com-
posed during the Frankfurt years, the years spent in the Gontard household,
the years of life with Susette-Diotima. It may therefore be entirely spurious to
seek remarkable differences between volume one, composed during the sec-
ond half of the year 1796, which was the very springtime of Hölderlin’s and
Susette’s love, and volume two, written largely during the year 1798 and com-
pleted by November of that year, though not published until a full year later,
in November 1799. However, if Hölderlin was driven from the Gontard house
in July of 1798, perhaps there are signs of that painful episode in volume two?

2. For what follows, see also the scene involving touching, in the “Drafts toward the Final
Version,” 1: 574, lines 27ff.

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spirit? Is it a little too close to the bone? In any case, by the end of this þrst
chapter love is identiþed with nature as the absolute mother. Just as “the plant
remains true to Mother Earth” (1: 530), so must absolute spirit become a ÿower
of a woman—and not merely as a temporary inconvenience, as Hegel be-
lieved. Well, then, to the mothers!
I know this isn’t the right time to bring them up, since you are talking
about the very beginning of Hölderlin’s career—but I am þxated on the end of
that career, where Penury reigns supreme. Particular phrases from his last let-
ters—the utter exhaustion in them terriþes me!—remind me of Gok, even
though the talk is of Tantalus and Apollo. These phrases are wrenched out of
their context not by me but already by him or by the blows of his destiny:

Oh, friend! the world lies before me, more radiant than be-
fore, and more earnest. . . . Now I have to watch out that I
don’t end up like old Tantalus, who became more of the gods
than he could digest. . . . I am now full of parting. I have not
cried in a long time. . . . Meanwhile, I am in France and have
seen the sad and lonely Earth. . . . Apollo has struck me. . . .
It was necessary for me, after a number of shattering experi-
ences that touched my very soul, to settle down for a time,
and in the meantime I am living in my home town. . . . The
philosophic light about my window is now my joy; may I be
able to preserve the path I have trod up to the present. . . .
Incidentally, love songs are always a tired ÿight, no matter
how varied the material may be: we are always already that
far along. . . . Dear friend, recently I wanted to visit you, but
I couldn’t þnd your house. . . . I think of simple and silent
days, may they come soon. (2: 914, 920–21, 927–29)

Yet these silent days began early on, back in the years before Hyperion, which
you are writing about here. Already back in the year of the Revolution, when
he was only nineteen, he had written into somebody’s autograph album, some-
body we don’t know:

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It seems undeniable that the Diotima of volume one represents the “se-
renity of childhood” for which the poet yearns (1: 616), and that she is accord-
ingly tender, innocent, and entirely prepubescent—a tutelary genius who de-
scends from the sky, trailing clouds of Wordsworthian glory (1: 629). Whereas
Hyperion loves Alabanda with that manly virtù that ÿows like a majestic stream
in Chaos, that is, in the land and time of the Titans (1: 631), he loves Diotima
with an airy, insubstantial love. Or, if it has substance, it is borrowed from the
mother love to which all living creatures respond by trying to be the mother’s
“favorite.” At all events, Diotima is in the þrst instance what Hyperion sees.
She þrst appears as such in volume one, book two, letter fourteen: “O Diotima,
Diotima, heavenly creature!” (1: 657). “Creature,” Wesen, may be more accu-
rately translated as “Essence,” inasmuch as Diotima seems more a pure Form
than a living being. The hero will now attempt to touch this little bit of heaven,
if only in order to protect it from a fall: “The railing she was leaning against
was somewhat low. Thus I was allowed to hold the charming creature a little
as she leaned forward over it. Ah! hot, shivering delight ran through me, and
my hands were burning like coals when I touched her” (1: 659–60). To touch
þre is to be scorched, however, and—with appropriate catachresis—to suffer
shipwreck. No sooner does Urania appear in the midst of Chaos than Diotima
lies in the grave (1: 663–64). Hölderlin will apologize to Susette Gontard for
the mise-en-scène of Diotima’s death in volume two, but the truth is that
Diotima never had to wait that long. Hyperion is from the outset of its þrst
volume an elegy, and Diotima is its country churchyard: “Do you hear? Do
you hear? Diotima’s grave!” (1: 664). Hyperion’s own death, we hear, will soon
follow: “I am digging a grave for my heart in which it can rest; I shall cloak
myself in it, for winter is everywhere; in the face of the storm I shall wrap
myself round in blessed memories” (1: 667). Once again prophetically, how-
ever, Hyperion lives on into advanced old age, remembering the maiden who
is long defunct. For the mother-maid is always already dead from the start.
She is death itself.
The art of writing—and of letter writing in particular—is a necroman-
tic art. If loving is the recalcitrant art in which every stratagem eventually
backþres, writing ÿows as easily as blood from a wound. However, we have

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There come hours when the shattered

Oppressed heart ÿees to the land of hope
In vain; where in vain our brazen defenses
Brace themselves against wisdom. (2: 967)

It is as though the “School of Destiny,” or the “School of the Sages,” as

he also calls it, had (almost) prepared him for—or (almost) braced him
against—his own destiny. Who teaches the terrifying lessons of this school of
destiny? Laplanche says it is his dead fathers. That is what his mother says too.
But the fact that she says it makes me think always of her, always of Gok,
which I sometimes write as God by lapsus calami. We have only one letter
from Hölderlin’s mother to her þrst-born son (see 2: 931–32). It comes from
the year 1805, when almost all the work is þnished. She signs it “Lady Gok” or
“The Female Gok,” Gokin. I know it is only an accident of survival, but there
are, it seems, one-hundred and thirty-þve letters from him to her. It is as
though all his life he’s trying to answer her one letter to him. (I know you are
going to count them again, all 135 of them, just to check on me, looking for
the chance to prove me mistaken: go ahead, it is she who is blackmailing us
both, and I hate her for it. Probably that is why I have done to her what I have
done to her here in the pages of your book.) It might as well be a million
letters that he writes or that I write or that even you write, though you had
such better luck than Fritz and I where mothers are concerned, a million or
one-hundred and thirty-þve letters to answer this one letter from her. I will
copy it out for you later. For the moment, just think of it: all his life he has
been trying to respond to her pious, pathetic whine, her endless servings of
humble pie with the tepid tea of unrelieved sadness. Perhaps Hölderlin’s en-
tire life is devoted to the futile effort to make her stop crying. One of his
earliest poems exhibits her: “When at the terrifyingly silent deathbed / My
mother lay senseless in the dust— / Woe! I see it still, the site of lamenta-
tion. . . . / Behold, how she weeps!” (“My Own,” 1: 22–23; cf. 1: 72, 78). As
you say of the mother-maid: “She is death itself.” I will return to this later.
(Honest!) I forgot I was supposed to be commenting on you. Hölderlin is so
much more interesting, to say nothing of Susette Gontard.

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not yet arrived at the letters; we are still tarrying with the writing of Hyperion—
which, it is true, is an epistolary novel in which a hoary Hyperion informs
young Bellarmine of the battles and the love of his youth. The most poignant
and sensual scene of its writing is the following one, and it is a scene of catas-
trophe. It is the moment, as we said earlier, in which Diotima threatens to
touch and be touched, to take on ÿesh:

She was so innocent! She did not yet know the powerful pleni-
tude of her heart, and, sweetly terriþed by the wealth in her,
she buried it in the depths of her breast—and the way she
now confessed, confessed under tears, with holy simplicity
itself, that she loved too much, and the way she bade adieu to
everything she once cradled in her heart, the way she cried
out I have now become an apostate to May and summer and
fall, and I heed neither day nor night as I used to; I belong to
neither heaven nor earth, I belong to One alone, One; yet the
bloom of May and the ÿame of summer and the ripeness of fall,
the clarity of the day and the earnestness of the night, and earth
and heaven are united in me in this One! That is how I love—
and the way she looked at me now with the full desire of her
heart, the way she took me now into her radiant arms with a
bold and holy joy and kissed my brow and my mouth, ha! the
way her divine head, dying in delight, sank to my open throat,
resting her sweet lips on my throbbing breast, her sweet breath
passing into my soul—O Bellarmine! my senses abandon me
and my soul is on the wing.
I see, I see, how it must end. The rudder has fallen into
the waves and the ship, like a child seized by its ankles, will
be spun about and will crash on the rocks. (1: 680)

The centrifugal kisses, the Scylla and Charybdis of a maid’s innocence and a
man’s guilt, inevitably culminate in the shipwreck of sensuality. Later on, in
the letters, even the ÿesh-and-blood Diotima will insist: not sensuality.

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To touch and be touched. “I see, I see how it must end.” The most sensual
scene as a scene of catastrophe: at þrst I thought it was merely you giving us
more of yourself, but you are right, the passage is there in Hyperion, and it
takes us well beyond the realm of squeamishness into the region of the patho-
logical.

“Dying in delight.” Why not living with delight? What chance did Susette
Gontard have? What chance did she ever have with him as her lover? She was
so hapless in love! But that means: without resource.

Who is this Poseidon who always seizes the child by her ankles?

You are insisting on this phrase not sensuality. Susette Gontard writes it, but
you attribute it to Hölderlin and see it as his fatal shortcoming. Perhaps
Hölderlin does not so much lack sensuality as possess another type than yours.

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If we expect that the action of volume two of Hyperion will lead to a

more mature Diotima, or to a more mature relationship between hero and
heroine, our expectations are frustrated. Diotima stays at home while the boys
set off on crusades of liberation. “You act,” she says; “I will bear it” (1: 701).
True, Hyperion þnds her “marvelously changed,” like the morning sun that
has risen to its zenith at noon. Yet the ascent passes over immediately to the
descent toward gloomy twilight: “She had become so sublime, she suffered so
much” (ibid.). Diotima remains at home, allied to her mother and the mother’s
hearth, a priestess of the kitchen. By the time of Hyperion’s departure for the
war of liberation, she has become a funerary monument: “Diotima stood like
a marble statue, and her hand palpably died in mine” (1: 705). Whereas
Hyperion goes on escapades with soldiers and bandits, facing death every day
on every page, it is Diotima, in the security of her own maternal home, who
dies. Presumably of chagrin, because she is now the one who is too penurious
for her adventurous lover: “I knew it soon enough; I could not be everything
to you” (1: 731). And, at the end, “But it is too late, Hyperion, it is too late.
Your maid has wilted since you are gone, a þre in me has consumed me by
degrees, and only a tiny remnant remains” (1: 746). Yet what could a tiny
remnant of such a diaphanous essence be? Perhaps Susette Gontard objected
less to Diotima’s dying than to her never having been born as a woman at all.
In retrospect, we must say that Diotima, far from being a priestess of
love, has little or no impact on the development of Hyperion as a personage—
and on this impact, in Hölderlin’s own judgment, hangs the success or failure
of the novel.3 If Hyperion’s initial conÿict arises from his failure to see or sense
Diotima’s love as suffering from its own penury, that is, if Hyperion’s rage
against Diotima’s perfection arises from his projection upon her of all the
perfections he feels lacking in himself, nothing that Diotima is or does in the
novel teaches him anything—either about his own need to project or about
his inability to see her as she is. Hyperion fails to see that Diotima does not
need to be ÿung against the rocks of Hyperion’s own guilt in order to know
that she is not an angel; she does not want to be fabricated of such gauzy stuff
that she becomes a transparent medium for the hero’s projections; she does

3. See Hölderlin’s letter to Neuffer of 21/23 July 1793 (2: 499).

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Perhaps his is only more reþned (“For love is happy to uncover tenderly”),
whereas to you it seems rareþed, vaporous. Why do you always insist on being
tickled and titillated? Don’t think that Hölderlin is unaware of his eccentric
sensuality. When Schiller remarks on it in a letter to him, after having read
volume one of Hyperion, Hölderlin replies: “I now take my metaphysical
attunement to be a kind of virginity of spirit and believe that awe in the face
of matter, as unnatural in itself as it is, is quite natural and bearable for a
certain period of life and over a particular stretch of time. It is like every ÿight
from particular relationships, inasmuch as it restricts the expenditure of en-
ergy and makes the proÿigate life of youth a bit more thrifty, up to the point
where its mature superÿuence branches out toward its manifold objects” (2:
663–64). You know that I hold no candle for eternal maidenhood, not even
for a man, and that I would be the þrst to shatter the crystalline prison that
Hölderlin has constructed for his Ionian maiden. You know that I object to
this hoarding of liquids as much (and perhaps inþnitely more!) than you. But
are you not completely oblivious of your own sublimations and your own
virginity of spirit as you inveigh against Hölderlin’s? Did you never have or
need the pliant membrane? Did you never have or need it because you had too
much of the other kind—the virginity of an awkward, inexperienced boy—
for too long? Don’t blame Hölderlin for your own mishaps. And don’t project
your maudlin history onto him when you yourself complain about his pro-
jecting his onto Diotima. You may be Poseidon.
Earlier you wrote something about Hyperion’s desire for virtù, the manly
virtues. In the very last pages of Hyperion, Hyperion is quoting himself. Or is
he quoting or ventriloquizing someone else when he says, or writes, “‘We too,
we too are not parted, Diotima! and my tears for you fail to understand this’”?
(1: 760). These are among the lines—the þnal lines of the book—that he
underlines when he gives Susette Gontard her copy of volume two. Pay them
some attention, why don’t you? And isn’t it strange that you’ve also skipped
over the most remarkable action of volume two? After Hyperion and Diotima
have gone their separate ways, Alabanda confesses to Hyperion that he has
always loved Diotima. Hyperion cries, “Oh, why can I not make a gift of her
to you?” (1: 738). So much for Hyperion’s undying love for a maid: now she is
chattel, passed on by one man to another man, a man whose love Hyperion

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not desire to be so innocent and so prepubescent that her designation as a

“priestess of love” makes no sense at all. Yet what about this designation?
There have been many Diotimas in Western philosophy and letters, all
of them tracing their lineage back to Plato’s Diotima in Symposium. Among
the most recent ones is Robert Musil’s satirical version of Diotima in The Man
without Qualities. Yet even as we laugh at Musil’s Diotima—her political naïveté
and her curbside psychoanalytic conception of love—Ulrich’s response to her
makes us realize that she embodies the Platonic priestess of love more con-
vincingly than Hölderlin’s maiden ever did. Indeed, when one compares the
physical descriptions we have of Susette Gontard to Hölderlin’s Ionian maiden
and to Musil’s Viennese socialite, Musil seems far closer to the mark. If Susette
Gontard was “the Greek woman” of Frankfurt, she nevertheless resembles
Musil’s mature and beautiful Diotima of Vienna more than Hölderlin’s child-
like Hellenic variety.
Who, after all, is the Diotima of Plato’s Symposium, which was one of
the dialogues on which Hölderlin at one time hoped to write a commentary?
One thing is certain: she is much older and much more authoritative a þgure
than the young Socrates whom she is instructing. Many aspects of her doctrine
make us think of the Sophists—Socrates’ sworn enemies, such as Gorgias—
and at one point her pupil comes perilously close to calling her precisely that:
at 208 b-c Socrates addresses her as “most wise,” Ì soqwtátn Diotíma, but
then goes on to say, perhaps ironically, that she is “like the most perfect of
Sophists,” Ïsper oÆ téleoi soqistaí. If Diotima is a Sophist, then the irony
runs truly deep, inasmuch as Diotima has been one of the principal spokes-
persons of Platonism (and hence of all philosophy) for the past two millennia.
Hölderlin himself seems to be aware of the curious sophistry bound up with
her character. He has Hyperion suddenly and inexplicably exclaim to the Ionian
maiden, “My dear Sophist!” (1: 700). Yet Hölderlin’s utterly innocent Diotima
resembles neither the uncanny Sophist nor the priestess who is “most wise.”
The aspect of Diotima’s instruction of young Socrates that most im-
presses Hölderlin comes from the þrst half of her discourse. Whereas the sec-
ond half, on the so-called “ladder of love,” ascends to the dizzying heights of
the love of the beautiful in itself, of the aÁtò tò kalóv, the þrst half teaches
Socrates that love is a mediator and a messenger who abides in between those

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thereby hopes to attain. Isn’t that what Hölderlin was doing ever since the
days of his puppy love for Louise Nast (“Stella”), wanting to give her away to
her future lover so that he could win that lover over to himself? Not even a
homosexual love can release Diotima from the exchange-value she represents.
(How far removed, in the end, is Hölderlin from Cobus? Never far enough.)
And why don’t you come out and say this about Hyperion as a whole, that it is
about men loving men? (See Hölderlin’s letter to Neuffer of October 10, 1794,
on the subject of love and destiny [2: 548–49].) And also about men using
women to hide the fact?

Skip this Musil paragraph. Musil’s “Diotima” is unworthy of him. If you had
the gumption to write about Agathe the reference might be worth retaining,
but as it is. . . .

Bad sentence! Weak transition! And in any case your readers are exhausted by
all this paraded erudition. You think they are meekly going to follow you back
to ancient Greece now, to watch you parade in another alphabet? They are
looking for Susette Gontard, not for Little Douglas. Can’t you get on with it?
And stop strutting! Incidentally, are you sure that Hölderlin planned to write
an article on Plato’s Symposium? I know about his intention to write a com-
mentary on the Phaedrus, in order to get at Plato’s “aesthetic ideas”; he men-
tions it in his letter to Neuffer of October 10, 1794, right at the end (2: 550–51);
but all I can recall about the Symposium is what he writes in an earlier letter to
Neuffer from late July 1793 (2: 499). Small point, but they’re the points you
have a chance of being good at.
Which brings me to an important question: Why did you skip over
those political parts of Hyperion? Especially the hero’s anti-German tirade,
where he outnietzsches Nietzsche? “Barbarians from of old, through hard work
and science and even religion made still more barbaric, profoundly incapable
of every divine feeling, corrupted down to the marrow when it comes to the
felicity of the holy Graces . . . ,” and so delectably on and on (1: 754)! If you
really want your reading of Hyperion to have more bite, why do you cling to
poor toothless diaphanous Diotima? Why don’t you go where the action is?

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celestial heights and the earth on which we stand. Love, says Diotima, is not a
god but a daimon or tutelary spirit, hovering or oscillating between (metafÂ,
ëv mésÔ) ignorance and wisdom, impotence and power, helplessness and au-
thority. She offers a portrait of the mother and father of Eros, and tells the
story of love’s birth—the story that so impressed Hölderlin that he referred to
it over and over again during the Hyperion period, at one point wanting to
name his proposed journal after it:

When Aphrodite was born, the gods celebrated. Among them

was Póroc [Plenty], the son of Metis. Now, after they had
eaten, Pevía [Penury] came to the door, begging for some of
the scraps. Poros, intoxicated with nectar (since there was no
wine at the time), stumbled out into Zeus’s garden and passed
out. Penia, who was poor, schemed how she might have a
baby by Poros: she lay with him and conceived Eros. . . . As
the son of both Poros and Penia, however, Eros þnds himself
in the condition of both his parents. First of all, he is always
wretched, and by far neither þne nor beautiful, as most people
believe; rather, he is rough and unattractive, barefoot and
homeless, sleeping on the ground without bedclothes, in door-
ways and on the open street, and thus is of his mother’s nature
(203d 3: t∞v t≤c mntròc qÂsiv êxwv), always a comrade of
indigence. Yet he is also like his father, in pursuit of the good
and the beautiful, always brave, courageous, and bold, an
uncanny hunter, always scheming at some sort of plot, striv-
ing for insight, abundant in resourcefulness, philosophizing
every day of his life, an uncanny magician, potion-mixer, and
sophist. And he is fashioned neither as an immortal nor as a
mortal, for on the selfsame day he can burgeon and blossom
with life when things go his way, but then can die off, and
then once again liven up, in accord with his father’s nature
(203e 3–4: dià t∞v toû patròc qÂsiv). Yet whatever resources
he acquires always dwindle, so that Eros is neither altogether
penurious nor wealthy.

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Surely it isn’t out of delicacy for my feelings? You don’t mistake me for a Ger-
man, do you? Perhaps you þnd it easier to sit back and criticize Hölderlin for
his inadequacies rather than to meet him on one of his strengths? Or perhaps
you love your Little Germans too much, if your Little Sabine may say so.
It may be that the letters themselves have affected you this way—I mean,
in a way that causes you to spurn the political. For it is true that by the end of
the correspondence I can’t tell whether Susette Gontard is becoming more like
Hölderlin or Hölderlin more like her: they both seem to excoriate society as
the abyss of nothingness. In this regard, Hölderlin writes to his stepbrother
Carl on November 2, 1797: “The more we are attacked by nothingness [vom
Nichts—what you hopeless Heideggerians like to call “the nothing”], which
surrounds us like a yawning abyss, or by those shapeless somethings-or-other
of human society and activity that pursue us and scatter us, the more passion-
ate, energetic, and violent our resistance has to be” (2: 668–69). Well, then, it’s
all about resistance! And even in Germany that means politics!

“Philosophizing every day of his life, an uncanny . . . sophist”: if that doesn’t

satisfy the demands of your autobiography, I don’t know what will.

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A number of jarring inconsistencies mar Diotima’s genealogy of Eros.

For example, only the mother of Poros is named: Metis, who for the Greeks
represents cunning intelligence. It seems that all the qualities of clever Poros
derive from his mother’s side. Moreover, the traits of Metis are exhibited less
by her son than by her son’s lover, Penia, who despite her ostensible resource-
lessness is sufþciently resourceful to get what she needs from Poros—who,
for his part, is utterly incapacitated. Finally, all the traits that are conþdently
(and hence sophistically?) attributed to Eros’s father are shown by the story to
be the traits of his mother: she is the schemer, avid in pursuit of the good and
the beautiful and the rich; she is the uncanny hunter, Artemis under the sign
of Aphrodite, uncannily canny, resourceful, philosophical and sophistical at
once.
No doubt Hölderlin was convinced by the Platonic Diotima’s deþnition
of Eros as an “engendering in the beautiful, in both body and soul” (206b 7).
Plato uses the words å tókoc and tíktw, sexual generation and giving birth,
a process that arguably combines both mother and father, even if in Hyperion
and also in Susette Gontard’s letters one gets the sense that Eros will have to
restrict itself to the soul. No doubt Hölderlin was also convinced that mortals
share in immortality only by planting the seeds of future generations—seeds
of children but also of ideas, insights, and stories—and not by stubbornly
holding on to the present moment, not by naively afþrming one’s kinship
with divinity. In that sense, Plato’s Diotima may also be the major source of
Hölderlin’s hope in the recurrence (Wiederkehr) of all that passes and is bygone.
Finally, it will not do to abandon Plato’s Symposium without at least
mentioning the entrance and subsequent speech of the drunken Alcibiades—
another þgure of resourceful penury. Alcibiades accuses Socrates of cruel
irony—he says that Socrates only pretends to love the beautiful youths of
Athens, that instead he tries to trick them into loving him. Ironic indeed is the
fact that philosophy has transformed Alcibiades’ complaint into a sign of
Socrates’ superior virtue: Socrates’ maieutic effect on the youths of Athens
depends upon his reversing the roles of lover and beloved as well as of soul and
body. Socrates does good because the young people love him and thus unwit-
tingly come to love philosophy. Hölderlin’s refutation of Socrates’ ostensible
indifference to beautiful bodies thus does some damage to the image of Socrates

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Don’t forget what Zeus does to Metis after he takes her as his lover. Once he
learns how dangerous she is, he eats her. He consumes her utterly, then claims
her cunning as his own, parturing Athena out of his aching head. Is this not
the prototype of every masculist ploy, this swallowing and coopting of the
cleverness that is inherently womanly? Wouldn’t you do the same to me—if I
let you?

A question to Plato: Why at Symposium 208e does Diotima refer back to

Pausanias’ and Aristophanes’ stated preference for the love of boys, for ped-
erasty? Why does Diotima herself (she who speaks out of the mouth of one
man, Socrates, and the pen of another, Plato) identify the love of boys with
nurturing the soul and the love of women with acting like an animal? Irigaray
(whom you do not cite) notices this, but she doesn’t make enough of it. Diotima
says that animals are sick with love, nauseous with love, and her therapy is
dalliance with boys. Whose Diotima is this, anyway? The question isn’t why
does Plato make Diotima a woman; the question is why he doesn’t make Diotima
a woman. (Not that I have anything against love of boys. Repeat this after me
if you can.) How is the famous ladder of love supposed to work, where does it
stand planted? It isn’t enough to drag out the old Irish rag-and-bone shop, as
you do, predictably, later on. One must ask: Why does the ladder begin and
end with the love of One? Why is the trajectory always from boys and back to
boys, the only Ones? Is this what Diotima is engaged in when “she” talks to
young Socrates? And what is he doing talking to “her”?

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as a stalwart lover of souls rather than of bodies. Hölderlin gives the lie to
Alcibiades’ complaint, and to an entire tradition of philosophy (the ascetic
tradition), in one of the most famous of his early lyric poems:

Socrates and Alcibiades

“Why do you pay homage, holy Socrates,

“Always to this youth? Do you know nothing greater?
“Why does your eye look with love
“On him, as though on gods?

Who has thought what is deepest loves what is most alive,

Who has observed the world understands lofty youth
And wise men incline
Often in the end to the beautiful.

In these subdued lines of verse, the lineage of love is once again traced back to
Pevía, Penia more than Poros, helpless inclination more than resourceful seduc-
tion. Hölderlin’s lyric poem thus resembles the letters by Susette Gontard—
letters whose penury attests to their very richness.
After this digression on Plato’s Symposium, and the analysis of Hyperion
that it is meant to supplement, we must turn to the literary text that is con-
temporaneous with the Gontard-Hölderlin correspondence and in part with
the affair itself, namely, the three versions of the tragic drama, The Death of
Empedocles. I have argued elsewhere that there is some difþculty with the usual
interpretation of these drafts.4 The standard reading is that in the three ver-
sions Hölderlin gradually purges the “accidental” characters and events from
his drama in order to preserve solely what is essential. In his letter to Neuffer
of July 3, 1799, Hölderlin does refer to “this proud renunciation of everything

4. See chaps. 1–2 of D. F. Kenney, Lunar Voices: Of Tragedy, Poetry, Fiction, and Thought
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 3–51.

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I have nothing else to say about your treatment of Plato—not one of my

competencies. (Is he one of yours?) But I wanted to remind you of what
Friedrich Schlegel says about Diotima in his Lucinde. (You’ve read it, haven’t
you?) Schlegel writes: “The inspired Diotima revealed only half of love to her
Socrates. Love is not merely the silent longing for the inþnite; it is also the
sacred enjoyment of a beautiful present. It is not merely a mixture, or a tran-
sition from mortal to immortal, but a complete union of the two. There is a
pure love, an indivisible and simple feeling, without the least disturbance by
restless striving. Each gives and takes the same, the one as well as the other;
everything is equal and whole and complete in itself, like the eternal kiss of
divine children” (Reclam edition, 80). Isn’t that what you’ve been trying to tell
us? Isn’t that what you’ve been dreaming of? Be that as it may, perhaps the last
word on Plato should be Hölderlin’s own warning-shot across the bow, from
the “Penultimate Version” of Hyperion, which you skip. These are the þnal
words of the preface: “I believe that in the end we will all say: Holy Plato,
forgive us! We have sinned mortally against you!” (1: 559).

Just listen to yourself: “I have argued elsewhere.” Don’t you know that these
words invariably introduce the worst stupidities into a book? If you have ar-
gued elsewhere, let it be elsewhere; if elsewhere you have argued, be advised
that these matters are too difþcult for arguments, which depend on clear lines
and straightforward oppositions. You have argued elsewhere? We will forgive
you for it—if you stop rubbing our noses in it.

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accidental” (2: 781). The standard reading presumes that the female characters
Panthea and Delia (þrst called Rhea) and Empedocles’ love of them are “sen-
timental” in Schiller’s sense and in any case peripheral and unimportant for
the life and death of the philosopher. It is neither possible nor necessary here
to trace the chronology of the plans and drafts of The Death of Empedocles
from 1797 to 1800, but one must respond to the possible objection that these
years of the Bad Homburg period, although the very years of the correspon-
dence with Diotima, nevertheless see a diminution of the space and impor-
tance given to the female characters in the play. Would it not make sense to
capitulate to the usual understanding of the development of The Death of
Empedocles and concede that the female characters, along with the sensuality
and love they promise, are absent by the time we get to the third draft? And do
we not have to accept that these characters and events disappear from the play
precisely as they disappear from Hölderlin’s own life during the Bad Hom-
burg period? Is not Diotima (now in the þgure of Panthea) declared a mere
contingency and eliminated as an unfortunate accident of both life and po-
etry? Is not the standard reading of The Death of Empedocles therefore com-
pletely convincing? Does not Hölderlin turn to the overwhelming impor-
tance of the problem of historical time—of the becoming of a new historical
world out of the ashes of the old—and thus let the all-too-transient accidents
of love and sensuality, the very essence of an excessively intense individuality,
drop? Do not his grief for Susette and his humiliation at the hands of Cobus
explain the fact that if there is any love left in the third version it is Empedocles’
love for his pupil Pausanias? And does not the emergence in the third and
þnal draft of the character Manes show that when Hölderlin is forced to leave
Frankfurt he ÿees beyond Greece to ancient Egypt, to the “essentials” of myth
and metaphysics?
It is not possible here and now to make convincing reply to these objec-
tions. Perhaps we are mistaken in any case when we try to draw a direct line
between the “essence” of a literary product and the “accidents” of a life. Nev-
ertheless, I want to continue to reject the claims that The Death of Empedocles
becomes increasingly occupied with sacrilege (nefas) and guilt, or historical
change and time, or anything else at the cost of its insight into the relation of
tragedy to sensual love. Rather, I would assert, if Hölderlin confesses himself

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These “accidents” you are concerned about—you may be right to say that
Panthea and Delia are not accidentals getting in the way of Hölderlin’s trag-
edy. Women are his tragedy, ever since his mother. Earlier I promised you I’d
copy out for you his mother’s one surviving letter to him. Here it is. Enjoy.

Most beloved Son!

Although I am not yet so fortunate as to have had my re-

peated request fulþlled—the request to receive a few lines
from you—even so, I cannot deprive you of the occasional
assurance of our lasting love and remembrance of you. How
much joy and good cheer it would give me if once more you
were to write to me, saying that you still love and think of
your family. Perhaps I have unwittingly given you cause to be
upset with me, so that you are paying me back in this bitter
coin; please be kind and tell me what it is I have done so that
I can try to make it up to you. Or, if you need any linens or
clothing, write me about that, or have your landlord do it for
you. I am heartily glad that, as our good Frau von Bröck ad-
vises me, you have such a benevolent landlord, one who treats
you so kindly. My dear, you will also know enough to be
grateful for the special devotion and support offered by your
noble friend and patron Herr von Sincklär. He and his es-
teemed mother have done so much for you, as have the per-
sons who are taking care of you now.
Yet my special heartfelt plea to you is that you do not
neglect your duties to our dear God and Father who is in
Heaven. We can have no greater happiness on earth than to
stand in the grace of our dear Lord. This is what we must
strive for with the greatest seriousness of purpose, so that we
may þnd ourselves once again in that kingdom where we will
never again be separated from one another.
Along with this letter I am sending you a warm vest,
four pairs of socks, and one pair of gloves, as proofs of my

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“torn to shreds by several sorrows” (2: 710), so that he has had to ÿee Frankfurt
in order to achieve “calm,” The Death of Empedocles exhibits the lacerations of
Frankfurt more than the desired serenity of Homburg vor der Höhe. If
Hölderlin shies away from “the common and familiar aspects of actual life,” it
is nonetheless true that his heart is “precipitous,” seeking as it does “alliances
with every human being and every thing under the moon” (2: 711). The Death
of Empedocles does not become increasingly loveless, bloodless, and pedantic.
Rather, as Hölderlin avers, “I believe I am a proper pedant because I am full of
love” (ibid.). If the progression of the three incomplete versions of the play
can be characterized by one word, that word is Innigkeit, which is an ever-
increasing intimacy and intensity of feeling. Such growing intimacy and wax-
ing intensity are perhaps the only things that prevent both Hölderlin and
Empedocles from a suicidal leap into the crater. Innigkeit, along with Armut,
penury, are the words that most faithfully characterize the letters by Susette
Gontard that we have read in this volume. The art with which they are written
is artless; or, if there is art, then it is the art of love, the recalcitrant art.
Yet before commenting on the Gontard letters, let us return very brieÿy
to Hölderlin’s Hyperion. For there is a kind of coda to the story of Diotima and
Hyperion, and we dare not close the analysis of Hölderlin’s early work with-
out reporting something about it. At some point after his release from his
year-long conþnement in the Autenrieth Clinic in 1806, that is, at some point—
but probably early—during his thirty-six-year sojourn in the Tübingen tower,
Hölderlin sketched a þnal exchange between “Diotima” and “Hyperion.”5 It
had been at least þve years since Susette Gontard’s death, and several more
since the period of their correspondence. It was as though Hölderlin were

5. See Knaupp, 1: 907–13, 3: 354–55. Knaupp reports that according to Wilhelm Waiblinger
these materials toward a continuation of Hyperion, most of them probably from the year 1808,
were far more extensive than the few pages still extant today. They were letters written in prose,
or Pindaric or Alcaic odes, “directed to his beloved Diotima” (3: 354). Waiblinger cites this
sentence, which apparently communicates the mood of these þnal þctional exchanges: “For the
þrst time I understand human beings, now that I am living far from them and in solitude”
(ibid.). For the following dramatic monologue, or Rollengedicht, see also Beck, Hölderlins Diotima,
163–65, 284–86.

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love and remembrance. But I ask you also to wear the woolen
socks. Praise the Lord, I can tell you that your dear brother
and his wife in Zwiefalten have been protected from the un-
rest and the calamities of the war, and I thank our loving God
that in Homburg, as I am given to understand, no military
conÿicts have occurred. May our dear Lord bestow his Grace
on us and on our fatherland; may He grant his sweet peace to
us and to all mankind.
With greetings from everyone here, and with the request
that you make me happy by writing soon, I close with assur-
ances that I remain unalterably

Yours faithfully,
Nürtingen, October 29, 1805 M. Gokin

“Unalterably,” you’d better believe it. (You think I’m an avid “feminist,”
don’t you? You think every woman is blessed by me, every man cursed? That is
your caricature of me. Hold onto it if it helps you. But I’ll tell you something:
when even the most vile man in the world, the typical man, writes the worst
sort of trash about women, the typical trash, all I have to do is substitute two
words whenever he uses the word woman: I insert the words my mother—and
then I can accept all the infamy he unloads on us. You’re shocked? Guten
Appetit! ) When Hölderlin is nineteen he comes as close as he ever will to
scolding his mother:

It pains me in the extreme, dear Mama! that I have to see you

so sad and dejected—indeed, on my account. As far as the
past is concerned, I beg you a million times, dearest Mother,
to forgive me. When I went to God’s holy table the day before
yesterday, I particularly begged the same from him.
As far as my current situation is concerned, I can as-
sure you that I could pass all my days confronting my fate if
your sadness did not cause so many hours of gloom to de-

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trying to continue the second part of his Hyperion, the þnal sections of which
are entitled “Continuations” and the þnal words of which are “Very soon,
more.” According to the þrst and longest fragment, “I can certainly tell you
that” (1: 910–11), Hyperion has put his loneliness behind him and is no longer
a “hermit.” The second fragment consists of a brief exchange between Hyperion
and Diotima. Whether such an exchange ever took place between himself and
Susette Gontard, that is, whether the exchange is fact or þction, whether it
belongs to Hölderlin or to Hyperion, cannot be determined. Perhaps that is
often the case with love letters. From out of his long night Hölderlin wrote
the following prose exchange:

Hyperion to Diotima

I cannot tell you how much from time to time I desire to see
you again.
I scarcely know how it is that I came to be separated
from you after our sojourn on the island, where I introduced
you to an extraordinary person whom people love because of
her elevated culture and her benevolent way of thinking. I
shall guard against removing myself from you. Life may per-
haps have something that appeals to me.

Diotima to Hyperion

Little by little I will be able to tell you something that amounts

to an explanation of the doubts and confessed quarrels we
have had.

Nothing more about these “confessed quarrels” remains in Hölderlin’s

papers. Instead, after a blank space that follows the þrst fragment we þnd the
following draft of an Alcaic ode, which Adolf Beck entitles “Diotima to
Hyperion” and which he describes as a dramatic monologue (ein Rollengedicht).

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scend on me. I beg you as earnestly as I can, I conjure you to

fulþll your duties as a mother and as a Christian woman,
fulþll them as you have done so conscientiously up to now—
except for your excessive sadness. Make yourself more cheerful,
enjoy the gorgeous spring, take joy in the hope-dispensing
verdure that God once again has bestowed on our þelds and
trees.

From the period of his conþnement in the Tübingen tower until his
death (you are wearing me down; okay, you win: in the end I’ll be writing just
like you, I give up) he writes her as she requests: over and over again he pens
the same obsequious phrases, bowing and scraping to her, seeking the forgive-
ness she will never grant him. Why should she? How can she? He made her
the mother of a loony. He kept her at arms’ length, if only through his syco-
phancy. Only in the end, only in the dark, only in his enduring confusion is
he honest with her: “I want to try to strengthen in me the respect I owe you, or
to think about what sort of remembrance I owe you, excellent Mother! If I
cannot entertain you as well as you entertain me, then it is the Negation that
lies in the selfsame submission that I have the honor of exhibiting toward
you.” I have the honor he says over and over again in these þnal þlial letters
from the tower, though sometimes the “Negation” peeps through: “I have the
honor of writing you again already.” Submission and deþance, obsequious-
ness and irony, indissolubly linked:

Most Respected Mother!

I am writing you already once again. The repetition of what

one has written is not always an unnecessary characteristic. It
is grounded in the fact of what one is talking about that when
one admonishes oneself to do what is right and says some-

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It is clearly a mere sketch, composed during a period of confusion. Yet it

seems to locate Diotima in the remoteness of the underworld and in the mists
of the irretrievable past. For in this sketch the voice of Diotima sings, and
what it sings is her portrait of the forlorn poet’s gloomy aspect:

If out of the remoteness, since we are parted,

I am still known to you, out of the past,
O you who shared my sorrows!
If I can still paint for you a few good things,

Then tell me, how does the woman who loves

you await you?
In those gardens where, after a wretched
And dark time, we found one another?
Here by the streams of the holy, primal world?

This I must say, a few good things entered

Into your ken, as off into the distance you
Once happily gazed about you, a
Human being forever closed, with gloomy

Aspect. How did the hours ÿit by, how silent

Was my soul about the truth, that
I had been so sundered?
Yes! I confess it, I was yours.

Truly! since everything that is known to you

You want to write down and convey to my memory,
With letters, that’s how it is with me too,
So that I, bygone, tell all touching the past.

Was it spring? Was it summer? The nightingale,

With its sweet song, lived among the birds that

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thing serious it should not be taken very much amiss if one

says precisely the same thing and does not always produce
something that is not the usual. I shall let it go at that. I
commend myself to you most obediently and call myself

Your
obedient son,
Hölderlin

Yet in these missives from the tower I have to look hard before I can
locate ironies to be savored: the irony I like best comes from that þnal ex-
change between Hyperion and Diotima, in which he refers to his “introduc-
ing” Diotima to an extraordinary person whom people love because of her
elevated culture and her benevolent way of thinking. Who might this woman
be? Whoever she may be, most of the ironies here are bitter, bitter coin, as
Lady Gok avows. “I see that I must close,” he says to his sister and his step-
brother, and to his mother he writes, at the end, “Accept me the way I am.
Time is precise, down to the letter, and all-merciful.” Hölderlin’s faith in mercy
is greater than my own, but he is right about the horriþc precision of time,
right down to the letter—all the letters, including the very last letter. . . .
At the end of the day you are still traipsing out the women (traipse
traipse traipse) without getting any closer to the mysteries. And by this time
you seem to have forgotten the mothers altogether. On January 30, 1797, dur-
ing those months in which Hölderlin is tutoring Henry Gontard, the boy he
feels is a mirror image of himself, and falling ever more deeply in love with
Henry’s mother, he writes a letter to his own mother. He is replying to her
continuing expectations and growing exasperation: she expects him to take
orders (holy ones, I mean), marry, and compel his wife to make babies. Their
whole relationship, it seems to me, is captured in these few lines from his
reply: “Dearest Mother! Your goodness makes me happy and unhappy. . . .
You want to have a human being who can do something. Am I that, if I am to
be honest with myself?” (2: 646).

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Dwelled not far away in the bush,

And trees surrounded us with their fragrances.

The unobstructed paths, the low-lying scrub, the sand

On which we trod, made me more joyful still,
And lovelier the hyacinths bloomed
Or the tulips, violets, carnations.

About the houses and the walls sprouted ivy,

Green the blessed darkness of long avenues. Often
In the evening, in the morning, we were there,
Said some things, were glad to see one another.

In my arms the young man came alive,

Who, abandoned, one day walked out of the landscape,
Which he showed me with a heavy heart,
Though the names of these rare places

And all their beauty he retained, whatever

On those blessed shores meant so much to me as well,
All that burgeons in our homeland,
Or, concealed from even a lofty prospect

From which one can usually espy all the sea,

Yet no one wants to be that high. Be content,
And think of her who still takes pleasure in it,
Because the charming day shone down on us,

Commenced with a confession or the squeeze of a hand,

Which united us. Ah! woe is me!
They were beautiful days. But
Mournful twilight followed hard upon.

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It is amazing how even when Hölderlin is terribly ill—and this is 1808—he is

still able to slip into womanly ÿesh. No, not that way. I mean: to incarnate
herself.

Let me comment on your Diotima poem now, the late fragment of a poem
that you have chosen, because something important happens in its penultimate
stanza. Hölderlin’s ms. shows a correction. He may be terribly ill by the time
he’s writing this poem, but he is still making corrections—and this one is a

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You are so alone in the lovely world,

That is what you always say, my beloved. But
This is something that you do not know,

Here the fragment ends—on a lofty prospect of unknowing and ultimate

concealment.
Let us advance to the letters, then, þnally, even if nothing of the forego-
ing (which has been about Hölderlin, not Susette Gontard) can help us very
much. For the sake of argument, the following thesis: What is most revealing
and most poignant in the letters from Susette Gontard to Hölderlin is the
mixture of elevated sentiment and mundane practicality, the amalgam of an
ennobling candor and a crass and almost vulgar concern with secrecy—in a
word, the fusion of the desire to soar in love and the terror of being detected
and shot to the ground. Alongside the poetry of intense feeling, nerve-racking
details of times and trysts; alongside the courtly conceits, shallow and de-
meaning deceits. Don’t let the nosy neighbors see you, don’t let my husband
catch you—all the ignominy of desperate love, all the penury of resourceful
Eros, the entire repertory of concealment and deception, the trappings of the
illicit. And yet. The sheer intensity of the anxiety and all the arabesques of
feigning are the very proofs of love. The high and mighty may smirk. They
may scorn the dirty little deceptions, the entire wretched business of forbid-
den love—the inanity, the embarrassing sentimentality, the childish fright,
the cooing of pigeons and the calculating of hawks. Yet until the high and
mighty have themselves fallen they know nothing of what they spurn; they
only seem to thrive on their well-protected ignorance. Theirs is a squalor more
demeaning than that of the poorest lover, because the high and mighty—who
are also the righteous and the just—are alone. And they would tear out their
own eyes for some of the dirty little business that is given as the purest gift of
grace to others but not to them. Love and squalor—that is a title or a dedica-
tion used somewhere by J. D. Salinger. And it probably echoes the words of
every poet since Bachmann, Dickinson, the Brontës, Shakespeare, Vergil, and
Sappho.

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terrible correction, a terrifying correction, at least for me: in the penultimate

stanza, which now has a “squeeze of the hand,” as you translate it—but it is
only a handshake, a Hände Druk, don’t get too excited—Hölderlin had origi-
nally written: “Commenced with a confession or the kisses that we gave one
another.” The correction obliterates the kisses and settles for a handshake. Her
lips have long been stilled, he is ensconced in his tower, what can he be afraid
of, why is he censoring himself ? You have been hankering after these kisses
since page one of this book, and now that you are within reach of them, now
that they are so close you can taste them, you allow Hölderlin’s correction to
stand, you accept a meager handshake in exchange for lip and tongue. I don’t
understand you. As for me, I won’t let the kisses be obliterated. Do I contra-
dict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself. I am large. . . .

Dirty little business? Purest gift of grace? J. D. Salinger? Why don’t you go for
a little self-indulgence! Don’t think that Ingeborg Bachmann and Sappho will
come to your rescue. So, now you have a thesis. Before you merely had “argued
elsewhere,” but now you have a thesis. Things are going splendidly for you, aren’t
they! Let me see if I can understand your thesis: Love hurts. There. Did I get it?

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The mystery of the Gontard-Hölderlin letters is tied to penury, the Pevía

identiþed, as we heard, by the Platonic Socrates’ Diotima as the maternal line
of Eros. Pevía is the humiliation that follows hard on the heels of amorous
humility. Even the philosophic ladder of love, of which Diotima speaks in the
second half of her discourse, has humble grounds, “down where all the lad-
ders start,” as Yeats says, “in the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.”6 The
priestess of love beds down not with the proud priest but with ignominy; her
truck is with the lowly, her trafþc is with the ridiculed. Her music is Luigi
Nonno’s breathless Stille: An Diotima. Her sculpture is George Segal’s un-
speakably forlorn Alice Listening to Her Radio. Her mate is the desperado.
Can we track the squalor and penury of Susette Gontard’s letters with-
out losing faith in the transcendent power of her love? Can we survive our
own scorn, avoid the high-and-mighty (and dishonest) spurning, without
collapsing into sentimentality? Here are some of the hardest tests, at least for
two readers.
Susette loves her pain and her tears and yet she cannot eschew coquett-
ish teasing—“wicked fellow that you are” (Letter I). She thinks of the tutor
when she lays down to rest with her own children—whom she must now
remind herself to love. It is as though her love for Hölderlin is driving a wedge
between herself and her own ÿesh. Especially Henry seems to suffer in this
triangle that often has him at its center, as though to make of the triangle a
pyramid and of Henry a mummy. Or perhaps Hölderlin is the one wrapped
in winding cloth: Susette herself wished him gone from the house, but now
that he is gone she spins him back again by the force of her lament—Hölderlin
as spinning mummy, top, or yo-yo. (His favorite Platonic myth is of the two
ages of the world, the reign of Zeus and the reign of Kronos, spinning out and
then back again on a string suspended from some Titanic þnger poised in
Chaos.) We are free to laugh, inasmuch as the wretched lovers will espy one
another at the Comic Opera—where, however, they want no spectators for
their own show. A “profound and holy seriousness pervades my whole being,”

6. “The Circus Animals’ Desertion,” in The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats (New York:
Macmillan, 1956), 336.

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About that ubiquitous, predictable rag-and-bone shop: it may be foul or fair,

but it is in any case silent. When Susette Gontard writes Hölderlin that she
wants to tell Ludwig Zeerleder of their love, she assures him that she “would
tell him only the most necessary things,” so that the “loveliest part” of their
love would be known to the lovers alone, “and would remain secret, sacrosanct,
forever.” What she did not tell Zeerleder she will not tell you. Is that not the
very essence of your frustration? Welcome to penury, Little Alice, my desperado.

At least for one of these two readers, my lonely one. For in the end I am
uncertain whether these extracts from Susette Gontard’s letters prove (a) that
love is penurious or (b) that editing is pernicious. You cut and paste and play
games with juxtaposition, and you think you are proving something more
than your own snippetry, but you aren’t. For me, by contrast, it all starts with
the hiatuses. Nietzsche says that somewhere. You are so prepared to þnd Susette
Gontard “teasing,” so ready to declare her “coquettish,” that it ought to strike
even you (who all by yourself constitute two readers) as extremely odd—as
something more about you than about her. You keep trying to turn her letters
into a cheap romance, one that you can identify with, one that anybody could
buy at their friendly local Barnes & Borders. But it isn’t a cheap romance. It is
an unheard-of exchange between two extraordinary human beings. You sim-
ply have to be able to accept that they are unlike anyone you have ever met.
Why can’t you do that? Think of the letter I mentioned before, the one where
she tells him, so simply, “Few are like you.” Even if he struggles to deny it,
whether out of anxiety or modesty, he cannot. It is the lesson he had to learn
all his life—þrst in the family home, then at school, then at university, and
þnally in every “normal” household with “normal” children waiting to be
tutored. True, sometimes he doubted his rarity. He wrote Schiller on Septem-

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she says, adding that he should “proceed quickly and quietly up the stairs” to
her room.
She tells him that they must both þght against “passion,” yet she wants
her “passionate language” to persuade him of her love (Letter II). It is a matter
of persuasion throughout, of ardent rhetoric, and thus of amorous sophistry:
this Diotima too, like the þrst one, will be both “most wise” and “a perfect
Sophist.” And for all the force of life in her ardent rhetoric, there is something
essentially morbid and moribund about that rhetoric: “The passion of supreme
love will never þnd its satisfaction on Earth! Feel this with me! To die with one
another!” That seems to be the object of her persuasion. If Hölderlin apolo-
gizes for having had Diotima die in Hyperion, and, as we have seen, not þrst of
all in volume two but at the very outset of volume one, this Diotima ups the
ante. To be sure, she rejects a literal Liebestod in the name of duty and “splen-
did nature,” but she offers this barbed consolation: “Therefore, do not grieve,
not even now that you have made me sad.” She protests (too much?) that she
is not in the least upset that he has not come to see her as her letter to him had
proposed: “I can assure you that it didn’t disturb me in the slightest.” She
prays for tranquillity and peace of mind, then talks of ten o’clock, three o’clock,
you know the sign: “I am ready for anything” (Letter III). “Build your life
upon my heart,” she enjoins, and adds, “Next month I am sure you will risk
it” (Letter IV).
A different level of penury rises to meet us in Letter V. Here Susette
confesses that by the end of February 1799 (it has been six months since their
separation), his image is beginning to evaporate from her mind; she tries to
call it up, endeavors to paint it again in vivid colors on her imagination, as
Locke had instructed, but she fails. “I felt my desire and my powerlessness at
one and the same time.” She needs mementos or relics of him—dare we call
them fetishes?—the letters and books, the lock of hair. She thereby lets us
know what we have lost in losing the bulk of Hölderlin’s letters to her: “What
a treasury of tender words, what a consolation, what a lovely image of you I
found in those letters, how they lured love-þlled tears of tenderness from my
eyes, how they strengthened my heart, how I cling to them now during every
wretched hour!” Hölderlin’s vanished letters enable her to repaint his image
on her mind: these cenotaphs of his—and of him—conjure up his ghost, as

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ber 4, 1795 (2: 596), “I believe that it is the property of rare human beings that
they can give without receiving, that they can also ‘warm themselves on ice.’”
(Incidentally, isn’t that Nietzsche’s favorite þgure—warming himself on ice in
high mountains?) But the way Hölderlin proceeds to use the þgure removes it
altogether from the realm of romance: “All too often I feel that I am not really
a rare human being. I freeze and turn to ice in the winter that surrounds me.
As my sky is of iron, so I am of stone.” Ice and more ice. No teasing would
melt it. In the letter to Neuffer where he calls himself a pedant, but “a pedant
precisely because of love,” Hölderlin says, “I am afraid that the warm life in
me will catch cold when it goes out into the ice-cold history of the day” (2:
711). To his sister Rike he is disarmingly honest about the source of the chill:
“I have in me such a profound and compelling need for tranquillity and still-
ness—more than you can see in me, more than you should see in me. . . . I
cannot bear the thought that I too, like many others in this critical period of
our lives—more critical still than the period of our youth—þnd a deafening
tumult surrounding me, so that in order to survive I have to become so cold,
so excessively sober and taciturn. And indeed I often feel as though I were
made of ice, and that this is necessary as long as I do not have a refuge of
stillness where everything that matters to me doesn’t impinge on me so much,
and therefore doesn’t move me to the point of agitation” (2: 880). Hyperaes-
thesia—with hypothermia as the only possible cure. What are you talking
about, with your accusation that she is “teasing” him? You think Susette
Gontard doesn’t know whom she is dealing with when she loves? I repeat, for
me it all starts with the hiatuses. Not your hiatuses, hers. Why do you say
nothing about these dashes and strokes of desperation—three strokes, four,
þve—an entire line of hiatuses? Maurice Blanchot says of Hölderlin’s gods
that they dwell in these dashes, these blanks, these caesurae. I would say of
Susette Gontard that they are her heartbeat, her pounding pulse, or the cas-
cading tears that make it impossible for her to glean a single word of his
letters. She weeps—while you dissect her letters for squalor and glands. Doesn’t
your trusty, testy Aristotle say somewhere that an educated person knows when
not to look for a proof ?
With all your remarks on Hölderlin’s failed sensuality, but also on the
sensuality you insist was theirs, you only betray your own desire. You insist

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now, centuries later, Susette’s extant letters conjure hers and his alike for us.
Like Hölderlin’s mother, and perhaps even like Cobus, we intercept those
letters—never intended for us—and so cross paths with the ghosts of lovers,
specters of the lovelorn and the forlorn, perturbèd spirits all.
In this same Letter V, Susette celebrates a love that dwells in the ethereal
realm of the beautiful and good—and yet she is unhappy with her spectral
Platonism. Fearful of sensuality, she is nevertheless not content to surrender
the world of sense:

Yet this loving relation subsists in the real world, the world
that surrounds us, and not only through the spirit alone. Our
senses too (not sensuality) belong to it. A love that would
transport us altogether beyond reality, a love that we could
feel in spirit only, a love that could not be nurtured and that
could give itself no hope would in the end be an empty dream.
It would go up in smoke before our very eyes. Or, it would
remain, but we wouldn’t know it any longer, and its salutary
effects on our very being would cease. When all this is so
clear, when it hovers right before my eyes, and yet when it is
so hard for me to þnd my way out of the morass I am in,
should I then deceive myself and rock myself to sleep? — —
Should I dream? Should I harden my heart? Should I learn to
think otherwise?

“Not through the spirit alone.” Yet what about the parenthetical distinction—
indeed, opposition—between the senses and sensuality? What do lovers see,
smell, hear, taste, and touch? Not even the most moralizing lines of her rhetoric,
and not even the most brittle and anxious lines of Hölderlin’s drafts of letters
to her, none of this can persuade us that these lovers never gazed, breathed,
listened, savored, and palpated. Not sensuality? Was there no turning hard of
the head, no gasp, no contraction in the belly? Who can believe that there was
always only the empty ache? Yet what makes us believe otherwise? What gives
us conþdence in the power of glands? Nothing more than these barren vaults
of letters with their dried ink or fading pencil, with their very paper going to

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that they enjoyed their love, even though every shred of evidence we have
indicates that apart from exchanges of kisses there was nothing between them.
Nothing but letters, dead letters. (Yes! We cross paths with her ghost! That’s
what I’ve been trying to tell you! But you haven’t even begun to imagine what
will happen when a ghost starts to make the tenderest love to you.) Because
admit it: you want something from these two, something more than corre-
spondence. You want to catch them at their intimacies. You lower Hölderlin’s
head over her naked lap, you reach out to his thighs and things with her
hands, the hands of your own mind’s eye. These two people are puppets to
you, and you want to pull the strings as luridly as possible. It is a voyeurism
that reaches back over two centuries in order to sate itself. What is it you want
to see in them? What blank in your own life are you trying to þll? Is that what
you thought a life of scholarship would do for you—þll in the blanks? Did
you expect the rest of us to be ediþed by it? It’s as though you were trying to
get away with some naughty prank at school, playing with yourself beneath
your desk, where you’re sure no one will þnd you out. Am I being too harsh?
— Or too accurate?
As for me, sometimes I wonder what this love affair was for—if it was an
affair, if it was love, and if love affairs are ever for anything. But then I read
lines like the following, written by Hölderlin to Landauer in February 1801
from Hauptwil, and I think this is what he learned from her, even if he learned
it only by half and altogether too late:

I always believed that in order to live in peace with the world,

in order to love human beings and to see holy nature with
true eyes, I would have to bow down, and that in order to be
something for the others around me I would have to surren-
der my own freedom. At long last I have learned to feel that
all-consuming love exists only in all-consuming energy: it
surprised me in moments when I was fully pure and when I
looked around me without feeling constrained. The surer a
human being is of himself or herself, and the more composed
one is in one’s best life, and the more readily one recoils from
subaltern attunements and comes back again to what is one’s

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powder. Smell of seed and seaweed, or musty odor of library? “Should I learn
to think otherwise?”
Still in Letter V, the greatest possible compression of love and squalor:
“Nor could I ever be at peace if I were forced to think that I had been swept
away entirely from the reality of you, and that you would be happy to make
do with the mere shadow of me, with the thought that maybe I was not right
for you.” If Hyperion’s Diotima is untouchably autonomous and self-sufþcient,
at least in Hyperion’s fantasies of her, Susette Gontard is not. If Póroc is
conþdent self-sufþciency, Pevía is gripped by the abiding fear that “maybe I
was not right for you.”
Maybe she is not right for anyone. “Let us do what is most necessary,
and let us do our best,” she writes, and in immediate parataxis she expresses
her fears about her children’s moral education. For if it is too lax, Susette will
not be able to rescue them; if it is too strict, it will drive the children’s mother
from their hearts. Henry is especially troublesome in this regard. He plays the
lord of the demesne, just like his father. And he chases after every sensual
gratiþcation.
What would happen to us if Susette’s letters were for us what Hölderlin’s
were to her? What if we were unable to read them, not because they were
indecipherable but because our hearts were pounding and the backs of our
eyes were throbbing in the dark? That is the squalor of Letter VI, something
beyond the scholar’s and the poet’s migraine: it is contingency hammering
away at divine providence—a crust of petriþed rye bread, Henry crossing her
path outside the door of Hölderlin’s former room, “Surely, you won’t be able
to take much more!” exclaims the little lord; the tomb painted into the corner
of a landscape long locked away in a drawer; the lover’s plans on which she
ruminates as the preacher drones on, plans to see him that summer and worries
about whether she will be frightened to death when he appears; “the holiest
moment of our love” celebrated in a dress of lavender and white, as white as
the towel of surrender she’ll be holding at the window.
In Letter VIII, Susette pictures herself writing happily, entertaining her-
self quietly with thoughts of him, until she is disrupted by the thought Some-
one is coming! although she is not so disrupted that she fails to write down
those words as well. She has only now encouraged him to have a bit more trust

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own, the brighter and more comprehensive will be the eye,

and one will have a heart for everything in the world that is
effortless and for everything in the world that is hard, a heart
for everything great and everything beloved. (2: 894–95)

This is the love story you should have been telling all along—not of yet an-
other pathetic affair that the world managed to stiÿe but of an energetic love
that opened the eye and the heart to þre. It is the only way to live! That is what
he learned from her, if only by half and altogether too late. You have to be
prepared for that all-consuming energy! That’s what I meant about those þnal,
terrifying letters: the energy is gone. Brief candle.
And that is why I wanted you to be writing about Susette Gontard rather
than Hölderlin—not because she is a woman but because she is alive, not yet
finished. Sometimes he drives me into a rage: for all his incomparable gifts, he
is always already finished. How do you know when a man is þnished? There are
unmistakable signs. In the spring of 1804 Hölderlin writes to Friedrich Wilmans
at the moment Wilmans is publishing the Sophocles translations. Hölderlin
wants to have copies of the volume sent to Schiller and Goethe: he is still
desperate for Schiller’s paternal blessing, and from Goethe he wants an overdue
ounce of recognition, neither of which will be forthcoming. Princess Auguste
von Homburg is to get a copy too, and in vellum, but she doesn’t count because
she is nuts about him. But here is how he þnagles and insinuates himself with
the august fathers of Weimar Classicism: “I believe that always and every-
where I have written in opposition to eccentric inspiration [gegen die exzentrische
Begeisterung] and thus have achieved Greek simplicity” (2: 930). Three lines
later he repeats the phrase, as though protesting too much, “in opposition to
eccentric inspiration.” (Some of my colleagues here at the Institute insist that
gegen in this context means “toward,” not “in opposition to.” Don’t they wish.)
With this apparently innocent disclaimer Hölderlin attacks everything he had
always stood for, what he had always sacriþced himself for and exposed him-
self to. For in the “Fragment of Hyperion,” a decade earlier, he had announced
that supreme simplicity is sometimes granted by nature but sometimes achieved
by formation and struggle—the latter necessitating something like eccentricity.
Eccentricity is not mere oddity but the off-centered, the dual-centered, the

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in people. In Letter IX, written after her return from Thuringia, where she has
so blatantly failed to help him, she wonders whether she should pretend she is
not back yet, “whether I shouldn’t rather let you be deceived.” His ghost then
avenges him, deceiving her with multiple apparitions—in the bushes, down
in the lane, leaning against a tree—eliciting from her “a moan, a whine, a
ÿood of tears.” Someone thinks that the lecherous tutor is still sneaking into
the house and instigating her confusion. “It was very hard for me to be as
faithful to the truth as possible.” So hard that she takes no time to contem-
plate the positive possibility of “ruin.” “I certainly would not do anything that
would ruin me and everything else.” And yet “ruin” seems to bear no relation
to culpability: “And even if I did nothing, would not the identical suspicion fall
upon me, and would I not have to suffer that suspicion without receiving any
boon in return?” Which brings her back to the impossible, remorseless, nega-
tive calculus of “ruin.” “For everything that I might undertake to oppose my
love seems to me now to entail my corruption, my destruction.”
“What a recalcitrant art it is, this loving! Who can understand it? And
who can do anything else but obey it?”
It is pointless to go on, not even to Letters XI and XIII, where Susette
tells him to do whatever he has to do and go wherever he has to go for the sake
of his career, just not back to Jena—and to Kalb or Kirms; nor to Letter XII,
where she goads him with her ribbons of Zeerleder; nor to Letter XVII, the
last of the series, which tells him to come and to go, to arrive at her side and to
stay away, to give her back her peace of mind and to rob her of her serenity, to
fulþll her life now that it seems almost over and to precipitate her ruin. And to
ruin “everything else,” her husband, her children, the House of Gontard. Let’s
give Frankfurt something to talk about.
The genealogy of Eros, born of Plenty and Penury, Abundance and
Destitution, Wealth and Squalor, Thoroughfare and Roadblock, Straightway
and Gridlock, Narrow Strait and Iceberg, is established forever in each of
these letters. Anyone who reads them, anyone who exposes himself or herself
to them, is affected by them, infected by them. However much Hölderlin’s
Diotima tries to protect herself from the sensuality of her love by amulets of
rhetoric, by all the apotropaic rituals of letter-writing, a desperate Eros crowds
and prods her. Her letters do not conþrm but defeat all theories of sublimation.

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bipolar ellipse. For the Greeks an ellipse is a shortfall and a shortcoming; for
Hölderlin it is a way of life and poetry. Eccentricity is the parabola, the hyper-
bolic asymptote, the approximate and interminable approach: “The eccentric
orbit that the human being—in general and as an individual—traverses from
one point (of a more or less pure simplicity) to another (of a more or less
accomplished formation) seems in its essential directions to be always identi-
cal” (1: 489). Identity is eccentricity. As much as he craved Greek simplicity or
Junonian sobriety, Hölderlin knew that his part was þre from heaven and all
the dissonances of the earth (1: 611). In the preface to the “Penultimate Draft”
of Hyperion, from the spring of 1796, he says, “We all traverse an eccentric
orbit, and there is no other path from childhood to the þnish that is possible
for us” (1: 558). Critics and philosophers wafÿe on and on about “inþnite
uniþcation” by grace of “the beautiful,” and they expect me to curtsey at the
sound of the word “beautiful,” which they think ÿatters me, but they forget
what the eccentric orbit enjoins: “Yet neither our knowledge nor our action in
any period of our existence reaches a point where all strife ceases, where all is
One: the asymptote unites with the axis only in inþnite approximation” (ibid.;
cf. 2: 51). When in his poetry Hölderlin dreams of repose, of uniþcation with-
out gaps and scraps, without leftovers and layovers, he knows he is dreaming.
Perhaps at the end he forgets he is dreaming, as he surrenders the bipolar—the
eccentric elliptical, the tensed span—for Goethe and Schiller. He is ready for
the clinic and the tower. He is þnished. She is the only one who could have
kept him out, and she is already years in the grave. Sometimes I hate her for
dying. Isn’t that stupid? I hate her for giving up. She could have fed him her
great round and opened the tight elliptical to him, there is always a way to get
around the avid banker. (Here I am, writing like you, desiring like you. Isn’t
that stupid?) The truth is that we don’t know and we never will know what
they had together, what they ate and drank together, what they touched and
touched on and laughed about together; we know only that it wasn’t enough
to sustain either of them, that they starved and went to their several deaths,
she with such alacrity and decisiveness that I admire her as I hate her, he with
such tortoise-like lurching over years and years that all I can say is Oh please let
my death be like hers, not like his, don’t let me drag on, stooped and stupeþed,
bowing and scraping, eking out doggerel verses for awestruck visitors, outliving

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For their sublimity is marked and marred by love’s old sweet song. Their sub-
limity is not above it all, is not erhaben, erhoben. It goes down. The penury
inherited from love’s maternal line raises and lowers its disheveled head over
and over again in the letters; no paternal line, no sunny sky god, is clever
enough to overcome or outsmart or even resist it. This is the very meaning of
tragedy, as Hölderlin conceives of it. In his translation of Sophocles’ Antigone,
Hölderlin has Danaë counting off the hours of Zeus, as though the father of
all the gods were a mortal imprisoned in her cell.

She counted off, for the Father of Time,

The strokes of the hours, the golden strokes. (2: 353, 372)

The god dons his mortality in this love struggle: the god of time and the earth
suffers the hours that she metes out. In the end, he is “more decisively com-
pelled back to earth,” and the words that are spoken in tragedy, which is the
liturgy of this return to mortality, are the “suffering organs” of the godhead (2:
374).
It is pointless to go on. I know that with regard to this genealogy of love
you will not þght me. I am satisþed with that. You tell me to be honest, yet it
is I who confront squalor while you take the cheap shot. I refuse to þght back:
futility itself. These letters ought to have brought us closer together than ever
before; instead, they have driven us oceans apart, we will never þnd the way
back. After all these years, after all these centuries of years, they ought to have
taught us that intimacy and intensity alone count. Innigkeit! That is Hölderlin’s
word, though he may have learned it from Susette Gontard. In any case, it was
for us to learn from one another. But after I had introduced you to an extra-
ordinary person, and after you had had the baby (how proudly you showed
me your eighth-month belly, right there at the train station where all the
world could see us—your new partner might have seen us too, but you didn’t
seem to care!) the only word you could say was security. You needed your
security! After all those years of clandestine meetings and secret exchanges,
after all the meals we shared with one another and of one another, after all the
hectic mornings and lazy afternoons of lovemaking—you dared to talk to me
about security! You told me you could no longer bear the anxiety, the secrecy,

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all my friends, who by that time will have abandoned me anyway one by one,
especially you, you þrst of all, you long gone out of my life with never so
much as a backward glance o’er traveled roads, sucking on the great round of
your scholarship and penetrating the tight ellipticals of your beloved books,
prying into the mysteries of the failed loves of the past instead of rejuvenating
your own, doesn’t the cowardice of it ever get to you? Mock me if you like.
But I love letters as much as you do—and eccentricities a good deal more.
There is always a vagabond point out there drawing me out of the comfort-
able circles of my self. I always let myself in for those outside points, and they
always disturb my orbit and twist me beyond recognition. I have long forgot-
ten how to protect myself. Don’t let all this spitting fool you. If I stop spitting
I’ll explode, you’ll have to visit me on Sundays, introduce me to your children
as their balmy aunt, not far from the truth. I don’t know what the matter is.
Mock me if you like. But you will never know when a woman is þnished. I
hate her and admire her and love her with all my body and all my energy. Eat
your heart out.

It is pointless to go on. We are oceans apart. Nothing will restore us now, and
why should it, why should we bother? Each of us has a separate way to go, and
we will go it. I’ve been going it alone for years now, and your time will come,
we all have to grow up sometime.
It is pointless to go on. No, I will not contest your genealogy of love. But
what is left of the whole project that is worth saving? What is left of The
Recalcitrant Art ? I confess I still love the title—even if all the rest is so problem-
atic that it ought to be burned. If I could þnd the originals at Dr. Arnold’s
house, would I in fact burn them after breaking and entering? Would I be
willing to be shut away in prison or an asylum for destroying a national treasure?
Would you visit me on Sundays? Would I want you to? I don’t know. Every
now and then I hear your voice—without knowing what you’re saying. It was
always only your voice, nothing else. It is pointless to go on. I have a new life,
a new baby, a new partner who will never accept my having been with you,
who won’t even let me pronounce your name. Not that I’m often tempted.
You should be able to accept the breakup—you of all people should understand
that what is past is irretrievably past—but you don’t. You are so caught up in

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the pangs of conscience, you confessed to me that you were too cowardly,
that your nerves were too feeble; you claimed that our love had taken its toll
on you, that you paid an exorbitant price for it. You submitted our love to
an efþciency expert and got a cost analysis?! I don’t understand you. I will
never understand you. I don’t suppose I ever did understand you. You never
write, not even to scold me. Not that I miss the reprimands, they were starting
to grate, it all took on such a quarrelsome color. And so I shall be silent toward
you, absolutely still from now on, and you will know me only through the
pain. I can’t imagine what sort of impression my words—my ÿood of words—
made on you. I kept no secrets from you, but I always despaired of þnding the
right tone. I cannot describe how crushing it is for me: I feel my desire and my
powerlessness at the same time. Everything is out of kilter, my thoughts are
adrift, years pass as centuries, centuries as instants. Who knows what will
happen next? As for me, I simply don’t know what to do, I haven’t the foggiest
notion. And the pain I feel rages like a þre in my head. Let us hope that the
pain lasts a long, long time. I’m just getting this off my chest, don’t read
anything else into it—I wanted to be sure to tell you that, because I know how
quickly your imagination runs off with you. The split between us is no con-
tingency, but necessity itself, serendipity. I’m glad it’s over, we have to move
on, have to rejoin the real world, I can’t bear to think that it may be over, I
can’t move on, can’t rejoin the icy world, it isn’t over, is it?

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your own little world that all you can do is calculate the hurt to you. Never
mind if the people around you are lacerated and bleeding, never mind if they
are at their wits’ end, if only little old Number One is pampered and petted. I
have to stop this: it is futile, it is ridiculous. I don’t understand you. I will
never understand you. I don’t suppose I ever did understand you. You never
write, not even to scold me. Not that I miss the reprimands, they were starting
to grate, it all took on such a quarrelsome color. And so I shall be silent toward
you, absolutely still from now on, and you will know me only through the
pain. I can’t imagine what sort of impression my words—my ÿood of words—
made on you. I kept no secrets from you, but I always despaired of þnding the
right tone. I cannot describe how crushing it is for me: I feel my desire and my
powerlessness at the same time. Everything is out of kilter, my thoughts are
adrift, years pass as centuries, centuries as instants. Who knows what will
happen next? As for me, I simply don’t know what to do, I haven’t the foggiest
notion. And the pain I feel rages like a þre in my head. Let us hope that the
pain lasts a long, long time. I’m just getting this off my chest, don’t read
anything else into it—I wanted to be sure to tell you that, because I know how
quickly your imagination runs off with you. The split between us is no con-
tingency, but necessity itself, serendipity. I’m glad it’s over, we have to move
on, have to rejoin the real world, I can’t bear to think that it may be over, I
can’t move on, can’t rejoin the icy world, it isn’t over, is it?

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 A  T

The late Douglas F. Kenney was Professor of Humanities at Smithson College

in Illinois. He wrote monographs on a number of þgures in German literature
and philosophy, e.g., Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Hölderlin.

Sabine Menner-Bettscheid was Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin at the Hölderlin-

Institut in Weimar. She published articles on the prose and early lyric poetry
of Friedrich Hölderlin and before her untimely death was working on the
historical-critical edition of Caroline Schelling-Schlegel’s correspondence.

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