John T.

Hamilton (Harvard University)

FULGURATORES.
Lessing and Holderlin

For Thomas Schestag

In the third, incomplete triad of the Pindaric hymn, Wie wenn am Feier-
tage .. ., Friedrich Holderlin moves to endorse a poetics of fulguration:
Doch uns gebiihrt es, unter Gottes Gewittem,
Ihr Dichter! mit entbloBtem Haupte zu stehen,
Des Vaters Stral, ihn selbst, mit eigner Hand
Zu fassen und dem Yolk ins Lied
Gehiillt die himrnlische Gaabe zu reichen. 1

The lines directly follow a terse account of the myth of Semele who, desir-
ing to experience Zeus in all his glory, was struck down by the god's thun-
derbolt, thereby giving birth to the wine-god, Bacchus. The implication is
that poets occupy an analogous position: to bare one's head to the divine is
to receive heaven's flash passively and then to transmit it actively by means
of creative song. In assigning poetry with the capacity to give expression to
the intentions of the gods, Holderlin reverts to a long and persistent tradi-
tion, perhaps best identified by the classical Roman conception of the vates.
Once a priestly office akin to the Greek npoq>fJTTJS', the vates was a figure
cherished throughout the Augustan period, which associated the poet's work
more closely with oracular interpretation, i.e., with the public duties of the
augur or haruspei. The tradition that allowed Vergil to identify the Cu-
maean Sibyl as a "most holy vates, prescient of things to come" ("sanctis-
sima vates, I praescia venturi", Aeneis 6.65f) also guided Horace's assertion,
in the famous conclusion to the Odes' prologue, that if his patron would en-
roll him "among the lyrical vates, [he would] strike the stars with his head
aloft" ("quodsi me lyricis vatibus inseres, I sublimi feriam sidera vertice",

1 Friedrich Holderlin, Wie wenn am Feiertage .. . , in: Htilderlin, Siimtliche Werke

(GroBe Stuttgarter Ausgabe), ed. by Friedrich BeiSner and Adolf Beck, Stuttgart
1943-1977, vol. 2/1, p. 118-120, here p. 119f., v. 56-60.
2 For references and critical analysis see Hellfried Dahlmann, "Yates", Philologus
97/1948, p. 337-353; on the Augustan period see J.K. Newman, Augustus and the New
Poetry, Brussels 1967, p. 99-206.

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446 John T. Hamilton

Carmina 1.1.35t). Such sublime heights came with the vates' mediating
role, which placed the poet, like Diotima's Eros, in the daemonic realm
between the eternal and the temporal, between mortals and immortals.
Similarly for HOiderlin, poets are at once situated beneath the divine ("unter
Gottes Gewittern"), while remaining above, or at least distanced from, the
people to whom they extend ("reichen") the heavenly gift. As seers, they
can authentically comprehend ("mit eigner Hand [ ... ] fassen") what has
been authorized from above, wrap it in song, and bequeath it to the commu-
nity.
While Holderlin's lines find general support in this vatic tradition, they
borrow their metaphor more specifically from the Etruscan figure of the ful-
gurator. This archaic office, which would be adopted and modified by the
Roman haruspices, fell to the one who could explicate the significance of a
thunderbolt according to a very precise and complex set of parameters 3 .
Based on a discipline that had its origins among the Chaldean priesthood,
the Etruscan ars fulguriatorum assigned the privilege of manubia ("the
power to hurl lightning") to no less than nine distinct gods, who could exer-
cise their right in any one of sixteen regions of the sky. Upon ascertaining
the correct god and region, the fulgurator identified the type of lightning,
considered the place or object struck, and publicly proclaimed his interpre-
tation. Invariably, the content was political. In the later, Roman version,
when the thunderbolt was ascribed primarily to Jupiter, this type of divina-
tion came to hold the highest place, capable of annulling or confirming all
other portents. So reports Seneca: "Whatever is foretold by [the force of
lightning] is fixed and is not changed by the meaning of another sign" 4 • Far
and above all other means sought for determining the will of the gods, the
fulmen represented sovereign authority. Clearly, it is on this basis that the
brontoscopic calendar attributed to Nigidius Figulus could make pro-
nouncements on the climate of civil discord during the last decades of the
Republic, including fairly explicit references to the careers of Julius Caesar,
Pompey and Catiline 5• By alluding to this tradition, therefore, HOiderlin

3 The best review of the material remains Carl 0. Thulin, Die etruskische Disciplin
(1905), Darmstadt 1968, here vol. I, p. 1-128. See also, Auguste Bouche-Leclercq,
Histoire de Ia Divination dans l'Antiquite, 4 vols. (Paris 1882), Brussels 1963, here
vol. 4, p. 32-57.
4 "Summan esse vim fulminis iudicant, quia, quicquid alia portenditur, interventus ful-
minis tollit; quicquid ab hoc portenditur, fixum est nee alterius ostenti significatione
mutatur" (Nat. Quaest. 2.34.1).
5 See A. Piganiol, "Sur le calendrier brontoscopique de Nigidius Figulus", in: Paul R.
Coleman-Norton (ed.), Studies in Roman Economic and Social History in Honor of

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Fulguratores 447

portrays poets as having the greatest social import. Vaticination inclines to-
ward civic intervention. Song governs people's lives. Aesthetics becomes
the basis for politics.
According to modern sensibilities - or perhaps according to the very
sense of modernity - this aesthetic confusion of myth and history should be
subjected to a rigorous critique6 . For Friedrich Schlegel, writing just years
before Holderlin's poem was composed, the analytical weapon most suit-
able for disrupting such an "aestheticized politics" is also likened to light-
ning, for example in the brilliance of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing 7•
Das Beste was Lessing sagt, ist was er, wie erraten und erfunden, in ein paar ge-
diegenen Worten voll Kraft, Geist und Salz hinwirft; Worte, in denen, was die
dunkelsten Stellen sind im Gebiet des menschlichen Geistes, oft wie vom Blitz
pH:itzlich erleuchtet [ ... ]8

This critical force may be opposed to Holderlin's claim concerning the po-
ets' privileged relation to truth. Far from being concealed ("gehiillt"),
Lessing's thunderbolt would recognize the ideologically suspect nature of
Holderlin's Lied and break open its aesthetic obfuscation 9 . Poetic represen-
tations, especially ones that flaunt a Graeco-Roman provenance, would be
exposed as a means for normalization at best, and at worst, social control.

Allen Chester Johnson, Princeton 1951, p. 79-87; and S. Weinstock, "Libri ful-
gurales", Papers of the British School in Rome 1911951, p. 122-153.
6 See the "Paralipomena" to Theodor Adorno, Asthetische Theorie, Frankfurt am Main
1970 ( 11955). On the question of "aesthetic modernity" see Jiirgen Habermas, "Mod-
ernity versus Postmodernity", trans!. by S. Ben-Habib, New German Criticism
22/1981, p. 3-14.
7 The notion of an "aestheticized politics" is adopted from the well-known chiasmus
that concludes Walter Benjamin's Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Re-
produzierbarkeit: "So steht es urn die Asthetisierung der Politik, welche der Faschis-
mus betreibt. Der Kommunismus antwortet ihm mit der Politisierung der Kunst." in:
Benjamin, Ausgewiihlte Schriften, vol. I: llluminationen, ed. by Siegfried Unseld,
Frankfurt am Main 1969, p. 148-184, here p. 176. The possibility of politicizing aes-
thetics, as it unfolds in Benjamin's development of the "dialectical image", also par-
ticipates in a fulgurating poetics. Without advancing any further discussion, I would
simply like to append the equally famous lines from the Passagen- Werk: "Nicht so ist
es, daB das Vergangene sein Licht auf das Gegenwiirtige oder das Gegenwiirtige sein
Licht auf das Vergangene wirft, sondern Bild ist dasjenige, worin das Gewesene mit
dem Jetzt blitzhaft zu einer Konstellation zusammentritt." Walter Benjamin, Gesam-
melte Schriften, vol. 5: Das Passagen-Werk, ed. by Rolf Tiedemann, Frankfurt am
Main 1982, p. 578 (Konvolut N 3, I; my emphasis).
8 Friedrich Schlegel, Dber Lessing (1797), in: Kritische Friedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe,
vol. 2, ed. by Hans Eichner, Miinchen/Paderbom/Wien 1967, p. 100-125, here p. 112.
9 On this common motif of ideological criticism, see Terry Eagleton's concluding
chapter in The Ideology of the Aesthetic, Oxford 1990, p. 366-417.

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448 John T. Hamilton

To be sure, such insidious aestheticization seems to find a most apt de-

scription in HOlderlin's figure of the father's fulgurating law, repressed or
suppressed within the song offered to the people. The insight of an enlight-
ened mind, one that is conscious of this problem and thereby free from it,
would disclose the paternal forces that deny us our freedom. The lightning
flash of critical theory promises to dismantle a dogmatic literary form that
proffers a blinding aesthetic practice intent on inhibiting the modern sub-
ject's capacity to think. In obliterating received ideas, its explosiveness
would replace the past with the future, remembrance with anticipation, ca-
nonical tradition with a demand for creativity, invention, and current rele-
vance.
To be sure, Schlegel's use of the lightning metaphor attempts to appro-
priate Lessing for his own theoretical-critical program, specifically for the
one which is best articulated by the Romantic configuration of Blitz and
Witz 10 • This notion, which gives the poet a more creative role downplayed
in the primarily interpretive service of the vates, differs significantly from
the conception of fulguration outlined above (and in fact would seem to
contradict Lessing's own comments on the idea of Witz 11 ). Nonetheless, po-
etic thought so conceived does hearken back to the very same tradition, al-
beit to an alternative strand within that tradition. For it, too, connects human
language with the gods - if not as a transmission of the divine, then as
something godlike in its own right. In ancient sources, this effect is com-
monly applied to oratory. Pericles, for example, is said to "bear a thunder-
ev
bolt on his tongue" (Kepavvov yAwTTTJI cpepetv, Comica Adespota, 10);
while Cicero refers to what others call "the lightning-bolts of [his] words"
("verborum meorum [... ] fulmina", Epistolae ad Familiares 9.21.1). Twice
in the treatise On the Sublime, Demosthenes' penetrating rhetoric is com-
pared "to a thunderbolt or a flash of lightning" (OKT]lTTWI [ ... ] f)
KEpauvwt), able to "tear apart or dismantle" (otapna~etv) whatever lies in
its path (12.4; see also 34.4). Not simply an interpretation of brilliant signs,
the word becomes the radiant event, flashing and illuminating what other-
wise remains in the dark. Whereas in HOlderlin's case poetry makes explicit
what is said implicitly by the thunder, here the poem is the lightning bolt it-
self. Language shifts from exegesis to epiphany, from verbal mediation to
verbal immediacy.

° For a useful account see Ernst Behler "Friedrich Schlegels Theorie der Universal-
1

poesie", Jahrbuch der deutschen Schillergesellschaft 1/1957, p. 211-252, here p. 232.

11 See Paul Bockman "Das Formprinzip des Witzes bei Lessing" (1932/33), in: Gerhard
and Sibylle Bauer (eds.), Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Darmstadt 1968, p. 176-195.

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Fulguratores 449

Which version, then, constructs the aesthetic ideology and which one
unmasks it? Certainly both Lessing's critical acuity and Holderlin's re-
splendent poetics are grounded in the political relevance of art. Both claim
the strength to disclose significance for the community. Both insist on the
inseparability of aesthetics and politics. The analysis, therefore, that would
view the two versions in strict opposition operates within a debilitating
blindness of its own. Its methodological failure results from the pre-
sumption that the aesthetic can only be construed as a representation of po-
litical, historical or cultural forces. It falters in its wish to distinguish aes-
thetic experience from critical truth, aiming to re-inscribe art within a
broader, deaestheticized frame 12 • The metaphor of lightning shared by
Schlegel's and Holderlin's texts suggests an alternative. By revealing the
historical or political unconscious buried in subjective affect ("die dunkel-
sten Stellen [ ... ] im Gebiet des menschlichen Geistes"), Lessing's fulmi-
nating critique also reiterates what HOlderlin's lines confidently affirm -
that the aesthetic is indissoluble from the political. Both participate in a
conventional poetics of fulguration, but neither imposes an unquestioned
relation to literary legacy. On the contrary, their common source of repre-
sentation as well as their mutual interaction reflect a profound and ongoing
commitment to a criticism grounded in the aesthetic (and not despite it) - a
persistent tradition, perhaps, but one that is elicited to question the persis-
tence of all traditions.

The inseparability of the political and the aesthetic is expressed by the dual
possibility of language, both to reveal the truth of signs and to produce signs
that reveal the truth. This complementary role is wonderfully articulated by
the image of the fulgurator, who was said to have the power not only to ex-
plicate the significance of a thunderbolt, but also to summon, by means of
language, the lightning to strike from the sky. Pliny the Elder refers to an-
cient accounts of prayers used to conjure a thunderblast, a practice fre-
quently carried out by Numa (Nat. Hist. 2.140). Therefore, while as Cicero
asserts, the fulgurator is simply to be counted among the other "interpreters
of signs" ("interpretes ostentorum", De divinatione 2.1 09), it is nonetheless
true that he can elicit the phenomenon by his own powers. Tellingly, Jupiter
too is considered a fulgurator, insofar as he controls and is the very source
of the thunderbolt. Indeed, in the treatise De mundo attributed to Apuleius,

12 I refer the reader to David Ferris' excellent study Silent Urns: Romanticism, Helle-
nism, Modernity, Stanford 2000, here p. l-15 and 62-70.

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450 John T. Hamilton

Jupiter is explicitly named "the one who creates lightning, thunder and the
thunderbolt" ("fulgurator et tonituralis et fulminator", 37) 13 •
Lessing and Holderlin dealt with and certainly have been considered as
dealing with this double legacy of poetic fulguration. Their respective en-
gagements with this venerated tradition, both as subjective authors of texts
as well as objective figures of a Rezeptionsgeschichte, reflect the duality in-
herent in the figure of the fulgurator. A brief survey of some additional
texts will further illustrate this point. In the new-year poem for 1752, pub-
lished in the Berlinische Priviligierte Zeitung, Lessing's persona is explic-
itly a reader of the thunderstorms that serve as figures for Europe's warring
nations ("Kriegeswetter"). The clashing provides foil for the peace offered
by Frederick the Great.
Botschaft von hingerissnen Gottem
Der einst durch sie regierten Welt;
Botschaft von finstem Kriegeswettem,
Die bier ein Gott zuriicke halt,
Und dort ein Gott, der grausamer verfahrt,
Mit immer neuen Blitzen niihrt.
Doch Botschaft auch von einem Lande,
Wo Friedrich den weichen Zepter fiihrt,
Und Ruh und Gliick, im schwesterlichen Bande,
Die Schwellen seines Thrones ziert [ ... ] 14

Similarly, in the conclusion to his essay, Rettungen des Horaz (1754) Les-
sing establishes a new basis for understanding tradition through a discussion
of Horace's Carm. 1.34, a short poem in which the narrator describes his
role as a vates interpreting a portentous thunderclap heard from a cloudless
sky - "per purum tonantes egit equos" 15 • In the course of the argument,
Lessing ostensibly correlates an experience of literary tradition with the
prognostication of a fulgurator. It is clear then, why, as an object of re-
ception after his death, Lessing appears not simply as an interpreter but
rather as an originator of figural lightning, for example in the Schlegel cita-
tion given above. To be sure, throughout Schlegel's memorial essay, Les-

13 See Raymond Bloch, Les Prodiges dans l'antiquite classique. Grece, Etrurie et Rome,
Paris 1963, p. 150, note 2.
14 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Der Eintritt des 1725sten Jahres, in: Lessing, Werke und
Briefe, vol. 2: Werke 1751-1753, ed. by Jiirgen Stenzel, Frankfurt am Main 1998, p.
398.
15 Lessing, Rettungen des Horaz, in: Lessing, Siimtliche Schriften, vol. 5, ed. by Karl
Lachmann and Franz Muncker, Berlin 1968 ('Stuttgart 1890), p. 272-309. On this es-
say and its reformulation of tradition, see my "Thunder from a Clear Sky: On Less-
ing's Redemption of Horace", Modem Language Quarterly 62/2001, p. 203-218.

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Fulguratores 451

sing's radical effect on German letters is couched in terms consistently sug-

gestive of lightning: "Lessing [ ... ] war einer von den revolutioniiren Geis-
tem, die iiberall wohin sie sich [ ... ] wenden, gleich einem scharfen
Scheidungsmittel, die heftigsten Giirungen und gewaltigsten Erschiitterun-
gen allgemein verbreiten" 16 • This cutting, disseminating violence is picked
up by Goethe when he describes how Lessing's Laocoon presented Ger-
many with a "Werkzeug der Bildung" - "Daher war uns jener Lichtstrahl
hOchst willkommen, den der vortrefflichste Denker durch diistre Wolken
auf uns herableitete [ ... ] Wie vor einem Blitz erleuchteten sich uns aile Fol-
gen dieses herrlichen Gedankens" 17 •
As for Holderlin, the phenomenon of lightning, in addition to its place in
Wie wenn am Feiertage .. ., plays a significant role throughout the poetry
from the Tiibingen period into the so-called Umnachtung 18 • Not surprising-
ly, the image enjoys a broad semantic range: from representing the vengeful
expression of Jupiter's fury (Die Weisheit des Trauers, Hymne an die
Menschheit) and the life-force that animates nature (Die Unsterblichkeit der
Seele, An einen Baum) to serving as the manifestation of the godhead, an
experience of the deus revelatus in a world where the divine is otherwise
absconditus 19 :
Was ist Gott? unbekannt, dennoch
Voll Eigenschaften ist das Angesicht
Des Hirnrnels von ihrn. Die Blize nemlich
Der Zorn sind eines Gottes. 20

In the first letter to Bohlendorff, Holderlin fondly recalls Goethe's lines

from Grenzen der Menschheit (1781): "Ja! es gefallt mir, wie es zugeht,
gefallt mir, wie wenn im Sommer 'der alte heilige Vater mit gelassener
Hand aus rothlichen Wolken seegnende Blize schiittelt'." 21 The blessing

16 Schlegel, Uber Lessing (seen. 8), p. 101.

17 Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Siimtliche Werke, Briefe, Tagebiicher und Gespriiche, vol.
14: Aus meinem Leben: Dichtung und Wahrheit, ed. by Klaus Detlef Mi.iller, Frankfurt
am Main 1985, p. 345f.
18 In the poetry alone, the Worterbuch zu Friedrich Holder/in, vol. 1, ed. by Heinz-
Martin Dannhauer, Hans Otto Horch, and Klaus Schuffe1s, Tiibingen 1983, cites
thirty-one passages for Blitz and blitzen.
19 See Yahya A. E1saghe, Untersuchungen zur Funktion des Mythos in Holder/ins
Feiertagshymne. Gedichte nach 1800, Tiibingen 1998, p. 106-114.
20 Holderlin, Was ist Gott? in: Groj3e Stuttgarter Ausgabe (seen. 1), vol. 211, p. 210, v.
1-4.
21 HO!derlin, Letter to Bohlendorff, 4 December 1801, in: Groj3e Stuttgarter Ausgabe,
vol. 6/1, p. 425-428, here p. 427.

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452 John T. Hamilton

that is sent from clouds of red (Goethe had written "aus rollenden Wolken")
also marks the limit of human accomplishment. As Goethe's poem contin-
ues:
Denn mit Gottem
Soli sich nicht messen
Irgend ein Mensch.
Hebt er sich aufwiirts
Und beriihrt
Mit dem Scheitel die Sterne,
Nirgends haften dann
Die unsichem Sohlen,
Und mit ibm spielen
Wolken und Winde.Z2

Again, it is the vatic tradition, codified by Horace ("bertihrt mit dem

Scheitel die Sterne"; "sublimi feriam sidera vertice"), that maintains the
distinction between mortals and immortals by having the poet occupy the
space of the middle zone. Man fails to attain the gods' measure because the
divine is immeasurable- or, in other words, because man is measured: der
Mensch is mensus. Poets apparently can establish a continuity between
heaven and earth only because mortals exist in a discontinuous relationship
to the divine.
The well-known Heraclitus fragment can be applied with justice to
Holderlin's poetic career: "lightning steers all things" (Ta Be navTa
oiaKi~EI Kepavvos, Diels, fr. 64). Accordingly, as the sixth and seventh
strophes of the Feiertagshymne make clear, in performing their vatic duty as
intermediaries, poets should find a mythic exemplum in the story of Semele,
the mortal mother of Dionysus. For like this woman, poets desire to behold
the plenitude of the divine and thereby court the risk of being struck down
by the god's thunderbolt. Insofar as they must "unter Gottes Gewittem [ ... ]
mit entblosstem Haupte [ ... ] stehen", they occupy precisely the same space
as "die gottlichgetroffene". Consequently, Martin Heidegger, whose poeto-
logical musings emerge from a profound engagement with Holderlin's reu-
vre, explicitly refers to the Semele myth in order to establish that poet's ex-
emplarity for "dichterisch wohnen", which he defines as "in der Gegenwart
der Gotter stehen und betroffen sein von der Wesensnahe der Dinge" 23 . In-
deed, it is in no way fortuitous that Heidegger's poetic theories receive what
is perhaps their greatest development in the 1966/67 Heraclitus seminar,

22 Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Grenzen der Menschheit, in: Goethe, Siimtliche Werke (see
n. 17), vol. 2, ed. by Karl Eibl, p. 30 I f.
23 Martin Heidegger, "Holderlin und das Wesen der Dichtung", in: Heidegger, Gesamt-
ausgabe, vol. 4: Erliiuterungen zu Holderlins Dichtung (1944), Frankfurt am Main
1971, p. 33-48, here p. 42 (my emphasis).

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Fulguratores 453

which opens with a lengthy discussion of the 64th fragment 24 • Heidegger's

gambit deserves citation, if for no other reason than that it readily recalls the
Horatian figure of thunder from a clear sky: "lch erinnere mich an einen
Nachmittag wiihrend meines Aufenthaltes auf Aegina. PlOtzlich vernahm
ich eine einzigen Blitzschlag, auf den dann kein weiterer erfolgte. Mein
Gedanke war: Zeus." 25
The fulgurator stands at the threshold of nationhood. If for Schlegel,
Lessing represents a fulminating spirit of revolution, it is specifically be-
cause he was "der eigentliche Autor der Nation und des Zeitalters" - not
simply a genius, but more emphatically a "deutsches Genie" 26 • Similarly, in
his laudatory necrologue, Johann Gottfried Herder finds a truly original
German sensibility in Lessing's work, before which it is doubtful that there
was even such a thing as German taste: "Kein neuerer Schriftsteller hat,
diinkt mich, in Sachen des Geschmacks, des feinern, griindlichen Urteils
tiber litterarische Gegenstande, auf Teutschland mehr gewiirkt, als LeBing.
Was war teutscher Geschmack im Anfang dieses Jahrhunderts?" Indeed,
Herder goes on: "So lange Teutsch geschrieben ist, hat, diinkt mich, nie-
mand, wie LeBing, teutsch geschrieben [ ... ]"27 Comparable only to Luther
perhaps, Herder asserts that Lessing wrote "ursprilnglich teutscher" than
any other before him. In both Schlegel and Herder, then, Lessing's capacity
to represent the nation is parallel with the power to constitute that national-
ity. Germans become German as a direct result of Lessing's literary accom-
plishments. One's own German identity is disclosed through the agency of a
single man.
It is important to bear in mind that although one's nationality is perfectly
natural, it is not readily apparent or knowable. Lessing's work provides ac-
cess to such knowledge, because - again, to use Schlegel's phrase - his
words illuminate "the darkest places in the realm of the spirit as though by
lightning". Hidden inside each potentially German subject is a political
identity, awaiting the thunderbolt that will reveal its essence. This crypt of
potentiality, this "darkest place in the realm of the human spirit", in fact
names the space that Alexander Baumgarten had designated as the proper

24 Martin Heidegger and Eugen Fink, Heraklit: Seminar Wintersemester 196611967, in:
Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe (see n. 22), vol. 15: Seminare, ed. by Curd Ochwaldt,
Frankfurt am Main 1986, p. 11-263. On lightning, see in particular Lectures I and 7:
p. 11-29 and p. 118-138.
25 P. 15.
26 Schlegel, Vber Lessing (seen. 8), p. 100.
27 Johann Georg Herder, "G. E. Lessing: Geboren 1729, gestorben 1781", in: Herder,
Werke, vol. 2: Schriften zur Asthetik und Literatur 1767-1781, ed. by Gunter Grimm,
p. 689-702, here p. 689f.

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454 John T. Hamilton

area of investigation for his new science of Aesthetics, the fundus animae,
the source or foundational ground of the soul. It is the basis of experiential
particularity, the Lebenswelt that resists the inquiries of reason, but is open
to the "lower rationale" - the "gnoseologia inferior" - that defines Baum-
garten's project. In Herder's elaboration of Baumgarten's principal treatise,
the fundus animae is specified as that in which one's inner vitality
("Starke") is constituted28 • And for Schlegel, far beyond any other writer of
the Enlightenment, Lessing's fulgurating poetics best serves to awaken
within this dark source of aesthetic feeling, within the deepest recesses of
every German soul, his or her political identity.
The lightning bolt that illuminates this aesthetic space apparently reveals
the political in the natural and thereby urges us to conceive that the political
is the natural. This, of course, is entirely congruent with the classical politi-
cal theory of Aristotle, who, throughout the Politics is at pains to demon-
strate that the polis is not merely an institution founded by convention, but
rather something altogether natural: q>avepov OTt Twv f!JUOEI i] TICAlS
EOTi, KOl OTI 6 av8pc.ulTOS f!JUOEI lTOAITIKOV ~WIOV ("It is clear that the
city belongs to those things that are by nature, and that man, by nature, is a
political animal" 1253a; my emphasis). Lessing, too, accepts the naturalness
of the political as self-evident. Anthropology is politics. Accordingly, he in-
sists that German poetics be developed along tendencies that would help re-
alize a naturally German politics. On a pragmatic level this means, first and
foremost, that German literature must counter the influence of French neo-
classical theater. In the preface to his Beytriige zur Historie und Aufnahme
des Theaters (1750), at the age of21, Lessing argues:"[ ... ] wollte der Deut-
sche in der dramatischen Poesie seinem eigenen Naturelle folgen, so wtirde
unsre Schaubtihne mehr der englischen als franzosischen gleichen." 29 Much
later, when Friedrich Nicolai tries to dissuade his friend from accepting a
post at Joseph Il's court in Vienna, Lessing gives his well-known, fulmi-
nating reply:
Wien mag sein wie es will, der deutschen Literatur verspreche ich doch immer
noch mehr Gliick, als in Eurem franzosierten Berlin. [ ... ] Sonst sagen Sie rnir von
Ihrer Berlinischen Freiheit zu denken und zu schreiben ja nichts. Sie reduciert sich
einzig und allein auf die Freiheit, gegen die Religion so viel Sottisen zu Markte
bringen, als man will. Und dieser Freiheit muB sich der rechtliche Mann nun bald
zu bedienen schamen. Lassen Sie es aber doch einmal einen in Berlin versuchen,

28 Herder, "Kritik der Aesthetica" in: Werke, vol. 1: Fruhe Schriften 1764-1772, Frank-
furt am Main 1985, p. 659-576, p. 665.
29 Lessing, Beytriige zur Historie und Aufnahme des Theaters, in: Werke und Briefe (see
n. 14), vol. 1: Werke 1743-1750, ed. by Jiirgen Stenzel, Frankfurt am Main 1989, p.
723-733, here p. 729.

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Fulguratores 455

tiber andere Dinge so frei zu schreiben [ ... ]lassen Sie einen in Berlin auftreten,
der fiir die Rechte der Untertanen, der gegen Aussaugung und Despotisrnus seine
Stirnrne erheben wollte [ ... ] und Sie werden bald die Erfahrung haben, welches
Land bis auf den heutigen Tag das sklavischste Land von Europa ist. 30
The exaggerated tone of these remarks no doubt stemmed from the frustrat-
ion and insult Lessing had consistently suffered in Berlin following the
Seven Year's War. Just a few years back he had been nominated to fill the
post of Royal Librarian after negotiations with Winckelmann had failed.
But Frederick the Great refused to pursue Lessing's application and offered
the position instead to a Parisian scholar by the name of Pemety. Lessing, of
course, never made it to Vienna, thanks to the good graces of the Crown
Prince of Brunswick, who summoned him to the Bibliotheca Augusta in
Wolfenbtittel, where he would end his days as the chief librarian. Never-
theless, at the age of 40, his hopes to establish himself in Berlin, in Freder-
ick's court, were abandoned for good.
It had been just over two decades since Lessing set aside his university
studies and first attempted to find his place in the Prussian capital. But his
Francophobia and the incautious tone of his journalism obstructed his career
in the court that played host to Voltaire and was steadily becoming known
as "Paris-on-the-Pleiss." Interestingly, many of Lessing's first Berlin pub-
lications of the 1750s, in particular the new-year odes that appeared in the
Berlinische Priviligierte Zeitung, betrayed a decided intention on Lessing's
part to play the role of Horace 31 • But the appeals of the young man in des-
perate need of royal patronage proved to be fruitless. Frederick was no
Augustus. Besides, the Prussian court already had its Horace in one Samuel
Gotthold Lange, pastor of Laublingen and member of the Berlin Academy,
whose full Horace translation with commentary had been commissioned by
the king himself. Beyond possible motives of jealousy, the outspoken pre-
tentiousness of Lange, coupled with his ineptitude as a scholar, drove
Lessing to publicly expose the translator's work as worthless. After ex-
posing some fifty significant errors in the first book, Lessing concludes:
lch habe Ihnen gezeigt, daB Sie weder Sprache, noch Critik, weder Alterthtirner,
noch Geschichte, weder KenntniB der Erde noch des Hirnrnels besitzen; kurz daB
Sie keine einzige von den Eigenschaften haben, die zu einern Uebersetzer des
Horaz nothwendig erfordert werden. Was kann ich noch rnehr thun? 32

30 Lessing, letter to F. Nicolai, 25.8.1769, in: Werke und Briefe (seen. 14), vol. 1111:
Briefe von und an Lessing 1773-1780, ed. by Helmuth Kiesel, Frankfurt am Main
1997, p. 621-623, here p. 622f.
31 See Volker Riedel, Lessing und die romische Literatur, Weimar 1976, p. 124f.
32 Lessing, Ein Vade Mecum for den Hm. Sam. Gotth. Lange (1754), in: Lessing, Siimt-
liche Schriften, vol. 5 (seen. 15), p. 260.

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456 John T. Hamilton

To be sure, Lange's original ad hominem attack, charging Lessing with ex-

tortion, warranted such merciless intolerance. But Lessing would also use
this occasion again to represent himself as a Horace redivivus. Lessing's re-
peated denouncement of Lange's insults, which victimized him as the slan-
dered one, effectively aligned him with Horace, who equally was slandered
by his unqualified translator. This identification would become explicit in
Lessing's next essay devoted to Horace, which would bear a simple Latin
epigraph from the Satires to supplement the German title: Rettungen des
Horaz- quem rodunt omnes ("whom everyone slanders").
As mentioned above, the Rettungen essay ends with the image of the
fulgurator, as presented in Horace's Odes 1.34. This brief, first-person nar-
rative recounts the poet's conversion from atheism to a newfound faith, oc-
casioned by the miracle of thunder in a clear sky:
Parcus deorurn cultor et infrequens
insanientis durn sapientiae
consultus erro, nunc retrorsurn
vela dare atque iterare cursus
cogor relictos : narnque Diespiter
igni corusco nubila dividens
plerurnque, per pururn tonantes
egit equos, volucrernque currurn (1-8)

Convinced that poetic prose is preferable to prosaic poetry, Lessing renders

the lines as follows:
In unsinnige Weisheit vertieft, irrt ich umber, ein karger, saurnseliger Verehrer der
Gotter. Doch nun, nun spann ich, den verlaBnen Lauf zu erneuern, gezwungen die
Segel zuriick.
Denn sonst nur gewohnt die Wolken mit blendenden Blitzen zu trennen, trieb der
Vater der Tage, durch den heitern Himmel, die donnernden Pferde und den be-
fliigelten Wagen (300).

To explicate the poem Lessing abandons the traditional interpretation that

reads the text as a sincere refutation of Epicurean materialism or atheism33 •
He also rejects the reading proposed a century before by Andre Dacier, who
saw the lines as ironically scorning the Stoics' argument that, because a god
can make thunder without clouds, a god must surely exise 4 • In reviewing
his Seneca, who explains how thunder occurs in a clear sky, Lessing de-
monstrates the inanity of Dacier's argument: the Stoics, like the Epicureans,

33 This reading is found in the third-century commentary of Porphyrio.

34 Rettungen, p. 303ff. For Dacier's commentary, see his Remarques critiques sur les
reuvres d'Horace avec une nouvelle traduction, vol. 1, Paris 1681, p. 377f.

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Fulguratores 457

attributed thunder to natural causes; Horace would find no contention here

to support any irony 35 •
Instead, Lessing moves toward various political allegories. He refers to
Suetonius, who in his biography of Augustus, speaks of the emperor's fear
of lightning 36 • On this basis, Lessing proposes that Horace, who presumably
had no fear of electric storms, simply adopted this phobia to comfort his
leader about his own weakness. For a second interpretation Lessing turns to
a later chapter in Suetonius (95), which speaks of Octavian's return to
Rome after the assassination of Caesar. On this day, from a clear and
cloudless sky ("liquido ac puro sereno"), lightning suddenly struck the tomb
of Caesar's daughter, Julia; and this was understood unanimously as the
portent that first ensured Augustus' future success. Should we not, Lessing
asks, see this happy event as the allusion behind Horace's poem? Are not
Caesar and Augustus the gods whom Horace failed to honor, having sided
with Brutus at Philippi? Was not the "unsound wisdom" into which Horace
had wandered his adoption of Brutus's republican cause37 ?
To read this prodigious event not merely as a story of personal con-
fession, but rather as an expression of political relationships, is perfectly
within the scope of the Etruscan discipline of the fulgural art as described
by Seneca and Pliny the Elder - two authors cited liberally by Lessing. To
allude to this tradition, as Schlegel correctly noted, is revolutionary to the
extreme. As a vates, Lessing exposed the so-called "enlightened" court of
Prussia as the purveyor of an aestheticized politics that screened an insidi-
ous exploitation of its subjects and a nearly insatiable lust for warfare.
Moreover, its platform of universal toleration barely cloaked the entrenched
anti-Semitism that made the life of Lessing's friend, Moses Mendelssohn,
so very difficult. At bottom, in "Frenchifying" the Germans, it obstructed
German nature. Indeed, it denaturalized its citizens, who would realize per-
haps too late that they were residing in the most enslaved country in Europe.
Beyond the open intention of demonstrating how one should read
Horace, Lessing chose to discuss a poem on cloudless thunder to act as a
veiled critique against Frederick the Great. In other words, Lessing becomes

35 "Quare et sereno tonat? quia tunc quoque per crassum et scissum aera spiritus prosilit"
(Seneca, Naturales quaestiones 2.18).
36 "Tonitrua et fulgura paulo inflfl1lius expavescebat, ut semper et ubique pellem vituli
marini circurnferret pro remedio atque omnem maioris tempestatis suspicionem in ab-
ditum et concamaratum locum se reciperet, constematus olim per nocturnum iter
transcursu fulguris, ut praediximus" (Suetonius, Divus Augustus 90).
37 Note Lessing's translation of "insaniens" (2) as "unsinnig". Later in the ode, Lessing
will render Horace's conspicuous "bruta" as "sinnlos" to suggest an even closer con-
nection between the republican general and the negligence of the gods.

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458 John T. Hamilton

political because he can read Horace like Horace reads the sky, i.e., like a
fulgurator, whose capacity to read lightning is concomitant with the power
to conjure it. With a strategy similar to his beloved fables, he could refute
the state propaganda image of the king as an enlightened despot and could
suggest instead that the throne was occupied by a rogue tyrant. I select this
particular image, not based on anything explicitly said by Lessing - outspo-
ken as he was, he would never be so blatant- but rather because the inter-
textual energy of his essay, bouncing across passages from Lucretius, Sue-
tonius, and Seneca seems to point to Lucan and his well-known characteri-
zation of Julius Caesar as a war-mongering megalomaniac. Tellingly, Lucan
introduces his evil autocrat with the simile of the thunderbolt:
qualiter expressum ventis per nubila fulmen
aetheris impulsi sonitu mundique fragore
ernicuit rupitque diem populosque paventes
terruit obliqua praestringens lumina flamma;
in sua templa furit, nullaque exire vetante
materia magnamque cadens magnamque revertens
dat stragem late sparsosque recolligit ignes.
(De Bello civ., l.l51-57)

Just as lightning is driven by the winds through the clouds

with the din of smitten heaven and the crash of the cosmos
it flashed out and ruptured the day and terrified the frightened
people, dazzling the eye with sidelong flame;
in its appointed quarter (temp/a) it rages, with no matter forbidding its exit
great destruction it spreads falling, great destruction it spreads returning
and from afar it gathers its scattered fires.

Later in the first book, Caesar's attack on Rome is forewarned by apo-

calyptic signs:
Fulgura fallaci rnicuerunt crebra sereno,
et varias ignis denso dedit aere formas
nunc iaculum Iongo, nunc sparso lurnine lampas.
ernicuit caelo taciturn sine nubibus ullis
fulmen et Arctois rapiens de partibus ignem
percussit Latiare caput. (530-535)

Lightning-bolts flashed repeatedly from a deceptively clear sky,

and fire gave out various shapes in the dense air,
now a javelin with lengthened light, now spread out, a torch.
There flashed from heaven without any clouds silent
lightning and seizing its fire from the Arctic regions
it stuck the head of Latium.

Horace's private experience of hearing thunder from a clear sky is used a half-
century later by Lucan to depict a public event. Similarly, Lessing transforms

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Fulguratores 459

the aesthetic experience of explicating a poem into a means for entering and
remaining within the political sphere. To think that one could be had without
the other - be it a pure poetry or a de-aestheticized politics - is to commit the
error of tyranny. Furthermore, in suggesting that Horace speaks to Augustus'
fear of lightning, Lessing reasserts the power of aesthetic judgement, which
here weakens the emperor by establishing his phobia. If lightning was the sign
that gave Augustus success, lightning could come again to take it away. As a
fulgurator, Lessing gives Horace - and implicitly creates for himself- a posi-
tion analogous to Prometheus, who, though bound by Zeus, remains master
over his master, insofar as he holds the secret for his lord's demise. Whoever
reads the power of lightning possesses lightning.
To bring the discussion back to Holderlin, I turn to a passage further on
in the first book of Lucan's epic. After the spectacular apocalypsis, Lucan
introduces afulgurator in the proper sense. He is the Etruscan prophet Ar-
runs, "learned in the movements of the thunderbolt" ("fulminis edoctus
motus", 587). Following the storms, during the purification of Rome, Ar-
runs "collects the scattered fires of the thunderbolt and buries them in the
land with a mournful murmur and gives sanctity to the spot" ("dispersos
fulminis ignes I colligit et terrae maesto cum murmure condit I datque locis
numen", 606-608). In mourning, Arruns collects and recollects the fire of
the past, which will be commemorated from here on. This practice of bury-
ing lightning (fulmen condere) as a way to purify the ground is well attest-
ed38. Priests would gather the ashen earth and enclose it in a bottomless cof-
fin; a sheep's sacrifice would consecrate the spot, upon which it was forbid-
den to walk; and this area would then be marked off by a circular, stone
curbing resembling a well - a puteal or "lightning well". The famous puteal
Libonis, a memorial for fallen lightning, was a central image in the arena of
Roman politics, situated at the assembly or comitium, in the center of the fo-
rum. According to Pliny the Elder, a fig-tree stood nearby, which also
served as a monument for interred thunderbolts:
colitur ficus arbor in foro ipso ac comitio Romae nata sacra fulguribus ibi conditis
magisque ob memoriam eius qua nutrix Romuli ac Remi conditores imperii in Lu-
percali prima protexit (Nat. hist.l5.20.77)
A fig tree grown in the forum itself and the Comitium at Rome is worshipped as
sacred because lightning is buried there; and moreover in memory of the [fig-tree]
by which the nurse of Romulus and Remus first sheltered these founders of the
empire on the Lupercal Hill.
The fig-tree, which serves as a remembrance for buried lightning and there-
by circumscribes a political space, figures prominently in Holderlin's two

38 See Georges Dumezil, Archaic Roman Religion (1966), trans!. by Philip Krapp, Chi-
cago 1966, vol. 2, p. 645f.

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460 John T. Hamilton

memorial poems, Mnemosyne and Andenken39 • In the second strophe of the

latter text, after a survey of the landscape, we read the mild intrusion:
Im Hofe aber wiichset ein Feigenbaum
An Feiertagen gehn
Die braunen Frauen daselbst
Auf seidnen Boden40
Not only does the passage directly translate the Pliny ("im Hofe [ ... ] wach-
set ein Feigenbaum" = "ficus arbor in foro nata"), it also points to the poem
with which I began, Wie wenn am Feiertage ... Although no fig-tree appears
in the editions of the poem, one can be found on the manuscript page, in
Holderlin's translation from Euripides' Bacchae41 • The play opens with
Dionysus, standing before the tomb of his mother Semele:
"HKU) ~lOS TIOlS Tf)voe 8T][3atc..)V x66va
~.6vvaos. ov TtKTEt Tio6' f) KaoiJov KopT]
~EIJEAT] Aoxev6ela' aaTpaTIT]q>OpU)l TIVp[·
IJOpq>i]v o' OIJElljiOS EK 6eov [3poTTja[av
e·
TiapEliJl ~lpKT]S VOIJaT' 'laiJT]VOV VOU)p.
6pw OE IJT]TpOS IJVfiiJa Ti;S KEpavv[as
Too' EyyVS oiKU)V Ka\ OQIJU)V epelma
TV<p61Jeva ~lou Tivpos ht ~waav q>A6ya,
a6avaTOV "Hpas IJT]TEp' els EIJTJV v[3ptv.
a\vw oe KaOIJOV, a[3aTOV os 'TTEOOV TOOE
Tl6T]m, 6vyaTpos aT]K6v. (I-II)
For which Holderlin has:
Ich komme, Jovis Sohn, bier ins Thebanerland,
Dionysos, den gebar vormals des Kadmos Tochter
Semele, geschwiingert von Gewitterfeuer,
Und sterbliche Gestalt, an Gottes statt annehmend
Bin ich bei Dirzes Wiildem, Ismenos Gewasser.
Der Mutter Grabmal seh' ich, der gewitterhaften,
Dort, nahe bei den Hiiusem, und der Hallen Triimmer,
Die rauchenden, noch lebend gottlichen Feuers Flarnme,
Die ewge Gewaltthat Heres gegen meine Mutter.
Ich lobe doch den heiligen Kadmos, der im Feld bier
gepflanzt der Tochter Feigenbaum. [ ... ]42

39 On the significance of the fig-trees in these texts, see Anselm Haverkamp, Laub volt
Trauer: Hij/derlins spiite Allegorie, Miinchen 1991.
40 Holderlin, Andenken, in: Grofle Stuttgarter Ausgabe, vol. 2/l (see n. 1), p. l88f., v.
16-19.
41 For a still useful textual analysis of the manuscript with facsimiles and some tran-
scriptions, see Eduard Lachmann, "Holderlins erste Hyrnne", Deutsche Vierteljahrs-
schrift 17/1939, p. 221-251.
42 Holderlin, Die Bacchantinnen des Euripides, in: Grofle Stuttgarter Ausgabe (seen. 1),
vol. 5, p. 41, v. I-ll.

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Fulguratores 461

The fig-tree is especially remarkable here because it is the result of an error,

mistranslating the Greek word for "tomb" (OTJKOS). On the one hand, Hold-
erlin may have only slightly misread the Greek, seeing instead the word for
fig-tree or OVKTJ. On the other hand, by performing a paronomasia in the
original text, HOlderlin ostensibly places Cadmus in the role of Lucan's
mournful priest, Arruns. Translation foregrounds the fact that literary allu-
sions are always textual appropriations. Thus, the fig-tree becomes the me-
morial for the lightning buried there, at the site of Semele's death (cf. Mne-
mosyne: "Am Feigenbaum ist mein I Achilles mir gestorben", 35f.).
Interestingly, in the first strophe of the Feiertagshymne, trees stand ex-
posed on the field where an electric storm raged the night before:
Wie wenn am Feiertage, das Feld zu sehn
Ein Landmann geht, des Morgens, wenn
Aus heiBer Nacht die kiihlenden Blize fielen
Die ganze Zeit und fern noch ttinet der Donner,
In sein Gestade wieder tritt der Strom,
Und frisch der Boden griint
Und von des Himmels erfreuendem Reegen
Der Weinstok trauft und gliinzend
In stiller Sonne stehn die Biiume des Haines: 43

In the strophe that follows, by way of stunning pronominal ambiguity, poets

are compared with these lightning-prone trees as well as conflated with
Nature. "lm stiller Sonne stehn die Baume des Haines":
So stehn sie unter gtinstiger Witterung
Sie die kein Meister allein, die wunderbar
Allgegenwiirtig erzieht in leichtem Urnfangen
Die miichtige, die gtittlichschtine Natur. 44

The poets, then, who later will be encouraged to receive the god's thunder-
bolt and therefore to occupy the mediating position of Semele, here are as-
sociated with trees, which likewise stand open to the divine blasts 45 • A
broad discursive field is accumulated across the entire expanse of the poem
and is assigned to the Natural. (Note, e.g., how "die gt:ittlichschone Natur"
is recalled thirty-nine lines later by Semele, "die gt:ittlichgetroffene".) In and

43 Htilderlin, Wie wenn am Feiertage ... (seen. 1), v. 1-9.

44 v. 10-13.
45 The question of Semele's relation to poets was instigated by Heidegger's reading of
the poem, where her story was presented as a mere "Gegenspiel", Erliiuterungen zu
Holder/ins Dichtung (see n. 22), p. 70. See Peter Szondi, "Der andere Pfeil: Zur Ent-
stehungsgeschichte des hymnischen Spiitstils", in: Szondi, Holderlin-Studien, Frank-
furt am Main 1967, p. 33-54; and William O'Brien, "Getting Blasted: Htilderlin's Wie
wenn am Feiertage ... ", Modern Language Notes 94/1979, p. 569-586.

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462 John T. Hamilton

by nature, poets suffer a fate (and enjoy a promise) shared by Semele and
the trees: to become memorialized repositories for the heavenly fire.
The seventh strophe elaborates:
Und daher trinken himmlisches Feuer jezt
Die Erdensohne ohne Gefahr.
Doch uns gebiihrt es, unter Gottes Gewittern,
Ihr Dichter! mit entbli:iBtern Haupte zu stehen
Des Vaters Stral, ihn selbst, mit eigner Hand
Zu fassen und dem Yolk ins Lied
Gehiillt die himmlische Gaabe zu reichen.
Denn sind nur reinen Herzens,
Wie Kinder, wir, sind schuldlos unsere Hande,
Des Vaters Stral, der reine versengt es nicht46

The dangerous flame that killed Semele is safely handled through verbal
mediation ("ins Lied gehtillt"). Poets apparently receive what is external to
them and, with purity and guiltlessness, they internalize it for the sake of the
people. However, if this fire has its source in the heavens above, it also
should be understood as having its residence below within those who extend
song. Poets are not simply struck by lightning, they summon the lightning to
strike. They attract the divine fire because its heat is already housed inside
them. The Jovian flame is both without and within. This important point has
been asserted earlier in the text, at the head of the second triad, where the
fire is explicitly internal:
Und wie im Aug' ein Feuer dem Manne glanzt,
Wenn hohes er entwarf; so ist
Von neuem an den Zeichen, den Thaten der Weltjezt
Ein Feuer angeziindet in Seelen der Dichter. (28-31)

The fire, which now is coincident with the political ("den Thaten der
Welt"), can only be a trace of the divine- a vestige of the god's thunderbolt
collected in man as well as an index to man's origins. Indeed, the scintil-
lating eye of man- "im Aug' ein Feuer dem Manne gllinzt"- may well be a
reference to the common Greek word for man, O:v8pc.:mos. According to
one etymology, the word O:v8pwnos - the Aristotelian O:v8pwnos, inci-
dentally, who is political by nature - is derived from the word for burning
embers, O:vSpaKes. Man is anthropos because his face (ops) contains the
commemorative glow of burning embers (anthrakes).
It is an explanation that evokes and finds its confirmation in the anthro-
pogony associated with archaic Orphic cult. After the Titans lured the infant
Dionysus into their cave, murdering and then feasting upon his flesh, Zeus

46 Holderlin, Wie wenn am Feiertage ... (seen. 1), v. 54-63.

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Fulguratores 463

struck the cannibals down with his lightning; and it is out these ashes that
the race of mortals was bom47 • Accordingly, by transmitting the thunderbolt
in the creation of song, poets perform nothing less than a ritual reenactment
of mankind's genesis. Moreover, again by adducing Orphic doctrine, poetry
can be made to reveal the truth of mortals' participation in immortality, by
showing how the mythic blast established man's essence as the preservation
of the Dionysiac soul 48 • The discontinuity affirmed by the word Mensch (as
mensus) is overwhelmed by the creation of the soul (Seele) which is the
fulminating residue buried in man as anthropos. The story of Semele, serves
as a figure for this hope just as her name - Se-m-ele literally names the
ground for such expectations (as well as the Mensch defined therein). Hol-
derlin therefore works to transgress the limits described in Goethe's Gren-
zen der Menschheit; hence the pleasure he takes in modifying Goethe's line
"aus rollenden Wolken" into "aus rothlichen Wolken". For the color red,
which in addition to being conventionally associated with the ars fulguria-
torum, also resonates with the human life that - in-carn-ate - lives on this
earth. It thereby represents an element that is invisible but latent in Goethe,
a chromatic trace that might ground the highest optimism. "Ja! es gefallt
mir, wie wenn im Sommer [perhaps: "wie wenn am Feiertage"] 'der alte
heilige Vater mit gelassener Hand aus rothlichen Wolken seegnende Blize
schtittelt"'.
To conclude: if late eighteenth-century readers of Lessing like Schlegel
desired to see in their author a prefiguring of the French Revolution, readers
of HOlderlin remain eager to detect reactions to that world-shattering event.
The reading that would understand the Revolution in the nighttime thunder-
storm and the rumbling still heard from afar is apparently supported by the
poem's third strophe, where Nature is said to have awoken with the clashing
sound of arms - "Die Natur ist jezt mit Waffenklang erwacht". Nature
awakens. Or is it not someone's nature that no longer sleeps (e.g., the poets'
or the people's)? The political intersects with the aesthetic at this moment
("jetzt"), in this strophe that begins with a dawning- "Jezt aber tagts!" It is
noteworthy that this dawning introduces, for the first time in the poem, the

47 This myth is paraphrased by Olympiodorus in his commentary to Plato's Phaedo

(61c) =Kern fr. 220: "Ka\ Tolhos [Tm1vasl6pyto6e\s 6 Zeus eKepawwoe, Ka\ eK
TiiS aiBaAT)S TWV CXT~WV TWV c'xvaBoBeVTWV et; allTWV VATJS yevo~EVTJS
yeveoBat Tovs c'xvBpwnovs", Otto Kern, Orphicorumfragmenta, Berlin 1922). See
Ivan M. Linforth, The Arts of Orpheus, Berkeley 1941, p. 324-364. The derivation of
av6pwnos from av6paKES is suggested in Aristophanes, Achamians 34 and 332 and
is briefly discussed by Gregory Nagy in Greek Mythology and Poetics, Ithaca 1990, p.
151 note 30.
48 See the analysis in Martin West, The Orphic Poems, Oxford 1983, p. 140-175.

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464 John T. Hamilton

poet's ego: "Jetzt aber tagts! Ich harrt und sah es kommen, I Und was ich
sah, das Heilige sei mein Wort" (19-20; my emphasis). For Holderlin, the
coincidence of the political and the aesthetic discloses identity in relation to
the divine. This disclosure is the work of the fulgurator who, in summoning
and reading the thunderbolt, reads and summons the thunderbolt in us. The
famous question of the failure of the Feiertagshymne is, therefore, a matter
of telling undecidability; for the possibility of such a disclosure remains,
like every possibility, a possible impossibility. The clouds' redness that
grounds our optimism can also point toward the profoundest pessimism:
Holderlin was sufficiently aware - notoriously so - that to brood or to in-
dulge in melancholy thoughts was to make something red, KaAxaivetv. In-
deed, the space covered between the "rothliche Wolken" and Antigona's
"rothes Wort"49 is comparable to the space, in the Feiertagshymne, that
spans from the "Jezt aber tagts!" to the "Weh mir!" scratched at the bottom
of Holderlin's manuscript. Nonetheless, the promise- a true Versprechen-
is to reveal what may be our innermost nature, our potential for history in
and through the community. It exists, for the poet, in our potential to par-
ticipate in the divine.

49 Holderlin, Antigonii, in: GrojJe Stuttgarter Ausgabe (seen. 1), vol. 5, p. 201-262, here
p. 206, v. 21.

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