Abstract
Proceeding from the common roots of Friedrich Hölderlin and Henry David Thoreau in the philosophical ideas of (German) idealism, this essay explores concepts of nature writing in the work of both authors. Their philosophical and literary reflections show that Hölderlin critically distances himself from Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s systematic philosophy of pure and subjective idealism as Thoreau critically dissociates his concept from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s transcendental idealism. Based on Lawrence Buell’s criteria defining nature writing, Thoreau’s Walden: or, Life in the Woods and Hölderlin’s hymn “The Rhine” are examined as literary examples that share the common aim of acknowledging nature in the sense of an entity having its own agency and power of understanding, as opposed to the “I” or the “spirit.” Special attention is paid to four areas: first, to Hölderlin’s and Thoreau’s redefinition of the quality “pure” that had largely been associated with the term “understanding” in Kantian philosophy for natural phenomena, for example, as water; to a receptive orientation with respect to humans and nature as well as the overlapping of this polarization by a concept of processuality; and, finally, to a discussion of the “unconditioned” as the reason for being.
This essay was translated by Dominik Ohrem.
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Notes
- 1.
The Concord group of transcendentalists was thus also referred to as “Hedge’s Club” (Pochmann 1978, 144).
- 2.
The original includes a footnote at this point that reads “Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft.”
- 3.
James Marsh writes that “[i]t is by self-inspection, by reflecting upon the mysterious grounds of our own being, that we can alone arrive at any rational knowledge of the central and absolute ground of all being.” “PRELIMINARY ESSAY TO AIDS TO REFLECTION” (Coleridge [1829] 1993, 492–493).
- 4.
Short German expressions appear in brackets.
- 5.
The original reads: “In der künftigen Reflexionsreihe wird reflectirt über Fakta; der Gegenstand dieser Reflexion ist selbst eine Reflexion” (Fichte 1971, 222).
- 6.
The original reads: “Je mehreres ein bestimmtes Individuum sich wegdenken kann, desto mehr nähert sein empirisches Selbstbewusstseyn sich dem reinen” (Fichte 1971, 244).
- 7.
The original reads: “für uns leblos und seelenlos, und kein Ich” (Fichte 1971, 274).
- 8.
This statement is primarily concerned with the Kantian I think (Kant 1998, 246).
- 9.
The notion of the “sphere of influence” is taken from Swedish mystic and theosophist Emanuel Swedenborg (Oetinger 1858, 41–44).
- 10.
- 11.
“Receptivity” also plays a significant role in Buell’s Environmental Imagination (Buell 1995, 82, 122–124).
- 12.
The original reads: “An sich (d.h. absolut gesehen) ist der Wirkungskreis größer als der poetische Geist, aber nicht für sich selber” (Hölderlin 1961, 244, 27–28, original emphasis).
- 13.
The original reads: “Er [der Wirkungskreis] ist der Tendenz nach, dem Gehalte seines Strebens nach dem poetischen Geschäffte entgegen, … indem er dem Geiste nicht blos als Vehikel dienen will” (Hölderlin 1961, 245, 2–3, 7). Marion Hiller qualifies the sphere of influence as the “Not-Ideal” which the “Ideal”—“substance” (Stoff) and “ground” (Grund), in her own words—must absorb (Hiller 2008, 132).
- 14.
This refers to the sphere of influence’s “tendency” (Hölderlin 2009, 280 and above).
- 15.
The original reads: “wenn das Organ des Geistes könnte betrachtet werden als dasjenige, welches … receptiv seyn muß” (Hölderlin 1961, 249, 11–13).
- 16.
The original reads: “Dieser Grund des Gedichts, seine Bedeutung, soll den Übergang bilden zwischen dem Ausdruk, dem Dargestellten, dem sinnlichen Stoffe, dem eigentlich ausgesprochenen im Gedichte, und zwischen dem Geiste, der idealischen Behandlung” (Hölderlin 1961, 244, 8–12).
- 17.
The original reads: “Da er aber sie [seine Individualität] nicht durch sich selbst und an sich selbst erkennen kann, so ist ein äußeres Object nothwendig” (Hölderlin 1961, 252, 23–24).
- 18.
Christiane Rühling argues that “it is only when the poetic individuality enters into relationship with an external object, thus abstracting from itself and reflecting upon the object, that it is able to find itself” (Rühling 2015, 192, my translation).
- 19.
The original reads: “wenn sie nicht statt einer unendlich einigen und lebendigen Einheit, eine todte und tödtende Einheit … seyn soll” (Hölderlin 1961, 252, 6–8).
- 20.
Here Marsh points to the principle “A=A” from Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre: “I propose A, and then, reflecting upon it, find that it is A.” The crucial point is that this process is internal to human consciousness: “This identity arises not from any quality in the thing proposed; it exists solely in my own consciousness” (Marsh 1833, 108–120, 122).
- 21.
On the role of such “analogies between the human eye and the firmament” (Zapf 2018, 188, my translation).
- 22.
According to a footnote, this refers to a unit of measurement: “a 56-pound iron weight, which was half a hundredweight (a hundredweight being 112 pounds in his day)” (Thoreau 2004, 276).
- 23.
Also, Schneider (1995, 97; 100; 147–148).
- 24.
Accordingly, Urbas characterizes the “quest for what Thoreau called in Walden a ‘solid bottom’” as a search for “metaphysical foundations” (Urbas 2013, 107).
- 25.
According to Johannes Mahr, “all of the mythical processes of the poem remain bound to the facts, to things observed and remembered, to the immediacy of sense perception” (Mahr 1972, 49, my translation).
- 26.
In Ebel’s 1801 publication, published one year after the completion of the hymn, we read: “With heartfelt joy I looked upon the youthful Rhine that lay before me, wild, raw, dashing, and turbid like the nature that created it, as it was leaving its country of birth … It forced its way northward through enormous mountains, and then, after untold exertions, into the free expanse of Lake Constance. It is here that the wildness of its character is finally tamed” (Ebel 1802, 120, my translation). It is not known to what extent Hölderlin may have been influenced by contemporary ideas about straightening the Rhine. In 1809, Johann Gottfried Tulla presented a first plan for a correction of the upper Rhine, which was only put into action in 1817 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Gottfried_Tulla (20.07.22).
- 27.
Page numbers, stanzas and lines hereafter given in text.
- 28.
The meaning of “pure origins” (Das Reinentsprungene) is subject to different interpretations. According to Bernhard Böschenstein, it combines “all elements of the character of the Rhine … We may call it the original, the unalloyed, the eternal, the spiritual, the living, the divine, ‘nature’ in Hölderlin’s sense, meaning natura naturans, the creative origin of everything created” (Böschenstein 1968, 51).
- 29.
In his short philosophical note Being Judgement Possibility [original title Urtheil und Seyn] Hölderlin explains: “Being—expresses the connection of subject and object / Where subject and object are absolutely, not only partly, united, namely so united that no division can be executed without damaging the essence of that which is to be separated, there and nowhere else one can speak of a being as such, as is the case with intellectual intuition” (Hölderlin 2009, 231–232, 231, original emphasis). The original reads: “Seyn—drükt die Verbindung des Subjects und des Objects aus. Wo Subject und Object schlechthin, … vereiniget ist, …, daß gar keine Theilung vorgenommen werden kan, ohne das Wesen desjenigen, was getrennt werden soll, zu verlezen, da und sonst nirgends kann von einem Seyn schlechthin die Rede seyn, …” (Hölderlin 1961, 216–217, 216, original emphasis).
- 30.
The original reads: “Das ‘Reinentsprungene’ ist ein Rätsel in seinem Ursprung, aber eben deshalb in seinem ganzen Seyn, als welches dann das Entsprungene ist. Die Weite des Geheimnisses erstreckt sich auch auf das Entsprungene, nicht auf das für sich genommene, woher’, das wir nicht anderswoher errechnen können. Geheimnis ist das ‘Reinentsprungene’. Erst in diesem selbst ist je auch der Ursprung voll als Ursprung” (Heidegger 1980, 234, original emphasis).
- 31.
The original reads: “Dieser wird nicht als ein für sich stehender Beginn verlassen und zurückgelassen; was der Strom in seinem Strömen verströmt, an jeder Stelle seines Strömens ist, das ist der Ursprung” (Heidegger 1980, 234).
- 32.
“Here sit I, forming mortals /After my image” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus_(Goethe), 22.07.22. “Hier sitz’ ich, forme Menschen / Nach meinem Bilde” (Goethe [1981] 1989, Bd. 1, 44–46, v. 52–53).
- 33.
Rousseau is particularly critical of reflection, which he regards as being “against nature” (Rousseau 1983, 99).
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Grimm, S. (2024). Nature Writing in Transcendental Perspective: Friedrich Hölderlin and Henry David Thoreau. In: Dürbeck, G., Kanz, C. (eds) German-Language Nature Writing from Eighteenth Century to the Present. Literatures, Cultures, and the Environment. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-50910-0_4
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