—for indeed this fragment means something still more profound, to which we are not yet equal.1 Von Hellingrath assigns this fragment to that larger fragment which he has entitled “Out of the range of motives of the Titans.”2 It certainly belongs there, though not by reason of some special relation, but because the fragment we will cite names something that constitutes a—if not the—essential determination of the entire domain of the later hymns.
The verse runs as follows:
For tremendous powers wander over the earth,
And their destiny touches the one
Who suffers it and looks upon it,
And it also touches the hearts of the peoples.
For a demigod must grasp everything,
Or a man, in suffering,
Insofar as he hears, alone, or is himself
Transformed, surmising from afar the steed of the lord,
Renouncing a full interpretation, we will only provide a directive to the context. Hölderlin says either a demigod or a man—in suffering—must grasp everything. And the suffering is twofold: hearing, looking, perception, and letting oneself be transformed, whereby the distant surmising of the steed of the lord, the coming of the god, is opened up. Suffering: a perception or a transformation; the essential is the advertence in hearing and, together with that, a readiness for the transition into another Being.3 In hearing, we project and extend ourselves over and into broad expanses, though in such a way that, complying with what is heard, we bring ourselves back into the gathering of our essence. Perception is something suffered in the sense of the most expansive, and at the same time the most intimate, passion. All grasping is measured according to the standard of the power for such suffering.
The grasping occurs only in suffering. Here resides for Hölderlin
1. Hölderlin, Bruchstücke und Entwürfe, No. 14. In: Sämtliche Werke. Ed. N. v. Hellingrath. Bd. IV, 2 ed. Berlin 1923. Pp. 247f., verses 18-27.
2. Ibid., pp. 215-218.
3. On “suffering” and the “suffering of the god,” see the conclusion of “Wie wenn am Feiertage,” ibid., pp. 151ff.