Strangely enough, the adjective “poetic” does not occur in Hölderlin’s poems in the final text of his published works. Nevertheless the Stuttgart edition (II, 635) includes the adjective as variant in line 28 of the poem “The Archipelago”, the relevant passage (lines 25-29) reading as follows:
Likewise, heaven’s own, they, the powerful up on high, the silent ones,
Who a serene day and sweet slumber and foreboding
From far away cast over the head of men sensitive and receptive to it
Out of the fullness of their might, even they, the ancient companions in play,
Dwell, as before, with You…3
In the first draft, instead of “the ancient companions in play, Dwell,” Hölderlin writes “poetic companions in play, dwell.” Thus the poetic thought of a poetic dwelling is in no way foreign to the poet. But the adjective “poetic” in the quoted passage qualifies the manner of dwelling of the heavenly bodies, not man’s.4 What then does “poetic companions in play” say if instead it turned out to say “the ancient companions in play” in the final version?
In what respect are the “ancient” the “poetic”, and the “poetic” the “ancient”?
The heavenly bodies in the poem refer to things that always have been – ‘ones of yore’ – as well as to things that shall return in what is yet to come. They are ones of yore in a twofold sense. Their being of yore explains their present state, their everlasting aspect in Hölderlin’s phrase of the “ever blooming stars” (Draft, II, 365) goes beyond mere persistence. The ancient companions in play bring, to “men sensitive and receptive to it,” the serenity of day and the night’s slumber and foreboding. These companions donate constancy to mortals across their lifetime, and are thereby poets (or ‘poetizing’ ones). The ancient companions in play “dwell poetically” with the god of the Aegean Sea, with its islands and the inhabitants.
3. The translations of Hölderlin’s three poems quoted in this essay benefitted from consulting previously published translations of each. Nevertheless, the translations here are my own, as in each case there were enough differences, sometimes subtle but significant enough differences, that I could not use the previously published poems. For comparison of “Der Archipelagus” see Friedrich Hölderlin, Friedrich Hölderlin: Poems and Fragments, trans. Michael Hamburger (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 1967), 212-215.
4. ‘Heavenly bodies’ (Himmelskörper): literally, celestial bodies (as in section 7). The translation preserves Heidegger’s reference to ‘the heavenly’ in Hölderlin’s poem (section 4) and his own Fourfold.