nonsensuous [dar Nichtsinnliche], which is understood and given meaning and has been determined in manifold ways in the course of metaphysics: the nonsensuous and suprasensuous are the spiritual; ideals and "values" are the ideational. The superior and the true are what is sensuously represented in the symbolic image. The essence of art stands or falls in accordance with the essence and truth of metaphysics.
§4. Hölderlin's poetry as not concerned with images in a symbolic or metaphysical sense. Tire concealed essence of tire river
Hölderlin's poetry too appears in the course of the history of Western metaphysics and art. We can even classify it accurately in terms of its temporal relation to this history. The genesis of the hymns lies between the years 1800 and 1806. Precisely this same time span covers the genesis of the principle work in Hegel's thought. the Phenomenology of Spirit (1807). Hegel, the thinker, was the friend of the poet Hölderlin while they were both students in Tübingen and also later during their years together in Frankfurt until 1799. Thus Hölderlin's poetry, if it is art, will also be metaphysical and will therefore be concerned with "symbolic images." The German rivers that are sung in Hölderlin's poems, the Main, the Neckar, the Donau, and the Rhine, are "symbolic images" of German essence and life. Nothing prevents us from interpreting Hölderlin's river poetry according to this perspective or in such a way.
Perhaps the sense that Hölderlin gives these images of rivers is more difficult to discern than the content of other poetic works written by other poets who also sing of rivers, streams, and brooks, the ocean and the seas. This greater interpretive difficulty may have its grounds in the fact that Hölderlin poetizes more mysteriously than these other poets and perhaps also in the fact that his poetry remains incomplete in many ways, and is indeed occasionally overshadowed and confused by his impending madness.
The rivers in Hölderlin's poetry are, however, in no way symbolic images that are merely more difficult to interpret in terms of degree. If that were the case, they would still remain essentially "symbolic images." Yet this is precisely what they are not. The "rivers" are therefore not to count as symbols of a higher level or of "deeper," "religious" content. Hölderlin's hymnal poetry, which is the vocation of the poet after 1799, is not concerned with symbolic images at all.
Yet what we have said then means that this poetry must stand entirely outside of metaphysics. and thus outside of the essential realm of Western art. Then all the usual readings and interpretations of these poems would be in vain, because all such interpretation borrows its tools and its effort