Die Mutter ist von allem, und den Abgrund trägt
Who is Mother of all, and carries the abyss
The words “and carries the abyss” [und den Abgrund trägt] are missing in Zinkernagel and in your Reclam edition.1 (2) In strophe VII, lines 101f., von Hellingrath reads:
Wie anders ists! und rechthin glänzt und spricht
Zukünftiges auch erfreulich aus den Fernen.
How different it is! And unmistakably gleam and speak
From great distance also cheering things to come.
We may make the general remark that the poem has been preserved for us in two handwritten fair copies; they are not drafts, unlike many of the poems from this period. Von Hellingrath designates these versions a and b. Version b breaks off at line 97; thus, it omits the entire last strophe (VII). When this strophe appears in print, it has been taken from the a version.
Regarding 1: It is this a version, which Zinkernagel and Vesper also use in reproducing the final strophe, that includes the words “and carries the abyss” in line 76. It is unclear why, although strophe VII is adopted from version a, line 76 is not also reproduced in its entirety. Nor is it clear why both strophe VII and the words “and carries the abyss” are missing from version b. And this quite apart from the fact that these words “and carries the abyss,” which tell of the Earth, are so poetically appropriate and said in such a Hölderlinian manner that they ought not to be missing.
Regarding 2: Instead of spricht [speak], Zinkernagel and Vesper have the word spielt [play], a discrepancy in reading, but also of understanding in terms of the whole. I am unfamiliar with the handwritten manuscript of the poem, but I agree with the way in which von Hellingrath reads this. The word “play” seems to be suggested by the word erfreulich [cheering]. Yet if we merely take the latter in the straightforward meaning of pleasant, welcome, or notable, which fits with “play,” then we are not understanding this in a Hölderlinian sense. Hölderlin does not mean the word erfreulich to be understood in the sense in which we say that trial runs of the new race car
1. Hölderlin, Gedichte, Gesamtausgabe, compiled by Will Vesper, Leipzig, 1921. Hölderlin, Werke, selected and with a biographical introduction by Will Vesper, Leipzig, 1928 (Helios-Klassiker edition).