This hint concerning the beginnings of the strophes initially seems to give only an extrinsic guide that points us in the direction of the altered reading or listening, an indication of the manner in which each strophe in the turbulence of the poetizing turns at another point in the turbulence. More precisely: Since the turbulence does not exist independently from the outset, each strophe in this transformation, in this turning, first creates the turbulence and its various points, if one can speak at all of ‘points’ within a turbulence.
d) The Relation of Today’s Human Being to the Greeks and Their Gods
Even now—and in a certain sense constantly and ineradicably—our initial mode of encounter with the poem as a piece of text lying present before us will continue to persist. On the other hand, however, we can now no longer altogether avoid the start of the poem and the way in which it tears us away. “Not those, the blessed ones. . . .” This “Not” tears us to a certain location from where, at the same time, we are supposed to accomplish a ‘No,’ a turning away. Yet why are we supposed not to be able to avoid this “Not those . . .”? Why are we supposed not to be able to refuse to accompany the telling of this “Not”? Not those, the gods of old. . . . Is it at all necessary for us to avoid in the first place? Surely this word speaks past us, no longer affects us, no longer applies to us. We have long since been done with the gods of old. Of what concern are, say, the Greeks still to us? The old, genuine humanism of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is in any case dead. The second wave, the neo-humanism of Winckelmann and Herder, of Goethe and Schiller, is merely an affair of cultural erudition, and barely that. What then followed in the second half of the century was already unmasked as groundless and vacuous by Nietzsche around the year 1870 in his lectures in Basel concerning the future of our educational establishments. What may still flicker up here and there as a third form of humanism is a predilection of individuals that carries no force and remains a flight from what is contemporary. Of what concern are the Greeks still to us, now that we have reached the point of henceforth no longer even learning their language, which is of no practical utility anyway!
This refusal of Hölderlin’s therefore comes too late for us. It may have had some meaning for his era. Consider the revival of classical antiquity happening at that time. For Hölderlin in particular this refusal may have been of great consequence and import. Consider the ‘enthusiasm for the Greeks’ that carries and sustains the whole of Hyperion. Consider especially the harsh words about the Germans toward the end of Hyperion (II, 282ff.). Thus Hölderlin may now—barely