In this part of the play within my novel, I try to imagine what it would have been like in Homburg, Germany, for the poet Friedrich Holderlin and his two close friends, the philosopher Georg Hegel and the pastor Rudolph Magenau, as Holderlin begins to plunge toward madness.
Act III, Scene 3
Midday, September 10, 1806. Holderlin sits on the couch, looking glassy-eyed. Hegel knocks on the door and Magenau opens it and greets him. “Thank you for making the trip here, dear Hegel.”
“What is Holderlin’s state now?” Hegel asks, worried.
“He continues to speak only in poetic phrases,” Magenau informs him.
“Good heavens!” Hegel exclaims. Hegel and Magenau walk over to Holderlin.
Holderlin has a blank expression as he speaks. “The Spirit descends toward us and seeks closer company with us.”
Hegel waves his hand in front of Holderlin’s eyes. “Does he even know we are here?”
“I don’t think so,” says Magenau.
“It is a beautiful thing to unfold the soul and this brief life.”
“He’s in a trance?” Hegel asks.
“I believe so,” says Magenau.
“Who has thought what is deepest loves what is most alive.”
“Damnation!” yells Hegel. “Magenau, you’ve always encouraged his ecstatic reveries.”
Magenau looks stunned. “You are blaming me, Hegel?”
“Miracles are nothing unusual in the domain of the Most High.”
“Yes, Magenau,” Hegel replies, “you are at fault.”
“Listen to me, Hegel,” Magenau says testily. “You may think you’re normal. But for 17 years now, you have tried to take the entire realm of experience and ideas into your mind! Everything that has ever been thought! You attempt to give an answer to every question ever asked! And then to assign every answer you come up with to its perfect place in your system! A fantastic attempt, Hegel! Some would even call it madness!”
“Startle my heart with glimpse of greater! I’ll climb up the most glorious path! Grant us the fuller cup and the bolder existence.”
Hegel calms himself. “This is not the time for us to argue, Rudolf. Holderlin’s condition is a shattering blow to me.”
“And to me, Wilhelm.”
“Speed back to the Infinite by the shortest way.”
“I am jolted,” Hegel laments. “Disturbed. Frightened. What are we to do?”
Magenau raises his arm and puts his hand on his chin. “Something must be done about the sad condition of our friend. Holderlin needs to be rebuilt from the ground up.”
“His mind has been shaken from its course,” says Hegel. “He is slipping away, beyond our help.”
“Drunk and drowsy, my soul is filled with Your Rapture.”
“What do you think is happening to him?” Magenau inquires.
“Exactly what I’ve always feared,” Hegel answers, “and always warned him about. He has so closely woven himself into his inner vision that he is vanishing into it.”
“Mists and dreams fly over us.”
“Do you see, Mag?” Hegel asks. “He has become entirely a vessel of his transcendent visions.”
“The skies will begin to flower even as we do, and meet our open eyes with their light.”
“Hegel,” says Magenau, “how can you separate yourself from what is happening with Holderlin? Since I first met the two of you, you have both been intoxicated with the possibilities of our age. Your ardor, your ambition, you shared it. You were both caught up in this rhapsody to do everything and do it all at once!”
“Dawn fills my eyes. A more luminous day breaks. A heavenly brightness shines.”
“Listen, Magenau, you are beginning to aggravate me. Holderlin has poured his whole life into his work, and now he himself is fading into it. He has sacrificed normal life to revel in and affirm his vision. Now he is disappearing into that world, while for him the world around us disappears.”
“A fire is lit in our souls. A golden age, intact, returns.”
“Oh Wilhelm, listen. Holderlin has pushed himself to the brink. He started with an excitable temperament and delicate nerves, and he over-exposed himself to heavenly light.”
“This is the Garden where I dwell in sacred enchantment and sure contentment.”
“What Holz has experienced is so magnificent that he could not fully adjust himself to it,” Magenau tells Hegel. “For him, life in the Spirit has become an ordeal. He was compelled almost against his will to reveal a dimension with which most of us had lost contact. His loving disposition could not overcome all the afflictions of his life. But his visionary experiences and his struggle to express them to the world – that work demanded everything he had. He exerted himself every day until he was fatigued. He sacrificed himself for his readers, including us. His heart has suffered heroically and he has worn himself out.”
“The Muses inspired me and harmonious music came to rest on my soul and sounded from my heart.”
“My dear Magenau,” Hegel replies, “consider Dante and Shakespeare. Dante attempted too much. In Hamlet, Shakespeare attempted too much. And yet they left us the greatest epic and the greatest tragedy.”
“Your blessings flow into the waking soul of the people,” chants Holderlin.
“And Holderlin, Hegel? How will Holderlin be remembered?”
“I fear that history will remember him as an unstable sentimentalist who failed as a poet.”
“No!” Magenau shouts. “Damn it! No, Hegel! You are wrong! Holderlin will be remembered as a great poet. He is the first great modern poet of Europe! His lyrics are among the best in all of literature. He is the greatest of visionary poets; his vision is rare and unique in the poetry of any time or place. He is the most inspired and inspirational of poets. He is the poet of philosophers. And he is the poet of poets. He is one of the most remarkable poets of all time.”
Holderlin still stares into space. “The souls of tender greatness gently inspire me to recognize grandeur.”
Hegel turns conciliatory. “Images and language have filled Holderlin’s soul with overflowing emotional power. Perhaps you are right, Mag.”
“I have seen much that is beautiful, and I sang it out as hymns. And let me stay a while, for much remains to be sung.”
Magenau remains firm. “Holz has scaled heights that very few have touched, and you know it, Wilhelm. He went as far as anyone in our lifetime has gone. Perhaps to the highest a mere mortal can experience. He entered the Sanctuary. He evoked for us a sense of Deity. He exhorted us to worship.”
“Let us seek out our kinsmen and let us in one single soul-song, wholly at peace with ourselves, join in celebration.”
Magenau turns calm. “Holderlin is a seer, Hegel. He has been accessing deeper dreams and ideals than almost anyone. He encounters the Spirit, translates It into form, and renders It to us so we can apprehend It. His poetry is made up of fresh revelations. He asserts the supremacy of Divine Love. He makes us yearn as he has for the Divine Presence.”
“It takes wings to reach the other side. O grant us wings, so that, true in spirit, we may cross over and come back.”
Hegel stamps one of his feet on the floor. “And yet we stand here talking about our dearest friend as if he is not here! Because he isn’t here!”
Holderlin chants on. “All for nothing we keep our spirit in check. Who would affront us? Who would forbid our rejoicing? So come, let us seek out what is ours.”
Magenau swoons. “He is a herald of the most sublime Harmony, Beauty, and Joy.”
“Let us cast all the dice in the name of genius. Boldly, my genius, step right into the thick of life!”
“I too come from an evangelical family, Magenau,” Hegel tells him. “I understand ecstatic and enthusiastic faith. I am familiar with radical mysticism, with dreams and visions, and with personal experiences of the Divine. But some enthusiasts, perhaps most enthusiasts, depart from firm ground, and then enthusiasm turns into a weakness. Where does Holderlin dwell? He dwells in his transcendent imagination.”
“If our celestial need remain, that need is for the heroic. It is better to slumber than to live unaccompanied by Deity and heroes.”
“Which is why his poetry is so pure and sublime,” Magenau muses. “Which is why we hear in his poems the rhythms of that eternal and immutable world. Which is why we ride the waves of that world with him. His celebration of the plenitude of the Spirit is delicately lyrical and immensely profound – and it is always a singular overflow of subtle and fluid music.”
“Let what is heavenly be shared! Make us noble and new!”
“The problem, Rudolf, is that reaching higher levels in his art has been all that matters to Holz. He has no energy left for living his life!”
“But the quality of his work! You’ve heard it yourself, Wilhelm. The odes, the hymns, the elegies. You love his novel, Hyperion. You were there together with him in Homburg when his genius rapidly matured.”
“None of that matters if his individual identity is being forfeited!”
“Love has given birth to centuries of living individuals. Friendship is giving birth to them again. Love gave birth to the world. Friendship will give birth to it again.”
“Do you see, Magenau? Holderlin’s being has merged into the universal Essence. In his quest for perfect art, he has disembodied himself!”
Magenau holds his ground. “He has been possessed by a keen intuitive awareness of spiritual reality. He stayed defenseless so that he could receive from Deity.”
“Genius, innate in us, grants us golden dreams anew each morning.”
“Art is not the supreme mode of bringing the mind’s genuine interests into awareness,” Hegel insists. “Poetry cannot provide us an ordered comprehension of life!”
“You would not have said that when we were in college, Hegel.”
“I have learned from Holderlin’s struggles for sanity.”
“Having loved, is not my heart filled with nobler and more radiant life?”
“Have you also learned from Holderlin’s ideals of harmony, beauty, joy, friendship, love, and boldness?”
“Of course I have, Mag.”
“A living image of Beauty, tended with careful love, draws us forward into the Light.”
“He is not saying anything that is not eloquent,” Magenau observes.
“True.”
“Perhaps this is part of his writing process.”
“I’m not convinced of that,” says Hegel.
“Poetry is not an escape for him, Wilhelm. His poetry is a dynamic expression of his vision, his passionate fullness of life, his aspirations for humanity, his invocation of the promise of human existence!”
“By a miracle’s strength, one day we will walk anew across verdant fields. A sacred breathing will flow through our luminous bodies. As we are drenched with the rains of Heaven, as the rivers sing out to us the triumphs of life, we will partake together in the inspired Feast.”
“Oh Friedrich!” Magenau exclaims. He embraces Holderlin. Holderlin pays no attention.
“Friedrich,” Hegel tells him, “I am so alarmed by your acute instability.” He embraces Holderlin.
Holderlin looks into space and chants on. “Always there is the yearning into the unbound. What I saw in the hallowed place my words will convey.”
“Our friend is brilliant, Mag. His rare cadences sound like incantations.”
Magenau nods. “He combines firm strength with such tender longing.”
Holderlin chants again. “The eagle learns to soar toward the Sunlight, carried away by the sacred rhythms, borne along, ascending and descending in celestial frenzy, ultimately abandoned to the Divine.”
“The Infinite is unmediated for him now.” Hegel observes. “It weighs him down and confuses him.”
“Ah,” Magenau replies, “but what sacred joy, what immediacy of spiritual reality, what timeless revelations!”
“His inner life has always seemed beautiful and pure.” Hegel acknowledges. “But he has not matched his experiences of Beauty, Harmony, and Love with comprehensive truths of the mind.”
“There is a cosmic Spirit migrating to new epiphanies. Is it not our destiny to be the locus of these new epiphanies?”
“The division between his inner and outer realities has become too thin,” Hegel asserts.
“And yet the inspired soul is still the beauty of the world,” Magenau declares.
“I grant you that,” says Hegel. “However, consciousness lost in what is universal evaporates into thin air. Experiences and manifestations of Spirit must have a rational grounding. The only alternative is madness.”
Holderlin offers up one more utterance. “We climb on toward our ardent and reckless dreams. This is how we, as happy companions, did walk the Earth.” He falls asleep.
Hegel turns to go. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Rudolf, blessed friend.”
“Tomorrow, dearest Wilhelm.” Hegel and Magenau embrace. Hegel exits.