Benjamin As A Reader of Holderlin

Benjamin as a Reader of Hölderlin: The Origins of Benjamin's Theory of Literary Criticism
Author(s): Michael W. Jennings

Source: The German Quarterly, Vol. 56, No. 4 (Nov., 1983), pp. 544-562
Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Association of Teachers of German
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Benjamin as a Reader of H61derlin:
The Origins of Benjamin's
Theory of Literary Criticism
MICHAEL W. JENNINGS
The demythologization of Walter Benjamin has already begun. Benja-

min's expressed desire to be considered "the premier critic of German
literature"' has certainly come close to fulfillment in the 25 years since
the publication of his selected works;2 he is by any reckoning one of
the preeminent critics of the twentieth century. Negative critical reaction
to this rise could not be long in coming, and attacks upon both the larger
structures of Benjamin's thought and upon specific insights have indeed
proliferated in recent years.3 This rapid canonization and equally swift
denunciation should, I think, be viewed with a certain detachment,
if not irony, since the work of understanding Benjamin's notoriously
and often willfully difficult writings remains in its earliest stages. We
have not yet, for example, been able to sort out in a satisfactory manner
the multitude of influences working upon a thinker as eclectic as Wal-
ter Benjamin. Critics attempting to situate Benjamin's work within
its context in intellectual history have thus far been content to refer
to Benjamin's mysticism, derived from his friendship with Gershom
Scholem, his Marxism, stemming from his encounter with Lukacs'
Geschichte und Klassenbewufltsein and the influence of Brecht, and,
above all, his Hegelianism, associated with his work in the 1930's
for the Institut for Sozialforschung.4 If we are to evaluate Benjamin's
contribution to the theory of literary criticism, we need to balance
this acknowledgment of his very real debt to Hegel, Marx and the
Kaballah with an appreciation for Benjamin's reliance upon the thought
of a diverse group of poets and philosophers of the age of Goethe.
The development, in the period 1912 to 1916, of Benjamin's theory
of literary criticism, the broad outlines of which remain in force for
the post-Marxist criticism, is documented in a series of essays which
look to Kant ("Ober das Programm der kommenden Philosophie"),
to Friedrich Schlegel, Novalis, Fichte, and to Goethe himself (Der
Begriff der Kunstkritik in der deutschen Romantik), to Herder and
Hamann ("Ober Sprache tiberhaupt und uiber die Sprache des Men-
schen"), and, in his first major literary essay, to HOlderlin. Looking
back on his career in 1930, Benjamin referred to "Zwei Gedichte von
544
Benjamin and HOlderlin 545
Friedrich Holderlin" as one of the "herrlichen Grundlagen" of his

subsequent thought.' The essay has gone neglected, yet it signals Benja-
min's emergence as a major critic and in fact marks his "conversion"
to literature. Under Holderlin's influence Benjamin begins to formulate
a definition of the work of art which makes of it the bearer of absolute
truth in a fallen world. Benjamin's larger project, the "saving" of a
materialistic epoch through the act of literary criticism, finds its incep-
tion in the essay on HOlderlin.
Since the present essay will outline the nature and extent of Holder-
lin's influence upon Benjamin's image of the work of art and his theory
of criticism, a word on the methodological problem of tracing some-
thing so slippery as influence is in order here. Adorno first pointed
to Benjamin's refusal to think "freiweg" or "amateurhaft":6 that
is, without a precursor text upon which to comment, however idiosyn-
cratically. Benjamin's thought took shape only in the process of such
commentary, so that many of his central notions represent radical
reworkings of elements derived from texts about which he had written.
In Benjamin's own words, "'Beeinfluflt' ist am meisten der Trage,
wAhrend der Lernende frtiher oder spater dazu gelangt, dessen sich zu
bemachtigen, was am fremden Schaffen ihm das Dienliche ist, um
es als Technik seinem Werke einzugliedern."' Any understanding
of Benjamin depends therefore upon a thoroughgoing analysis of Ben-
jamin's transformation and supplementation of the ideas of his intellec-
tual ancestors. The interpreter of Benjamin must distinguish that which
has been assimilated more or less integrally, and here one might think
of the use of certain Freudian insights in the essay on Baudelaire, from
that which has been modified into something distinctively Benjaminian
-the rendering of historical materialism in the first pages of the essay
on Eduard Fuchs, for example. Since Benjamin's appropriations of
Holderlin's ideas fall without exception into this latter category, I
will attempt to distinguish between, on the one hand, those positions
and ideas of Benjamin's which are directly derived from his study of
Holderlin and, on the other, those which betray a possibly Holderlinian
origin but which bear the mark of other sources as well."
Benjamin knew of the enthusiasm for HOlderlin of the circle around

Stefan George, and this, together with his discovery of Norbert von
Hellingrath's pioneering interpretive and editorial work, initiated the
period of intensive involvement which led to the writing in the winter
of 1914-1915 of "Zwei Gedichte von Friedrich HOlderlin."9 Holderlin's
profound and enduring influence upon Benjamin stems, I think, from
the essential similarity of their reactions to the contemporary intellec-
tual situation; the Kantian philosophy marked a watershed for both,
and both formulated responses to the post-Kantian dilemma in terms
similar to, but clearly distinguishable from, those of the German Ro-
546 MICHAEL W. JENNINGS
mantics. In Benjamin's case, his earliest essays are marked by a general

and not yet clearly articulated dissatisfaction with contemporary cul-
ture. Both this dissatisfaction and Benjamin's initial response to it, the
vague call for the spiritual regeneration of that culture, reflect his
participation in the German Jugendbewegung and, in particular, his
absorption in the teachings of Gustav Wyneken.'? Wyneken's program,
formulated in his Schule und Jugendkultur of 1913, consisted of a
pastiche of ideas taken from Kant, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and
bound together with a naive Hegelian historicism. Stripped of the
complexity of Hegel's dialectic, Wyneken's "system" called for the
creation of a new, aestheticized culture which would promote the
transformation of the world into pure Geist. These ideas, however
innocuous they may seem in retrospect, exerted a major influence upon
the generation which was to fight the First World War. They could
not, however, satisfy for long a thinker such as Benjamin, who would
later become famous for the specificity of his powers of observation.
Only the encounter with the Kantian philosophy released Benjamin
from his obsession with Wyneken's nebulous concepts and allowed
him to focus his energies upon a specific concern with the problem of
knowledge. His initial reaction to Kant's ideas emphasized, as had
those of the Romantics and HOlderlin before him, the discontinuities
which arise with Kant's assertion of the limits of knowledge. Benjamin
wrote in 1912: "Es waltet ein tragikomisches Gesetz darin, dai3 in dem
Augenblick, wo wir uns der Autonomie des Geistes mit Kant, Fichte
und Hegel bewul3t wurden, die Natur in ihrer unermef3lichen Gegen-
sttindlichkeit sich auftat" (II, 1, 24). He echoes here the recognition
by the generation following Kant of the gap between subject and ob-
ject, between nature and the ideas, and finally between man and his
world. Heine's reference to Kant's "zerstOrenden, weltzermalmenden
Gedanken"" gives perhaps the most accurate image of the impact of
this aspect of Kant's thought. And again like the Romantics and HOl-
derlin, Benjamin sought a solution to the dilemma in the notion of a
new unity, a reintegration of that which had been rendered separate.
The study of Holderlin's works revealed to Benjamin a model upon
which to base his own reworking of Kant. Holderlin's conviction,
expressed repeatedly in the poetry and essays, that the poem itself repre-
sents a receptacle of and means of access to knowledge, has far-reaching
implications for Benjamin's subsequent work.
For all his reverence for Kant as the "Moses unserer Nation,""2 Hol-
derlin could not rest content with Kant's assertion of the wholly tran-
scendent, and thus unknowable, nature of the noumenal realm.'3
In the essay "Ober Religion," HOlderlin posits the existence of "ein
hoherer, mehr als mechanischer Zusammenhang" (SA IV, 1, 275)-
something to which he generally refers as "das All" or "das Ganze"
-and establishes this larger unity as the potential object of knowledge.
Recent readings of Holderlin's poetry have noted a vacillation on
Holderlin's part between an affirmation of the individual and his
boundedness (which is in a sense an admission of "failure," in that
Benjamin and Holderlin 547
the quest for the numinous is abandoned) and a willingness to surren-

der subjectivity in the interest of the all (a moment characterized in
the poetry by the metaphor of lightning-the poet is subject to inspira-
tion and even revelation, but at the cost of being consumed).'4 For
Benjamin, however, the effort to transcend subjectivity and integrate
the finite world and the transcendental realm is privileged over any
affirmation of individuality. He emphasizes, as have BOckmann and
Ryan,'" that HOlderlin consummated the search for the larger unity
in the act of writing; poetry as activity itself makes possible the cogni-
tion of something beyond it. The cryptic assertion in "Uber Religion"
that religion is "ihrem Wesen nach poeitisch" (SA IV, 1, 281) is intended
not only as a definition of religion but, more importantly, as a claim
for the potential status of poetry. The idea that the poem captures the
transcendental in some manner finds its most forthright expression
in the poem "Wie wenn am Feiertage," at once poetological manifesto
and divinatory utterance. Due to poetic inspiration, the presence of
the divine is felt in the world: "sie sind erkannt,/Die Allebendigen,
die Kraifte der Gotter" (SA II, 1, 119). This general attribution of revela-
tory capacity to the poem exercised an immediate influence on Benja-
min's thought and indeed upon his career. Before turning to a discus-
sion of the precise manner in which HOlderlin envisions the manifesta-
tion in the poem of a transcendental force, and of Benjamin's subse-
quent appropriation of that vision, we need to examine the more gen-
eral effect of HOlderlin's fusion of epistemology and poetics upon Ben-
jamin's reading of the ode "Blodigkeit":
Sind denn dir nicht bekannt viele Lebendigen?

Geht auf Wahrem dein FuB nicht, wie auf Teppichen?
Drum, mein Genius! tritt nur
Bar ins Leben, und sorge nicht!
Was geschiehet, es sei alles gelegen dir!

Sei zur Freude gereimt, oder was kinnte denn
Dich beleidigen, Herz, was
Da begegenen, wohin du sollst?
Denn, seit Himmlischen gleich Menschen, ein einsam

Wild,
Und die Himmlischen selbst fiihret, der Einkehr zu,
Der Gesang und der Fiirsten
Chor, nach Arten, so waren auch
Wir, die Zungen des Volks, gerne bei Lebenden,

Wo sich vieles gesellt, freudig und jedem gleich,
Jedem offen, so ist ja
Unser Vater, des Himmels Gott,
Der den denkenden Tag Armen und Reichen gonnt,

Der, zur Wende der Zeit, uns, die Entschlafenden,
Aufgerichtet an goldenen
Gingelbanden, wie Kinder, halt.
Gut auch sind und geschickt einem zu etwas wir,

Wenn wir kommen, mit Kunst, und von den Himm-
lischen
Einen bringen. Doch selber
Bringen schickliche HAnde wir.
(SA II, 1, 66)
Benjamin's reading of this poem centers upon the poet's establishment

of unity between the various elements of a mythic, self-contained world.
Benjamin's use of the word "mythic" in this period bears none of the
pejorative connotations it has in Benjamin's later work, where it comes
to stand as a cipher for the daemonic forces of nature which intrude
upon man's moral life. Nor does Benjamin wish to imply through his
use of the word "Mythos" that he wishes to create a new body of myths
similar to those of Greece. As Scholem has recounted, Benjamin saw
in Mythos the "Sinn der Welt."'6 This understanding of myth is based
directly upon Holderlin's. Common to both Holderlin's and Benjamin's
perceptions is a conviction that man must base his understanding of
nature and the world upon religious experience. A rough parallel can be
established between Benjamin's early essay "Dialog tiber die Reli-
giositat der Gegenwart" and Holderlin's "Uber Religion": in both the
available forms of religion, which should be able to give form to the
experience of the world, are rejected as inadequate. Holderlin's poetry
is, then, an attempt to give form to his religious experience, from which
his understanding of the world cannot be separated. He writes in "Ober
Religion" that the "religiOsen Verhaltnisse" require a "mythische
Vorstellungsweise" (SA IV, 1, 281). Paul Bockmann points out that
this "mythische Vorstellungsweise" interests HOlderlin not as the basis
for a new mythic order, but rather as a method and form for a new
manner of expression.'7 Mythos is thus for HOlderlin and for the early
Benjamin a form within which the larger, metaphysical relationships
which obtain in the world may be understood. And in Benjamin's
reading of "BlOdigkeit," it is the poet who becomes the medium of this
understanding; his song has a direct and lasting effect upon the world.
The poet in fact soon discovers that his song empowers him to reshape
even the mode of existence of the various discrete elements of his world:
he can unite the world and the numinous realm which lies beyond it,
that is, he can bring about the interpenetration of spirit and matter.
Men, "das Volk" become, in the poet's song, a new element of a new
world governed by a new order. They are deprived of their corporeality
and identity, but, as ideas of the poet, assume a real plastic form. And
not only are humans "vergeistigt" in Benjamin's reading; the gods,
in a remarkable paradox, are hypostatized. "Der Gott hort auf, den
Kosmos des Gesanges zu bestimmen, dessen Wesen vielmehr-mit
Kunst-erwaihlt sich frei das Gegenstandliche: er bringt den Gott, da
GOtter schon zum versachlichten Sein der Welt im Gedanken geworden
sind" (II, 1, 121). Benjamin here intensifies what is already a radical idea
in Holderlin. Whereas HOlderlin had envisioned the capacity of the
poem to make the gods "fiihlbar,"'8 Benjamin finds in the HOlder-
linian world an actual hypostatization of the gods. Benjamin argues,

then, that the HOlderlinian poem tends to render all of the elements of
the universe plastic as the poem progresses: time is stopped, for example,
and made "beharrend" (II, 1, 120), and the idea of infinity, repre-
sented by the gods, becomes concrete. Song functions, then, as a media-
tor between ideal and world, imposing not just a coherence that had
been lacking before, but making of the world a place analogous in its
coherence and meaningfulness to Mythos.
The interpretation of "Bl6digkeit" reveals a great deal regarding
Benjamin's understanding of Hblderlin and of the possibilities this
understanding opened for him. Benjamin recognizes that the poem
represents for HOlderlin the key to a new epistemology and indeed to a
new, post-Kantian unity. This attribution of an epistemological function
must have revealed to Benjamin for the first time that it would be pos-
sible to formulate a theory which incorporated metaphysics and poetics.
Although Benjamin arrived at a final definition of the "Wahrheitsgehalt
des Kunstwerks" only in 1921, with the writing of the essay "Goethes
Wahlverwandtschaften," this fundamental idea is present in nuce in
the HOlderlin essay. He refers there, in fact, to the "Wahrheit der
Dichtung," and so prefigures his later fascination with those elements of
a work of art which are constituent parts of a larger, absolute truth.
Benjamin's epistemological interests, inspired by his contact with
Wyneken and especially by his involvement in the Neo-Kantianism of
Hermann Cohen, pre-date, to be sure, his reading of Holderlin. The
idea, though, that these questions might be pursued not in the realm of
systematic philosophy but rather in the course of literary commentary
emerges only with the writing of the HOlderlin essay. It is no overstate-
ment to speak of Benjamin's conversion to literature through the exam-
ple of HOlderlin.'9
The conviction that the work of art must be accorded a privileged
status due to its function as the residence of truth in the world lends to
Benjamin's career a purpose and tenor we do not ordinarily associate
with that of a literary critic. This juxtaposition of epistemological and
literary critical interests has led Anglo-American readers in particular to
misunderstand the character of Benjamin's work; he is neither precisely
a philosopher, nor exactly a literary essayist. As Scholem puts it, each
of his literary essays describes a philosophy of its object.20 His career
might be said to represent the protracted attempt to articulate the man-
ner in which literature in general and specific works in particular hold
within them the key to man's understanding of the world and the abso-
lute, and to describe a literary critical method adequate to the recogni-
tion and revelation of that truth. Even in the 1930's, as Benjamin's
essays hew ever closer to the central doctrines of historical materialism,
the concept that the work of art contains elements which afford access
to a privileged knowledge will remain central. In the 1938 essay "Ciber
einige Motive bei Baudelaire," for example, Benjamin finds evidence in
Les fleurs du mal of Baudelaire's ability to capture glimpses of the
"true nature" of history and to hold fast to the insights gained by
means of a series of images within the poems. A passage from the

recently published study of nineteenth-century Paris, Das Passagen-
Werk, offers perhaps the best testimony to the ongoing importance of
the idea that fragments of truth are present in the world and in par-
ticular in works of literature. In the middle of a far-ranging argument
for the ultimate legitimacy of Marxist historiography, Benjamin asserts
the following: "Entschiedene Abkehr vom Begriffe der 'zeitlosen Wahr-
heit' ist am Platz. Doch Wahrheit ist nicht-wie der Marxismus es
behauptet-nur eine zeitliche Funktion des Erkennens sondern an einen
Zeitkern, welcher im Erkannten und Erkennenden zugleich steckt, ge-
bunden" (V, 1, 578).
Benjamin's study of HOlderlin had, in addition to this awakening of
interest in the relationship of poetics and epistemology, a specific in-
fluence upon his understanding of the manner in which truth can be
said to reside in literature. In the interpretation of "Blodigkeit," Ben-
jamin characterizes the new relationship between poet and "Volk"
engendered by the poet's song through a daring metaphor: "Nun
erscheint-diirfen wir es byzantinischen Mosaiken vergleichen?-
entpersonlicht das Volk, wie in der Flache gedrangt um die flache grof3e
Gestalt seines heiligen Dichters" (II, 1, 118). The appearance of the
metaphor of the mosaic links the HOlderlin essay with Benjamin's
definitive treatment of epistemological problems, the "Erkenntnis-
kritische Vorrede" to the Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels. There,
the ideas are themselves described as constellations, "capricious mo-
saics" of fragments of truth. The fragmentary nature of truth in Benja-
min's thinking has customarily been traced to Benjamin's contact
with Scholem and his Kabbalistic studies.2 We can, however, trace the
primary, if not exclusive impetus for Benjamin's development of these
ideas to HOlderlin. That development is not to be found in the Holder-
lin essay itself, but rather in "Das Leben der Studenten," a piece com-
posed simultaneously with "Zwei Gedichte von Friedrich HOlderlin"
in the winter of 1914-1915. Benjamin there articulates a utopian under-
standing of history which focuses upon a "Zustand, in dem die Historie
als in einem Brennpunkt gesammelt ruht" (II, 1, 75). This assertion of
the importance of a synchronic moment has an exact parallel in the
Holderlin essay, in which Benjamin is able to attribute a revolutionary
impact to the poem only because it represents a moment lifted out of
flux. At the "Wende der Zeit" (II, 1, 120), the poem transcends not
only the limits of the poet's subjectivity, but also the boundaries im-
posed upon existence by transience. This point at which history comes
to a standstill, and at which a moment of stasis is lifted out of flux
and suffused with the numinous, is an important one in both essays.
In "Das Leben der Studenten" Benjamin goes so far as to assert that
elements of this utopian moment are present in fragmented form within
the course of "normal" history:
Die Elemente des Endzustands sind als gefiahrdetste,
verrufenste, und verlachteste Schopfungen und Ge-
danken tief in jeder Gegenwart eingebettet. Den
immanenten Zustand der Vollkommenheit rein zum

absoluten zu gestalten, ihn sichtbar und herrschend
in der Gegenwart zu machen, ist die geschichtliche
Aufgabe. (II, 1, 75)
The importance of this passage for Benjamin's subsequent career

cannot be overestimated; it reads like a codified program for the course
of his later thought, since it contains a radically foreshortened defini-
tion of his theory of literary criticism. Truth, which attains its full
meaning only in the "final condition" described in detail in the preface
to the Trauerspielbuch, is present in the world, albeit hidden in frag-
mentary form. As Benjamin later puts it in the essay on Goethe of
1921, using language reminiscent of "Das Leben der Studenten" of 1915,
the truth content of literature is fragmen ary, "unscheinbar" and
"innig," (I, 1, 125), hidden behind a welter of baser matter. It is the
task of criticism, as Benjamin describes the "historical task" here, to
make these fragments visible and dominant.
Benjamin's central category of fragmentation is already adumbrated,
then, in the essays of 1914-1915. These essays predate his acquaintance
with Scholem and thus with Jewish mysticism. It seems more likely
that these concepts can be traced to Benjamin's immersion in Holder-
lin's works, and specifically to his reading of the Homburg essay frag-
ments of 1798 to 1800. In the essay "Ober den Unterschied der Dicht-
arten," Holderlin addresses directly the problem of separation posed
by the Kantian philosophy. He seeks a specific answer to the question
of how the unity of the larger whole may be reconciled with the individ-
ual in his bounded and clearly defined subjectivity; how, in other words,
is a sense of that unity available to the "beschrainkterem Gemuite"?
We have noted that Holderlin's general answer was something like
"poetry can bring about the transcendence of subjectivity," but we must
now turn to Holderlin's more specific articulation of the manner in
which poetry can mediate between the worldly and the ideal.
In "Ober den Unterschied der Dichtarten" HOlderlin distinguishes
between a series of tones or modes of poetry.22 Of HOlderlin's three
tones, the lyric, epic and tragic, the tragic emerges as that mode of
poetry most closely associated with the ideal. In his description of the
"Begrtindung des tragischen Gedichts," he asserts that the higher unity
needs to divide itself into discrete fragments so that it can, in those frag-
ments, come to be aware of itself.
Das tragische, in seinem au3eren Scheine heroische

Gedicht ist, seinem Grundtone nach, idealisch, und
allen Werken dieser Art mu3 eine intellectuale An-
schauung zum Grunde liegen, welche keine andere seyn
kann, als jene Einigkeit mit allem, was lebt, die zwar
von dem beschrankteren Gemuthe nicht geftihlt, die
... aber vom Geiste erkannt werden kann und aus
der Unmoglichkeit einer absoluten Trennung und Ver-
einzelung hervorgeht, und am leichtesten sich aus-
spricht dadurch, da3 man sagt, die wirkliche Trennung,
und mit ihr alles Materielle Vergangliche, so auch

die Verbindung und mit ihr alles wirklich Geistige
Bleibende, das Objective, als solches, so auch das
subjective als solches, seien nur ein Zustand des
Urspriinglich einigen, in dem es sich befinde, weil es
aus sich herausgehen maisse, . . . denn es ist ewiges
Gesez, daB das gehaltreiche Ganze in seiner Einigkeit
nicht mit der Bestimmtheit und Lebhaftigkeit sich
fiihlt, nicht in dieser sinnlichen Einheit, in welcher
seine Theile . . . sich fikhlen. (SA IV, 1, 267-68)
The fragments of the original whole are, then, necessary moments

in the self-realization of the larger unity. As Ryan has pointed out,
it is precisely poetry which is called upon to allow the unity of the world
to be felt.2 Due to the elements of the "Trennung" in the work of art
the poem yields the knowledge of the larger whole.
Now this sort of thinking was pervasive in HOlderlin's time, and
Benjamin was familiar with a number of variations on the same theme.
He was conversant with Neo-platonic theories of emanation and with
Boehme's modification of those theories, and he was familiar with
similar ideas in the works of HOlderlin's companions at the Tilbinger
Stift, Schelling and Hegel. We can, however, trace the primary, though
certainly not exclusive, impetus for Benjamin's development of these
concepts to HOlderlin not merely because of the simultaneous com-
position of the essays on HOlderlin and "Das Leben der Studenten,"
but in particular because of the intimate relationship between an "episte-
mological poetics" and the notion of the fragment which will hence-
forth pervade Benjamin's work.
In sum, both HOlderlin and Benjamin responded to a perceived
rupture in the relationship of man to his universe which followed from
the Kantian philosophy. HOlderlin's solution, the attribution to the
poem of a revelatory capacity, led Benjamin into a realm within which
to deal with epistemological and metaphysical questions. Benjamin
transforms HOlderlin's basic concept in that he makes of the poem not
something which achieves an intermittent sense of the transcendental,
but rather the actual residence of a form of truth in the world. In the
HOlderlin essay of 1915 he asserts that the poem makes possible the
hypostatization of the gods; by 1921 he will boldly maintain that the
work of literature contains, albeit in fragmented form, absolute truth.
Benjamin found in his study of HOlderlin, moreover, the first impetus
toward the formulation of a theory which includes a concept of frag-
mented truth; HOlderlin's reworking of Neo-platonism and BOhme's
mysticism had a profound effect upon him.
II
To this point, the positive side of Benjamin's reading has been empha-
sized. As will often be the case in his later essays, though, the HOlderlin
essay consists of a subtle dialectical interweaving of two aspects of Ben-

jamin's thought. The potential creative power of song is both coun-
tered and reinforced at every point by a darker, nihilistic tendency.
The poet of Benjamin's reading is a paradoxical figure. Essential to the
creation of the new world as the bearer of song, he is yet in many ways a
transitional figure, a necessary evil. In the figure of the poet, in fact,
we find Benjamin's first attempt to formulate an anti-subjective posi-
tion. Benjamin sees the poet's initial stance in "Blodigkeit" as an
existence above and outside of life. In entering into life by recognizing
the "Volk," the poet accepts his own "Lebendigkeit" (II, 1, 114) and
so takes the first step toward his own end. The people show that the
relation of the poet to the world is a reciprocal one; while the poet
transforms the world through his song, he is in turn determined and
formed by the conditions existing in the world. The people, pressed
into a plastic form about the poet, are thus a spatial representation of
the human fate to which the poet has submitted; they become the
"Erstreckung des Raumes, . . . in dem sich das Schicksal erstreckt"
(II, 1, 113). Similarly, the act of rendering concrete the gods and time
constitutes an acceptance of temporal limitations by the poet, and not
merely an assimilation of time and the gods into the poetic cosmos.
Although the initial unification of world and idea takes place through
song, only the poet's submission to his fate gives to the new order its
final, objective form. As long as the new world remains embodied only
in song, as an idea of the poet, it is still subjective, still bound by his
person, despite its plastic form. Only song and fate acting together can
objectify the new order and thereby lend it universal significance. The
final objectification occurs, then, through the death of the poet. The
dissolution of the poet as subjective, finite individual frees the plastic
forms of his vision from their subjective limitations, lending to their
mythic unity an objective status in the world. "Wo vordem das Wahre
der Aktivitat des Dichters einbeschlossen war, tritt es nun beherrschend
in sinnlicher Erfiilltheit auf" (II, 1, 120). The death of the poet frees
the individual from his subjective boundaries. It allows him to be viewed
not as an individual "Gestalt, sondern als Prinzip der Gestalt, Begren-
zendes, auch seinen eignen Korper noch Tragendes" (II, 1, 125). The
result of death is thus the assimilation of the poet into a mythically
charged world in which the connections between elements take preced-
ence over the identity of the elements themselves. In Benjamin's reading,
then, poet and world become synonymous and even, in the end, identi-
cal. This identity is "der Grund, in dem immer wieder die gesonderte
Gestalt sich aufhebt in der raum-zeitlichen Ordnung, in der sie als
gestaltlos, allgestalt, Vorgang und Dasein, zeitliche Plastik und raum-
liches Geschehen aufgehoben ist" (II, 1, 124). This odd death's dance of
creativity and destruction stands at the deepest level of Benjamin's read-
ing. In it contradictions are resolved, meaning lent to that which was
formerly meaningless, and a unity that can be called mythic is discov-
ered. This new unity cannot, however, be viewed in an unqualifiedly
positive way; the new world is, due to its birth in an act of lethal sacrifice,
"mit Gefahr gesattigt" (II, 1, 124), and so it will remain.

Even the most cursory reading of "Zwei Gedichte von Friedrich Hol-
derlin" reveals the extent to which Benjamin's understanding of Der
Tod des Empedokles influenced his interpretation of the poem "Bl0dig-
keit." Benjamin views the initial situation of the poet in "Blodigkeit" in
much the same way that Empedokles views himself: the poet and Empe-
dokles are at once privileged and condemned to lead a life above and
outside that of the "Volk." And again like Empedokles, the poet in
Benjamin's reading is able by virtue of his song to impose a new order
and meaning on the lives of the people; they are lifted from their mun-
dane existence while, as we saw above, elements of the transcendental
sphere are hypostatized, lending an imposing stature and significance
to the new order. And finally, just as the problem of Empedokles'
death stands at the center of the drama, so, too, does the death of the
poet in Benjamin's interpretation figure as the major and necessary
event in the realization of the new order. The poet's death frees his
song from the bounds of his subjectivity and thus objectifies and uni-
versalizes it. Benjamin attributes to the death of the poet, moreover,
not only the objectification of the newly forged unity, but also the very
source of the poet's song. "Offenbar ist, dali der Tod in der Gestalt der
'Einkehr' in die Mitte der Dichtung versetzt wurde, daI3 in dieser Mitte
der Ursprung des Gesanges ist, als des Inbegriffs aller Funktionen, daI3
hier die Ideen der 'Kunst,' des 'Wahren' entspringen als Ausdruck
der beruhenden Einheit" (II, 1, 124).
The world is "saved" through the surrender of subjectivity-this
motif recurs throughout Benjamin's works. Adorno was the first to
point to the importance of Benjamin's rejection of the notion of the
individual subject: "In all seinen Phasen hat Benjamin den Untergang
des Subjekts und die Rettung des Menschen zusammengedacht."24
The deeply rooted distrust of subjectivity was present very early in
Benjamin's nature, as a letter of 1912, which deals with the problem of
self-consciousness, reveals:
Die Erkenntnis, das SelbstbewuBtsein einer Berufung,
ist immer Schuld ... Ich glaube, es ist nicht zu abstrakt
gesprochen: alle Erkenntnis ist Schuld, wenigstens alle
Erkenntnis vom Guten und Bosen-so sagt auch die
Bibel-aber alles Handeln ist Unschuld.25
At this early stage, Benjamin cannot separate knowledge from its

apparent source in consciousness; the Holderlin essay first affords him
the opportunity to separate truth and subjectivity. The nihilism which
results from the contact first with HOlderlin and then with Jewish
mysticism leaves its traces in many areas of Benjamin's thought: in his
decidedly apocalyptic view of history and redemption; in his attack on
all forms of psychological criticism; and, perhaps most peculiarly,
in his insistence upon speaking always of criticism and never the critic,
as if the act of criticism were somehow autonomous and free of the
taint of the critic's person.
Benjamin's reading of Empedokles, as it can be deduced from the
Holderlin essay, had one other important result: it shaped his under-
standing of the relationship which obtains between language and knowl-
edge. In "Grund zum Empedokles" Holderlin describes a necessarily
reciprocal relationship which can be established between man and
nature. Man becomes "unterscheidender, denkender, vergleichender,
bildender, organisirender, und organisirter . . . wenn er weniger bei sich
selber ist, und in so fern er sich weniger bewuBt ist, daB bei ihm und ftir
ihn das sprachlose Sprache ... gewinnt" (SA IV, 1, 154-55). Language,
then, is a means through which to achieve the transcendence of self-
consciousness discussed above. More than that, though, it is here de-
scribed as the mode wherein man can come to develop his potential
to its fullest. And this development is in turn only possible when man
exercises his function as the one who lends language to nature, which
is without language. This idea finds expression in the following passage
from the drama itself:
Und staunend hOrt ich oft die Wasser gehn

Und sah die Sonne bliihn, und sich an ihr
Den Jugendtag der stillen Erd entziinden.
Da ward in mir Gesang und helle ward
Mein dimmernd Herz im dichtenden Gebete,
Wenn ich die Fremdlinge, die gegenwart'gen,
Die Gotter der Natur mit Nahmen nannt'
Und mir der Geist im Wort, im Bilde sich,
Im seeligen, des Lebens Rathsel loste.
(SA IV, 1, 137)
Inspired by nature, the poet translates its sounds and sights into images
and in so doing names it. The act of naming grants to the speaker a
power which opens to him a realm beyond the bounds of his subjectivity
and makes him privy to a special knowledge.
The importance of this idea for Benjamin is apparent in his inter-
pretation of "Blodigkeit" in the Holderlin essay, in which the poet's
song melds the worldly and the ideal. But Benjamin was to use this
problem complex more explicitly in an essay written in 1916. The essay
"Uber Sprache tiberhaupt und tiber die Sprache des Menschen" is often
described as the keystone of Benjamin's thought. Its opening pages
read like an amplification of the dialogical function of language in
Empedokles. In a pre-Adamitic, perfect language, man entered into a
dialogue with nature, translating for it its silent speech and finally
naming it. This act of naming spoke as a performative act the final
unity of man and nature; and, as was the case in the Holderlinian
model, this act of naming established man's relationship to the abso-
lute. In naming, man is granted a power and knowledge analogous to
God's own creativity. "Das absolute Verhiltnis des Namens zur Er-
kenntnis besteht allein in Gott, nur dort ist der Name, weil er im inner-
sten mit dem schaffenden Wort identisch ist, das reine Medium der
Erkenntnis" (I, 1, 148). Here, as in Empedokles, language is the lynchpin
of the larger constellation man-nature-God(s); the language essay
supplies for Benjamin the crucial connection between HOlderlin's idea
that the poem itself establishes a unity with something larger than man
and his own later assertion of the presence of truth in the work of art.
He comes increasingly to identify the name with the presence of truth
in the world. In the Goethe essay, Benjamin intimates that access to
truth is attainable only through the "Anschauung des gottlichen Na-
mens" (I, 1, 128), and in the preface to Trauerspiel, he defines truth
itself as the "Gewalt" which gives form to matter and proceeds to
identify this "Gewalt" with the name: "Das aller Phenomenalitit
entruickte Sein, dem allein diese Gewalt eignet, ist das des Namens"
(I, 1, 216). In these and other references throughout his works, Benjamin
allows the word "name" to stand metonymically for the idea complex
of his early theory of language. This theory, which combines ideas de-
rived from HOlderlin, Hamann and Jewish mysticism, stands behind
Benjamin's final attribution of a special significance to the work of liter-
ary art: its use of language sets it above all other art forms as the resi-
dence and final refuge of truth in the phenomenal world.
III
Benjamin's debt to HOlderlin can be solidly demonstrated as Benjamin

develops Holderlin's notion of the "Grund" of poetry into his concept
of the "Gedichtete," the forerunner of the doctrine of the ideas pre-
sented in the "erkenntniskritische Vorrede" to Trauerspiel and an
entity fundamental to the development of his theory of literary criticism.
In the idea of "Trennung" we have seen how elements of a larger unity
exist as constituent parts of the world. These elements may be regarded
as the presuppositions for our knowledge of that whole. Holderlin still
faced, however, the fundamental question as to how we are to get from
our feeling of the part to the feeling of the whole, particularly insofar
as this question relates to poetry. Holderlin hints at an answer to this
question in a letter to his friend Sinclair of 1798. He points to poetry
as an alternative to a "positive revelation," since poetry as a "product"
of both the subjective and the objective yields access to a knowledge of
both:
Resultat des Subjektiven und Objektiven, des Einzel-

nen und Ganzen, ist jedes Erzeugni3 und Product,
und eben weil im Product der Antheil, den das Einzelne
am Producte hat, niemals villig unterschieden werden
kann vom Antheil, den das Ganze daran hat, so ist
auch daraus klar, wie innig jedes Einzelne mit dem
Ganzen zusammenhangt und wie sie beede nur Ein
lebendiges Ganze ausmachen, das zwar durch und
durch individualisiert ist und aus lauter selbststandigen,
aber ebenso innig und ewig verbundenen Theilen
besteht. (SA VI, 1, 301)
The references not only to the function of poetry as the mediator be-
tween larger whole and discrete part, but also to the idea of "Trennung"
discussed above are, I think, clear enough here. But Holderlin adds in
this letter the implication that the whole has a role in the organization
and relationships inherent in the poem. The essay "Ober die Verfahrens-
weise des poetischen Geistes," another of the Homburg essay fragments,
discusses this relationship of the roles played by the whole and by the
individual in some detail.26 According to HOlderlin, the poem is able to
accomplish so much due to the existence of something which lies beyond
the poem, a heuristic principle of organization with Kantian features
which HOlderlin calls the "Grund."
Dieser Grund des Gedichts, seine Bedeutung, soll

den Obergang bilden zwischen dem Ausdruck, dem
Dargestellten, dem sinnlichen Stoffe, dem eigentlich
ausgesprochenen im Gedichte, und zwischen dem
Geiste, der idealischen Behandlung. (SA IV, 1, 244)
As a mediator, the "Grund" lends "dem Idealischen einen Anfang,

eine Richtung, eine Bedeutung," and in so doing makes possible the
successful realization of the poem "so daI3 man sagen kann, in jedesma-
ligen Elemente liege objektiv und reell Idealisches dem Idealischen,
lebendiges dem Lebendigen, individuelles dem Individuellen gegentiber"
(SA IV, 1, 244). In organizing and giving direction to the discrete ele-
ments of the poem, the "Grund" at the same time establishes, to use
Baudelaire's term, "correspondences" between the poem and the
ideal, and therefore between the individual and the whole. This media-
tion can, at least intermittently, overcome the subject-object dichotomy
inherent in the world.
Benjamin makes explicit use of the idea of the "Grund" in the meth-
odological introduction to the HOlderlin essay, his first attempt to
formulate a theory of literary criticism. He there proposes the existence
of a "sphere" called the "Gedichtete" which represents the a priori
ideal of the poem. In describing the "Gedichtete" as the final "Grund"
of the poem, Benjamin refers openly to its HOlderlinian origins. The
"Gedichtete" in fact performs a function identical to that of the
"Grund"-as the "geistig-anschauliche Struktur derjenigen Welt, von
der das Gedicht zeugt" (II, 1, 105), the "Gedichtete" lies beyond the
poem, a mediator between the poem and the larger whole beyond it.
"Das Gedichtete ist in seiner allgemeinen Form synthetische Einheit
der geistigen und anschaulichen Ordnung" (II, 1, 105). In positing the
existence of such a realm Benjamin consciously ties his ideas, through
his use of Holderlin, to a theory of idealism derived in equal parts
from Plato and Kant. The "Gedichtete" is Platonic in the metaphysical
status attributed to it as an autonomous entity; it is Kantian in its
progressive and heuristic character. Like Holderlin's "Grund," it is
heuristic in its organization of poetic activity. The poem is, then, the
poetic "solution," a concrete approximation of the "Gedichtete" which
points toward, but in no way subsumes or comprehends, its a priori,
the "Gedichtete" itself, which is the poetic "task."
The idea of the "Gedichtete" represents the first stage in Benjamin's
development of that aspect of his thought which finally emerges as the

doctrine of the ideas which dominates the Ursprung des deutschen
Trauerspiels. Like the "Gedichtete," the ideas are there shown to
organize elements of literary texts (which have, by this late stage of
Benjamin's theories, been freed from their context in the work of
art) into configurations which point toward absolute truth. The "Ge-
dichtete" has more immediate ramifications, however, for Benjamin's
theory of criticism. He describes at some length in the Holderlin essay
a theory of criticism developed to accommodate the idea of the "Ge-
dichtete." In defining the "Gedichtete" as the a priori of the poem,
Benjamin asserts that it is differentiated from the poem itself "durch
das potentielle Dasein derjenigen [Bestimmungen], die im Gedicht
aktuell vorhanden sind und anderer" (II, 1, 106). This statement points
to the dual nature of the "Gedichtete" in Benjamin's creative appro-
priation of the Holderlinian idea; this dual nature in turn gives rise
to two distinct moments in Benjamin's practice of literary criticism.
In one sense, the "Gedichtete" is a "Grenzbegriff" (II, 1, 106) de-
limiting those elements of the metaphysical superstructure "aktuell
vorhanden" in the poem. It guarantees, then, the coherence and unity
of the poem, its "hOchste Bestimmtheit" and the "GrOi3e und Ver-
bundenheit der Elemente" (II, 1, 106). The successful poetic realization
will be characterized by an intensive unity and coherence: this notion
furnishes Benjamin with the basis for an evaluative procedure, a pro-
cedure which looks to the formal aspects of literature for the basis of
its judgment. This aspect of the "Gedichtete" sheds light upon an ele-
ment of Benjamin's method that is too often neglected. While hardly
a formalist critic, strictly formal concerns nonetheless play an impor-
tant role in many of his best-known readings. His analysis of Goethe's
Die Wahlverwandtschaften finally turns, for example, on generic
differences between the novel and novella forms; the clash of these
generic forms leads the reader, according to Benjamin, to the truth
implicit in the work. And Benjamin's resuscitation of the Baroque
"Trauerspiel" focuses quite as much upon the various constituent parts
of the drama, upon the "Reyen" and the echo, for example, as it does
upon the more famous analysis of the historical consciousness evident
in the ruin.
We would be remiss, however, to overemphasize this moment of
Benjamin's criticism. His theory and practice are dominated instead
by his well-known advocacy of the outright destruction of the work
of art. The fully developed theory of the "annihilation"--a word from
Schlegel-of the work of art, which leads Benjamin to envision criticism
as the "mortification of the text," originates in the second aspect of
the "Gedichtete." In the sense described above, the "Gedichtete" limits
the potential meanings of the poem as it excludes from it elements not
present in the metaphysical superstructure. Benjamin makes clear,
however, that the possibilities of the "Gedichtete" are by no means
exhausted by the poem. The "Gedichtete" contains not only those ele-
ments "actually present" in the poem, but also "others." As the "Auf-
lockerung der festen funktionellen Verbundenheit die im Gedichte

selbst waltet" (II, 1, 106), the "Gedichtete" gives way to a criticism
which attempts to move through the poem and toward elements only
potentially present in it. The sphere beyond the poem displaces it as
the end of critical analysis. It is "der letzte Grund, . . . der einer Analyse
zugainglich ist" (II, 1, 105).
Since the poem itself is never exhaustive, the critic is not only free,
but actually obliged to expand upon the elements and relationships
found in the poem. And conversely, the elements only potentially present
in the poem, as much a part of the poem's truth as anything it actually
contains, can only be represented ("dargestellt") through the act of
criticism. Benjamin refers to this aspect of his criticism as the exploita-
tion of the "VerbindungsmOglichkeiten" (II, 1, 106) present in the
"Gedichtete"; in later years he develops his critical practice upon just
this theoretical justification. Benjamin opens here a path toward a
criticism that operates freely on many levels of connotation and refer-
entiality. In the idea of the "Gedichtete" as "Auflockerung" he grants
to the critic an unprecedented freedom. As early as the HOlderlin essay
of 1915, then, Benjamin anticipates many of the critical motifs asso-
ciated with structuralist and post-structuralist criticism.27 Benjamin's
first essay in critical theory already contains in nuce the idea that the
work of literature is itself something mutable and transitional, together
with the notion that the work of criticism itself may stand beside the
work of literature as an important and necessary contribution to its
fulfillment.
Benjamin's involvement with Holderlin's work represents, then, much
more than the mere beginnings of Benjamin's ideas on literature and
criticism; in its complexity and in the originality of its ideas Benjamin's
response contributes significantly to his mature formulations on a
number of issues. First, in his recognition of Holderlin's attribution of
revelatory capability to the poem, Benjamin focuses his epistemo-
logical and metaphysical interests on literary studies and moves toward
a definition of the work of art which encompasses its ability to hold a
form of truth within it. Second, Holderlin's version of the fragmenta-
tion of the larger whole directs Benjamin toward his own, ultimately
nihilistic notion of fragmented truth. And finally, in HOlderlin's estab-
lishment of the mediation between the worldly and the ideal, Benjamin
finds the sphere in which his criticism will move. He sets as the goal
of criticism nothing less than the metaphysical structure of the world.
Princeton University
' Walter Benjamin, Briefe (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1966), p. 505 (in French
in the original).
2 Adorno's publication of a selection of Benjamin's essays, Walter Benjamin, Schriften
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1955), served as the basis for Benjamin scholar-
ship until the critical edition edited by Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppen-
hauser began to appear in 1971.
? The attack on Benjamin began in a paradoxical fashion. Bernd Witte's Walter Ben-
jamin: Der Intellektuelle als Kritiker (Stuttgart: Metzler Verlag, 1976) is in many
ways the best single book on Benjamin, yet Witte consistently undermines his own
work by dismissing Benjamin's interpretations as overly personal and subjective.
This criticism has been taken up more recently by Michael Rumpf, who extends
it so as to call Benjamin's stature into question: "Es zeigt sich, daI3 Benjamins Funktion
als Leitfigur neuerer Forschung bedenklich ist." Rumpf, "Walter Benjamins Nachle-
ben," DVjS, 52 (1978), 137.
' Liselotte Wiesenthal's generally reliable overview of Benjamin criticism divides the
critics into "fronts" roughly parallel to those sketched here; Rumpf offers an overview
of newer material, although his evaluations are colored by his animus against Ben-
jamin. Wiesenthal, Zur Wissenschaftstheorie Walter Benjamins (Frankfurt am Main:
Athenaum Verlag, 1973), pp. 179-206; Rumpf, pp. 137-53.
? Benjamin, Briefe, p. 513.
6 Adorno, introduction to Benjamin, Schriften, p. xv.
7Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, ed. R. Tiedemann and H. Schweppenhauser
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1971ff.), Vol. IV, Part 1, p. 507. All references
to Benjamin's works will be cited in the text by volume, part and page number.
8 I shall try to show that Benjamin developed much of his thought not only on the basis
of his reading of "Dichtermut" and "BlOdigkeit," the poems analyzed in the
essay on HOlderlin, but also of Der Tod des Empedokles and of the philosophical
essay fragments written in Homburg between 1798 and 1800, texts not specifically
mentioned in "Zwei Gedichte von Friedrich HOlderlin." My argument for the im-
portance of these texts relies upon an analysis of strikingly similar concepts, rela-
tionships and denotative terminology between them and Benjamin's thought. I
cannot prove that Benjamin knew these works, but they were available to him, and
I argue from Benjamin's habits of reading and thinking. First, "Zwei Gedichte
von Friedrich HOlderlin" was written in the winter of 1914-1915. I list below the first
complete edition of the texts discussed in my essay. "Grund zum Empedokles," in
HOlderlin, Samtliche Werke und Briefe, ed. Franz Zinkernagel, 1914; "Ober die
Verfahrungsweise des poetischen Geistes," in HOlderlin, Gesammelte Werke, ed.
Wilhelm BOhm, 1911; "Ober den Unterschied der Dichtarten," in BOhm, 1911;
"Uber Religion," in BOhm, 1911. Secondly, Benjamin was a voracious reader, with a
predilection for the arcane and obscure. He was given to reading everything avail-
able to him on a subject about which he has writing and routinely integrated con-
cepts from "obvious" and "arcane" sources in his work without mention of their
origin. It was not until late in his life, for example, that he mentioned the importance
of Goethe's morphological writings not only for the composition of the essay
"Goethes Wahlverwandtschaften" of 1921, but also for the development of his
concept of the Ursprung in Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels of 1924.
9 For a history of the essay's composition, see the critical apparatus to volume II
of the Gesammelte Schriften (II, 3, 921-22).
o0 Walter Laqueur's Young Germany: A History of the Youth Movement (New York:
Basic Books, 1962) remains the best study of the Jugendbewegung. It contains valu-
able insights into Wyneken's influence.
" Heinrich Heine, Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland in
Sakularausgabe der Werke (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1972), VIII, 194.
2 Friedrich HOlderlin, Samtliche Werke, Grof/e Stuttgarter Ausgabe, ed. Friedrich
Beil3ner and Adolf Beck (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer Verlag, 1943ff.), VI, Part 1,
p. 304. All references to HOlderlin's works and letters will be cited in the text by
volume, part and page number.
" HOlderlin's relationship to German Idealism in general and to Kant in particular has
been a topic of recurrent debate. See esp. Ernst Cassirer, Idee und Gestalt (Berlin:
Bruno Cassirer, 1921), pp. 109-52; Johannes Hoffmeister, Holderlin und die Philo-
sophie (Leipzig: Meiner Verlag, 1944); Ernst Muiller, Holderlin: Studien zur Geschichte
seines Geistes (Berlin: W. Kohlhammer Verlag, 1944), pp. 1-173; Wolfgang Binder,
"HOlderlins Dichtung im Zeitalter des Idealismus," Holderlin Jahrbuch, 14,
(1965-66), 57-72.
"14 See esp. Jochen Schmidt, Holderlins spater Widerruf in den Oden "Chiron,"
"Blodigkeit und "Ganymed" (Ttibingen: Max Niemayer Verlag, 1978), esp. pp.
1-15, 113-45.
" Paul BOckmann, "Sprache und Mythos in HOlderlins Dichten" in Hans Steffen,
ed., Die deutsche Romantik (GOttingen: Vandenhoek und Ruprecht, 1967), pp. 10-11;
Lawrence Ryan, Friedrich Holderlin (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuch-
handlung, 1962), p. 21.
16 Gershom Scholem, Walter Benjamin-Die Geschichte einer Freundschaft (Frank-
furt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1975), p. 45.
7 BOckmann, p. 10.
, Ryan, "HOlderlins Dichtungsbegriff," in Holderlin Jahrbuch, 12 (1961-62), 20-41
offers the best account of this difficult problem.
'9 HOlderlin is of course not the only author of the Goethezeit who saw in poetry the
dynamic capacity to work decisive changes on the world. The conception of the
work of art as a manifestation of transcendental forces was at the time a nearly
universal one. Benjamin recognized, for example, that Classicism offered a model
for the reintegration of the worldly and the ideal: the notion that the world is itself
a metaphor for a higher order, that "alles Vergangliche ist nur ein Gleichnis," finds
its characteristic trope in the classical "Kunstsymbol." As early as 1912 and again,
emphatically, in Trauerspiel, Benjamin rejected the symbol as a "Reaktionser-
scheinung" (I, 1, 32), a claim for an organic totality which no longer exists. And
Benjamin's rejection of the ideas of the Romantics on this specific point is even
better documented. Despite the appreciation expressed in Der Begriff der Kunst-
kritik in der deutschen Romantik for Schlegel's and Novalis' contributions in other
areas, Benjamin's statements on their various definitions of the work of art are
marked by ambivalence. It is no accident that Benjamin's objections to the Romantic
position are closely related to Holderlin's reservations regarding Fichte. Holderlin
described his objections to the Fichtean philosophy in a letter to Hegel of 1795:
Sein absolutes Ich . . . enthalt alle Realitat; es ist alles und
au3er ihm ist nichts, es giebt also ftir dieses absolute Ich
kein Object, denn sonst ware nicht alle Realitat in ihm,
ein Bewul3tsein ohne Object ist aber nicht denkbar ...
(SA VI, 1, 155)
The thrust of HOlderlin's argument is that consciousness can never become wholly
identical with its object, that is, the absolute subject cannot come to subsume all
of reality. The division of subject and object cannot be mended, according to
HOlderlin, through the mere expansion of consciousness. Benjamin takes up a similar
argument in his book on Romantic art criticism when he points out that the poetics
of the Schlegel circle represents a development of Fichtean philosophy, especially
as the work of art is defined in analogy to consciousness. Benjamin rejects this
identification in the afterword to his study and even more decidedly in the Ursprung
des deutschen Trauerspiels: the criticism of works is "nicht also--romantisch-
Erweckung des Bewul3tseins in den lebendigen [Werken]" (I, 1, 357). The refusal to
rely upon an expanded conception of the role of consciousness as the solution to
the problem of separation is common, then, to both Benjamin and HOlderlin. The
arguments contained in the letter to Hegel are representative of HOlderlin's more
general attitude toward the problem of consciousness and subjectivity, and they
are reflected in his poetic production. HOlderlin depicts his attempt to overcome
and transcend, rather than expand, consciousness most explicitly in Der Tod des
Empedokles. Benjamin's knowledge of the drama, and not necessarily of HOlderlin's
philosophical formulations, had far-reaching consequences for his own attitudes
toward consciousness and subjectivity.
20 Scholem, "Walter Benjamin," in Uber Walter Benjamin (Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970), p. 143.
21 See esp. Scholem, "Walter Benjamin und sein Engel" in Zur Aktualitdt Walter
Benjamins, ed. Siegfried Unseld (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1972),
pp. 87-138 and Wiesenthal, pp. 116-23.
22 Ryan's Holderlins Lehre vom Wechsel der Tone (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer Verlag,
1960) represents the most thorough interpretation of this aspect of Holderlin's poetics.
On the tragic tone see especially pp. 22-25.
23 Ryan, "HOlderlins Dichtungsbegriff," p. 21.

24 Adorno, "Ober Walter Benjamin" in Uber Walter Benjamin, p. 14.
25 Benjamin, Briefe, p. 88.
26 Michael Konrad in Holderlins Philosophie in Grundrifi (Bonn: Bouvier & Co., 1967)
treats this essay as Holderlin's central poetological statement.
2? Jacques Derrida is aware of the proximity of many of his own positions to those
of Benjamin. See his "Ein Portrait Benjamins" in "Links hatte noch alles sich zu
entritseln . . ." Walter Benjamin in Kontext, ed. Burkhardt Lindner (Frankfurt am
Main: Syndikat Autoren- und Verlagsgesellschaft, 1978), pp. 171-79. American
post-structuralist critics have begun, if not to recognize Benjamin as a forerunner
of their own positions, then to subject Benjamin's works to (often willful) decon-
structionist readings. Cf. Samuel Weber, "Benjamin Lektiire," MLN, 94 (1979),
pp. 441-54, and Carol Jacobs, The Dissimulating Harmony (Baltimore: The Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1978).
CALL FOR PAPERS
Friedrich von Schiller
PHILOSOPHICAL IDEALISM: Aesthetics, History, and Freedom of Thought.
International Interdisciplinary Conference in Celebration of the

225th Anniversary of the Birth of Friedrich von Schiller, 1759-1805.
Thursday, Friday, Saturday
November 8, 9, 10, 1984
Papers may deal with any aspect of the conference theme in:
POETRY, DRAMA, HISTORICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL WRITINGS.
Co-Sponsor: LUFTHANSA GERMAN AIRLINES
HOFSTRA
UNIVERSITY
Deadline for papers: April 1, 1984.

FOR INFORMATION:
Alexej Ugrinsky, Conference Director
Natalie Datlof, Conference Coordinator
University Center for Cultural & Intercultural Studies (UCCIS)
(516) 560-5669, 5670

Benjamin As A Reader of Holderlin

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Benjamin As A Reader of Holderlin

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Benjamin as a Reader of Hölderlin: The Origins of Benjamin's Theory of Literary Criticism

Author(s): Michael W. Jennings

The demythologization of Walter Benjamin has already begun. Benja-

Friedrich Holderlin" as one of the "herrlichen Grundlagen" of his

Benjamin knew of the enthusiasm for HOlderlin of the circle around

mantics. In Benjamin's case, his earliest essays are marked by a general

the quest for the numinous is abandoned) and a willingness to surren-

Sind denn dir nicht bekannt viele Lebendigen?

Was geschiehet, es sei alles gelegen dir!

Denn, seit Himmlischen gleich Menschen, ein einsam

Wir, die Zungen des Volks, gerne bei Lebenden,

Der den denkenden Tag Armen und Reichen gonnt,

Gut auch sind und geschickt einem zu etwas wir,

Benjamin's reading of this poem centers upon the poet's establishment

linian world an actual hypostatization of the gods. Benjamin argues,

means of a series of images within the poems. A passage from the

immanenten Zustand der Vollkommenheit rein zum

The importance of this passage for Benjamin's subsequent career

Das tragische, in seinem au3eren Scheine heroische

und mit ihr alles Materielle Vergangliche, so auch

The fragments of the original whole are, then, necessary moments

essay consists of a subtle dialectical interweaving of two aspects of Ben-

"mit Gefahr gesattigt" (II, 1, 124), and so it will remain.

At this early stage, Benjamin cannot separate knowledge from its

Und staunend hOrt ich oft die Wasser gehn

Benjamin's debt to HOlderlin can be solidly demonstrated as Benjamin

Resultat des Subjektiven und Objektiven, des Einzel-

Dieser Grund des Gedichts, seine Bedeutung, soll

As a mediator, the "Grund" lends "dem Idealischen einen Anfang,

development of that aspect of his thought which finally emerges as the

lockerung der festen funktionellen Verbundenheit die im Gedichte

23 Ryan, "HOlderlins Dichtungsbegriff," p. 21.

CALL FOR PAPERS

Friedrich von Schiller

PHILOSOPHICAL IDEALISM: Aesthetics, History, and Freedom of Thought.

International Interdisciplinary Conference in Celebration of the

Co-Sponsor: LUFTHANSA GERMAN AIRLINES

Deadline for papers: April 1, 1984.

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