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Orphic Hymns, with Alcaeus and, toward the last, with Pindar; yet
that connection is made specific by the fact that Hoelderlin's syntax and
meters were, throughout his mature work, modeled on Greek paradigms.
The genius of German not only allows but actually invites such "trans–
lations," for the shared features of the two languages are many: flexible
syntax, rapidity of movement, a high incidence of polysyllabic units,
and a register of sonorities that admits, along with rare sweetness, that
which is utterly harsh and austere. But Hoelderlin's Hellenizing would
not be the particular triumph it is had he not steeped himself in Greek
thought and discourse to a degree attained by no other modern poet:
his
whole mode of feeling, the nexus of his prepossessions, his "values"
if
you will-all are determined, or co-determined, by Greece in a way
that appears as natural as it seems, considering the vast distance of time,
unique. We may say, perhaps, that it is the single strength, the im–
probable pitch, of his Graecomania (even more than his verbal and
metrical observances) that make Hoelderlin a classic poet, in a very
strict sense, where Keats and Shelley, who share his nostalgia for Hellas
and, some claim, his greatness, remain incurably romantic.
In
his long introduction-a full-dress "appreciation," really-Mr.
Hamburger manages to get a good many things said, some acute, some
otherwise. His prose is vitiated for me by an extreme discursiveness and
a tendency toward laboring the obvious or toying with the far-fetched.
The biographical portions (interspersed, not altogether successfully, with
analysis and criticism) are the most valuable: they do their humble
job with a minimum of fuss and betray a sensitivity never found in the
standard German handbooks. But the critical sections-in especial, those
of the Conclusion-are poorly conceived and full of irrelevant matter.
Much too much time is spent expatiating on points which to the most
casual reader of the verse must be instantly apparent; and the verse,
let us remember, is but a short distance away, in both tongues more–
over. An equal amount of time is wasted on matters that are simply
beside the point, sheer accumulations of aesthetic quicksand. Among
these last I number certain passages on Hoelderlin and Wordsworth,
Hoelderlin and Blake, Hoelderlin and Swinburne-not because all com–
parisons should be shunned (having indulged several myself, this can
scarcely be my view) but because the writers with whom Hoelderlin here
is confronted are all, in one way or another, incommensurable with him.
Of this Mr. Hamburger too is aware: but what is the sense of dis–
crediting, and at such length, analogies which no sane person has ever
entertained? To tell what he is not, and why, may help in defining a
writer when he shares with another (or others) certain essential qual-
