Pindare, Hölderlin : l’avant-garde

Abstract

The experimental taken as a non-conventional form is strongly linked to procedures that establish a break. The translation of Pindar’s odes by Friedrich Hölderlin around 1800 saw one of the crucial breaks of modernity: in this regard the translation was experimental, and its experimentation went unnoticed for a century. A hundred years later, Norbert von Hellingrath (1888-1916) discovered the manuscript of these translations at the Stuttgart library, and immediately published them, initiating a new reception of its author in 1910. In a study that preceded this publication, he refused to associate the disruptive style of Hölderlin’s late writings with his madness, as had been done before. He related it to a voluntary gap created by Hölderlin, a break with the dominant reception of the Greeks in the philosophy, the literature and the German poetry of his own time. This article presents a translation of the first eight pages of Hellingrath’s study, unpublished to this day in French. In these pages he expounds what he means by “disruptive connexion” (harte Fügung, ἁρμονία αὐστηρά). The translation is accompanied by an analysis that emphasizes the experimental actuality of such a style.

Keywords

• Hölderlin
• Hellingrath
• Pindar
• austere harmony
• harte Fügung