Words in Blood, Like Flowers: Philosophy and Poetry, Music and Eros in Hölderlin, Nietzsche, and Heidegger Babette Babich Fordham University, [email protected]
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Fordham University Masthead Logo DigitalResearch@Fordham Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Philosophy Collections 2006 Words in Blood, Like Flowers: Philosophy and Poetry, Music and Eros in Hölderlin, Nietzsche, and Heidegger Babette Babich Fordham University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://fordham.bepress.com/phil_babich Part of the Continental Philosophy Commons, German Language and Literature Commons, History of Philosophy Commons, Other History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons, and the Theory and Criticism Commons Recommended Citation Babich, Babette, "Words in Blood, Like Flowers: Philosophy and Poetry, Music and Eros in Hölderlin, Nietzsche, and Heidegger" (2006). Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections. 48. https://fordham.bepress.com/phil_babich/48 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Philosophy at DigitalResearch@Fordham. It has been accepted for inclusion in Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections by an authorized administrator of DigitalResearch@Fordham. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Preface The title of this book, Words in Rlood, Like Flowcrs, repeats the language and the passions of Friedrich Hiilderlin and fri<::drich Ni<::tzsche. For it was Nietzsche who wrote of living with ideas as one li\'es with compan ions-as real as flesh and blood-and he spoke more f(xccfully of in blood, tdling us that of everything written, his Zarathustra "loves" "what one has written with on<::'s blood. Write with blood and you will learn that blood is spirit" (Z, "Of Reading and Writing"). Hiilderlin, in his poem Brcad and Wine, lIses the language of "words, like flowers" and writes variollsly, as only a poet can, of the "flowers" of the mouth and "the flowers of the heart." Written, as we say, with one's heart, words in blood express the passion that fix Heid<::ggu belongs to philosophy at its inception as thallmazein, as pathos itself, which Heidegger understood as the key to the attllnemellt rStimmtm.8] of philosophic astonishment, the sustained wonder or amazement that things are, that what is is as it is-and not otherwise. On<:: can keep this wonder only in "authentic questioning," a qu<::stioning "that opens lip its 0"'11 source" (I, 6). In this sdl:rending tension, philosophy "ne\'er makes things easier but only more ditllcult" , II}. This same ditllculty is the reason Heidegger thinks that philoso might, indeed, "if we concern ourselves with it, do something with liS" (1. 12). the language of writing ill blood, Nietzsche docs not fail to underscore its faustian implications, on the one hand in teasing, as :--Ji<::tzsche liked to tease Goethe, on the other hand in all seriOllsness. If one writes in blood, one surrenders one's soul. But if these authors put into what th<::y write, we will see that they claim the same from the reader. The conjunction between philosophy and poetry, not to mention music and eros, is a complicated one. And this limits, if it also consti tutes, its appeal. For ifthe reading I propose between the poet Hilldnlin and the philosophers Nietzsch<:: and Heid<::gger will speak to wille read ers, it is iust as obvious that this approach will not appeal to others. Here \'11 Preface IX V11l I can have little to say as these other readers will be unlikely to have read When Nietzsche reflects on his writing, he reflects on the Greek even this far or if they do read limher, will likely dip and pick, convention of the poetic m use or inspiration,"the idea that one is merely out context and sidestepping all stich complications as inherently belong incarnation, merely mouthpiece" (EH, Z §3), as this idea inheres in the to the themes of philosophy and poetry, music and eros in Hiilderlin, ecstatic essence of Dichtunlf. This is what works in or thl'ottlfh him Nietzsche, and Heidegger and so constitute the substance of this book. apart from his own will: "One hears, one docs not seek; one takes, one To summarize the chapters to I()llo\\', I begin with a discllssion of does not ask who gives; a thought flashes lip like lightning, with neces Heidegger and Nietzsche on philosophy, poetry, and love, including sity, 11l1f.llteringly formed-I have never had any choice" (ibid.). In this some c\'eryday reflcctions on philosophical affairs. I then 110te Nietzsche's fashion, the Same Nietzsche who celebrates the primacy of the active artist above the passive spectator and who assumes the determining su aphoristic style and the role of rhetoric in order to raise the question of how the spirit of music would account not only lor the beart of Nietzsche's periority of the wealthy (t()r Nietzsche, the rich arc not merely consum first book on tragedy but also for his singular insight into the sound of ers but those who impose their standards as "taste") is also cardit! to set ancient Greek itself and his emphasis on language with respect to the the unconscious dynamic of poetic invention in place of the creative sounds of its words, its meters and its rhythms, likewise articulated and and contra the ideal of artistic genius. (this similarity is no accident) in the beauty of Holderlin's on the "phoenix of music" where he also tells llS that poetry. for Nietzsche had discovered nothing less dun the "breath" or "the whole of Zarathustra may perhaps be reckoned as music" (EH, Z spirit of music in the words of Greek tragedy, which was also his testa ), Nietzsche adverts to the singular achievements of his style: the ment to oral culture in antiquity. Yet this discovery, particularly as trembling with passion; eloquence become mllsic" (EH, Z Nietzsche chose to illustrate its consequences lor modern culture (a very §6). For my part, I consider the metaphorical and literal expression of classical, indeed classicist's programme, precisely in the spirit of Erwin philosophy as music as this has come down to liS from Heraclitus and Rohde, and contra Wilamowitz, as Karl Reinhardt would also attest, the Plato. A musical resonance works through Hblderlin's poetry where it is same Reinhardt whose t:lther had studied with Nietzsche in Basel and taken up in Nietzsche's most personal poem to the city of bridges and who had even urged his son to take up Nietzsche's cause precisely as a music: Venice itself. The same resonance works, so Theodor Adorno "classicist"), drew little resonance from his readers (be they specialists or re~lds this resonance, as Holderiin'5 voice recurs in Heidegger's p;)ratactic not). This may have been the reason Nietzsche began with the same from the problem of the artist, Nietzsche turns to the ques !c)Cus in The Gay Science, drawing on the example of the trou badour and tion of the actor, thence to the question of the Je\\', and ultimately to the question of woman. For Nietzsche, who always tclt himself to have yet another oral tradition of poetic or song composition. "the soul of a lover," the question of woman takes us to the eros of art I particularly attend to Nietzsche's lite-long preoccupation with Pindar's poetic word: Become the one you are! Nietzsche hears this as the illusion of the actor and thus the artist. word in the enigmatic voice of conscience (GS §270), a creator's con The concluding section of this book turns to Nietzsche's archaic science, spoken with the utter innocence of the creator. "That one be reflections on chaos as well as IWlderiin's poetic call to a mindful COI1 comes what one is presupposes that one does not have the remotest idea sideration of the relation between nature and art (adumbrated, f()r the what one is" (EH, "Why I am so Clever," §9). The philosophically poet, in technological terms). This also includes a review of the judg reflexive point here, taken in connection with the resonant influence of ments rendered by the advocates of art history and hermeneutic aesthet poetry (that is: the heart "of what is music in it" [GS §3731, to use ics regarding Heidegger 011 the of the work of art, which I consider with reference to col1temporarv sensibilities, with respect to the locus of Nietzsche's OWI1 language), underscores the inevitable limits of a reading the museum (I discllss Christo and New York's Central Park) and the that would reduce everything in Nietzsche (or in the Greeks) to question of conservation (the preservation of antiq uities in Greek Arcadia sources, a project which not only disregards the transl(xmations of as in Athens). The pCI1ultimate chapter offers a reading of Hcidegger's but excludes the same spirit of "music" as well as what Nietzsche re politicizing of language between Germany and Greece and the last chap garded as historical reflection-a judgment on the critical sense of history ter considers Heidegger's intended legacy as he crafts his own self-oriented Nietzsche had in common with Herbert Butterfield, a scientific historian Nachlaj5 in his Beitl'tige, which he composes, so I argue, on the model in almost the same sense that Nietzsche was. x Preface Preface XI or Nietzsche's Will to Power-an ironically unsuccessful ambition given he could also write in his poem IfJe Rhein, dedicated to his friend Isaak the posthumous editorial interventions in the published version. After \"on Sinclair, "For as you so you \\"ill remain." I Wie du reviewing the consequences of such interventions, I read the Beitri(qe in wint dtt bleiben.] I the very Greek relation to the technologically globalized world. is already fully present at the start.