Holderlin Quotes

Holy spirits, you walk up there
in the light, on soft earth.
Shining god-like breezes
touch upon you gently,
as a woman's fingers
play music on holy strings.

Like sleeping infants the gods
breathe without any plan;
the spirit flourishes continually
in them, chastely kept,
as in a small bud,
and their holy eyes
look out in still
eternal clearness.

A place to rest
isn't given to us.
Suffering humans
decline and blindly fall
from one hour to the next,
like water thrown
from cliff to cliff,
year after year,
down into the Unknown. ~ Friedrich Holderlin

Wir sind nichts; was wir suchen ist alles. (We are nothing; what we search for is everything.) ~ Friedrich Holderlin

You have lost faith in anything great; you are doomed, then, doomed to perish unless that faith returns, like a comet from unknown skies. ~ Friedrich Holderlin

Some are shy of going to the source
For riches begin in the sea. ~ Friedrich Holderlin

Eagles live in the darkness,
And the sons of the Alps
Cross over the abyss without fear
On lightly-built bridges.
***
Growing weak on the separate mountains
Then give us calm waters;
Give us wings, and loyal minds
To cross over and return. ~ Friedrich Holderlin

I grew up in the arms of the gods. ~ Friedrich Holderlin

Near and hard
to grasp
Is the God.
But where danger is
Deliverance also grows ~ Friedrich Holderlin

For our generation walks as in Hades, without the divine. ~ Friedrich Holderlin

when i was a boy
a god often rescued me
from the shouts and the rods of men
and i played among trees and flowers
secure in their kindness
and the breezes of heaven
were playing there too.

and as you delight
the hearts of plants
when they stretch towards you
with little strength

so you delighted the heart in me
father Helios, and like Endymion
i was your favourite,
Moon. o all

you friendly
and faithful gods
i wish you could know
how my soul has loved you.

even though when i called to you then
it was not yet with names, and you
never named me as people do
as though they knew one another

i knew you better
than i have ever known them.
i understood the stillness above the sky
but never the words of men.

trees were my teachers
melodious trees
and i learned to love
among flowers.

i grew up in the arms of the gods. ~ Friedrich Holderlin

A poet has to be a bit childlike at heart, and in that sense all the romantic stereotypes about poets being "eternal children", etc, are all accurate. They believe, whatever they may say, that art and words can change the world. ~ John Thomas Allen

I can think of no people more fragmented ... Craftsmen you see, but no humans, thinkers, but no humans, priests, but no humans, lords and servants, boys and established peoples but no humans
is this not like a battlefield, where hands and arms and all limbs lie chaotically in pieces, while the spilled blood of life runs into the sand? ~ Friedrich Holderlin

You have a head and a heart? Reveal only one of them, I say; If you reveal both at once, doubly they'll damn you, for both. ~ Friedrich Holderlin

Man kann auch in die Höhe fallen, so wie in die Tiefe. ("One can as well fall into height as into depth") ~ Friedrich Holderlin

But where the danger is, also grows the saving power. ~ Friedrich Holderlin

I want to build / and raise anew / Theseus' Temple and the Stadiums / and where Pericles lived
But there's no money, too much spent today / I had a guest over and we sat together. ~ Friedrich Holderlin

Everything that I have known
You'll write to me to remind
Me of, and likewise I shall do
The whole past I'll recount to you ~ Friedrich Holderlin

But the sower Loves to see a woman Fallen asleep in the daytime Over a half-knitted stocking. ~ Friedrich Holderlin

All the fruit is ripe, plunged in fire, cooked,
And they have passed their test on earth, and one law is this:
That everything curls inward, like snakes,
Prophetic, dreaming on
The hills of heaven. And many things
Have to stay on the shoulders like a load
of failure. However the roads
Are bad. For the chained elements,
Like horses, are going off to the side,
And the old
Laws of the earth. And a longing
For disintegration constantly comes. Many things however
Have to stay on the shoulders. Steadiness is essential.
Forwards, however, or backwards we will
Not look. Let us learn to live swaying
As in a rocking boat on the sea. ~ Friedrich Holderlin

The earth with yellow pearsAnd overgrown with roses wildUpon the pond is bent,And swans divine,With kisses drunkYou drop your headsIn the sublimely sobering water.But where, with winter come, am ITo find, alas, the floweres, and whereThe sunshineAnd the shadow of the world?Cold the walls standAnd the wordless, in the windThe weathercocks are rattling. ~ Friedrich Holderlin

It was not delight, not wonder that arose among us, it was the peace of heaven. A thousand times have I said it to her and to myself: the most beautiful is also the most sacred. And such was everything in her. Like her singing, even so was her life. ~ Friedrich Holderlin

Heart's wave could not curl and break beautifully into the foam of spirit, unless the ageless silent rock of destiny stood in its path. ~ Holderlin

Close and difficult to realize is the god, but where danger abounds, grows what saves. ~ Friedrich Holderlin

Thus the sons of earth now drink in
The fire of heaven without danger.
And it is our duty, poets, to stand
Bare-headed under the storms of God,
Grasping with our own hand
The Father's beam itself,
And to offer the gift of heaven,
Wrapped in song, to the people.
From "As On a Holiday" ("Wie Wenn am Feiertage") ~ Friedrich Holderlin

Too long now things divine have been cheaply used
And all the power of heaven, the kindly, spent
In trifling waste by cold and cunning
Men without thanks, who when he, the Highest,
In person tills their field for them, think they know
the daylight and the Thunderer, and indeed
Their telescope may find them all, may
Count and may name every star of heaven.
Yet will the Father cover with holy night,
That we may last on earth, our too knowing eyes.
... Never will our
Free-ranging power coerce his heaven.
From "The Poet's Vocation" ("Dichterberuf") ~ Friedrich Holderlin

The God, when he draws near, will the heart stand fast.
But, oh my, shame! when of
My shame!
And let me say at once
That I approached to see the Heavenly,
And they cast me down, deep down
Below the living, into the dark cast down
The false priest that I am, to sing,
For those who have ears to hear, the warning song.
There ~ Friedrich Holderlin

For the mindful god does detest untimely growth. ~ Friedrich Holderlin

Isn't everything alive already in your blood? ~ Friedrich Holderlin

Sometimes his genius goes dark and sinks down into the bitter well of his heart. But mostly his apocalyptic star glitters wondrously ~ Friedrich Holderlin