Hyperion Read online

  We walked on and on, and in the end, we had not walked in vain.

  O you groves of Angele, where the olive tree and the cypress, whispering together, cool each other with friendly shadows, where the golden fruit of the lemon tree gleams from the dark foliage, where the swelling grape grows wantonly over the hedge and the ripe bitter orange lies in the path like a smiling foundling! you fragrant secret paths! you peaceful seats, where the image of the myrtle bush smiles from the wellspring! you I will never forget.

  Diotima and I walked about for a while under the glorious trees until an open, bright place presented itself to us.

  Here we sat down. There was a blessed silence between us. My spirit hovered about the divine figure of the maiden like the butterfly about a flower, and all my being was eased and brought into unity in the joy of inspiring contemplation.

  Are you already consoled again, lightheaded one? said Diotima.

  Yes! yes! I am, I replied. What I thought lost, I have, what I pined for as if it had vanished from the world is before me. No, Diotima! The wellspring of eternal beauty has not yet run dry!

  I have told you once already that I no longer need gods and men. I know that heaven is deserted, depopulated, and that the earth, which once overflowed with beautiful human life, has become almost like an anthill. But there is still a place where the ancient heaven and the ancient earth smile upon me. For I forget all gods of heaven and all divine men of earth in you.

  What does the shipwreck of the world concern me, I know nothing but my blessed island.

  There is a time for love, Diotima said to me with friendly seriousness, as there is a time to live in the happy cradle. But life itself drives us out.

  Hyperion! – here she seized my hand with fervor, and her voice rose with grandeur – Hyperion! I think you were born for higher things. Do not misjudge yourself! Lack of raw material held you back. Things did not move quickly enough. That struck you down. Like the young fencers, you lunged too rapidly, even before your aim was sure and your hand deft, and because you, as if by nature, were struck more than you struck, you grew timid and doubted yourself and everything; for you are as sensitive as you are impetuous. But thereby nothing is lost. Had your disposition and your activity ripened so early, your spirit would not be what it is; you would not be the thinking man, would not be the suffering, tumultuous man. Believe me, you would never have known the equilibrium of beautiful mankind so purely had you not lost it so completely. Your heart has finally found peace. I will believe it. I understand it. But do you truly think that you are now at the end? Will you shut yourself into the heaven of your love and let the world that needs you wither and grow cold below you? Like the ray of light, you must descend; like the all-refreshing rain, you must go down into the land of mortality, you must illuminate like Apollo, shake and animate like Jupiter, or else you are not worthy of your heaven. I implore you, go into Athens, one more time, and look at the men, too, who walk about there among the ruins, the coarse Albanians and the other good, childlike Greeks, who console themselves with a merry dance and a holy fairy tale about the disgraceful power that weighs over them – can you say: I am ashamed of this material? I think that it could still be shaped. Can you turn your heart away from those in need? They are not wicked, they have done you no harm.

  What can I do for them, I cried.

  Give them what you have within you, Diotima replied, give –

  Not a word, not another word, great soul! I cried, or else you shall bend me, or else it will be as if you brought me to it by force –

  They will not be happier, but nobler – no! they will also be happier. They must come forth, they must emerge like young mountains from the tide when their subterranean fire drives them.

  To be sure, I stand alone and come without glory among them. Yet one who is a man, can he not do more than hundreds who are only fragments of men?

  Holy nature! you are the same within me and outside of me. It need not be so difficult to unite what is outside of me with the divine within me. If the bee’s small kingdom thrives, then why should I not be able to plant and cultivate what is needed?

  What? the Arabian merchant sowed his Koran and a people of disciples grew up for him like an endless forest, and should not the field also thrive where ancient truth returns in new living youth?

  May there be change from the ground up! May the new world sprout from the root of mankind! May a new divinity rule over them, a new future brighten before them.

  In the workshop, in the houses, in the assemblies, in the temples, may there be change everywhere!

  But I must still go forth to learn. I am an artist, but I am not skilled. I shape in thought, but I still do not know how to guide the hand –

  You shall go to Italy, said Diotima, to Germany, France – how many years do you need? Three – four – I think three are enough; you are not one of those who move slowly, and you seek only the greatest and the most beautiful –

  “And then?”

  You will be the educator of our people, you will be a great man, I hope. And when I then embrace you thus, then I will dream, as if I were a part of the glorious man, then I will rejoice, as if you had bestowed upon me half of your immortality, as Pollux did Castor, O! I will become a proud maiden, Hyperion!

  I fell silent for a while. I was full of unutterable joy.

  Is there then contentment between the decision and the deed, I finally resumed, is there repose before the triumph?

  It is the repose of the hero, said Diotima, there are decisions that, like the words of gods, are at once command and fulfillment, and thus is yours. –

  It was as if we returned to the moment after our first embrace. All had become strange and new to us.

  I stood now above the ruins of Athens as the farmer on the fallow field. Only lie still, I thought, when we returned to the ship, only lie still, slumbering land! Soon young life will sprout green from you, and grow toward the blessings of the heavens. Soon the clouds will never rain in vain, soon the sun will find again its ancient pupils.

  You ask for men, nature? You lament like a lyre that only chance’s brother, the wind, plays because the artist who imposed order on it has died? They will come, your men, O nature! A rejuvenated people will rejuvenate you, too, and you will become like its bride and the ancient union of spirits will renew itself with you.

  There will be but one beauty; and mankind and nature will unite in one all-embracing divinity.

  SECOND VOLUME

  μη φυναι, τον απαντα νικ λογον.

  το δ’επει φαν βηναι κειϑεν, οϑεν περ ηκει,

  πολυ δευτερον ως ταχιςα.

  . . .

  Not to be born surpasses thought and speech.

  The second best is to have seen the light

  and then to go back quickly whence we came.

  SOPHOCLES

  FIRST BOOK

  HYPERION TO BELLARMIN

  We lived the last beautiful moments of the year after our return from the region of Attica.

  Autumn was a brother of spring for us, full of mild fire, a festive time for the memory of sorrows and past joys of love. The withering leaves bore the color of red sunset; only the spruce and the laurel stood in eternal green. In the clear breezes, migrating birds lingered, others swarmed in the vineyard and in the garden and reaped joyfully what the men had left. And the heavenly light ran pure from the open sky; through all branches, the holy sun smiled, the kind sun that I never name without joy and thanks, that has often healed me in deep sorrow with a glance, and purified my soul of discontent and worries.

  We visited all our dearest paths, Diotima and I; vanished, blessed hours encountered us everywhere.

  We remembered the past May; we had never before seen the earth as we did then, we said, it had been transformed, a silver cloud of blossoms, a joyful flame of life, rid of all coarser matter.

  O! All was so full of pleasure and hope, cried Diotima, so full
of incessant growth and yet also so effortless, so blissfully calm, like a child who is lost in play and no longer thinks.

  In this, I cried, I recognize it, the soul of nature, in this still fire, in this lingering in its mighty haste.

  And it is so dear to the happy, this lingering, cried Diotima; do you recall? we stood one evening together on the bridge after a fierce storm, and the red mountain waters shot away under us like an arrow, but beside them the forest stood green in peace, and the bright beech leaves scarcely stirred. It did us such good then that the soulful green did not also fly away from us as the brook did, and the beautiful springtime held as still for us as a tame bird, but now it is nonetheless gone, over the mountains.

  We smiled about these words, although mourning was nearer to us.

  Thus should our own blissfulness, too, depart, and we foresaw it.

  O Bellarmin! Who, then, may say that he stands fast, when the beautiful, too, thus ripens toward its fate, when the divine, too, must humble itself and share mortality with all that is mortal!

  HYPERION TO BELLARMIN

  I had lingered with the fair maiden before her house until the glow of the night shone into the peaceful twilight; then I returned to Notara’s dwelling, thoughtful, brimming with heroic life, as always when I left her embraces. A letter had arrived from Alabanda.

  Things are stirring, Hyperion, he wrote to me, Russia has declared war on the Porte; they are coming with a fleet into the Archipelago;* the Greeks shall be free if they join the uprising to drive the Sultan to the Euphrates. The Greeks will do their part, the Greeks will be free, and I feel joy in my heart that there is once again something to do. I did not like to greet the day so long as it had not yet come to this.

  If you are still the old Hyperion, then come! You shall find me in the town of Koroni, to which you come by way of Mistra. I dwell by the hill, in the white cottage by the forest.

  I have forsaken the men whom you met through me in Smyrna. You were right, with your finer sense, not to enter their sphere.

  I long for us to see each other again in the new life. For you, the world was until now too base to reveal yourself to it. Because you did not like doing servile work, you did nothing, and doing nothing made you morose and dreamy.

  You did not like to swim in the mire. Come now, come, and let us bathe in the open sea!

  That shall do us good, my only beloved!

  So he wrote. At first I was taken aback. My face burned with shame, my heart boiled like hot wellsprings, and I could not remain in one place, it pained me so to be surpassed by Alabanda, surmounted forever. Yet I now took all the more eagerly to heart the work to come.

  I have become too idle, I cried, too fond of peace, too inclined toward heaven, too inert! – Alabanda gazes into the world like a noble pilot, Alabanda is diligent and searches for booty in the waves; and your hands sleep in your lap? and you would like to make do with words, and conjure the world with magic formulas? But your words are like snowflakes, useless, and only make the air murkier, and your magic spells are for the pious, but the unbelievers do not hear you. – Yes! to be gentle at the proper time, that is beautiful, but to be gentle at an untimely moment, that is ugly, for it is cowardly! – But Harmodius! I will be like your myrtle, your myrtle in which the sword was hidden. I will not have been idle in vain, and my sleep shall become like oil when the flame ignites it. I will not look on at a decisive moment, will not go about asking for news while Alabanda takes the laurel.

  HYPERION TO BELLARMIN

  Diotima’s growing pallor as she read Alabanda’s letter pierced my soul. Then she began, calmly and earnestly, to advise me against the step, and we spoke of many things for and against it. O you violent men! she cried finally, who go so quickly to the extreme, think of Nemesis!

  For him who suffers the extreme, I said, the extreme is right. Even if it is right, she said, you were not born for it.

  So it appears, I said; I have lingered long enough. O I would like to load an Atlas upon myself, so as to pay off the debts of my youth. Do I have a consciousness, do I have steadfastness in me? O let me go, Diotima! Here, precisely in such work, must I attain it.

  This is vain pride! cried Diotima; recently, you were humbler, recently when you said, I must still go forth to learn.

  Dear sophist! I cried, we were talking then of something entirely different. To lead my people to the Olympus of the divinely beautiful, where the true issues with all the good from eternally young wellsprings, I am not yet able. But to use a sword – this I have learned, and no more is required for now. The new union of spirits cannot live in the air, the holy theocracy of the beautiful must dwell in a free state, and this state will have a place on earth, and this place we shall surely conquer.

  You will conquer, cried Diotima, and forget what for? will, at the most, impose a free state and then say: For what have I built? O! it will be consumed, all the beautiful life that should have stirred there will be exhausted even in you! The wild battle will tear you to shreds, beautiful soul, you will grow old, blessed spirit! and weary of life, you will ask in the end: Where are you now, you ideals of youth?

  This is cruel, Diotima, I cried, thus to grasp into my heart, thus to hold me fast by own fear of death, by my highest lust for life, but no! no! no! Servitude kills, but just war brings every soul to life. Gold attains the color of the sun when one throws it into fire! A man first attains his whole youth when he breaks fetters! He is saved only when he sets out and tramples the viper, the crawling century that poisons all beautiful nature in the bud! – I should grow old, Diotima! when I liberate Greece? should grow old, become miserable, a common man? O so was he then insipid and empty and godforsaken, the Athenian youth, when he came as a messenger of victory from Marathon over the summit of Pentelicus and gazed down into the valleys of Attica!

  My dear! my dear! cried Diotima, be silent! I will say not another word to you. You shall go, shall go, proud man! O! when you are thus, I have no power, no right to you.

  She wept bitterly and I stood before her like a criminal. Forgive me, divine maiden! I cried, sinking down before her, O forgive me, when I must act! I do not choose, I do not reflect. A power is in me, and I know not if it is myself that drives me to this step. Your full soul commands you to do it, she replied. Not to follow the soul often leads to downfall, yet to follow it may well lead there too. It is best that you go, for it is nobler. You act; I will bear it.

  HYPERION TO BELLARMIN

  From then on Diotima was astonishingly changed.

  With joy I had seen how her silent life had opened into glances and lovely words since our love began, and her extraordinary calm often met me with shining enthusiasm.

  But how foreign the beautiful soul becomes to us when, after its first blossoming, after the morning of its course, it must rise to the midday height! One almost no longer recognized the blessed child, so sublime and so sorrowful had she become.

  O how I lay at times before the mourning, divine figure and thought that I should weep my soul away in grief for her, and stood up admiringly and was myself full of almighty powers! A flame had risen into her eye, wrung from her breast. Her bosom, full of wishes and sorrows, had become too cramped for her; that is why the maiden’s thoughts were so glorious and bold. A new greatness ruled in her, a visible power over all that could feel. She was a higher being. She belonged to mortal men no more.

  O my Diotima, could I have thought then to what this should come?

  HYPERION TO BELLARMIN

  Shrewd Notara, too, was enchanted by the new projects, promised me a strong following, hoped to occupy soon the Corinthian Isthmus and there to seize Greece as if by the handle. But destiny decided otherwise, and made his work useless before it reached its goal.

  He advised me not to go to Tina, to travel straight down the Peloponnese, remaining as unnoticed as possible. I should write to my father on the way, he said, the cautious old man would more easily forgive a step that had been taken than permit one that had not
. This was not quite to my liking, but we so gladly sacrifice our own feelings when a great goal stands before our eyes.

  I doubt, Notara went on, whether you will be able to reckon on your father’s help in such a matter. Therefore I will give you what you need so as to live and work for a time in all eventualities. If you can someday, then pay me back; if not, then what was mine was also yours. Do not feel ashamed of the money, he added with a smile; even the horses of Phoebus do not live on air alone, as the poets tell us.

  HYPERION TO BELLARMIN

  Now came the day of parting.

  Through the morning, I remained above in Notara’s garden in the fresh winter air among the evergreen cypresses and cedars. I was composed. The great powers of youth held me upright, and the suffering that I anticipated bore me higher, like a cloud.

  Diotima’s mother had asked Notara, our other friends and me to spend the last day together at her home. The good souls had all delighted in me and Diotima, and the divine in our love had not been lost on them. Now they were to bless my parting too.

  I went down. I found the dear maiden at the hearth. It seemed to her a holy, priestly business to tend to the house on this day. She had set everything in order, had beautified everything in the house, and no one was permitted to help her with it. She had gathered all the flowers that still remained in the garden, had assembled roses and fresh grapes even in this late season.

  She recognized my footstep when I approached, came softly toward me; her pale cheeks glowed from the flame of the hearth, and her earnest, widened eyes glistened with tears. She saw how all this assailed me. Go in, my dear, she said; my mother is inside, and I will follow in a moment.