Poetry@Princeton

Der Ister

Friederich Hölder­lin c.1803–5

Jetzt komme, Feuer!
Begierig sind wir,
Zu schauen den Tag,
Und wenn die Prü­fung
Ist durch die Knie gegan­gen,
Mag einer spüren das Waldgeschrei.
Wir sin­gen aber vom Indus her
Fer­nangekom­men und
Vom Alpheus, lange haben
Das Schick­liche wir gesucht,
Nicht ohne Schwin­gen mag
Zum Näch­sten einer greifen
Ger­adezu
Und kom­men auf die andere Seite.
Hier aber wollen wir bauen.
Denn Ströme machen urbar
Das Land. Wenn näm­lich Kräuter wach­sen
Und an densel­ben gehn
Im Som­mer zu trinken die Tiere,
So gehn auch Men­schen daran.

Man nen­net aber diesen den Ister.
Schön wohnt er. Es bren­net der Säulen Laub,
Und reget sich. Wild stehn
Sie aufgerichtet, untere­inan­der; darob
Ein zweites Maß, springt vor
Von Felsen das Dach. So wun­dert
Mich nicht, daß er
Den Herkules zu Gaste geladen,
Fer­nglänzend, am Olym­pos drun­ten,
Da der, sich Schat­ten zu suchen
Vom heißen Isth­mos kam,
Denn voll des Mutes waren
Daselbst sie, es bedarf aber, der Geis­ter wegen,
Der Küh­lung auch. Darum zog jener lieber
An die Wasserquellen hieher und gel­ben Ufer,
Hoch duf­tend oben, und schwarz
Vom Ficht­en­wald, wo in den Tiefen
Ein Jäger gern lust­wan­delt
Mit­tags, und Wach­s­tum hör­bar ist
An harzi­gen Bäu­men des Isters,

Der scheinet aber fast
Rück­wärts zu gehen und
Ich mein, er müsse kom­men
Von Osten.
Vieles wäre
Zu sagen davon. Und warum hängt er
An den Bergen grad? Der andre,
Der Rhein, ist seitwärts
Hin­wegge­gan­gen. Umsonst nicht gehn
Im Trock­nen die Ströme. Aber wie? Ein Zeichen braucht es,
Nichts anderes, schlecht und recht, damit es Sonn
Und Mond trag im Gemüt, untrennbar,
Und fort­geh, Tag und Nacht auch, und
Die Himm­lis­chen warm sich fühlen aneinan­der.
Darum sind jene auch
Die Freude des Höch­sten. Denn wie käm er
Herunter? Und wie Hertha grün,
Sind sie die Kinder des Him­mels. Aber allzugeduldig
Scheint der mir, nicht
Freier, und fast zu spot­ten. Näm­lich wenn

Ange­hen soll der Tag
In der Jugend, wo er zu wach­sen
Anfängt, es trei­bet ein anderer da
Hoch schon die Pracht, und Füllen gle­ich
In den Zaum knirscht er, und wei­thin hören
Das Treiben die Lüfte,
Ist der zufrieden;
Es brauchet aber Stiche der Fels
Und Furchen die Erd,
Unwirt­bar wär es, ohne Weile;
Was aber jener tuet, der Strom,
weiß niemand.

Josef Koudelka, Danube after dam con­struc­tion, 2000

The Ister

Come to us, fire!
We are avid
For sight of day,
And when the ordeal
Has passed through the knees,
Wood­song is within hear­ing.
But we sing, hav­ing come
Far from the Indus
And Alpheus, we have long sought
Ade­quacy to fate,
It takes wings to seize
The near­est things
Imme­di­ately
And reach the other side.
Let us set­tle here.
For the rivers make the land
Arable. If there be veg­e­ta­tion
And ani­mals come to water
At the banks in sum­mer,
Here men will also go.

And they call this the Ister.
Beau­ti­ful his dwelling. Leaves on columns
Burn and quiver. They stand in the wild,
Ris­ing among each other; above which
Surges a sec­ond mass,
The roof­ing of rock. So it does not
Sur­prise me he had
Her­cules as a guest,
Far-shining, up from Olym­pos,
Hav­ing left the Ish­mos heat
In search of shade,
For though they had great for­ti­tude
In that place, spir­its also need
The cool. He there­fore chose
To travel to these springs and yel­low banks
With their ascend­ing fra­grance and black
With firs, and these val­leys
That hunters love to roam
At noon, when you can hear the grow­ing
Of the resinous trees of the Ister

Which almost seems
To run back­wards and
Strikes me must come
From the East.
Much could be said
Of this. And why does he cling
So steep to these hills? The other,
The Rhine, ran off
Side­ways. There is a rea­son rivers run
Through dry land. But how? All that is needed
Is a sign, pure and sim­ple, which bears
Sun and moon in mind, indi­vis­i­ble,
And goes its way night and day, and
The gods will feel each other’s warmth.
Which is why rivers
Are the Almighty’s joy. How could He oth­er­wise
Descend? And like green Hertha,
They are the chil­dren of heaven. Yet this one here
Strikes me as all too placed, barely
Free, almost laugh­able. For when
In his youth
The day come of him to begin
To grow, the Rhine is already there,
Dri­ving his splen­dor higher, champ­ing at the bit,
Like a colt, with the winds hear­ing
His pas­sage in the dis­tance,
While this one lies con­tent.
But rock needs split­ting,
Earth needs fur­row­ing,
No habi­ta­tion unless one longer;
But what he does, the river,
Nobody knows.

trans­la­tion by Richard Sieburth, from Friederich Hölder­lin: Hymns and Frag­ments, Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Press, 1984

Hei­deg­ger reads Hölderlin’s “Der Ister”, excerpt from the doc­u­men­tary film “The Ister” (2004) dir. David Bari­son and Daniel Ross

Still from the doc­u­men­tary film “The Ister” (2004) written/directed David Bari­son & Daniel Ross

Extract from Clau­dio Magris, The Danube [Danubio]

The river has many names. Among some peo­ples the words Danube and Ister were used respec­tively for the upper and lower courses, but some­times for the entire length. Pliny, Strabo and Ptolemy won­dered where the one ended and the other began: maybe in Illyria, or at the Iron Gates. The river, which Ovid called “bis­no­minis” or double-named, draws Ger­man cul­ture, with its dream of an Odyssey of the spirit, towards the east, min­gling it with other cul­tures in count­less hybrid meta­mor­phoses in which it find ful­fill­ment and tis fall. The Ger­man scholar who trav­els fit­fully along the whole course of the river car­ries with him his bag­gage of fads and quo­ta­tions; if the poet entrusts him­self to his bateau ivre, his under­study tries to fol­low the advice of Jean Paul, who sug­gested that on the way one should gather and record no only visual images but old pref­aces and play­bills, rail­way– sta­tion gos­sip, epics and bat­tles, funer­ary and meta­phys­i­cal inscrip­tions, news­pa­per clip­pings, and notices pinned up in tav­erns and parish halls. Mem­o­ries, impres­sions, reflec­tions and land­scapes on a voy­age to the Ori­ent, announces a title of Lamartine’s. Reflec­tions and impres­sions of whom? one may ask. When we travel alone, as hap­pens only too often, we have to pay our way out of our own pocket; but occa­sion­ally life is good to us, and enables us to see the world, if only in brief snatches of time, with those four or five friends who will bear us wit­ness on the Day of Judg­ment, and speak in our name.

Between one trip and the next we attempt to trans­fer the bulging files of notes onto the flat sur­face of paper, to get the bun­dles of stuff, the note-pads, the leaflets and the cat­a­logues, down onto type­writ­ten sheets. Lit­er­a­ture as mov­ing house; and as in every change of address some­thing is lost and some­thing else turns up in a “safe place” we had for­got­ten about. Indeed, we go almost like orphans, says Hölder­lin in his poem on the sources of the Danube: the river flows on glit­ter­ing in the sun­light, like the non-existent lumi­nous spots on the wall, the neon dazzle.

A tremor of noth­ing­ness sets fire to things, the tin cans left on the beach and the reflec­tors of motor­cars, just as sun­set makes the win­dows blaze. The river adds up to noth­ing and trav­el­ling is immoral: this is what Weininger said, as he was trav­el­ling. But the river is an old Taoist mas­ter, and along its banks it gives lessons on the great Wheel and the gaps between its spokes. In every jour­ney there is at least a smat­ter­ing of the South, with hours of relax­ation, of idle­ness. Heed­less of the orphans on its banks the Danube flows down towards the sea, towards the supreme conviction.

Clau­dio Magris, The Danube, Far­rar, Straus & Giroux, 1989

Inge Morath, Sulina Canal — Danube Delta, 1994