The Editing of the Erotic in Hölderlin’s Empedocles Project

Abstract

While the development of the Empedocles figure in the various versions of Hölderlin’s unfinished tragedy has long been the subject of scholarship, the shifts in his relationships to the women around him have largely gone unnoticed. Yet these changes are anything but subtle: in the Frankfurt Plan, Empedocles is married with children, and his wife plays a significant role in the outline of the plot; in the first draft, Empedocles is unmarried but adored by Panthea, a young Agrigentine woman; in the last draft, the figure of Panthea has been reconfigured as Empedocles’ biological sister. With each successive draft Hölderlin imposed new barriers, the crossing of which would imply sexual transgression or incest, in order to set Empedocles apart from potential sexual or erotic entanglements with the dramatis personae. But at the same time, we observe language suited for erotic settings (and used thus by Hölderlin here and in other works) being displaced to ever new objects throughout the drafts. In other words, while the author as editor of his material successively deleted or prohibited the sexual/erotic relationships of his titular hero, at the same time he allowed this fluidly metonymic, multivalent erotic language to flow, continuously redirected, throughout the entire Empedocles project. With Empedocles’ leap into Mount Etna, we find the culmination of this meandering erotic diction, imagined in the last draft as an hybristic, incestuous union with his divine parents.

1. The Empedocles Project

As early as 1794, Hölderlin wrote to his friend Ludwig Neuffer regarding his plan to write a tragedy about the death of a philosopher, albeit not Empedocles, but Socrates.1 This idea probably was the seed from which the Empedocles project was born. Evidence of Hölderlin’s interest in Empedocles can be found in a draft of the ode “Empedocles” written in 1797 and in the second volume of his novel, Hyperion.2 Hölderlin’s work on the novel and his tragedy thus overlap. He sent the draft for the second volume of Hyperion to the publisher in the fall of 1798, either shortly before or after his departure from the Gontard house, where he had been a tutor for almost three years (late 1795 to September 1798). The plans, drafts and essays that make up the unfinished Empedocles project were written in Frankfurt and Homburg between 1797 and 1799.

I will not go into the editorial decisions underlying the constitution of a readable text and the construction of a probable chronology of work phases based on the extant manuscripts. Instead, I will rely on the editions by Knaupp (Hölderlin 1992–1993, MA, volume 1, with commentary in volume 3) and Schmidt/Grätz (Hölderlin 1992–1994, KA, volume 2), with occasional reference to the Große Stuttgarter Ausgabe (Hölderlin 1943–1985, StA, volume 4) and the manuscript facsimiles in the Frankfurt edition (Hölderlin 1975–2000, FHA, volume 12). In the following discussion of each of the drafts, I follow Schmidt/Grätz’ chronology (Hölderlin 1992–1994, KA 2, p. 1096):

Summer 1797: Frankfurt Plan.

Summer–Fall 1798: beginning of work on first draft.

Early 1799: beginning of work on second draft.

Fall–Winter 1799: third draft and complex of related texts.

(for more details, see Section 6 below)

2. Editing the Erotic in the Empedocles Drafts

While the development of the Empedocles figure in the various versions has long been the subject of scholarship, the shifts in his relationships to the women around him have largely gone unnoticed.3 Yet these changes are anything but subtle: in the Frankfurt Plan, Empedocles is married with children, and his wife plays a significant role in the outline of the plot; in the first draft, Empedocles is unmarried but adored by Panthea, a young Agrigentine woman; in the last draft, the figure of Panthea has been reconfigured as Empedocles’ biological sister. With each successive draft Hölderlin imposed new barriers, the crossing of which would imply sexual transgression or incest, in order to set Empedocles apart from potential sexual or erotic entanglements with the dramatis personae. But at the same time, we observe language suited for erotic settings (and used thus by Hölderlin here and in other works) being displaced4 to ever new objects throughout the drafts. In other words, while the author as editor of his material successively deleted or prohibited the sexual/erotic relationships of his titular hero, at the same time he allowed this fluidly metonymic, multivalent erotic language to flow, continuously redirected, throughout the entire Empedocles project. With Empedocles’ leap into Mount Etna, we find the culmination of this meandering erotic diction, imagined in the last draft as an hybristic, incestuous union with his divine parents.

3. The Frankfurt Plan: Empedocles as Henpecked Husband

Let us begin with the earliest draft, the Frankfurt Plan, which Hölderlin sketched out in the summer of 1797 in one of Henri Gontard’s (his pupil’s) exercise books.5 Only in this version does Empedocles appear as a married family man with a wife and children. It is conceivable that this idea is a remnant from Hölderlin’s original plan to write a tragedy about Socrates’ death; his marriage to the quarrelsome Xantippe (who in Plato’s “Phaedo” sits by her husband’s side the night before his execution6) bears certain similarities to Empedocles’ connubial plight in this sketch. In any case, Empedocles’ marriage must be considered Hölderlin’s invention, as the ancient sources are silent on this subject.7 The opening paragraph of the Frankfurt Plan suggests how the marriage might fit into the larger context of the plan:

Empedokles, durch sein Gemüth und seine Philosophie schon längst zu Kulturhaß gestimmt, zu Verachtung alles sehr bestimmten Geschäffts, alles nach verschiedenen Gegenständen gerichteten Interesses, ein Todtfeind aller einseitigen Existenz, und deswegen auch in wirklich schönen Verhältnissen unbefriedigt, unstät, leidend, blos weil sie besondere Verhältnisse sind und, nur im großen Akkord mit allem Lebendigen empfunden ganz ihn erfüllen, blos weil er nicht mit allgegenwärtigem Herzen innig, wie ein Gott, und frei und ausgebreitet, wie ein Gott in ihnen leben und lieben kann, blos weil er, so bald sein Herz und sein Gedanke das Vorhandene umfaßt, ans Gesez der Succession gebunden ist

—(Hölderlin 1992–1993, MA, volume 1, p. 763)8

Empedocles, by temperament and through his philosophy long since inclined to despise his culture, to scorn all neatly circumscribed affairs, every interest directed to sundry objects; an enemy to the death of all one-sided existence, and therefore also dissatisfied, restive, suffering in real, lovely relationships, because they are particular relationships that fulfill him completely only when they are felt in grand accord with all living things; simply because he cannot live in them and love them intimately, with omnipresent heart, like a god, and freely and expansively, like a god; simply because as soon as his heart and his thought embrace what is at hand he finds himself bound to the law of succession

—(Hölderlin 2008, p. 299)

What is consistently regarded as an essential feature of Empedocles’ character throughout the entire project, namely a disposition that makes him unsuited to particular intimate relationships—what Hölderlin later, in the “Grund zum Empedokles”, describes as the “Tendenz zur Allgemeinheit” (Hölderlin 1992–1993, MA, volume 1, p. 871; tendency towards universality) typical of the poet10—thus appears right from the start in the Frankfurt Plan as the driving force of the drama.11 The plot unfolds as a tug-of-war between Empedocles and the people around him, to whom he is tied through “particular relationships”: to his wife and family, his favorite disciple, the other pupils and to the Agrigentines. In the first three acts we see how these people—be it through bonds of marriage, love or veneration—try to direct Empedocles’ life according to their interests. The idea of suicide develops in the fourth act, after Empedocles has been driven out of the city by the Agrigentines. And it is only in the fifth act that he rejects all “zufällige[] Veranlassungen” (“accidental inducements”) as motivation for his actions, recognizing instead the decision to jump into Mount Etna “als eine Nothwendigkeit, die aus seinem innersten Wesen folge” (Hölderlin 1992–1993, MA, volume 1, p. 766; “as a necessity proceeding from his inmost being”; Hölderlin 2008, p. 31).

A significant portion of the Frankfurt Plan portrays scenes of Empedocles uncomfortably caught in the bonds of marriage and family.12 For this reason, his movements on stage until the fifth act are largely reactive, and it is above all his wife’s at times badgering, at times tender speeches that direct him:

 beginning with her call to breakfast–he comes;

(Hölderlin 1992–1993, MA, volume 1, p. 764)

 at the breakfast table, his wife complains about her husband’s “Mismuth” (ill humor) and advises him to “sich…erheitern” (cheer up) by attending the town festival–he leaves;

(Hölderlin 1992–1993, MA, volume 1, p. 764)

 her “empfindlich und sarkastisch” (irritable and sarcastic) rebuke when Empedocles, visibly annoyed, returns from the festival, leads to the “häusliche[r] Zwist” (domestic quarrel) that prompts Empedocles’ second departure from the house: “[O]hne zu sagen was seine Absicht ist, wohin er geht” (without saying what his intention is, or where he is going), he retreats to Mount Etna;

(Hölderlin 1992–1993, MA, volume 1, p. 763 f.)13

 after his pupils and his favorite disciple, having followed him up the mountain, try in vain to persuade Empedocles to return to the city, his wife appears with their children in tow. She pleads with her husband to return home, because his followers have erected a statue in his honor. “Ehre und Liebe, die einzigen Bande, die ihn an’s Wirkliche knüpfen, bringen ihn zurück” (Honor and love, the only ties binding him to reality, bring him back)—he returns.

(Hölderlin 1992–1993, MA volume 1, p. 765)

Hölderlin must soon have realized, however, that much of this plan was ill-suited for a tragedy. A philosopher who is directed hither and yon across the stage as if on puppet strings by his wife’s cajoling and henpecking—that is more the stuff of comedy.14 And this—certainly unintended—comic effect is exacerbated by repeated allusions to his wife’s limited intellect.15

In all later drafts, Empedocles’ marriage is omitted altogether.

4. First Draft: Empedocles as Matchmaker

Hölderlin probably began the first and longest draft of the Empedocles material in the last third of 1798, but it remained unfinished: some scenes are only sketchily outlined; the manuscript was heavily and apparently repeatedly revised; and the text breaks off in the second act before Empedocles’ leap into Mount Etna.16

In the manuscript of this draft, the heading over the opening scene, a dialog between Panthea and Rhea, reads “Zwei Priesterinnen der Vesta” (two priestesses of Vesta).17 Hölderlin abandoned this idea early on18 and opted for different circumstances: Panthea lives in her father Critias’ house and is visited by her friend Delia, an Athenian woman. But the mere consideration that the two female figures in the new draft should be Vestal virgins—and thus sworn to chastity19—suggests that from the start Hölderlin wanted to keep his Empedocles far from any courtship or romancing scenarios with them. And Empedocles’ new domestic arrangement—he now lives as an unmarried, childless man in the house of his deceased parents (Hölderlin 1992–1993, MA, volume 1, p. 798 f.)—is singularly suited to provide him the greatest possible independence and freedom from familial obligations.

Hölderlin found mention of a Panthea in Diogenes Laertius, where, according to one source, Empedocles healed a woman by that name after the doctors had given her up for lost (Laertius 1925, p. 382 ff.). From this detail, Hölderlin developed a character and situated her within a network of relationships relevant to the unfolding of the drama: Panthea is the daughter of the Agrigentine archon (ruler) Critias, “ein arger Feind” (Hölderlin 1992–1993, MA, volume 1, p. 770; a bitter enemy) of Empedocles, whom Critias views as a threat to overturning the city’s balance of power through his charismatic effect on the Agrigentine citizens. In this new draft it is Panthea who, in the opening scene, first introduces Empedocles by recounting the moment she awakened after taking his healing potion:

[…] da stand er, Empedokles! o wie göttlich

und wie gegenwärtig mir! am Lächeln seiner Augen

blühte mir das Leben wieder auf! ach

wie ein Morgenwölkchen floß mein Herz dem

hohen süßen Licht entgegen und ich war der zarte

Wiederschein von ihm.

(Hölderlin 1992–1993, MA, volume 1, p. 770 f.)

$$

[…]

and there he stood, Empedocles! how godlike

and how present to me! beneath his smiling eyes

my life blossomed forth again! ah,

like a fleecy morning cloud my heart

soared upward to that sweet light and I was

its tender reflection.

(Hölderlin 2008, p. 39)

Two things are immediately striking: first, the mirror metaphor (“I was its tender reflection”), perhaps subtly suggesting Panthea’s erotic attraction to the man who saved her life;20 and second, Panthea’s immediate corrective to this attraction in describing him as “göttlich” (divine). These conflicting perceptions are underscored in the next line in the manuscript, which Hölderlin later struck: “Du Heiliger! in Traum und Wonne lag ich aufgelöst” (Hölderlin 1975–2000, FHA, volume 12, p. 54; You Holy One! I lay dissolved in a dream, in bliss): even as Panthea swoons with ecstasy, her address, “You Holy One”, inscribes a dividing line between herself and Empedocles. The one close to the gods is elevated far beyond the reach of her desire:

Der Unbedürftge wandelt

In seiner eignen Welt; in leiser Götterruhe geht

Er unter seinen Blumen, und es scheun

Die Lüfte sich, den Glüklichen zu stören[.]

(Hölderlin 1992–1993, MA, volume 1, p. 771)

$$

He needs nothing, traverses

His own world; reposing gently like a god

He walks among his flowers; the very breeze

Forbears disturbing this most fortunate man.

(Hölderlin 2008, p. 40)

So great is the distance she perceives between herself and the divine man that Panthea longs only to sit at his feet as his pupil:

       […] zu seinen Füßen

möcht’ ich sizen, stundenlang, als seine Schülerin

sein Kind, in seinen Aether schaun, und

zu ihm auf frohlokken, bis in seines Himmels

Höhe sich mein Sinn verirrte.

(Hölderlin 1992–1993, MA, volume 1, p. 771)

$$

       […] at his feet

I’d sit, for hours at a time, as his pupil

His child, gazing out into the ether that is all his own

And, clambering joyously to his own heaven’s

Height, my senses fairly wandered.

(Hölderlin 2008, p. 40)

Yet note how her reverie carries her, nevertheless, to ever greater proximity to Empedocles: first she sits at his feet as his pupil; then she acquires kinship, becomes his “child”; she gazes upwards into his element, the ether; she ascends to his “heavenly heights”; her senses lose their way, she jubilates (frohlokken), her diction increasingly enthused, ecstatic, she swoons (albeit not quite as suggestively as in the omitted line discussed above).21

Panthea makes no secret of her love for Empedocles in this opening scene: she “gehör[t]” (belongs)22 to him; her thoughts revolve obsessively around him: “ich weiß/Nicht anderes, denn ihn” (Hölderlin 1992–1993, MA, volume 1, p. 773; I know/Nothing else but him). Yet, because of his proximity to the gods, she considers the idea of equality with him to be hybristic: “Ich bin nicht er” (Hölderlin 1992–1993, MA, volume 1, p. 773; “I am not he”; Hölderlin 2008, p. 42) she states simply, and adds:

Und hätt‘ er gegen alle Götter sich

Versündiget und ihren Zorn auf sich

Geladen, und ich wollte sündigen,

Wie er, um gleiches Loos mit ihm zu leiden,

So wärs, wie wenn ein Fremder in den Streit

Der Liebenden sich mischt,—was willst du? sprächen

Die Götter nur, du Thörin kannst uns nicht

Belaidigen, wie er.

(Hölderlin 1992–1993, MA, volume 1, p. 773)

$$

And if he were to sin against all gods, and

Invite their wrath upon him, and if I

Should want to sin as he had done,

To draw the selfsame lot in suffering, that

Would be as though a stranger tried to interrupt

A lovers’ quarrel—What have you to do with us,

The gods would say; you fool, you never could

Insult us in the way he can.

(Hölderlin 2008, p. 42)

Panthea allows herself to imagine sharing “the same fate” with Empedocles only as a fellow transgressor against the gods,23 formulated as a conditio irrealis.24 But even this would be a presumptuous elevation of herself. The simile she uses here to describe herself (“as though a stranger tried to interrupt/A lovers’ quarrel”) emphasizes what she sees as the insurmountable difference between herself and Empedocles. But at the same time, the erotic scene she conjures up with her simile—her standing outside, interrupting the lovers’ quarrel—betrays the forbidden longing around which her thoughts forever circle. Her friend Delia raises further doubts as to whether Panthea has assessed herself correctly: “Du bist vielleicht/Ihm gleicher als du denkst, wie fändst du sonst/An ihm ein Wohlgefallen?” (Hölderlin 1992–1993, MA, volume 1, p. 773; “You are perhaps/More like him than you think, how else/Could you delight in him?”; Hölderlin 2008, p. 42). Thus, despite all her denials, Panthea’s erotic desire for Empedocles hangs in the air like an unanswered question at the end of the first scene.

Empedocles provides an answer towards the end of the first act, albeit not in conversation with Panthea—the two do not appear together in any scene in the first draft—but with her father, his opponent, the archon Critias. In the previous scene, the priest Hermocrates pronounces a curse against Empedocles in the presence of Empedocles, Critias and the assembled Agrigentines. As the townspeople exit, Empedocles requests that Critias remain; he wishes to speak to him about his daughter. Critias must “hinweg aus diesem Land” (leave this land), otherwise Panthea will “freudenlos [sterben], denn nie begiebt/Die zärtlichernste Göttertocher sich/Barbaren an das Herz zu nehmen” (Hölderlin 1992–1993, MA, volume 1, p. 794; “She’ll die deprived of joy; for never will/This tender earnest daughter of the gods take/Barbarians to heart”; Hölderlin 2008, p. 65). In a “holy land”, in “Elis or Delos” (both sites of Panhellenic games):

        […] wird sie ruhn,

Dort bei den schweigenden Idolen wird

Der schöne Sinn, der zartgenügsame

Sich stillen, bei den edeln Schatten wird

Das Laid entschlummern, das geheim sie hegt

In frommer Brust.

(Hölderlin 1992–1993, MA, volume 1, p. 795)

$$

        There she’ll rest’

Among the silent idols will

Her gentle sense be nurtured to

Her tender satisfaction; there amid the noble shades

Her pain will nod, the pain that she has locked away

Within her reverent breast.

(Hölderlin 2008, p. 65)

Her “Laid” (pain) is not defined in more detail, but its diagnosis is revealed in the remedy Empedocles prescribes. “Die fromme Träumerin” (the pious dreamer) will choose a worthy husband from one of the victors crowned with wreath and song in her new home; he will “den Schatten sie entführe[n]/Zu denen sie zu frühe sich gesellt” (Hölderlin 1992–1993, MA, volume 1, p. 795; “lead her from the shades/That all too soon became her sole companions”; Hölderlin 2008, p. 65), and carry her home, thus the implication, as his willing wife. It is an awkward scene for the philosopher-turned-matchmaker, but one Hölderlin apparently felt compelled to write in order quite literally to distance his Empedocles from the woman who adored him, and him alone. Having abandoned early on the barrier a Vestalic oath would have provided, he resorts to a method employed in the Thalia-Fragment: removal of the young woman from the proximity of the hero through the intervention of her father.25

Empedocles’ description of Panthea as the “daughter of the gods” deserves particular attention here, given that he is talking to her biological father. But according to Empedocles’ assessment, Critias has failed to recognize his daughter:

        Kennest du sie nicht?

Und tastest, wie ein Blinder an, was dir

Die Götter gaben? und es leuchtet dir

In deinem Hauß umsonst das holde Licht?

(Hölderlin 1992–1993, MA, volume 1, p. 794)26

$$

        Do you not know her?

And do you tamper like a blind man with the gift

The gods bestowed on you? and that bright light

Within your walls illuminates in vain?

(Hölderlin 2008, p. 64)

We see a double genealogy: Panthea is Critias’ biological daughter, yet is a stranger in his house, as she has come from the gods.27 It is no different with Empedocles. His parental home is proof of his biological family, but the people who understand and love him—Panthea and his favorite disciple, Pausanias—declare that he belongs to a different, divine race. In the last lines of the draft, Panthea calls him a “Göttersohn” (Hölderlin 1992–1993, MA, volume 1, p. 837; son of the gods). To the question Empedocles puts to Pausanias in their last scene together near Mount Etna: “Wofür/Erkennst du mich?” (Who do you think I am?), Pausanias replies: “O Sohn Uraniens!” (Hölderlin 1992–1993, MA, volume 1, p. 830; O son of Urania!).

This spiritual kinship functions paradoxically both as the justification for Panthea’s obsessive, erotically colored love for Empedocles, and as the unspoken barrier preventing an incestuous tie between her and her spiritual kinsman.28 She is, to recall Delia’s words, “ihm gleicher als du denkst” (Hölderlin 1992–1993, MA, volume 1, p. 773; more like him than you think). Hölderlin would have been familiar with the concept of spiritual kinship (cognatio spiritualis) as a marriage impediment according to ecclesiastical law.29 But here the notion is removed from an institutional context: Empedocles and Panthea are “spiritually related”, not as the result of any rite, but because of their shared “divine genealogy”. And in this sense their spiritual kinship represents a more essential obstacle to an erotic union than the mere ritual of a Vestalic vow ever could have.

Hölderlin will bring the network of relationships even more explicitly to the fore in his final draft. At this point, we can see that the spiritual kinship between Panthea and Empedocles emphasized in the first draft represents an intermediate position between Empedocles the family man with wife and children in the Frankfurt Plan, and the sibling constellation around the Empedocles of the third draft.

5. Second Draft: “Ist Doch Sein Eigen der Lebendige”30

Hölderlin began work on the second draft in the spring of 1799. In addition to the draft, which comprises around 700 lines and contains scenes from the beginning and end of the drama, a 143-line fair copy of the first scenes has survived. The second draft consists to a considerable extent of revised texts from the first draft. However, the revisions and the newly added lines point to conceptual shifts that are relevant to our discussion. A comparison of the two manuscripts shows, for example, that Hölderlin decided to delete the opening scene between Panthea and Delia after beginning work on the second draft.31 Instead, the tragedy opens with a newly composed dialog between Mecades and the priest Hermocrates. Mecades is not identified beyond his name in the dramatis personae at the beginning of the fair copy. He plays a similar role to Critias in this scene, in warning the priest of the threat Empedocles represents through his charisma and hybristic statements before the Agrigentines. However, his position in the city is unclear; he is described neither as an archon nor as Empedocles’ enemy. Rather, he attempts, albeit in vain, to mollify Hermocrates’ resolute condemnation of Empedocles. There is no evidence that Hölderlin planned to maintain a father–daughter relationship in the second draft with the Mecades figure. The deletion of the first Panthea/Delia scene—and thus also the story of Empedocles’ healing of Panthea in her father’s house—would speak against this. And if the father–daughter relationship was to have been omitted, so, too, would have been the awkward matchmaking scene between Empedocles and Panthea’s father.

There is no trace of Panthea’s obsessive love for Empedocles in the second draft. Indeed, her only appearance in what remains of the second draft occurs in the final scenes, where she discusses Empedocles’ presumed death first with Delia and then Pausanias. Hölderlin retained some of the lines from the corresponding scenes in the first draft. But Panthea’s words are now more quietly composed, and it is she who seeks to calm the more agitated Delia. In response to Delia’s objection, “aber traurig dunkel/Vor meinem Auge steht das Ende/Des Unbegreiflichen, und du heißest ihn auch/Hinweggehn, Panthea?” (Hölderlin 1992–1993, MA, volume 1, p. 858; “but mournfully obscure/Before my eyes looms the end/Of this incomprehensible man, and you/Encourage him to part, Panthea?”; Hölderlin 2008, p. 131), Panthea replies:

Ich muß. Wer will ihn binden?

Ihm sagen, mein bist du,32

Ist doch sein eigen der Lebendige,

Und nur sein Geist ihm Gesez[.]

(Hölderlin 1992–1993, MA, volume 1, p. 858)

$$

I have to. Who will tie him down? Who

Will tell him, You are mine;

The living one is all his own,

His spirit is his only law[.]

(Hölderlin 2008, p. 131)

There is no room here for erotic possession: Empedocles is not bound to another; he belongs solely to himself. And to Delia’s further protests that life on earth is “herrlich” (splendid) she replies:

        Gutes Kind!

Mich trift es freilich auch und gerne möcht‘

Ichs anders, doch ich schäme dessen mich.

Thut er es ja! Ists so nicht heilig?

(Hölderlin 1992–1993, MA, volume 1, p. 859)

$$

        Good child!

Of course it hurts me too and gladly would

I have it otherwise yet I’m ashamed of this.

Let him do it! Is it not holy thus?

(Hölderlin 2008, p. 132)

If Panthea’s erotic desire for Empedocles was to have been alluded to in any way in the second draft, it is ruled out in this scene as a violation of Empedocles’ character, and an impulse in Panthea’s nature of which she could only be ashamed. Binding him to herself, claiming him as her own, would be, by implication, an unholy act, a transgression against the “holy” path Empedocles has chosen.

6. Third Draft: All in the Family

Hölderlin’s last phase of work on the Empedocles project began in the second half of 1799 and comprises a manuscript complex consisting, chronologically,33 of

(a)

The poetological essay “Die tragische Ode” (The tragic ode), which includes a theoretical discussion of tragedy and the “Grund zum Empedokles” (Basis of Empedocles) (Hölderlin 1992–1993, MA, volume 1, pp. 865–78; Hölderlin 2008, pp. 139–57);

(b)

A newly conceived plan of the drama with short prose descriptions of some scenes (Hölderlin 1992–1993, MA, volume 1, pp. 878–81; Hölderlin 2008, pp. 163–66);

(c)

The third draft, consisting of three completed scenes from the first act (Hölderlin 1992–1993, MA, volume 1, pp. 883–901; Hölderlin 2008, pp. 171–88);

(d)

Another theoretical essay, “Das untergehende Vaterland” (Hölderlin 1992–1993, MA, volume 2, pp. 72–77; “The Fatherland in Decline”, Hölderlin 2008, pp. 153–57);

(e)

A very sparsely sketched new plan for the continuation of the third draft (Hölderlin 1992–1993, MA, volume 1, p. 902 f.; Hölderlin 2008, p. 193 f.).

Hölderlin’s theoretical reflections on the meaning of “tragischer Untergang” (tragic downfall) led him to a new conception of the plot in the last draft of his Empedocles. No longer do contingent circumstances motivate Empedocles’ leap into the volcano. The Empedocles of the third draft (c) has already recognized the necessity of his death in the opening scene; the following two scenes—the only ones Hölderlin completed for this draft—are concerned with articulating the legitimacy of this decision. The new approach brought a concentration of the material, which appears to have intensified even in the course of this work phase. Both the plan (b) and the third draft (c) begin with a monolog by Empedocles on Mount Etna; the events of the past, his expulsion from Agrigento, are mentioned here only in passing. The dramatis personae of the third draft are also newly conceived. These, too, are concentrated around Empedocles through familial ties: the philosopher’s political opponent—referred to in the plan (b) as “König” (king), and in the draft (c) as “Herr von Agrigent” (Lord of Agrigento), is now Empedocles’ brother. In the third draft he is given the name “Strato”. A nameless “sister” in the plan (b) receives the name “Panthea” in the third draft (c). The Delia role is entirely omitted.

According to the plan of the third draft (b), “the sister” is to act initially as mediator between the two feuding brothers: “Schwester fragt den König./will beide versöhnen/spricht vom Volk./bittet Empedokles zurükzukehren” (Hölderlin 1992–1993, MA, volume 1, p. 880; “The sister inquires of the king./wants to reconcile the two/speaks of the people/begs Empedocles to turn back”; Hölderlin 2008, p. 165). As the armed people approach, she fears the “zweideutige Menge” (“the ambivalent crowd”) and “den Zwist des Empedokles mit dieser, und des andern Bruders mit ihr, den Zwist, der nun erst zwischen beiden Brüdern ganz zu beginnen scheint” (Hölderlin 1992–1993, MA, volume 1, p. 881; “Empedocles’ quarrel with them, and her other brother’s quarrel with them, the quarrel between the two brothers that only now appears to be beginning”; Hölderlin 2008, p. 165).34 In his last speech, Empedocles is to comfort his sister before singing his “Abendlied” (Hölderlin 1992–1993, MA, volume 1, p. 881; evening song/swan song) and presumably then returning to Mount Etna. In contrast to Panthea in the two earlier drafts, the sister interacts directly with Empedocles (we recall that Panthea and Empedocles share no common dialogs in the earlier drafts). We can assume it was the sibling relationship that made the difference here. The entire identity of this nameless figure is subsumed under the role of “sister”; there is no suggestion in this albeit very brief sketch that her proximity to her brother was to include erotic overtones.

With the development of the third draft (c) and in the new plan for the continuation of the draft (e) attached to it, Hölderlin focuses the drama ever more on the meaning and justification of Empedocles’ suicide. The emphasis shifts to the Egyptian priest, Manes, and his testing of Empedocles’ motives. In the newly composed third scene of the third draft (c), Manes interrogates Empedocles to determine if he is indeed “der neue Retter” (the new savior), who alone can commit the “schwarze Sünde” (black sin) of suicide with impunity.35 While the list of dramatis personae now includes “Panthea, seine Schwester” (Hölderlin 1992–1993, MA, volume 1, p. 884; Panthea, his sister), she does not appear in the first act, the only one Hölderlin completed for this draft. But in substituting the nameless sister in the plan for the old Panthea, he has erased the erotic dimension of the figure he had developed in the earlier drafts, leaving only the merest trace of it with her name.

The last extant manuscript of the Empedocles project, the brief plan for the continuation of the third draft (e), gives a barebones sketch of acts two through five. Hölderlin lists the figures who are to appear in each act (including a chorus), but offers virtually no dialog or prose elaborations. As for Panthea, we know only that she is to appear in various configurations with other characters in each of these acts. A note at the end of the plan gives the final word to Manes, who, following Empedocles’ suicide, declares to the assembled Agrigentines, Pausanias, Strato and Panthea that Empedocles is “der Berufene” (the called one), and interprets the epochal significance of his life and death, “in dem und durch den eine Welt sich zugleich auflöse und erneue” (Hölderlin 1992–1993, MA, volume 1, p. 903; “in whom and through whom a world dissolves and in the same instant renews itself”; Hölderlin 2008, p. 194). As Empedocles is reimagined as the sign and sacrifice of an epochal change, all volitional and all even potentially sexual or erotic “particular relationships” seem to have been systematically removed from the plot.

7. The “Festlich Paar”36: Empedocles and Pausanias

But one possible exception remains: Pausanias. As with Panthea, Hölderlin found this figure in Diogenes Laertius, where he is called Empedocles’ pupil and “beloved” (ἐρώμενος).37 Hölderlin will have known that this referred to a pederastic relationship between the older Empedocles and his favorite pupil: what was known as “Greek love” in his day.38 However, in contrast to Hölderlin’s description of the relationship between Hyperion and Alabanda in his novel, for example, where homoerotic allusions can scarcely be overheard,39 the relationship between Empedocles and Pausanias is presented as one between father and son throughout the drafts.40 Although the love between the two is intimate, their speeches are not erotically charged, as Panthea’s effusions are in the first draft.

However, a subtle change can be sensed in the third draft (c) in the newly composed scene between Pausanias and Empedocles on Mount Etna, where we hear echoes of Panthea’s language of erotic possession. Empedocles seeks solitude. Pausanias protests: since Empedocles discovered him “[d]er Waise gleich” (like an orphan) and extended to him his hand, “Seitdem bin ich ein anderer, und dein” (Hölderlin 1992–1993, MA, volume 1, p. 889; “Since then I’ve been another, I’ve been yours”; Hölderlin 2008, p. 176). Empedocles brusquely corrects him: “Du must es wissen, dir gehör ich nicht/Und du nicht mir, und deine Pfade sind/Die meinen nicht (Hölderlin 1992–1993, MA, volume 1, p. 890); “You have to know I don’t belong to you, nor you//To me; the paths that you will tread/Are not mine” (Hölderlin 2008, p. 177), rejecting the idea of belonging to another, much as Panthea had denied herself that possibility in the first and second drafts.

Pausanias’ final argument that he would remain with Empedocles, even if he were to descend to the Titans to reconcile them, is also reminiscent of Panthea’s even more transgressive fantasy in the first draft of joining Empedocles in sinning against the gods. Pausanias’ statement, too, is formulated as a conditio irrealis:

Beim göttlichen Herakles! Stiegst du auch

Um die Gewaltigen, die drunten sind,

Versöhnend die Titanen heimzusuchen,

Ins bodenlose Thal, vom Gipfel dort,

[…]

      Ich folgte dir hinunter.

(Hölderlin 1992–1993, MA, volume 1, p. 892)

Divine Heracles! Even if you plummeted

To seek below the violent ones, to

Conciliate defeated Titans, plunging down

From that peak there into the groundless gorge,

[…]

      I’d follow you below.

(Hölderlin 2008, p. 178)

It appears, then, that Hölderlin modified and transferred to Pausanias some of the Panthea material from the first and second drafts that no longer fit her sisterly role in the third draft. A new tone can also be heard in Empedocles’ reply to Pausanias. He acquiesces, tells his friend to stay with him after all, and when Pausanias asks in astonishment what he means by this, Empedocles answers: “Du gabst/Dich mir, bist mein; so frage nicht!” (Hölderlin 1992–1993, MA, volume 1, p. 892; You gave yourself to me;/You’re mine; and so you must not question!”; Hölderlin 2008, p. 179). A few lines later, he indulges himself briefly with the following fantasy of a shared death with Pausanias:

O allesopfernd Herz! und dieser giebt

Schon mir zu lieb die goldne Jugend weg!

Und ich! o Erd und Himmel! siehe! noch,

Noch bist du nah, indeß die Stunde flieht,

Und blühest mir, du Freude meiner Augen.

Noch ists, wie sonst, ich halt im Arme

Als wärst du mein, wie meine Beute dich,

Und mich bethört der holde Traum noch einmal.

Ja! herrlich wärs, wenn in die Grabesflamme

So Arm in Arm statt Eines Einsamen

Ein festlich Paar am Tagesende gieng‘,

Und gerne nähm‘ ich, was ich hier geliebt,

Wie seine Quellen all ein edler Strom,41

Der heilgen Nacht zum Opfertrank, hinunter.

(Hölderlin 1992–1993, MA, volume 1, p. 893)

$$

O all-sacrificing heart! and this one

For my sake flings away his golden youth!

And I! O earth and sky! behold! still

Still you are near, although the hour flies

And still you bloom, you, my eyes’ rejoicing.

Things still are as once they were, I hold you in

My arms as though you’re mine, indeed, my prey,

And once again the lovely dream befuddles me.

Yes! it would be splendid if into the pyre’s flames

Thus arm in arm instead of one left all alone

A festive pair at end of day went off companionably

And gladly I would take the one that here I loved,

The way a noble stream sweeps all its tributaries

Into the depths below, libations to the holy night.

(Hölderlin 2008, p. 179 f.)

One hears in these lines an allusion to ancient heroic pairs united in death—Castor and Pollux, Achilles and Patroclus, Harmodius and Aristogeiton, all of whom also appear in Hyperion to illuminate the relationship between Hyperion and Alabanda.42 The homoerotic potential of this allusion is heightened with the image of Empedocles embracing Pausanias as his “prey”, a reference to the abduction of Ganymede by Jupiter. Hölderlin would have been familiar with the sexual overtones of the myth; he refers to it in his novel in the context of Hyperion’s erotic attraction to Diotima.43

But Empedocles abruptly breaks off the reverie in the following lines:

Doch besser ists, wir gehen unsern Pfad

Ein jeder, wie der Gott es ihm beschied,

Unschuldiger ist diß, und schadet nicht.

(Hölderlin 1992–1993, MA, volume 1, p. 893)

$$

Yet better it would be if each of us pursued

His own path, as divinity has meted out,

Less guilt there is in this, no damage done.

(Hölderlin 2008, p. 180)

Ultimately, the erotic reverie is suppressed here, too; desire is stifled by divine prohibition and the threat of guilt.

8. Empedocles’ Transports

While sexual or erotic unions are successively erased or prohibited in the course of the Empedocles drafts, the ecstatic, erotically suggestive language associated with these unions wanders, displaced, to occupy a number of new objects throughout the drafts. In the opening scene of the first draft, Panthea imagines Empedocles in his garden at night in raptures of creative song:

[…] aus sich selber wächst in steigendem

Vergnügen die Begeisterung ihm auf,

Bis aus der Nacht des schöpfrischen Entzükens,

Wie ein Funke, der Gedanke springt,

Und heiter sich die Geister künftger Thaten

In seiner Seele drängen, und die Welt,

Der Menschen gährend Leben und die größre

Die Natur um ihn erscheint–hier fühlt er, wie ein Gott

In seinen Elementen sich, und seine Lust

Ist himmlischer Gesang […].

(Hölderlin 1992–1993, MA, volume 1, p. 771)

$$

[…] from out of himself there waxes

In ever-enhancing enjoyment an enthusiasm

Within, until from the night of his creative rapture

The thought, like a spark, leaps,

And cheerfully the spirit of deeds that are

To come crowd his soul, and the world,

The leavening life of humankind, and the larger

Natural world about him radiate—here he feels like

A god within his element; his joy intones

A canticle of heaven […].

(Hölderlin 2008, p. 40)

The diction—steigendes Vergnügen (rising pleasure), Begeisterung (enthusiasm/inspiration); die Nacht der Entzückung (the night of rapture/ecstasy), from which, spark-like, springs the thought that engenders the spirit of future deeds within his soul in an act of metaphorical self-fertilization; Lust (lust, pleasure)—is suggestively (auto)erotic, but has been displaced, sequestered from Panthea’s own erotic desire and given a new home in the ecstasy of Empedocles’ poetic inspiration: “seine Lust/ist himmlischer Gesang”.44

In Empedocles’ final monolog in the first draft we find again this suggestively erotic language as he contemplates his plunge to death in the fiery Mount Etna:

Nun find ich in der Einen That, der heilgen

Euch Siegeswonnen all, wonach mein Herz

Gedürstet. Sterben? nur ins Dunkel ists

Ein Schritt und sehen möchtst du doch, mein Auge!

[…]

Es muß die Nacht izt eine Weile mir

Das Haupt umschatten. Aber freudig quillt

Aus muthger Brust die Flamme. Schauderndes

Verlangen! Was! am Tod entzündet mir

Das Leben sich zulezt und reichest du

Den Schrekensbecher, mir[,] den gährenden[,45]

Natur! damit dein Sänger noch aus ihm

Die lezte der Begeisterungen trinke!

(Hölderlin 1992–1993, MA, volume 1, p. 833)

$$

And now I find in that one holy deed

All you triumphant delights for which my heart

Has thirsted. Dying? it’s only into darkness,

One step; and still you’d love to see, O eye of mine!

[…]

And now must night awhile surround

My head in shadow. Yet joyous surge

The flames from an intrepid breast. Shuddering

Desire! What? death alone ignites

My life now at the end, and you extend

To me the terrifying chalice, the fermenting cup,

Nature! that he who sings you drink a draft of it

His spirit’s ultimate enthusiasm!

(Hölderlin 2008, p. 103)46

His diction—Wonne (bliss/delight), freudig (joyous), quellen (surge, well up, gush), schauderndes Verlangen (shuddering desire), ein am Tod entzündetes Leben (a life enflamed by death), Begeisterung (enthusiasm/inspiration)—echoes Panthea’s, while surpassing it in intensity. The culmination of all previous ecstasies is found in the “cup of horror”, as erotic passion is displaced along an associative chain to find, in the first draft, its final resting place in death.

9. Empedocles’ Incestuous Suicide

A final reimagining of erotic union occurs in the third draft, where the figure of the mother comes to dominate the imagery. In his opening monolog, Empedocles addresses “Allduldende Natur” (all-forbearing nature); she is his old love, the mother who possesses her son, who embraces him and gently pulls him down into death:

Allduldende Natur! du hast mich auch,

Du hast mich, und es dämmert zwischen dir

Und mir die alte Liebe wieder auf.

Du rufst, du ziehst mich nah und näher an–

Und wenn die Wooge wächst, und ihren Arm

Die Mutter um mich breitet, o was möcht‘

Ich auch, was möcht‘ ich fürchten.

(Hölderlin 1992–1993, MA, volume 1, p. 886)

$$

Long-suffering nature! you too possess me,

You have me; between the two of us

The old love kindles once again

You call, you draw me close and closer to yourself.

And when the wave would whelm me, then

My mother’s arm embraces me; oh what have I

To fear, is there anything to fear.

(Hölderlin 2008, p. 173)

And finally, when Empedocles challenges Manes to join him in the suicidal leap, should he, too, be “befreit von andrer Pflicht/In freiem Tod, nach göttlichem Geseze” (Hölderlin 1992–1993, MA, volume 1, p. 900; freed from other duty/in freely chosen death, in accordance with divine law), Empedocles envisions himself as kinsman of the fiery father, following him into the embrace with darksome mother Earth:

So komm mit mir, wenn izt zu einsam sich,

Das Herz der Erde klagt, und eingedenk

Der alten Einigkeit die dunkle Mutter

Zum Aether aus die Feuerarme breitet

Und izt der Herrscher kömt in seinem Stral,

Dann folgen wir, zum Zeichen, daß wir ihm

Verwandte sind, hinab in heil’ge Flammen.

(Hölderlin 1992–1993, MA, volume 1, p. 899 f.)

$$

Then come with me and banish dire loneliness;

The heart of earth lamenting to itself, remembering

Their ancient unity, the darksome mother reaching out

Her arms of fire, stretching toward the ether;

And if the ruler comes in his bright ray

We’ll follow him, to signify that we are blood

Related [to him47], going down in holy flames together.

(Hölderlin 2008, p. 186)

With his leap into the volcano, Empedocles becomes a kind of exponentiated Oedipus: not sexually united with his biological mother, but rather, in a fiery consummation, incinerated in his truest mother’s flaming desire for the divine Father. In this supremely hybristic claim to kinship (“Verwandte”) with these parents, and in uniting himself with them in one last deadly, incestuous, transgressive act, breaking human but obeying divine law, he is to reconcile humans with the gods, renew the world and herald in a new age.48

10. Conclusions: The Tragic as Monstrous Copulation

How should the process of editing the erotic, which unfolds across the Empedocles drafts, be interpreted? At the most banal level, one could argue that sexual/erotic relationships are simply extraneous to the plot, and lie outside the central concern of the tragedy. As the dramatic material came into sharper focus, Hölderlin deleted these entanglements, most of which were his own invention, as unwanted distractions. However, this process cannot, in my view, be explained solely in terms of tightening up the composition. At the same time Empedocles’ marriage is eliminated, and increasingly prohibitive bonds of kinship are put into place to remove him from sexual/erotic engagements with the dramatis personae, a related process of displacement occurs, whereby erotic diction is transferred along an associative chain to ever new objects across the drafts: Panthea, Pausanias, poetic inspiration, the suicide. One is a movement toward barriers, one a meandering flow, yet in both processes we find a drift towards prohibition, whereby erotic union is imagined as a violation of divine law, as “unholy”, as incest. In other words, while this drift serves to prevent erotic unions between Empedocles and either Panthea or Pausanias from materializing, it also provides the impetus for the displacement of erotic diction to other objects throughout the drafts. And this latter process does not halt at the barrier, but plunges into the paradoxical violation and affirmation of divine law: Empedocles’ suicide, imagined as the incestuous union with his divine parents. Retracing the editing of the erotic through the Empedocles drafts leads us finally to this monstrous copulation, which, I would suggest, does indeed lie at the very heart of Hölderlin’s understanding of tragedy. As he would write a few years later in the “Anmerkungen zum Ödipus” (Notes on the Oedipus):

Die Darstellung des Tragischen beruht vorzüglich darauf, daß das Ungeheure, wie der Gott und Mensch sich paart, und gränzenlos die Naturmacht und des Menschen Innerstes im Zorn Eins wird, dadurch sich begreift, daß das gränzenlose Eineswerden durch gränzenloses Scheiden sich reinigt.

(Hölderlin 1992–1993, MA, volume 2, p. 315)

The presentation of the tragic is based primarily on this: that the monstrous—as the god and man couple, and the power of nature and man in his innermost self become limitlessly One in wrath—comprehends itself, when limitless unification purifies itself through limitless separation.

But a discussion of Hölderlin’s theory of tragedy would take us well beyond the bounds of this paper.49