Archipelago

(Dubrovnik area image)

I emphasized to Oppermann that the importance of this poem by Friedrich Holderlin was principally that it was an image of consciousness.

We may interpret a great deal concerning the fathers of philosophy, or the love of the ancient heroic intrigues of Ancient Greece and the like: all ascribable to Schliemann and the German romanticization of Greece.

Consciousness exists as the fullness of the sunlight upon the waters-- illuminates between the masses of dark matter we call "the land" where we ourselves cleave to our existences: on the ruddy and dusky earth, we "men who eat bread" to quote Hesiod's words. Consciousness illumines, the eye is water, pure reflection of the luminous presence of the sun. The craggy outcroppings of greece, the dusty taste of goat's milk: these immediately juxtaposed with familiar names: Athens, Sparta, Delphi among these names: consciousness is here spread out between small land masses: not easily assailable in the manner that Moscow was assailed by the Mongol hordes. But also not easily populable: or differentially populable. This is what it means to belong to an archipelago: there is a sea voyage involved between each town, a necessary and dangerous crossing of the unconscious: a deeply intoned and well intentioned prayer to Poseidon to bring fair weather and not storms to throw one dangerously off course (and one must beg for the deliverance of Earth-Shaking Poseidon). This is what it means. On each island an articulate cultural and mythical strata is woven, and then checked against each other point in the archipelago... and so on...

But most importantly one should read this fragment of the poem "Der Archipelagus" as I read this poem today to Dr. Oppermann's answering machine: that at least in this life we did get to read Holderlin to each other, even if over the mindless static of the technological machine: we read a fragment of "The Archipelago..." and for the time being this must be enough.

I have written before that the essence of reading Holderlin for Oppermann and myself is this semi-participation in a strange cult of initiation: those of us who actually read Holderlin still and guard something about this knowledge: maybe it is the knowledge that within Holderlin's verse, which may be the greatest verse ever written, there is something so beautiful, and yet so careful, that it would never forsake conscience for the sake of its overwhelming beautiful knowledge.

And so this is to be read in the early evening, in late Autumn, in the Medeterranean chill of California: December 2007:

Der Archipelagus

Kehren die Kraniche wieder zu dir, und suchen zu deinen
Uffen wieder die Schiffe den Lauf? Umatmen erwunschte
Lufte dir die beruhigte Flut, und sonnet der Delphin,
Aus der Tiefe gelogt, am neuen Lichte den Rucken?
Bluht Ionen? Ists die Zeit? Denn immer im Fruhlung,
Wenn den Lebenden sich das Herz erneut und die erste
Liebe der Menschen erwacht und goldner Zeiten Erinnerung,
Komm' ich zu dir und gruss' in deiner Stille dich, Alter!