A Reading of Love in Hölderlin's “Andenken”1

At the heart of my reading of Holderlin's poem "Andenken" lies the question of mutuality: how best to understand mutuality and how to realize it. Drawing on my unconventional rendition of Hegel's theory of recognition, I will read the blowing of the wind presented by "Andenken" as a conversation between lovers-indeed as the intersection of two conversations, one between Friedrich Holderlin and Susette Gontard, and one between the poet and the reader. Working with the lines "Doch gut / Ist ein Gesprach" and "Mancher / Tragt Scheue" as the main coordinates of this interpretation, I will develop a theory of reading that calls on the reader to contribute to the poem's efforts to facilitate a love that is mutual. In a further multiplication of crossed couples, the human lovers are interlaced with the poem's several pairs of trees until finally a Gesprach not so much in, but among, words emerges in the form of asymmetrical chiasms-that is, of unfinished, non-reciprocal but nevertheless mutual exchanges. "Andenken" is a wind poem. It initiates its own movement in the first line by saying "Der Nordost wehet." Why Nordostl Why not any other wind? And precisely what direction does this northeasterly poem take? Most interpreters, among them most influentially Heidegger, take for granted that the act of 'thinking-toward' (''Andenken") follows the blowing of the wind from northeast to southwest. Presuming that recollection is only possible from the perspective of home and presupposing that this home must be Germany, Heidegger emphasizes that the poem knows only one direction, that is, southwest: "Der Nordost zeigt und fuhrt hinweg aus dem heimischen Land in die einzige Richtungdes sudwestlichenHimmels" (my emphasis).4Beisner, in his edition of Holderlin's works, follows Heidegger and, with a surprising lack of critical sensibility, conflates empirical and poetic realities when commenting, "Der Nordost weht nach Sudwesten, das bedeutet vom Ort des Dichters aus: nach Bourdeaux."5 Dieter Henrich complicates this reading somewhat, by integrating a change in perspective. He argues that, after moving southwest to Bordeaux, the wind and with it the poem's gesture of remembrance turns northwest and toward the sea.6 Nevertheless, Henrich's interpretation still leaves untouched the presupposed directionality of the first stanza and thereby of the poem's greeting, its original and self-originating address: "Geh aber nun und gruse." Eberhard Baumann is, to my knowledge, the first to point out how counterintuitive these claims about the orientation of the poem really are. Reading the first line, "Der Nordost wehet," he asks: Was fur Gedanken lost denn diese Richtungsangabe im Horer oder Leser aus? Nur die der Richtung, in die der Wind weht und damit den Blick nach Sudwest, wie er im weiteren Gedicht angesprochen zu werden scheint, oder vielmehr die Blickrichtung nach Nordosten als dem Ursprung und dem Herkommen des Windes?7 Since the geographic coordinates included in the descriptor of a particular wind do not indicate into which direction the wind blows but rather from which direction it is blowing, the line "Der Nordost wehet," locates its writer -and reader-in the southwest facing northeast and feeling the wind (of the poem) blow in his/her face. Even though the poem points in the north-easterly direction with its opening phrase, a slight fear blows most readers away from the source and turns them toward the south-west. "Mancher / Tragt Scheue, an die Quelle zu gehn." Holderlin tries to be among the few, a "mancher," who carries the burden of moving against the wind instead of being carried away by it.8 Holderlin travels northeast from Bordeaux back to Frankfurt; he does so in real life, but also with the lines of this poem. In May 1802, Holderlin sets out on his walk from Bordeaux, where he had assumed a position as tutor, to Frankfurt, the home of Susette Gontard. Drawn toward the impossible reunion with the forbidden love, this journey is marked by several detours and delays (in Paris, Stuttgart, Nurtingen, and again Stuttgart) until Holderlin is struck by the news of Gontard's death. …