the river told me

8/12/2019 The River Told Me

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The River Told Me.

Upstream Danube PhilosophyHerbert Hrachovec

Department of Philosophy

University of Vienna


2/22

Now come, fire!

We are impatient

To look upon the Day,And when the trial

Has passed through the knees

One may perceive the cries in the wood.

But, as for us, we sing from the Indus,

Arrived from afar, and

From the Alpheus, long weHave sought what is fitting,

Not without wings may one

Reach out for that which is nearest

Like so

And get to the other side.

But here we wish to build.For rivers make arable

The land. For when herbs are growing

And to the same in summer

The animals go to drink,

There too will human kind go.


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This one, however, is called the Ister.

Beautifully he lives. The pillars foliage burns,

And stirs. Wildly they stand

Supporting one another; above,A second measure, juts out

The roof of rocks. No wonder, therefore,

I say, this river

Invited Hercules,

Distantly gleaming, down by Olympus,

When he, to look for shadows,Came up from the sultry isthmus,

For full of courage they were

In that place, but, because of the spirits,

Theres need of coolness too. That is why that hero

Preferred to come here to the wellsprings and yellow banks,

Highly fragrant on top, and blackWith fir woods, in whose depths

A huntsman loves to amble

At noon, and growth is audible

In resinous trees of the Ister,


4/22

Yet it seems

To travel backwards and

I think it must come from

The East.Much could

Be said about this. And why does

It cling to the mountains, straight?The other,

The Rhine, has gone away

Sideways. Not for nothing rivers flow

Through dry land. But how? A sign is needed,Nothing else, plain and honest, so that

Sun and Moon it may bear in mind, inseparable,

And go away, day and night no less, and

The Heavenly feel warm one beside the other.

That also is why these are

The joy of the Highest. For howWould he get down? And like Hertha green

They are the children of Heaven. But all too patient

He seems to me, not

More free, and nearly derisive. For when


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Day is due to begin

In youth, where it starts

To grow, another already there

Drives high the splendour, and like foalsHe grinds the bit, and far off the breezes

Can hear the commotion,

If he is contented;

But the rock needs incisions

And the earth needs furrows,

Would be desolate else, unabiding;Yet what that one does, the river,

Nobody knows. (Michael Hamburger

Translation,

With A. Sol Invictus

Emendation)

http://poetrybeingzen.blogspot.com/2007/11/hlderlin-der-ister-translation.html


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https://reader010.{domain}/reader010/html5/0618/5b26d6d15dd84/5b26d6d549906.jpg


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http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b3/Europa_Ludwigskanal_Rhein_Main_Donau.png/532px-

Europa_Ludwigskanal_Rhein_Main_Donau.png


8/22

Two Itineraries

river mouth 1

Baile Herculane 4

Vukovar 2

Mauthausen 5 Straubing/Pfatter 6

Regensburg 9

Beuron 3

Vhrenbach 7

Furtwangen 8


9/22


10/22

Framework Sorge

Being and Time

Rektoratsrede

Riverie


11/22

The being of Dasein means: to-be-ahead-of-oneself-already-in-(the world) as

being-with (beings encountered in the world). This being fulfils the

signification of the term care, which is used here purely in an ontological-

existenzial way. Every ontically intended tendency of being such as worry

(having cares) or carefreeness remains excluded from this signification.(Being and Time, p. 192)

Whether this will or will not happen depends solely on whether we, as a

historical-spiritual people, still and once again will ourselvesor whether we no

longer will ourselves. Each individualparticipates in this decision even when, andespecially when, he evades it.

But we do will that our people fulfill its historical mission.

We do will ourselves. For the young and the youngest strength of the people,

which is already reaching beyond us, has already decided the matter.

But we will only fully understand the magnificence and greatness of this new

departure when we carry within us that profound and far-reaching thoughtfulness that

gave ancient Greek wisdom the saying:

...

[All that is great stands in the storm ...]

(... to sway ...)

(Plato, Republic, 497 d. 9)

Rektoratsrede, p. 13


12/22

Martin Heidegger: Hlderlin's Hymn The Ister, p.15


13/22

German Visionaries: The Dead End

Hans Jrgen Syberberg

at the Villa Wahnfried: Winifred Wagner

on Poetry lost


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16/22

Fault Lines

The Ister MixThe Hlderlin Autographs

Generalplan Ost


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Soon after Germany conquered Poland in September 1939, Hitler directed

SS chief Heinrich Himmler to begin distilling his geopolitical aims into a formal

plan of action. The newly conquered territories of Poland, and lands

Germany intended to conquer in the western Soviet Union, lands Himmler

referred to as the "California of Europe," would be "Germanized." In 1940,

Himmler had experts in the Reich Office for the Strengthening of Germandom

(RKFDV) and the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) develop plans for the

territory won by the Third Reich through its military conquests in Eastern

Europe. Known alternately by their names as the Generalplan Ostor the

Gesamtplan Ost(GPO), the different versions of these plans envisaged a

comprehensive restructuring of social, political, ethnic, and economic life in

occupied Bohemia and Moravia, Poland, the Baltic States, and regions of theSoviet Union west of the Ural Mountains according to National Socialist racial-

political principles. The GPO was in effect a utopian, ideologically oriented

plan for the creation of a German land-based empire in the east. As such,

the Generalplan Ostrepresented the most detailed statement ever

produced during the Third Reich of long-term foreign policy goals that

Adolf Hitler had first articulated in the mid-1920s.

In their place, the SS intended to settle communities of millions German

warrior-farmers (Wehrbauern) from Germany, Holland, Norway, Denmark,

and other countries with Germanic-Nordic racial stock would settle in the

lands between the eastern frontier and the German homeland.

http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/GPO/Generalplanostnew.htm

the river told me

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