I’m wondering whether his punctuation in citations below (substantially changing the meaning) is based on any edition, or is a sheer figment of his creativity.
Und die Red und den luftigen
Gedanken und städtebeherrschenden Stolz
Hat erlernet er, und übelwohnender
Hügel feuchte Lüfte und
Die unglücklichen zu fliehen, die Pfeile. Allbewandert,
Unbewandert. Zu nichts kommt er.
Der Toten künftigen Ort nur
Zu fliehen weiß er nicht,
Und die Flucht unbeholfener Seuchen
Zu überdenken.
Die Gesetze kränkt er, der Erd und Naturgewalt’ger
Beschwornes Gewissen; Hochstädtisch kommt, unstädtisch
Zu nichts er, wo das Schöne
Mit ihm ist und mit Frechheit.
Lloyd-Jones and Wilson’s OCT doesn’t report any variants that would justify Hölderlin’s translation in these passages, insofar as I understand his eccentric German.
Die Gesetze kränkt er – this is strange and seems to be the opposite of what the Greek seems to say. γεραίρων, “honoring”, is a conjecture. The mss. read παρείρων, “threading” or “fitting into” which L-J&W print and defend, but H’s translation doesn’t reflect either reading. I would imagine that H. tried to make sense of the Greek without the aid of commentaries or other translations and filtered through his own poetic imagination.
Brunck on παρείρων gives a conjecture equivalent to Hölderlin here:
His punctuation for the first bit, which also seems suggestive [EDIT: more than suggestive, also better image]:
Having not come across Hölderlin before, I’m blown away by how good his feel for the rhythm mechanics of Sophocles is. See his Anmerkungen on the play. [Walter Benjamin: In ihnen stürzt der Sinn von Abgrund zu Abgrund, bis er droht in bodenlosen Sprachtiefen sich zu verlieren.]
On this style of translation…well, in a somewhat related essay, Alter talks about our living in a golden age for accuracy in Hebrew to English prose, as compared to the 17th century, but says that it only seems to lead to grotesque (but formally “accurate”) betrayals of the spirit in translation. Benjamin talks about the issue of “Übersetzbarkeit” in Hölderlin’s translations. “Ubersetzung ist eine Form.” Lloyd-Jones’ translation is actually the one I always think of in regard to translation faithfulness. I recall someone objecting to the “thees” and “thous” in the old translation for some play (Suppliants?), and I was a little startled that they didn’t notice how much more simply readable the old version was than the new super-accurate, super-cribby Loeb.
Thanks, Joel. Jebb does consider such punctuation as in Brunck, yet it does not change the meaning of ἐπ᾽ οὐδὲν ἔρχεται, which is where H.'s differs drastically, as he makes this phrase into a separate sentence.
(kränkt does seem strange; unfortunately, your first scan is not clear enough for me to see the emendation: ευ??ων; I wonder whether German had an idiom similar to the Russian one: “to be sick for something” = “to be its zealous fan”)
Obviously, one problem with all these definitions, for actually accepting the emendation is that they are all intransitive. But that’s not the question at hand. The question is where did Hölderlin get his source text from, and it’s clearly Brunck.
He does make a hard stop before zu nichts kommt er. It’s completely justified. I don’t know what Jebb does, but some sort of stop seems warranted in English at least to follow Brunck’s punctuation.
παντοπόρος, ἄπορος
ἐπ᾽ οὐδὲν ἔρχεται
τὸ μέλλον
Trying everything, nothing possible, he comes to nothing in the end.
EDIT: I think you’re misreading kränkt in the German. Transitive. He harms/offends (ie. violates) the laws. Notice also how he emphasizes the Greek root -πορος in a way that I don’t attempt with “trying everything, nothing possible”.
You’re right, I wrongly took “kränkt” to be a form of “kranken”.
Jebb: “παντοπόρος is at once a comment on the achievements already enumerated (cp. “περιφραδής” in 348), and a general expression absolving the poet from further detail: ‘yes, there is nothing that he cannot provide.’ … We must not point thus: “βέλη: παντοπόρος, ἄπορος κ.τ.λ.”, when the sense would be weakened, and the construction perplexed (‘all-providing, and in no case without resource, he meets the future’).” I.e., whether or not one puts a colon after βέλη, Jebb takes “ἐπ᾽οὐδὲν” with ἄπορος and so as confirming the παντοπόρος statement, not debunking it. Which makes sense to me, for otherwise stressing in what follows that death is the only (μόνον) thing that man has no resources to avoid would seem out of place.
I’m not getting email notifications for some reason, although all proper boxes are checked.
The email notifications issue (I think) is due to Textkit’s being hosted on a virtual server. As with any cloud virtual hosting, there are sometimes email blocks due to spammers using other parts of the service. I haven’t looked into it very carefully. Actually, I’ve ignored it. I will see about fixing it sometime soon. At some point I may just spend some money for Sendgrid or equivalent.
Better image provided above. I see that taking ἐπ’ οὐδὲν with ἄπορος is also recommended by the scholion printed in the Brunck edition (why can’t we have editions this good today?).
I suppose the scholion is probably right, but you could imagine either an invisible “ἀλλά” or invisible “γάρ” linking up 'Αίδα μόνον (bad accent?) “[but/for] from death alone he will not procure escape, and he has made plans for flights from impossible diseases.” Hölderlin in slight departure from this seems to take the οὐκ as applying to both verbs, which seems unlikely. I think the meaning comes from simple emphasis of “impossible”. He’s made plans in vain. Against impossible things. They’ll come to nothing.
“[but/for] from death alone he will not procure escape” – Why “death alone”, if it is already stated that “he comes to nothing” in his undertakings even while alive?
Anyway, I’ve been trying to find whether τὸ μέλλον is used as anything like adverbial “in the future” elsewhere, but only find it as “the future.” You can εἰδεῖν τὸ μέλλον or αἰσθάνεσθαι τὸ μέλλον and so on. But ἔρχεται τὸ μέλλον and not ἔρχεται εἰς τὸ μέλλον seems unique. Maybe someone has an example though. So maybe what is meant is “τὸ μέλλον οὐδέν”, all governed by ἐπί?
All-capable man, incapable he comes upon the future nothing. From death alone he will not procure escape, and he has planned his flights from diseases inescapable.
[The pointless flight of mankind from inescapable diseases really “hits you in the feels” these days, as they say.]
Anyway, this description of the human condition seems self-evident. We can do anything about anything. But we’re ultimately powerless in the face of death. We are παντοπόρος now and ultimately ἄπορος.
But…the scholion is probably right and that ἐπ’ οὐδὲν just goes with ἄπορος. Still, I thought it would be good to make a case for this.
(1) Hölderlin’s reading does, of course, resonate (Heidegger, for one, follows it), but it strikes me as too modern to be plausible. For Sophocles, death means being in Hades, not “nothing”.
(2) Jebb on “τὸ μέλλον”:
““οὐδὲν … τὸ μέλλον ῀ οὐδὲν ὃ μέλλει” (“ἔσεσθαι”), nothing that is to be … Donaldson took “τὸ μέλλον” adverbially: ‘in regard to the future, he comes to nothing without resources.’” Again, in the spirit of Heidegger, one might read the phrase in bold in a different key, namely, as meaning “he comes to death (= future nothing) without resources” (instead of “he comes to all things future with resources” [which is what, I assume, Donaldson had in mind]).
(3) I’ve received a notification for this one, thanks!
