‘An abyss seems to open up between the écho towjours parlant au ars speaking in the tween the empty word words (parole vide de pi “According to Blanchot its an echo that speaks. And its an echo that Benjamin locates in that space of transition from language to language in translation: without entering into unique place where render the resonance of the work of a foreign language.”! Ben- jamin’s syntax itself produces at this point the density of a moun- tain forest. What is called and what resonates poses some prob- Jems to the reading and translation of this passage, specifically at Benjamin, the echo is pro- itin the echo of a double hinein duced and where Benjamin ena « - binein, which, if one listens with an open ear for the phonetic it might, however, already be if it is poetry, and if poetry is, in ‘contrast to translation, already in the interior of the mountain for- BCMOLALIA 33translation, the places are reversed: “and, without entering, it calls into the original, into that single place . . .,” writes one of Ben- jamin’s most subtle readers.? It seems that the access to this unique place where the echo or cts take place can be reached only through detours. We might in by noticing how the word “echo” emerges here and there in rather different texts. Thus Paul de Man hears certain echoes in Benjamin's essay: “. .. a figure of the poet as an almost sacred fig- ture, a8 a figure which echoes sacred language. ... But this tone hangs over the German academic discourse and overa certain con- t of poetry which were then current. There are many echoes of jamin approaches the problem, at least super- Ik is not justin the form of echoes that this is pres- italmost seems to have been part ofthe statement 1 the theme of the Frankfurt Schoo! interpretation ‘of Benjamin is shot through with messianic elements which cer- tainly are there, asa desire in Benjamin, but which Benjamin man- aged to control by an exteaordinarily refined and deliberate strat- egy of both echoing themes, allowing them to enter his text, but then displacing them in his text in such a way that an attentive reading would reveal them.”$ Echo here refers to the sacred and messianic sphere. It appears first as the echo of a certain tone of the sacred in the academic discourse of Benjamin's time, which res- conates in Benjamin's text. But de Man goes a step further when he not just in the form of echoes that this is present it almost seems to have been pat The sacred seems to enter into the ton« echo. Echo and original tone no longer seem “There is indeed a strong tendency inthe Benj the sacred and messianic moments as the substance of his texts, as, if the messianic and the sacred could be present in the content of the text. According to these readings, the sacred and the messianic ‘would function as a ground and guarantee for the fullness of the sword. Against such readings, de Man invokes Benjamin's texts as an echo, as a deliberate strategy of echoing themes that allows at 54 “ECHORS OF TRANSLATION the same time a displacement ofthe original tones. To be sure, there is, besides the echo, also something ofthe original tone ofthe sacred in Benjamin’s tone, “as a desire in Benjamin,” but the echo allows 2 corrective displacement of the desire. This displacement enters into a complex constellation with that other “unique place where the echo in one’s own language is capable to render the resonance of the work of a foreign language.” It is the task of the translator to find that unique strategic place where the echo can be produced, in order to make audible and perceptible inthe resonance that pure language thatis intended by all languages. And it would be the task ‘of the critic to reveal, ina strategic arrangement of echoes, the orig- inal tones as elements of a wishful thinking. De Man uses the not quite innocent word “reveal” in this context. The echo strategy makes possible a revelation of the wishful nature of ‘revelation’ in language: a revelation of revelation. Asin psychoanalysis, i is the task of rhetorical analysis to direct the attention to that whick produces certain effects instead of being seduced by the effects. What is thus revealed to the attentive reader are certain messianic tones in Benjamin's text, but they are revealed as elements of a wishful thinking, of a desire. If they are confused with cognition and insight, they turn into phantasms. ‘Yet the status of what de Man calls a “desire in Benjamin” can- rot be easily defined. De Man links it with a tonal dimension of the text. Ie is first a certain tone that hangs over the German aca- demic discourse and resonates as echo in Benjamin's texts later it is also the tone of this text itself which many critics confuse with that which Benjamin actually says: “this pathetic mixture of hope and catastrophe and apocalypse which Hartman captures, which is present certainly in Benjamin's tone, but not so much in what he says. ‘This difference between “tone” and what Benjamin says takes a curious turn in the context of Benjamin's text. This text namely says also that what is said and meant is less important in transla- tion than the “mode of saying and meaning” (die Art des Mein- ens). One form in which this mode of meaning presents itself is precisely the “tone”: “Faithfulness to the individual word in trans- ECHOLALIA. 35Jation almost never inal. This sense namely. [Gefiiblston} wi sage in order to opening of lan- guages onto Language. And this something is not only, as one usually says, a tone of voice in which something more than the semantic content of words is communicated, but specifically a Ge- fiblston, a tone of This notion of a Gefiihlston not only opens up the doors to “pathos” i Benjamin takes recourse to commot ‘out something that is constitutive for \ceven be considered the condition of that snguage” from which or out of which the echo seems to be produced (“It is the task of the translator to find that intentionality coward the language into which he translates, from which the echo of the original is evoked in it"). One might energizing principle o' ward something, des It might even occupy that unique “place where the echo in one’s ‘own language is capable to render the resonance of the work of a foreign language.” ical sobriety acknowledges the presence of a’ mes- but he new by separ ng so he attributes a considerable force of control to the author: “a desire in Benjamin, but which Benjamin managed to control by an extraordinarily refined and deliberate strategy of both echoing themes.” The invocation of the author's control might at the same time point at something that threatens authorial control is something that seems constitutive of the relationship of a text to language and of 36 ECHOES OF TRANSLATION languages to Language. At the same time, this tone as a Ge- fiublston seems to render more difficult the recognition of the rela- tion to language—the text's ‘linguis its Sprachlichkeit; it might even block the recognition or vel it under the affectiv brations of the tone. Only through the displacing effect of an echo strategy might the constitutive linguistic relation be accessible. ‘When de Man speaks of echo and echoing in Benjamin, he uses the word, at least on one level, in the familiar sense of inter- and intratextual resonances and allusions.? Indeed, Benjamin’s text is permeated by intertextual resonances. De Man hears both mes- sianic and Nietzschean ‘nihilistic’ elements as the two “echoing themes” that control the text. The manifold echoes of early Ger- ‘man romanticism have often been noticed.%® The passage on the echo in the essay is itself an echo not only of the most famous poem of Baudelaire’s Fleurs du mal—“Comme de longs écho qui de loin se confondent” (“Correspondances,” v. 5}—but also of Hlderlin’s poetry, which presents and understands itself as trans- lation and echo: so kam Das Wort aus Osten 2u uns, ‘Und an Parnassos Felsen und am Kithiiron hés" ich. © Asia, das Echo von dir und es bricht sich AmK [Thus came cous from the East the Word, and oa the rocks of Par- nassos and on Kithairon I heas, © Asi is refracted on the Capitol]. (“Am Q Hilderlin’s poetic praxis and theory occupy a privileged pl in this essay on the task of the translator, which is at the same time the preface to Benjamin’s own translations from the Fleurs du mal and resonates with Baudelaire’s language. Hélderlin’s translation of the Sophoclean Oedipus and Antigone figure as the model of ‘translation. Even more than model, they are “Urbild zum Vor- bild” [archetype of the mode ; thus they approach the sacred text—but there are abysses: “In these translations meaning BOROLALIA 37plunges from abyss to abyss until it threatens to get lost in bot- tomless depths of language.” Here one may hear the echo from Holderlin’s poem “Hyperions Schicksalslied”: Es schwinden, es fa Seunide aur andern, Wie Wasser von Klippe Za Klippe geworfen Jabe lang ins Ungewisse hinab unseeing, from one hpur to the cliff yearlong down into un- certain depth]. (vv. 18-24) In the echo resounds the unbridgeable difference between suffer- ul gods, between the profane and the sacred. book on the baroque Trawerspiel, specifica tuted by allegory and its “contemplative imerses itself into the abyss between pictorial being (bi Sein} and meaning,” as well sound: “Writing and sound stand in a very tense polarity in oppo- sition to each other... . The chasm between signifying written fig- ure [Schriftbild] and intoxicating language sound, compels the {gaze to look into the depth at the moment when the fixed massif Of the meaning of the word is torn up.”" The intoxicating sound of language is opposed to the signifying figures and lines of writ- ian image to the Dionysian drunken music of spell between them, meaning is torn to pieces. The rup- ture opens an abyss in language—Sprachtiefe: a depth in and of language, a depth of something that is yet pure surface. The thetoric of the abyss carries a seductive pathos. It seems that Benjamin is well aware of it, when he insists already in the earlier essay “ber die Sprache tberhaupt und iiber die Sprache des Menschen” (“On Language in General and on the Language 58 ECHOES OF TRANSLATION | | | of Man”) that the most important thing is not to fall prey to the spell of thé abyss, not to. its “The view that the intelligible ‘essence of a thing consists in its language—this view understood as a hypothesis is the great abyss to which all language theory threatens to fall prey, and to preserve itself above it, hovering above it, is its task.” * The task of language theory and the task of the translator meet in the double demand: to tear open the mean ing, to direct the gaze, in the most fleeting touch of meaning, to- ward the depth of language and yet not fall into the depth. ‘The Hélderlinian echo intones the threat of such a plunging into the bottomless, empty depth of language where meaning is liqui- dated in the intention toward Language and where thought is car- ried away by the torrents of this liquid language. But as echo it also preserves itself, hovering above it, allowing the determinate ‘word to emerge from the liquid flow, through a sequence of refrac- ions where the word is broken and reinvoked, fading in and fad- ing out. fragmentary poem “Am Quell der Donau,” in which H6l- derlin invokes the word as an echo from Asia, has no beginning. gins’ on the lower part of a ly empty page with a tone, a “melodischen Strom, von der herrlichgestimmten, der Orgel melodious flow from the magnificently tuned, from the organ}.”” ‘Bat this tone stands under the rule of a Wie (as, like), a8 a simile that only points at the coming word: “so kam/Das Wort.” And this word is echo. ‘The coming of the word is staged in a sequence of refractions, marked by the stations of occidental history, names of mountains and mountain forests, which accentuate moments and transitions of European linguistic and cultural history: the Greek mountains and mountain forests of Parnassus and Cithaeron, the hills of Rome, the Alps. Each refraction, each breaking of the word is ainother echo of an inaccessible origin which Hlderlin’s occiden- tal text calls with the Greek/Latin name Asia. ‘Holderlin’s invocation of Asia is itself the echo of a Greek echo. Ie recalls the Euripidean Asi@tan .... achan (Asian echo) in Ipbige- nnia in Tauris (v. 180). In the dialogue between Iphigenia and the ECHOLALIA 39chorus, the chorus responds co Iphigenia’s lamentati lost homeland with an “Asian barbaric countersong”: ‘ous éidas hymn6n ¢’/Asitan soi barbaron achan /despoina g’ex- 79-81). The As countersong to the Greek heroine’s lamentation song corresponds to the preced- ing naming of the lost homeland not only as Argos and Greece but jos euippou pyrgous/kai teiché chortén teu srépan /pateéén oikdn hedras” [Palaces and reece, rich with horses, I have left and Europe full of meadows and trees, the place of my father’s house] (vv. 133-2 In Hélderlin’s countersong and echo, the Asian barbarian coun- tersong returns as the archetypal tone of the European word. This inversion in the echo points at an implicit inversion in the Greek text: the barbarian Asian countersong tells the story of the origin of Iphigenia, Holderlin’s poetics is based on a theory of tones and alternation of tones. Such a grounding of poetry in the elusive dimension of tonality where any semantic determination is liquified threatens to plunge poetics into bottomless depths. Hélderlin counters the threat with a systematized theory of a calculable al tones which he records in a series of permutation tables.!*Hélder- lin’s poetics of “tones” points, like Benjamin, at a register of lan- ‘even asemantic."?Ismene ear” Antigone even “Sinnlos, doch lieb specific relation to language. Benjamin's Gefiihlston is defined as the relation of meaning to the mode of meaning, “the way in which what is meant is tied to the mode of meaning in the specific word.” Hild rkeit appears as receptivity for lan- 40. ECHOES OF TRANSLATION guage through which a totality imparts itself. Ie is mediated and luced By a process of separations and reflections: “The tangi- [Ruhibarkeit| of the whole progresses in the same degree and relation in which the separation in the parts and the center, through which the parts and the whole are most tangible, pro- ‘gresses.”2° What emerges from this process is the echo of an ori- gin in an anticipation of language: “Resonance [Wiederklang] of the original living sensation in this moment where one can say that language is a Igeabndet wird).”" This anticipation of language corresponds to a remembering in lan- guage: “Just as cognition anticipates language, language reme bers cognition.”2? What Holderlin calls “cognition” [Erkenntnis} spans the whole range from the “still unreflected, pure sensation of life” through the dissonances of reflection, striving, and imagi- native thinking (Dichten] to “the resonance of original living sen- sation” as an echo produced in a “higher divine receptivity” from ‘which that language emerges in which life imparts itself as remem- brance and echo. Language is thus not an expression of cognition. Cognition aims at an anticipation or divination of a language int ‘which it can impart itself as remembrance. This figure of imparting and communication resounds not only in content but in the literal echoes of words through Benjamin's essay on the task of the translator. Hélderlin’s formula appears in Benjamin's formulation as an anticipation [Abung] of pure Lan- guage: “and itis precisely this [pure Language] whose anticipation [Abmung] and description is the only perfection that a philosopher can hope for, and it is intensively hidden in translation.”® Ben- jamin continues and expands his reflections on the philosophy of language in the book on the baroque Trauerspiel pears also the other side of anticipation: remem! Hilderlin’s frst moment of cognition as the “original sensation of life” which language remembers after the dismemberment of re- flection appears in Benjamin’s text as an original or primal hear- ing (Urvernehmen, 1:216 ff.) it is the task of the philosopher, ac- cording to Benjamin, to reinstate the symbolic character of the ECHOLALIA 4xword in its primacy in his presentation through a remembrance that frst goes back to the primal hearing. Benjamin contrasts this remembrance with any kind of revela- tory discourse which is explicitly. forbidden to philosophy. The we of language in the pri- ines the original sensation that dete ‘mal hearing can only be remembered in the resonances of echoes: Accordingly, any text that deals with this dimension of language fh what Benjamin cal ‘cannot simply rep- would do so, it would fall into the abyss of pseudo- hhas to find a mode of procedure where it In order to talk of the echoes and their effects, our own presen- tation has to enter in the indirect discourse of the echoing texts. This determines a form of presentation that atterapts to listen to the intertextual echoes in the constellations of textual fragments. ‘The procedure is dictated by the hypothesis that what Benjamin calls “pure Language” and which, by definition, cannot be ex- pressed in any language (accordingly also not in the languages of Benjamin, Héld ‘ight perhaps become tangi- tion that is merely a deaf equation and the temporally delayed echo effect of true translation with the German word merken (notice, sense, perceive a mark): tis true translation’s most proper qu (a quality and property that ‘falls to it’ [zufallt as if by accident or chance [Zufall} to take note {auf... merken] of the afterripening, ‘ofthe foreign word and of the pangs of one’s own word.™* The pas- sage has gained a certain notoriety through de Man's translation and interpretation of the Weben as “death pangs” instead of “birch pangs.” Some Germanists seemed rather happy to have caught this intruder in their territory with a blatant philological error. De Man’s translation indeed poses a riddle. He not only says that Weher as the plural of Web could have the connotation of all kinds of sufferings beyond the specific idiomatic use in which the plural generally does refer to birth pangs, but he cals ita “mystery” that both the English and French translators would translate it in the 42 ECHOES OF TRANSLATION sense of “birth pangs.” A translator hardly scems to have another choice, given the idiomatic use as well as the context in Benjamin's ‘essay that seems to posit a clear correlation between the dying of in another. Benjamin's own ine “les douleurs des femmes en gésine” in *Crépuscule du matin” (v. 18) as “Die Wehen Schwangerer” ‘might offer further support for Weben as “birth pangs.” De Man's intrusive interruption of the idiomatic usage deranges the natives’ ease and coziness in their language precisely at the ‘moment when the alienating effect of translation is at stake: “We think we are at ease in our own language, we feel a coziness, a familiarity a shelter in the language we call our own, in which we think that we are not alienated. What the translation reveals is that this alienation is at its strongest in our relation to our own origi- nal language, that the original language within which we are engaged is disarticulated in a way which imposes upon us a pat- ticular alienation, a particular suffering.”* The interruption and disturbance of the idiomatic familiarity of Weben as “birth pangs” is performed not only through a superscription of the paradigmatic possibilities of Weher over its idiomatic use but also through its inscription in Benjamin's text and its relation there to the word ‘Nachreife(afterripening), which, in de Man's text, echoes with the sweet delicate decadence of a Spiitlese wine (made of late, rotten ‘grapes) and the literary melancholy of Stfter’s Nachsommer. The intertextual echoes of the nach and spat enter into a constellation with the intratextual echo of the Nachreife with the Nachleben and ‘aberleben of the original in translation. What does it mean to sur- vive in an afterlife? If the original lives on, after its death in the afterlife of translation, the translation confirms the death of the original; the birth pangs of its rebirth in the afterlife of translation sight then very well be also its death pangs. ‘There is another echo in de Man’s argument and in Benjamin's merken of the Nachreife, one cither of them might or might not have heard. In his Oedipus translation Hélderlin translates the anaphorically repeated Greek phthinousa (vanishing) with the ECHOLALIA 45cups of fertile eat (ra 16:82-83, vs. 25-26). The marking s Merken is not a direct perception of an object but a reading of traces. What is marked and can be remarked at the vanishing y belated and deferred: nacheraglich. What becomes pechaps even readable, in the belated effects of the echoes between texts is independent of authorial intention. A phrase, a word, a phoneme even, a mere tone may become the rier of unforeseen transports. Thus Rimbaud’s pale Ophelia (“6 pile Ophélie”) appears like an echolalia in the “Opal des Him- the opal of the sky) which sparkles over Brecht’s drowned \phelia’s pale corpse is transported from one linguistic shore to another; and we do not know whether Brecht, if he knew the French original a¢ all, eemembered the French paleness when his vowel intoxication transformed it into the sparkling jewel in his German palinode of Rimbaud’ poem. Ophelia continues to float through the streams and rivers of translations. Benjamin's transla- tion seems to remember her dismembered name when he renders Baud ration in “Le eygne” (v. 48): orphelin. .fleurs in the iteration of Blinenhuptern bleichen. Thus Baudelaire’s orphaned Ophelia pales in che alliterative babbling of the German florilegium of letters. ‘When the echo approaches echol where, according to Benjami center that space of yeaning plunges from less depths of ig baroque in a mode of reading which con- structs its figures in the recombination of fragmented textual turns, and in many other linguist lable, and the sound swagger, emancipated from any connection, ‘meaning, as things that can be allegorically exploited. . 44. ECHOES OF TRANSLATION ‘Thus language is broken to pieces in order to give it over in its frag- ments to a transformed and intensified express The shat- tered language no longer serves mere communication in its pieces, and it establishes its dignity as a newborn object next to the gods, rivets, virtues, and similar forms of nature that oscillated into the allegorical.” In this transcendence of communication and mean- ing toward an intensified expression, the baroque procedure resern- bles the task that Benjamin ascribes to the translator: “Just as frag- ments of 4 vessel, in order to be joined together, must follow each bilden} in its own language the mode of meaning of the original to make both recognizable as broken parts of a greater language, just as fragments are the broken part of a vessel.”? But whereas the baroque technique characterizes an allegorical procedute, the task of the translator seems to aim at the symbol. ‘The antithesis of symbol and allegory, of pure Language and the Janguage of judgment, which the book on the baroque drama un- folds, is condensed in the antithesis of sound and meaning in an ‘echolalia that is struck by meaning: “When the echo of all things, the proper domain ofa free play of sound, is struck [befallen] as it ‘were by meaning, it had to be the ultimate demon: lation of Language [des Sprachlichen] as that time - jamin reads in these echo plays “the stylistic law of bomibast, the formula of ‘Asian words."*3! Once more the Asian echo emerges unexpectedly from the rhetorical tradition as an anticlassical, ‘bar- batian’ countersong, in which now a revelation of Language is demonstrated in the specific form as it was felt by the baroque period. Language, pure Language, does not exist, cannot be grasped and perceived, but it ‘is’ there in the tangible effects between lan- guages and in the crevices within languages (between sound and ‘meaning, for example, as sound and fury, for example) where it can be ‘felt, in what Benjamin calls the Gefiiblston, the mode of ‘meaning which is specific to every language and every time. Thus BoMOLALIA. 45the abyss between sound and meaning is specifically the baroque Gefiblston and its stylistic bombast. When this bombast, this anti ‘stylus Asiaticus, transports the Asian echo into the ei! lows A. W. Schlegel image but from word combinations and word posit pioneering eighteenth-century German poet Klopst veals this transition. Klopstock was the only model for lyrical poetry, outside of antiquity, which Hlderlin acknowledged in his search for the modern echo from Asia. The Greek model for Hi derlin is Pindar, whose odes Hélderlin rendered in a word-for- , which shattered all German syntax and word In his translation of Pindar’s third translates the Greek “epedn de thesin’ ment) of words] as “der Worte Ge specific connotation of a whole, integral form). But Holderlin’s word-for-word translation, the “literality in the wear tion, lquidates precisely der Worte Ges German syntax, its idiomatic integral forms. The syntactical form ‘of the original displaces and disfigures the form of the language of translation and opens it up toward Language as an areade in the | ical “wall before Language” (4:18). ing toward the Babel in Baudelaire’s Réve rset d'arcades” (“Gestuftes Babel von ‘Arkaden” in Benjamin's translation), the Babel of stairs and ar- cades in a sphere where the organic and liquid world of plants and rivers is petrified and crystallized. Instead of the water “von Klippe/Zu Klippe geworfen” [thrown from cliff to eliff] whose echo tears open the “bottomless depths of language” in Benjamin's essay, everything in this poem is in dreamlike petrification, and the (A des murailles de absence of tones in this dream world: “Tout pour Poel, rien pour 46 eCHORS OF TRANSLATION les oreilles/Un silence d’éternité” [Everything for the eye, nothing for the ears/a silence of eter gins to resound in the poe oreilles—an echo toujours parlant au milieu du silence. The word as arcade in the wall of syntax not only breaks a pas- sage through the syntax but forms a vertical line, mounting and descending like a staircase, in relation to the horizontal linearity of syntax: The steps of this stair conform to the levels and steps of ‘meaning in traditional allegory as well as to the descending steps of intention (absteigenden Intentionsstufen) of melancholy in Ben- jamin’s book on the baroque drama (1:334). A step in German is also an Absatz (something set off, a paragraph, an off-sentence, the'breaking up of the sentence). In the breaks produced by the steps'interrupting the syntax, the momentary hold of a precari- ously fixed meaning intersects with the unrestrained plunge of ified meaning from step to step, from cliff to cliff into the bot- tomless depths of Language. Both in his book on the baroque drama and in the essay on the task of the translator Benjamin affirms that there is a stop, a hold But in both cases there is no holding on to meaning, To the con- ‘rary, its a radical liquidation of meaning. Benjamin posits a hold ‘where “meaning has ceased to be the watershed of streaming rev- clation.”®? It might be no more than the echo of a Holderlin’s poem “Brod und Wein” the power an word (des Wortes Gewalt), even the most ethereal word, grows like the word Ather (ether) in the returning echo sound heiter (serene): “und hallt, so weit es geht, das uralt/eichen, von Eltern geerbt, treffend und schaffend hinab” [and it resounds, as far as it ‘g0¢s, the age-old sign, inherited from parents, downward it sounds hitting the mark and creative] (vv. 65~70). And Walter Benjamin, tening to a language thus expanded and permeated by power (“einer so erweiterten und durchwalteten Sprache” ceives a hold in it, one that is given (“es gibt ein Halten”) (Gabe) and a task (Aufgabe) for the translator. Already the Greeks heard in the word echo the word echein (to hold). Echo, reflection, refraction, rupture, steps are the returning fig- ich, however, be- und, just as in jolence of the RomOLALIA. 47,‘ures of pure Language. Thus the “descending steps of intentional- ity” in melancholy find their corresponding complement in the mirroring of mounting steps: “Faithfulness is the rhythm of the steps of in ley in which the mount- heosophy are mirrored transformed and In the figure of the mounting and de- scending steps Language appears as a rhythmic intermittence. Faithfulness to this Language, the! in rhythm a and fixed mea ‘correspondences. the echoes from this poem produce the virtual space of the pre- sentation of Benjamin's philosophy of translation. space where identity and nonide mingle “comme de longs échos Jong echoes that from afar melt togethe: a nature that is not a nature but a temple, a forest that is not a for- est but an assembly of symbols. ris a mode of speech which cor- responds to the possibilty that Blanchot envisions as narration and ‘writing: “Mais il se pourrait que raconter (écrire), ce soit attirer le would say being without saying it and yet not denying Baudelaire’s forest of symbols, this forest full of echoes, posited as forest and yet other-than-forest (perhaps more forest than the hidden and, if one may say so, for say so: the distant echo of Hélderlin’s Rhein poem—“Denn, Die Seligsten nichts ‘von selbst,/Muf8 wohl, wenn solches zu sagen/Erlaubt ist, in der Gétter Namen/Teilnehmend fab cin Ander” nes feel nothing by themselves, it is necessary, if to say so is permitted, that another ‘one must feel sympathetically in the name of the gods} (vv. x09— 48 ECHOES OF TRANSLATION guaranteed not in semantics such saying is possible only with a categorical reservation: if one if to say so is permitted. It can be said only by saying at the same time. It is unsaying, the furthest from rarole vide de paroles, écho toujours parlant au miliew du silence ‘The figure of language as forest and forest as language has the legitimation of a long tradition, reaching back to a time long be- fore Baudelaire. It has been a topos of allegorical interpretation and its ayers and levels of meaning atleast since Gregory the Great, who figures explicitly the mountain forestas the topos of reading. ‘The so-called silvae (forests) were a special genre from the Renai sance tothe baroque. Herder’s Kritische Walder stil echoes the tra- dition in the second half of the eighteenth century. One of the most expansive and erudite works ofthis kind is the Silva Allegoriarum TTotius Sacrae Scripturae of the Spaniard Hieronymus Lauretus (lerénimo Lloret).® The two inclines of the allegorical mountain forest of language are clearly delineated here: on the one hand the silva indicates the unsystematic character of a work, a collection (of various items (in this case an alphabetical order instead of a sys- tematic order of things), emphasizing the allegorical power of dis- membering and tearing apart the ‘natural’ world; on the other hand there is the claim for totality as a forest of the whole scripture (Totius Sacrae Scripturae). The latter claim is accompanied by ive claim: to understand allegory in its highest— itual-mystical—sense asa revelation beyond the shetor- ical metaphor alis est, quem Spir- iras sanctus in rebus corporaliter aut gestis aut gerendis voluit significare” (The truly mystical or spiritual sens is that which the Holy Spirit wanted to signify bodily in things that happened or are about to happen.” ‘With this spiritual-mystical level of meaning, allegory turns into symbol in the sense in which Benjamin understood it in his early ‘essays on language. It is a moment where the difference between metaphor and proper meaning is sublated in something different. ‘The distance from ‘metaphor’ returns “The word ‘language’ is here not at used in a metaphorical ROHOLALIA. 49sense. For itis a fully substantial recognition that we cannot imag- ine anything that does not communicate translator he w: tinuation of the life of the work of art “in completely unmetaphor- ical objectivity (Sachlichkeit].""! Sachlichkeit is not the same as phenomenal reality; itis that which communicates itself as the in- telligible being of the phe Lauretus, the Holy Spirit communicates itself in the gests. ‘The Latin gestus reappears, semantically transformed, in the Ger- Benjamin's concept of the symbol. Benjamin establishes the between Gestus and s essay on Kal appears in the form of the parable, their symbolic ‘enounced in the gesture [Gestus]. The actual antinomy of Kafka’s and symbol." The demonstra- of gesture stage the phenomenal world at the threshold of visibility: at the edges the visible world becomes blurred: “thus the most unforeseeable [am unabsebbar- sten] thing for Kafka was certainly the gesture."® Its the demon- strative visibility of gesture that accounts for its “nebulous kernel” 1 in contrast to parable an: (wolkiger Kern). The word unabsebbarin German locates the limit of visibility not in the metaphysical difference of a visible surface horizon, where the phenomenal world vanishes: perte de vue, as nch. ‘The gesture as symbolic form transports the symbolic content from the invisibility of metaphysical depths into the expansive dissemination of a surface, limited only by a per- spectival horizon. Thus the symbolic content is always visible in treasure at the end of the r ‘The individual gestures are joined together in the Gestus as an assembly of gestures. But just as the fragments of a vessel in Ben- 50 ECHOES OF TRANSLATION jamin’s simile remain the broken part of a vessel even when joined together, as Carol Jacobs tightly emphasized, the Gestus remains « broken part. In the configurations of gestures the vertical lines of steps and arcades are flattened out again over the horizontal surface of contiguous parts and fragments. Their auditive version is the echo as refracted and fragmented voice, which might be re- assembled, as it is in some baroque echo plays, into a new frag- mentary sense. ‘The French translation of Benjamin's essay renders Gefif (ves- sel) as amphore, which is perhaps an echo from the mouth of ‘Beauty herself: “ta bouche une amphore” (Baudelaire, “Hymne la beaué,” v. 6). Derrida condenses the amphore with the meta- hot into an ammétaphore.*® The neologism appropriately de- scribes the status of language in the echo space where everything is and is not, in the same way in which the hammering envisioned by Kafka is and is not: “to hammer together a table with the accu racy and orderliness of an artisan and at the same time to do noth- ing, notin the sense that one could say ‘hammering for him is noth- ing,’ but rather ‘hammering for him i a zeal hammering and at the same time also nothing,’ in which case the hammering would have become even bolder, more decisive, more real, and, if you want, In this throwing together of the amphora and the metaphor, the symbol—iterally: chat which is thrown together—is delineated as ints atthe relationship of all languages in pure Lan- ‘guage and at the same time at the confusion of tongues in Babel: ‘Comme de longs échos qui de loin se confondent Dans une ténébreuse et profonde unité Vaste comme la nuit et comme la clarté. ‘The unity of echoes in which the echoes mele together is the pure indifference of night and clarity, as it appears also in Baudelaice’s dedication of the Paradis artifciels in the figure of the woman: est Evident que, comme le monde nature! pénétre i sert de pature, et concourt ainsi a opérer cet ‘amalgame indéfinissable que nous nommons notre individualité, Bemovatza srla femme est Létre qui projette la plus grande ombre ou Ia plus grande lnmitre dans nos réves” [In any case itis evident that, just as the natural world penetrates into the spicitual world, serves as its pasture and thus brings about that undefinable concoction that he being that projects we call our individual the greatest shadow and the greatest dark and profound unity of the languages in Language has its place in the name of Babel, which can be translated as “confu- sion.” Thus it finds its echo in the confuses paroles of the “Corre- spondances*; and in the chyme echo of confondent and profonde resounds as the echo of Babel.** point of indifference where “les transports de 'esprit cet des sens” the transports of the spirit and of the senses] take place, One might also locate here the transport from the metaphor to the ammeézaphore in which the German ear can also hear the 52d). This Amme is always already there “befor fore the Law and before translation, shaking and shaken she hov- che Platonic chdras thus she achieves the separation of the unseparated, the defini undefined. ‘The ammetaphor produces its effect of transports and defini- tions, the delineation of its figures, in space. This space is to be understood, according to the law of the ammetaphor, in unmeta- a8 graphematic yas a space of (re-)presentati 12, a8 a mountain forest of language, and as echo sly refracted word. Benjamin's essay begins ingends” [Nowhere]: nowhere, not never, a line is delineated, a path against the path that leads astray (“vorn Weg abfthrt” To this Nirgends, the first negative determination of the essay, corresponds the echo of an empty “Dort” [There] in Benjamin's translation of Baudelaire’s “Les aveugles”: “Que cherchent-ils au y Looking the Sky/ 1es?], “Was verrit sich Dort den Blin- the blind ones?} (v. 14). The 52 ECHOES OF TRANSLATION an emphatic * becomes 2 capitalized “Dore” in the tection. In Baudelaire's poetry “Ciel” is also the direction par excellence, although not without an ironic turn: “Vers le ciel quelquefois, comme Phomme d'Ovide,/ Vers le ‘onique et cruellement bleu” [Toward the sky sometime the man of Ovid, toward the ironic and cruelly blue sky] cygne,” vv. 25-26). The echo effect of the comparison comme Phomme resounds and vanishes in the emptiness which the name Ovid addresses: O vide. Echolalia and the écho toujours parlant au du silence begin to melt together in the direction and sense that Baudelaire’s verses, his vers, indicate: a word that echoes through his poetry as verse, a5 worm, as direction and sense—the word that points at the emptiness of heaven and sky in the intention toward Lan- guage. Benjamin insists on something that remains and lasts versions and turns of direction and sense, precisely at the point where meaning becomes liquid: “Thus an ultimate, decisive cle- ‘ment remains very close to and yet infinitely far away from [mean- ing}, hidden underneath it, or more clearly refracted (gebrochen] through it, or more powerful beyond all communi remains in all language and in its formations outside of what is communicable something noncommunicable, something, depend- ing on the context in which it is found, symbolizing or symbol- ized." The work of separating, deciding, and defining, which is the work of the ammetaphor and the task of the translator, would thus arrive at an ultimate, decisive point that nonsense. It stands in spatial, pre meaning: close to it, far from it, underneath it, through it, and beyond and over it. It seems most distant to it where conventional understanding most often looks for it: hidden underneath; more clearly—and thus closer to cognition—it appears where it is refracted, ruptured, in pieces (the multiply refracted echo of Asia in Holderlin, the confuses paroles that look at man through the ammetaphoric forest and temple of the correspondances); its high- est mode of presentation is presented as pure effect and power: translation: a pure spatial these tion, There ther sense nor tional relations to sense and ECHOLALIA. 53$4 ECHOES oF TRANSLATION 2. Recalling the Gods Hélderlin Baudelaire NietzscheNotes INTRODUCTION ro. Nietasche, Siimiliche ‘Werke: Kritische Studienausgabe, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Mon ‘nari (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuehverlag, 1980), 1:88. 1, The entry is August 2, 1914, in Franz Kafka, Tagebiicher: Kritische Ausgabe (Frankfurt am Main: 5. 2, Friedtich Holderlin, Essays and Letters o edited by Thomas Pfau 4988), 121 3. How much of De losophy is shaped by a deconstructive reading of a philosophical tradition of reflection has been shown by Rodolphe Gasché, The Tai of the Mirror: Derrida and the Philosopky of Reflection (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2986) 4-Jirgen Habermas, *Selbstreflexion als Wissenschaft: Feeuds psy- s” in Brkenntnis und Interesse (Frankfurt am 262-300, 5 Jingen Habermas, Der philosophische Diskurs der Modeme (Frank- fart am Main: Suhrkamp, 1985). English tcanslation: The Philosophical Disconrse of Modernity (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987). ¢ Selbstanalyse bleib: unterbrochen. ich habe b kann mich nur selbst analysieren mit den obje ‘nenen Kenntnissen (wie ein Fremder), cig agli.” Letter co Briefe an Wilbelm rheon, translated and Ibany: State University of New York Press, *897. Sigmund Freud, i¢f, 1887-1904 (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, tens gibt e6 keine seelische Verh ¢ines von Grund aus von leiblicher wesensverschiednen. Die tape bliche Ditferenz df fremdes Seelenleben uns im Gegensat 2um eignen ‘nur mittelbar durch Deucung éremder Leiblichkeit gegeben sei beseht cht... Fremdes Seelenleben wird niche rinapel anders als iges wahrgenommen, es wird nich erchlossen, sondern im Leiblichen das ihm als Seelenleben zugshért, gesehen.” (Walter Benjamin, Gesammeits Schriften, Wisg. v Rolf Tiedemann v. Hermann Schweppeshaser (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, x980), 6:65. All quotations of Bea. jemin are from ths edition weise im Sinne irgend NOTES To Paces 3-7 rar8, Translation by Beryl Schloseman, 9. Typical correspondences between the macrocosnos and microcos- ‘mos in the pansophic world of the sixteenth and seventeenth centu would relate, for example, sun-gold-heary; moor Iver-brain; ider themselves atheoretical of illustrated in the job search of igh euphemism for conventional, withthe excep son of one member who washed inthe name of psi, a rep ce on: Whe fl ye i aot: poo ots up, a highly original eandate with several shunning publications i cEninaed are nging whe tpunens We seis oe ae although he work and interes of hs candidate se adh om the other "hore inthe department The arg ofthe man wh refs the argument "But akeady ave a 2 highly recommended book wi book at home.” ith sand Michael Worton, introduction to Intertextual ractices (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1950), 77a The mon conie dacuin of he acer generation ofthe concept of ex’ can be found in Jacques Desidn, Positions (Ching University of Chicago Press, 972) See also Gasch'sexclee exegesis of the concept in Tan ofthe Miron, 178-93 45. Jacques Dersida, Of Granmatology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins ity ress, 1976), x58 4, “Das Dasein der Sprache ersteckt sich aber niche nur tiber alle Gebiete menschlcher GeistesduSerung, der in iegendeinem Sinne immer Sprache inaewohnt, sondern es ersteeckt sich auf schlechthin alles.” Jber die Sprache ibeshaupe und Uber die Sprache des Menschen,” 2:r40 15. Gasché, Tain ofthe Mirror 279. 36. “Die Ansicht, da das geistige Wesen eines Dinges eben in seiner Sprache besteht—iese Anscht als Hypothesis verstanden, ist der groBe Abgrund, dem alle Sprachtheorie za verfallen drobs, und Uber, gerade sebend au erhalten iste Aufgabe” (a:x41)- modern” are used here more in a typological shan a historical sense. 38. Peter Szondi, Theorie des modernen Dramas, in Schriften I (Frankfurt am Main: Subrkamp, 1970), 10-148, 19. Bei ax, “Autre, nconscient, uel tournent en rond plusie transmission dinconscient 59. See also Elisabeth We in Wabmweltem im Zuesam: ed. D. Kamper and U, Son- seman (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1953), 20 22, “Wie ndmlich Scherben eines Gefies, um sich zusammentiigen 2u lassen, in den kleinsten Einzelheiten einander zu folgen, doch niche 0 zu gleichen haben, so mu anstate dem Sinn des Originals sich ane lich 2a machen, die Obersetzung liebend vielmehe und bis ins Einzelne hinein dessen Arc des Meinens in der eigenen Sprache sich anbilden, umn s0 beide wie Scherben als Bruchstick eines Gefaes, als Bruchstick ciner ssrOReren Sprache erkennber 2u machen” (4:78). My trans here, with slight modification, Carol Jacobs Strosity of Translation: Walter Benjamin's The Task of the Translatox; in Telling Time: Lévi-Strauss, Ford, Lessing, Benjamin, de Man, Words- ‘worth, Rilke (Baltimore Johas Hopkins University Press, 2992), 136 23. On Heine's and Baudelaie's relationship to modecnity, see Theodor ie Wande Heine,” in dem, Gesammelee Schriften, ed. Rolf ‘Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1374), vol. rz: Noten eur Literatur, 95-r00, 24. "Die ‘Harareise’ ist und bleibt Fragment, und die bunten Faden, die so hibsch hineingesponnen sind, um sich im Ganzen harmonisch 24 ‘esschlingen, werden plétach, wie von der Schere der Parze, abge- schnitten, Vielleiche verwebe ich sie weiter in kirnftigen Liedern, und was jetat arglich verschwiegen ist, wird alsdann vollauf gesagt, Ara Ende kommt es auch auf eins heraus, wann ad wo man eewas ausge- sprochen hat, wenn man es nur iberhaupt Mogen die einzelnen Wecke immezhin Fragmente wenn sie nur in ihrer Vetsinigung ein Ganzes bilden.” Heinrich Heine, “Die Harare ‘idem, Sdmtliche Schrifien, ed. Klaus Briegleb (Munich: Hanser, 19 asa, 27. French critics played a major role in the rereading of cis essa ‘The issue of Porque 5 (1975), with essays by Derrida (“La mythologic NOTES To Paces xe-17 125ind Sarah Kofman fs as seminal as the following Nie- in bewegliches Heer von Metaphern, ismen, kurz eine Summe von mensch~ und rhetorisch gesteigert, hische Diskurs der Moderne. New York Review of Books recoil in offrey Hartman is condescendingly patted on the shoul- der and assured that is longtime occupation with the Holocaust saves him, despice some taintecness with deconstruction, from the idolatey of s. Pechaps it has never occurzed to these literary the- their moral pathos thar the Holocaust was an attempt at fe where the letter stood and stands Kohlhammer, 1943-1974 6:289. ter to Boblendorff, Holderlin refers to sd steuck by Apollo: “da mich Apol of Ondipus (x. 167): phoibon hekax as “den Phobus fernhin treffend.” e Werke, Frankfurter Ausgabe (Frankfurt 16:97. Hereafter this edition is cited as Fa tations and thelr traces in Holderlin’s bungen zu Holderlins Pindar-Revep- 8; da das Vergangene sein Liche auf das Gegen- ‘wartige oder das Gegenwastige stin Licht auf das Vergangene with, son rin das Gewesene mit dem Jetzt blitchaft za timentrite. Mit andern Worten; Bild ist die Dia- 157643 N 2a, 3). ter einmal des Geistes machtig,” ra 14:59. Brecht, Gesammelte Werke (Frankfurt am Mann: Suhe- 398, 38: Ibid, 15:245. in's essay “Der Stirealismus” was publishéd in 2929, now in Gesammelte Schriften, 2:295-310. 4x Ibid lent reading of this text by Claire Lyu, Transpostry: Voices, Conjumctions, and Spaces in Baudelaire (Ph.D. dis. Johns Hop. kins University, 2994) 43-.2:296 ff 44 “Sie liegt in eines profanen Erleuchtung, einer macecalstschen, anthropologischen Inspiration, zu der Haschisch, Opium und was im, ‘mer sonst die Vorschule abgeben konnen. (Aber eine geféhrliche, Und die dee Religion ist strenger)” Ibid,, 2:297, 45. “Als solche gehéct die Idee einem grundsitzlich andemn Bereich an ich zu den Dingen wie die Sternbilder zu den Sternen. Das besage muniichst: sie sind wedec deren Begrife noch deren Gesetae™ (2214). 47-1208, 48.1225, seelle des Erwachens zu enthalten, ja aus diesen Stellen seine Figur wie in Sternbild aus den leuchtenden Punkeen erst herzustellen” [The dia, not depict the dream—it was never my intention to Seems to me to contain the agencies, the rupruring ing and to construct from these points its igure like is made out ofits luminous points). Benjamin to Gre. ‘21 Adorno, August 26, 1935, in Adorno and Benjamin, Briefwechse, 1928-1940 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, x994), 157, 30, “Nur daleeische Bilder sind echte (.h. nicht archaische) Bilder, und der Ort, an dem man sie ani, ist die Sprache” (Only dialeceal images are genuine (ie., not archaic) images; and the place where one encounters them is language]. Benjamin, Gesammelie Schriften, 79,. Tagebitches, 594. 52. Ibid, 596. 55. Sigmund Freud, “Konstruktionen in dee Analyse” (2937), in Stue dienausgabe: Erginzungsband: Schriften zw Bebandlungstechnik (Frank face am Main; S. Fischer, x975), 393-406. Epigraph: Blanchot, “La 4 Kafka (Paris: Gallimars, 291 ls das Echo in der eigenen den Sprache au geben vermag.” Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Rolf Tiedemann end Hermann Schweppenhiuser (Frankfurt am Main: Subrkamp, 198: ns are from this edition. 4. Paul de Man, “Walter Benjamin's "The Task of the Translatos The Re finneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1987), 73-195. 5. Ibid., 103 6. Ibid, 86 7. “Treue in der Ubersetzung des einzelnen Wortes kann fast nie den inal bat. Denn dieser erschopit hen Bedeurang flrs Original nicht in dem Sinn voll wiedergeben, den es im sich nach seiner diel explicate. One understands with the ‘tone’ ofa language something that 126 NoTES 70 races 28-36 {isnot determined by the ‘verbal contents but something tha ‘immediately’ ‘in’ chem. Especially well known is the expresses something that is not only not cont ‘ents, but is even opposed ro them.” Benjamins Theorie der Sprachmagie 3980), 33, 9. On the tradition and signifcance of echoes in literatuse and rhe- see John Hollander, The Figure of Echo: A Mode of and After (Berkeley: Univers 110. Most extensively by Menning! Sprachmagie. 31, What irrupts in Hélderlin as che violent and powerful fate of the ‘word into the occidental wor ‘Menninghaus, Wa rankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, of California Press, x98). , Walter Benjamins Theorie der latine et la poussiére grecque,/Se idle stood near the bookshelves, a sombre Babel, where cience, fables, the Latin ashes and the Greek dust smin names Holderlin’s Sophocles transla tions and not his translations of Pindar as pacadigms for transla the strict sense, only the latter are inter then, that for Benjamin interl to the ideal of a complement Benjamin finds in Hold ihnen ist de Harmonie der Sprachen so tief, da8 der Sinn nur noch wie eine Aols- hharfe vom Winde von der Sprache berihrt wird” (In them the harmony of the languages is so profound thar meaning in them is touched only Uightly like an Acotian harp by the wind] (4:21). This harmony eannot appear on the phenomenal level 25. “In ihnen stirae der Sinn von Abgeund 2u Abgrund, bis er drobt in bodenlosen Sprachtiefen sich 2u ver 4, "Dic kontemplative Ruhe, mit wel ‘rund zwischen 5. “Scheift und Li segeniiber. ... Die Klufe awischen bedeucendem Schriftbild und becau- Sschendem Sprachlaut nétigt, wie deas gefestete Massiv der Worbedeu- ung in th aufgerissen wird, den Blick in die Sprachtiefe” (1:376), 26. “Die Ansicht, da® das geistige Wesen eines Dinges eben in teiner Sprache besteht—diese Ansicht als Hypothesis verstanden, ist der groSe NOTES TO PAGES 57-39 127[Abgcand, dem alle Sprachtheorie 2u verfallen deobt, und ber, gerade ‘aber ihm sich schwebend 2u erhalten ist ihre Aufgabe” (2:141). 17. Beier, the editor ofthe Stuttgart edition, calculated the measure cof the empty space on the page as approximately twenty-four verses and lets the poem "beg fort, in welchem die Trennung in den Theilen und itrem Centeum, worin die Theile und das Ganze am fablbarsten sind, fortschreiter.” FA 143871. 21. “ Wiederklang der ursprisnglichen lebendigen Empfindung ... in 1, da die Sprache geabn- resonance or echo is usu- “countersound”; but Hlderin writes tes the repetition of the sound as @ se ho wc de Eten i Space abner, so enn sich de Spa drake 39 13. "Und be ie sie wie pace in deen Abing und Beschebung ae lee de Pil cecmgenverborgen 6) " fe des fremden 25, De Ms Translatos?” 85. 26, Ibid., 84. 27. Bertolt Brecht, “Vom ertrunkenen Machen,” in Grofee kommen- tierte Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe, vol. 11, Gedichte I (Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1988), 109, 25. “n den Anagrannen, den ononatoposincen Wendungen nd dasallegorisch ausgebentet werden darf... . Dergestat zerbrochen, um in ihren Bruchstiicken sich einem verinderten und ge- ie zerttimmerte Sprache hat in ihren 29. Wie namlich Scherben eines Geffges, um sich rusammenfligen 2u lassen, in den kleinsten Einzelheiten einander zu folgen, doch nicht so zu glcichen haben, so muf anstatt dem Sion des Originals sich shn- lich za machen, die Ubersetzing liebend vielnchr und bis ins Einzelne hhinein dessen Art des Meinens in der eigenen Sprache sich anbilden, um $0 beide wie Scherben als Bruchstick eines Gefifes, als Bruchstick einer agriGeren Sprache erkennber 2u machen” (4:18). My translation f here, with slight modification, Carol Jacobs’ translation in Telling Time, 136. 30, “Wenn nun gerade das Echo, dic egentliche Domaine eines freien Lautspels, von Bedeutung sozusagen befallen wird, so muse vollends dies als eine Offenbarung des Sprachlichen, wie jene Zeit es fale, sich exweisen” (12384) 3 "Das stlstische Gesetz des Schvvulstes, die Formel von ‘Asiati- schen Worten |. The expression “Asiaische Worte” isa quota- tion from the baroque writer Hallmann, which in turn takes up the ancient opposition ofa restrained classical style versus the excess and bombast of Asian style (stylus Asiaticus). 3% Wordlichkeit im der Obertragung der Syntax (4:18). 33. *Wo der Sinn aufgehdt hat, die Wasserscheide fir die stebmende Sprache und die strimende Offenbarung zu sein,” (4:21) 34. “Die Treue ist der Rhythmus dec emanatistisch absteigenden Intentionsstufen, in welcher die aufsteigenden der neuplatonischen ‘Theosophie berichugasvol verwandele sich abspiegeln”(1:334). 35. Maucice Blanchot, “La voix narrative,” in De Kafka a Kafka, 184. 36. “Den Sina in sein verborgenes und, wenn man so sagen dati, waldiges Innere aufnimme” (1:42). 37, See Hans-Jorg Spitz, Die Metaphorik des geistgen Scbriftsinn: Ein Beitrag aur allegorischen Bibelauslegung des ersten christlichen Jabr- ‘tausends (Munich: Fink, x972), x32: “die vastitas und universitas det sacra historia vergleicht Gregor resigen, an Berge grenzenden Wildern, die sich zwar von hoher Wartetiberschauen lassen, iber deren wirkliche ‘Weite der Betrachter jedoch getauscht wird, 2umal ihm die Schluchten ‘und Ebenen in der verkixzten Perspecktive verborgen bleiben missen,” 38. Hieronymus Lauretus (Jer6nimo Lloret), Silva Allegoriarum To- logne, x68z, photomechan- ical reprint: Munich: Fink, 1971). 439: See also the commentary of Friedtich Oly in the introduction to the reprint ofthe Sila (see n. 38), 9. NOTES TO PAGES 45-49 12940. "Eine Metapher aber ist das We dlurchaus ache. Den esis im Geseus. Die eigentliche Antinomie von Kaflas Werk liege im nis von Gleichnis und Symbol” (2:1255). 443. "So war fir Kafka sicher am unabsehbarsten der Gestus” (2:419) 44. Jacobs, Telling Time, 137. 45. Jacques Derrida, “Des tours de Babel,” in Peyché: Invention de autre (Paris: Galilée, 1987), 222. 46. “Binen Tisch mit peinlich ord zasammenzuhimmer und dabei niche so da men sagen kn licher Handwerksmagigkeit niches 20 tun undewar wodurch ja das Hammern noch kilhnes, nach ent- schlossener, noch wirklicher und wenn Du wills noch iesinniger gewor- 4 {dem Sinn] ganz nab und doch unendlich fern, unter im verborgen oder deutlcher, durch ihn gebrochen oder machtvoller iiber alle Mitteilung hina b bolisierendes oder Spmb CHAPTER 2: RECALLING THE GODS Die scheinheiligen Dichter -n Heuchler, sprecht von den Géttern nicht! habe Verstandt ihr glaube nicht an Helios, Noch an den Donnerer und Meergot Todt ist die Erde, wer mag ihe danken?— 130 WoTES To PACES sons7 Geerost ihr Gotwer!zieret ihe doch das Lied, ‘Wenn schon aus euren Nahmen die Seele schwand, Und ist ein grokes Wore vonnathen, ‘Matter Natur! so gedenkt man deiner. Fa 5:538. 2, Reduced to the cliché, Detlev Liiders’ commentary on Héldetlin's ‘poems is symptomatic: “Das Gedicht [*Die Scheinheiligen Dichter"] ‘wendet sich gegen den nur allegorischen Gebrauch der Gétternamen, der in s0 vielen Dichtungen des 18. Jahshunderts herrsche und seinen Grund in dem Verlust des Glaubens an die Realitit der Géetee hat.” Friedrich Hélderlin, Sdrmliche Gedichte: Studienausgabe in zuvei Bane den, Hesg. u. kommentiert von Detlev Liiders (Homburg: Athenium Verlag, 1970), 22145. 5. Holderlin was sensitive to such interlinguistie echoes and occa sionally lets them resound in his poetry, such as the echo of the Greek Aithér and the German heiter in “Brod und Wein”: “Vater Aether! 50 ifs. Vater! heiter! und halle” (vv. 65-69). 4. With a more spatial emphasis, Jean Bollack translates the line as en atteste le dien posté devant tous les dieux, Soleil.” Jean Bollack, LOedipe Roi de Sopbocle (Lille: Presses Universitaires de Lille, 2990), 5. The link between vorstellen and danken is articulated most explic- itly in a text that Beifiner edited under the title “Uber Religion” and ‘which Satter brings in close connection with the so-called Systempro- ‘gramm of German idealism as “Fragment of Pile ide vorstellen, warum, sie sich eine Idee oder ein Bild machen missen” [why human beings have ‘orepresent to themselves the relation between themselves and the world, ‘why they have to produce an idea or image of it} and answers: “da der ‘Mensch auch in so fern sich ber die Noth echebt, als er sich seines is er fie sein Leben dankbar seyn kann” [that man rises above necessity insofar as he can remember his fate, as he can be Fa 14346, 6. E. R, Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), 106 f. Half a century earlier Klopstock celebrated the beauty of “Mother '" inventions in his poem “Der Ziirichsee” [1750] (“Schén ist, Mutter Natus, deiner Ecfindungen Pracht”), but her beauty is com. fronted with the higher beauty of the “great thought, thinking again {hes] creations.” Poetic thought and feeling become a second creation ‘he allegotical fgure of Mother Nature with another legitima- NOTES TO PAGES 58-63 54