Holderlin in Jerusalem Buber and Strauss

Naharaim 2014, 8(2): 289–307
Lina Barouch
Hölderlin in Jerusalem: Buber and Strauss
on Poetry and the Limits of Dialogue
Abstract: This paper discusses a series of commentaries and lyrical texts by
Martin Buber and Ludwig Strauss, which dwell on Hölderlin’s poetry and the
dialogical ideas implicit therein (e.g. the dialogical vocation of the poet). The
paper distinguishes between the dialogical ideal and its concretization in lan-
guage, as the selected texts all strive to develop a dialogical poetics, yet at the
same time engage with textual junctures where the dialogical mode collapses.
This collapse is also registered in the historical sphere: Buber’s engagement
with Heidegger’s paradigmatic Hölderlin studies calls for a comparison with
Strauss’s reception of Hölderlin, and therefore points to an absent dialogue be-
tween these two contemporary scholars. This historical lacuna, which Buber
may have wished to bridge, thus resonates with ideas on the limits of dialogue
in the poetic sphere. The paper draws on further Hölderlin scholars, such as
Peter Szondi and Winfried Menninghaus, and their discussion of the lyrical re-
sults of failed dialogue, and on the ideas of Franz Rosenzweig and Rabbi Nah-
man, in the mapping of the dialogical ideas of both Buber and Strauss. Strauss
himself thus emerges as a scholar and poet who draws both on Hölderlinian
motifs and notions and on dialogical ideas in contemporaneous German-Jewish
thought.
DOI 10.1515/naha-2014-0011
In 1952 the German-Jewish poet and Hölderlin scholar Arie Ludwig Strauss cele-
brated his sixtieth birthday in Jerusalem. For a collection of essays to mark this
occasion, Martin Buber, Strauss’s father-in-law, wrote a short commentary on
Hölderlin’s verse “Seit ein Gespräch wir sind” (“since a conversation we are”).1
When Strauss passed away only a year later, Buber added a post-script in which
he describes the commentary as a “Hinweis auf den Sinn eines Verses Hölder-
lins.” By framing his collation of comments as dedication (“Ludwig Strauss zum

1 Martin Buber, “Seit ein Gespräch wir sind,” in Martin Buber, Werkausgabe, eds. Paul
Mendes-Flohr and Peter Schäfer, vol. 6, Sprachphilosophische Schriften, ed. Asher Biemann (Gü-
tersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2003), 83–86.

Lina Barouch: Minerva Humanities Center, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, Israel 69978,
E-Mail: barouch.lina@gmail.com
Angemeldet | irene.aue@mail.huji.ac.il
Heruntergeladen am | 10.12.14 21:40
290  Lina Barouch
Gedächtnis“) and as reference or suggestion (“Hinweis”) Buber enacts the dialo-

gical ideas discussed in the body of the text. At the same time, this endeavor
uncovers the inherent tension between the dialogical ideal and its concretiza-
tion in conversation.2 In his commentary, Buber engages with Hölderlin’s dialo-
gical verse “Seit ein Gespräch wir sind” explicitly in relation to Heidegger’s
paradigmatic commentary and implicitly in connection with Strauss’s work on
Hölderlin. By bringing Heidegger and Strauss into close proximity, is Buber at-
tempting to initiate a conversation between two contemporary Hölderlin scho-
lars by referring to one and dedicating the text to the other? May we interpret
this strained enactment of an indirect encounter between Strauss and Heideg-
ger, via Hölderlin, as Buber’s own deliberation regarding a possible future meet-
ing with the esteemed German philosopher and former member of the Nazi
Party?3 Although I do not of course attempt to reach definitive conclusions re-
garding Buber’s motivations, these questions help us approach with caution the
supposedly cozy, comfortable, harmonic space of dialogue, of I and Thou, and
especially its utilization as an allegory of the German-Jewish dialogue.4
Buber’s 1952 commentary necessarily evokes some of the circumstantial
questions outlined above. Yet apart from reading it as a precursor to his actual
meeting and conversation with Heidegger in 1957, the text serves also as a point
of access to dialogical ideas in the poetry and Hölderlin studies of Ludwig
Strauss. Via Hölderlin, Strauss raises similar questions to those discussed by
Buber and Heidegger in the quest for a better understanding of poetry, dialogue
and its limits. By upholding the ideal of dialogue it seems, moreover, that the
texts discussed in this paper reduce the idea of monologue to the status of
failed dialogue – despite the fact that certain lyrical forms such as lamentation
and prayer display inherently monological dispositions and may allude to an

2 The German “Dialog” and “Gespräch” are often both translated as dialogue. In order to bet-
ter distinguish between the two I will translate the first as “dialogue” and the second as “con-
versation.”
3 On Heidegger’s rectorate at the University of Freiburg in 1933–1934 and his membership in
the Nazi Party see, for example, Jürgen Habermas, “Work and Weltanschauung: the Heidegger
Controversy from a German Perspective,” Critical Inquiry 15, 2 (1989): 452–454. The series of
encounters between Buber and Heidegger in and after 1957 in preparation of a conference on
language, as well as the accompanying meeting protocols, correspondences, lectures and es-
says have recently been discussed in Paul Mendes-Flohr, “Martin Buber and Martin Heidegger
in Dialogue,” The Journal of Religion 94, 1 (2014): 2–25.
4 I specifically thank Galili Shahar for his important comments on the theoretical pitfalls in-
herent in the dialogical idea; on the necessary distinction between dialogue and its realization
in language as conversation; and on the complexities of applying these ideas to a specific his-
torical and political setting. Shahar’s comments followed an earlier version of this paper given
on 8th May 2014 at the Leo Baeck Institute in Jerusalem.
Hölderlin in Jerusalem  291
absent third (thus hinting at dynamics beyond monologue and dialogue alto-
gether).5 Several commentaries on Hölderlin thus shrink the idea of monologue
to the vanishing point of the addressee, whether the divine, nature or any other
form. The issue of the dynamic between dialogical and monological themes and
text forms defines several central discussions of Hölderlin’s key meditations on
poetry. I wish to proceed, however, from the locus of encounter.
I. Strauss: Where Buber and Hölderlin Meet

Tuvia Rübner, poet, friend and student of Ludwig Strauss, as well as co-editor
of his Gesammelte Werke, made the following statement in a footnote: “Bei
Strauss treffen sich Hölderlin und Buber.”6 Despite the peripheral, marginal lo-
cation of the statement in a footnote, Rübner here makes a substantial claim
about the defining features in Strauss’s œuvre: for the encounter between Höl-
derlin and Buber denotes more than the clichéd if useful term of the Bindes-
trich-Juden, the hyphenated German-Jew.7 The meeting of Buber and Hölderlin

5 On the breakdown of covenantal dialogue and its expression in the monological form of the
Hebrew lamentation as put forward by Gershom Scholem see Lina Barouch and Paula Schwe-
bel, “‘On Lament and Lamentation’: Translators’ Introduction,” in Lament and Jewish Thought:
Philosophical, Theological and Literary Perspectives, eds. Ilit Ferber and Paula Schwebel (Berlin:
De Gruyter, forthcoming 2014), 305–312. In the same volume Galili Shahar discusses the “silent
syllable” of an absent other in poetry and translation in the article entitled “Silent Syllable: On
Franz Rosenzweig’s Translations of Yehuda Halevi’s Liturgical Poems,” ibid., 153–172. Franz
Rosenzweig himself discusses the idea of monologue in different spheres. Thus he distin-
guishes between the spoken language of (divine) creation, which is monological, and lovers’
speech, which is dialogical. See Norbert L. Samuelson, A Reader’s Guide to Franz Rosenzweig’s
Star of Redemption (Richmond: Curzon Press, 1999), 156–157. On the monologue as the Greek
tragic hero’s primary form of expression in Rosenzweig see ibid., 183–185. Bakhtin’s idea of the
monologue is reminiscent of the negative definition of monologue as the collapse of dialogue.
According to Gary Saul Morson and Caryl Emerson, Bakhtin described monologue, among
other things, as a form of thought that turns dialogue into an “empty form and lifeless interac-
tion,” where partitioning voices and individualizing intonations are replaced by an abstract
consciousness. Gary Saul Morson and Caryl Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 57.
6 Ludwig Strauss, Gesammelte Werke, eds. Tuvia Rübner and Hans Otto Horch (Göttingen:
Wallstein, 1998–2002), 4:468n16. Henceforth the volumes of Strauss’s Gesammelte Werke will
be abbreviated as StGW.
7 Franz Rosenzweig uses the term “Bindestrichjuden” in his 1924 letter to Eugen Rosentock in
Franz Rosenzweig, Der Mensch und sein Werk: Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 1, Briefe und Tagebü-
cher, eds. Rachel Bat-Adam and Edith Rosenzweig-Scheinmann (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff,
1979), 508. See also Harry Brod, “The German-Jewish Hyphen: Conjunct, Disjunct or Adjunct?,”
highlights how foundational dialogical ideas were to Strauss’s concept of poet-

ry, and also draws our attention to related notions found in the writings of
Franz Rosenzweig and Martin Heidegger. I will illustrate these dialogical ideas
and encounters in Strauss by discussing several texts: Strauss’s 1940 poem “Die
lebendigen Worte,” Buber’s above-mentioned 1952 commentary on Hölderlin’s
“Seit ein Gespräch wir sind” and Strauss’s 1950 interpretation of Hölderlin’s
poem “Hälfte des Lebens.” On the one hand, Hölderlin and Buber both function
as source and object of Strauss’s dialogical thinking on poetry, on the other,
Strauss features as an object of Buber’s dialogic aspirations.
Strauss imagines humans as dialogical beings, expressing this aspect of his
thought in the 1940 poem entitled “Die lebendigen Worte” from the volume
Heimliche Gegenwart:
Wort bin ich, und Wort bist du,

Gott spricht uns einander zu.
Einig Wasser speist uns innen,
Wie wir Strahl bei Strahl rinnen,
Wechselnd Rauschen ewigen Brunns.
Unter uns und über uns,
Erd und Wipfel: Gottes Ruh.8
This poem joins several dialogical ideas: the dialogue between I and Thou, be-
tween God and humanity, and between humanity and nature, and utilizes the
related motif of rustling, leaping water, which underscores different qualities of
the dialogical encounter. The correlated temporal adjectives “wechslend” and
“ewigen” thus conjure the dialectic between eternity and temporality, alluding
on the one hand to the permanence of dialogue as the source of our very exis-
tence, and on the other to its temporal, earthly realization in inter-personal hu-
man conversation (“Gespräch”). This in turn provides the ontological underpin-
ning of the poem as such, for according to Strauss the poem’s origin and
realization are of dialogical nature. As will be shown, Strauss defines the poet
as a hearer who receives poetry from a transcendent source and realizes it in
human language. Before discussing the central dialogical ideas introduced in
the above poem, I will briefly discuss Strauss’s affiliation with Buber, Hölderlin
and Rosenzweig, with whose ideas he clearly engages within this framework.
Strauss’s affinity with Buberian thought, and by extension with Rosenzweig’s
writings on language, dates to at least 1913 when the young Strauss began corre-

in Conceptions of Postwar German Masculinity, ed. Roy Jerome (New York: SUNY Press, 2001),
91–103.
8 StGW 3:419.
sponding with Buber. In a 1913 letter9 he expressed great admiration for Buber’s
Daniel: Gespräche von der Verwirklichung and in the years that followed he pub-
lished numerous political essays in the framework of cultural Zionism, reflecting
on ideas of Jewish authenticity, the role of Ostjudentum and Yiddish in Jewish
revival, the significance of the Hebrew language, and the attempt to combine
Deutschtum and Judentum.10 Strauss married Eva Buber, Martin Buber’s daughter,
in 1925. The forty-years correspondence (1913–1953) between Buber and Strauss
uncovers among other things Buber’s unceasing intellectual and practical sup-
port of Strauss’s literary œuvre as well as the personal tensions that emerged
once the young Strauss family emigrated to Palestine and settled temporarily in
Kibbutz Hazorea where Ludwig and Eva were engaged in heavy manual work.
Buber’s commentaires on Strauss’s literary enterprise, some of which have been
published in the volume containing Buber’s sprachphilosophsche Schriften of the
latest Werkausgabe, are relevant to the current investigation.11
Strauss’s relationship to Rosenzweig is a topic worthy of further investiga-
tion. From their correspondence, which intensified in 1926, it is clear that Ro-
senzweig much admired Strauss’s poetry.12 Moreover, Strauss commented on
Rosenzweig’s translations of Yehuda Halevi and on the Buber-Rosenzweig Bible
translation.13 Hölderlin, in turn, was the topic of Strauss’s 1927 doctoral disser-
tation, entitled Hölderlins Anteil an Schellings frühem Systemprogramm, and sev-
eral other in-depth analyses of Hölderlin’s writings such as Natur und Ge-
meinschaft. Stücke einer Hölderlinbiographie (1927–28), Ein Hymnenbruchstück
Hölderlins (1928), and Das Problem der Gemeinschaft in Hölderlins “Hyperion”
(1933).14 It has, moreover, been shown that Hölderlin influenced Strauss’s own
poetry and especially his early poems. Bernd Witte demonstrates this via speci-
fic poems by Strauss, which draw on Hölderlin’s “word-material,” on the motif
of the tempest (Unwetter) as a metaphor for the human condition, and on com-
positional traits such as the evident syntactical break or caesura through which
affiliated words are violently torn apart.15 Strauss’s reception of Hölderlin was

9 Briefwechsel: Martin Buber-Ludwig Strauss 1913–1953, eds. Tuvia Rübner and Dafna Mach
(Frankfurt a. M.: Luchterhand Literaturverlag, 1990), 19.
10 Strauss’s political essays appear in volume 4 of the StGW.
11 Buber, Werkausgabe, vol. 6, Sprachphilosophische Schriften.
12 Rosenzweig, Der Mensch und sein Werk: Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 1, Briefe und Tagebücher,
1102, 1125, 1130, 1177, 1191.
13 Ibid.
14 Strauss’s writings on Hölderlin are collated in StGW 2:95–280.
15 Bernd Witte, “Messianische Gemeinschaft: Friedrich Hölderlin im Werk von Ludwig
Strauss,” in Ludwig Strauss 1892–1992: Beiträge zu seinem Leben und Werk. Mit einer Bibliogra-
phie, ed. Hans Otto Horch (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1995), 199–213; 200.
mediated, according to Witte, by the contemporary Hölderlin renaissance of the

George school, which, for example, picked up Hölderlin’s “hard-joining,” a term
coined by Norbert von Hellingrath.16 Similarly to Hölderlin, Strauss bewails his
modern, benighted world in poems such as his own “Archipelagus,” in which
he asks that one embrace the traditional poetic word and its transformation.
Strauss views this as the task of the poet in the early twentieth century. How-
ever, in contrast to the George school’s elevation of the poet to a divine apostle,
Strauss sees the task of the poet in reference to earlier poetry, namely, in the
transformation of and literary commentary on the canonical texts.17 This is what
Witte calls the “Jewish moment” in Strauss’s Hölderlin-hymns, which he be-
lieves is complemented by Jewish messianic ideas and a concept of “Ge-
meinschaft,” which, it needs to be noted, is also central to Hölderlin’s writings
and Strauss’s Hölderlin reception.18 Strauss’s pen pal Gershom Scholem would
probably have disagreed with Witte’s analysis. In an unsent 1918 letter Scholem
defines Strauss’s early poetry volume Wandlung und Verkündung and his con-
current George parodies as totally “un-Jewish” due to Strauss’s application of
apparently Jewish forms of commentary to secular, German texts, which are,
moreover, dominated by a homily on nature.19 In the following I will refrain
from evaluating whether Strauss applies an arguably Jewish form of commen-
tary to Hölderlin’s non-Jewish, German texts. I am more concerned with map-
ping Strauss’s transformative, interpretative reception of dialogical ideas found
in Hölderlin and in Buber. For this purpose I continue by discussing Buber’s
dialogical gesture to Strauss.
II. A Twofold Gesture: Buber on Hölderlin’s

“Seit ein Gespräch wir sind”
Buber’s gesture is based, no doubt, on his dialogical thinking as developed in
Ich und Du (1923).20 Buber’s point of departure is the twofold character of man’s

16 Norbert von Hellingrath, “Kunstcharakter der Hölderlinischen Übertragungen und ihre Stel-
lung in der Geschichte der Pindarverdeutschung,” in Pindar Übertragungen von Hölderlin: Pro-
legomena zu einer Erstausgabe (Jena: Eugen Dietrichs, 1911), 6–11.
17 Witte, “Messianische Gemeinschaft,” 201–202.
18 Ibid., 202. See Rony Klein, “Ludwig Strauss’s Reception of Hölderlin: Hölderlin in the Light
of Jewish Theocracy” (lecture, Leo Baeck Institute, Jerusalem, Israel, May 8, 2014).
19 Witte, “Messianische Gemeinschaft,” 203–204.
20 Martin Buber, Ich und Du in Das Dialogische Prinzip, 9th ed. (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlag-
shaus, 2004), 7–138.
world and his attitude as reflected in the fundamental word pairs I-Thou and I-
It (“Es”).21 The I thus exists only in relation to the Thou and the It. Crucially, the
I-Thou relationship is spoken with the entire essence whereas the I-It relation-
ship is only partly spoken. It follows that “Ich sein” equals “Ich sprechen.”22 In
Ich und Du Buber generally distinguishes between three spheres of relationships
in the world (which are relevant no doubt also to the relationships espoused in
Strauss’s “Die lebendigen Worte”): life with nature, which takes place at the
threshold of language; life with fellow humans, which is apparent and partakes
in the formation of language (“sprachgestaltig”); and finally, life with mental
beings, where the relationship is mute (“sprachlos”) but creates language
(“spracherzeugend”).23 These very same ideas resurface in Buber’s reading of
Hölderlin.
“Seit ein Gespräch wir sind” stems from the celebrated stanza of the third
version of Hölderlin’s incomplete poem “Versöhnender, der du nimmer ge-
glaubt”:
Viel erfahren hat der Mensch. Der Himmlischen viele genannt,

Seit ein Gespräch wird sind
Und hören können voneinander.24
In its double gesture, Buber’s short commentary from 1952 engages implicitly
with Strauss’s Hölderlin scholarship and more directly with Martin Heidegger’s
paradigmatic 1936 lecture titled “Hölderlin und das Wesen der Dichtung,” a sec-
tion of which deals with precisely the above three-line stanza from Hölderlin’s
poem.25 Buber’s explicit reference to Heidegger is clearly central to his own un-
derstanding of Hölderlin and may feature as a precursor to their meeting and
conversations five years later, which in fact led Buber to doubt the possibility of
a dialogue with Heidegger.26 Moreover, dedicated to Strauss and read with and
partly against Heidegger, Buber brings these two Hölderlin experts into an ima-
gined dialogue where an actual conversation had and would never take place.
In other words, by bringing Strauss and Heidegger into an imagined conversa-
tion Buber’s text invokes – whether as a correcting act or as an accentuation –
precisely its opposite: the absence of a conversation, its problematic nature and

21 Ibid., 7.
22 Ibid., 8.
23 Ibid., 10, 103.
24 Friedrich Hölderlin, Werke, Briefe, Dokumente (Munich: Winkler, 1969), 164.
25 Martin Heidegger, “Hölderlin und das Wesen der Dichtung,” in Heidegger, Erläuterungen zu
Hölderlins Dichtung (Frankfurt a. M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1951), 31–46.
26 Mendes-Flohr, “Martin Buber and Martin Heidegger in Dialogue,” 8.
perhaps even its impossibility. Another sign of an absent exchange is the fact
that in his Hölderlin scholarship Strauss seems never to cite Heidegger even as
he often quotes other contemporary Hölderlin critics.
Buber begins his commentary by emphasizing that Hölderlin wrote “seit ein
Gespräch wir sind,” namely, we are not in a conversation but the very conversa-
tion itself. Heidegger similarly explains that being human originates in lan-
guage and language only truly happens in conversation: “Sprache geschieht
erst eigentlich im Gespräch.”27 In other words, only in conversation does lan-
guage become concrete. Elsewhere, however, Buber explicitly disagrees with
Heidegger’s interpretation, specifically with the claim that in Hölderlin the gods
bring us into conversation – a claim that is shared by Strauss’s “Die lebendigen
Worte”: “Gott spricht uns einander zu” (here a singular God). Heidegger reaches
his interpretation of the divine precondition of the human conversation by
dwelling on the word “seit” in Hölderlin. He argues that the temporal “seit”
postulates multiple parallel dialogues, which nourish and pre-condition each
other. From the time that language has become conversation, writes Heidegger,
the gods “come to word” (“kommen zu Wort”) and a world emerges
(“erscheint”). At the same time the presence of the gods and the emergence
(“Erscheinen”) of the world are not a result of the “happening of language” (or
“event of language”) but rather coincide with it. The extent of this coinciding
means that in the naming of the gods and in the word-becoming (“Wort-Wer-
den”) of the world the actual conversation takes place, which we ourselves are.
Yet the gods can come into the word (“ins Wort kommen”) only when they
themselves address us humans and place us within this address (“Anspruch”).
The word, which names the gods, is in turn always the reply to this address.
The gods’ act of verbalizing our “Dasein” means that we are drawn into an area
of responsibility towards our fate, an area of decision making: whether we con-
verse and comply with the gods (“uns den Göttern zusagen”) or whether we fail
(“versagen”). The way in which Heidegger utilizes these German expressions is
somewhat untranslatable into English: he employs and manipulates the basic
verbs “sprechen” and “sagen” with the help of prefixes and suffixes in order to
charge them with surplus meaning: he uses the substantive “Anspruch” of the
verb “ansprechen,” the first of which implies a claim, an entitlement of the gods
in relation to humans as soon as the latter are addressed: it is a linguistic ad-
dress charged with an entitlement. Humans in turn have a responsibility in this
constellation, which they can either fulfill – in Heidegger’s words, “[sich] den
Göttern zusagen” – or fail to fulfill – “versagen.”28

27 Heidegger, “Hölderlin und das Wesen der Dichtung,” 36.
28 Ibid., 36–37.
Whereas Strauss’s poem clearly expresses the divine origin and pre-condi-
tion of “our conversation” and as such corresponds to Heidegger’s analysis of
Hölderlin, Buber argues that this reading does not do justice to Hölderlin’s
verses. Buber writes that we are ourselves the conversation: we are being spo-
ken.29 In other words, “unser Gesprochenwerden ist unser Dasein” and this is
the true divine gift – rather than responsibility – bestowed upon us. In the early
versions, explains Buber, language fulfills itself only once it has become our
“property” (“Eigentum”) and we can call the “human-divine” language our
own. It seems that what Buber alludes to is that the “conversation that we are”
is more than the conversation instigated by the gods. This conversation grows
beyond its divine core and while it remains “human-divine” it develops an in-
dependent existence through it concretization.30
Let us return to Strauss. In his theoretical essays written in the 1910s and
1920s he envisions the origin of poetry as dialogical. It is specifically the task of
the poet to realize the poem in the world via his dialogue with the transcendent
source of poetry. If we acknowledge Hölderlin as the “poet of the poets” – as he
was crowned by Heidegger – namely, a poet who contemplates the task of the
poet – precisely in poems such as “Versöhnender, der du nimmer geglaubt,”
“Wie wenn am Feiertage…” and more – then we see that Strauss meditates on
the very same task a century later.31 In Strauss’s writings the vocation of the
poet is described as a multi-level dialogue: he is the mediator between human-
ity and a transcendent poetic being, and between the poem and hearer. By
viewing the poet as the worldly fulfiller of a transcendent poetic being, the poet
is in constant dialogue with the gods. In the early 1913 essay “Erfahrungen über
die Existenz der Dichtung” he likens the task of the poet to a religious prac-
tice:32
Dem arbeitenden Dichter wird die absolute Notwendigkeit der Dichtung am deutlichsten
in diesem Gefühl: dass sie seit ewig, unabhängig von ihm, eine abstrakte, unirdische
Existenz führe. Der Dichter, begnadet diese Existenz zu empfinden, muss sie als Aufgabe
fühlen, die ihm gegeben ist: sie auf der Erde zu verwirklichen.33

29 Buber, “Seit ein Gespräch,” 83.
30 Ibid.
31 Heidegger, “Hölderlin und das Wesen der Dichtung,” 31–32.
32 “Erfahrungen über die Existenz der Dichtung,” StGW 2:9–13; 11.
33 Ibid., 2:9. Bernd Witte claims that here the classical German notion of the poet as a unique
individual and genius is adopted and transformed through the legacy of George. The function
of poetry is no longer perceived merely as the aesthetic education of the human being through
contemplative reception of the work of art, but rather as the transformation of each individual
through an active poetic practice. Witte, “Ludwig Strauss als Germanist,” in Horch, Ludwig
Strauss, 89–95; 89–90.
In this essay Strauss declares his belief in poetry as the mystical encounter be-
tween the poet and an absolute poetic being, and his conviction that the poetic
lies not in the materials but in their relationships: “nicht in den Stoffen, sondern
in ihren Beziehungen liegt das Dichterische.”34
From Strauss’s concurrent fascination with Buber’s Daniel, which he ex-
pressed in several letters, we can assume that he was inspired by its mystical
tone and parallel dialogical vocabulary. In the opening paragraph of the 1913
edition of Daniel, the narrator describes how during a stroll at sunset he stops
at the edge of a field and leans his walking stick against a tree trunk. This two-
fold contact – the first where he holds the stick, and the second where the stick
touches the tree trunk – evokes a “conversation”: “Damals erschien mir das Ge-
spräch. Denn wie jener Stab ist die Rede des Menschen.”35 The centrality of the
encounter is stressed also in Buber’s introduction to “The Tales of Rabbi Nah-
man,” where he writes that the Jew exists less in substance than in relation –
an idea which recurs in a more generalized and metaphorical sense in Ich und
Du.36
Strauss also understands the poet as mediator between poetic essence and
changing historical conditions. In “Der Dichter in der Zeit” (1927) Strauss la-
ments the fallen status of the poet in contemporary, purpose-driven society,
which excludes divine and “primary” forces such as poetry from public life: in
such a world, bewails Strauss, the poet appears as purposeless and meaning-
less.37 In these conditions, which evoke Hölderlin’s mythology of a “benighted
age,”38 the poet will continue to live in involuntary banishment rather than in
chosen solitude.39 With an admonishing and pathos-filled tone Strauss claims
that humanity has exhausted its own powers and will have to return to the de-
throned forces. In his contemporaneity, the poet keeps the junction open so that
historical time and eternal forces may meet. In an epoch in which everything
has its purpose and use, the useless poet thus protects a spark of humbleness

34 StGW 2:9.
35 Martin Buber, Daniel: Gespräche von der Verwirklichung (Leipzig: Insel Verlag, 1913). Later
editions have an added paragraph explaining the ideas of “echte Rede” and “zugewandte An-
rede.” Martin Buber, Werke, vol. 1, Schriften zur Philosophie (Munich and Heidelberg: Kösel and
Lambert Schneider, 1962), 9–76; 11.
36 Martin Buber, “Die Geschichten des Rabbi Nachman,” in Buber, Die Chassidischen Bücher
(Hellerau: Jakob Hegner, 1928). See also Asher Biemann, introduction to Buber, Werkausgabe,
vol. 6, Sprachphilosophische Schriften, 21.
37 “Der Dichter in der Zeit”, StGW 2:14–18; 17.
38 See David Constantine, “1800–1802: The Coherent Years,” in Constantine, Hölderlin (Ox-
ford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 152–181.
39 Constantine, Hölderlin, 18.
before the primordial forces, which cannot be put to use. These in return will
rekindle the human soul.40 In tandem with Hölderlin’s idea of a “benighted
age,” on the one hand, and Buber’s vocabulary of renewal, on the other, Strauss
expresses his belief in a return of the ancient forces not by way of a reactionary
restoration but by keeping the path open for their renewal at the hands of the
poets.41 The poet is thus granted a key role in enabling the dialogue between
potent ancient forces and contemporary humanity.
Hölderlin’s understanding of the poet as a vigilant mediator between the
gods and humanity is clearly conjured up here. Adrian Del Caro shows how
Hölderlin’s poems “An die Parzen” and “An die jungen Dichter” demonstrate
his faith in a transcendent existence that is a prerequisite of poetry.42 In “An die
jungen Dichter” Hölderlin addresses his fellow poets as “brothers,” asking them
to remain as humble as the ancient Greeks were by acknowledging the divine
origin of poetry. Poets are thus asked to love the gods and their fellow human
beings and to show respect for nature by entering into a dialogue with them
rather than preaching and wishing gain mastery over them.43 While most mor-
tals remain “asleep” in the face of the age of godlessness, it is the responsibility
of the poet to remain actively open and prepared to receive the gods. In “Dich-
terberuf” Hölderlin thus addresses the poet as a hybrid creature, likening him
to the demigod Bacchus (Dionysus) or a “day’s Angel” for his ability to join the
divine and the mortal, especially during an age in which “zu lang ist alles Gött-
liche dienstbar schon | Und alle Himmelskräfte verscherzt, verbraucht.”44 These

40 Ibid.
41 Constantine shows the triadic structure of Hölderlin’s mythology, which contains an ideal
past, a benighted present and an ideal future. This constellation expresses the hope that the
spirit of the “New Hesperia” will be an incarnation of the ideal past, embodied by Ancient
Greece. Ibid., 163–167.
42 The opening lines of “An die Parzen” address these “fates” directly and as such both ac-
knowledge their powerful role and establish a dialogue with them. Hölderlin, Werke, 30.
43 Hölderlin, Werke, 33–34. The idea of the poet’s vocation as mediation between gods and
humanity within the context of a “benighted age” runs through Hölderlin’s poetry, both in
hymns like “Wie an einem Feiertage...” and in elegies such as “Brot und Wein,” “Dichterberuf”
and “Dichtermut.” See Adrian Del Caro, Hölderlin: The Poetics of Being (Detroit: Wayne State
University Press, 1991), 25. See also Constantine, Hölderlin, Chapters 9 and 11 on the elegies and
hymns respectively, as well as Peter Szondi, “Der andere Pfeil. Zur Entstehungsgeschichte des
hymnischen Spätstils,” in Szondi, Hölderlin-Studien: Mit einem Traktat über philologische Er-
kenntnis (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1979), 37–62. Szondi writes that the poem “Wie an einem
Feiertage” wishes to determine the status of the poet in relation to the divine sphere (ibid., 57).
44 Hölderlin, Werke, 97. In “Brot und Wein” we similarly read: “Aber Freund! wir kommen zu
spät. Zwar leben die Götter,/Aber über dem Haupt droben in anderer Welt./[...] Denn nicht im-
mer vermag ein schwaches Gefäß sie zu fassen,/Nur zu Zeiten erträgt göttliche Fülle der
ideas resonate in Strauss’s poetological reflections and are complemented by

the emphasis Strauss places on the oral essence of poetry.
In stressing the auditory quality of poetry Strauss defines the poem as an
encounter between the poet and the hearer, whereby the poem often receives
the form of an address (once again the expression “Ansprache” appears in this
connection). Orality is also central in the verses discussed earlier: “Seit ein Ge-
spräch wir sind, / Und hören können voneinander.” Both Buber and Heidegger
dwell on the meaning of “hören können.” Heidegger stresses that the ability to
hear is not a mere result of talking to one another. The ability to hear and the
ability to speak are equally originary (“gleich ursprünglich”). “We are a conver-
sation,” means, according to Heidegger, that we can hear from each other.45
Buber takes this “hören können” further and shows a messianic streak in Höl-
derlin’s poem and in the final version “Friedensfeier.” He writes that we let the
future arrive (“das Kommende kommen”) by revealing our being as saying
(“Spruch”) to the other. The capability of hearing existence in its mutuality
(“aus dem Hörenkönnen des Daseins in der Gegenseitigkeit”) results in us all
experiencing each other.46 This, in turn, allows for the return of a silent choir at
the end of the days, explains Buber, for in “Friedensfeier” we read: “Schickals-
gesetz ist dies, dass alle sich erfahren, dass wenn die Stille kehrt, auch eine
Sprache sei.”47
In the context of his writings on Hasidism, Buber demonstrates the auditory
quality of Rabbi Nahman’s teachings and their reception.48 Rabbi Nahman’s
teachings acquire significance by virtue, firstly, of their oral nature (the student
is a “hearer” and not a “reader”) and, secondly, of their dialogical character,
according to which both teacher and student are perceived as hearer-receivers
and the boundary between them is blurred. Essays written in the context of the
Buber-Rosenzweig Bible translation likewise emphasize the spokenness of the
Biblical text, and the necessary link to its dialogical character.49 In “Biblical

Mensch” (ibid., 123). And it is here that poets are particularly called to duty: “Brot ist der Erde
Frucht, doch ists vom Lichte gesegnet,/Und vom donnernden Gott kommet die Freude des
Weins./Darum denken wir auch dabei der Himmlischen, die sonst/Da gewesen und die kehren
in richtiger Zeit,/Darum singen sie auch mit Ernst, die Sänger, den Weingott/Und nicht eitel
erdacht tönet dem Alten das Lob” (ibid., 124). See also Del Caro, Hölderlin, 41.
45 Heidegger, “Hölderlin und das Wesen der Dichtung,” 36.
46 Buber, “Seit ein Gespräch,” 84.
47 Ibid.
48 Buber, “Rabbi Nachman,” 28.
49 See Karl-Johan Illman, “Buber and the Bible: Guiding Principles and the Legacy of his In-
terpretation,” in Martin Buber: A Contemporary Perspective, ed. Paul Mendes-Flohr (Jerusalem:
Israel Academy of Sciences and Syracuse University Press, 2002), 87–100. In the same volume,
Humanism” (1933) Buber writes, “only that man is a Hebrew man who lets him-
self be addressed by the voice which speaks to him in the Hebrew Bible.”50 The
immediacy of the Biblical word is explained by its essential spokenness, which
is traced back to its very creation: the word happens, it is spoken.51 In fact, the
only being of the word is its spokenness, while the being of all being objects
originates from the spokenness of the Biblical word.52 Buber’s “Biblical human-
ism” recognizes language as an event in the making, as a dynamic, mutual rela-
tionship. It gives preference to the hearer and messenger of the word rather
than to its master. These ideas are invoked in Strauss’s poetological reflections.
Like Buber’s “Hebrew human-being” (who is more than a Hebrew-speaking hu-
man-being), the poet and hearer of poetry are required to be in a state of open-
ness and active receptivity. Similarly to Buber, Strauss identifies the essence of
poetry first and foremost as a multi-faceted relationship. And in affinity to both
Buber and Hölderlin, Strauss praises the hearer-receiver of the word, defining
the poet as a crucial agent or messenger of the word rather than granting him
mastery over it.53
Strauss poignantly stresses the oral character of poetry in the following
aphorism from the collection Wintersaat:
Glaube nicht, dass im Buch das Gedicht stehe! Die Zeichen dort sind wie der aufs Papier
gezeichnete Plan des Architekten. Erst das Gedicht in deinem Gehör und deiner Seele ist
das gebaute, das wirkliche Haus.54
In a short text on Stefan George likewise included in Wintersaat, Strauss depicts

the audial experience of poetry as a formative (linguistic) event. Strauss de-
scribes how, when hiking in the high mountains, “it sometimes happened that
in the thin air [his] ear perceived all the sounds damped.” He became mindful

see also Dan Avon, “Limmud and Limmudim: Guiding Words of Buber’s Prophetic Teachings,”
101–119.
50 Martin Buber, “Biblical Humanism (1933),” in The Martin Buber Reader: Essential Writings,
ed. Asher Biemann (New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2002), 46–50; 47.
51 Ibid., 49.
52 Ibid. In “The Language of Botschaft” (1936) Buber likewise declares that “everything in
scripture is genuine spokenness.” In Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig, Scripture and Transla-
tion, trans. Lawrence Rosenwald and Everett Fox (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana Univer-
sity Press, 1994), 27–39; 28. Buber here attempts to illustrate in greater detail how, for example,
elements of “phonetic rhythmic paronomasiastic method” (word repetition or “lauthafte Wie-
derholung”) are used in the Bible to achieve narrative expression (ibid., 29).
53 Both Strauss and Buber distinguish between “Jewish” and “German” art. In “Biblical Hu-
manism” Buber makes the comparison between the spokenness and dialogical quality of the
Biblical word as “happening” and the Athenian monological, crafted word as “construct.”
54 StGW 1:266.
of this light dampening just as he descended into thicker air and the “stream,
which up to then rustled lightly and quietly” next to him, suddenly “announced
itself with full boom” to the re-opened ear, causing fright as if from sudden
lightning. “As a boy,” concludes Strauss, “I likewise heard with joy and fright
the formerly dull sounds of language until I read, only half understanding,
verses of George for the first time.”55
The theme and metaphors of language, in this short text on George inescap-
ably bring us back to Strauss’s analysis of Hölderlin.
III. Strauss on “Hälfte des Lebens”:

Dialogical Aspirations, Monological Conclusions
In his thorough 1950 study Strauss elaborates on the idea of dialogue and the
metaphors of nature, and especially water, in Hölderlin’s poem “Hälfte des Le-
bens”:
Mit gelben Birnen hänget

Und voll mit wilden Rosen
Das Land in den See,
Ihr holden Schwäne,
Und trunken von Küssen
Tunkt ihr das Haupt
Ins heilignüchterne Wasser.
Weh mir, wo nehm ich, wenn

Winter ist, die Blumen, und wo
Den Sonnenschein
Und Schatten der Erde?
Die Mauern stehn
Sprachlos und kalt, im Winde
Klirren die Fahnen.56
In his 1950 analysis of the poem and especially when contrasting the first and
second strophes, Strauss employs the dialogical terminology of address, affilia-
tion and conversation reminiscent of Buber.57 Strauss first illustrates how the

55 StGW 1:256 (the translation into English is my own).
56 Hölderlin, Werke, 138–139.
57 Indeed, Witte argues that several sections of Strauss’s essay on this poem demonstrate how
Strauss recognizes in Hölderlin’s poem Buber’s dialogical principle. Witte, “Messianische Ge-
meinschaft,” 211.
first strophe is fully formed as an address, yet goes on to quote von Hellingrath
to show that only in the second strophe does the I receive its voice (through
“weh mir” and the appearance of the word “ich”). Yet with the emergence of
the I, the Thou is lost. The I speaks into the winter void and finds no reply, for
the Thou has disappeared in this strophe.58 While the world was previously all
language and address, it is now silent before the I. In the first strophe, adds
Strauss, the I lived in relation to the environment and only here could the I
become loud. Once this environment and relationship disappear the I is ex-
pelled into a solitary monologue, into the exile of winter.59 It is, however, in its
existence in mutuality, in address and in dialogue – as symbolized by the
swans, that the I can sense things beyond the mere factual world. Based on a
central philosophical fragment by Hölderlin (“Über die Religion”) Strauss
further concludes that the revelation of a mental being, of the divine, is condi-
tioned by and recognizable through existence in relationship, or more precisely
in relationship to the world. Once this relationship is severed the world loses its
language and can reveal to the human being only the mute, mechanical stride
of the factual world.60
Examining the dynamics of both strophes of the poem, Strauss claims that
although the alliteration of “nehm” and “nüchtern” offers a bridge above the
abyss between the strophes, the existence of only two strophes prevents a dia-
lectic development of thesis, antithesis and synthesis.61 In fact the poem offers
the opposite dynamic: the synthesis presented in the first strophe is dissolved
and cannot be regained in the exile of a solitary winter in which dialogue no
longer exists and a reply is not given.
Contemporary and later analyses of “Hälfte des Lebens” likewise dwell on
the monological conclusions suggested. Peter Szondi reads the poem as a direct
result of the failure of its apparent predecessor, Hölderlin’s hymn “Wie wenn
am Feiertage…”62 As a hymn, writes Szondi, this poem addresses the gods, and
reflects, moreover, on the poet’s vocation and the genesis of poetry.63 In this
hymn Hölderlin still believes in the possibility of the poet encountering the di-
vine (in the form of heavenly fire) without endangering himself.64 Yet the frag-

58 StGW 2 : 254.
59 Ibid. Strauss analyses earlier drafts of the poem such as “Die Rose” and here likewise uses
terms such as “Anrede“ and “Zwiesprache” (ibid., 256–257).
60 StGW 2 : 254.
61 Ibid., 2 : 260–261.
62 Peter Szondi, Der andere Pfeil: zur Entstehungsgeschichte von Hölderlins hymnischem Spätstil
(Frankfurt a. M.: Insel-Verlag, 1963).
63 Szondi, Der andere Pfeil, 5–9.
64 Ibid., 13.
mentary, arguably failed ending of the poem (mainly in its eighth incomplete
stanza), reflects Hölderlin’s emerging frustration with the status of the poet and
the ways in which he may address God without becoming a “false priest.”65
Szondi concludes from a close philological examination of the manuscript,
which includes the hymn itself, its prose version, incomplete drafts of its final
(eighth) stanza, and transitional verses, that “Hälfte des Lebens” came out of
the incomplete hymn.66 Hölderlin wished in “Wie wenn am Feiertage…” to es-
tablish the status of the poet in relation to the divine sphere, yet its incomplete
final stanza and overall ending place the poem at an abyss.67 The transitional
verses in the manuscript continue to bewail the want for and the impossibility
of the hymnic essence, namely the encounter with the divine. Yet in “Hälfte des
Lebens” the divine sphere is left out and at most evoked in the blissful bond
that exists in the image of nature in the first stanza, in which, however, the poet
does not partake.68
Heidegger’s study of “Wie wenn am Feiertage…” likewise points to its incom-
pleteness.69 Here Heidegger interprets the lyrical word (“das dichtende Wort”) as
“stiftendes Sagen” – perhaps translatable as “endowed speech” – rather than as
“Besingen or “Ansingen.” In other words, it is no longer a “Hymne an” (a hymn
that is addressed to the poet or to nature), but a hymn “of” the sacred. Reminis-
cent of his interpretation of “Seit ein Gespräch wir sind,” Heidegger claims that
in “Wie wenn am Feiertage…” the sacred ordains the word and as such arrives
with it; the word is thus the event of the holy. At this point, continues Heidegger,
Hölderlin’s poetry is “anfängliches Rufen,” an incipient call, which expresses
nothing beyond itself.70 Other Hölderlin scholars disagree with Szondi’s interpre-
tation of “Wie wenn am Feiertage…” as a failed hymn due to the collapsed en-
counter of the poet with the gods, and also to reading “Hälfte des Lebens” as a
direct result of this failure.71 Winfried Menninghaus in fact objects to qualifying
“Wie wenn am Feiertage…” as a hymn, labeling it instead as a “Gross-Gedicht,”
following both Hölderlin’s own definition for poems generated during this period
and secondary literature, which assigns the “vocational doubt” of the poet to
other lyrical forms such as the ode. As such, the frustration and doubt of the poet

65 Ibid., 14–15.
66 Ibid., 23.
67 Ibid., 25–26.
68 Ibid., 26–27.
69 Martin Heidegger, Hölderlins Hymne “Wie wenn am Feiertage ...” (Halle a. d. S.: Niemeyer,
1941), 30.
70 Ibid., 31–32.
71 See Winfried Menninghaus’s discussion of Szondi’s reading in Menninghaus, Hälfte des Le-
bens. Versuch über Hölderlins Poetik (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2005), 103–104.
which are depicted in “Wie wenn am Feiertage…” and in “Hälfte des Lebens” do
not necessarily mark a break. According to Menninghaus, Hölderlin aims instead
at integrating such revolutions into the poetic method via compositional shifts of
tone: for example, the shift from passionate, divine “fire” to radical soberness,
which arguably also belongs to the formal traits of the hymn.72 More specifically,
it is precisely the vacuum of the caesura between the two stanzas of “Hälfte des
Lebens” – the critical moment of the middle, of the half, from which the lan-
guage of the lyrical I emerges and is consolidated.73
Strauss’s own poem “Die lebendigen Worte,” which I quote here once
again, includes one stanza, which, in contrast, offers a harmonious ideal of un-
broken dialogue:
Wort bin ich, und Wort bist du,

Gott spricht uns einander zu.
Einig Wasser speist uns innen,
Wie wir Strahl bei Strahl rinnen,
Wechselnd Rauschen ewigen Brunns.
Unter uns und über uns,
Erd und Wipfel: Gottes Ruh.74
I and Thou are building blocks, which are vivid and spirited thanks to the conver-
sation into which they are brought via God. This dialogue is reflected in divine,
natural peace: We who are in conversation – “Wir”, also used here in the dative-
relational form “uns” – are enveloped and cradled by the earth below and tree-
tops above. The use of water as metaphor is not unusual here either. We are im-
mersed in united waters, in which the temporal and eternal meet: for we flow and
swish alternately yet from the same eternal well. The metaphor of water resonates
in Strauss’s discussion of Hölderlin. Water here is deemed as a positive metaphor,
which underpins the dialectic search for a higher synthesis. Strauss thus attends
specifically to the seeming oppositions of “holy” and “sober,” which appear com-
bined in the single lexeme “heilignüchtern,” and also refers to other writings of
Hölderlin in which water is described as “innocent.” Holy and sober, in Strauss’s
view, describe a harmonious, complementary opposition within the poet’s state
of mind, reflected also in the swans, which are both drunk and sober.75 As such
this relatively late poem seems to ignore Hölderlinian crisis and points of frustra-
tion with regard to the poet’s vocation and the dialogic ideal.

72 Ibid.
73 Ibid., 13–14.
74 StGW 3 : 419.
75 Ibid., 3 : 259.
Strauss’s emphasis on the metaphor of water – as point of origin (“Brunn,”

well, in his own poem) and as agent of (ex-)change, both in his own poem and
in the analysis of Hölderlin – is mirrored also in his affinity to the linguistic
ideas of Rosenzweig. The ideas of conversation, vivid words and shifting waters
are clearly reminiscent of Rosenzweig’s use of a similar vocabulary relating to
the “flowing” of language – more specifically the “influx” (“Zustrom”) and
“time flow.” As in Strauss this terminology complements Rosenzweig’s funda-
mental conviction that “we live in language” (“man lebt in der Sprache”) or that
“language lives us.”76 In his essay “Vom Geist der hebräischen Sprache” Ro-
senzweig speaks of the “spirit of God” which is “poured” into the ready-made
vessel of language (“gegossen in das bereitstehende Gefäß der Sprache”).77
Can we now describe the relationship between the envisioned dialogues
and their linguistic actualization in human conversation and poetry? According
to Buber it is in speech and in counter-speech or reply (“Rede” and “Gegen-
rede”) that language is fulfilled. Only in this constellation does the linguistically
formed word meet its reply and only in one tongue are address and answer
(“Entgegnung”) alive. For I and Thou exist not only in relation to one another
but also in firm, loyal spokenness (“feste Redlichkeit”). The moments of rela-
tionship, continues Buber, are here connected through the element of language
in which they are immersed.78 In Strauss the dialogical quality of poetry is given
concrete form by attempting to understand physiological and psychological pro-
cesses in the minds of the poet and hearers, whose thoughts and feelings are
evoked by the words of the poem, and especially their sound.79 In “Der Mensch
und die Dichtung” (1929) Strauss describes the role of the hearer as crucial, for
only in the concrete sound does the word have its full sensory existence.80
When hearing a poem for the first time each word-sound evokes conceptions of
and associations with objects, feelings and deeds, and their interrelations. In
fact, only through the meeting of the evoked mental content and the concrete
sound does the word come into existence.81 A mutually dependent relationship
is proposed between the evocation of mental content by the word-sound and
the creation of the word. Furthermore, the word of poetry embodies the insepar-

76 In his essay “Vom Geist der hebräischen Sprache” Rosenzweig claims that “man lebt in der
Sprache,” in Rosenzweig, Der Mensch und sein Werk: Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 3, Zweistrom-
land: Kleinere Schriften zu Glauben und Denken, eds. Reinhold Mayer and Annemarie Mayer
(Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1984), 719–721; 719.
77 Ibid., 719.
78 Buber, Ich und Du, 104.
79 StGW 2 : 9.
80 Ibid., 2 : 21.
81 Ibid., 2 : 22.
able unity between sound and meaning, in contrast to mere communicative lan-
guage in which the sound functions only as a sign, which is forgotten once the
hearer has understood the message.82 This calls for an inquiry into the nature of
poetry’s receiver and reception. Strauss clearly states that it is the task of the
hearer to realize the poem in the world, just as it once was the task of the
poet.83 The poet and all the following hearers of the poem are required to be in
an active state of “readiness” or inspiration (“Eingebung”) if they are to grant
the poem an earthly existence.
Strauss partakes no doubt in the Hölderlin renaissance of the early twenti-
eth century. As such his theoretical writings on poetry discuss the task of the
poet as mediator and establish poetry as the locus of dialogue, failed or ful-
filled. Strauss wrote his theoretical treatises as well as his manifold studies spe-
cifically on Hölderlin mainly in the 1920s and 1930s, a time during which he
also wrote extensively within the framework of cultural Zionism and in the con-
text of his close political and personal affiliation with Martin Buber. This paper
has shown how the affinity to both Hölderlin and Buber is manifest in the ways
in which Strauss applies dialogical terminology in his poetry, poetological
thought and literary criticism, and how in turn dialogical ideas were employed
by Buber to celebrate Strauss’s life-long literary and scholarly œuvre. Yet the
dialogical endures cracks and failures: this is evident in the poetic enterprise of
Hölderlin himself and especially in poems such as “Wie wenn am Feiertage…”
and “Hälfte des Lebens,” as interpreted by scholars ranging from Strauss to Hei-
degger and Szondi. Moreover, the dialogic principle, as envisioned in Buber’s
writings – most notably in Ich und Du as well as in shorter pieces such as the
1952 commentary on “Seit ein Gespräch wir sind” – lays bare the discrepancy
between the ideal and its fulfillment, both in the metaphorical and historical
spheres. Hölderlin was a much-discussed literary figure, not just between
Strauss and Buber, but also within the wider German-speaking literary and in-
tellectual circles in Jerusalem from the 1930s onwards.84 Whatever Buber’s moti-
vations may have been when bringing Heidegger and Strauss, via Hölderlin,
into an indirect, imagined conversation, the gesture unveils the absence and
difficulty of dialogue, and the parallel continuous striving towards it, against
all odds.

82 Ibid.
83 Ibid.
84 See, for example, Werner Kraft’s descriptions of his conversations about Hölderlin with
Buber from 1959 onwards in Werner Kraft, Gespräche mit Martin Buber (Munich: Kösel, 1966),
60, 64–54, 74, 102, 105–106, 138. They also specifically discussed Strauss’s and Heidegger’s
writings on Hölderlin as well as Buber’s 1952 commentary.

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Naharaim 2014, 8(2): 289–307

Gedächtnis“) and as reference or suggestion (“Hinweis”) Buber enacts the dialo-

I. Strauss: Where Buber and Hölderlin Meet

highlights how foundational dialogical ideas were to Strauss’s concept of poet-

Wort bin ich, und Wort bist du,

mediated, according to Witte, by the contemporary Hölderlin renaissance of the

II. A Twofold Gesture: Buber on Hölderlin’s

Viel erfahren hat der Mensch. Der Himmlischen viele genannt,

ideas resonate in Strauss’s poetological reflections and are complemented by

In a short text on Stefan George likewise included in Wintersaat, Strauss depicts

III. Strauss on “Hälfte des Lebens”:

Mit gelben Birnen hänget

Weh mir, wo nehm ich, wenn

Wort bin ich, und Wort bist du,

Strauss’s emphasis on the metaphor of water – as point of origin (“Brunn,”

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