by Corry Shores
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The Rhythm of Your Different Self
Friedrich Hölderlin
Remarks on Oedipus and Antigone
[Thanks wikimedia and www.zeno.org]
What’s Hölderlin’s Commentary Got to Do with You?
In a poem, representations, sensations, and reasons will appear in different successions. Yet lawful calculation will guide these appearances. In tragedy, the distribution within the succession tends toward a state of balance. (101; V,196)
Tragedies will have on onrush of change in the representations, culminating at a highest point. To counter-balance the disproportion in the pace of the drama, what is needed at that highest point is a “counter-rhythmic rupture” (gegenrhythmische Unterbrechung). He calls this the cesura (Cäsur). (102a; V,196)
So in the calculation of the rhythmic sequence in the tragic play, there will be two parts, divided by the cesura. Both halves will relate to each other in a way that makes them appear as though they have common weight, even though they move at different speeds. (102a; V,196)
When the initial part of the tragedy has more ‘pressure’, then the counter-rhythmic cesura will be placed more toward the beginning. When instead the ending part has more pressure, the cesura will be placed toward the end. This is because the more rapid parts seem to weigh more. (102b; V,196) [So long stretches of low pressure are balanced by small sections of high pressure, found on the other side of the cesura fulcrum-point].
Oedipus Rex’s cesura is found toward the beginning; Antigone’s is toward the end. (102c; V,196) But in both cases, Tiresias’ speech forms the cesura. The seer is the figure who removes human-kind from our ‘life-sphere’, that is, the center of our inner life, and places us into another world and into the sphere of the dead. (102cd; V,197)
Hölderlin displays them this way:
(a) is the counter-rhythmic rupture of the cesura; (c) is the beginning, here fast paced and weightier, while the (b) is the slower-moving tail-end of the tragedy. ("Remarks on 'Antigone' " 109c.d; V,265)
Early in the story, Oedipus postures himself in complete antagonism toward the one who brought the plague upon Thebes.
Hölderlin notes how in the second half we see Oedipus in “the desperate struggle to find himself, the brutal, almost shameless strife to gain control of himself, the madly wild seeking for a consciousness.” (“das verzweifelnde Ringen, zu sich selbst zu kommen, das niedertretende fast schaamlose Streben, seiner mächtig zu werden, das närrischwilde Nachsuchen nach einem Bewußtseyn.”) (p.104-105; V,199a.)
In the speeches toward the end we see “the insane questioning for a consciousness” (p.105d; V,200) in his mad search for who he is.
As Oedipus comes to uncover the tragic difference he shares with himself, we see the tremendous encounter between the gods and man, expressed in the dramatic dialogue. Hölderlin says that in these moments, man forgets himself, just as the gods forget themselves. [Normally tragedies end with the tragic character dying. But at the end of Oedipus Rex, he is not yet dead. Rather, his death is a prolonged wandering journey, ending in a painless rather than tortured transition to the afterlife. But his tragic prophesy, known even before he was born, suggests to us that it would be fitting for Oedipus to die a tragic death. So in a way,] the beginning and end of Oedipus’ life story does not correspond or ‘rhyme’. [The gods who safe-guard man’s fate and ensure justice in this case seem to turn their concerns away from mankind. So normally the gods fill the time of our life-story with our fated events. But instead for Oedipus, he is left with the empty form of time. It is a pure time, an empty time, because it is unfilled by a fated line of development and so it is just there as time in pure immediacy. But time in pure immediacy is not like the usual extending time we normally consider to be time. It rather is time unmediated by duration. It is time as the condition for change. But we might think of time in this a priori form as being the way we receive internal moments as being successive. If one moment is the same as another, then there has not really been a passage to a new moment, and hence there is no succession. Rather, each moment must be different than the rest in order for them to succeed one another. So if time in its pure form is merely our manner of receiving succession, and if succession at its basis is difference, then this a priori time is our being in a state of receiving difference as it is immediately given to us. The difference that is most immediately given to us is the difference that makes us who we are. We experience it in many ways. Oedipus always was, from his fated beginning, someone who would never in his life kill his father and bed his mother, while also he was someone who undeniably commits these very deeds. At the tragic cesura moment, he cannot be distracted from this. The pain of his tragic feeling lies not merely in him realizing he committed these acts. It as well is the pain of realizing that he is not his own self. He himself is other to himself. Not as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Not as a new self regretting an old self. It is he himself, right there and then, in that moment of realization– he then is both himself and not himself at the same time. He realizes he is the criminal, all while he considers this criminal to be completely foreign to himself. So he is brought down into himself, which is a pure irreconcilable internal difference with himself. This also brings him to the conditions of time, for two reasons. 1) He is brought to the pure reception of difference. He at that moment is entirely consumed by his internal difference. He is in a state of purely receiving difference, which is a priori time, the conditions for our internal events having succession. So whenever we are absorbed solely in the internal difference that makes us who we are, we are also putting aside from our attention those changes that fill time, and instead find ourselves wrapped-up in the conditions allowing for those changes to appear successively in time. 2) When this happens to us, we are no longer observing what came before us and what comes after us in the succession. We instead are concerned with the grounds for our experiencing succession (our internal reception of difference). Successive events come secondary to the pure conditions of succession. In a way, the rest is not determined, in the sense that we are not in a moment placed within our life’s time-line, but rather that our life’s time-line shoots-out secondarily from these pure inner conditions. We see this expressed metaphorically with the turning-away of the gods. They are no longer there to tell us the story of our lives. Rather, we are left to wander an unforged road.] Hölderlin says that in these tragic cesura moments, humans forget themselves [that is, for example, Oedipus realizes he is not his very own self, and loses all sense of his role in society and his family, and even his responsibilities to himself, when he tears out his eyes]; and the gods forget themselves, because they are purely time [The gods no longer observe their role in the lives of mortals, and in a way become just the powers of fate itself, without any application to fated mortal beings.] The gods-time is unfaithful, because it no longer attempts to make Oedipus’ life-story correspond to the expectations made at the beginning by the prophesies, which are supposedly the messages of gods to men. Humanity becomes unfaithful; for, as we see in Oedipus’ case for example, he now finds himself on a wandering path in his life’s story which can no longer harmonize with his beginnings.
Hölderlin, Friedrich. Sämtliche Werke. Fünfter Band. Stuttgart: Verlag W. Kohlhammer, 1952.
Hölderlin, Friedrich. Remarques sur Oedipe. Remarques sur Antigone. François Fédier, transl. Paris: Union générale is’éditions, 1965.
Hölderlin, Friedrich. Essays and Letters on Theory. Thomas Pfau, trans & ed. Albany NY: SUNY Press, 1988.
Image Credits:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hoelderlin_1792.jpg
sourced from:
http://www.zeno.org/Literatur/I/holdepor
Friedrich Hölderlin
Remarks on Oedipus and Antigone
[Thanks wikimedia and www.zeno.org]
What’s Hölderlin’s Commentary Got to Do with You?
We might not realize it, but we are never who we are. We are always different from ourselves. In fact, difference is what makes us who we are. Rather than speaking of our ‘personal identity’, we might be better served to consider our ‘personal non-identity’. It is our not-being ourself, our always being internally different from ourselves. It is not that we are Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, where there are two conflicting sides of us that each expresses itself in different circumstances. It is something more profound. And it is not simply just that we are different today then we were yesterday, although this is part of the situation. Right now, without taking time and change into account- we right now are different from our very own selves. And it is this difference that makes us who we are. When we become aware of this, we realize our pure liberty. We are not confined to be anybody at all. This is not merely because we are always changing; for, our always changing is based on the fact that we are never self-same to begin with. Our already being different from ourselves is the condition which allows us to change. But when we, like Oedipus, descend into our pure self-difference, when we feel how we already begin by being different from ourselves, time for us is no longer a line of consistent development extending out from us. Rather time is empty; time is what is filled by changes. It is empty and open; we, then, are free and purely open too. The changes we undergo are what fill the open receptiveness we create by always being different from ourselves, even before time and change enter into consideration. We are difference. We are time open and free.
Brief Summary
In the Oedipus Rex tragedy, there is a break in the rhythmic pace of the story’s development. It happens when Oedipus discovers that there is an irreconcilable difference that makes him who he is: both someone who would never commit horrible crimes, and a person who in fact did do them. At this moment, the drama’s rhythm shifts pace. This cesura is both a break in time and in Oedipus' self-hood. For, by becoming painfully aware of his internal self-difference, he also happens upon the a priori conditions for space and time.
Points Relative to Deleuze
[Under Ongoing Revision]
[Under Ongoing Revision]
Deleuze will claim that time at its basis is our split-self. Hölderlin describes the cesura he finds in Sophocles' tragedies. It is the ‘rhythmic’ moment when the pressures of the drama’s pace enter a transition. In the case of Oedipus, it is also the moment when the tragic character confronts himself as being other to himself. Deleuze seems to be saying that we are always at this rhythmic point. Time is continual variation based on our immediate internal differential relation. It is not that there is one moment along with its successor, and the differences are to be found secondarily between the two. No, rather the succession is only possible because in the first place we are open in an a priori way to receive internal moments as being different from one another. It is as though we internally open our arms to difference itself, so that we may receive differences, sometimes in the form of changes happening over time. But the conditions for change is our mode of reception, our taking-things-in as difference. The most immediate difference we are receptive-to is the difference that makes-up our selfhood. An intensional semiotics or logic would say that ‘son of Jocasta’ and ‘husband of Jocasta’ both share the same extensional term, 'Oedipus'. But we would not say that their meanings are exactly equal. They have different intensional references. Our personal non-identity is not something found merely in an extension. Oedipus is not Oedipus. Rather, Oedipus is the intensional difference that makes it possible for him to be expressed both as the son of Jocasta and the husband of Jocasta. Before Oedipus had this realization, he was not aware of the incompatibilities making him who he is.
If we are indistinguishable from ourselves, we cannot then appear to ourselves, and we cannot be aware of ourselves. As we noted before from Hölderlin’s other writings, some internal differentiation is needed for I to equal I. He writes:
In other words, we cannot have just one extension, we cannot just be Oedipus, as in his case. We must instead have different intensional meanings. The I’s of “I am I” must be intensionally different. And thus what makes us who we are is the difference that makes it possible for the two to stand apart all while being forced-together in the same personal non-identity. This is the most immediate difference we are receptive to. And the immediate reception of difference is the a priori grounds for time. So when we like Oedipus are forced upon the intensive confrontation within our internal self-differentiation, we come more closely to a sense of the rhythmic foundations of our experience of time.
“I am I” is the most fitting example for this concept of arche-separation as theoretical separation, for in the practical arche-separation it [the “I”] opposes the non-I, not itself.” [Hölderlin, “Judgment and Being” 37b; V,216]
Being must not be confused with identity. If I say: I am I, the subject (“I”) and the object | (“I”) are not united in such a way that no separation could be performed without violating the essence of what is to be separated; on the contrary, the I is only possible by means of this separation of the I from the I. [37-38; V,216-217] How can I say: “I”! without self-consciousness? Yet how is self-consciousness possible? In opposing myself to myself, separating myself from myself, yet in recognizing myself as the same in the opposed regardless of this separation. Yet to what extent as the same? I can, I must ask in this manner; for in another respect it [the “I”] is opposed to itself. Hence identity is not a union of object and subject which simply occurred, hence identity is not = to absolute Being. [38a, V,217]
In other words, we cannot have just one extension, we cannot just be Oedipus, as in his case. We must instead have different intensional meanings. The I’s of “I am I” must be intensionally different. And thus what makes us who we are is the difference that makes it possible for the two to stand apart all while being forced-together in the same personal non-identity. This is the most immediate difference we are receptive to. And the immediate reception of difference is the a priori grounds for time. So when we like Oedipus are forced upon the intensive confrontation within our internal self-differentiation, we come more closely to a sense of the rhythmic foundations of our experience of time.
Summary of Selected Parts of Hölderlin's
Remarks on Oedipus and Antigone
Remarks on Oedipus and Antigone
Hölderlin writes that modern poetry lacks a form of ‘lawful calculation’ (gesezlichen Kalkul). ("Remarks on 'Oedipus'" p.101; V,195)
In a poem, representations, sensations, and reasons will appear in different successions. Yet lawful calculation will guide these appearances. In tragedy, the distribution within the succession tends toward a state of balance. (101; V,196)
Tragedies will have on onrush of change in the representations, culminating at a highest point. To counter-balance the disproportion in the pace of the drama, what is needed at that highest point is a “counter-rhythmic rupture” (gegenrhythmische Unterbrechung). He calls this the cesura (Cäsur). (102a; V,196)
So in the calculation of the rhythmic sequence in the tragic play, there will be two parts, divided by the cesura. Both halves will relate to each other in a way that makes them appear as though they have common weight, even though they move at different speeds. (102a; V,196)
When the initial part of the tragedy has more ‘pressure’, then the counter-rhythmic cesura will be placed more toward the beginning. When instead the ending part has more pressure, the cesura will be placed toward the end. This is because the more rapid parts seem to weigh more. (102b; V,196) [So long stretches of low pressure are balanced by small sections of high pressure, found on the other side of the cesura fulcrum-point].
Oedipus Rex’s cesura is found toward the beginning; Antigone’s is toward the end. (102c; V,196) But in both cases, Tiresias’ speech forms the cesura. The seer is the figure who removes human-kind from our ‘life-sphere’, that is, the center of our inner life, and places us into another world and into the sphere of the dead. (102cd; V,197)
Hölderlin displays them this way:
_/__ and __\_
The first one is Oedipus and the second one Antigone. To explain the parts, he depicts it like this:c__a\_b
(a) is the counter-rhythmic rupture of the cesura; (c) is the beginning, here fast paced and weightier, while the (b) is the slower-moving tail-end of the tragedy. ("Remarks on 'Antigone' " 109c.d; V,265)
Early in the story, Oedipus postures himself in complete antagonism toward the one who brought the plague upon Thebes.
“For that man[So we see that one source for the onrushing forces of the play comes from Oedipus’ drive to discover and punish the criminal, who really is Oedipus himself. Later we will find that this drive will push back upon him, causing him to stand in the pure immediacy of his own self. He will see that he is internally differentiated between the self who thinks he would never do such a thing and the self who undeniably did commit these crimes.]
I accurse, whoever he be, in this land,
Where I hold sovereignty and throne;
Not shall one welcome him, not greet him
Not take him to sacrifice and not to offerings.
This I am shown
By the divine oracle, of Pytho, etc. [11. 226 ff] ("Remarks on 'Oedipus'" 103-104; V,198)
Hölderlin notes how in the second half we see Oedipus in “the desperate struggle to find himself, the brutal, almost shameless strife to gain control of himself, the madly wild seeking for a consciousness.” (“das verzweifelnde Ringen, zu sich selbst zu kommen, das niedertretende fast schaamlose Streben, seiner mächtig zu werden, das närrischwilde Nachsuchen nach einem Bewußtseyn.”) (p.104-105; V,199a.)
In the speeches toward the end we see “the insane questioning for a consciousness” (p.105d; V,200) in his mad search for who he is.
As Oedipus comes to uncover the tragic difference he shares with himself, we see the tremendous encounter between the gods and man, expressed in the dramatic dialogue. Hölderlin says that in these moments, man forgets himself, just as the gods forget themselves. [Normally tragedies end with the tragic character dying. But at the end of Oedipus Rex, he is not yet dead. Rather, his death is a prolonged wandering journey, ending in a painless rather than tortured transition to the afterlife. But his tragic prophesy, known even before he was born, suggests to us that it would be fitting for Oedipus to die a tragic death. So in a way,] the beginning and end of Oedipus’ life story does not correspond or ‘rhyme’. [The gods who safe-guard man’s fate and ensure justice in this case seem to turn their concerns away from mankind. So normally the gods fill the time of our life-story with our fated events. But instead for Oedipus, he is left with the empty form of time. It is a pure time, an empty time, because it is unfilled by a fated line of development and so it is just there as time in pure immediacy. But time in pure immediacy is not like the usual extending time we normally consider to be time. It rather is time unmediated by duration. It is time as the condition for change. But we might think of time in this a priori form as being the way we receive internal moments as being successive. If one moment is the same as another, then there has not really been a passage to a new moment, and hence there is no succession. Rather, each moment must be different than the rest in order for them to succeed one another. So if time in its pure form is merely our manner of receiving succession, and if succession at its basis is difference, then this a priori time is our being in a state of receiving difference as it is immediately given to us. The difference that is most immediately given to us is the difference that makes us who we are. We experience it in many ways. Oedipus always was, from his fated beginning, someone who would never in his life kill his father and bed his mother, while also he was someone who undeniably commits these very deeds. At the tragic cesura moment, he cannot be distracted from this. The pain of his tragic feeling lies not merely in him realizing he committed these acts. It as well is the pain of realizing that he is not his own self. He himself is other to himself. Not as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Not as a new self regretting an old self. It is he himself, right there and then, in that moment of realization– he then is both himself and not himself at the same time. He realizes he is the criminal, all while he considers this criminal to be completely foreign to himself. So he is brought down into himself, which is a pure irreconcilable internal difference with himself. This also brings him to the conditions of time, for two reasons. 1) He is brought to the pure reception of difference. He at that moment is entirely consumed by his internal difference. He is in a state of purely receiving difference, which is a priori time, the conditions for our internal events having succession. So whenever we are absorbed solely in the internal difference that makes us who we are, we are also putting aside from our attention those changes that fill time, and instead find ourselves wrapped-up in the conditions allowing for those changes to appear successively in time. 2) When this happens to us, we are no longer observing what came before us and what comes after us in the succession. We instead are concerned with the grounds for our experiencing succession (our internal reception of difference). Successive events come secondary to the pure conditions of succession. In a way, the rest is not determined, in the sense that we are not in a moment placed within our life’s time-line, but rather that our life’s time-line shoots-out secondarily from these pure inner conditions. We see this expressed metaphorically with the turning-away of the gods. They are no longer there to tell us the story of our lives. Rather, we are left to wander an unforged road.] Hölderlin says that in these tragic cesura moments, humans forget themselves [that is, for example, Oedipus realizes he is not his very own self, and loses all sense of his role in society and his family, and even his responsibilities to himself, when he tears out his eyes]; and the gods forget themselves, because they are purely time [The gods no longer observe their role in the lives of mortals, and in a way become just the powers of fate itself, without any application to fated mortal beings.] The gods-time is unfaithful, because it no longer attempts to make Oedipus’ life-story correspond to the expectations made at the beginning by the prophesies, which are supposedly the messages of gods to men. Humanity becomes unfaithful; for, as we see in Oedipus’ case for example, he now finds himself on a wandering path in his life’s story which can no longer harmonize with his beginnings.
At such moments man forgets himself and the god and turns around like a traitor, naturally in saintly manner. – In the utmost form of suffering, namely, there exists nothing but the conditions of time and space.
Inside it, man forgets himself because he exists entirely for the moment, the god [forgets himself] because he is nothing but time; and either one is unfaithful, time, because it is reversed categorically at such a moment, no longer fitting beginning and end; man, because at this moment of categorical reversal he has to follow and thus can no longer resemble the beginning in what follows. (108a.b)
In solchem Momente vergißt der Mensch sich und den Gott, und kehret, freilich heiliger Weise, wie ein Verräther sich um. – In der äußersten Gränze des Leidens bestehet nemlich nichts mehr, als die Bedingungen der Zeit oder des Raums.
In dieser vergißt such der Mensch, weil there ganz im Moment ist ; de Gott, weil er nichts als Zeit ist ; und beides ist untreu, die Zeit, weil sie in solchem Momente sich kategorisch wendet, und Anfang und Ende sich in ihr schlechterdings nicht reiment läßt ; der Mensch, weil er in diesem Momente der kategorischen Umkehr folgen muß, hiermit im Folgenden schlechterdings nicht dem Anfänglichen gleichen kann. (V,202)
En un tel moment, l’homme oublie : il s’oublie soi-même et oublie le Dieu, et fait volte-face, sans manquer certes à la piété, comme un traître. – A la limite extrême du déchirement, il ne reste en effet plus rien que les conditions du temps ou de l’espace.
A cette limite, il oublie, l’homme, soi-même, parce qu’il est tout entier à l’intérieur du moment ; le Dieu parce qu’il n’est rien que Temps ; et de part et d’autre on est infidèle, le Temps parce qu’en un tel moment il vire catégoriquement, et qu’en lui début et fin ne se laissent plus du tout accorder comme des rimes, l’homme, parce qu’à l’intérieur de ce moment, il lui faut suivre le détournement catégorique, et qu’ainsi par la suite, il ne peut plus en rien s’égaler à la situation initiale. (65b.d)
Hölderlin, Friedrich. Sämtliche Werke. Fünfter Band. Stuttgart: Verlag W. Kohlhammer, 1952.
Hölderlin, Friedrich. Remarques sur Oedipe. Remarques sur Antigone. François Fédier, transl. Paris: Union générale is’éditions, 1965.
Hölderlin, Friedrich. Essays and Letters on Theory. Thomas Pfau, trans & ed. Albany NY: SUNY Press, 1988.
Image Credits:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hoelderlin_1792.jpg
sourced from:
http://www.zeno.org/Literatur/I/holdepor
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