Holderlin's Hochzeit

The world made right will look much the same,
the slightest difference would correct things.
Just to move a stone is more than a game;
imagine Holderlin’s world in a wing

of the same house, prepared for his wedding.
With whom ? Is she Susette Gontard, divorced
from the banker ? Do not think his bedding
anyone else, makes light of his remorse.

Do not lift the veil. The world is almost
the same, but it is not. Who is brought back ?
Him ? Or, she saved for them to be the host
and hostess of an age that lacks

for nothing ? He moved his verse’s small stone.
Leave them the use of what is most own.

Woodford Halse - 26 November 2025

Well, a wedding is a Hochzeit in German. Imagine Holderlin’s life put right, from schizophrenia or whatever the problem was. Sorry about the missing umlauts but one must make do with one has got.

You may recall I wrote The Loss of Madness - A Tribute to Holderlin which I published with Tuwhiri in Wellington in 2022. If I reissued it, I would add this sonnet to it. My main all-time Holderlin sonnet appears as the conclusion to Crete 1941 ( 2021 ).

A touch of Euripides’ Alcestis, here, with Holderlin’s Herakles implied, and not referred to.