The River Told Me.

Upstream Danube Philosophy

Herbert Hrachovec Department of Philosophy University of Vienna

Now come, fire! We are impatient To look upon the Day, And when the trial Has passed through the knees One may perceive the cries in the wood. But, as for us, we sing from the Indus, Arrived from afar, and From the Alpheus, long we Have sought what is fitting, Not without wings may one Reach out for that which is nearest Like so And get to the other side. But here we wish to build. For rivers make arable The land. For when herbs are growing And to the same in summer The animals go to drink, There too will human kind go.

This one, however, is called the Ister. Beautifully he lives. The pillars foliage burns, And stirs. Wildly they stand Supporting one another; above, A second measure, juts out The roof of rocks. No wonder, therefore, I say, this river Invited Hercules, Distantly gleaming, down by Olympus, When he, to look for shadows, Came up from the sultry isthmus, For full of courage they were In that place, but, because of the spirits, Theres need of coolness too. That is why that hero Preferred to come here to the wellsprings and yellow banks, Highly fragrant on top, and black With fir woods, in whose depths A huntsman loves to amble At noon, and growth is audible In resinous trees of the Ister,

Yet it seems To travel backwards and I think it must come from The East. Much could Be said about this. And why does It cling to the mountains, straight? The other, The Rhine, has gone away Sideways. Not for nothing rivers flow Through dry land. But how? A sign is needed, Nothing else, plain and honest, so that Sun and Moon it may bear in mind, inseparable, And go away, day and night no less, and The Heavenly feel warm one beside the other. That also is why these are The joy of the Highest. For how Would he get down? And like Hertha green They are the children of Heaven. But all too patient He seems to me, not More free, and nearly derisive. For when

Day is due to begin In youth, where it starts To grow, another already there Drives high the splendour, and like foals He grinds the bit, and far off the breezes Can hear the commotion, If he is contented; But the rock needs incisions And the earth needs furrows, Would be desolate else, unabiding; Yet what that one does, the river, Nobody knows.

(Michael Hamburger Translation, With A. Sol Invictus Emendation)

http://poetrybeingzen.blogspot.com/2007/11/hlderlin-der-ister-translation.html

http://www.ub.es/medame/danubi1.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b3/Europa_Ludwigskanal_Rhein_Main_Donau.png/532pxEuropa_Ludwigskanal_Rhein_Main_Donau.png

Two Itineraries
river mouth Baile Herculane Vukovar Mauthausen Straubing/Pfatter Regensburg Beuron Vhrenbach Furtwangen 1 4 2 5 6 9 3 7 8

Framework Sorge

Being and Time Rektoratsrede Riverie

The being of Dasein means: to-be-ahead-of-oneself-already-in-(the world) as being-with (beings encountered in the world). This being fulfils the signification of the term care, which is used here purely in an ontologicalexistenzial way. Every ontically intended tendency of being such as worry (having cares) or carefreeness remains excluded from this signification.
(Being and Time, p. 192)

Whether this will or will not happen depends solely on whether we, as a historical-spiritual people, still and once again will ourselves or whether we no longer will ourselves. Each individual participates in this decision even when, and especially when, he evades it. But we do will that our people fulfill its historical mission. We do will ourselves. For the young and the youngest strength of the people, which is already reaching beyond us, has already decided the matter. But we will only fully understand the magnificence and greatness of this new departure when we carry within us that profound and far-reaching thoughtfulness that gave ancient Greek wisdom the saying:
... [All that is great stands in the storm ...] (... to sway ...)
(Plato, Republic, 497 d. 9)
Rektoratsrede, p. 13

Martin Heidegger: Hlderlin's Hymn The Ister, p.15

German Visionaries: The Dead End

Hans Jrgen Syberberg
at the Villa Wahnfried: Winifred Wagner on Poetry lost

Fault Lines

The Ister Mix The Hlderlin Autographs Generalplan Ost

Diese rechnende, entdeckende, erobernde Durchmessung der Welt vollzieht der neuzeitliche Mensch in einer Weise, deren ausgeprgtes metaphysisches Kennzeichen die neuzeitliche Maschinentechnik ist. Metaphysisch unentschieden bleibt in diesem Vorgang, ob das raumgreifende und zeitraffende Vorgehen des neuzeitlichen Menschen nur dazu dient, innerhalb des Ganzen des Planeten eine Stellung zu beziehen, die der Lebenszeit dieses Menschentums den ihm gemen Lebensraum sichert; oder ob diese Raum- und Zeitsicherung in sich die weitertragende Bestimmung hat, ihrerseits neue Mglichkeiten des raumgreifenden und zeitraffenden Vorgehens zu erreichen und dieses zu steigern. ... Wenn es im Blick auf diesen Vorgang, der alle Vlkerschaften und Nationen des Planeten erfat hat, momentweise so aussehen mag, als werde der neuzeitliche Mensch zu einem bloen planetarischen Abenteurer, so tritt doch zugleich da eine andere ... Erscheinung in den Vordergrund: Die raumgreifenden Bewegungen stehen im Zusammenhang mit Siedlung und Umsiedlung. Siedeln ist als Gegenbewegung eine Bewegung zur Bindung an einen Platz. Allein, auch hier ist unser Gesichtskreis viel zu beschrnkt, als da entschieden oder auch nur vermutet werden knnte, ob eine Drosselung des Abenteuerlichen ein Heimischwerden in sich schliet, oder doch wenigstens eine Bedingung desselben auszumachen vermag. (Martin Heidegger: Der Ister p. 59)

new possibilities to proceed by occupying space and snatching time

modern technology are connected with settlement and resettlement

whether reducing the adventurous includes (a) becoming familiar

Soon after Germany conquered Poland in September 1939, Hitler directed SS chief Heinrich Himmler to begin distilling his geopolitical aims into a formal plan of action. The newly conquered territories of Poland, and lands Germany intended to conquer in the western Soviet Union, lands Himmler referred to as the "California of Europe," would be "Germanized." In 1940, Himmler had experts in the Reich Office for the Strengthening of Germandom (RKFDV) and the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) develop plans for the territory won by the Third Reich through its military conquests in Eastern Europe. Known alternately by their names as the Generalplan Ost or the Gesamtplan Ost (GPO), the different versions of these plans envisaged a comprehensive restructuring of social, political, ethnic, and economic life in occupied Bohemia and Moravia, Poland, the Baltic States, and regions of the Soviet Union west of the Ural Mountains according to National Socialist racialpolitical principles. The GPO was in effect a utopian, ideologically oriented plan for the creation of a German land-based empire in the east. As such, the Generalplan Ost represented the most detailed statement ever produced during the Third Reich of long-term foreign policy goals that Adolf Hitler had first articulated in the mid-1920s. In their place, the SS intended to settle communities of millions German warrior-farmers (Wehrbauern) from Germany, Holland, Norway, Denmark, and other countries with Germanic-Nordic racial stock would settle in the lands between the eastern frontier and the German homeland.
http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/GPO/Generalplanostnew.htm