Friedrich Hölderlin at a manuscript overlooking a landscape with columns

Where the stones speak of Apollo

Friedrich Hölderlin (1770–1843), a German poet, opens his hymn Der Einzige with a question addressed to himself. Why should the ancient coasts of Greece hold his affections so strongly that at times he loves them even more than his own country? In the second version, a few stones bring within reach a place of which he could otherwise learn only through someone else's account.

Witnesses to a walk

Apollo comes into view for two lines in the guise of a king. The speaker gives us no portrait and describes none of the king's clothes. What seems worth knowing in the first instance is simply that he once walked here. It makes sense to let the stones testify to that particular thing. A road can still be traced long after the person who travelled it has passed out of sight.

I am there where, as the stones tell, Apollo walked
In the guise of a king,

– Friedrich Hölderlin, Der Einzige, 2012, p. 164.[1]

A landscape finds a voice

The brief aside about the stones changes the sound of the poem. A solitary voice has been wondering what draws it to these coasts. Now an answer seems to come from the landscape itself. Read aloud, the line pauses long enough to take in this other voice before going on with Apollo.

Later the speaker names Olympia, Parnassus and Ephesus. Each name brings another part of the ancient world close. Yet among these vivid presences he keeps looking for someone else, the figure he comes to address as Christ. The ease with which a handful of stones can summon Apollo makes the experience of that other absence particularly moving.