Nature Writing in Transcendental Perspective: Friedrich Hölderlin and Henry David Thoreau

Abstract

Proceeding from the common roots of Friedrich Hölderlin and Henry David Thoreau in the philosophical ideas of (German) idealism, this essay explores concepts of nature writing in the work of both authors. Their philosophical and literary reflections show that Hölderlin critically distances himself from Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s systematic philosophy of pure and subjective idealism as Thoreau critically dissociates his concept from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s transcendental idealism. Based on Lawrence Buell’s criteria defining nature writing, Thoreau’s Walden: or, Life in the Woods and Hölderlin’s hymn “The Rhine” are examined as literary examples that share the common aim of acknowledging nature in the sense of an entity having its own agency and power of understanding, as opposed to the “I” or the “spirit.” Special attention is paid to four areas: first, to Hölderlin’s and Thoreau’s redefinition of the quality “pure” that had largely been associated with the term “understanding” in Kantian philosophy for natural phenomena, for example, as water; to a receptive orientation with respect to humans and nature as well as the overlapping of this polarization by a concept of processuality; and, finally, to a discussion of the “unconditioned” as the reason for being.

This essay was translated by Dominik Ohrem.

Under “nature writing,” the Oxford Handbook of Transcendentalism mentions (among other things) Lawrence Buell’s four criteria of what he calls an “environmental text.” The first of these is that in such a text, nonhuman nature does not simply figure as a “framing device” but as “a presence that begins to suggest that human history is implicated in natural history.” Second, the interests of human beings are not the only “legitimate interest” in the text. Third, the responsibility of humans for the natural world is a “part of the text’s ethical orientation.” And, fourth, the text in question employs or at least implies a concept of nature as a “process rather than as a constant or a given” (Buell 1995, 6–7, original emphasis; Gura 2010, 409–410). Using these definitional criteria as a guideline, in this essay I wish to discuss the phenomenon of nature writing in the work of Friedrich Hölderlin (1770–1843) and Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) from a comparative perspective. Thoreau and his mentor Emerson are commonly regarded as “canonical originators of American nature writing” (Walls 2011, 99). In contrast, Hölderlin’s significance for ecocritical perspectives has mostly been neglected (Bartosch, Grimm 2018, 1–16). This omission is especially surprising given American roots of transcendentalism in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German idealism, a school of thought in which Hölderlin played a significant role (Chai 1987, 62–73, 141–155, 279–288, 331–342; Pochmann 1978, 153–207, 432–436). My essay begins by highlighting the relationship between the transcendental approach as it emerged within Kantian German idealism and the perspectives of cultural ecology. In a second step, I will discuss some shared (proto-)ecological aspects in Hölderlin’s theory of poetry and Thoreau’s poetic autobiography in Walden. Finally, I will illustrate these theoretical considerations by looking at the examples of Thoreau’s Walden and Hölderlin’s hymn “The Rhine.”

1 The Transcendental Approach in the Context of Cultural Ecology

In his famous essay “Nature,” Ralph Waldo Emerson argues that “[i]dealism acquaints us with the total disparity between the evidence of our own being, and the evidence of the world’s being” (Emerson 1971a, 37). Emerson’s observation of a discrepancy between humanity and the world (or the nonhuman environment) was inspired by a philosophical sea change that originated in German idealism and is commonly identified with Kantian transcendentalist philosophy, which became familiar to the ensemble of American transcendentalists around Emerson and Thoreau primarily through their acquaintance with Germanist scholar and philosopher Frederic Henry Hedge.¹

To get a better understanding of the meaning of “transcendental,” it is helpful to begin with Immanuel Kant’s own definition: “I call all cognition transcendental,” he writes, “that is occupied not so much with objects but rather with our a priori concepts of objects in general” (Kant 1998, 134, original emphasis). In this way, Kant locates all processes of cognition within the mind of the subject: knowledge transcends sensory “forms (of intuition)”; these are connected by categories that are already present in the mind in what Kant calls the “faculty of rules” (Ibid., 242, original emphasis). Based on these a priori structures in the mind, empirical object-bound perception and rational-conceptual cognition become conjoined. It is in reference to this form of knowledge that Kant coins the term “transcendental philosophy,” which observes the following principle: “The I think must be able to accompany all my representations” (Ibid., 246, original emphasis). Pertaining to a divine truth and (thus) transcending human consciousness, the “things-in-themselves” are no longer accessible. This view poses something of a challenge to the Puritan background of New England transcendentalism, which had traditionally endowed nature with an “unusually high theoretical value … as evidence and analogue of man’s relation to God” (Buell 1973, 147). Accordingly, as an object of poetry and philosophical discourse, nature was supposed to give expression to the relationship between the human and the divine. Hedge formulates this challenge as follows:

In the transcendental system, the object is to discover in every form of finite existence, an infinite and unconditioned as the ground of its existence, or rather the grounds of our knowledge of its existence, to refer all phenomena to certain noumena,² or laws of cognition. It is not a ratio essendi, but a ratio cognoscendi; it seeks not to explain the existence of God and creation, objectively considered, but to explain our knowledge of their existence. (Hedge 1833, 108–129, 121)

The necessity to establish an unconditioned principle of thought follows from the transcendental approach. Thus, Hedge elevates the process of cognition to the level of the Kantian I think. In contrast, Emerson envisions consequences that extend beyond the disparity between “man” and the material world or environment, claiming that the human being “stands on the point betwixt the inward spirit & the outward matter” (Emerson 1960–1982, 103). Cultural ecologist David Abram sees this separation of (inner) thought or mind from the experience of (exterior) nature as expressive of a long Western tradition of human–nature dualism that is already evident in the Cartesian cogito. The consequence of this dualistic tradition was an increasing isolation of humankind “from the rest of material nature” that gained particular traction during the Enlightenment period. “By conceiving of itself as something entirely distinct from palpable nature,” Abram argues, “the rational mind of the Enlightenment was empowered to pursue its giddy dream of comprehending, and mastering, every aspect of the material cosmos” (Abram 2010, 108). In a similar vein, Bruno Latour claims that the tension between the rational, thinking subject of the Enlightenment and the natural world intensifies with Kant: “Things-in-themselves become inaccessible while, symmetrically, the transcendental subject becomes infinitely remote from the world … In the end, if there is a pair that no one can reconcile, it is the pole of Nature and the pole of Spirit” (Latour 1993, 56–57). The “book of nature,” which had given insight into the relationship between humans and God, became illegible.

It was German idealism that tried to bridge this chasm between humans and nature by way of a critical reappraisal of the Kantian I think, a project that is clearly reflected in the subject philosophy of Johann Gottlieb Fichte. American transcendentalists became familiar with the latter through Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Aids to Reflection ([1829] 1993), as exemplified by Emerson’s reference to a new “Reflective or Philosophical Age” (Emerson 1971b, 66). As an expression of the activity of the human mind, reflection was supposed to reconnect humans with “the central and absolute ground of all being” (Marsh 1993, 492–493).³ Fichte’s philosophy of reflection is also relevant to Hölderlin’s poetology and the question of progression, which is why it is useful to have a brief look at it.

For Fichte, the human subject figures as the “I” and the natural, physical world of objects as the “Not-I,” and it is the purpose of reflection to connect these two domains. In this regard, reflection can be understood as “a freely undertaken action of our mind” [eine willkürliche Handlung unseres Geistes] (Fichte 1971, 123; Breazeale 2021, 225)⁴ that seeks an antithetical action in the external physical world, abstracts from it, and introduces this abstraction into the human mind, creating a kind of mental image. In this way, the Not-I and the I, the external world and the activity of human consciousness, are able to create a synthesis. Here, Fichte draws on the Kantian I think. The newly created mental image then functions as a point of departure for the next act of reflection, a system that Fichte summarizes as follows: “In the future series of reflections, we will be reflecting upon facta. The object of this reflection is itself a reflection” (Ibid., 222; 302).⁵ The aim is to “continue” this sequence of juxtaposition and synthesis “for as long as we are able” [und dies fortzusetzen, solange wir können] (Ibid., 115, 218)—a spiral of reflection potentially extending into the infinite. In this way, the I and the Not-I are incorporated into an “absolute I” [absolute[s] Ich] that contains “all reality” [alle Realität] (Ibid., 277; 340). The sought-after unconditioned ground of all being is thus located within human consciousness itself (i.e., in the Kantian notion of the I think).

The question that is most relevant to the ecological aspect of nature writing is what happens with the external world of objects—with the religiously charged, physical world of nature and the body—in Fichte’s system of reflection. Fichte refers to the activity of reflection as “thinking away” [wegdenken], which equals a process of purification (Ibid., 244; 318). “The more of himself a determinate individual is able to think away, the closer his empirical self-consciousness comes to pure self-consciousness” (Ibid., 244; 318)⁶; the body, in contrast, is “for us, lifeless and soulless and is not an I” (Ibid., 274; 338).⁷ Ultimately, the corporeal-natural sphere of the Not-I thus serves as a kind of matrix through which the reflecting I can assert itself. Bruno Latour has shown that this polarization between the natural world and the human subject (or human society) is further exacerbated by the process of “purification,” through which materiality and sensation are dissolved within the process of cognition (Latour 1993, 57; Walls 2011, 99).

Such considerations also shape the work of the New England transcendentalists. Noting Fichte’s influence on Emerson, Philip Gura explains that it was “Idealist philosophers like Friedrich von Schelling and Johann Gottlieb Fichte” who taught Emerson that “an individual’s consciousness is the center from which all knowledge radiates” (Gura 2010, 410).⁸ This is particularly evident in the case of Emerson’s question about the physical world of nature: “Whence is matter? and Whereto? Many truths arise to us out of the recesses of consciousness” (Emerson 1971a, 38). This latter wording is a reference to idealist systematic philosophy. In a way that is comparable to early German Romanticism, Emerson attributes to the human mind the power to penetrate nature, as is the case with what is surely one of his most famous passages: “I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all. The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God” (Ibid., 10). The I is elevated and finds expression in the divinity of nature itself: “the Supreme Being … does not build up nature around us, but puts it forth through us” (Ibid., 38). The human being itself becomes an expression of divine creation, and the goal is “that man has access to the entire mind of the Creator and is himself the creator in the finite” (Ibid.). Like Fichte, Emerson conceives of nature as a “vehicle of thought” that remains subordinate to the human mind: nature is “thoroughly mediate” and “made to serve,” and its role consists in functioning as “a metaphor of the human mind” (Ibid., 17, 25, 22). With regard to the relationship between mind and nature, Emerson claims that “[i]t is essential to a true theory of nature and of man, that it should contain somewhat progressive” (Ibid., 36). Leon Chai credits the progressivity (of reflection) attributed to nature by Emerson to German idealist philosophy:

The movement of mind or thought which he [Emerson] describes, projecting itself outward into the world, then turning back upon itself in self-conscious analysis, is one that derives in essence from German philosophy after Kant, the philosophy of Fichte, Schelling, and, finally, Hegel. (Chai 1987, 147)

Like many of the post-Kantian German philosophers, Emerson remains bound to an anthropocentric framework because, by accessing nature through reflection, he ultimately subordinates it to the human mind. In what follows, I want to engage with Hölderlin’s and Thoreau’s respective answers to this post-transcendentalist conundrum.

2 Hölderlin and Thoreau: Poetological Considerations

In his “When the poet is once in command of the spirit…”, Hölderlin develops a poetology that echoes Buell’s aforementioned criteria for nature writing in several ways. In Hölderlin, the polarization of mind and nature addressed by Abram and Latour manifests itself in the relationship between the “poetic spirit” and the “sphere of influence” [Wirkungskreis].⁹ The latter is permeated by the prereflective sensuous impressions of the physical world, which are then selected and processed by the poetic spirit. On the one hand, the poetic sphere of influence provides the material that enables the activity of the human mind to express itself; “insofar as it is held fast and appropriated by the poet, it is subordinate” to the spirit (Hölderlin 2009, 280).¹⁰ In order to be able to even accommodate the activity of the mind, the sphere of influence is characterized as “receptive” (Ibid., 279); [receptiv, Hölderlin 1961, 243, 23].¹¹ On the other hand, “insofar as it is considered in relation to the world” (Hölderlin 2009, 280) [Insofern er im Zusammenhange der Welt betrachtet wird, Hölderlin 1961, 244, 28–245, 1], the sphere of influence exceeds the poetic spirit, the reason for this being that the poet is only ever able to process a small segment of world events. According to Hölderlin, “in itself the sphere of influence is greater than the poetic spirit, but not for itself” (Hölderlin 2009, 280).¹² The poetic sphere of influence thus retains a certain autonomy vis-à-vis the poetic spirit: “According to its [the sphere of influence’s] tendency, according to the import of its striving, it is opposed to the poetic transaction … in that it does not wish to serve as a mere vehicle for the spirit” (Ibid.).¹³ Here, Hölderlin stands in clear contrast to both Fichte’s concept of the Not-I and Emerson’s claim that nature was merely the “vehicle of thought.” In Hölderlin’s poetology, nature is able to hold its own against the aspirations of the poetic spirit.

Corresponding to the sphere of influence, the poetic spirit has the ability to absorb the activity that materializes in these “tendencies.”¹⁴ Like the sphere of influence, “the organ of the spirit [must be] RECEPTIVE” to that (Ibid., 284 [original emphasis]).¹⁵ A further premise for the harmonization between the sphere of influence and the poetic spirit consists in what Hölderlin refers to as a “real ground” (Ibid, 279) [ächter Grund, Hölderlin 1961, 244, 2], which assumes a mediating function: “This ground of the poem, its meaning, should form the transition between the expression, what is represented, the sensuous subject, that which is actually uttered in the poem, and between the spirit, the idealic treatment” (Hölderlin 2009, 280).¹⁶ The explanation and meaning of the poem ensure the mutual intertwinement of poetic spirit and sphere of influence, which thus relativize each other. In contrast to the idealist chain of reflection, however, the poetic spirit in its progression is not allowed to simply return to itself. Since it “cannot recognize its individuality through itself and in itself, an external object is necessary” (Ibid., 287).¹⁷ This reference to an externality—to a nature or environment that is not yet known to and exceeds the poetic spirit—prevents the “poetic unity” from being “conceived by itself” or becoming “its own object” (Ibid.; Rühling 2015, 192)¹⁸ and appears to be, “instead of an infinitely united and living unity, a dead and deadening unity” (Hölderlin 2009, 287).¹⁹ This critique aims at Fichte’s system of reflection, in which one reflection always becomes the object of the next. Hölderlin’s poetology thus expresses significant reservations about the anthropocentrism of idealist philosophy.

Thoreau takes up the ideas of transcendental philosophy in a similar way. While Emerson’s engagement with nature ultimately remains circumscribed by the extent to which it can serve human beings and be penetrated by the human mind, Thoreau is increasingly interested “in defining nature’s structure, both spiritual and material, for its own sake” (emphasis added, S.G.) (Buell 1995, 117). It is this acknowledgment of a world of nature that remains independent of the human mind that Thoreau shares with Hölderlin. Neither, however, abandons the transcendentalist approach. In Thoreau, Laura Dassow Walls instead sees a development “from a transcendental holist to something new which combined transcendentalism with empiricism” (Walls 1995, 5). This endeavor to connect transcendental perspectives with an empirically grounded symbolism is part of what Joseph Urbas identifies as a broader ontological turn in American transcendentalism in the 1830s, which is marked by the increased use of terms like “being, foundation, ground, reality, existence, substance, and object” (Urbas 2013, 105–125, 113). Here, we can draw a parallel to the “real ground” [ächter Grund] in Hölderlin’s poetology.²⁰ In Walden, the rift between a cognitive–spiritual and a physical–earthbound sphere permeates Thoreau’s descriptions of nature in a way that makes palpable his conflict with Emerson. In the book’s famous chapter, “Higher Laws,” the speaker admits that “I found in myself, and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a primitive rank and savage one, and I reverence them both. I love the wild not less than the good” (Thoreau 2004, 202). This attempt at creating a balance between a cognitive–spiritual existence and the primitive life of the wilderness marks Thoreau’s distinction from Emerson. The wilderness defies cognitive penetration.

This appreciation of the wild dovetails with the “receptive” stance that is evident in the speaker’s behavior toward other creatures. For Buell, the return of the wild geese symbolizes “spiritual renewal” (Buell 1995, 123). The speaker retreats into the house so as not to startle the geese and to give them space, indicating “respect for their interests,” which Buell regards as expressive of a more encompassing ethical stance. “This respect is what begins to modulate Thoreau’s romantic enthusiasm towards something like environmental awareness in the modern sense” (Ibid., 124). The very possibility of perceiving animal sounds already requires the I to relativize itself: “Earnest struggle partially gives way to receptivity, self-absorption to extrospection” (Ibid., 122). This means that a true search for knowledge demands receptivity toward the other, even toward the antithetical. “Receptivity” is the opposite of “dominance” (Ibid., 82). In this sense, the speaker’s respect for animals—who represent the otherness of nature—signifies a repudiation of Emerson’s claim that nature is merely a “vehicle of thought.”

A concept that requires some closer attention is that of progression. In Walden, progression can be found in the circular metaphor of the seasons. “Walden was dead and is alive again,” we read in the chapter “Spring” (Thoreau 2004, 300). For Richard J. Schneider, this external progression of the seasons is accompanied by the inner progression of consciousness, as the “circle of inward spiritual and psychological exploration in Walden is reflected in its chronological structure, the cycle of seasons” (Schneider 1995, 97). Progression mirrors the advance of the cycles of reflection in the transcendental approach. In Hölderlin, the progression of the physical world of nature as the symbolic equivalent of a journey into the interior of the self finds expression in the intertwinement of the striving poetic spirit and the progressivity of the (material) sphere of influence. Like Hölderlin, Thoreau counterposes the danger of an “idealist” solipsism of spiritual progression with nature itself. Thus, Schneider credits the hermit in “Brute Neighbors” with the observation that “spirit is to be found by experiencing nature, not by retreating into the mind,” which points to a clear distinction between Thoreau and Emerson: “For Thoreau spirit is found in nature, not through it” (Schneider 1995, 100). If spirit were to be found “through” nature, then it would have to be located outside of it, but Thoreau’s claim is precisely that nature itself acts as a source of the spiritual. This is premised on the idea that the natural world is agential, which Walls sees as consistent with Thoreau’s concept of nature:

What energized him [Thoreau] was his conviction that nature does not lie passive and ready-made, to be “read” by his educated eye; rather, it is continually creative, improvising in front of his very eyes everywhere and at every moment, in an unfathomable wealth of experience. (Walls 1995, 147–148)

A look at Hölderlin’s and Thoreau’s poetological-philosophical ideas shows that Hölderlin’s poetic spirit emancipates itself from the Fichtean I in a way that echoes Thoreau’s departure from Emerson’s idealism through an elevation of, and establishment of an equal relationship with, the natural world. In both cases, human interests no longer hold primacy over nonhuman nature.

3 Thoreau’s Walden

I now wish to illustrate some of these poetological-philosophical approaches by looking at the portrayal of the lakes in Thoreau’s Walden. “A lake is the landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature,” we read there. “It is earth’s eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature” (Thoreau 2004, 180). The lake functions as a metaphor for an earthly sense organ, as the description of the lake’s “smooth reflecting surface” (Ibid., 84) points to the reflective activity of the idealist subject. When the speaker removes a part of the ice sheet during the winter in order to be able to peek into “the quiet parlor of the fishes,” he declares, “Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads” (Ibid., 274). Through the reflections of the sky on the still surface of the water, the transcendental is captured by the earthly “eye.”²¹

Looking into the water provokes questions about the desire “to recover the long lost bottom of Walden Pond” (Ibid., 276). In this regard, the speaker exposes human presumptions as nothing more than illusions:

It is remarkable how long men will believe in the bottomlessness of a pond without taking the trouble to sound it. I have visited two such Bottomless Ponds in one walk in this neighborhood. Many have believed that Walden reached quite through to the other side of the globe. Some who have lain flat on the ice for a long time, looking down through the illusive medium … have seen vast holes, “into which a load of hay might be driven,” … the undoubted source of the Styx and entrance to the Infernal Regions from these parts. Others have gone down from the village with a “fifty-six”²² and a wagon load of inch rope, but yet have failed to find any bottom … For while the “fifty-six” was resting by the way, they were paying out the rope in the vain attempt to fathom their truly immeasurable capacity for marvellousness. (Ibid.)

The capitalization of “Bottomless Ponds” continues the anthropomorphization of the lakes. If we take the lake as a metaphor for the human consciousness, the question of the “bottom” alludes to no less than the limits of human cognition. Here, Thoreau evokes the search for a fundamental principle in transcendental philosophy. The speaker suggests sounding the depth of the lake by the fairly simple means of “a cod-line and a stone weighing about a pound and a half,” thus being able to “tell accurately when the stone left the bottom, by having to pull so much harder before the water got underneath to help me” (Ibid., 191). The insistence on the existence of such a bottom that marks the limits of human reflection distinguishes Thoreau from Emersonian idealism, which holds that the human self—as suggested by the image of the “transparent eye-ball”—fully penetrates the natural world. The much-invoked “bottom” thus serves to curb the ad-infinitum orientation of idealist cycles of reflection.

Sounding the bottom of the lake also reveals a remarkable coincidence:

Having noticed that the number indicating the greatest depth was apparently in the centre of the map, I laid a rule on the map lengthwise and then breadthwise, and found, to my surprise, that the line of greatest length intersected the line of greatest breadth exactly at the point of greatest depth … (Ibid., 280)

This observation can be translated into a universal law: “Given, then, the length and breadth … and the character of the surrounding shore, and you have almost elements enough to make out a formula for all cases” (Ibid.). But what exactly is the speaker’s argument here? Vertical progression reaches its deepest point where the horizontal lines meet. If we equate depth with the progression into the interior of the self,²³ this demonstrates the dependency of the vertical progression on the horizontal spatial extension. It is not only that this geographically measurable extension limits the progression into the interior, the particular force of the argument derives from its contrast to the moral law of “pure reason.” Human action cannot be comprehended on the basis of logical fundamental principles alone; instead, concrete empirical observations of the natural world provide a more reliable foundation. The consequence of this is the speaker’s insistence on an analogy between the natural world and human ethics:

What I have observed of the pond is no less true in ethics. It is the law of average. Such a rule of the two diameters not only guides us toward the sun in the system and the heart in man, but draw lines through the length and breadth of the aggregate of a man’s particular daily behaviors and waves of life into his coves and inlets, and where they intersect will be the height or depth of his character. Perhaps we need only to know how his shores trend and his adjacent country or circumstances, to infer his depth or concealed bottom. (Ibid., 281)

This image can be read as a critique of idealist systematic philosophy because it suggests that the natural environment is of greater significance for human action than infinite cycles of reflection. As Walls rightly notes, “Thoreau was moving away from a grand and abstract transcendentalism toward detailed observation of the specifics of nature, in all its unaccountable diversity … A Walden with a measurable bottom signified more to him than a Walden that was bottomless” (Walls 1995, 115). Sounding the bottom of the lake with such primitive means contradicts the overblown claim of the “bottomless,” and in this sense “measurements diminished the sublime” (Ibid., 116). The ultimate ground of being remains inscrutable even to the deepest and most sustained efforts of human reflection,²⁴ and it is nature itself that imposes this limit. This relativization finds its echo in the aforementioned “ontological turn in American thought” (Ibid., 113; 105–125). Thoreau reverses Emerson’s claim that “the foundations of man are not in matter, but in spirit” (Emerson 1971a, 42).

This is, again, illustrated by Walden Pond itself and by the speaker’s question: “What if all ponds were shallow? Would it not react on the minds of men? I am thankful that this pond was made deep and pure for a symbol” (Thoreau 2004, 277). If we take seriously this demand for depth and purity, then the symbolic power of the pickerel, whose unusual beauty captures the speaker’s attention, is particularly significant:

Ah, the pickerel of Walden! … I am always surprised by their rare beauty, as if they were fabulous fishes, they are so foreign to the streets, even to the woods, foreign as Arabia to our Concord life. They possess a quite dazzling and transcendent beauty which separates them by a wide interval from the cadaverous cod and haddock whose fame is trumpeted in our streets. They are not green like the pines, nor gray like the stones, nor blue like the sky; but they have, to my eyes, if possible, yet rarer colors, like flowers and precious stones, as if they were the pearls, the animalized nuclei or crystals of the Walden water. They, of course, are Walden all over and all through; are themselves small Waldens in the animal kingdom, Waldenses. (Ibid., 275)

The pickerel epitomize the speaker’s thoughts, which communicate with each other in the “pure” water. As Walls explains, “[t]he fish that inhabit Walden Pond also ‘inhabit’ Thoreau’s mind, yet are no less materially fish for all that” (Walls 1995, 115). While in Emerson’s “Nature” the reflecting I absorbs nature in a quasi-absolute sense, Walden’s pickerel figure as an animal analogy to Thoreau’s thoughts. It is not in the supposedly unconditioned ground of human existence but in the crystalline beauty of the fish that they are able to encounter transcendence.

Thoreau illustrates the subversion of idealist claims by describing the lake as “deep and pure”—qualities that evoke the notion of a (philosophical) “purification” tied to the idealist reflection. Thoreau’s response to the supposed necessity of an unconditioned ground or “bottom” thus implies a critique of the infinite reflections of the human mind proclaimed by the transcendental approach, and his use of concepts of depth and purity in relation to the lake—a natural phenomenon—undermines an idealist systematic philosophy in which the conceptual range of “purity” is reduced to processes of rational and logical cognition. The characterization of the pickerel, whose presence in the lake symbolizes the speaker’s thoughts, defies the search for an unconditioned principle from the outset. Nature is not a Jacob’s Ladder to God.

4 Hölderlin’s “Rhine” Hymn

As is the case with Thoreau’s portrayal of Walden Pond, Hölderlin’s “Rhine” hymn personifies a natural phenomenon—a river, which also figures as a typical metaphor of the genius cult in that the imagery of the flow of water provokes a tension between rigidity and stasis on the one hand and rebellion and anarchy on the other. In a similar vein, Walden Pond functions as a natural metaphor for the complexity and flexibility of human consciousness. While Hölderlin’s “Rhine” creates not a concrete image of a landscape but a linguistic piece of art that operates as “a medium between the ideal and the real world,” the geographical course of the river remains present (Kiewitz 2003, 57).²⁵ As is evident in his friend Ebel’s description of the Rhine, Hölderlin’s hymn clearly draws on the imagery established by his contemporaries.²⁶ In what follows, I am less interested in an elaborate interpretation of the hymn but rather in drawing out some parallels to Thoreau’s nature writing, beginning with the hymn’s content structure. Hölderlin’s hymn consists of 15 stanzas, which can in turn be divided into five sections (Schmidt 1992, 856). The first section describes the vigorous power of the water as it forces its way through the narrow valleys. The speaker sings of the birth of a “youth” (Jüngling)—the Rhine—from the bosom of the earth (Hölderlin 1996, 48, II, 24).²⁷ The youth’s rebellion against the mountainous environment constraining his movement is the fury of someone who is inexperienced and does not yet know where his (life’s) path will lead him. While the first section (I–III) is devoted to the “voice of the … freeborn Rhine” (Ibid. 48, III, 33), the second section (IV–VI) is concerned with the river’s striving for “lifelong freedom” (Ibid. 49, IV, 56) after it has thrown off the shackles of the mountains. The restlessness of (the) youth is eventually appeased by his encounters with the world, and the river itself now appears as “father Rhine” (Ibid. 50, VI, 88), on whose shores towns and cities are born. The river’s own birth, however, remains a mystery, as we learn at the beginning of the second section:

Verse

Verse Pure origins are a riddle. Even The poem may hardly disclose them. For what You began as you will remain However necessity And discipline work, and most Is done by birth And the ray of light That greets us newborn. (Ibid. 49, IV, 46–53)

The reference to “pure origins” in the first line is particularly relevant in the context of nature writing.²⁸ The speaker here alludes to the cult of original genius in the Sturm und Drang period, which he connects with the adjective “pure.” This means that for the human being—especially for the genius who remains true to himself—birth is decisive and anterior to all rational distinctions. Bernard Böschenstein’s remark that “on the Rhine” (referring to the hymn) “one is always surprised by the originality that keeps forcing its way back to the undivided ground” (Böschenstein 1968, 65, my translation) indicates a parallel to Thoreau’s Walden. Both address an urge toward a “ground” or “bottom” that constitutes a manifestation of being itself. Being figures as the metaphysical “ground” in which the subject and nature are inextricably merged.²⁹ The “riddle” character, too, is ultimately rooted in being itself. As Martin Heidegger puts it:

That which “has purely sprung forth” is an enigma in its origin, and for this very reason in its entire being [sic!], as that which has sprung forth then is. The scope of the mystery extends also to that which has sprung forth, not to the “whence” taken by itself, which we cannot account for from anywhere else. A mystery is that which “has purely sprung forth.” And only in the latter itself is the origin in each case fully as origin. (Heidegger 2014, 213)³⁰

Within the purview of the idealist philosophy of the subject it would hardly be possible to allow the “pure” to remain a secret or “riddle,” given that its concern is precisely with the rational-conceptual activity and logicality that enables the I (Fichte) or spirit (Hegel) to penetrate the material world, a process that demands the exclusion of physical sensation and experience. However, like Thoreau, Hölderlin undermines idealist systematic philosophy by positioning the “pure” as the source of the river at the beginning of the hymn. This is also Jochen Schmidt’s point, who sees Hölderlin’s phrase that “[p]ure origins are a riddle” as a “clear reflex of his engagement with Fichte’s making-absolute of the subject …, as it is expressed in the Sturm und Drang topos of the ‘godlikeness’ of the genius” (Schmidt 1992, 858, my translation). We find a similar functionalization in Thoreau’s use of the quality “pure” in reference to the waters of Walden Pond (Thoreau 2004, 277; Fichte 1971, 244; Breazeale 2021, 318; Latour 1993, 57; Walls 2011, 99). In the middle stanza of the second section, we are confronted with the boisterousness of Heracles, who is, however, “mastered” (Hölderlin 1996 49, V, 72) by someone even more powerful—God himself. The progression of the first section is thus driven by an impetuous forward thrust, an urge or striving that is relativized in the second section, as the river finally quiets down. According to Heidegger, the origin continues to remain present: “The origin is not abandoned and left behind as a beginning that stands by itself; what emanates from the river in its flowing—what the river at every point of its flowing is—is the origin” (Heidegger 2014, 213).³¹

The third section (VII–IX) describes the breakdown of this harmonious course of education: the original life falls victim to the “fetters” (Hölderlin 1996 50, VII, 98) of a “life-alienating positivity,” as Schmidt argues from a historical-philosophical perspective (Schmidt 1992, 858, my translation). In reaction to this, we encounter the hubris of Prometheus, who stole the fire from the gods to give autonomy to humankind:

Verse

Verse So overweening that they mocked Their own justice and surely The fire of Heaven too and then Despising human paths Elected overboldness And strove to equal the gods. (Hölderlin 1996 50, VII, 99–104)

Schmidt interprets the syntactic entanglement in the sense that this certainty (“surely”) regarding the “fire of Heaven” amounts to a kind of “hybrid defiance” of precisely its “heavenly”—and, hence, fundamentally inaccessible—character (Schmidt 1992, 865, my translation). The hubris lies in the striving to “equal the gods.” In this sense, the phrase “own justice” points to an autonomy that challenges the gods and returns as disgraceful “overboldness” (Ibid.). The stanza thus articulates a critique of the anthropocentric claim of the genius and its idea of a godlike artist, the most prominent example of which can be found in Goethe’s ode “Prometheus.”³² Hölderlin distances himself from the Promethean concept of autonomy prominent in German classicism (a reference to the eponymous protagonist of his Empedocles drama, for example, remarks on the “haughtiness of the genius”) (Schmidt 1992, 858, my translation). The middle stanza of the hymn’s third section describes the failure of the rebellious genius, who is labeled a “fool” (Hölderlin 1996 51, VIII, 109), with the figure of Heracles, whose hubris leads him to “topple his house / And mix his dearest and his enemies in one scolding” (Ibid. 50–51, VIII, 115–116), serving as an example for this kind of human. Having recognized his own limits, in the third section’s closing stanza the river is “blessed” and at peace, “rest[ing] from his boldness” (Ibid. 51, IX, 129–133). The fourth section (X–XII) then turns away from (heroic) overboldness and toward the “domain of the passive-receptive” (Schmidt 1992, 867, my translation). As an advocate of nature and one of the first critics of the Enlightenment, Rousseau here offers a suitable reference.³³ He is one of the “sons of the earth,” who “are, like the mother, / All-loving, for which they receive / Everything effortlessly and are blessed” (Hölderlin 1996 51, XI, 149–151) and thus establishes a contrast to the hubris of figures like Heracles. Rousseau represents a stance of receptivity, which dovetails with Böschenstein’s assessment that

The core aspect of Hölderlin’s image of Rousseau in the “Rhine,” the relinquishing of activity in favor of functioning as a receptacle for the powerful forces of nature, is in line with Rousseau’s feelings of ecstasy at Lake Biel. Rousseau extinguishes all urges of his inner self—including thinking—in order to experience only the rhythmic pulse of creation. (Böschenstein 1968, 91, my translation)

Thus, while the third section addresses the foolishness of Heraclean hubris, the contrasting fourth section has the figure of Rousseau serve as an example of humility and the ability to “receive.” As Hans Esselborn puts it, the hymn produces a “mutual identification which relativizes the traditional anthropomorphic portrayal of nonhuman nature by making it replaceable with the physiomorphism of the human” (Esselborn 2018, 73, my translation). The fifth section then focuses on the transhistorical or philosophical consciousness of Socrates, who celebrates the “bridal feast” (Hölderlin 1996 52, XIII, 178) of humans and gods. The hymn closes with a repetition of the fundamental tension between day and night, that is, between the chaining of life during the day and its unleashing “[a]t night when everything mixes / Without order and the ancient / Chaos returns” (Ibid. 53, XV, 217–219).

5 Conclusion

Both Hölderlin and Thoreau are influenced by the transcendental philosophy that emerges in German idealism. Transcendentalism separated human thought from a holistically conceived and religiously charged world of nature assigning knowledge to the a priori structures of consciousness. Both Hölderlin and Thoreau seek a balance between transcendentalist cognition and material-geographical reality in which the history of human consciousness remains integrated into the broader history of nature. While Hölderlin’s poetry and poetology constitute a response to Fichte’s attempt at bridging the rift between human thought and the world of material objects through a reflective system of the subject, Thoreau is introduced to the post-Kantian challenge by his mentor Emerson, who transfers idealist systematic philosophy into a model of cognitive and spiritual penetration of nature. And while Thoreau eventually develops a critical distance from Emerson, Hölderlin adopts a comparable stance towards Fichte’s idealism. Their shared goal consists in the revaluation, and elevation, of nature vis-à-vis the human self or mind through an epistemic principle that is inherent in the natural world itself. Both Hölderlin and Thoreau use the term “pure” [rein], a quality associated with understanding [Verstand] in the Kantian sense, which maintains that experiences and sensations cannot constitute a claim to knowledge and are absorbed by the mind or self. However, both use this term in reference to phenomena of nature: the waters of Walden Pond in Thoreau and the source of the Rhine in Hölderlin’s hymn. Thus, the philosophical claim to “purification” is undermined by a natural element, a reversal of the meaning of “purity” that articulates a challenge to the anthropocentrism of the idealist subject.

Another commonality between Thoreau and Hölderlin is the “receptive” orientation of both “man” and nature. Receptivity as the ability to absorb or receive the other (of the mind or self) is one of the pillars of Hölderlin’s poetry and poetology and important for his characterization of the Rhine “youth”. Both the poetic spirit and the sphere of influence are defined by receptivity, which amounts to a rejection of the Fichtean subject. In Thoreau, such a receptive orientation is evident, for example, in an appreciation of the animal world, which can be seen as an undermining of spiritual pretensions (directed against Emerson). In the Rhine-hymn, such receptivity finds its articulation in the mutual identification of the river and the youth as well as in Hölderlin’s Rousseauvian concept of nature. Similarly, during his survey of Walden Pond, the speaker recognizes the interdependence between the lake’s depth and horizontal dimensions, which can be understood as a relativization of the significance of cognitive reflection vis-à-vis the natural (wilderness) environment. This receptive orientation and the subversion of the “pure” in Hölderlin and Thoreau articulate an ethical claim, which consists in a willingness to acknowledge and receive the impulses of the natural world. In this way, both of them meet Buell’s criterion of a subordination of human interests to those of nonhuman nature.

In both Hölderlin and Thoreau the concept of progressivity, which emerges from the progressive orientation of idealist systematic philosophies, is superimposed upon the interdependence of human beings and nature. Importantly, however, both identify such progressivity not only with the (human) mind or subject but also with their respective concepts of nature and the material world.

Another similarity between the two consists in their mutual search for a “ground” or “bottom,” which assumes the function of limiting, through a reference to nature itself, the potentially endless idealist cycles of reflection. Hölderlin and Thoreau thus evoke and draw on the quintessentially transcendentalist pursuit of discovering what Hedge refers to as “an infinite and unconditioned” as the ground of (our knowledge of) “every form of finite existence” (Hedge 1833, 108–129, 121). The search, with simple empirical methods, for the “bottom” of Walden Pond ironically counteracts idealist models of reflection, while the “real ground” in Hölderlin’s poetology assumes a comparable function in its interweaving of cognitive-formal and sensate elements as an attempt to limit the seemingly limitless reflections of the human mind.

In sum, the shared goal of Thoreau and Hölderlin consists in the relativization of idealist concepts of subjectivity and the recovery of a holistic understanding of the natural world. The fact that empirical measurability nonetheless rests on a transcendental base may be conveyed through an anecdote from the closing chapter of Walden:

There is a solid bottom everywhere. We read that the traveller asked the boy if the swamp before him had a hard bottom. The boy replied that it had. But presently the traveller’s horse sank in up to the girths, and he observed to the boy, “I thought you said that this bog had a hard bottom.” “So it has,” answered the latter, “but you have not got half way to it yet.” (Thoreau 2004, 321)