What's in a Name? Quite a Lot When That Name is Scardanelli

Ja, die Gedichte sind echt, die sind von mir, aber der Name ist gefälscht! 

Ich habe nie Hölderlin geheißen, sondern Scardanelli!

 

 

I. 

 

Nietzsche is not the only great poet-philosopher and madman of German letters. Before him came the early Romantic figure Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843), who, long plagued by mental illness, was finally committed in 1806. 

 

Deemed incurable - despite the belladonna preparations and cold water baths - Hölderlin was released into the care of a kindly carpenter called Ernst Zimmer, who gave him a room at his house in Tübingen. Here, Hölderlin would spend the last thirty-six years of his life; a period referred to by those in the know as the Turmzeit. 

 

During this so-called Tower period, Hölderlin would occasionally write rhymed quatrains signed with a variety of theatrical-sounding pseudonyms, including Scardanelli, a name which Stephan Hermlin would use as the title of his 1970 Hörspiel, which deals with the poet's breakdown triggered (arguably) by the realisation that there is little room for art in a world dominated by politics and philistinism; something that Hermlin himself would also come slowly to accept despite his life-long communist affiliations and affinity.

 

II. 

 

Offering as it does a "musical variation on a pre-existent artistic matrix" [1], one wonders why Síomón Solomon didn't simply call his translation-adaptation of Hermlin's play Scardanelli: an Extended Remix, instead of opting for the (admittedly more paranormally suggestive) title of Hölderlin's Poltergeists.

 

For whilst I appreciate his desire to announce the work's originality and emphasise its spectral chaos, I think the name Scardanelli should have remained in the title somewhere or other. For Scardanelli is a name that has a real magic to it and which has continued to resonate within creative circles for over 200 years; not just amongst poets and playwrights, but also composers, filmmakers, and even graffiti artists. 

 

I'm thinking, for example, of the large-scale Scardanelli-Zyklus project that the Swiss composer Heinz Holliger worked on from 1975 to 1993 (ECM Records); the 2003 film written and directed by Harald Bergmann entitled Scardanelli, and starring André Wilms as Hölderlin (see image below); and of the fabulous piece of street art (reproduced above) painted on shutters in Milan and posted on the designer Campbell Johnson's Instagram account: click here [2].

 

My point is this: the name Scardanelli unites a wide range of artists and artworks and I think Solomon's work is best understood in relation to this world rather than the academic world of German studies. There's no doubting Solomon is a fine scholar: but he is also an amazing artist in his own right.  

 

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Síomón Solomon, 'Translator's Introduction', Hölderlin's Poltergeists, (Peter Lang, 2020), p.13 

 

[2] Mention must also be made of Austrian poet Friederike Mayröcker's recent collection of poems entitled Scardanelli, trans. Jonathan Larson, (The Song Cave, 2018); a collection haunted by the presence of Hölderlin throughout, an author to whose work Mayröcker is, by her own admission, addicted. Click here for more details.