[Footnote 11:  “Confession d’un enfant du siecle.”  Oeuvres compl.  Paris, 1888 (Charpentier).  Vol.  VIII, p. 24.]

CHAPTER II

=Hoelderlin=

A case such as that of Hoelderlin, subject as he was from the time of his boyhood to melancholy, and ending in hopeless insanity, at once suggests the question of heredity.  Little or nothing is known concerning his remote ancestors.  His great-grandfather had been administrator of a convent at Grossbottwar, and died of dropsy of the chest at the age of forty-seven.  His grandfather had held a similar position as “Klosterhofmeister und geistlicher Verwalter” at Lauffen, to which his son, the poet’s father, succeeded.  An apoplectic stroke ended his life at the early age of thirty-six.  In regard to Hoelderlin’s maternal ancestors, our information is even more scant, though we know that both his grandmother and his mother lived to a ripe old age.  From the poet’s references to them we judge them to have been entirely normal types of intelligent, lovable women, gifted with a great deal of good practical sense.  The only striking thing is the premature death of Hoelderlin’s great-grandfather and father.  But in view of the nature of their stations in life, in which they may fairly be supposed to have led more than ordinarily sober and well-ordered lives, there seems to be no ground whatever for assuming that Hoelderlin’s Weltschmerz owed its inception in any degree to hereditary tendencies, notwithstanding Hermann Fischer’s opinion to the contrary.[12] There is no sufficient reason to assume “erbliche Belastung,” and there are other sufficient causes without merely guessing at such a possibility.

But while there are no sufficient historical grounds for the supposition that he brought the germ of his subsequent mental disease with him in his birth, we cannot fail to observe, even in the child, certain natural traits, which, being allowed to develop unchecked, must of necessity hasten and intensify the gloom which hung over his life.  To his deep thoughtfulness was added an abnormal sensitiveness to all external influences.  Like the delicate anemone, he recoiled and withdrew within himself when touched by the rougher material things of life.[13] He himself poetically describes his absentmindedness when a boy, and calls himself “ein Traeumer”; and a dreamer he remained all his life.  It seems to have been this which first brought him into discord with the world: 

    Oft sollt’ ich stracks in meine Schule wandern,
    Doch ehe sich der Traeumer es versah,
    So hatt’ er in den Garten sich verirrt,
    Und sass behaglich unter den Oliven,
    Und baute Flotten, schifft’ ins hohe Meer.

* * * * *

    Dies kostete mich tausend kleine Leiden,
    Verzeihlich war es immer, wenn mich oft
    Die Kluegeren, mit herzlichem Gelaechter
    Aus meiner seligen Ekstase schreckten,
    Doch unaussprechlich wehe that es mir.[14]