«...das namenlose Nennen». Kommerells ‘letzter Hölderlin’

Abstract

In his 1943 untitled anniversry-talk on Hölderlin, Max Kommerell (1902-1944), known principally as a member of the ‘George-Kreis’, suggests that Hölderlin’s mental illness might be – «Schicksal des Dichters» – linked directly to the poet’s partlcular behavior as an artist, the consequence of his particularly radical aestheticism. The question of names is crucial to the argument as, in defining Hölderlin’s last poetical project an attempt ‘to name the nameless’ («das Namenlose nennen») – Kommerell reconstructs, alongside significant changes in naming, a continuous process of stylistic transfonnation which, as a matter of fact, in the end, inevitably leads to a highly problematic universal nominalism. In the light of recent research on artistic creativity, Kommerell’s philologically based insights, ignored in the past, now appear highly motivated and groundbreaking.