[Book Sip] "Pure things can only be expressed through impure things"

Some sentences encapsulate the entire content of the book itself, while others instantly reach the reader's heart, creating a point of connection with the book. We introduce such meaningful sentences excerpted from the book. - Editor's note

This is a collection of letters by the late 18th-century German poet Friedrich H?lderlin. H?lderlin was not only a literary figure at the core of the Romantic spirit but also a thinker who greatly influenced Hegel and Schelling, leading the development of German idealism. He lived a life close to confinement for nearly half of his later years due to mental illness and did not receive much attention during his lifetime. However, after his death, Nietzsche, Rilke, Heidegger, Adorno, Benjamin, and others re-evaluated him as a pioneer of modern German poetry. The collection includes 121 letters he wrote from his school days to friends, lovers, and family, including Hegel, Schelling, Schiller, and Goethe, with an appendix of six letters written after the onset of his mental illness.

If our quiet happiness must be translated into language, it is always death for that quiet happiness. I would rather wander like a child, joyfully and beautifully at peace, without reckoning what I have or who I am. Because no thought can fully grasp what I possess.

p. 238

Purity can only be expressed through impurity. If you try to present the noble without the base, it will appear unnatural and most absurd. The noble itself inevitably bears the color of the fate in which it was born as it reaches expression, and beauty, as it is expressed in reality, inevitably takes on a form unnatural to itself from the environment in which it was created. And this unnatural form becomes natural only when we accept the situation that necessarily gave rise to that form. (...) Therefore, the noble cannot be expressed without the base. When the base confronts me in this world, I always want to say this: just as the potter necessarily needs glue, the base is inevitably used in that way. So always accept the base, do not reject or disdain it.

pp. 287?288

Do you know the root of all my misfortunes? I want to live for the art to which my whole heart is devoted. Therefore, I must work moving here and there among people. As a result, I often become truly weary of life. (...) Many who were raised as poets have already died. We do not live in a climate where poets can thrive. That is why not a single tree among ten can grow properly.

p. 259

H?lderlin’s Letters | Written by Friedrich H?lderlin | Translated by Jang Young-tae | ITTA | 568 pages | 22,000 KRW

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