Zwischen Elegie und Prosa – Hölderlin-Nachklänge bei W. G. Sebald

In this essay, the effects of extensive quotations from Hölderlin’s verse texts on the diction of the works of W. G. Sebald (1944–2001) are examined. Two texts that stand at turning points in Sebald’s oeuvre are analysed as examples: His first literary text, “Nach der Natur. Ein Elementargedicht” from 1988, as well as his last public speech, “Ein Versuch der Restitution”, which he delivered on 17 November 2001 at the opening of the Literaturhaus Stuttgart. The long poem, Sebald’s only experiment with this form, is characterised by a prose-like style over long sections, but several verses contain unmarked and slightly varied quotations from Hölderlin’s elegies “Der Wanderer” and “Stutgard”, thus giving the passages in question an elegiac diction, culminating in an almost verbatim quotation from Hölderlin’s very late, free-rhythm poem “Griechenland”. Thirteen years later, the Stuttgart speech also picks up the elegy dedicated to the city. Hölderlin’s journey to Bordeaux and back to Württemberg is reconstructed as a restless escape movement. Finally, Sebald makes Hölderlin’s elegiac language completely his own in eight verses from the poem “Elegie”; they become an integral part of his prose. Yet he reinterprets them as a lament about the “suffering of others” (Susan Sontag).