Disregard of the author's work due to modal
misinterpretation
The great Stuttgart Hölderlin edition is held by German
philologists to be exemplary of literary editions avoiding the information
deficiency in the critical apparatus for which the Weimar Goethe edition is
typical. The textual editor, Friedrich Beissner, records the manuscript
variants in their entirety, including even the alterations irrelevant to the
actual wording of the text; and he presents them readably. Without doubt,
the critical apparatus is thereby significantly enhanced, even though it
remains subordinated to the presentation of the text. As before, it is the
writer's final and binding word that goes to constitute the edition text. The
axiom of the reception-oriented editorial concept to honour "the
poet's
intention and his right to his work"[42] remains valid. In other words: the
author
is still granted the decision how his works are to be read. It is however
debatable if this is possible in Hölderlin's case to the
same extent as it appeared to be in Goethe's. For Hölderlin there
exists neither a final revised edition nor "prints of individual works whose
wording, since checked by the poet himself, should be binding for the
editor".[43] Hölderlin's oeuvre has
come to us largely as a legacy of unpublished manuscripts.[44] The editor's determination to let
the
author decide how his works should be read was therefore to be realised
only by means of a text-genetical interpretation of the manuscripts, although
these often enough are in the nature of heavily worked-over drafts.
Beissner's mode of text-genetical interpretation becomes fully
apparent in his method and system of variant presentation. Its essential
characteristic is to situate the variants within the context of a reconstruction
of the text's chronological development. The main focus is not on individual
alterations, but on the representation of successive genetic versions. On the
assumption that the author has replaced the earlier version by the later one,
the later version is regarded as the one finally intended by him. If one
accepts this system of text-genetic interpretation, Hölderlin's ultimate
versions may indeed be constructed by stages from the heavily worked-over
drafts. Yet is the implicit premise legitimate?
Beissner stressed repeatedly that his main concern was to develop
from the "spatial confusion" of the manuscripts and their corrections a
"chronological order of sequence" of genetic versions of the text. In this
way he held that the genetic process could be rendered both presentable and
comprehensible as a process.[45] The
implicit consequences may be clarified by reflecting that the spatial
dimension of an inscription, if irrelevant, can be considered so only from
the reader's perspective but not from that of the writer. For the author, the
spatiality of the writing importantly conditions his creative linguistic
behaviour, enabling him constructively to negotiate his conceptions and
their expression.[46] It is with the help
of the spatial dimension that he renders his conceptualisations visible and
available. He is in control of everything he has recorded in
writing—which in turn may influence his imagination—as
long as he is able to decide whether it should be retained or not. He can
decide for as long as what he has written remains readable and decipherable
to him. Deleted or otherwise invalidated passages must generally be taken
to be included in such writing. Textual exclusions of this kind should
therefore not be taken as definitive, i.e., as outright
annulments,
but as provisional deletions. Invalidated wordings within a manuscript must
be considered potentially valid if still legible to the author.
Conversely, all wordings left valid should be considered potentially
invalid.
In his genetic representation of the manuscript texts Beissner
sacrifices their spatial dimension. The alinear spatiality of draft initiations
and alterations is turned into a linear temporality of text stages where each
stage is definitively replaced by the next. This conversion is not a matter
of mere externals. Rather, it reflects an assessment of the authenticity of the
states of an unpublished text in autographs. The editor turns into definitive
text what for the author in principle was only potential writing. Hence, the
editor's system of genetic interpretation reinterprets the modality of the
writing: from being author-related it becomes reader-related. Otherwise the
editor's aim to make possible an "actively participating and co-productive
view of the work in progress"[47]
would indeed remain incomprehensible. It is in a manner the editor who
produces genetic readings from the poet's draft fluidities. In so doing, he
not only disregards the
spatial dimension as something seemingly unimportant.
He also neglects the specific productive (constructive) function which
writing has for the author as a process of visually recording transitory
reflections that acts as a reinforcement of his imagination. He degrades, in
effect, the act of writing to a mere external reproductive activity of no
importance for its written result, which is paradoxical especially for an
author whose manuscripts show that he made superbly constructive use of
their spatial dimension in drafting his texts.
[48]
Favouring the reader's perspective, this edition abandons the
fundamental difference between the author's and the reader's evaluation of
writing. For the reader, the act of writing as such is unimportant; important
is only its outcome in what the writing imparts. Taking writing to be merely
a graphic medium of communication, and categorically equating the written
and the oral utterance, the reader views the act of writing as a graphic
realisation of inner speech. This receptive stance is by extension attributed
to the author when it is implicitly assumed that his characteristic and
essential activity is to affirm or reject his writing in the reading of it as an
articulation of inward perceptions whose content core remains
unalterable.
In the Stuttgart edition, Hölderlin—like Goethe in the
Weimar
edition—is primarily understood as an author who positively or
negatively
evaluates his writing as an immediate projection of his imagined self. The
manuscript deletions and changes are not considered in their merely
potential quality holding no prejudice for the author's final decision on a
given text in publication; they are considered definitive. A deleted or
unaltered result of changes is not seen as the last of several textual options,
but as the "only possible form" or the "consummate form" of
expression.[49] The editor seems to
have been aware that this reader-oriented system of interpretation is
incommensurate with the nature of authentic textual production, since he
justifies his text-genetical representation as setting out the "ideal growth"
of the text and not its actual development, which "cannot generally be
deduced from manuscripts".[50]
This is an acceptable argument under the premise that it is relatively
unimportant to know how the author worked, and more
important that "organic links" should not be severed.[51] However, the "organic link"
between
states of textual development is finally seen to be the articulate author
reaching out for the perfect expression of his self.[52]
The disregard and modal misinterpretation of the writer's work
evident in the Weimar edition is thus by no means overcome in the
Hölderlin edition, even though its textual editor understood much
better how to deal with the manuscripts than did his colleagues of the
Goethe edition (Beissner, "Editionsmethoden", p. 73).
To summarise: the reception-oriented editorial concept does not
promote an interest in an improved understanding of literary work
processes. Hence it develops no analytic system, differentiating terminology
or representationally adequate model for dealing with text changes in
autographs.[53] Philologists who favour
this concept are more intent on preparing poet editions for the general
reader than work editions for the scholarly user.[54] As far as possible, they eschew
specialised editorial professionalism.[55]
As long as there are authors who sufficiently clearly lay down their
decisions on the versions in which they wish their texts to be read, and as
long as there are readers willing to submit their souls to authorial guidance,
this editorial concept cannot be considered outdated.
