And defenselessly give counsel
Around the kings and peoples.
Yet to where does this turbulence tear us? Into the speaking whose configuring of language is the poem. What kind of speaking is that? Who is speaking to whom, with whom, and about what? We are torn into a dialogue that brings language to language, and not as something arbitrary or incidental, but as the mandate given to the girl, to Germania: “O name you daughter . . .”; more properly speaking, the issue concerns naming and saying. Is this turbulence that tears us into the dialogue something other than the dialogue itself, or are they one and the same? Is this turbulence the poetizing we are seeking? In that case, the poetizing is not something we happen upon lying present before us. We shall not grasp the turbulence of the dialogue if we merely gape at it, rather than entering into its movement. But how are we to accomplish this? Our first task will be simply to begin to move, to abandon our peaceful position of spectator. This position must become unsettled so that our reading can no longer maintain the neutral position of uniformly reading off a text. Such a stance will already be unsettled if we now read along the lines of the hints provided and heed the beginnings of the various strophes.
c) The Beginnings of the Strophes
The beginning of each strophe is different, not just in terms of content, in the sense that there are different words in each case that mean something different, but insofar as the manner and status of the saying and the sayer are different.
I. “Not those . . . / Those, indeed, I may call no longer. . . .” Refusal in the first person.
II. “Gods who have fled!” First the refusal, now an appeal once more, and at the same time a retreat of the ‘I’ as it changes to ‘we.’
III. “Already . . . indeed grows verdant . . .” We are told what we are seeing, but in this strophe there is a shift to the “man” as the one who is looking, who follows the eagle and listens to it.
IV. “The priestess, quietest daughter of God. . . .” He sees her look for the eagle. In this strophe there is, at the same time, a shift to the calling of the eagle.
V. “Since then, when hidden in the woods. . . .” The eagle’s telling, and indeed telling of language and of the silent speech of the girl.
VI. “O drink morning breezes . . . / And name. . . .” This is the telling call to tell, but to tell in a manner that is to leave unspoken.
VII. “O name you daughter. . . .” The foretelling that points to what is to be said in an unsaid manner.