The Sovereign Translation: Mediation and Holderlin's "Das Hochste"

This article uncovers the distinctive relationship between sovereignty and translation that is embedded in Holderlin's Das Hochste (a translation of and commentary to Pindar's fragment Nomos Basileus). Das Hochste asserts that sovereign power is always a mediation of the foundational principles of justice, which it can access only indirectly when enacting law. Translation corresponds to this figuration of sovereignty to the extent that it always mediation rather than a direct conveyance of language, text, and context. As this article demonstrates by juxtaposing Das Hochste, Holderlin's letter to Casimir Bohlendorff on modernity's relationship to Greek antiquity, and his sketch Urtheil und Seyn, Holderlin understands both sovereignty and translation in terms of problems of knowledge. The concept of discipline (Zucht) as raised in Das Hochste indicates how the sovereign/translation might proceed in strict awareness of the fundamental divide between antiquity and the present, text and translation, and justice and law.