The Sea Both Giveth and Taketh Away: Holderlin and Coetzee on the Philosophical Essence of the Refugee

Arguing that the seafarers in Holderlin's late hymn "Remembrance" are ambiguous, as they keep slipping between the figure of the merchant and the refugee, this paper juxtaposes how the ambiguous seafarers in Holderlin's poem and the protagonists in Coetzee's The Childhood of Jesus, who are all refugees, relate to the sea. This juxtaposition allows us to arrive at a philosophical distillation of the existence of the refugee, who, caught between the competing injunctions to forget and to remember, represents the entire gamut of human existence. Coetzee's novel complements Holderlin's poem by showing us that the refugee, in facing existential dilemmas that pertain to the very ground of all morality, is not to be seen as a victim or an eternal object of pity, but as a figure exhibiting a sovereignty of incomparable magnitude.