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 One
of the greatest German lyric poets who melded classical and Christian
themes in his works. Among Hölderlin's major works is his novel
HYPERION ODER DER EREMIT IN GRIECHENLAND (1797-99), expressing longing
for ancient Greece. His actual career as a writer lasted only about
a decade. Hölderlin's life was never settled or happy: he lacked
both money and recognition and his socially suspect love affair
with a married woman drove him insane in 1803.
"I am mortal, born to love and to suffer."
Hölderin was born in Lauffen am Neckar, Württemberg. He studied
theology at the university of Tübingen, where he obtained a master's
degree. In 1793 he was introduced to Friedrich von Schiller, who
published some of his poems. The turning point in his life was,
when he took post in a house of a wealthy Frankfurt banker Gontard.
Hölderlin had a painful but platonic love affair with his employee's
wife Susette, whom he called 'Diotima' in his poems. Their happiness
was short-lived and ended by the husband. Hölderlin left Frankfurt
in 1798 and went through a period of intense creativity, producing
his great elegies and the second volume of HYPERION.
After working for a short time as a tutor at Bordeaux in France,
Hölderin returned in 1802 to Germany in an advanced stage of schizophrenia.
The last 36 years of his life Hölderin spent under the shadow of
insanity, living in a carpenter's house in Tübingen. He died on
June 7, 1843. In 1861 Friedrich Nietzsche, who died insane, wrote
an enthusiastic essay on his "favourite poet", Hölderlin, who became
six years after Nietzsche's essay widely recognized as Germany's
greatest poet after Goethe.
MENSCHENBEIFALL
Ist nicht heilig mein Herz, schöneren Lebens voll,
seit ich liebe? warum achtetet ihr mich mehr,
da ich stolzer und wilder,
wortereicher und leerer war?
Ach! der Menge gefällt, was auf den Marktplatz taugt,
und es ehret der Knecht nur den Gewaltsamen;
an das Göttliche glauben die allein,
die es selber sind.
Hölderlin was not directly affiliated with either of the two major
literary movements of his time, Weimar Classicism or Romanticism,
but his thought has elements in common with both. Some of Hölderlin's
finest lyrics are 'Brod und Wein', an elegy celebrating both Jesus
and Dionysus, 'Der Archipelagus', an ode in which it is hoped that
modern Germany will tend toward the character of ancient Greece,
'Heidelberg' and 'Der Rhein', odes on the city and the river, and
the patriotic ode 'Germanien'.
"The greatest lyric poets, for instance Hölderlin or Keats,
are men in whom the mythic power of insight breaks forth again
in its full intensity and objectifying power..."
(Ernst Cassirer in Language and Myth, 1946)
 In
his use of classical verse forms and syntax, Hölderlin was follower
of Friedrich Klopstock (1724-1803), who attempted to develop for
the German language a classical perfection of its own that would
place it on a par with Greek and Latin. Hölderlin shared the classicists'
love of balance and repose. For this he added a romantic yearning
for harmony with nature and elements of pantheism and Christian
images. Like William Blake and W.B. Yeats, he explored cosmology
and history for meaning, expression, and hope in an often hostile
and uncertain world. Hölderlin also played a decisive role in the
development of philosophy from Kant to Hegel, and hence in the formation
of German Idealism. Hölderlin rejected the bourgeois goal of rational
happiness, for him pleasure was but 'tepid water on the tongue'.
Hölderlin felt homeless and like Kleist, Shelley or Pushkin he was
worried to death by his age.
Nur einen Sommer gönnt, ihr Gewaltigen!
Und einen Herbst zu reifem Gesange mir,
Dass williger mein Herz, vom süssen
Spiele gesättiget, dann mir sterbe.
(from An die Parzen)
For further reading: Holderlin's Hyperion: A Critical Reading
by Walter Silz (1969); Reading After Freud: Essays on Goethe,
Holderlin, Habermas, Nietzsche, Brecht, Celan, and Freud by Rainer
Nagele (1987); Holderlin's Silence by Thomas Eldon Ryan (1988);
Holderlin by David Constantine (1988); Die Kunst Der Differenz
by Eric Bolle (1988); Holderlin: The Poetics of Being by Adrian
Del Caro (1990); Literature & Religion by Walter Jens, Hans Kung
(1991); Holderlin and the Golden Chain of Homer by Emery E. George
(1992); The Poet As Thinker: Holderlin in France by Geert Lernout
(1994); Finding Time: Reading for Temporality in Holderlin and
Heidegger by Timothy Torno (1995); Leaves of Mourning: Holderlin's
Late Work, With an Essay on Keats and Melancholy by Anselm Haverkamp
(1995); Studies in Poetic Discourse: Mallarme, Baudelaire, Rimbaud,
Holderlin by Hans-Jost Frey (1996); Holderlin's Hymn 'the Ister'
by Martin Heidegger, et al (1996); The Course of Remembrance and
Other Essays on Holderlin, ed. by Eckart Forster (1997); The Solid
Letter: Readings of Friedrich Holderlin, ed by Aris Fioretos (1999)
Note: Goethe's house in the Duchy of Weimar attracted
writers: Friedrich Hölderlin was received well but the dramatist
and storywriter Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1843) never recovered
from the depression resulting from his rejection by Goethe. However,
neither Goethe nor Schiller recognized Hölderlin's greatness.
Trivia: American writer Dan Simmon's took the title Hyperion
for his science fiction saga (Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion,
sequels: Endymion, The Rise of Endymion, the title Endymion referring
to John Keats's unfinished long poem about the displacement of
old gods.). The first volume was structured after Chaucer's The
Canterbury Tales: seven pilgrims have been called to the planet
Hyperion and en route they tell tales contributing to the mosaic
of the overall story. The first two parts were later published
together, under the title Hyperion Cantos.
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