Friedrich Hölderlin
Encyclopedia
Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin (ˈjoːhan ˈkʁɪsti.aːn ˈfʁiːdʁɪç ˈhœldɐliːn; 20 March 1770 – 7 March 1843) was a major German
lyric poet
, commonly associated with the artistic movement known as Romanticism
. Hölderlin was also an important thinker in the development of German Idealism
, particularly his early association with and philosophical influence on his seminary
roommates and fellow Swabia
ns Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
.
and moved there. He had a full sister, born after their father's death, and a half-brother. His stepfather died when he was nine. He went to school in Denkendorf
and Maulbronn
and then studied theology
at the Tübinger Stift
, where his fellow-students included Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
(who had been a fellow-pupil at his first school) and Isaac von Sinclair. It has been speculated that it was probably Hölderlin who brought to Hegel's attention the ideas of Heraclitus
about the union of opposites, which the philosopher would develop into his concept of dialectics. Finding he could not sustain a Christian faith, Hölderlin declined to become a minister of religion and worked instead as a private tutor. In 1793-94 he met Friedrich Schiller
and Johann Wolfgang Goethe and began writing his epistolary novel
Hyperion
. During 1795 he enrolled for a while at the University of Jena
where he attended Fichte
's classes and met Novalis
.
As a tutor in Frankfurt
from 1796 to 1798 he fell in love with Susette Gontard
, the wife of his employer, the banker Jakob Gontard. The feeling was mutual, and this relationship was the most important in Hölderlin's life. Susette is addressed in his poetry under the name of 'Diotima'. Their affair was discovered and Hölderlin was harshly dismissed. He lived in Homburg from 1798 to 1800, meeting Susette in secret once a month and attempting to establish himself as a poet, but was plagued by money worries, having to accept a small allowance from his mother. He worked on a tragedy in the Greek manner, Empedokles, producing three versions, all unfinished. Already at this time he was diagnosed as suffering from a severe "hypochondria
", a condition that would worsen after his last meeting with Susette Gontard in 1800. After a sojourn in Stuttgart
, probably working on his translations of Pindar
, at the end of 1800 he found further employment as a tutor in Hauptwyl
, Switzerland and then, in 1802, in Bordeaux
, at the household of the Hamburg
consul. His stay in that French city is celebrated in "Andenken" ("Remembrance"), one of his greatest poems. In a few months, however, he returned home on foot via Paris (where he saw Greek sculptures for the only time in his life). He arrived home in Nürtingen both physically and mentally exhausted. Susette died from influenza
in Frankfurt about the same time.
After some time in Nürtingen he was taken to the court of Homburg by Sinclair, who found a sinecure for him as court librarian, but in 1805 Sinclair was denounced as a conspirator and tried for treason. Hölderlin was in danger of being tried too but was declared mentally unfit to stand trial. The state of Hesse-Homburg
was dissolved the following year after the Battle of Jena. On 11 September Hölderlin was delivered into the clinic at Tübingen
run by Dr Ferdinand Autenrieth
, inventor of a mask for the prevention of screaming in the mentally ill. The clinic was attached to the University and the poet Kerner
, then studying medicine, was assigned to look after Hölderlin for a while. The following year he was discharged as incurable and given three years to live, but was taken in by the carpenter Ernst Zimmer (a cultured man, who had read Hyperion) and given a room in his house in Tübingen, which had been a tower in the old city wall, with a view across the Neckar
river and meadows. Zimmer and his family cared for Hölderlin until his death in 1843, 36 years later. Wilhelm Waiblinger
, a young poet and admirer, left a poignant account of Hölderlin's day-to-day life during these long, empty years. Hölderlin continued to write poetry of a simplicity and formality quite unlike what he had been writing up to 1805. As time went on he became a kind of minor tourist attraction and was visited by curious travelers and autograph-hunters. Often he would play the piano or spontaneously write short verses for such visitors, confining himself to conventional subjects such as Greece, the Seasons, or The Spirit of the Times, pure in versification but almost empty of affect, although a few of these (such as the famous 'The Lines of Life', Die Linien des Lebens, which he wrote out for his carer Zimmer on a piece of wood) have a piercing beauty and have been set to music by many composers.
Hölderlin's own family did nothing to support him but instead petitioned (successfully) for his upkeep to be paid by the state. His mother and sister never visited him, and his stepbrother only once. His mother died in 1828: his sister and stepbrother quarrelled over the inheritance, arguing that too large a share had been allotted to Hölderlin, and tried unsuccessfully to have the will overturned in court. Neither of them attended his funeral, nor had the (now famous) friends of his childhood, Hegel and Schelling, had anything to do with him for years; the Zimmer family were his only mourners. His inheritance, including the patrimony left him by his father when he was two, had been kept from him by his mother and was untouched and continually accruing interest. He died a rich man, and never knew it.
, was little known or understood during his lifetime, and slipped into obscurity shortly after his death; his illness and reclusion made him fade from his contemporaries' consciousness – and, even though selections of his work were published by his friends during his lifetime, it was largely ignored for the rest of the 19th century.
Indeed, Hölderlin was a man of his time, an early supporter of the French Revolution
– in his youth at the Seminary of Tübingen, he and some colleagues from a "republican club" planted a "Tree of Freedom" in the market square, prompting the Grand-Duke himself to admonish the students at the seminary. In his early years he was an enthusiastic supporter of Napoleon, whom he honors in one of his couplets.
Like Goethe and Schiller, his older contemporaries, Hölderlin was a fervent admirer of ancient Greek culture, but his understanding of it was very personal. Much later, Friedrich Nietzsche
would recognize in him the poet who first acknowledged the Orphic
and Dionysian
Greece of the mysteries
, which he would fuse with the Pietism
of his native Swabia
in a highly original religious experience. For Hölderlin, the Greek gods
were not the plaster figures of conventional classicism, but living, actual presences, wonderfully life-giving though, at the same time, terrifying. He understood and sympathized with the Greek idea of the tragic fall
, which he expressed movingly in the last stanza of his "Hyperions Schicksalslied" ("Hyperion's Song of Destiny").
In the great poems of his maturity, Hölderlin would generally adopt a large-scale, expansive and unrhymed style. Together with these long hymns, odes and elegies – which included "Der Archipelagus" ("The Archipelago"), "Brot und Wein" ("Bread and Wine") and "Patmos" – he also cultivated a crisper, more concise manner in epigrams and couplets, and in short poems like the famous "Hälfte des Lebens" ("The Middle of Life"). In the years after his return from Bordeaux he completed some of his greatest poems but also, once they were finished, returned to them repeatedly, creating new and stranger versions sometimes in several layers on the same manuscript, which makes the editing of his works problematic. Some of these later versions (and some later poems) are fragmentary, but they have astonishing intensity. He seems sometimes also to have considered the fragments, even with gaps and unfinished lines and incomplete sentence-structure, to be poems in themselves. This obsessive revising and his stand-alone fragments were once considered evidence of his mental disorder, but they were to prove very influential on later poets such as Paul Celan
. In his years of madness, Hölderlin would occasionally pen ingenuous rhymed quatrains, sometimes of a childlike beauty, which he would sign with fantastic names (most often "Scardanelli") and give fictitious dates from the previous or future centuries.
were published in 1804 but were generally met with derision over their apparent artificiality and difficulty caused by transposing Greek idioms into German. In the 20th century, theorists of translation
such as Walter Benjamin
have vindicated them, showing their importance as a new – and greatly influential – model of poetic translation. Der Rhein and Patmos, two of the longest and most densely charged of the hymns, appeared in a poetic calendar in 1808.
Wilhelm Waiblinger, who visited Hölderlin in his tower repeatedly in 1822-3 and depicted him in the protagonist of his novel Phaëthon, urged the necessity of issuing an edition of his poems and the first collection of his poetry was issued by Ludwig Uhland
and C. T. Schwab in 1826. They omitted anything they suspected might be 'touched by insanity'. A copy was given to Hölderlin, but some years later this was stolen by a souvenir-hunter. A second, enlarged edition with a biographical essay appeared in 1842, the year before Hölderlin’s death.
Only in 1913 did Norbert von Hellingrath
, a member of the circle around poet Stefan George
, bring out the first two volumes of what eventually became a six-volume edition of Hölderlin's poems, prose and letters (the 'Berlin Edition', Berliner Ausgabe). For the first time, Hölderlin's hymnic drafts and fragments were published and it became possible to gain some overview of his work in the years between 1800 and 1807, which had been only sparsely covered in earlier editions. The Berlin edition and von Hellingrath's impassioned advocacy of Hölderlin's work shifted the emphasis of appraisal from his earlier elegies to the enigmatic and grandiose later hymns. At the same time, Hölderlin's appeals to the Germans became all too easy to abuse among nationalists and finally among Nazi-inflected groups.
Already in 1912, before the Berlin edition began to appear, Rainer Maria Rilke
composed his first two Duino Elegies
whose form and spirit draw strongly on the hymns and elegies of Hölderlin. Rilke had met von Hellingrath a few years earlier and had seen some of the hymn drafts, and the Duino Elegies heralded the beginning of a new appreciation of Hölderlin's late work. Although his hymns can hardly be imitated, they have become a powerful influence on modern poetry in German and other languages, and are sometimes cited as the very crown of German lyric poetry.
The Berlin edition was to some extent superseded by the Stuttgart Edition (Grosse Stuttgarter Ausgabe) edited by Friedrich Beissner and Adolf Beck, which began publication in 1943 and eventually saw completion in 1986. This undertaking was much more rigorous in textual criticism than the Berlin edition and solved many issues of interpretation raised by Hölderlin's unfinished and undated texts (sometimes several versions of the same poem with major differences). Meanwhile a third complete edition, the Frankfurt Critical Edition (Frankfurter Historisch-kritische Ausgabe), began publication in 1975 under the editorship of Dietrich Sattler; it is still in progress. There are other editions; it should be noted that no two of them show all the major poems in congruent textual status. Strophes and readings are sometimes arranged in different ways from one edition to the next.
Though Hölderlin's hymn
ic style – dependent as it is on a genuine belief in the divinity – creates a deeply personal fusion of Greek mythic figures and romantic nature mysticism, which can appear both strange and enticing, his shorter and sometimes more fragmentary poems have exerted wide influence too on later German poets, from Georg Trakl
onwards. He also had an influence on the poetry of Hermann Hesse
and Paul Celan
. (Celan wrote a poem about Hölderlin, called "Tübingen, January" which ends with the word Pallaksch - according to C. T. Schwab, Hölderlin's favourite neologism "which sometimes meant Yes, sometimes No").
Hölderlin was a poet-thinker who wrote, fragmentarily, on poetic theory and philosophical matters. His theoretical works, such as the essays "Das Werden im Vergehen" ("Becoming in Dissolution") and "Urteil und Sein" ("Judgement and Being") are insightful and important if somewhat tortuous and difficult to parse. They raise many of the key problems also addressed by his Tübingen
roommates Hegel and Schelling. And, though his poetry was never "theory-driven", the interpretation and exegesis of some of his more difficult poems has given rise to profound philosophical speculation by thinkers as divergent as Martin Heidegger
, Jacques Derrida
, Michel Foucault
and Theodor Adorno.
by Brahms, based on Hyperions Schicksalslied. Other composers of Hölderlin settings include Peter Cornelius
, Hans Pfitzner
, Richard Strauss
(Drei Hymnen), Max Reger
(An die Hoffnung), Alphons Diepenbrock
(Die Nacht), Richard Wetz
(Hyperion), Josef Matthias Hauer
, Stefan Wolpe
, Paul Hindemith
, Benjamin Britten
, Hans Werner Henze
, Bruno Maderna
(Hyperion, Stele an Diotima), Heinz Holliger
(the Scardanelli-Zyklus), Hans Zender
(Hölderlin lesen I-IV), György Kurtág
(who planned an opera on Hölderlin), György Ligeti
(Hölderlin-Phantasien), Hanns Eisler
(Hollywood Liederbuch), Viktor Ullmann
(who wrote settings in Terezin concentration camp), Wolfgang von Schweinitz
, Walter Zimmermann
(Hyperion, an epistolary opera) and Wolfgang Rihm
. Wilhelm Killmayer
based in 1986 two song cycles Hölderlin-Lieder for tenor and orchestra on Hölderlin's latest poems. Kaija Saariaho
's Tag des Jahrs for mixed choir and electronics (2001) is based on four of these poems, Graham Waterhouse
composed in 2003 Sechs späteste Lieder nach Hölderlin for (singing and speaking) voice and cello on six latest poems.
Many songs of Swedish
alternative rock
band ALPHA 60
also contain lyrical references to Hölderlin's poetry. Finnish
melodic death metal
band Insomnium
has transposed and used Hölderlin's verses in several songs.
's late piano suite Gesänge der Frühe was inspired by Hölderlin, as was Luigi Nono
's string quartet Fragmente-Stille, an Diotima and parts of his opera Prometeo. Josef Matthias Hauer
wrote many piano pieces inspired by individual lines of the poems. Carl Orff
used Hölderlin's German translations of Sophocles in his operas Antigone and Oedipus der Tyrann. Paul Hindemith
's First Piano Sonata is influenced by Hölderlin's poem Der Main. Hans Werner Henze
's Seventh Symphony
is partly inspired by Hölderlin.
Germans
The Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....
lyric poet
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
, commonly associated with the artistic movement known as Romanticism
Romantic poetry
Romanticism, a philosophical, literary, artistic and cultural era which began in the mid/late-1700s as a reaction against the prevailing Enlightenment ideals of the day , also influenced poetry...
. Hölderlin was also an important thinker in the development of German Idealism
German idealism
German idealism was a philosophical movement that emerged in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It developed out of the work of Immanuel Kant in the 1780s and 1790s, and was closely linked both with romanticism and the revolutionary politics of the Enlightenment...
, particularly his early association with and philosophical influence on his seminary
Seminary
A seminary, theological college, or divinity school is an institution of secondary or post-secondary education for educating students in theology, generally to prepare them for ordination as clergy or for other ministry...
roommates and fellow Swabia
Swabia
Swabia is a cultural, historic and linguistic region in southwestern Germany.-Geography:Like many cultural regions of Europe, Swabia's borders are not clearly defined...
ns Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher, one of the creators of German Idealism. His historicist and idealist account of reality as a whole revolutionized European philosophy and was an important precursor to Continental philosophy and Marxism.Hegel developed a comprehensive...
and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling , later von Schelling, was a German philosopher. Standard histories of philosophy make him the midpoint in the development of German idealism, situating him between Fichte, his mentor prior to 1800, and Hegel, his former university roommate and erstwhile friend...
.
Life
Hölderlin was born in Lauffen am Neckar in the Duchy of Württemberg. His father, the manager of a church estate, died when the boy was two years old. He was brought up by his mother, who in 1774 married the Mayor of NürtingenNürtingen
Nürtingen is a town in the district of Esslingen in Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. It is located on the river Neckar.-History:The following events occurred, by year:*1046 : First mention of Niuritingin in the document of Speyer...
and moved there. He had a full sister, born after their father's death, and a half-brother. His stepfather died when he was nine. He went to school in Denkendorf
Denkendorf
Denkendorf may refer to two municipalities in Germany:*Denkendorf, Baden-Württemberg*Denkendorf, Bavaria...
and Maulbronn
Maulbronn
Maulbronn is a city in the district of Enz in Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany.-History:Founded in 1838, it emerged from a settlement, built around a monastery, which belonged to the Neckar Community in the Kingdom of Württemberg. In 1886, Maulbronn officially became a German town and was an...
and then studied theology
Theology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...
at the Tübinger Stift
Tübinger Stift
The Tübinger Stift is a hall of residence and teaching; it is owned and supported by the Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Württemberg, and located in the university city of Tübingen, in South West Germany. The Stift was originally founded as an Augustinian monastery in the Middle Ages...
, where his fellow-students included Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher, one of the creators of German Idealism. His historicist and idealist account of reality as a whole revolutionized European philosophy and was an important precursor to Continental philosophy and Marxism.Hegel developed a comprehensive...
, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling , later von Schelling, was a German philosopher. Standard histories of philosophy make him the midpoint in the development of German idealism, situating him between Fichte, his mentor prior to 1800, and Hegel, his former university roommate and erstwhile friend...
(who had been a fellow-pupil at his first school) and Isaac von Sinclair. It has been speculated that it was probably Hölderlin who brought to Hegel's attention the ideas of Heraclitus
Heraclitus
Heraclitus of Ephesus was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, a native of the Greek city Ephesus, Ionia, on the coast of Asia Minor. He was of distinguished parentage. Little is known about his early life and education, but he regarded himself as self-taught and a pioneer of wisdom...
about the union of opposites, which the philosopher would develop into his concept of dialectics. Finding he could not sustain a Christian faith, Hölderlin declined to become a minister of religion and worked instead as a private tutor. In 1793-94 he met Friedrich Schiller
Friedrich Schiller
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller was a German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright. During the last seventeen years of his life , Schiller struck up a productive, if complicated, friendship with already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang von Goethe...
and Johann Wolfgang Goethe and began writing his epistolary novel
Epistolary novel
An epistolary novel is a novel written as a series of documents. The usual form is letters, although diary entries, newspaper clippings and other documents are sometimes used. Recently, electronic "documents" such as recordings and radio, blogs, and e-mails have also come into use...
Hyperion
Hyperion (Hölderlin)
Hyperion is a novel by Friedrich Hölderlin first published in 1797 and 1799 . The full title is Hyperion oder Der Eremit in Griechenland ....
. During 1795 he enrolled for a while at the University of Jena
Jena
Jena is a university city in central Germany on the river Saale. It has a population of approx. 103,000 and is the second largest city in the federal state of Thuringia, after Erfurt.-History:Jena was first mentioned in an 1182 document...
where he attended Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte was a German philosopher. He was one of the founding figures of the philosophical movement known as German idealism, a movement that developed from the theoretical and ethical writings of Immanuel Kant...
's classes and met Novalis
Novalis
Novalis was the pseudonym of Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg , an author and philosopher of early German Romanticism.-Biography:...
.
As a tutor in Frankfurt
Frankfurt
Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...
from 1796 to 1798 he fell in love with Susette Gontard
Susette Borkenstein Gontard
Susette Gontard, née Borkenstein , dubbed Diotima by the German poet Friedrich Hölderlin after Diotima of Mantinea, was the inspiration for his novel Hyperion, published in 1797–1799. She was the wife of Hölderlin's employer, the Frankfurt banker J. F. Gontard...
, the wife of his employer, the banker Jakob Gontard. The feeling was mutual, and this relationship was the most important in Hölderlin's life. Susette is addressed in his poetry under the name of 'Diotima'. Their affair was discovered and Hölderlin was harshly dismissed. He lived in Homburg from 1798 to 1800, meeting Susette in secret once a month and attempting to establish himself as a poet, but was plagued by money worries, having to accept a small allowance from his mother. He worked on a tragedy in the Greek manner, Empedokles, producing three versions, all unfinished. Already at this time he was diagnosed as suffering from a severe "hypochondria
Hypochondria
Hypochondriasis or hypochondria refers to excessive preoccupation or worry about having a serious illness. This debilitating condition is the result of an inaccurate perception of the body’s condition despite the absence of an actual medication condition...
", a condition that would worsen after his last meeting with Susette Gontard in 1800. After a sojourn in Stuttgart
Stuttgart
Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....
, probably working on his translations of Pindar
Pindar
Pindar , was an Ancient Greek lyric poet. Of the canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, his work is the best preserved. Quintilian described him as "by far the greatest of the nine lyric poets, in virtue of his inspired magnificence, the beauty of his thoughts and figures, the rich...
, at the end of 1800 he found further employment as a tutor in Hauptwyl
Hauptwil
Hauptwil is a village and former municipality in the canton of Thurgau, Switzerland.It was first recorded in year 1413 as Hoptwill.The municipality had 50 inhabitants in 1649, which increased to 598 in 1850, 741 in 1900, 819 in 1950 and 910 in 1990....
, Switzerland and then, in 1802, in Bordeaux
Bordeaux
Bordeaux is a port city on the Garonne River in the Gironde department in southwestern France.The Bordeaux-Arcachon-Libourne metropolitan area, has a population of 1,010,000 and constitutes the sixth-largest urban area in France. It is the capital of the Aquitaine region, as well as the prefecture...
, at the household of the Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
consul. His stay in that French city is celebrated in "Andenken" ("Remembrance"), one of his greatest poems. In a few months, however, he returned home on foot via Paris (where he saw Greek sculptures for the only time in his life). He arrived home in Nürtingen both physically and mentally exhausted. Susette died from influenza
Influenza
Influenza, commonly referred to as the flu, is an infectious disease caused by RNA viruses of the family Orthomyxoviridae , that affects birds and mammals...
in Frankfurt about the same time.
After some time in Nürtingen he was taken to the court of Homburg by Sinclair, who found a sinecure for him as court librarian, but in 1805 Sinclair was denounced as a conspirator and tried for treason. Hölderlin was in danger of being tried too but was declared mentally unfit to stand trial. The state of Hesse-Homburg
Hesse-Homburg
Hesse-Homburg was formed into a separate landgraviate in 1622 by the landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt to be ruled by his son, although it did not become independent of Hesse-Darmstadt until 1668....
was dissolved the following year after the Battle of Jena. On 11 September Hölderlin was delivered into the clinic at Tübingen
Tübingen
Tübingen is a traditional university town in central Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated south of the state capital, Stuttgart, on a ridge between the Neckar and Ammer rivers.-Geography:...
run by Dr Ferdinand Autenrieth
Johann Heinrich Ferdinand von Autenrieth
Johann Heinrich Ferdinand von Autenrieth was a German physician born in Stuttgart.He studied medicine at Karlsschule Stuttgart, and following graduation attended lectures by Antonio Scarpa and Johann Peter Frank at Pavia...
, inventor of a mask for the prevention of screaming in the mentally ill. The clinic was attached to the University and the poet Kerner
Justinus Kerner
Justinus Andreas Christian Kerner was a German poet and medical writer.-Life:He was born at Ludwigsburg in Württemberg...
, then studying medicine, was assigned to look after Hölderlin for a while. The following year he was discharged as incurable and given three years to live, but was taken in by the carpenter Ernst Zimmer (a cultured man, who had read Hyperion) and given a room in his house in Tübingen, which had been a tower in the old city wall, with a view across the Neckar
Neckar
The Neckar is a long river, mainly flowing through the southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg, but also a short section through Hesse, in Germany. The Neckar is a major right tributary of the River Rhine...
river and meadows. Zimmer and his family cared for Hölderlin until his death in 1843, 36 years later. Wilhelm Waiblinger
Wilhelm Waiblinger
Wilhelm Waiblinger was a German romantic poet, mostly remembered today in connection with Friedrich Hölderlin. After he had attended Gymnasium Illustre in Stuttgart, he was a student at the seminary of Tübingen in the 1820s, when Hölderlin, already mentally ill, lived there as a recluse in a...
, a young poet and admirer, left a poignant account of Hölderlin's day-to-day life during these long, empty years. Hölderlin continued to write poetry of a simplicity and formality quite unlike what he had been writing up to 1805. As time went on he became a kind of minor tourist attraction and was visited by curious travelers and autograph-hunters. Often he would play the piano or spontaneously write short verses for such visitors, confining himself to conventional subjects such as Greece, the Seasons, or The Spirit of the Times, pure in versification but almost empty of affect, although a few of these (such as the famous 'The Lines of Life', Die Linien des Lebens, which he wrote out for his carer Zimmer on a piece of wood) have a piercing beauty and have been set to music by many composers.
Hölderlin's own family did nothing to support him but instead petitioned (successfully) for his upkeep to be paid by the state. His mother and sister never visited him, and his stepbrother only once. His mother died in 1828: his sister and stepbrother quarrelled over the inheritance, arguing that too large a share had been allotted to Hölderlin, and tried unsuccessfully to have the will overturned in court. Neither of them attended his funeral, nor had the (now famous) friends of his childhood, Hegel and Schelling, had anything to do with him for years; the Zimmer family were his only mourners. His inheritance, including the patrimony left him by his father when he was two, had been kept from him by his mother and was untouched and continually accruing interest. He died a rich man, and never knew it.
Work
The poetry of Hölderlin, widely recognized today as one of the highest points of German literatureLiterature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
, was little known or understood during his lifetime, and slipped into obscurity shortly after his death; his illness and reclusion made him fade from his contemporaries' consciousness – and, even though selections of his work were published by his friends during his lifetime, it was largely ignored for the rest of the 19th century.
Indeed, Hölderlin was a man of his time, an early supporter of the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
– in his youth at the Seminary of Tübingen, he and some colleagues from a "republican club" planted a "Tree of Freedom" in the market square, prompting the Grand-Duke himself to admonish the students at the seminary. In his early years he was an enthusiastic supporter of Napoleon, whom he honors in one of his couplets.
Like Goethe and Schiller, his older contemporaries, Hölderlin was a fervent admirer of ancient Greek culture, but his understanding of it was very personal. Much later, Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
would recognize in him the poet who first acknowledged the Orphic
Orphism (religion)
Orphism is the name given to a set of religious beliefs and practices in the ancient Greek and the Hellenistic world, as well as by the Thracians, associated with literature ascribed to the mythical poet Orpheus, who descended into Hades and returned...
and Dionysian
Dionysian Mysteries
The Dionysian Mysteries were a ritual of ancient Greece and Rome which used intoxicants and other trance-inducing techniques to remove inhibitions and social constraints, liberating the individual to return to a natural state. It also provided some liberation for those marginalized by Greek...
Greece of the mysteries
Greco-Roman mysteries
Mystery religions, sacred Mysteries or simply mysteries, were religious cults of the Greco-Roman world, participation in which was reserved to initiates....
, which he would fuse with the Pietism
Pietism
Pietism was a movement within Lutheranism, lasting from the late 17th century to the mid-18th century and later. It proved to be very influential throughout Protestantism and Anabaptism, inspiring not only Anglican priest John Wesley to begin the Methodist movement, but also Alexander Mack to...
of his native Swabia
Swabia
Swabia is a cultural, historic and linguistic region in southwestern Germany.-Geography:Like many cultural regions of Europe, Swabia's borders are not clearly defined...
in a highly original religious experience. For Hölderlin, the Greek gods
Greek mythology
Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...
were not the plaster figures of conventional classicism, but living, actual presences, wonderfully life-giving though, at the same time, terrifying. He understood and sympathized with the Greek idea of the tragic fall
Tragedy
Tragedy is a form of art based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of...
, which he expressed movingly in the last stanza of his "Hyperions Schicksalslied" ("Hyperion's Song of Destiny").
In the great poems of his maturity, Hölderlin would generally adopt a large-scale, expansive and unrhymed style. Together with these long hymns, odes and elegies – which included "Der Archipelagus" ("The Archipelago"), "Brot und Wein" ("Bread and Wine") and "Patmos" – he also cultivated a crisper, more concise manner in epigrams and couplets, and in short poems like the famous "Hälfte des Lebens" ("The Middle of Life"). In the years after his return from Bordeaux he completed some of his greatest poems but also, once they were finished, returned to them repeatedly, creating new and stranger versions sometimes in several layers on the same manuscript, which makes the editing of his works problematic. Some of these later versions (and some later poems) are fragmentary, but they have astonishing intensity. He seems sometimes also to have considered the fragments, even with gaps and unfinished lines and incomplete sentence-structure, to be poems in themselves. This obsessive revising and his stand-alone fragments were once considered evidence of his mental disorder, but they were to prove very influential on later poets such as Paul Celan
Paul Celan
Paul Celan was a poet and translator...
. In his years of madness, Hölderlin would occasionally pen ingenuous rhymed quatrains, sometimes of a childlike beauty, which he would sign with fantastic names (most often "Scardanelli") and give fictitious dates from the previous or future centuries.
Dissemination and influence
Hölderlin’s major publication in his lifetime was his novel Hyperion, which was issued in two parts (1797 and 1799). Various individual poems were published but attracted little attention and in 1799 he also attempted to produce a literary-philosophical periodical, Iduna. His translations of the dramas of SophoclesSophocles
Sophocles is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus, and earlier than or contemporary with those of Euripides...
were published in 1804 but were generally met with derision over their apparent artificiality and difficulty caused by transposing Greek idioms into German. In the 20th century, theorists of translation
Translation
Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature; there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of...
such as Walter Benjamin
Walter Benjamin
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin was a German-Jewish intellectual, who functioned variously as a literary critic, philosopher, sociologist, translator, radio broadcaster and essayist...
have vindicated them, showing their importance as a new – and greatly influential – model of poetic translation. Der Rhein and Patmos, two of the longest and most densely charged of the hymns, appeared in a poetic calendar in 1808.
Wilhelm Waiblinger, who visited Hölderlin in his tower repeatedly in 1822-3 and depicted him in the protagonist of his novel Phaëthon, urged the necessity of issuing an edition of his poems and the first collection of his poetry was issued by Ludwig Uhland
Ludwig Uhland
Johann Ludwig Uhland , was a German poet, philologist and literary historian.-Biography:He was born in Tübingen, then Duchy of Württemberg, and studied jurisprudence at the university there, but also took an interest in medieval literature, especially old German and French poetry...
and C. T. Schwab in 1826. They omitted anything they suspected might be 'touched by insanity'. A copy was given to Hölderlin, but some years later this was stolen by a souvenir-hunter. A second, enlarged edition with a biographical essay appeared in 1842, the year before Hölderlin’s death.
Only in 1913 did Norbert von Hellingrath
Norbert von Hellingrath
Norbert von Hellingrath was a German literary scholar whose main contribution to literary scholarship is the first complete edition of the works of the poet Friedrich Hölderlin. Hellingrath was born in Munich: his father was an army officer and his mother claimed descent from the Byzantine Emperor...
, a member of the circle around poet Stefan George
Stefan George
Stefan Anton George was a German poet, editor, and translator.-Biography:George was born in Bingen in Germany in 1868. He spent time in Paris, where he was among the writers and artists who attended the Tuesday soireés held by the poet Stéphane Mallarmé. He began to publish poetry in the 1890s,...
, bring out the first two volumes of what eventually became a six-volume edition of Hölderlin's poems, prose and letters (the 'Berlin Edition', Berliner Ausgabe). For the first time, Hölderlin's hymnic drafts and fragments were published and it became possible to gain some overview of his work in the years between 1800 and 1807, which had been only sparsely covered in earlier editions. The Berlin edition and von Hellingrath's impassioned advocacy of Hölderlin's work shifted the emphasis of appraisal from his earlier elegies to the enigmatic and grandiose later hymns. At the same time, Hölderlin's appeals to the Germans became all too easy to abuse among nationalists and finally among Nazi-inflected groups.
Already in 1912, before the Berlin edition began to appear, Rainer Maria Rilke
Rainer Maria Rilke
René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke , better known as Rainer Maria Rilke, was a Bohemian–Austrian poet. He is considered one of the most significant poets in the German language...
composed his first two Duino Elegies
Duino Elegies
The Duino Elegies are a set of ten elegies written in German by the poet Rainer Maria Rilke from 1912 to 1922. They are frequently referred to as Rilke's most acclaimed poetic work.-Presentation:...
whose form and spirit draw strongly on the hymns and elegies of Hölderlin. Rilke had met von Hellingrath a few years earlier and had seen some of the hymn drafts, and the Duino Elegies heralded the beginning of a new appreciation of Hölderlin's late work. Although his hymns can hardly be imitated, they have become a powerful influence on modern poetry in German and other languages, and are sometimes cited as the very crown of German lyric poetry.
The Berlin edition was to some extent superseded by the Stuttgart Edition (Grosse Stuttgarter Ausgabe) edited by Friedrich Beissner and Adolf Beck, which began publication in 1943 and eventually saw completion in 1986. This undertaking was much more rigorous in textual criticism than the Berlin edition and solved many issues of interpretation raised by Hölderlin's unfinished and undated texts (sometimes several versions of the same poem with major differences). Meanwhile a third complete edition, the Frankfurt Critical Edition (Frankfurter Historisch-kritische Ausgabe), began publication in 1975 under the editorship of Dietrich Sattler; it is still in progress. There are other editions; it should be noted that no two of them show all the major poems in congruent textual status. Strophes and readings are sometimes arranged in different ways from one edition to the next.
Though Hölderlin's hymn
Hymn
A hymn is a type of song, usually religious, specifically written for the purpose of praise, adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a deity or deities, or to a prominent figure or personification...
ic style – dependent as it is on a genuine belief in the divinity – creates a deeply personal fusion of Greek mythic figures and romantic nature mysticism, which can appear both strange and enticing, his shorter and sometimes more fragmentary poems have exerted wide influence too on later German poets, from Georg Trakl
Georg Trakl
Georg Trakl was an Austrian poet. He is considered one of the most important Austrian Expressionists.- Life and work :Trakl was born and lived the first 18 years of his life in Salzburg, Austria...
onwards. He also had an influence on the poetry of Hermann Hesse
Hermann Hesse
Hermann Hesse was a German-Swiss poet, novelist, and painter. In 1946, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature...
and Paul Celan
Paul Celan
Paul Celan was a poet and translator...
. (Celan wrote a poem about Hölderlin, called "Tübingen, January" which ends with the word Pallaksch - according to C. T. Schwab, Hölderlin's favourite neologism "which sometimes meant Yes, sometimes No").
Hölderlin was a poet-thinker who wrote, fragmentarily, on poetic theory and philosophical matters. His theoretical works, such as the essays "Das Werden im Vergehen" ("Becoming in Dissolution") and "Urteil und Sein" ("Judgement and Being") are insightful and important if somewhat tortuous and difficult to parse. They raise many of the key problems also addressed by his Tübingen
Tübingen
Tübingen is a traditional university town in central Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated south of the state capital, Stuttgart, on a ridge between the Neckar and Ammer rivers.-Geography:...
roommates Hegel and Schelling. And, though his poetry was never "theory-driven", the interpretation and exegesis of some of his more difficult poems has given rise to profound philosophical speculation by thinkers as divergent as Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher known for his existential and phenomenological explorations of the "question of Being."...
, Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida was a French philosopher, born in French Algeria. He developed the critical theory known as deconstruction and his work has been labeled as post-structuralism and associated with postmodern philosophy...
, Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
and Theodor Adorno.
Vocal music
One of the earliest settings of Hölderlin's poetry and perhaps the most famous is SchicksalsliedSchicksalslied
The Schicksalslied is a short, powerful work for chorus and orchestra composed by Johannes Brahms between 1868 and 1871, his Opus 54. The text is that of Friedrich Hölderlin's poem Hyperions Schicksalslied, originally part of the novel Hyperion...
by Brahms, based on Hyperions Schicksalslied. Other composers of Hölderlin settings include Peter Cornelius
Peter Cornelius
Carl August Peter Cornelius was a German composer, writer about music, poet and translator. He was born and died in Mainz where his grave in the Hauptfriedhof survives....
, Hans Pfitzner
Hans Pfitzner
Hans Erich Pfitzner was a German composer and self-described anti-modernist. His best known work is the post-Romantic opera Palestrina, loosely based on the life of the great sixteenth-century composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina.-Biography:Pfitzner was born in Moscow, Russia, where his...
, Richard Strauss
Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...
(Drei Hymnen), Max Reger
Max Reger
Johann Baptist Joseph Maximilian Reger was a German composer, conductor, pianist, organist, and academic teacher.-Life:...
(An die Hoffnung), Alphons Diepenbrock
Alphons Diepenbrock
Alphonsus Johannes Maria Diepenbrock was a Dutch composer, essayist and classicist.-Life and work:...
(Die Nacht), Richard Wetz
Richard Wetz
Richard Wetz was a German late Romantic composer best known for his three symphonies. In these works, he "seems to have aimed to be an immediate continuation of Bruckner, as a result of which he actually ended up on the margin of music history".-1875-1906: Youth:Richard Wetz was born to a merchant...
(Hyperion), Josef Matthias Hauer
Josef Matthias Hauer
Josef Mattias Hauer was an Austrian composer and music theorist. He is most famous for developing, independent of and a year or two before Arnold Schoenberg, a method for composing with all 12 notes of the chromatic scale.Hauer "detested all art that expressed ideas, programmes or feelings,"...
, Stefan Wolpe
Stefan Wolpe
Stefan Wolpe was a German-born composer.-Life:Wolpe was born in Berlin. He attended the Klindworth-Scharwenka Conservatory from the age of fourteen, and the Berlin Hochschule für Musik in 1920-1921. He studied composition under Franz Schreker and was also a pupil of Ferruccio Busoni...
, Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith was a German composer, violist, violinist, teacher, music theorist and conductor.- Biography :Born in Hanau, near Frankfurt, Hindemith was taught the violin as a child...
, Benjamin Britten
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...
, Hans Werner Henze
Hans Werner Henze
Hans Werner Henze is a German composer of prodigious output best known for "his consistent cultivation of music for the theatre throughout his life"...
, Bruno Maderna
Bruno Maderna
Bruno Maderna was an Italian conductor and composer. For the last ten years of his life he lived in Germany and eventually became a citizen of that country.-Biography:...
(Hyperion, Stele an Diotima), Heinz Holliger
Heinz Holliger
Heinz Holliger Heinz Holliger Heinz Holliger (born 21 May 1939 is a Swiss oboist, composer and conductor.-Biography:He was born in Langenthal, Switzerland, and began his musical education at the conservatories of Bern and Basel. He studied composition with Sándor Veress and Pierre Boulez...
(the Scardanelli-Zyklus), Hans Zender
Hans Zender
Johannes Wolfgang Zender is a German conductor and composer.-Life:From 1956 to 1959 Zender studied piano, conducting, and composition at the Hochschule für Musik Frankfurt and at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg.From 1959 to 1963 he was Kapellmeister of the Municipal Theatres in Freiburg im...
(Hölderlin lesen I-IV), György Kurtág
György Kurtág
György Kurtág is a Hungarian composer of contemporary music.- Biography :György Kurtág was born in Lugoj in the Banat region, Romania.In 1946, he began his studies at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, where he met his wife, Márta, and also György Ligeti, who became a close friend...
(who planned an opera on Hölderlin), György Ligeti
György Ligeti
György Sándor Ligeti was a composer of contemporary classical music. Born in a Hungarian Jewish family in Transylvania, Romania, he briefly lived in Hungary before becoming an Austrian citizen.-Early life:...
(Hölderlin-Phantasien), Hanns Eisler
Hanns Eisler
Hanns Eisler was an Austrian composer.-Family background:Eisler was born in Leipzig where his Jewish father, Rudolf Eisler, was a professor of philosophy...
(Hollywood Liederbuch), Viktor Ullmann
Viktor Ullmann
Viktor Ullmann was a Silesia-born Austrian, later Czech composer, conductor and pianist of Jewish origin.- Biography :...
(who wrote settings in Terezin concentration camp), Wolfgang von Schweinitz
Wolfgang von Schweinitz
Wolfgang von Schweinitz is a German composer of classical music.Schweinitz studied composition at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg, from 1971 to 1973 with Gernot Klussmann and from 1973 to 1975 with György Ligeti. He continued his studies at the Stanford University with John Chowning...
, Walter Zimmermann
Walter Zimmermann
Walter Zimmermann is a German composer.Zimmermann studied composition in Germany with Werner Heider and Mauricio Kagel, the theory of musical intelligence at the Institute of Sonology in Utrecht , and computer music at Colgate University in New York.Zimmerman's works are infused by a personal...
(Hyperion, an epistolary opera) and Wolfgang Rihm
Wolfgang Rihm
Wolfgang Rihm is a German composer.Rihm is Head of the Institute of Modern Music at the Karlsruhe Conservatory of Music and has been composer in residence at the Lucerne Festival and the Salzburg Festival...
. Wilhelm Killmayer
Wilhelm Killmayer
Wilhelm Killmayer is a German composer of classical music and an academic.-Professional career:Wilhelm Killmayer studied conducting and composition from 1945 to 1951 in Munich at Hermann Wolfgang von Waltershausen’s Musikseminar...
based in 1986 two song cycles Hölderlin-Lieder for tenor and orchestra on Hölderlin's latest poems. Kaija Saariaho
Kaija Saariaho
Kaija Saariaho is a Finnish composer.Kaija Saariaho studied composition in Helsinki, Freiburg and Paris, where she has lived since 1982. Her studies and research at IRCAM have had a major influence on her music and her characteristically luxuriant and mysterious textures are often created by...
's Tag des Jahrs for mixed choir and electronics (2001) is based on four of these poems, Graham Waterhouse
Graham Waterhouse
Graham Waterhouse is an English composer and a cellist. He is known for chamber music and for unusual scoring, such as Piccolo Quintet, Bright Angel for three bassoons and contrabassoon, Chieftain's Salute for Great Highland Bagpipe and string orchestra, and works for speaking voice and cello,...
composed in 2003 Sechs späteste Lieder nach Hölderlin for (singing and speaking) voice and cello on six latest poems.
Many songs of Swedish
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
alternative rock
Alternative rock
Alternative rock is a genre of rock music and a term used to describe a diverse musical movement that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1980s and became widely popular by the 1990s...
band ALPHA 60
ALPHA 60
ALPHA 60 is an alternative rock band from Uppsala, Sweden, formed in 2008. Their name is a reference to the 1965 noir classic Alphaville; Alpha 60 being the computer controlling Godard's dystopian city.-History:...
also contain lyrical references to Hölderlin's poetry. Finnish
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
melodic death metal
Melodic death metal
Melodic death metal is a heavy metal music style that combines elements from the New Wave of British Heavy Metal with elements of death metal. The style was developed during the early and mid-1990s, primarily in England and Scandinavia...
band Insomnium
Insomnium
Insomnium is a Finnish melodic death metal band from Joensuu, Finland. Their new album "One for Sorrow" was released October 2011. On September 9th, 2011 Insomnium released the music video Through The Shadows from their 2011 album One For Sorrow....
has transposed and used Hölderlin's verses in several songs.
Instrumental music
Robert SchumannRobert Schumann
Robert Schumann, sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era....
's late piano suite Gesänge der Frühe was inspired by Hölderlin, as was Luigi Nono
Luigi Nono
Luigi Nono was an Italian avant-garde composer of classical music and remains one of the most prominent composers of the 20th century.- Early years :Born in Venice, he was a member of a wealthy artistic family, and his grandfather was a notable painter...
's string quartet Fragmente-Stille, an Diotima and parts of his opera Prometeo. Josef Matthias Hauer
Josef Matthias Hauer
Josef Mattias Hauer was an Austrian composer and music theorist. He is most famous for developing, independent of and a year or two before Arnold Schoenberg, a method for composing with all 12 notes of the chromatic scale.Hauer "detested all art that expressed ideas, programmes or feelings,"...
wrote many piano pieces inspired by individual lines of the poems. Carl Orff
Carl Orff
Carl Orff was a 20th-century German composer, best known for his cantata Carmina Burana . In addition to his career as a composer, Orff developed an influential method of music education for children.-Early life:...
used Hölderlin's German translations of Sophocles in his operas Antigone and Oedipus der Tyrann. Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith was a German composer, violist, violinist, teacher, music theorist and conductor.- Biography :Born in Hanau, near Frankfurt, Hindemith was taught the violin as a child...
's First Piano Sonata is influenced by Hölderlin's poem Der Main. Hans Werner Henze
Hans Werner Henze
Hans Werner Henze is a German composer of prodigious output best known for "his consistent cultivation of music for the theatre throughout his life"...
's Seventh Symphony
Symphony No. 7 (Henze)
The Seventh Symphony by the German composer Hans Werner Henze was written in 1983-84. It was commissioned by the Berliner Philharmoniker as part of the orchestra's centenary celebrations in 1982....
is partly inspired by Hölderlin.
Cinema
- A 2004 film, The Ister, is based on Martin Heidegger'sMartin HeideggerMartin Heidegger was a German philosopher known for his existential and phenomenological explorations of the "question of Being."...
1942 lecture course (published as Hölderlin's Hymn "The Ister"). The film features Jean-Luc NancyJean-Luc NancyJean-Luc Nancy is a French philosopher.Nancy's first book, published in 1973, was Le titre de la lettre , a reading of the work of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, written in collaboration with Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe...
, Philippe Lacoue-LabarthePhilippe Lacoue-LabarthePhilippe Lacoue-Labarthe was a French philosopher. He was also a literary critic and translator....
, Bernard StieglerBernard StieglerBernard Stiegler is a French philosopher at Goldsmiths, University of London and at the Université de Technologie de Compiègne. In addition, he is Director of the , founder in 2005 of the political and cultural group, , and founder in 2010 of the philosophy school,...
, and Hans-Jürgen SyberbergHans-Jürgen SyberbergHans-Jürgen Syberberg is a German film director, whose best known film is his lengthy feature, Hitler: A Film from Germany.- Early life :...
.
- The 1985 film Half of life is named after a poem of Hölderlin and deals with the secret relationship between Hölderlin and Susette Gontard. It stars German actors Ulrich MüheUlrich MüheFriedrich Hans Ulrich Mühe was a German film, television and theatre actor. He played the role of Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler in the Oscar-winning film Das Leben der Anderen , for which he received the award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role, Gold, at Germany's most prestigious film...
and Jenny Gröllmann.
- In 1986 and 1988 Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub shot two films "Der Tod Des EmpedoklesThe Death of EmpedoclesThe Death of Empedocles is a 1987 German drama film directed by Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub. It was entered into the 37th Berlin International Film Festival.-Cast:* Martina Baratta* Vladimir Baratta* William Berger...
" and "Schwarze SündeBlack SinBlack Sin is a 1989 German-French short drama film directed by Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub. It was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival.-Cast:* Andreas von Rauch as Empédocle...
" in Sicily, which were both based on the drama Empedokles (respectively for the two films they used the first and third version of the text).
- A 1981-82 television drama, "Untertänigst Scardanelli" (The Loyal Scardanelli), directed by Jonatan BrielJonatan BrielJonatan Karl Dieter Briel was a German director, screenplay author, and actor. He was born in Bodenwerder, Lower Saxony, and died in Berlin...
in Berlin.
Works
- Friedrich Hölderlins Sämtliche Werke. Ed. Gotthold Friedrich Stäudlin (Berlin: Cotta, 1846).
- Sämtliche Werke. Ed. Norbert von HellingrathNorbert von HellingrathNorbert von Hellingrath was a German literary scholar whose main contribution to literary scholarship is the first complete edition of the works of the poet Friedrich Hölderlin. Hellingrath was born in Munich: his father was an army officer and his mother claimed descent from the Byzantine Emperor...
, Ludwig von Pigenot and Friedrich Seebass. 6 vols. (Berlin: Propyläen, 1913–23 and 1943).
- Sämtliche Werke. Große Stuttgarter Ausgabe. Ed. Friedrich Beißner (works) and Adolf Beck (letters and documents). 8 vols in 16 parts. (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1943–1985).
- Sämtliche Werke. Known as the "Kleiner Stuttgarter Ausgabe". Ed. Friedrich Beißner. 6 vols. (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1946–1962).
- Sämtliche Werke. Frankfurter Ausgabe. Ed. D.E. Sattler. 20 vols. (Frankfurt am Main: Stroemfeld, 1975–2003).
- Sämtliche Werke und Briefe in drei Bänden. Ed. Jochen Schmidt. 3 vols. (Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Klassiker, 1992–94).
- Sämtliche Werke und Briefe. Ed. Michael Knaupp. 3 vols. (München: Hanser, 1992–1993).
- Gesammelte Werke von Friedrich Hölderlin, Hans-Jürgen Balmes ( herausgegeber ) Ed.Verlag: Fischer (Tb.), Frankfurt; ( Broschiert ) Auflage: 1 (4. April 2008)
English translations
- Some Poems of Friedrich Holderlin. Trans. Frederic Prokosch. (Norfolk, CT: New Directions, 1943).
- Alcaic Poems. Trans. Elizabeth Henderson. (London: Wolf, 1962; New York: Unger, 1963). ISBN 0854963030
- Friedrich Hölderlin: Poems & Fragments. Trans. Michael HamburgerMichael HamburgerMichael Hamburger OBE was a noted British translator, poet, critic, memoirist, and academic. He was known in particular for his translations of Friedrich Hölderlin, Paul Celan, Gottfried Benn and W. G. Sebald from German, and his work in literary criticism...
. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966; 4ed. London: Anvil Press, 2004). ISBN 0 85646 245 4 - Friedrich Hölderlin, Eduard Mörike: Selected Poems. Trans. Christopher Middleton (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1972). ISBN 0 22634 934 9
- Poems of Friedrich Holderlin: The Fire of the Gods Drives Us to Set Forth by Day and by Night. Trans. James Mitchell. (San Francisco: Hoddypodge, 1978; 2ed San Francisco: Ithuriel's Spear, 2004). ISBN 0974950297
- Hymns and Fragments. Trans. Richard SieburthRichard SieburthRichard Sieburth is a translator, essayist, editor, and literary scholar. He has gained widespread recognition for his numerous translations from both German and French literature, receiving a number of awards and prizes for his work. Sieburth is considered an authority on literary modernism,...
. (Princeton: Princeton University, 1984). ISBN 0 691 01412 4 - Friedrich Hölderlin: Essays and Letters on Theory. Trans. Thomas Pfau. (Albany, NY: State University of New York, 1988). ISBN 0 88706 558 9
- Hyperion and Selected Poems. The German Library vol.22. Ed. Eric L. SantnerEric SantnerEric L. Santner is an American scholar. He is Philip and Ida Romberg Professor in Modern Germanic Studies, and Chair, in the Department of Germanic Studies, at the University of Chicago, where he has been based since 1996....
. Trans. C. Middleton, R. Sieburth, M. Hamburger. (New York: Continuum, 1990). ISBN 0 8264 0334 4 - Friedrich Hölderlin: Selected Poems. Trans. David ConstantineDavid ConstantineDavid Constantine is a British poet and translator.Constantine is a Fellow of Queen's College, Oxford University, and a graduate of Wadham College, Oxford. He is co-editor of the literary journal Modern Poetry in Translation...
. (Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe, 1990; 2ed 1996) ISBN 1 85224 378 3 - What I Own: Versions of Hölderlin and Mandelshtam. Trans. John RileyJohn RileyJohn Riley was a poet who was associated with the British Poetry Revival.Riley was born and grew up in Leeds. He served in the Royal Air Force from 1956 to 1958 and then attended Pembroke College, Cambridge, graduating in 1961. He then worked as a teacher in various schools around the Cambridge area...
and Tim Longville. (Manchester: Carcanet, 1998). ISBN 1 85754 175 8 - Holderlin's Sophocles: Oedipus and Antigone. Trans. David Constantine. (Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe, 2001). ISBN 1852245433
- Odes and Elegies. Trans. Nick Hoff. (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan Press, 2008). ISBN 0 81956 8902
- Hyperion. Trans. Ross Benjamin. (Brooklyn, NY:Archipelago BooksArchipelago BooksArchipelago Books is an American not-for-profit literary publisher dedicated to promoting cross-cultural exchange through international literature in translation. Located Brooklyn, New York, it publishes small to mid-size runs of international fiction, poetry, and literary essays...
, 2008) ISBN 978-0-9793330-2-6 - Selected Poems of Friedrich Hölderlin. Trans. Maxine ChernoffMaxine ChernoffMaxine Chernoff is an American novelist, writer, poet, academic and literary magazine editor. She was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, and attended the University of Illinois at Chicago....
and Paul HooverPaul HooverPaul Hoover is an American poet and editor born in Harrisonburg, Virginia.His work has been associated with the New York School poets and innovative practices such as New York School and language poetry....
. (Richmond, CA: Omnidawn, 2008). ISBN 9781890650353 - Essays and Letters. Trans. Jeremy AdlerJeremy AdlerJeremy Adler is a British poet and professor of German at King's College London.-Education:Adler completed his PhD dissertation in 1977 on the chemistry of German polymath Johann Goethe's Elective Affinities under Claus Bock....
and Charlie Louth. (London: Penguin, 2009). ISBN 9780140447088 - The Death of Empedocles: A Mourning-Play. Trans. David Farrell KrellDavid Farrell KrellDavid Farrell Krell is a professor of philosophy at DePaul University. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy at Duquesne University, where he wrote his dissertation on Heidegger and Nietzsche. He has taught at many universities in Germany, France, and England...
. (Albany, NY: State University of New York, 2009). ISBN 0791476480
Selected secondary literature
- Martin HeideggerMartin HeideggerMartin Heidegger was a German philosopher known for his existential and phenomenological explorations of the "question of Being."...
, Erläuterungen zu Hölderlins Dichtung. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1944; Elucidations of Hölderlin's Poetry. Trans. Keith Hoeller. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2000. - Jean Laplanche, Hölderlin et la question du père. Paris: PUF, 1961; Hölderlin and the Question of the Father. Trans. Luke Carson. Victoria, BC: ELS Editions, 2007. ISBN 978-1-55058-379-3
- Berman, AntoineAntoine BermanAntoine Berman was a French translator, historian and theorist of translation.- Works :* L'épreuve de l'étranger: Culture et traduction dans l’Allemagne romantique: Herder, Goethe, Schlegel, Novalis, Humboldt, Schleiermacher, Hölderlin. Paris: Gallimard, 1984* Lettres à Fouad El-Etr sur le...
. L'épreuve de l'étranger. Culture et traduction dans l'Allemagne romantique: Herder, Goethe, Schlegel, Novalis, Humboldt, Schleiermacher, Hölderlin., Paris, Gallimard, Essais, 1984. ISBN 978-2070700769 - Paul de Man, “Heidegger’s Exegeses of Hölderlin.” Blindness and Insight. 2nd Ed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1983, pp. 246–66.
- Dieter Henrich, Der Gang des Andenkens: Beobachtungen und Gedanken zu Hölderlins Gedicht. Stuttgart: Cotta, 1986; The Course of Remembrance and Other Essays on Hölderlin. Ed. Eckart Förster. Stanford: Stanford University, 1997. ISBN 0804727392
- Andrzej Warminski, Readings in Interpretation: Hölderlin, Hegel, Heidegger. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1987.
- Martin Heidegger, Hölderlins Hymne >>Der Ister<<. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1984; Hölderlin's Hymn "The Ister". Trans. William McNeill and Julia Davis. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University, 1996.
- David Constantine, Hölderlin. Oxford: Clarendon Press 1988, corrected 1990. ISBN 0 19 815169 1.
- Annemarie Gethmann-SiefertAnnemarie Gethmann-SiefertAnnemarie Gethmann-Siefert is a professor of philosophy at the University of Hagen, Germany.-Biography:Gethmann-Siefert was born in 1945, studied philosophy, art history and theology in Münster, Bonn, Innsbruck and Bochum. She earned her PhD in philosophy 1973 from the Ruhr University Bochum...
, "Heidegger and Hölderlin: The Over-Usage of "Poets in an Impoverished Time"", Heidegger Studies (1990). pp.59-88. - Theodor W. AdornoTheodor W. AdornoTheodor W. Adorno was a German sociologist, philosopher, and musicologist known for his critical theory of society....
, "Parataxis: On Hölderlin's Late Poetry." In Notes to Literature, Volume II. Ed. Rolf Tiedemann. Trans. Shierry Weber Nicholson. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992. pp. 109–49. - Gert Lernout, The poet as thinker: Hölderlin in France. Columbia USA : Camden House, 1994.
- The Solid Letter: Readings of Friedrich Hölderlin. Ed. Aris Fioretos. Stanford: Stanford University, 1999. ISBN 0804729425
- Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei, Heidegger, Hölderlin, and the Subject of Poetic Language. New York: Fordham University, 2004. ISBN 0823223604
- David Michael Kleinberg-Levin, Gestures of Ethical Life: Reading Hölderlin's Question of Measure After Heidegger. Stanford: Stanford University, 2005. ISBN 0804750874
- Roseline Bonnellier, Sous le soleil de Hölderlin: Oedipe en question - Au premier temps du complexe était la fille. Paris: L'Harmattan, Collection "Études psychanalytiques", février 2010. ISBN 978-2-296-10411-2
External links
- Hölderlin-Archiv : http://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/archive/hoeld2.htm
- Hölderlin Gesellschaft (in German, links to English, French, Spanish, and Italian)
- Selected Poems of Hölderlin - English translations
- Poems by Friedrich Hölderlin - English translations
- Selective list of Hölderlin's poems in German, with linked texts - contains most of his major finished poems up to ca 1804, but not complete
- http://video.google.de/videoplay?docid=2912979794226430098&hl=de#"Hölderlin-Songs" composed by Viktor UllmannViktor UllmannViktor Ullmann was a Silesia-born Austrian, later Czech composer, conductor and pianist of Jewish origin.- Biography :...
, signed and translated into Austrian Sign Language by Horst Dittrich, sung by Rupert Bergmann in a production of ARBOS - Company for Music and Theatre] - Antigonai, an oper based on fragments by sophocles and hölderlin for three choirs and a women trio, composed by Carlos StellaCarlos StellaCarlos Stella is an Argentine composer.Self-taught in composition, Stella studied piano at the Buenos Aires National Conservatory of Music and in 1985 he was invited by Krzysztof Penderecki to the Cracow Academy of Music...