Friedrich Hölderlin

Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin (March 20, 1770 – June 6, 1843) was a major German lyric poet. His work bridges the Classical and Romantic schools. Image File history File links Download high resolution version (500x694, 68 KB) Beschreibung: Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843) Künstler: unbekannt Quelle: selbst gescannt File links The following pages link to this file: Friedrich Hölderlin ... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (500x694, 68 KB) Beschreibung: Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843) Künstler: unbekannt Quelle: selbst gescannt File links The following pages link to this file: Friedrich Hölderlin ... March 20 is the 79th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (80th in Leap years). ... 1770 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ... June 6 is the 157th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (158th in leap years), with 208 days remaining. ... 1843 was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... Bust of Homer, one of the earliest European poets, in the British Museum Poetry (ancient Greek: ποιεω (poieo) = I create) is an art form in which human language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or instead of, its notional and semantic content. ... Neoclassicism (sometimes rendered as Neo-Classicism or Neo-classicism) is the name given to quite distinct movements in the visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture. ... Romanticism was an artistic and intellectual movement in the history of ideas that originated in late 18th century Western Europe. ...

Life

Hölderlin was born in Lauffen am Neckar in the kingdom of Württemberg. He studied Theology at the Tübinger Stift (seminary of the Protestant Church in Württemberg), where he was friends with the future philosophers Georg Hegel and Friedrich Schelling. They mutually influenced one another, and it has been pointed by some 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. In politics, a country (or in some cases, a group of countries) over which a king or queen reigns, is a kingdom, see: monarchy. ... Württemberg (often spelled Wurttemberg in English) refers to an area and a former state in Swabia, a region in south-western Germany. ... Theology is reasoned discourse concerning God (Greek θεος, theos, God, + λογος, logos, word or reason). It also refers to the study of other religious topics. ... Tübinger Stift is a hall of residence and teaching of the Protestant Church in Württemberg. ... Protestantism is a general grouping of denominations within Christianity. ... G.W.F. Hegel Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (August 27, 1770 - November 14, 1831) was a German philosopher born in Stuttgart, Württemberg, in present-day southwest Germany. ... Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (January 27, 1775 - August 20, 1854) was a German philosopher. ... Heraclitus of Ephesus (Greek Herakleitos) (about 535 - 475 BC), known as The Obscure, was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher from Ephesus in Asia Minor. ... Broadly defined, Dialectic (Greek: διαλεκτική) is an exchange of propositions (theses) and counter-propositions (antitheses) resulting in a synthesis of the opposing assertions, or at least a qualitative transformation in the direction of the dialogue. ...

Being from a family of limited means (his mother was twice a widow), and having little inclination for an ecclesiastical career, Hölderlin had to earn his living as a tutor of children of well-to-do families. While working as the tutor of the sons of Jakob Gontard, a Frankfurt banker, he fell in love with his wife Susette, who would become his great love. Susette Gontard is the model for the Diotima of his epistolary novel Hyperion.   Frankfurt am Main? [ˈfraÅ‹kfÊŠrt] is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany. ... An epistolary novel is a book written using a literary technique in which a novel is composed as a series of letters, although diary entries, newspaper clippings and other documents are sometimes used. ...

Having been publicly insulted by Gontard, Hölderlin felt forced to quit his job in the banker's household and found himself again in a difficult financial situation (even as some of his poems were already being published through the influence of his occasional protector, the poet Friedrich Schiller), having to accept a small allowance from his mother. Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (November 10, 1759 – May 9, 1805), usually known as Friedrich Schiller, was a German poet, philosopher, historian, and dramatist. ...

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. In early 1802 he found a job as tutor of the children of the Hamburg consul in Bordeaux, France, and traveled by foot to that city. His travel and stay there are celebrated in Andenken (Remembrance), one of his greatest poems. In a few months, however, he would be back in Germany showing signs of mental disorder, which was aggravated by the news of Susette's death. Hypochondria (sometimes hypochondriasis) is the unfounded belief that one is suffering from a serious illness. ... 1800 was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ... 1802 was a common year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... Hamburg is Germanys second largest city (after Berlin) and, with the Hamburg Harbour, its principal port. ... For the wine, see Bordeaux Wine City motto: Lilia sola regunt lunam undas castra leonem. ... The Scream, the famous painting commonly thought of as depicting the experience of mental illness. ...

In 1807, having become largely insane, he was brought into the home of Ernst Zimmer, a Tübingen carpenter with literary leanings, who was an admirer of his Hyperion. For the next 36 years, Hölderlin would live in Zimmer's house, in a tower room overlooking the beautiful Neckar valley, being cared for by the Zimmer family until his death in 1843. Wilhelm Waiblinger, a young poet and admirer, has left a poignant account of Hölderlin's day-to-day life during these long, empty years. 1807 was a common year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar). ... Tübingen, Neckar front Tübingen, an old university city of Baden-Württemberg, Germany, is situated 20 miles southwest of Stuttgart, on a ridge between the River Neckar and the Ammer. ... The Neckar is a river in Germany, a major tributary of the River Rhine, which it joins at Mannheim. ... 1843 was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... Wilhelm Waiblinger (November 21, 1804 - January 17 or 30, 1830) was a German romantic poet, mostly remembered today in connection with Friedrich Hölderlin. ...

Work

The poetry of Hölderlin, widely recognized today as one of the highest points of German and Western literature, was quite forgotten very soon – his illness and reclusion made him fade from his contemporaries' consciousness – and, even though selections of his work were being published by his friends already during his lifetime, it was largely ignored for the rest of the 19th century, Hölderlin being classified as a mere imitator of Schiller, a romantic and melancholy youth. (He would be rediscovered, by Norbert von Hellingrath, only in the 20th century). Open Directory Project: Literature World Literature Electronic Text Archives Magazines and E-zines Online Writing Writers Resources Libraries, Digital Cataloguing, Metadata Distance Learning Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Classicism in Literature The Universal Library, by Carnegie Mellon University Project Gutenberg Online Library Abacci - Project Gutenberg texts matched with Amazon... Alternative meaning: Nineteenth Century (periodical) (18th century — 19th century — 20th century — more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 19th century was that century which lasted from 1801-1900 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar. ... (19th century - 20th century - 21st century - more centuries) Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s As a means of recording the passage of time, the 20th century was that century which lasted from 1901–2000 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar (1900–1999 in the...

In fact, 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. He was at first carried away by Napoleon, whom he honors in one of his couplets (it should be noted that his exact contemporary Beethoven also initially dedicated his Eroica to the Corsican general). During the French Revolution (1789–1799) democracy and republicanism overthrew the absolute monarchy in France, and the French portion of the Roman Catholic Church was forced to undergo radical restructuring. ... For other uses, see Napoleon (disambiguation). ... Ludwig van Beethoven Ludwig van Beethoven (baptized December 17, 1770; died March 26, 1827) was a German composer of classical music, who predominantly lived in Vienna, Austria. ... The Symphony No. ...

Like Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Schiller, his older contemporaries, Hölderlin was a fervent admirer of ancient Greek culture, but had a very personal understanding of it. Much later, Friedrich Nietzsche and his followers would recognize in him the poet who first acknowledged the orphic and dionysiac 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 and, 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"). Johann Wolfgang von Goethe   Johann Wolfgang von Goethe? (pronounced [gø tÉ™, sometimes incorrectly pronunced Goth, Gurter and Gotha]) (August 28, 1749 – March 22, 1832) was a German novelist, dramatist, humanist, scientist, philosopher, and he conducted his civic services as a cabinet minister of Weimar. ... Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (October 15, 1844 – August 25, 1900) was a profoundly influential German philosopher, psychologist, and classical philologist. ... The head of Orpheus, from an 1865 painting by Gustave Moreau. ... Bacchus by Caravaggio The god Dionysus is occasionally confused with one of several historical figures named Dionysius, a theophoric name that simply means [servant] of Dionysus. ... A mystery religion is any religion with an arcanum, or body of secret wisdom. ... Pietism was a movement, in the Lutheran Church, lasting from the late-17th century to the mid-18th Century. ... Swabia (German: Schwaben) is both a historic and linguistic region in Germany. ... Greek mythology comprises the collected narratives of Greek gods, goddesses, heroes, and heroines, originally created and spread within an oral-poetic tradition. ... This article refers to the literary work. ...

In the great poems of his maturity, Hölderlin would generally adopt a large-scale, expansive and unrhymed style. Together with these long hymns 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 his years of madness, he would occasionally pen ingenuous rhymed quatrains, sometimes of a childlike beauty, which he would sign with fantastic names, such as Scardanelli. Some went so far as to claim that his late poems written in the asylum (the so-called "tower poems"), full of "Homeric beauty", were the crystallization of his thoughts, and thus the greatest part of his works; and that his madness was indeed a voluntary one. Such claims are generally dismissed as romantic exaggeration today. German poet Friedrich Hölderlin used this name for himself while suffering from a mental illness that stretched along his last years of life. ... For other uses, see Homer (disambiguation). ... Crystal (disambiguation) Insulin crystals A crystal is a solid in which the constituent atoms, molecules, or ions are packed in a regularly ordered, repeating pattern extending in all three spatial dimensions. ... This group of political volunteers is working to promote voter turn-out. ... Romance or romantic can refer to: Romance (genre) - a style of Medieval narrative fiction. ... Hype! is also the name of a documentary film about grunge music. ...

Influence

Though Hölderlin's hymnic style – dependent as it is on a genuine belief in the divinity – can hardly be transposed without sounding parodistic, his shorter and more fragmentary lyric has exerted its influence in German poetry, from Georg Trakl onwards, and his elegiac mode has found an apt successor in Rainer Maria Rilke. A hymn is a song specifically written as a song of praise, adoration or prayer, typically addressed to a god. ... In contemporary usage, parody is a form of satire that imitates another work of art in order to ridicule it. ... Georg Trakl (February 3, 1887 - November 3, 1914) was an Austrian poet, whose deeply disturbing work assaults the emotions with its powerful metaphors of destruction, death, the search for meaning, and a tenuous relationship with God. ... Originally used for a type of poetic metre (Elegiac metre), the term elegy is also used for a poem of mourning, from the Greek elegos, a reflection on the death of someone or on a sorrow generally. ... Rainer Maria Rilke (4 December 1875 in Prague, Austria-Hungary – 29 December 1926 in Valmont (Switzerland)) is generally considered the German languages greatest poet of the 20th century. ...

Hölderlin earned some negative notoriety during his lifetime by his translations of Sophocles, which were considered awkward and contrived. In the 20th century, theorists of translation like Walter Benjamin have vindicated them, showing their importance as a new – and greatly influential – model of poetic translation. A Roman bust of Sophocles. ... (19th century - 20th century - 21st century - more centuries) Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s As a means of recording the passage of time, the 20th century was that century which lasted from 1901–2000 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar (1900–1999 in the... Translation is an activity comprising the interpretation of the meaning of a text in one language — the source text — and the production of a new, equivalent text in another language — called the target text, or the translation. ... Benjamin, in 1938. ...

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 such divergent thinkers as Martin Heidegger and Theodor Adorno. Tübingen, Neckar front Tübingen, an old university city of Baden-Württemberg, Germany, is situated 20 miles southwest of Stuttgart, on a ridge between the River Neckar and the Ammer. ... Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (August 27, 1770 - November 14, 1831) was a German philosopher born in Stuttgart, Württemberg, in present-day southwest Germany. ... Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (January 27, 1775 - August 20, 1854) was a German philosopher. ... Martin Heidegger (September 26, 1889 – May 26, 1976) was a German philosopher. ... Max Horkheimer (front left), Theodor Adorno (front right), and Jürgen Habermas in the background, right, in 1965 at Heidelberg Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund Adorno (September 11, 1903 – August 6, 1969) was a German sociologist, philosopher, musicologist and composer. ...

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Friedrich Hölderlin

A 2004 film, The Ister, is based on Martin Heidegger's 1942 lectures on Hölderlin's poem 'The Ister', and features Jean-Luc Nancy, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Bernard Stiegler, and Hans-Juergen Syberberg. * Official site Image File history File links i would like to see some quotations by or about goebbels. ... Wikiquote logo Wikiquote is a sister project of Wikipedia, using the same MediaWiki software. ... 2004(MMIV) is a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Martin Heidegger (September 26, 1889 – May 26, 1976) was a German philosopher. ... Jean-Luc Nancy (born 26 July 1940) is a French philosopher. ... Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe (born 1940) is a contemporary French philosopher, literary critic, and translator. ... Hans-Jürgen Syberberg (December 8, 1935 - ) is one of the most controversial directors of New German Cinema. ...