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.

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.

Related Topics:
Hymn - Parodistic - Georg Trakl - Elegiac - Rainer Maria Rilke

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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.

Related Topics:
Sophocles - 20th century - Translation - Walter Benjamin

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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.

Related Topics:
Tübingen - Hegel - Schelling - Martin Heidegger - Theodor Adorno

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