Synopses & Reviews
Though his literary talents were scarcely known to his contemporaries, Friedrich Holderlin has emerged today as one of Europe's supreme poets. The ode he wrote when he was in love with Susette Gontard, the wife of a rich banker to whose children he was tutor, and his sequence of hymns exploring cosmology and history are as extraordinary as the visionary lyrics of Blake and Yeats. The style of his other poems anticipates the symbolists and the surrealists. This superb bilingual selection exhibits Holderlin's prodigious gifts and his desperate struggle to reconcile his faith in Hellenism with Christianity.
Synopsis
Friedrich H lderlin (1770-1843) is now recognized as one of Europe's supreme poets. He first found his true voice in the epigrams and odes he wrote when transfigured by his love for the wife of a rich banker. He later embarked on an extraordinarily ambitious sequence of hymns exploring cosmology and history, from mythological times to the discovery of America and his own era. The 'Canticles of Night', by contrast, include enigmatic fragments in an unprecedented style, which anticipates the Symbolists and Surrealists. Together the works collected here show H lderlin's use of Classical and Christian imagery and his exploration of cosmology and history in an attempt to find meaning in an uncertain world.
Description
1187038 Includes bibliographical references (p. [xliv]-xlv) and indexes.