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Part of the book: The Significance of Locality in the Poetry of Friedrich Hölderlin

David J. Constantine

MHRA Texts and Dissertations 12

Modern Humanities Research Association

RomanticismGermanPoetryopen

Abstract.  It is generally true of Hölderlin's mature poems that they are backward- or forward-looking. They oscillate, even within one poem, between the ideal past, Greece, and the ideal future, the new Hesperia. At the height of his powers it was this concern for the ideal future (based on the ideal past) that Hölderlin felt to be his prime responsibility. The present was not ideal; to be content with it would be the greatest irresponsibility and a betrayal of the hope for the future. There are no instances in the poems of 1800 to 1801 of Hölderlin's being content with the immediate present, with the real circumstances of his own life and his times. Note cues in this chapter refer to endnotes in the end matter of the book.

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