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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.  If full topographical descriptions are rare in the letters they are almost entirely absent from the poetry. There are almost no factual descriptions in his poems; Hölderlin was opposed to that kind of writing. But the absence of descriptive passages from his letters suggests that in prose or poetry factual description was something he was incapable of. And this is interesting in a writer to whom so many places, near and exotic alike, were so attractive and important; who travelled and was an avid reader of other travellers' accounts, and who had a vision of his homeland and of Greece that he must communicate. How then is the vision communicated, if not through factual description? That is the question to be considered in this chapter. Note cues in this chapter refer to endnotes in the end matter of the book.

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