Selected Poems and Fragments
Friedrich Holderlin (1770-1843) is now recognized as one of Europe's supreme poets. Holderlin first found his true voice in the epigrams and odes he wrote when transfigured by his love for Susette Gontard, the wife of a rich banker, to whose children he was tutor. 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...
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Friedrich Holderlin (1770-1843) is now recognized as one of Europe's supreme poets. Holderlin first found his true voice in the epigrams and odes he wrote when transfigured by his love for Susette Gontard, the wife of a rich banker, to whose children he was tutor. 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. Throughout his career, he struggled desperately to reconcile his faith in the power of Nature, as embodied in the gods of ancient Greece, with conventional Christianity.
ForewordPrefaceIntroductionBibliographical noteGood Advice3Descriptive Poetry3To Diotima3Diotima ('Bliss of the heavenly Muse ...')3Bonaparte5Empedocles5To the Fates7Diotima ('You suffer and keep silent and, strange to them ...')7To Her Genius9Plea for Forgiveness9Then and Now9The Course of Life ('High my spirit aspired ...')11Brevity11Human Applause11Home ('Content the boatman turns ...')13Good Faith13Her Recovery ('Nature, she who's your friend ...')13The Unpardonable15To the Young Poets15To the Germans ('Do not laugh ...')15The Sanctimonious Poets17Sunset17To Our Great Poets17Socrates and Alcibiades19Sophocles19The Angry Poet19The Root of All Evil19Man23Hyperion's Song of Fate25In my boyhood days ...27The Spirit of the Age29Evening Fantasy31In the Morning33The River Main35My Possessions37To Princess Augusta of Homburg41Go down, then, lovely sun ...43To the Germans ('Never laugh at ...')45Rousseau49Heidelberg (Alcaic version)51The Neckar53Home ('Content the boatman turns ...')55Love57The Course of Life ('More you also desired ...')59Her Recovery ('Nature, look, your most loved ...')61The Farewell (second version)63Diotima ('You suffer and keep silent, unknown ...')65Return to the Homeland67The Ancestral Portrait69The Departed71Exhortation (second version)73Nature and Art or Saturn and Jupiter75Sung beneath the Alps77The Poet's Vocation79Voice of the People (second version)83The Blind Singer87Chiron91Tears95To Hope97Vulcan97The Poet's Courage (first version)99Timidness101The Fettered River103Ganymede105The Archipelago111Menon's Lament for Diotima127The Traveller137Stuttgart143Bread and Wine151Homecoming159The Ages of Life171Half of Life171The Nook at Hardt173As on a holiday ...175At the Source of the Danube177The Journey183Germania189The Rhine197Celebration of Peace209The Only One (first version)219The Only One (second version)225Patmos231Patmos (fragments of the later version)243Remembrance251The Ister253Mnemosyne (third version)259German Song265Home ('And no one knows ...')267For when the grape-vine's sap ...269On fallow foliage ...269What is the life of men ...271What is God? ...271To the Virgin Mary273The Titans283At one time I questioned the Muse ...287But when the heavenly ...289The Eagle295You firmly built alps ...299Whatever is Nearest (third version)301Colombo305When there's a flaming ...313For from the abyss ...313Narcissi ...315In Socrates' Time317Greece (third version)317If from the distance ...325On the Birth of a Child327The world's agreeable things ...329To Zimmer ('The lines of life ...')329Conviction329The Merry Life329The Walk333Spring ('New day descends ...')333Summer ('When then the blooms ...')335Summer ('Still you can see ...')335Autumn ('Nature's bright gleam ...')337Winter ('When past, unseen ...')337Spring ('When springtime from the depth ...')339Index of German first lines341Index of English first lines345Index of German titles349Index of English titles351
