Selected Poems and Fragments

by Holderlin, Friedrich; Hamburger, Michael; Adler, Jeremy

• ISBN13: 9780140424164
• ISBN10: 0140424164
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1998-09-01
• Publisher: Penguin Classics

Summary

Friedrich Holderlin (1770-1843) is now recognised as one of Europe's supreme poets. Although he was scarcely known to his contemporaries and became deeply unstable in the latter part of his life, he produced, writes Michael Hamburger, a poetic work 'rich in potentialities and possibilities for the "future ages " in which he placed his hope'. Holderlin found his true voice in the epigrams and odes he wrote to 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 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 to reconcile his faith in the power of Nature, as embodied in the gods of ancient Greece, with conventional Christianity. In this superb bilingual selection, Hamburger has produced the definitive English version of a giant of German literature.

Table of Contents

Foreword	ix	(2)
Preface	xi	(6)
Introduction	xvii	(27)
Bibliographical note	xliv
ODES AND EPIGRAMS (1797-1799)	1	(20)
EPIGRAMS (1797)	3	(16)
Good Advice	3	(1)
Descriptive Poetry	3	(1)
To Diotima	3	(1)
Diotima (`Bliss of the heavenly Muse...')	3	(2)
Bonaparte	5	(1)
Empedocles	5	(2)
To the Fates	7	(1)
Diotima (`You suffer and keep silent and, strange to them...')	7	(2)
To Her Genius	9	(1)
Plea for Forgiveness	9	(1)
Then and Now	9	(2)
The Course of Life (`High my spirit aspired...')	11	(1)
Brevity	11	(1)
Human Applause	11	(2)
Home (`Content the boatman turns...')	13	(1)
Good Faith	13	(1)
Her Recovery (`Nature, she who's your friend...')	13	(2)
The Unpardonable	15	(1)
To the Young Poets	15	(1)
To the Germans (`Do not laugh...')	15	(2)
The Sanctimonious Poets	17	(1)
Sunset	17	(1)
To Our Great Poets	17	(2)
Socrates and Alcibiades	19	(1)
EPIGRAMS (1799)	19	(2)
Sophocles	19	(1)
The Angry Poet	19	(1)
The Root of All Evil	19	(2)
THE LATER ODES (1798-1803)	21	(88)
Man	23	(2)
Hyperion's Song of Fate	25	(2)
In my boyhood days...	27	(2)
The Spirit of the Age	29	(2)
Evening Fantasy	31	(2)
In the Morning	33	(2)
The River Main	35	(2)
My Possessions	37	(4)
To Princess Augusta of Homburg	41	(2)
Go down, then, lovely sun	43	(2)
To the Germans (`Never laugh at...')	45	(4)
Rousseau	49	(2)
Heidelberg (Alcaic version)	51	(2)
The Neckar	53	(2)
Home (`Content the boatman turns...')	55	(2)
Love	57	(2)
The Course of Life (`More you also desired...')	59	(2)
Her Recovery (`Nature, look, your most loved...')	61	(2)
The Farewell (second version)	63	(2)
Diotima (`You suffer and keep silent, unknown...')	65	(2)
Return to the Homeland	67	(2)
The Ancestral Portrait	69	(2)
The Departed	71	(2)
Exhortation (second version)	73	(2)
Nature and Art or Saturn and Jupiter	75	(2)
Sung beneath the Alps	77	(2)
The Poet's Vocation	79	(4)
Voice of the People (second version)	83	(4)
The Blind Singer	87	(4)
Chiron	91	(4)
Tears	95	(2)
To Hope	97	(1)
Vulcan	97	(2)
The Poet's Courage (first version)	99	(2)
Timidness	101	(2)
The Fettered River	103	(2)
Ganymede	105	(4)
HEXAMETERS AND ELEGIES (1800-1801)	109	(60)
The Archipelago	111	(16)
Menon's Lament for Diotima	127	(10)
The Traveller	137	(6)
Stuttgart	143	(8)
Bread and Wine	151	(8)
Homecoming	159	(10)
THE HYMNS (1799-1803)	169	(94)
The Ages of Life	171	(1)
Half of Life	171	(2)
The Nook at Hardt	173	(2)
As on a holiday	175	(2)
At the Source of the Danube	177	(6)
The Journey	183	(6)
Germania	189	(8)
The Rhine	197	(12)
Celebration of Peace	209	(10)
The Only One (first version)	219	(6)
The Only One (second version)	225	(6)
Patmos	231	(12)
Patmos (fragments of the later version)	243	(8)
Remembrance	251	(2)
The Ister	253	(6)
Mnemosyne (third version)	259	(4)
FRAGMENTS OF OTHER HYMNS (1800-1805)	263	(60)
German Song	265	(2)
Home (`And no one knows...')	267	(2)
For when the grape-vine's sap	269	(1)
On fallow foliage	269	(2)
What is the life of men	271	(1)
What is God?	271	(2)
To the Virgin Mary	273	(10)
The Titans	283	(4)
At one time I questioned the Muse	287	(2)
But when the heavenly	289	(6)
The Eagle	295	(4)
You firmly built alps	299	(2)
Whatever is Nearest (third version)	301	(4)
Colombo	305	(8)
When there's a flaming	313	(1)
For from the abyss	313	(2)
Narcissi	315	(2)
In Socrates' Time	317	(1)
Greece (third version)	317	(6)
LAST POEMS (1807-1843)	323	(18)
If from the distance	325	(2)
On the Birth of a Child	327	(2)
The world's agreeable things	329	(1)
To Zimmer (`The lines of life...')	329	(1)
Conviction	329	(1)
The Merry Life	329	(4)
The Walk	333	(1)
Spring (`New day descends...')	333	(2)
Summer (`When then the blooms...')	335	(1)
Summer (`Still you can see...')	335	(2)
Autumn (`Nature's bright gleam...')	337	(1)
Winter (`When past, unseen...')	337	(2)
Spring (`When springtime from the depth...')	339	(2)
Index of German first lines	341	(4)
Index of English first lines	345	(4)
Index of German titles	349	(2)
Index of English titles	351