HÖLDERLIN, Friedrich. - German poet, Protestant, b. at Lauffen on the Neckar, March 20, 1770, d. at Tübingen, June 7, 1843. His life was an increasingly restless pilgrimage (even materially) toward the innermost part of himself and of being, two aspects that came more and more to coincide as they converged in a god understood in a resolutely pantheistic manner.
As a student, he was closely associated with Schelling and Hegel and was passionately devoted to Kant, Plato, and Spinoza: philosophers linked by an idealism of “mathematical” structure; nor can the connection with Schiller be surprising, for Schiller aided H. with lively interest and exerted an undeniable influence on the Hymns, which first brought H. fame. In the period 1796–98, at Frankfurt, there arose and perished, under adverse circumstances, the ardent love for Susette Gondtard, mother of the children of whom H. had become tutor. The evidence of this is the epistolary novel Hyperion, of a lyrical and absorbed character. More and more, the conflict began to emerge between the mystical exaltation for the god who dwells in all things, giving them the value they possess, and the dissent of all things from the god.
This conflict, still overcome in the Odes with expectation and hope, led H., psychologically, to madness, in which he remained for forty years until his death; but, poetically, it expressed itself in a language that broke every “orthodox” syntax, in a Pindaric atmosphere that had been precluded by translations of the Greek lyric poet. The lyrical outpourings of the Hymns and Elegies burst forth in succession, recalling through the innate, necessary secret bond of image and color and flowing immersed and connected in the melodic wave. With this language, outside every “logical” connection, H. perfectly realized his god, of whom all things are reality.