HÖLDERLIN, FRIEDRICH. — German Protestant poet, born at Lauffen on the Neckar on 20 March 1770, died at Tübingen on 7 June 1843. His life was an increasingly restless pilgrimage (materially as well) toward the innermost part of himself and of being, two aspects that increasingly came to coincide the more they converged in a god understood in a resolutely pantheistic manner.
As a student, he collaborated closely with Schelling and Hegel and became passionate about Kant, Plato, and Spinoza: philosophers linked by the “idealism” of “mathematical” structure; nor should his bond with Schiller cause surprise, for Schiller helped H. with lively interest, and his influence on the Hymns, which first brought H. fame, is indisputable. During the period 1796–98, in Frankfurt, his fervent love for Susette Gontard, the mother of the children of whom H. had become tutor, was born and died owing to adverse circumstances. It is attested by the epistolary novel Hyperion, lyrical and contemplative in character. The conflict between the mystical exaltation of the god who dwells in everything, giving it the value it possesses, and the dissent of everything from God became increasingly pronounced.
This conflict, still overcome in the Odes through expectation and hope, would lead H., psychologically, into madness, in which he would remain for forty years, until his death; but, poetically, it would be expressed in a language that breaks all “orthodox” syntax, in a Pindaric atmosphere, foreshadowed by the translations of the Greek lyric poet; the lyrical effusions of the Hymns and the Elegies subsequently burst forth, invoking one another through the innate, necessary secret bond between image and colour, and flowing immersed and interlinked in the melodic wave. With this language, beyond every “logical” connection, H. perfectly realizes his god, of whom everything is reality.