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Hyperion and Selected Poems (German Library)

Average customer rating:

Poetic Language without a Plot
Deserves as many stars as there are stars in the sky...
One of the giants of ALL literature
One of the giants of German Literature

Hyperion and Selected Poems (German Library)
Friedrich Holderlin
Manufacturer: Continuum International Publishing Group
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

German | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

German | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Qualifying Textbooks - Spring 2007 | Stores | Books
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ASIN: 0826403344

Customer Reviews:

Poetic Language without a Plot.......2007-01-15

My Professor advised us to read this book without looking for a plot...because we wouldn't find one. He was right: Hyperion is a beautifully written account of one man's reflection on his life; it deals with love, friendship, and man's relationship with Nature. Holderlin's personal love for the Ancient Greeks also resonates throughout the poem. It should be read to enjoy and to be used as personal reflection on one's own life as well; but if you're looking for a plot, don't bother. There really isn't one. Pay close attention to the selection of poems included in the back: some of his better works have been included, and they are printed alongside the original German version as well. German scholars may find some discrepencies in the translations.

Deserves as many stars as there are stars in the sky..........2005-08-31

I read this in a state of intoxicated bliss. No, I wasn't intoxicated when I read it; the singing prose itself made me drunk with the very CONCEPT of life itself, the illimitable potential that humanity can manifest when it is on the highest road of spiritual and artistic discovery. HYPERION is the literary equivalent of something like Beethoven's "Ode to Joy;" among the very highest and most transcendent monuments of world culture, if imbibed in the proper mood, it can change your life altogether. (And this was only by way of the superb old translation in the Signet Classic, whoever did it was one of the greatest of all English translators...)

One of the giants of ALL literature.......2005-07-05

Hölderlin today deserves to enjoy a much wider readership than ever before given the veneration afforded to him by none other than Martin Heidegger for whom he was the greatest of the great. Sadly, Hölderlin was to leave us only one completed novel before his final descent into madness and obscurity but, my goodness, it is a gem of the greatest philosophic and poetic depth. This is without doubt one of the truly greatest novels to have ever been written. Certainly there is the typically German influence of music on this contemporary of Beethoven, hence the idea of applying the structural principles of sonata-allegro form to the novel. Anyone familiar with the musicological musings of Nikolaus Harnoncourt will know that the principles of sonata form structure in music were originally grounded on the classical principles of rhetoric - the art of presenting arguments - with all of its origins in Aristotle and which was a corner stone of education at this time. At the same time Hölderlin was to enjoy friendship with none other the great Hegel himself, thus lending this novel a philosophical profundity perhaps unrivalled by any in history - even by Camus or Satre.

The novel is set on the backdrop of a classical Greece of ancient ruins but occupied by the Ottoman Empire. Hyperion yearns to reawaken the glories of Classical Greece but kindles Romantic dreams of fighting for the liberation of his homeland, and leaves his idyllic Mediterranean world and the love of his life to fight in the name of freedom. The story unfolds in masterly fashion, enriched with its perfect balance of a nostalgic dreaming after a lost Classical world, matched with a Romatic passion for freedom and is told in the form of letters exchanged between Hyperion and friends in his idyllic homeland, all of which provide grippingly intense reading from start to finish.

The final lengthy epilog is some of the most profound philosophical meditations to ever appear in a novel. You can see why he won Heidegger's veneration when you read them. In this age where in central Europe at least, Hölderlin's star only gets brighter, Hyperion is absolutey essential reading. This is without doubt my favourite novel of all time, a work of rare profundity akin to Beethoven's late string quartets - so esoteric yet utterly divine in the profundity of its utterance.

One of the giants of German Literature.......2002-12-22

While Holderlin's poetry is truly brilliant and is his link to modernism, his single novel 'Hyperion' is also a major artistic achievement. Much more profound than its close epistolary relative and predecessor 'Sorrows of Young Werther', 'Hyperion' contains some of the most inticate and elegant prose in all of literature. Holderlin successfully attempts to impose the sonata structure in music upon a novel, and, even if he wrote nothing else, he would still rank among the greatest of German writers. The above is not meant to devalue Holderlin's poetry - his best poems being ineffably beautiful and timeless - but is only intended to bestow upon 'Hyperion' a higher place in Holderlin's oeuvre.

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