Carolyn Gelland's Reviews > Hymns and Fragments

Holderlin said that he was struck by Apollo and I believe him. He is a poet of praise, dazzling like Pindar (some of whose Odes he translated), but with a modern vulnerability and brokenness and wistfulness that allows him to meditate on the terrifying withdrawal of God from the world (as in "Patmos").

A brilliant philosopher as well, who was a fellow-student and close friend of Hegel and Schelling, his poetry reaches with great art to discover an ultimate simplicity:

"Would I like to be a comet? I think so.
They are swift as birds, they flower
With fire, childlike in purity. To desire
More than this is beyond human measure."
(In lovely blue...)

Brilliantly translated and introduced by Richard Sieburth