Novel
Hyperion
Friedrich Hölderlin · 1797
Opening lines
Der liebe Vaterlandsboden gibt mir wieder Freude und Leid. Ich bin jetzt alle Morgen auf den Höhn des Korinthischen Isthmus, und, wie die Biene unter Blumen, biegt meine Seele oft hin und her zwischen den Meeren, die zur Rechten und zur Linken meinen glühenden Bergen die Füße kühlen.
The dear soil of my fatherland gives me joy and sorrow once more. Every morning now I am on the heights of the Isthmus of Corinth, and, like the bee among flowers, my soul often flies to and fro between the seas that, to right and left, cool the feet of my glowing mountains.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from zeno.org
Synopsis
Hyperion tells his life in letters to a German friend, Bellarmin. A child of the south of Greece, in the middle of the eighteenth century, he was awakened by his teacher Adamas to the greatness of the ancient heroes and the Greek gods; his friend Alabanda, a man of action, won him over to plans for the liberation of the country, and he met Diotima at Calauria, who gives him the strength to act. In 1770, when the Greeks rise up against the Turks, he leaves to fight.
Context
Work on the book ran from 1792 to 1799; a fragment appeared in 1794 in the journal Neue Thalia, and the novel came out in two volumes, in 1797 and in 1799. Susette Gontard inspired the figure of Diotima, and the second volume is dedicated to her; after his dismissal, the lovers continued to see each other in secret until 1800. Hyperion's Song of Fate, inserted in the novel, was set to music by Brahms. The poems of the last years, signed with assumed names such as Scardanelli, are now read as part of the work.
Who it is for
An epistolary prose close to poetry; the French translation by Philippe Jaccottet is available in paperback.
Prizes and reception
The novel of a poet whose work marked, in the twentieth century, the philosopher Heidegger and the poet Paul Celan.