Selected Poems and Fragments (Penguin Classics) [Paperback]

Friedrich Holderlin (Author), Jeremy Adler (Editor), Michael Hamburger (Translator)

Book Description

Series: Penguin Classics | Publication Date: September 1, 1998

Friedrich Holderlin (1770-1843) is now recognized as one of Europe's supreme poets. He first found his true voice in the epigrams and odes he wrote when transfigured by his love for the wife of a rich banker. He later embarked on an extraordinarily ambitious sequence of hymns exploring cosmology and history, from mythological times to the discovery of America and his own era. The 'Canticles of Night', by contrast, include enigmatic fragments in an unprecedented style, which anticipates the Symbolists and Surrealists. Together the works collected here show Holderlin's use of Classical and Christian imagery and his exploration of cosmology and history in an attempt to find meaning in an uncertain world.

Editorial Reviews

Review

The Angry Poet
The Archipelago
As On A Holiday
At One Time I Questioned The Muse
At The Source Of The Danube
Autumn
The Blind Singer
Bread And Wine
Brevity
But When The Heavenly
Chiron
Colombo
Conviction
The Course Of Life (1)
The Course Of Life (2)
The Departed
Descriptive Poetry
Diotima (1)
Diotima (2)
The Eagle
Evening Fantasy
Exhortation (second Version)
The Farewell (second Version)
The Fettered River
For From The Abyss We
For When The Grape-vine's Sap
Ganymede
German Song
Germania
Go Down, Then, Lovely Sun...
Good Advice
Good Faith
Greece (third Version)
Heidelberg
Her Recovery
Her Recovery
Home
Home (1)
Home (2)
Homecoming
Human Applause
Hyperion's Song Of Fate
If From The Distance...
In Socrates' Time
In The Morning
The Ister
The Journey
Love
Man
Menon's Lament For Diotima
The Merry Life
Mnemosyne (third Version)
My Possessions
Narcissi, Ranunculi And
Nature And Art Or Saturn And Jupiter
The Neckar
The Nook At Hardt
On Fallow Foliage
On The Birth Of A Child
The Only One (first Version)
The Only One (second Version)
Patmos
Patmos (fragments Of The Later Version)
The Poet's Courage (first Version)
The Poet's Vocation
Remembrance
Return To The Homeland
The Rhine
The River Man
The Root Of All Evil
Rousseau
The Sanctimonious Poets
Socrates And Alcibiades
Sophocles
The Spirit Of The Age
Spring
Stuttgart
Summer
Summer
Sung Beneath The Alps
Sunset
Tears
Timidness
The Titans
To Diotima
To Hope
To Our Great Poets
To Princess Augusta Of Homburg
To The Fates
To The Germans
To The Germans
To The Virgin Mary
To The Young Poets
To Zimmer
The Traveller
The Unpardonable
Voice Of The People (second Version)
Vulcan
The Walk
What Is God
What Is The Life Of Men
Whatever Is Nearest (third Version)
Where There's A Flaming Above The Vinyard
Winter
The World's Agreeable Things...
You Firmly Built Alps
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

Language Notes

Text: English, German (translation)

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Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics (September 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140424164
• ISBN-13: 978-0140424164
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 4.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #410,507 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars excellent translations, April 12, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Stuttgart, Germany) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Selected Poems and Fragments (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

As a german reader I must say that the author had made excellent translations. You have the feeling that he translated with heart - very rich in his speech and sometimes surprising. Some verses of Hoelderlin, which are strange and not easy to understand are in his translations clearer and simpler to understand. " But it is the sea / That takes and gives remembrance, / And love no less keeps eyes attentively fixed, / But what is lasting the poets provide" (Remembrance).

3 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fair collection, July 4, 2006

By 

Mr. Steiner (New York) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Selected Poems and Fragments (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

I don't have much to say about Holderlin's poetry, which I find a bit stodgy and ungraceful, but I have to say I cannot read it in German, which I believe is a necessary prerequisite to any true read of poetry. I would merely like to share a poem that I found beautiful:

Sunset

Where are you? Dazzled, drunken my soul grows faint
And dark with so much gladness; for even now
I listened while, too rich in golden
Sounds, the enrapturing youth, the sun-god

Intoned his evening hymn on a heavenly lyre;
All round the hills and forests re-echoed it,
Though far from here-to pious nations
Who still revere him-by now he's journeyed.

Wo bist du? Trunken dammert die Seele mir
Von aller deiner Wonne; denn eben ist's,
Dass ich gelauscht, wie, goldner Tone
Voll der entzukende Sonnenjungling

Sein Abendlied af himmlischer Leyer speilt';
Es tonten rings die Walder und Hugel nach.
Doch fern ist er zu frommen Volkern,
Die ihn noch ehren, hinweggegangen. (pp 16).

Enjoy the archaic read.