Hölderlin's Philosophy of Nature

Description

Shows the relation between Hölderlin’s poetic theory and his concept of nature as developed in his poetry, prose and dramatic works Analyzes Hölderlin’s cosmology and its relation to his conception of the divine The first collection to interpret his work within the context of the philosophy of nature Offers unique models for understanding the intersection of literature and philosophy Places ecological thought in dialogue with German Romanticism and Idealism Highlights the ontological significance of aesthetic categories (e.g. meter, harmony, discord and tragedy) in Hölderlin’s work to explain the role poetry plays in the history of being In our age of climate change, the work of the decidedly philosophical poet Friedrich Hölderlin has gained renewed urgency with its emphasis on the forces of nature that produce life and at the same time threaten to devour it. At the heart of his work lies an understanding of nature and the role that consciousness plays within it. This responds to, but also revises, the concerns of 18th and 19th-century philosophy of nature. This collection of 15 essays by distinguished international scholars reconsiders what his work reveals about the impulses toward form and formlessness in nature and the role that poetry plays in creating Hölderlin’s ‘harmonious opposition’. The collection shows that Hölderlin anticipates many of the concerns that motivate contemporary environmental thinking. Hölderlin’s Philosophy of Nature Copyright Contents Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations 1 Introduction Part I Tragic Nature 2 Nature and Poetic Consciousness from Hölderlin to Rilke 3 Raging with Care: The Poet’s Liquid Fire 4 The Order of the Unbound: Time and History in Hölderlin’s ‘The Titans’ Part II Hölderlin’s Rivers 5 The Untamed Earth: The Labour of Rivers in Hölderlin’s ‘The Ister’ 6 Hölderlin’s Local Abstraction: The Natural-Historical Sublime in ‘Voice of the People’ 7 Translating Centaurs: Notes on Hölderlin’s ‘The Life-Giving’ Part III Natural Beauty and the Absolute 8 Hölderlin’s Mythopoetics: From ‘Aesthetic Letters’ to the New Mythology 9 The Transition Between the Possible and the Real: Nature as Contingency in Hölderlin’s ‘The declin 10 ‘My whole being fell silent, and read’: Peter Handke’s Hölderlin and Heidegger Reception Part IV The Place of Poetry 11 Nature, Nurse, Khôra: Notes on the Poetics of Hölderlin’s Ode ‘Man’ 12 Not Rhythm 13 allowed, disallowed Notes on Contributors Index