Hyperion, or the Hermit in Greece

Howard Gaskill, Friedrich Hölderlin

Description

Friedrich Hölderlin’s only novel, Hyperion (1797–99), is a fictional epistolary autobiography that juxtaposes narration with critical reflection. Returning to Greece after German exile, following his part in the abortive uprising against the occupying Turks (1770), and his failure as both a lover and a revolutionary, Hyperion assumes a hermitic existence, during which he writes his letters. Confronting and commenting on his own past, with all its joy and grief, the narrator undergoes a transformation that culminates in the realisation of his true vocation. 





Though Hölderlin is now established as a great lyric poet, recognition of his novel as a supreme achievement of European Romanticism has been belated in the Anglophone world. Incorporating the aesthetic evangelism that is a characteristic feature of the age, Hyperion preaches a message of redemption through beauty. The resolution of the contradictions and antinomies raised in the novel is found in the act of articulation itself. To a degree remarkable in a prose work of any length, what it means is inseparable from how it means. In this skilful translation, Gaskill conveys the beautiful music and rhythms of Hölderlin’s language to an English-speaking reader.

 

Sujets

• Hiperión (desambiguación)
• Hyperion
• Novel
• Friedrich Hölderlin

Informations

• Publié par: Open Book Publishers
• Date de parution: 28 février 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783746583
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

HYPERION, or the Hermit in Greece


Hyperion, or the Hermit in Greece
By Friedrich Hölderlin
Translated and with an Afterword by Howard Gaskill






https://www.openbookpublishers.com
Translation and Afterword © 2019 Howard Gaskill


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the text; to adapt the text and to make commercial use of the text providing attribution is made to the authors (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information:
Friedrich Hölderlin Hyperion, or the Hermit in Greece . Translated and with an Afterword by Howard Gaskill. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2019, https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0160
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Open Book Classics Series, vol. 10 | ISSN: 2054-216X (Print); 2054-2178 (Online)
ISBN Paperback: 978-1-78374-655-2
ISBN Hardback: 978-1-78374-656-9
ISBN Digital (PDF): 978-1-78374-657-6
ISBN Digital ebook (epub): 978-1-78374-658-3
ISBN Digital ebook (mobi): 978-1-78374-659-0
ISBN Digital (XML): 978-1-78374-667-5
DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0160
Cover image: Rudolf Lohbauer, ‘Hyperions Fahrt nach Kalaurea’ [Hyperion’s voyage to Calauria] (1824), reproduced by kind permission of the owner. See Walter Ludwig, ‘Rudolf Lohbauers Bild “Hyperions Fahrt nach Kalaurea”’, Hölderlin-Jahrbuch 30 (1996–1997), pp. 359–80.
Cover design: Francesca Alabaster.
All paper used by Open Book Publishers is SFI (Sustainable Forestry Initiative), PEFC (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification Schemes) and Forest Stewardship Council® (FSC® certified).


Contents
Hyperion, or the Hermit in Greece
1
Volume One
3
Foreword
5
Book One
7
Hyperion to Bellarmin [I]
7
Hyperion to Bellarmin [II]
8
Hyperion to Bellarmin [III]
9
Hyperion to Bellarmin [IV]
11
Hyperion to Bellarmin [V]
16
Hyperion to Bellarmin [VI]
17
Hyperion to Bellarmin [VII]
21
Hyperion to Bellarmin [VIII]
34
Hyperion to Bellarmin [IX]
36
Hyperion to Bellarmin [X]
37
Hyperion to Bellarmin [XI]
38
Book Two
41
Hyperion to Bellarmin [XII]
41
Hyperion to Bellarmin [XIII]
42
Hyperion to Bellarmin [XIV]
45
Hyperion to Bellarmin [XV]
46
Hyperion to Bellarmin [XVI]
47
Hyperion to Bellarmin [XVII]
48
Hyperion to Bellarmin [XVIII]
49
Hyperion to Bellarmin [XIX]
49
Hyperion to Bellarmin [XX]
49
Hyperion to Bellarmin [XXI]
50
Hyperion to Bellarmin [XXII]
51
Hyperion to Bellarmin [XXIII]
52
Hyperion to Bellarmin [XXIV]
52
Hyperion to Bellarmin [XXV]
53
Hyperion to Bellarmin [XXVI]
54
Hyperion to Bellarmin [XXVII]
55
Hyperion to Bellarmin [XXVIII]
59
Hyperion to Bellarmin [XXIX]
64
Hyperion to Bellarmin [XXX]
65
Volume Two
79
Book One
81
Hyperion to Bellarmin [XXXI]
81
Hyperion to Bellarmin [XXXII]
82
Hyperion to Bellarmin [XXXIII]
83
Hyperion to Bellarmin [XXXIV]
84
Hyperion to Bellarmin [XXXV]
85
Hyperion to Bellarmin [XXXVI]
86
Hyperion to Bellarmin [XXXVII]
89
Hyperion to Diotima [XXXVIII]
90
Hyperion to Diotima [XXXIX]
90
Hyperion to Diotima [XL]
91
Hyperion to Diotima [XLI]
91
Hyperion to Diotima [XLII]
94
Diotima to Hyperion [XLIII]
94
Hyperion to Diotima [XLIV]
96
Hyperion to Diotima [XLV]
96
Hyperion to Diotima [XLVI]
98
Diotima to Hyperion [XLVII]
99
Hyperion to Diotima [XLVIII]
100
Hyperion to Diotima [XLIX]
101
Hyperion to Diotima [L]
102
Hyperion to Diotima [LI]
102
Hyperion to Diotima [LII]
104
Book Two
107
Hyperion to Bellarmin [LIII]
107
Hyperion to Bellarmin [LIV]
108
Hyperion to Bellarmin [LV]
109
Hyperion to Bellarmin [LVI]
111
Hyperion to Bellarmin [LVII]
116
Hyperion to Bellarmin [LVIII]
123
Continued
124
Continued
125
Continued
126
Continued
126
Hyperion to Bellarmin [LIX]
131
Hyperion to Bellarmin [LX]
134
Afterword
139
A Novel in Letters
141
The Foreword
151
‘Not to be constrained by the greatest …’
155
‘… return whence he came’
171
Englishing Hyperion
188
Acknowledgments
207
Appendix A
209
Editions consulted
209
Appendix B
211
Translations
211
English
211
Other translations consulted
211
Appendix C
213
Select bibliography in English
213
Index of Proper Names
215




Map of Greece and Asia Minor, with locations mentioned in Hyperion , CC BY 4.0.


Hyperion , or the Hermit in Greece


© 2019 Howard Gaskill, CC BY 4.0 https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0160.01
Volume One
Non coerceri maximo, contineri minimo, divinum est.
[Not to be constrained by the greatest, to be contained by the smallest,is divine.]
Foreword
I’d happily promise this book the love of the Germans. But I fear some will read it like a compendium and be overly concerned with the fabula docet , 1 whilst others will take it too lightly, and neither party will understand it.
Those who merely sniff my flower mistake its nature, and so do those who pluck it merely for instruction.
The res olution of the dissonances in a particular character is neither for mere reflection nor empty pleasure.
The setting for what follows is not new, and I confess that I was once childish enough to try changing the book in this respect. But I became convinced that this setting was the only appropriate one for Hyperion’s elegiac character, and was ashamed at my weakness in having been unduly swayed by the probable verdict of the public.
I regret that for now it is not yet possible for everyone to judge the design of the work. But the second volume is to follow as soon as possible.
Book One
Hyperion to Bellarmin [I]
The beloved soil of my fatherland gives me joy and grief once more.
I’m up now every morning on the heights of the Isthmus of Corinth, and often, like the bee from flower to flower, my spirit flits back and forth between the seas to right and left that cool the feet of my glowing mountains.
One of those two gulfs would specially have delighted me, had I stood here some thousand years ago.
Then, like a conquering demi-god between the glorious wilderness of Helicon and Parnassus, where the rosy light of dawn plays on a hundred snow-covered peaks, and the paradisal plain of Sicyon, the shining gulf surged in towards the city of joy, youthful Corinth, pouring forth before its favourite the accumulated bounty from all corners of the earth.
But what is that to me? The howl of the jackal, singing its wild dirge amidst the rubble of antiquity, jolts me from my dreams.
Happy the man for whom a flourishing fatherland gladdens and fortifies the heart! Being reminded of mine is like being pitched into the mire, like having the coffin lid slammed shut over me, and whenever anyone calls me Greek, I always feel I’m being throttled with a dog collar.
And see, my Bellarmin! whenever I’d burst out with such remarks, as often as not with tears of anger in my eyes, along came the wise gentlemen who so delight in gibbering among you Germans, those wretches for whom a grieving disposition is such a welcome opportunity to unload their maxims; they were in their element, and made so bold to tell me: ‘Don’t moan, act