Reconsidering Hölderlin’s “Hellenism”: Egypt, Hesperia and the Persistence of Enigma

Abstract

René Girard has suggested that Hölderlin is “much less haunted by Greece than we have been led to believe” (“Hölderlin’s Sorrow”). Girard suggests that Hölderlin was in fact “frightened by the paganism that infused the classicism of his time” and that his engagement with ancient Greece might be characterized instead in terms of an “oscillation between nostalgia and dread.” This essay will explore several tensions in Hölderlin’s appropriation of ancient themes and the countervailing modern (post-Kantian) elements of his thought with an examination of some of the key works most often thought to represent his Hellenism including Hyperion and the revisions of Death of Empedocles.