Selected Poems and Fragments

Friedrich Hölderlin (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 Hölderlin�s use of Classical and Christian imagery and his exploration of cosmology and history in an attempt to find meaning in an uncertain world.