SELECTED POEMS AND FRAGMENTS

Friedrich Holderlin (1770-1843) is now recognized as one of Europe's supreme poe
ts. He first found his true voice in the epigrams and odes he wrote when transfi
gured by his love for the wife of a rich banker. He later embarked on an extraor
dinarily ambitious sequence of hymns exploring cosmology and history, from mytho
logical times to the discovery of America and his own era.



The 'Canticles of
Night', by contrast, include enigmatic fragments in an unprecedented style, whic
h anticipates the Symbolists and Surrealists. Together the works collected here
show Holderlin's use of Classical and Christian imagery and his exploration of c
osmology and history in an attempt to find meaning in an uncertain world.