101-499: Empedocles ( / ɛ m ˈ p ɛ d ə k l iː z / ; Ancient Greek : Ἐμπεδοκλῆς ; c. 494 – c. 434 BC , fl. 444–443 BC) was a Greek pre-Socratic philosopher and a native citizen of Akragas , a Greek city in Sicily . Empedocles' philosophy is known best for originating the cosmogonic theory of the four classical elements . He also proposed forces he called Love and Strife which would mix and separate
202-537: A pitch accent . In Modern Greek, all vowels and consonants are short. Many vowels and diphthongs once pronounced distinctly are pronounced as /i/ ( iotacism ). Some of the stops and glides in diphthongs have become fricatives , and the pitch accent has changed to a stress accent . Many of the changes took place in the Koine Greek period. The writing system of Modern Greek, however, does not reflect all pronunciation changes. The examples below represent Attic Greek in
303-648: A childhood marked by bereavement. His mother intended for him to enter the Lutheran ministry, and he attended the Tübinger Stift , where he was friends with Hegel and Schelling. He graduated in 1793 but could not devote himself to the Christian faith, instead becoming a tutor. Two years later, he briefly attended the University of Jena , where he interacted with Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Novalis , before resuming his career as
404-572: A crisper, more concise manner in epigrams and couplets, and in short poems like the famous "Hälfte des Lebens" ("The Middle of Life"). In the years after his return from Bordeaux, he completed some of his greatest poems but also, once they were finished, returned to them repeatedly, creating new and stranger versions sometimes in several layers on the same manuscript, which makes the editing of his works troublesome. Some of these later versions (and some later poems) are fragmentary, but they have astonishing intensity. He seems sometimes also to have considered
505-473: A decade prior) and Schelling, who had long since ignored him; the Zimmer family were his only mourners. His inheritance, including the patrimony left to him by his father when he was two, had been kept from him by his mother and was untouched and continually accruing interest. He died a rich man, but did not know it. The poetry of Hölderlin, widely recognized today as one of the highest points of German literature ,
606-520: A great influence, said: "Hölderlin is one of our greatest, that is, most impending thinkers because he is our greatest poet." Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin was born on 20 March 1770 in Lauffen am Neckar , then a part of the Duchy of Württemberg . He was the first child of Johanna Christiana Heyn (1748—1828) and Heinrich Friedrich Hölderlin (1736—1772). His father, the manager of a church estate, died when he
707-472: A lack of contemporaneous evidence. Several theories exist about what Hellenic dialect groups may have existed between the divergence of early Greek-like speech from the common Proto-Indo-European language and the Classical period. They have the same general outline but differ in some of the detail. The only attested dialect from this period is Mycenaean Greek , but its relationship to the historical dialects and
808-419: A lesser degree. Pamphylian Greek , spoken in a small area on the southwestern coast of Anatolia and little preserved in inscriptions, may be either a fifth major dialect group, or it is Mycenaean Greek overlaid by Doric, with a non-Greek native influence. Regarding the speech of the ancient Macedonians diverse theories have been put forward, but the epigraphic activity and the archaeological discoveries in
909-500: A letter to Schiller regarding Don Carlos , stating: "It won't be easy to study Carlos in a rational way, since he was for so many years the magic cloud in which the good god of my youth enveloped me so that I would not see too soon the pettiness and barbarity of the world." In October 1788, Hölderlin began his theological studies at the Tübinger Stift , where his fellow students included Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel , Isaac von Sinclair and Schelling. It has been speculated that it
1010-546: A local tradition rather than directly from the Pythagoreans . Empedocles established four ultimate elements which make all the structures in the world— fire , air , water , earth . Empedocles called these four elements "roots", which he also identified with the mythical names of Zeus , Hera , Nestis , and Aidoneus (e.g., "Now hear the fourfold roots of everything: enlivening Hera, Hades, shining Zeus. And Nestis, moistening mortal springs with tears"). Empedocles never used
1111-669: A member of the literary Circle led by the German Symbolist poet Stefan George , publish the first two volumes of what eventually became a six-volume edition of Hölderlin's poems, prose and letters (the "Berlin Edition", Berliner Ausgabe ). For the first time, Hölderlin's hymnic drafts and fragments were published and it became possible to gain some overview of his work in the years between 1800 and 1807, which had been only sparsely covered in earlier editions. The Berlin edition and von Hellingrath's advocacy led to Hölderlin posthumously receiving
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#17328486230161212-555: A minor tourist attraction and was visited by curious travelers and autograph-hunters. Often he would play the piano or spontaneously write short verses for such visitors, pure in versification but almost empty of affect—although a few of these (such as the famous Die Linien des Lebens ("The Lines of Life"), which he wrote out for his carer Zimmer on a piece of wood) have a piercing beauty and have been set to music by many composers. Hölderlin's own family did not financially support him but petitioned successfully for his upkeep to be paid by
1313-421: A new—and greatly influential—model of poetic translation. Der Rhein and Patmos , two of the longest and most densely charged of his hymns, appeared in a poetic calendar in 1808. Wilhelm Waiblinger , who visited Hölderlin in his tower repeatedly in 1822–23 and depicted him in the protagonist of his novel Phaëthon , stated the necessity of issuing an edition of his poems, and the first collection of his poetry
1414-543: A prefix /e-/, called the augment . This was probably originally a separate word, meaning something like "then", added because tenses in PIE had primarily aspectual meaning. The augment is added to the indicative of the aorist, imperfect, and pluperfect, but not to any of the other forms of the aorist (no other forms of the imperfect and pluperfect exist). The two kinds of augment in Greek are syllabic and quantitative. The syllabic augment
1515-459: A selected few among them, were originally long-lived daimons who dwelt in a state of bliss until committing an unspecified crime, possibly bloodshed or perjury. As a consequence, they fell to Earth, where they would be forced to spend 30,000 cycles of metempsychosis through different bodies before being able to return to the sphere of divinity . One's behavior during his lifetime would also determine his next incarnation. Wise people, who have learned
1616-545: A seminal manuscript, dated 1797, now known as the Das älteste Systemprogramm des deutschen Idealismus (" The Oldest Systematic Program of German Idealism "). Although the document is in Hegel's handwriting, it is thought to have been written by Hegel, Schelling, Hölderlin, or an unknown fourth person. As a tutor in Frankfurt am Main from 1796 to 1798, he fell in love with Susette Gontard ,
1717-422: A sinecure for him as court librarian, but in 1805 von Sinclair was denounced as a conspirator and tried for treason. Hölderlin was in danger of being tried too but was declared mentally unfit to stand trial. On 11 September 1806, he was delivered into the clinic at Tübingen run by Dr. Johann Heinrich Ferdinand von Autenrieth , the inventor of a mask for the prevention of screaming in the mentally ill. The clinic
1818-515: A small allowance from his mother. His mandated separation from Susette Gontard also worsened Hölderlin's doubts about himself and his value as a poet; he wished to transform German culture but did not have the influence he needed. From 1797 to 1800, he produced three versions—all unfinished—of a tragedy in the Greek manner, The Death of Empedocles , and composed odes in the vein of the Ancient Greeks Alcaeus and Asclepiades of Samos . In
1919-633: A tutor. He struggled to establish himself as a poet, and was plagued by mental illness. He was sent to a clinic in 1806 but deemed incurable and instead given lodging by a carpenter, Ernst Zimmer. He spent the final 36 years of his life in Zimmer's residence, and died in 1843 at the age of 73. Hölderlin followed the tradition of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller as an admirer of Greek mythology and Ancient Greek poets such as Pindar and Sophocles , and melded Christian and Hellenic themes in his works. Martin Heidegger , upon whom Hölderlin had
2020-492: A victory in the horse race at Olympia in the 71st Olympiad (496–495 BC). Little else can be determined with accuracy. Primary sources of information on the life of Empedocles come from the Hellenistic period , several centuries after his own death and long after any reliable evidence about his life would have perished. Modern scholarship generally believes that these biographical details, including Aristotle 's assertion that he
2121-574: A view across the Neckar river. The tower would later be named the Hölderlinturm , after the poet's 36-year-long stay in the room. His residence in the building made up the second half of his life and is also referred to as the Turmzeit (or "Tower period"). In the tower, Hölderlin continued to write poetry of a simplicity and formality quite unlike what he had been writing up to 1805. As time went on he became
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#17328486230162222-510: A vowel or /n s r/ ; final stops were lost, as in γάλα "milk", compared with γάλακτος "of milk" (genitive). Ancient Greek of the classical period also differed in both the inventory and distribution of original PIE phonemes due to numerous sound changes, notably the following: The pronunciation of Ancient Greek was very different from that of Modern Greek . Ancient Greek had long and short vowels ; many diphthongs ; double and single consonants; voiced, voiceless, and aspirated stops ; and
2323-487: A wider sense. There were several regional dialects of Ancient Greek; Attic Greek developed into Koine. Ancient Greek was a pluricentric language , divided into many dialects. The main dialect groups are Attic and Ionic , Aeolic , Arcadocypriot , and Doric , many of them with several subdivisions. Some dialects are found in standardized literary forms in literature , while others are attested only in inscriptions. There are also several historical forms. Homeric Greek
2424-556: Is a literary form of Archaic Greek (derived primarily from Ionic and Aeolic) used in the epic poems , the Iliad and the Odyssey , and in later poems by other authors. Homeric Greek had significant differences in grammar and pronunciation from Classical Attic and other Classical-era dialects. The origins, early form and development of the Hellenic language family are not well understood because of
2525-418: Is added to stems beginning with consonants, and simply prefixes e (stems beginning with r , however, add er ). The quantitative augment is added to stems beginning with vowels, and involves lengthening the vowel: Some verbs augment irregularly; the most common variation is e → ei . The irregularity can be explained diachronically by the loss of s between vowels, or that of the letter w , which affected
2626-817: Is based on four of these poems, while more are set in her Überzeugung for choir (2001) and Die Aussicht for soprano and four instruments (1996). In 2003, Graham Waterhouse composed a song cycle , Sechs späteste Lieder , for voice and cello based on six of Hölderlin's late poems. Lucien Posman based a concerto-cantate for clarinet, choir, piano & percussion on 3 Hölderlin poems (Teil 1. Die Eichbäume , Teil 2. Mein Eigentum , Teil 3. Da ich ein Knabe war ) (2015). He also set An die Parzen to music for choir & piano (2012) and Hälfte des Lebens for choir. Several works by Georg Friedrich Haas take their titles or text from Hölderlin's writing, including Hyperion , Nacht , and
2727-644: Is called 'East Greek'. Arcadocypriot apparently descended more closely from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age. Boeotian Greek had come under a strong Northwest Greek influence, and can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect, as exemplified in the poems of the Boeotian poet Pindar who wrote in Doric with a small Aeolic admixture. Thessalian likewise had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to
2828-448: Is considered by some linguists to have been closely related to Greek . Among Indo-European branches with living descendants, Greek is often argued to have the closest genetic ties with Armenian (see also Graeco-Armenian ) and Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ). Ancient Greek differs from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and other Indo-European languages in certain ways. In phonotactics , ancient Greek words could end only in
2929-773: Is dated 1784 and addressed to his former tutor Nathanael Köstlin. In the letter, Hölderlin hinted at his wavering faith in Christianity and anxiety about his mental state. Hölderlin progressed to the Higher Monastery at Maulbronn in 1786. There he fell in love with Luise Nast, the daughter of the monastery's administrator, and began to doubt his desire to join the ministry; he composed Mein Vorsatz in 1787, in which he states his intention to attain " Pindar 's light" and reach "Klopstock-heights". In 1788, he read Schiller's Don Carlos on Luise Nast's recommendation. Hölderlin later wrote
3030-462: Is on a genuine belief in the divine—creates a deeply personal fusion of Greek mythic figures and romantic mysticism about nature, which can appear both strange and enticing, his shorter and sometimes more fragmentary poems have exerted wide influence too on later German poets, from Georg Trakl onwards. He also had an influence on the poetry of Hermann Hesse and Paul Celan . (Celan wrote a poem about Hölderlin, called "Tübingen, January" which ends with
3131-417: Is popularly termed growth, increase or decrease. One interpreter describes his philosophy as asserting that "Nothing new comes or can come into being; the only change that can occur is a change in the juxtaposition of element with element." This theory of the four elements became the standard dogma for the next two thousand years. The four elements, however, are simple, eternal, and unalterable, and as change
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3232-400: Is the cause of their separation. If the four elements make up the universe, then Love and Strife explain their variation and harmony. Love and Strife are attractive and repulsive forces, respectively, which are plainly observable in human behavior, but also pervade the universe. The two forces wax and wane in their dominance, but neither force ever wholly escapes the imposition of the other. As
3333-437: Is the consequence of their mixture and separation, it was also necessary to suppose the existence of moving powers that bring about mixture and separation. The four elements are both eternally brought into union and parted from one another by two divine powers, Love and Strife ( Philotes and Neikos ). Love ( φιλότης ) is responsible for the attraction of different forms of what we now call matter , and Strife ( νεῖκος )
3434-627: The Classical period ( c. 500–300 BC ). Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers . It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been a standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance . This article primarily contains information about the Epic and Classical periods of
3535-794: The Greek gods were not the plaster figures of conventional classicism, but wonderfully life-giving actual presences, yet at the same time terrifying. Much later, Friedrich Nietzsche would recognize Hölderlin as the poet who first acknowledged the Orphic and Dionysian Greece of the mysteries , which he would fuse with the Pietism of his native Swabia in a highly original religious experience. Hölderlin developed an early idea of cyclical history and therefore believed political radicalism and an aesthetic interest in antiquity , and, in parallel, Christianity and Paganism should be fused. He understood and sympathised with
3636-698: The Greek region of Macedonia during the last decades has brought to light documents, among which the first texts written in Macedonian , such as the Pella curse tablet , as Hatzopoulos and other scholars note. Based on the conclusions drawn by several studies and findings such as Pella curse tablet , Emilio Crespo and other scholars suggest that ancient Macedonian was a Northwest Doric dialect , which shares isoglosses with its neighboring Thessalian dialects spoken in northeastern Thessaly . Some have also suggested an Aeolic Greek classification. The Lesbian dialect
3737-528: The corporeality of air, but he says nothing whatever about the void, and there is no evidence that Empedocles performed any experiment with clepsydras. According to Diogenes Laertius, Empedocles wrote two poems, "On Nature" and "On Purifications", which together comprised 5000 lines. However, only some 550 lines of his poetry survive, quoted in fragments by later ancient sources. In old editions of Empedocles, about 450 lines were ascribed to "On Nature" which outlined his philosophical system, and explains not only
3838-501: The present , future , and imperfect are imperfective in aspect; the aorist , present perfect , pluperfect and future perfect are perfective in aspect. Most tenses display all four moods and three voices, although there is no future subjunctive or imperative. Also, there is no imperfect subjunctive, optative or imperative. The infinitives and participles correspond to the finite combinations of tense, aspect, and voice. The indicative of past tenses adds (conceptually, at least)
3939-600: The right to destroy themselves . In Icaro-Menippus [ it ] , a comedic dialogue written by the second-century satirist Lucian of Samosata , Empedocles' final fate is re-evaluated. Rather than being incinerated in the fires of Mount Etna, he was carried up into the heavens by a volcanic eruption. Although singed by the ordeal, Empedocles survives and continues his life on the Moon, surviving by feeding on dew. Burnet states that Empedocles likely did not die in Sicily, that both
4040-1031: The 5th century BC. Ancient pronunciation cannot be reconstructed with certainty, but Greek from the period is well documented, and there is little disagreement among linguists as to the general nature of the sounds that the letters represent. /oː/ raised to [uː] , probably by the 4th century BC. Greek, like all of the older Indo-European languages , is highly inflected. It is highly archaic in its preservation of Proto-Indo-European forms. In ancient Greek, nouns (including proper nouns) have five cases ( nominative , genitive , dative , accusative , and vocative ), three genders ( masculine , feminine , and neuter ), and three numbers (singular, dual , and plural ). Verbs have four moods ( indicative , imperative , subjunctive , and optative ) and three voices (active, middle, and passive ), as well as three persons (first, second, and third) and various other forms. Verbs are conjugated through seven combinations of tenses and aspect (generally simply called "tenses"):
4141-490: The Archaic period of ancient Greek (see Homeric Greek for more details): Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεά, Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί' Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε' ἔθηκε, πολλὰς δ' ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι· Διὸς δ' ἐτελείετο βουλή· ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε Ἀτρεΐδης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς. The beginning of Apology by Plato exemplifies Attic Greek from
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4242-726: The Classical period of ancient Greek. (The second line is the IPA , the third is transliterated into the Latin alphabet using a modern version of the Erasmian scheme .) Ὅτι [hóti Hóti μὲν men mèn ὑμεῖς, hyːmêːs hūmeîs, Friedrich H%C3%B6lderlin Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin ( UK : / ˈ h ɜː l d ər l iː n / , US : / ˈ h ʌ l -/ ; German: [ˈfʁiːdʁɪç ˈhœldɐliːn] ; 20 March 1770 – 7 June 1843)
4343-628: The French city is celebrated in Andenken ("Remembrance"), one of his greatest poems. In a few months, however, he returned home on foot via Paris (where he saw authentic Greek sculptures, as opposed to Roman or modern copies, for the only time in his life). He arrived at his home in Nürtingen both physically and mentally exhausted in late 1802, and learned that Gontard had died from influenza in Frankfurt at around
4444-435: The Greek idea of the tragic fall , which he expressed movingly in the last stanza of his "Hyperions Schicksalslied" ("Hyperion's Song of Destiny"). In the great poems of his maturity, Hölderlin would generally adopt a large-scale, expansive and unrhymed style. Together with these long hymns, odes and elegies—which included "Der Archipelagus" ("The Archipelago"), "Brod und Wein" ("Bread and Wine") and "Patmos"—he also cultivated
4545-481: The Lutheran church. In preparation for entrance exams into a monastery, he received additional instruction in Greek , Hebrew , Latin and rhetoric , starting in 1782. During this time, he struck a friendship with Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling , who was five years Hölderlin's junior. On account of the age difference, Schelling was "subjected to universal teasing" and Hölderlin protected him from abuse by older students. Also during this time, Hölderlin began playing
4646-649: The Stift. Along with Hegel and Schelling and his other peers during his time in the Stift, Hölderlin was an enthusiastic supporter of the French Revolution . Although he rejected the violence of the Reign of Terror , his commitment to the principles of 1789 remained intense. Hölderlin's republican sympathies influenced many of his most famous works such as Hyperion and The Death of Empedocles . After he obtained his magister degree in 1793, his mother expected him to enter
4747-487: The age of 109. Likewise, there are myths concerning his death: a tradition, which is traced to Heraclides Ponticus , represented him as having been removed from the Earth; whereas others had him perishing in the flames of Mount Etna . Diogenes Laërtius records the legend that Empedocles died by throwing himself into Mount Etna in Sicily, so that the people would believe his body had vanished and he had turned into an immortal god;
4848-550: The aorist. Following Homer 's practice, the augment is sometimes not made in poetry , especially epic poetry. The augment sometimes substitutes for reduplication; see below. Almost all forms of the perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect reduplicate the initial syllable of the verb stem. (A few irregular forms of perfect do not reduplicate, whereas a handful of irregular aorists reduplicate.) The three types of reduplication are: Irregular duplication can be understood diachronically. For example, lambanō (root lab ) has
4949-419: The augment when it was word-initial. In verbs with a preposition as a prefix, the augment is placed not at the start of the word, but between the preposition and the original verb. For example, προσ(-)βάλλω (I attack) goes to προσ έ βαλoν in the aorist. However compound verbs consisting of a prefix that is not a preposition retain the augment at the start of the word: αὐτο(-)μολῶ goes to ηὐ τομόλησα in
5050-414: The best and original state, there was a time when the pure elements and the two powers co-existed in a condition of rest and inertness in the form of a sphere. The elements existed together in their purity, without mixture and separation, and the uniting power of Love predominated in the sphere: the separating power of Strife guarded the extreme edges of the sphere. Since that time, strife gained more sway and
5151-425: The bond which kept the pure elementary substances together in the sphere was dissolved. The elements became the world of phenomena we see today, full of contrasts and oppositions, operated on by both Love and Strife. Empedocles assumed a cyclical universe whereby the elements return and prepare the formation of the sphere for the next period of the universe. Empedocles attempted to explain the separation of elements,
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#17328486230165252-438: The center of Greek scholarship, this division of people and language is quite similar to the results of modern archaeological-linguistic investigation. One standard formulation for the dialects is: West vs. non-West Greek is the strongest-marked and earliest division, with non-West in subsets of Ionic-Attic (or Attic-Ionic) and Aeolic vs. Arcadocypriot, or Aeolic and Arcado-Cypriot vs. Ionic-Attic. Often non-West
5353-611: The dialect of Sparta ), and Northern Peloponnesus Doric (including Corinthian ). All the groups were represented by colonies beyond Greece proper as well, and these colonies generally developed local characteristics, often under the influence of settlers or neighbors speaking different Greek dialects. After the conquests of Alexander the Great in the late 4th century BC, a new international dialect known as Koine or Common Greek developed, largely based on Attic Greek , but with influence from other dialects. This dialect slowly replaced most of
5454-1216: The earliest settings of Hölderlin's poetry is Schicksalslied by Johannes Brahms , based on Hyperions Schicksalslied . Other composers of Hölderlin settings include Ludwig van Beethoven ( An die Hoffnung - Opus 32 ), Peter Cornelius , Hans Pfitzner , Richard Strauss ( Drei Hymnen ), Max Reger (" An die Hoffnung "), Alphons Diepenbrock ( Die Nacht ), Walter Braunfels (" Der Tod fürs Vaterland "), Richard Wetz ( Hyperion ), Josef Matthias Hauer , Denise Roger , Hermann Reutter , Margarete Schweikert , Stefan Wolpe , Paul Hindemith , Benjamin Britten ( Sechs Hölderlin-Fragmente ), Hans Werner Henze , Bruno Maderna ( Hyperion , Stele an Diotima ), Luigi Nono ( Prometeo ), Heinz Holliger (the Scardanelli-Zyklus ), Hans Zender ( Hölderlin lesen I-IV ), György Kurtág (who planned an opera on Hölderlin), György Ligeti ( Three Fantasies after Friedrich Hölderlin ), Hanns Eisler ( Hollywood Liederbuch ), Viktor Ullmann , Wolfgang von Schweinitz , Walter Zimmermann ( Hyperion , an epistolary opera) and Wolfgang Rihm . Siegfried Matthus composed
5555-418: The elements, respectively. Empedocles challenged the practice of animal sacrifice and killing animals for food. He developed a distinctive doctrine of reincarnation . He is generally considered the last Greek philosopher to have recorded his ideas in verse. Some of his work survives, more than is the case for any other pre-Socratic philosopher. Empedocles' death was mythologized by ancient writers, and has been
5656-543: The formation of earth and sea, of Sun and Moon, of atmosphere. He also dealt with the first origin of plants and animals, and with the physiology of humans. As the elements entered into combinations, there appeared strange results—heads without necks, arms without shoulders. Then as these fragmentary structures met, there were seen horned heads on human bodies, bodies of oxen with human heads, and figures of double sex . But most of these products of natural forces disappeared as suddenly as they arose; only in those rare cases where
5757-589: The fragments, even with unfinished lines and incomplete sentence-structure, to be poems in themselves. This obsessive revising and his stand-alone fragments were once considered evidence of his mental disorder, but they were to prove very influential on later poets such as Paul Celan . In his years of madness, Hölderlin would occasionally pencil ingenuous rhymed quatrains , sometimes of a childlike beauty, which he would sign with fantastic names (most often "Scardanelli") and give fictitious dates from previous or future centuries. Hölderlin's major publication in his lifetime
5858-407: The fundamental basis on which later Greek philosophers and mathematicians like Euclid would construct some of the most important theories of light, vision, and optics. Knowledge is explained by the principle that elements in the things outside us are perceived by the corresponding elements in ourselves. Like is known by like. The whole body is full of pores and hence respiration takes place over
5959-556: The historical Dorians . The invasion is known to have displaced population to the later Attic-Ionic regions, who regarded themselves as descendants of the population displaced by or contending with the Dorians. The Greeks of this period believed there were three major divisions of all Greek people – Dorians, Aeolians, and Ionians (including Athenians), each with their own defining and distinctive dialects. Allowing for their oversight of Arcadian, an obscure mountain dialect, and Cypriot, far from
6060-472: The historical circumstances of the times imply that the overall groups already existed in some form. Scholars assume that major Ancient Greek period dialect groups developed not later than 1120 BC, at the time of the Dorian invasions —and that their first appearances as precise alphabetic writing began in the 8th century BC. The invasion would not be "Dorian" unless the invaders had some cultural relationship to
6161-670: The hymn drafts, and the Duino Elegies heralded the beginning of a new appreciation of Hölderlin's late work. Although his hymns can hardly be imitated, they have become a powerful influence on modern poetry in German and other languages, and are sometimes cited as the very crown of German lyric poetry. The Berlin Edition was to some extent superseded by the Stuttgart Edition ( Grosse Stuttgarter Ausgabe ), which began to be published in 1943 and eventually saw completion in 1986. This undertaking
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#17328486230166262-526: The key problems also addressed by his Tübingen roommates Hegel and Schelling, and, though his poetry was never "theory-driven", the interpretation and exegesis of some of his more difficult poems have given rise to profound philosophical speculation by thinkers such as Martin Heidegger , Theodor Adorno , Jacques Derrida , Michel Foucault and Alain Badiou . Hölderlin's poetry has inspired many composers, generating vocal music and instrumental music . One of
6363-402: The language, which are the best-attested periods and considered most typical of Ancient Greek. From the Hellenistic period ( c. 300 BC ), Ancient Greek was followed by Koine Greek , which is regarded as a separate historical stage, though its earliest form closely resembles Attic Greek , and its latest form approaches Medieval Greek , and Koine may be classified as Ancient Greek in
6464-635: The late 1790s, Hölderlin was diagnosed with schizophrenia , then referred to as " hypochondrias ", a condition that would worsen after his last meeting with Susette Gontard in 1800. After a sojourn in Stuttgart at the end of 1800, likely to work on his translations of Pindar , he found further employment as a tutor in Hauptwyl , Switzerland, and then at the household of the Hamburg consul in Bordeaux , in 1802. His stay in
6565-400: The ministry. However, Hölderlin found no satisfaction in the prevailing Protestant theology, and worked instead as a private tutor. In 1794, he met Friedrich Schiller and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and began writing his epistolary novel Hyperion . In 1795 he enrolled for a while at the University of Jena where he attended Johann Gottlieb Fichte 's classes and met Novalis . There is
6666-453: The nature and history of the universe, including his theory of the four classical elements , but also theories on causation, perception, and thought, as well as explanations of terrestrial phenomena and biological processes. The other 100 lines were typically ascribed to his "Purifications", which was taken to be a poem about ritual purification, or the poem that contained all his religious and ethical thought, which early editors supposed that it
6767-499: The older dialects, although the Doric dialect has survived in the Tsakonian language , which is spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has also passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek . By about the 6th century AD, the Koine had slowly metamorphosed into Medieval Greek . Phrygian is an extinct Indo-European language of West and Central Anatolia , which
6868-752: The orchestral song cycle Hyperion-Fragmente . Carl Orff used Hölderlin's German translations of Sophocles in his operas Antigone and Oedipus der Tyrann . In 2020, for the 250th anniversary of Hölderlin's birth, the American composaer Chris Jarrett wrote "Sechs Hölderlin Lieder" for baritone and piano. They have been recorded on the DaVinci Classics label and are available in print as well. Wilhelm Killmayer based three song cycles, Hölderlin-Lieder , for tenor and orchestra on Hölderlin's late poems; Kaija Saariaho 's Tag des Jahrs (2001) for mixed choir and electronics
6969-540: The parts were found to be adapted to each other did the complex structures last. Thus the organic universe sprang from spontaneous aggregations that suited each other as if this had been intended. Soon various influences reduced creatures of double sex to a male and a female, and the world was replenished with organic life. Like Pythagoras , Empedocles believed in the transmigration of the soul or metempsychosis , that souls can be reincarnated between humans, animals and even plants. According to him, all humans, or maybe only
7070-487: The perfect stem eilēpha (not * lelēpha ) because it was originally slambanō , with perfect seslēpha , becoming eilēpha through compensatory lengthening. Reduplication is also visible in the present tense stems of certain verbs. These stems add a syllable consisting of the root's initial consonant followed by i . A nasal stop appears after the reduplication in some verbs. The earliest extant examples of ancient Greek writing ( c. 1450 BC ) are in
7171-477: The phenomenon of respiration by means of an elaborate analogy with the clepsydra , an ancient device for conveying liquids from one vessel to another. This fragment has sometimes been connected to a passage in Aristotle 's Physics where Aristotle refers to people who twisted wineskins and captured air in clepsydras to demonstrate that void does not exist. The fragment certainly implies that Empedocles knew about
7272-615: The piano and developed an interest in travel literature through exposure to Georg Forster 's A Voyage Round the World . In 1784, Hölderlin entered the Lower Monastery in Denkendorf and started his formal training for entry into the Lutheran ministry. At Denkendorf, he discovered the poetry of Friedrich Schiller and Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock , and took tentative steps in composing his own verses. The earliest known letter of Hölderlin's
7373-405: The positive story of Empedocles being taken up to heaven and the negative one about him throwing himself into a volcano could be easily accepted by ancient writers, as there was no local tradition to contradict them. Empedocles' death is the subject of Friedrich Hölderlin 's play Tod des Empedokles ( The Death of Empedocles ) as well as Matthew Arnold 's poem Empedocles on Etna . Based on
7474-626: The recognition that had always eluded him in life. As a result, Hölderlin has been recognized since 1913 as one of the greatest poets ever to write in the German language . Norbert von Hellingrath enlisted in the Imperial German Army at the outbreak of World War I and was killed in action at the Battle of Verdun in 1916. The fourth volume of the Berlin edition was published posthumously. The Berlin Edition
7575-417: The same spiritual plane; plants and animals are links in a chain where humans are a link too. Empedocles is credited with the first comprehensive theory of light and vision. Historian Will Durant noted that "Empedocles suggested that light takes time to pass from one point to another." He put forward the idea that we see objects because light streams out of our eyes and touches them. While flawed, this became
7676-440: The same time. At his home in Nürtingen with his mother, a devout Christian, Hölderlin melded his Hellenism with Christianity and sought to unite ancient values with modern life; in his elegy Brod und Wein ("Bread and Wine"), Christ is seen as sequential to the Greek gods, bringing bread from the earth and wine from Dionysus . After two years in Nürtingen, Hölderlin was taken to the court of Homburg by Isaac von Sinclair, who found
7777-490: The secret of life, are closer to the divine, while their souls similarly are closer to the freedom from the cycle of reincarnations, after which they are able to rest in happiness for eternity. This cycle of mortal incarnation seems to have been inspired by the god Apollo 's punishment as a servant to Admetus . Empedocles was a vegetarian and advocated vegetarianism, since the bodies of animals are also dwelling places of punished souls. For Empedocles, all living things were on
7878-574: The solo ensemble "... Einklang freier Wesen ..." as well as its constituent solo pieces each named "... aus freier Lust ... verbunden ...". In 2020, as part of the German celebration of Hölderlin's 250th birthday, Chris Jarrett composed his "Sechs Hölderlin Lieder" for baritone and piano. Finnish melodic death metal band Insomnium set Hölderlin's verses to music in several of their songs, and many songs of Swedish alternative rock band ALPHA 60 also contain lyrical references to Hölderlin's poetry. Robert Schumann 's late piano suite Gesänge der Frühe
7979-405: The state. His mother and sister never visited him, and his stepbrother did so only once. His mother died in 1828: his sister and stepbrother quarreled over the inheritance, arguing that too large a share had been allotted to Hölderlin, and unsuccessfully tried to have the will overturned in court. Neither of them attended his funeral in 1843 nor did his childhood friends, Hegel (as he had died roughly
8080-518: The subject of a number of literary treatments. The exact dates of Empedocles' birth and death are unknown, and ancient accounts of his life conflict on the exact details. However, they agree that he was born in the early 5th century BC in the Greek city of Akragas in Magna Graecia , present-day Sicily . Modern scholars believe the accuracy of the accounts that he came from a rich and noble family and that his grandfather, also named Empedocles, had won
8181-539: The surviving fragments of his work, modern scholars generally believe that Empedocles was directly responding to Parmenides ' doctrine of monism and was likely acquainted with the work of Anaxagoras , although it is unlikely he was aware of either the later Eleatics or the doctrines of the Atomists . Many later accounts of his life claim that Empedocles studied with the Pythagoreans on the basis of his doctrine of reincarnation, although he may have instead learned this from
8282-517: The syllabic script Linear B . Beginning in the 8th century BC, however, the Greek alphabet became standard, albeit with some variation among dialects. Early texts are written in boustrophedon style, but left-to-right became standard during the classic period. Modern editions of ancient Greek texts are usually written with accents and breathing marks , interword spacing , modern punctuation , and sometimes mixed case , but these were all introduced later. The beginning of Homer 's Iliad exemplifies
8383-422: The term "element" ( στοιχεῖον , stoicheion ), which seems to have been first used by Plato . According to the different proportions in which these four indestructible and unchangeable elements are combined with each other the difference of the structure is produced. It is in the aggregation and segregation of elements thus arising, that Empedocles, like the atomists, found the real process which corresponds to what
8484-447: The volcano, however, threw back one of his bronze sandals, revealing the deceit. Another legend maintains that he threw himself into the volcano to prove to his disciples that he was immortal; he believed he would come back as a god after being consumed by the fire. Lucretius speaks of him with enthusiasm, and evidently viewed him as his model. Horace also refers to the death of Empedocles in his work Ars Poetica and admits poets have
8585-435: The whole frame. In the organs of sense these pores are specially adapted to receive the effluences which are continually rising from bodies around us; thus perception occurs. In vision, certain particles go forth from the eye to meet similar particles given forth from the object, and the resultant contact constitutes vision. Perception is not merely a passive reflection of external objects. Empedocles also attempted to explain
8686-508: The whole poem. Ancient Greek language Ancient Greek ( Ἑλληνῐκή , Hellēnikḗ ; [hellɛːnikɛ́ː] ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek ( c. 1400–1200 BC ), Dark Ages ( c. 1200–800 BC ), the Archaic or Epic period ( c. 800–500 BC ), and
8787-525: The wife of his employer, the banker Jakob Gontard. The feeling was mutual, and this relationship became the most important in Hölderlin's life. After a while, their affair was discovered, and Hölderlin was harshly dismissed. He then lived in Homburg from 1798 to 1800, meeting Susette in secret once a month and attempting to establish himself as a poet, but his life was plagued by financial worries and he had to accept
8888-508: The word Pallaksch —according to Schwab, Hölderlin's favourite neologism "which sometimes meant Yes, sometimes No".) Hölderlin was also a thinker who wrote, fragmentarily, on poetic theory and philosophical matters. His theoretical works, such as the essays "Das Werden im Vergehen" ("Becoming in Dissolution") and "Urteil und Sein" ("Judgement and Being") are insightful and important if somewhat tortuous and difficult to parse. They raise many of
8989-475: Was Aeolic. For example, fragments of the works of the poet Sappho from the island of Lesbos are in Aeolian. Most of the dialect sub-groups listed above had further subdivisions, generally equivalent to a city-state and its surrounding territory, or to an island. Doric notably had several intermediate divisions as well, into Island Doric (including Cretan Doric ), Southern Peloponnesus Doric (including Laconian ,
9090-631: Was Hölderlin who, during their time in Tübingen, brought to Hegel's attention the ideas of Heraclitus regarding the unity of opposites , which Hegel would later develop into his concept of dialectics . In 1789, Hölderlin broke off his engagement with Luise Nast, writing to her: "I wish you happiness if you choose one more worthy than me, and then surely you will understand that you could never have been happy with your morose, ill-humoured, and sickly friend," and expressed his desire to transfer out and study law but succumbed to pressure from his mother to remain in
9191-440: Was a German poet and philosopher . Described by Norbert von Hellingrath as "the most German of Germans", Hölderlin was a key figure of German Romanticism . Particularly due to his early association with and philosophical influence on Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling , he was also an important thinker in the development of German Idealism . Born in Lauffen am Neckar , Hölderlin had
9292-583: Was a poem that offered a mythical account of the world which may, nevertheless, have been part of Empedocles' philosophical system. A late 20th century discovery has changed this situation. The Strasbourg papyrus contains a large section of "On Nature", including many lines formerly attributed to "On Purifications". This has raised considerable debate about whether the surviving fragments of his teaching should be attributed to two separate poems, with different subject matter; whether they may all derive from one poem with two titles; or whether one title refers to part of
9393-411: Was attached to the University of Tübingen and the poet Justinus Kerner , then a student of medicine, was assigned to look after Hölderlin. The following year Hölderlin was discharged as incurable and given three years to live, but was taken in by the carpenter Ernst Zimmer (a cultured man, who had read Hyperion ) and given a room in his house in Tübingen, which had been a tower in the old city wall with
9494-600: Was completed after the German Revolution of 1918 by Friedrich Seebass and Ludwig von Pigenot ; the remaining volumes appeared in Berlin between 1922 and 1923. Already in 1912, before the Berlin Edition began to appear, Rainer Maria Rilke composed his first two Duino Elegies whose form and spirit draw strongly on the hymns and elegies of Hölderlin. Rilke had met von Hellingrath a few years earlier and had seen some of
9595-559: Was his novel Hyperion , which was issued in two volumes (1797 and 1799). Various individual poems were published but attracted little attention. In 1799 he produced a periodical, Iduna . In 1804, his translations of the dramas of Sophocles were published but were generally met with derision over their apparent artificiality and difficulty, which according to his critics were caused by transposing Greek idioms into German. However, 20th-century theorists of translation such as Walter Benjamin have vindicated them, showing their importance as
9696-454: Was little known or understood during his lifetime, and slipped into obscurity shortly after his death; his illness and reclusion made him fade from his contemporaries' consciousness—and, even though selections of his work were published by his friends during his lifetime, it was largely ignored for the rest of the 19th century. Like Goethe and Schiller, his older contemporaries, Hölderlin was a fervent admirer of ancient Greek culture, but for him
9797-534: Was much more rigorous in textual criticism than the Berlin Edition and solved many issues of interpretation raised by Hölderlin's unfinished and undated texts (sometimes several versions of the same poem with major differences). Meanwhile, a third complete edition, the Frankfurt Critical Edition ( Frankfurter Historisch-kritische Ausgabe ), began publication in 1975 under the editorship of Dietrich Sattler . Though Hölderlin's hymnic style—dependent as it
9898-463: Was released by Ludwig Uhland and Christoph Theodor Schwab in 1826. However, Uhland and Schwab omitted anything they suspected might be "touched by insanity", which included much of Hölderlin's fragmented works. A copy of this collection was given to Hölderlin, but later was stolen by an autograph-hunter. A second, enlarged edition with a biographical essay appeared in 1842, the year before Hölderlin's death. Only in 1913 did Norbert von Hellingrath ,
9999-477: Was scarred by grief and sorrow, writing in a 1799 correspondence with his mother: When my second father died, whose love for me I shall never forget, when I felt, with an incomprehensible pain, my orphaned state and saw, each day, your grief and tears, it was then that my soul took on, for the first time, this heaviness that has never left and that could only grow more severe with the years. Hölderlin began his education in 1776, and his mother planned for him to join
10100-408: Was the "father of rhetoric ", his chronologically impossible tutelage under Pythagoras , and his employment as a doctor and miracle worker, were fabricated from interpretations of Empedocles' poetry, as was common practice for the biographies written during this time. According to Aristotle , Empedocles died at the age of 60 ( c. 430 BC ), even though other writers have him living up to
10201-409: Was two years old, and Friedrich and his sister, Heinrike, were brought up by their mother. In 1774, his mother moved the family to Nürtingen when she married Johann Christoph Gok. Two years later, Johann Gok became the burgomaster of Nürtingen, and Hölderlin's half-brother, Karl Christoph Friedrich Gok, was born. In 1779, Johann Gok died at the age of 30. Hölderlin later expressed how his childhood
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