Reviews

Selected Poems and Fragments by Friedrich Hölderlin

casparb's review

I was doing my best to read this parallel text in my delightfully rusty german so I award myself points for trying , I'm not the strictest

beautiful & in a completely dire translation by hamburger which somehow makes a dynamic, exciting 19th-century poet sound like he's William morris writing in the 15th. Also maybe I'm missing something but it looks like ? somebody ? forgot to give us the original text on page 326 & there are parallel verses in English, but not the same english - possibly the literal trans.?

I really enjoyed this though & the caspar on the cover, he's one of those to live WIth

aceface's review

challenging dark mysterious reflective slow-paced

3.75

msand3's review

4.0

One of my favorite Romantic poets. While in Austria over the summer of '07, I made a special trip to Tübingen just to visit Hölderlin Tower (and the infamous "Goethe Puked Here" tavern sign). These poems brought me back to my time in Bavaria and the Black Forest; in fact, it almost feels like these poems demand to be read in those locations for the full experience. In terms of this collection, I felt that the translations were a little rigid at times, but I still enjoyed having all the best works in one volume, especially a sampling of Hölderlin's later work in the midst of his mental collapse. I also hadn't read many of the hexameters or elegies before, so those were worth the read alone.