Hyperion, or the Hermit in Greece - cover image

Book Series

Copyright

Howard Gaskill

Published On

2019-02-25

ISBN

Paperback978-1-78374-655-2
Hardback978-1-78374-656-9
PDF978-1-78374-657-6
HTML978-1-80064-578-3
XML978-1-78374-667-5
EPUB978-1-78374-658-3
MOBI978-1-78374-659-0

Language

  • English

Print Length

234 pages (x + 224)

Dimensions

Paperback156 x 13 x 234 mm(6.14" x 0.5" x 9.21")
Hardback156 x 14 x 234 mm(6.14" x 0.56" x 9.21")

Weight

Paperback745g (26.28oz)
Hardback1124g (39.65oz)

Media

Illustrations1

OCLC Number

1089990788

LCCN

2019452867

BIC

  • D
  • FC
  • FQ

BISAC

  • LIT004170
  • FOR009000
  • FIC032000

LCC

  • PT2359.H2

Keywords

  • Friedrich Hölderlin
  • novel
  • Hyperion
  • fictional epistolary autobiography
  • European Romanticism

Hyperion, or the Hermit in Greece

Friedrich Hölderlin’s only novel, Hyperion (1797–99), is a fictional epistolary autobiography that juxtaposes narration with critical reflection. Returning to Greece after German exile, following his part in the abortive uprising against the occupying Turks (1770), and his failure as both a lover and a revolutionary, Hyperion assumes a hermitic existence, during which he writes his letters. Confronting and commenting on his own past, with all its joy and grief, the narrator undergoes a transformation that culminates in the realisation of his true vocation.

Though Hölderlin is now established as a great lyric poet, recognition of his novel as a supreme achievement of European Romanticism has been belated in the Anglophone world. Incorporating the aesthetic evangelism that is a characteristic feature of the age, Hyperion preaches a message of redemption through beauty. The resolution of the contradictions and antinomies raised in the novel is found in the act of articulation itself. To a degree remarkable in a prose work of any length, what it means is inseparable from how it means. In this skilful translation, Gaskill conveys the beautiful music and rhythms of Hölderlin’s language to an English-speaking reader.

Endorsements

Hölderlin's only novel, Hyperion, is still not widely enough known in the English-speaking world despite its unquestionable importance. Now its moment has come in a new translation by Howard Gaskill, who probably knows the book better than anyone else alive. His version is the fruit of long years of loving attention, and it catches much of the beauty and texture of the original—its rhythms, diction, variety and shifts of style.

Prof. Charlie Louth

University of Oxford

Reviews

This edition will do much to make Hölderlin more accessible to the anglophone reader – or indeed to anyone who is unfamiliar with the work’s premises and unique structure (...) and Gaskill’s Afterword provides many of the tools for understanding the argument of the work.

Charles Lewis

"Friedrich Hölderlin: Hyperion, or the Hermit in Greece, translated by Howard Gaskill". Translation and Literature (0968-1361), vol. 28, no. 2/3, 2019. doi:10.3366/tal.2019.0397

Full Review

Contents

  • Friedrich Hölderlin

Afterword

(pp. 139–208)
  • Howard Gaskill

Contributors

Howard Gaskill

(translator)
Honorary Fellow in German at University of Edinburgh