"It was the function of poetry, not of himself as the poet, that he thought highly. That function was sacred, for the poet was the priest of the divine. Mr. Peacock – we think rightly – compares him with Blake both for his isolation among his contemporaries and for the purity of his utterance, which seems to carry with it so little base or neutral matter. He can be compared with Blake also for his sense of inspiration; but whereas the divine for Blake was gradually concentrated in a power which he identified with the god of Christianity, Hölderlin sought for it in the gods. These gods of his – of whose imaginative reality his poetry convinces us – appear to have been created by a singular combination of German philosophical pantheism and a profound insight into the religious sources of Greek poetry."
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Romantic poetsPoets from GermanyPlaywrights from GermanyNovelists from GermanyPhilosophers from Germany
Original Language: English
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A review of Hölderlin by Ronald Peacock
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Friedrich_H%C3%B6lderlin
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Friedrich Hölderlin
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