"The one poet who both grew out of but gave form to many of the thoughts and philosophies of these groups was Friedrich Hölderlin and though his disillusionment with the French revolution was great, the poems he wrote in response to it seek to bring a the sense of revolutionary elan and hope which it promised into his oeuvre. He did this by returning to the classical tradition and a reworking of ancient Greece which, instead of the usual promotion of a static understanding of the way history works, he emphasised the old Heraclitean adage that everything is in flux. Hope sprung eternal because hope emerged out of changed circumstances and out of the fundamental human desire to make things better, no matter how that desire may become diverted and deformed by the contingencies of the every day. His rediscovery of Dionysian desire is clear in his work."
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Romantic poetsPoets from GermanyPlaywrights from GermanyNovelists from GermanyPhilosophers from Germany
Original Language: English
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Peter Thompson, 'Friedrich Hölderlin', The Guardian (1 May 2010)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Friedrich_H%C3%B6lderlin
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Friedrich Hölderlin
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