Hölderlin and the consequences

"A sign we are, uninterpreted. Painless we are and have almost / lost the language in a foreign country." Thus begins the second version of Friedrich Hölderlin's hymn dedicated to goddess of memory, Mnemosyne. "Hölderlin and the Consequences" wants to remember this 'poet of poets' and consider what his unmatched poems have stimulated, even triggered, in others. This scholarly essay examines the legacy of a poet who was, by and large, ostracized in his time, a master of language, who was declared a stranger by his contemporaries until he became a stranger to himself. Hölderlin's multiple experience of foreignness and alienation was later counteracted by often ideologically motivated attempts to appropriate him. Rüdiger Görner presents this complex context as a special case in recent literary history.