Friedrich Hoelderlin’s Life, Poetry and Madness

After a childhood marked by loss and grief, Hoelderlin studied theology in the illustrious company of Hegel and Schelling, before concentrating on poetry and writing his most famous work, Hyperion. But, afflicted by the pressures of life and a doomed love affair, he gradually went mad, and spent the final thirty-six years of his life in a solitary tower in Tubingen, cared for by a kindly carpenter. The younger poet Wilhelm Waiblinger (1804-30) was one of the few people to gain Hoelderlin’s confidence, and visited him often; this is his beautifully written memoir of the stricken poet, a unique insight into his personality, sensitively translated by Will Stone.