Hölderlin’s ‘Hälfte des Lebens’ and the Fate of Reflection

Abstract

ABSTRACT The article examines Hölderlin’s poem as a tragic response to Romantic reflection as formulated by Fichte, and in this context shows that the poem’s interest in Klopstock, recognized by recent scholarship, is a critical one. Hölderlin, like Hegel, discerns a continuity between Klopstock’s emphasis on feeling and the problems of Fichtean reflection. The article concludes by looking at the poem’s critical anticipation of later Romantic developments, and its significant relation to Goethe’s ‘Auf dem See’.