112-510: Empedocles ( / ɛ m ˈ p ɛ d ə k l iː z / ; ‹See Tfd› Greek : Ἐμπεδοκλῆς ; c. 494 – c. 434 BC , fl. 444–443 BC) was a Greek pre-Socratic philosopher and a native citizen of Akragas , a Greek city in Sicily . Empedocles' philosophy is known best for originating the cosmogonic theory of the four classical elements . He also proposed forces he called Love and Strife which would mix and separate
224-577: A basis for coinages: anthropology , photography , telephony , isomer , biomechanics , cinematography , etc. Together with Latin words , they form the foundation of international scientific and technical vocabulary ; for example, all words ending in -logy ('discourse'). There are many English words of Greek origin . Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European language family. The ancient language most closely related to it may be ancient Macedonian , which, by most accounts,
336-671: A childhood marked by bereavement. His mother intended for him to enter the Lutheran ministry, and he attended the Tübinger Stift , where he was friends with Hegel and Schelling. He graduated in 1793 but could not devote himself to the Christian faith, instead becoming a tutor. Two years later, he briefly attended the University of Jena , where he interacted with Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Novalis , before resuming his career as
448-572: A crisper, more concise manner in epigrams and couplets, and in short poems like the famous "Hälfte des Lebens" ("The Middle of Life"). In the years after his return from Bordeaux, he completed some of his greatest poems but also, once they were finished, returned to them repeatedly, creating new and stranger versions sometimes in several layers on the same manuscript, which makes the editing of his works troublesome. Some of these later versions (and some later poems) are fragmentary, but they have astonishing intensity. He seems sometimes also to have considered
560-477: A decade prior) and Schelling, who had long since ignored him; the Zimmer family were his only mourners. His inheritance, including the patrimony left to him by his father when he was two, had been kept from him by his mother and was untouched and continually accruing interest. He died a rich man, but did not know it. The poetry of Hölderlin, widely recognized today as one of the highest points of German literature ,
672-558: A fairly stable set of consonantal contrasts . The main phonological changes occurred during the Hellenistic and Roman period (see Koine Greek phonology for details): In all its stages, the morphology of Greek shows an extensive set of productive derivational affixes , a limited but productive system of compounding and a rich inflectional system. Although its morphological categories have been fairly stable over time, morphological changes are present throughout, particularly in
784-560: A faster, more convenient cursive writing style with the use of ink and quill . The Greek alphabet consists of 24 letters, each with an uppercase ( majuscule ) and lowercase ( minuscule ) form. The letter sigma has an additional lowercase form (ς) used in the final position of a word: In addition to the letters, the Greek alphabet features a number of diacritical signs : three different accent marks ( acute , grave , and circumflex ), originally denoting different shapes of pitch accent on
896-540: A foreign language. It is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, " Homeric Greek is probably closer to Demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English ". Greek is spoken today by at least 13 million people, principally in Greece and Cyprus along with a sizable Greek-speaking minority in Albania near
1008-529: A great influence, said: "Hölderlin is one of our greatest, that is, most impending thinkers because he is our greatest poet." Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin was born on 20 March 1770 in Lauffen am Neckar , then a part of the Duchy of Württemberg . He was the first child of Johanna Christiana Heyn (1748—1828) and Heinrich Friedrich Hölderlin (1736—1772). His father, the manager of a church estate, died when he
1120-500: A letter to Schiller regarding Don Carlos , stating: "It won't be easy to study Carlos in a rational way, since he was for so many years the magic cloud in which the good god of my youth enveloped me so that I would not see too soon the pettiness and barbarity of the world." In October 1788, Hölderlin began his theological studies at the Tübinger Stift , where his fellow students included Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel , Isaac von Sinclair and Schelling. It has been speculated that it
1232-552: A local tradition rather than directly from the Pythagoreans . Empedocles established four ultimate elements which make all the structures in the world— fire , air , water , earth . Empedocles called these four elements "roots", which he also identified with the mythical names of Zeus , Hera , Nestis , and Aidoneus (e.g., "Now hear the fourfold roots of everything: enlivening Hera, Hades, shining Zeus. And Nestis, moistening mortal springs with tears"). Empedocles never used
SECTION 10
#17327653319211344-682: A member of the literary Circle led by the German Symbolist poet Stefan George , publish the first two volumes of what eventually became a six-volume edition of Hölderlin's poems, prose and letters (the "Berlin Edition", Berliner Ausgabe ). For the first time, Hölderlin's hymnic drafts and fragments were published and it became possible to gain some overview of his work in the years between 1800 and 1807, which had been only sparsely covered in earlier editions. The Berlin edition and von Hellingrath's advocacy led to Hölderlin posthumously receiving
1456-555: A minor tourist attraction and was visited by curious travelers and autograph-hunters. Often he would play the piano or spontaneously write short verses for such visitors, pure in versification but almost empty of affect—although a few of these (such as the famous Die Linien des Lebens ("The Lines of Life"), which he wrote out for his carer Zimmer on a piece of wood) have a piercing beauty and have been set to music by many composers. Hölderlin's own family did not financially support him but petitioned successfully for his upkeep to be paid by
1568-421: A new—and greatly influential—model of poetic translation. Der Rhein and Patmos , two of the longest and most densely charged of his hymns, appeared in a poetic calendar in 1808. Wilhelm Waiblinger , who visited Hölderlin in his tower repeatedly in 1822–23 and depicted him in the protagonist of his novel Phaëthon , stated the necessity of issuing an edition of his poems, and the first collection of his poetry
1680-459: A selected few among them, were originally long-lived daimons who dwelt in a state of bliss until committing an unspecified crime, possibly bloodshed or perjury. As a consequence, they fell to Earth, where they would be forced to spend 30,000 cycles of metempsychosis through different bodies before being able to return to the sphere of divinity . One's behavior during his lifetime would also determine his next incarnation. Wise people, who have learned
1792-557: A seminal manuscript, dated 1797, now known as the Das älteste Systemprogramm des deutschen Idealismus (" The Oldest Systematic Program of German Idealism "). Although the document is in Hegel's handwriting, it is thought to have been written by Hegel, Schelling, Hölderlin, or an unknown fourth person. As a tutor in Frankfurt am Main from 1796 to 1798, he fell in love with Susette Gontard ,
1904-422: A sinecure for him as court librarian, but in 1805 von Sinclair was denounced as a conspirator and tried for treason. Hölderlin was in danger of being tried too but was declared mentally unfit to stand trial. On 11 September 1806, he was delivered into the clinic at Tübingen run by Dr. Johann Heinrich Ferdinand von Autenrieth , the inventor of a mask for the prevention of screaming in the mentally ill. The clinic
2016-525: A small allowance from his mother. His mandated separation from Susette Gontard also worsened Hölderlin's doubts about himself and his value as a poet; he wished to transform German culture but did not have the influence he needed. From 1797 to 1800, he produced three versions—all unfinished—of a tragedy in the Greek manner, The Death of Empedocles , and composed odes in the vein of the Ancient Greeks Alcaeus and Asclepiades of Samos . In
2128-638: A tutor. He struggled to establish himself as a poet, and was plagued by mental illness. He was sent to a clinic in 1806 but deemed incurable and instead given lodging by a carpenter, Ernst Zimmer. He spent the final 36 years of his life in Zimmer's residence, and died in 1843 at the age of 73. Hölderlin followed the tradition of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller as an admirer of Greek mythology and Ancient Greek poets such as Pindar and Sophocles , and melded Christian and Hellenic themes in his works. Martin Heidegger , upon whom Hölderlin had
2240-498: A victory in the horse race at Olympia in the 71st Olympiad (496–495 BC). Little else can be determined with accuracy. Primary sources of information on the life of Empedocles come from the Hellenistic period , several centuries after his own death and long after any reliable evidence about his life would have perished. Modern scholarship generally believes that these biographical details, including Aristotle 's assertion that he
2352-590: A view across the Neckar river. The tower would later be named the Hölderlinturm , after the poet's 36-year-long stay in the room. His residence in the building made up the second half of his life and is also referred to as the Turmzeit (or "Tower period"). In the tower, Hölderlin continued to write poetry of a simplicity and formality quite unlike what he had been writing up to 1805. As time went on he became
SECTION 20
#17327653319212464-804: Is also found in Bulgaria near the Greek-Bulgarian border. Greek is also spoken worldwide by the sizable Greek diaspora which has notable communities in the United States , Australia , Canada , South Africa , Chile , Brazil , Argentina , Russia , Ukraine , the United Kingdom , and throughout the European Union , especially in Germany . Historically, significant Greek-speaking communities and regions were found throughout
2576-479: Is an Indo-European language, but also includes a number of borrowings from the languages of the populations that inhabited Greece before the arrival of Proto-Greeks, some documented in Mycenaean texts ; they include a large number of Greek toponyms . The form and meaning of many words have changed. Loanwords (words of foreign origin) have entered the language, mainly from Latin, Venetian , and Turkish . During
2688-826: Is based on four of these poems, while more are set in her Überzeugung for choir (2001) and Die Aussicht for soprano and four instruments (1996). In 2003, Graham Waterhouse composed a song cycle , Sechs späteste Lieder , for voice and cello based on six of Hölderlin's late poems. Lucien Posman based a concerto-cantate for clarinet, choir, piano & percussion on 3 Hölderlin poems (Teil 1. Die Eichbäume , Teil 2. Mein Eigentum , Teil 3. Da ich ein Knabe war ) (2015). He also set An die Parzen to music for choir & piano (2012) and Hälfte des Lebens for choir. Several works by Georg Friedrich Haas take their titles or text from Hölderlin's writing, including Hyperion , Nacht , and
2800-792: Is dated 1784 and addressed to his former tutor Nathanael Köstlin. In the letter, Hölderlin hinted at his wavering faith in Christianity and anxiety about his mental state. Hölderlin progressed to the Higher Monastery at Maulbronn in 1786. There he fell in love with Luise Nast, the daughter of the monastery's administrator, and began to doubt his desire to join the ministry; he composed Mein Vorsatz in 1787, in which he states his intention to attain " Pindar 's light" and reach "Klopstock-heights". In 1788, he read Schiller's Don Carlos on Luise Nast's recommendation. Hölderlin later wrote
2912-466: Is matched only by the now-extinct Anatolian languages . The Greek language is conventionally divided into the following periods: In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia : the coexistence of vernacular and archaizing written forms of the language. What came to be known as the Greek language question was a polarization between two competing varieties of Modern Greek: Dimotiki ,
3024-462: Is on a genuine belief in the divine—creates a deeply personal fusion of Greek mythic figures and romantic mysticism about nature, which can appear both strange and enticing, his shorter and sometimes more fragmentary poems have exerted wide influence too on later German poets, from Georg Trakl onwards. He also had an influence on the poetry of Hermann Hesse and Paul Celan . (Celan wrote a poem about Hölderlin, called "Tübingen, January" which ends with
3136-417: Is popularly termed growth, increase or decrease. One interpreter describes his philosophy as asserting that "Nothing new comes or can come into being; the only change that can occur is a change in the juxtaposition of element with element." This theory of the four elements became the standard dogma for the next two thousand years. The four elements, however, are simple, eternal, and unalterable, and as change
3248-519: Is protected and promoted officially as a regional and minority language in Armenia, Hungary , Romania, and Ukraine. It is recognized as a minority language and protected in Turkey by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne . The phonology , morphology , syntax , and vocabulary of the language show both conservative and innovative tendencies across the entire attestation of the language from the ancient to
3360-1101: Is sometimes called aljamiado , as when Romance languages are written in the Arabic alphabet. Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Greek: Transcription of the example text into Latin alphabet : Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English: Proto-Greek Mycenaean Ancient Koine Medieval Modern Friedrich H%C3%B6lderlin Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin ( UK : / ˈ h ɜː l d ər l iː n / , US : / ˈ h ʌ l -/ ; German: [ˈfʁiːdʁɪç ˈhœldɐliːn] ; 20 March 1770 – 7 June 1843)
3472-763: Is still used internationally for the writing of Ancient Greek . In Greek, the question mark is written as the English semicolon, while the functions of the colon and semicolon are performed by a raised point (•), known as the ano teleia ( άνω τελεία ). In Greek the comma also functions as a silent letter in a handful of Greek words, principally distinguishing ό,τι ( ó,ti , 'whatever') from ότι ( óti , 'that'). Ancient Greek texts often used scriptio continua ('continuous writing'), which means that ancient authors and scribes would write word after word with no spaces or punctuation between words to differentiate or mark boundaries. Boustrophedon , or bi-directional text,
Empedocles - Misplaced Pages Continue
3584-400: Is the cause of their separation. If the four elements make up the universe, then Love and Strife explain their variation and harmony. Love and Strife are attractive and repulsive forces, respectively, which are plainly observable in human behavior, but also pervade the universe. The two forces wax and wane in their dominance, but neither force ever wholly escapes the imposition of the other. As
3696-437: Is the consequence of their mixture and separation, it was also necessary to suppose the existence of moving powers that bring about mixture and separation. The four elements are both eternally brought into union and parted from one another by two divine powers, Love and Strife ( Philotes and Neikos ). Love ( φιλότης ) is responsible for the attraction of different forms of what we now call matter , and Strife ( νεῖκος )
3808-674: The Balkans , Caucasus , the Black Sea coast, Asia Minor , and the Eastern Mediterranean . It has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning at least 3,400 years of written records. Its writing system is the Greek alphabet , which has been used for approximately 2,800 years; previously, Greek was recorded in writing systems such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary . The alphabet arose from
3920-624: The Byzantine Empire and developed into Medieval Greek . In its modern form , Greek is the official language of Greece and Cyprus and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union . It is spoken by at least 13.5 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey , and the many other countries of the Greek diaspora . Greek roots have been widely used for centuries and continue to be widely used to coin new words in other languages; Greek and Latin are
4032-627: The Christian Bible was also originally written in Greek. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world , the Greek texts and Greek societies of antiquity constitute the objects of study of the discipline of Classics . During antiquity , Greek was by far the most widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world . It eventually became the official language of
4144-495: The Eastern Mediterranean , in what are today Southern Italy , Turkey , Cyprus , Syria , Lebanon , Israel , Palestine , Egypt , and Libya ; in the area of the Black Sea , in what are today Turkey, Bulgaria , Romania , Ukraine , Russia , Georgia , Armenia , and Azerbaijan ; and, to a lesser extent, in the Western Mediterranean in and around colonies such as Massalia , Monoikos , and Mainake . It
4256-756: The Greek gods were not the plaster figures of conventional classicism, but wonderfully life-giving actual presences, yet at the same time terrifying. Much later, Friedrich Nietzsche would recognize Hölderlin as the poet who first acknowledged the Orphic and Dionysian Greece of the mysteries , which he would fuse with the Pietism of his native Swabia in a highly original religious experience. Hölderlin developed an early idea of cyclical history and therefore believed political radicalism and an aesthetic interest in antiquity , and, in parallel, Christianity and Paganism should be fused. He understood and sympathised with
4368-516: The Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ), but little definitive evidence has been found. In addition, Albanian has also been considered somewhat related to Greek and Armenian, and it has been proposed that they all form a higher-order subgroup along with other extinct languages of the ancient Balkans; this higher-order subgroup is usually termed Palaeo-Balkan , and Greek has a central position in it. Linear B , attested as early as
4480-657: The Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin , Cyrillic , Coptic , Gothic , and many other writing systems. The Greek language holds a very important place in the history of the Western world. Beginning with the epics of Homer , ancient Greek literature includes many works of lasting importance in the European canon . Greek is also the language in which many of the foundational texts in science and philosophy were originally composed. The New Testament of
4592-528: The corporeality of air, but he says nothing whatever about the void, and there is no evidence that Empedocles performed any experiment with clepsydras. According to Diogenes Laertius, Empedocles wrote two poems, "On Nature" and "On Purifications", which together comprised 5000 lines. However, only some 550 lines of his poetry survive, quoted in fragments by later ancient sources. In old editions of Empedocles, about 450 lines were ascribed to "On Nature" which outlined his philosophical system, and explains not only
Empedocles - Misplaced Pages Continue
4704-492: The nominal and verbal systems. The major change in the nominal morphology since the classical stage was the disuse of the dative case (its functions being largely taken over by the genitive ). The verbal system has lost the infinitive , the synthetically -formed future, and perfect tenses and the optative mood . Many have been replaced by periphrastic ( analytical ) forms. Pronouns show distinctions in person (1st, 2nd, and 3rd), number (singular, dual , and plural in
4816-608: The right to destroy themselves . In Icaro-Menippus [ it ] , a comedic dialogue written by the second-century satirist Lucian of Samosata , Empedocles' final fate is re-evaluated. Rather than being incinerated in the fires of Mount Etna, he was carried up into the heavens by a volcanic eruption. Although singed by the ordeal, Empedocles survives and continues his life on the Moon, surviving by feeding on dew. Burnet states that Empedocles likely did not die in Sicily, that both
4928-647: The French city is celebrated in Andenken ("Remembrance"), one of his greatest poems. In a few months, however, he returned home on foot via Paris (where he saw authentic Greek sculptures, as opposed to Roman or modern copies, for the only time in his life). He arrived at his home in Nürtingen both physically and mentally exhausted in late 1802, and learned that Gontard had died from influenza in Frankfurt at around
5040-486: The Greek alphabet since approximately the 9th century BC. It was created by modifying the Phoenician alphabet , with the innovation of adopting certain letters to represent the vowels. The variant of the alphabet in use today is essentially the late Ionic variant, introduced for writing classical Attic in 403 BC. In classical Greek, as in classical Latin, only upper-case letters existed. The lower-case Greek letters were developed much later by medieval scribes to permit
5152-435: The Greek idea of the tragic fall , which he expressed movingly in the last stanza of his "Hyperions Schicksalslied" ("Hyperion's Song of Destiny"). In the great poems of his maturity, Hölderlin would generally adopt a large-scale, expansive and unrhymed style. Together with these long hymns, odes and elegies—which included "Der Archipelagus" ("The Archipelago"), "Brod und Wein" ("Bread and Wine") and "Patmos"—he also cultivated
5264-495: The Greek language was the Cypriot syllabary (also a descendant of Linear A via the intermediate Cypro-Minoan syllabary ), which is closely related to Linear B but uses somewhat different syllabic conventions to represent phoneme sequences. The Cypriot syllabary is attested in Cyprus from the 11th century BC until its gradual abandonment in the late Classical period, in favor of the standard Greek alphabet. Greek has been written in
5376-629: The Greek verb have likewise remained largely the same over the course of the language's history but with significant changes in the number of distinctions within each category and their morphological expression. Greek verbs have synthetic inflectional forms for: Many aspects of the syntax of Greek have remained constant: verbs agree with their subject only, the use of the surviving cases is largely intact (nominative for subjects and predicates, accusative for objects of most verbs and many prepositions, genitive for possessors), articles precede nouns, adpositions are largely prepositional, relative clauses follow
5488-685: The Greek-Albanian border. A significant percentage of Albania's population has knowledge of the Greek language due in part to the Albanian wave of immigration to Greece in the 1980s and '90s and the Greek community in the country. Prior to the Greco-Turkish War and the resulting population exchange in 1923 a very large population of Greek-speakers also existed in Turkey , though very few remain today. A small Greek-speaking community
5600-481: The Lutheran church. In preparation for entrance exams into a monastery, he received additional instruction in Greek , Hebrew , Latin and rhetoric , starting in 1782. During this time, he struck a friendship with Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling , who was five years Hölderlin's junior. On account of the age difference, Schelling was "subjected to universal teasing" and Hölderlin protected him from abuse by older students. Also during this time, Hölderlin began playing
5712-665: The Stift. Along with Hegel and Schelling and his other peers during his time in the Stift, Hölderlin was an enthusiastic supporter of the French Revolution . Although he rejected the violence of the Reign of Terror , his commitment to the principles of 1789 remained intense. Hölderlin's republican sympathies influenced many of his most famous works such as Hyperion and The Death of Empedocles . After he obtained his magister degree in 1793, his mother expected him to enter
SECTION 50
#17327653319215824-404: The acute during the late 20th century, and it has only been retained in typography . After the writing reform of 1982, most diacritics are no longer used. Since then, Greek has been written mostly in the simplified monotonic orthography (or monotonic system), which employs only the acute accent and the diaeresis. The traditional system, now called the polytonic orthography (or polytonic system),
5936-491: The age of 109. Likewise, there are myths concerning his death: a tradition, which is traced to Heraclides Ponticus , represented him as having been removed from the Earth; whereas others had him perishing in the flames of Mount Etna . Diogenes Laërtius records the legend that Empedocles died by throwing himself into Mount Etna in Sicily, so that the people would believe his body had vanished and he had turned into an immortal god;
6048-402: The ancient language; singular and plural alone in later stages), and gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter), and decline for case (from six cases in the earliest forms attested to four in the modern language). Nouns, articles, and adjectives show all the distinctions except for a person. Both attributive and predicative adjectives agree with the noun. The inflectional categories of
6160-414: The best and original state, there was a time when the pure elements and the two powers co-existed in a condition of rest and inertness in the form of a sphere. The elements existed together in their purity, without mixture and separation, and the uniting power of Love predominated in the sphere: the separating power of Strife guarded the extreme edges of the sphere. Since that time, strife gained more sway and
6272-425: The bond which kept the pure elementary substances together in the sphere was dissolved. The elements became the world of phenomena we see today, full of contrasts and oppositions, operated on by both Love and Strife. Empedocles assumed a cyclical universe whereby the elements return and prepare the formation of the sphere for the next period of the universe. Empedocles attempted to explain the separation of elements,
6384-1229: The earliest settings of Hölderlin's poetry is Schicksalslied by Johannes Brahms , based on Hyperions Schicksalslied . Other composers of Hölderlin settings include Ludwig van Beethoven ( An die Hoffnung - Opus 32 ), Peter Cornelius , Hans Pfitzner , Richard Strauss ( Drei Hymnen ), Max Reger (" An die Hoffnung "), Alphons Diepenbrock ( Die Nacht ), Walter Braunfels (" Der Tod fürs Vaterland "), Richard Wetz ( Hyperion ), Josef Matthias Hauer , Denise Roger , Hermann Reutter , Margarete Schweikert , Stefan Wolpe , Paul Hindemith , Benjamin Britten ( Sechs Hölderlin-Fragmente ), Hans Werner Henze , Bruno Maderna ( Hyperion , Stele an Diotima ), Luigi Nono ( Prometeo ), Heinz Holliger (the Scardanelli-Zyklus ), Hans Zender ( Hölderlin lesen I-IV ), György Kurtág (who planned an opera on Hölderlin), György Ligeti ( Three Fantasies after Friedrich Hölderlin ), Hanns Eisler ( Hollywood Liederbuch ), Viktor Ullmann , Wolfgang von Schweinitz , Walter Zimmermann ( Hyperion , an epistolary opera) and Wolfgang Rihm . Siegfried Matthus composed
6496-418: The elements, respectively. Empedocles challenged the practice of animal sacrifice and killing animals for food. He developed a distinctive doctrine of reincarnation . He is generally considered the last Greek philosopher to have recorded his ideas in verse. Some of his work survives, more than is the case for any other pre-Socratic philosopher. Empedocles' death was mythologized by ancient writers, and has been
6608-543: The formation of earth and sea, of Sun and Moon, of atmosphere. He also dealt with the first origin of plants and animals, and with the physiology of humans. As the elements entered into combinations, there appeared strange results—heads without necks, arms without shoulders. Then as these fragmentary structures met, there were seen horned heads on human bodies, bodies of oxen with human heads, and figures of double sex . But most of these products of natural forces disappeared as suddenly as they arose; only in those rare cases where
6720-589: The fragments, even with unfinished lines and incomplete sentence-structure, to be poems in themselves. This obsessive revising and his stand-alone fragments were once considered evidence of his mental disorder, but they were to prove very influential on later poets such as Paul Celan . In his years of madness, Hölderlin would occasionally pencil ingenuous rhymed quatrains , sometimes of a childlike beauty, which he would sign with fantastic names (most often "Scardanelli") and give fictitious dates from previous or future centuries. Hölderlin's major publication in his lifetime
6832-407: The fundamental basis on which later Greek philosophers and mathematicians like Euclid would construct some of the most important theories of light, vision, and optics. Knowledge is explained by the principle that elements in the things outside us are perceived by the corresponding elements in ourselves. Like is known by like. The whole body is full of pores and hence respiration takes place over
SECTION 60
#17327653319216944-689: The hymn drafts, and the Duino Elegies heralded the beginning of a new appreciation of Hölderlin's late work. Although his hymns can hardly be imitated, they have become a powerful influence on modern poetry in German and other languages, and are sometimes cited as the very crown of German lyric poetry. The Berlin Edition was to some extent superseded by the Stuttgart Edition ( Grosse Stuttgarter Ausgabe ), which began to be published in 1943 and eventually saw completion in 1986. This undertaking
7056-439: The infinitive entirely (employing a raft of new periphrastic constructions instead) and uses participles more restrictively. The loss of the dative led to a rise of prepositional indirect objects (and the use of the genitive to directly mark these as well). Ancient Greek tended to be verb-final, but neutral word order in the modern language is VSO or SVO. Modern Greek inherits most of its vocabulary from Ancient Greek, which in turn
7168-530: The key problems also addressed by his Tübingen roommates Hegel and Schelling, and, though his poetry was never "theory-driven", the interpretation and exegesis of some of his more difficult poems have given rise to profound philosophical speculation by thinkers such as Martin Heidegger , Theodor Adorno , Jacques Derrida , Michel Foucault and Alain Badiou . Hölderlin's poetry has inspired many composers, generating vocal music and instrumental music . One of
7280-467: The late 15th century BC, was the first script used to write Greek. It is basically a syllabary , which was finally deciphered by Michael Ventris and John Chadwick in the 1950s (its precursor, Linear A , has not been deciphered and most likely encodes a non-Greek language). The language of the Linear B texts, Mycenaean Greek , is the earliest known form of Greek. Another similar system used to write
7392-655: The late 1790s, Hölderlin was diagnosed with schizophrenia , then referred to as " hypochondrias ", a condition that would worsen after his last meeting with Susette Gontard in 1800. After a sojourn in Stuttgart at the end of 1800, likely to work on his translations of Pindar , he found further employment as a tutor in Hauptwyl , Switzerland, and then at the household of the Hamburg consul in Bordeaux , in 1802. His stay in
7504-576: The membership of Greece and Cyprus in the European Union, Greek is one of the organization's 24 official languages . Greek is recognized as a minority language in Albania, and used co-officially in some of its municipalities, in the districts of Gjirokastër and Sarandë . It is also an official minority language in the regions of Apulia and Calabria in Italy. In the framework of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages , Greek
7616-400: The ministry. However, Hölderlin found no satisfaction in the prevailing Protestant theology, and worked instead as a private tutor. In 1794, he met Friedrich Schiller and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and began writing his epistolary novel Hyperion . In 1795 he enrolled for a while at the University of Jena where he attended Johann Gottlieb Fichte 's classes and met Novalis . There is
7728-441: The modern period. The division into conventional periods is, as with all such periodizations, relatively arbitrary, especially because, in all periods, Ancient Greek has enjoyed high prestige, and the literate borrowed heavily from it. Across its history, the syllabic structure of Greek has varied little: Greek shows a mixed syllable structure, permitting complex syllabic onsets but very restricted codas. It has only oral vowels and
7840-453: The nature and history of the universe, including his theory of the four classical elements , but also theories on causation, perception, and thought, as well as explanations of terrestrial phenomena and biological processes. The other 100 lines were typically ascribed to his "Purifications", which was taken to be a poem about ritual purification, or the poem that contained all his religious and ethical thought, which early editors supposed that it
7952-399: The noun they modify and relative pronouns are clause-initial. However, the morphological changes also have their counterparts in the syntax, and there are also significant differences between the syntax of the ancient and that of the modern form of the language . Ancient Greek made great use of participial constructions and of constructions involving the infinitive, and the modern variety lacks
8064-706: The older periods of Greek, loanwords into Greek acquired Greek inflections, thus leaving only a foreign root word. Modern borrowings (from the 20th century on), especially from French and English, are typically not inflected; other modern borrowings are derived from Albanian , South Slavic ( Macedonian / Bulgarian ) and Eastern Romance languages ( Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian ). Greek words have been widely borrowed into other languages, including English. Example words include: mathematics , physics , astronomy , democracy , philosophy , athletics , theatre, rhetoric , baptism , evangelist , etc. Moreover, Greek words and word elements continue to be productive as
8176-769: The orchestral song cycle Hyperion-Fragmente . Carl Orff used Hölderlin's German translations of Sophocles in his operas Antigone and Oedipus der Tyrann . In 2020, for the 250th anniversary of Hölderlin's birth, the American composaer Chris Jarrett wrote "Sechs Hölderlin Lieder" for baritone and piano. They have been recorded on the DaVinci Classics label and are available in print as well. Wilhelm Killmayer based three song cycles, Hölderlin-Lieder , for tenor and orchestra on Hölderlin's late poems; Kaija Saariaho 's Tag des Jahrs (2001) for mixed choir and electronics
8288-540: The parts were found to be adapted to each other did the complex structures last. Thus the organic universe sprang from spontaneous aggregations that suited each other as if this had been intended. Soon various influences reduced creatures of double sex to a male and a female, and the world was replenished with organic life. Like Pythagoras , Empedocles believed in the transmigration of the soul or metempsychosis , that souls can be reincarnated between humans, animals and even plants. According to him, all humans, or maybe only
8400-482: The phenomenon of respiration by means of an elaborate analogy with the clepsydra , an ancient device for conveying liquids from one vessel to another. This fragment has sometimes been connected to a passage in Aristotle 's Physics where Aristotle refers to people who twisted wineskins and captured air in clepsydras to demonstrate that void does not exist. The fragment certainly implies that Empedocles knew about
8512-632: The piano and developed an interest in travel literature through exposure to Georg Forster 's A Voyage Round the World . In 1784, Hölderlin entered the Lower Monastery in Denkendorf and started his formal training for entry into the Lutheran ministry. At Denkendorf, he discovered the poetry of Friedrich Schiller and Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock , and took tentative steps in composing his own verses. The earliest known letter of Hölderlin's
8624-405: The positive story of Empedocles being taken up to heaven and the negative one about him throwing himself into a volcano could be easily accepted by ancient writers, as there was no local tradition to contradict them. Empedocles' death is the subject of Friedrich Hölderlin 's play Tod des Empedokles ( The Death of Empedocles ) as well as Matthew Arnold 's poem Empedocles on Etna . Based on
8736-604: The predominant sources of international scientific vocabulary . Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around the 3rd millennium BC, or possibly earlier. The earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the world's oldest recorded living language . Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation
8848-647: The recognition that had always eluded him in life. As a result, Hölderlin has been recognized since 1913 as one of the greatest poets ever to write in the German language . Norbert von Hellingrath enlisted in the Imperial German Army at the outbreak of World War I and was killed in action at the Battle of Verdun in 1916. The fourth volume of the Berlin edition was published posthumously. The Berlin Edition
8960-417: The same spiritual plane; plants and animals are links in a chain where humans are a link too. Empedocles is credited with the first comprehensive theory of light and vision. Historian Will Durant noted that "Empedocles suggested that light takes time to pass from one point to another." He put forward the idea that we see objects because light streams out of our eyes and touches them. While flawed, this became
9072-440: The same time. At his home in Nürtingen with his mother, a devout Christian, Hölderlin melded his Hellenism with Christianity and sought to unite ancient values with modern life; in his elegy Brod und Wein ("Bread and Wine"), Christ is seen as sequential to the Greek gods, bringing bread from the earth and wine from Dionysus . After two years in Nürtingen, Hölderlin was taken to the court of Homburg by Isaac von Sinclair, who found
9184-490: The secret of life, are closer to the divine, while their souls similarly are closer to the freedom from the cycle of reincarnations, after which they are able to rest in happiness for eternity. This cycle of mortal incarnation seems to have been inspired by the god Apollo 's punishment as a servant to Admetus . Empedocles was a vegetarian and advocated vegetarianism, since the bodies of animals are also dwelling places of punished souls. For Empedocles, all living things were on
9296-574: The solo ensemble "... Einklang freier Wesen ..." as well as its constituent solo pieces each named "... aus freier Lust ... verbunden ...". In 2020, as part of the German celebration of Hölderlin's 250th birthday, Chris Jarrett composed his "Sechs Hölderlin Lieder" for baritone and piano. Finnish melodic death metal band Insomnium set Hölderlin's verses to music in several of their songs, and many songs of Swedish alternative rock band ALPHA 60 also contain lyrical references to Hölderlin's poetry. Robert Schumann 's late piano suite Gesänge der Frühe
9408-405: The state. His mother and sister never visited him, and his stepbrother did so only once. His mother died in 1828: his sister and stepbrother quarreled over the inheritance, arguing that too large a share had been allotted to Hölderlin, and unsuccessfully tried to have the will overturned in court. Neither of them attended his funeral in 1843 nor did his childhood friends, Hegel (as he had died roughly
9520-437: The stressed vowel; the so-called breathing marks ( rough and smooth breathing ), originally used to signal presence or absence of word-initial /h/; and the diaeresis , used to mark the full syllabic value of a vowel that would otherwise be read as part of a diphthong. These marks were introduced during the course of the Hellenistic period. Actual usage of the grave in handwriting saw a rapid decline in favor of uniform usage of
9632-525: The subject of a number of literary treatments. The exact dates of Empedocles' birth and death are unknown, and ancient accounts of his life conflict on the exact details. However, they agree that he was born in the early 5th century BC in the Greek city of Akragas in Magna Graecia , present-day Sicily . Modern scholars believe the accuracy of the accounts that he came from a rich and noble family and that his grandfather, also named Empedocles, had won
9744-544: The surviving fragments of his work, modern scholars generally believe that Empedocles was directly responding to Parmenides ' doctrine of monism and was likely acquainted with the work of Anaxagoras , although it is unlikely he was aware of either the later Eleatics or the doctrines of the Atomists . Many later accounts of his life claim that Empedocles studied with the Pythagoreans on the basis of his doctrine of reincarnation, although he may have instead learned this from
9856-422: The term "element" ( στοιχεῖον , stoicheion ), which seems to have been first used by Plato . According to the different proportions in which these four indestructible and unchangeable elements are combined with each other the difference of the structure is produced. It is in the aggregation and segregation of elements thus arising, that Empedocles, like the atomists, found the real process which corresponds to what
9968-447: The various stages of the Greek language are often emphasized. Although Greek has undergone morphological and phonological changes comparable to those seen in other languages, never since classical antiquity has its cultural, literary, and orthographic tradition been interrupted to the extent that one can speak of a new language emerging. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than
10080-529: The vernacular form of Modern Greek proper, and Katharevousa , meaning 'purified', a compromise between Dimotiki and Ancient Greek developed in the early 19th century that was used for literary and official purposes in the newly formed Greek state. In 1976, Dimotiki was declared the official language of Greece, after having incorporated features of Katharevousa and thus giving birth to Standard Modern Greek , used today for all official purposes and in education . The historical unity and continuing identity between
10192-442: The volcano, however, threw back one of his bronze sandals, revealing the deceit. Another legend maintains that he threw himself into the volcano to prove to his disciples that he was immortal; he believed he would come back as a god after being consumed by the fire. Lucretius speaks of him with enthusiasm, and evidently viewed him as his model. Horace also refers to the death of Empedocles in his work Ars Poetica and admits poets
10304-435: The whole frame. In the organs of sense these pores are specially adapted to receive the effluences which are continually rising from bodies around us; thus perception occurs. In vision, certain particles go forth from the eye to meet similar particles given forth from the object, and the resultant contact constitutes vision. Perception is not merely a passive reflection of external objects. Empedocles also attempted to explain
10416-498: The whole poem. Greek language Greek ( Modern Greek : Ελληνικά , romanized : Elliniká , [eliniˈka] ; Ancient Greek : Ἑλληνική , romanized : Hellēnikḗ ) is an Indo-European language, constituting an independent Hellenic branch within the Indo-European language family. It is native to Greece , Cyprus , Italy (in Calabria and Salento ), southern Albania , and other regions of
10528-535: The wife of his employer, the banker Jakob Gontard. The feeling was mutual, and this relationship became the most important in Hölderlin's life. After a while, their affair was discovered, and Hölderlin was harshly dismissed. He then lived in Homburg from 1798 to 1800, meeting Susette in secret once a month and attempting to establish himself as a poet, but his life was plagued by financial worries and he had to accept
10640-514: The word Pallaksch —according to Schwab, Hölderlin's favourite neologism "which sometimes meant Yes, sometimes No".) Hölderlin was also a thinker who wrote, fragmentarily, on poetic theory and philosophical matters. His theoretical works, such as the essays "Das Werden im Vergehen" ("Becoming in Dissolution") and "Urteil und Sein" ("Judgement and Being") are insightful and important if somewhat tortuous and difficult to parse. They raise many of
10752-636: Was Hölderlin who, during their time in Tübingen, brought to Hegel's attention the ideas of Heraclitus regarding the unity of opposites , which Hegel would later develop into his concept of dialectics . In 1789, Hölderlin broke off his engagement with Luise Nast, writing to her: "I wish you happiness if you choose one more worthy than me, and then surely you will understand that you could never have been happy with your morose, ill-humoured, and sickly friend," and expressed his desire to transfer out and study law but succumbed to pressure from his mother to remain in
10864-440: Was a German poet and philosopher . Described by Norbert von Hellingrath as "the most German of Germans", Hölderlin was a key figure of German Romanticism . Particularly due to his early association with and philosophical influence on Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling , he was also an important thinker in the development of German Idealism . Born in Lauffen am Neckar , Hölderlin had
10976-574: Was a distinct dialect of Greek itself. Aside from the Macedonian question, current consensus regards Phrygian as the closest relative of Greek, since they share a number of phonological, morphological and lexical isoglosses , with some being exclusive between them. Scholars have proposed a Graeco-Phrygian subgroup out of which Greek and Phrygian originated. Among living languages, some Indo-Europeanists suggest that Greek may be most closely related to Armenian (see Graeco-Armenian ) or
11088-583: Was a poem that offered a mythical account of the world which may, nevertheless, have been part of Empedocles' philosophical system. A late 20th century discovery has changed this situation. The Strasbourg papyrus contains a large section of "On Nature", including many lines formerly attributed to "On Purifications". This has raised considerable debate about whether the surviving fragments of his teaching should be attributed to two separate poems, with different subject matter; whether they may all derive from one poem with two titles; or whether one title refers to part of
11200-568: Was also used as the official language of government and religion in the Christian Nubian kingdoms , for most of their history. Greek, in its modern form, is the official language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population. It is also the official language of Cyprus (nominally alongside Turkish ) and the British Overseas Territory of Akrotiri and Dhekelia (alongside English ). Because of
11312-557: Was also used in Ancient Greek. Greek has occasionally been written in the Latin script , especially in areas under Venetian rule or by Greek Catholics . The term Frankolevantinika / Φραγκολεβαντίνικα applies when the Latin script is used to write Greek in the cultural ambit of Catholicism (because Frankos / Φράγκος is an older Greek term for West-European dating to when most of (Roman Catholic Christian) West Europe
11424-411: Was attached to the University of Tübingen and the poet Justinus Kerner , then a student of medicine, was assigned to look after Hölderlin. The following year Hölderlin was discharged as incurable and given three years to live, but was taken in by the carpenter Ernst Zimmer (a cultured man, who had read Hyperion ) and given a room in his house in Tübingen, which had been a tower in the old city wall with
11536-619: Was completed after the German Revolution of 1918 by Friedrich Seebass and Ludwig von Pigenot ; the remaining volumes appeared in Berlin between 1922 and 1923. Already in 1912, before the Berlin Edition began to appear, Rainer Maria Rilke composed his first two Duino Elegies whose form and spirit draw strongly on the hymns and elegies of Hölderlin. Rilke had met von Hellingrath a few years earlier and had seen some of
11648-559: Was his novel Hyperion , which was issued in two volumes (1797 and 1799). Various individual poems were published but attracted little attention. In 1799 he produced a periodical, Iduna . In 1804, his translations of the dramas of Sophocles were published but were generally met with derision over their apparent artificiality and difficulty, which according to his critics were caused by transposing Greek idioms into German. However, 20th-century theorists of translation such as Walter Benjamin have vindicated them, showing their importance as
11760-454: Was little known or understood during his lifetime, and slipped into obscurity shortly after his death; his illness and reclusion made him fade from his contemporaries' consciousness—and, even though selections of his work were published by his friends during his lifetime, it was largely ignored for the rest of the 19th century. Like Goethe and Schiller, his older contemporaries, Hölderlin was a fervent admirer of ancient Greek culture, but for him
11872-545: Was much more rigorous in textual criticism than the Berlin Edition and solved many issues of interpretation raised by Hölderlin's unfinished and undated texts (sometimes several versions of the same poem with major differences). Meanwhile, a third complete edition, the Frankfurt Critical Edition ( Frankfurter Historisch-kritische Ausgabe ), began publication in 1975 under the editorship of Dietrich Sattler . Though Hölderlin's hymnic style—dependent as it
11984-463: Was released by Ludwig Uhland and Christoph Theodor Schwab in 1826. However, Uhland and Schwab omitted anything they suspected might be "touched by insanity", which included much of Hölderlin's fragmented works. A copy of this collection was given to Hölderlin, but later was stolen by an autograph-hunter. A second, enlarged edition with a biographical essay appeared in 1842, the year before Hölderlin's death. Only in 1913 did Norbert von Hellingrath ,
12096-477: Was scarred by grief and sorrow, writing in a 1799 correspondence with his mother: When my second father died, whose love for me I shall never forget, when I felt, with an incomprehensible pain, my orphaned state and saw, each day, your grief and tears, it was then that my soul took on, for the first time, this heaviness that has never left and that could only grow more severe with the years. Hölderlin began his education in 1776, and his mother planned for him to join
12208-408: Was the "father of rhetoric ", his chronologically impossible tutelage under Pythagoras , and his employment as a doctor and miracle worker, were fabricated from interpretations of Empedocles' poetry, as was common practice for the biographies written during this time. According to Aristotle , Empedocles died at the age of 60 ( c. 430 BC ), even though other writers have him living up to
12320-409: Was two years old, and Friedrich and his sister, Heinrike, were brought up by their mother. In 1774, his mother moved the family to Nürtingen when she married Johann Christoph Gok. Two years later, Johann Gok became the burgomaster of Nürtingen, and Hölderlin's half-brother, Karl Christoph Friedrich Gok, was born. In 1779, Johann Gok died at the age of 30. Hölderlin later expressed how his childhood
12432-580: Was under the control of the Frankish Empire ). Frankochiotika / Φραγκοχιώτικα (meaning 'Catholic Chiot') alludes to the significant presence of Catholic missionaries based on the island of Chios . Additionally, the term Greeklish is often used when the Greek language is written in a Latin script in online communications. The Latin script is nowadays used by the Greek-speaking communities of Southern Italy . The Yevanic dialect
12544-673: Was written by Romaniote and Constantinopolitan Karaite Jews using the Hebrew Alphabet . In a tradition, that in modern time, has come to be known as Greek Aljamiado , some Greek Muslims from Crete wrote their Cretan Greek in the Arabic alphabet . The same happened among Epirote Muslims in Ioannina . This also happened among Arabic-speaking Byzantine rite Christians in the Levant ( Lebanon , Palestine, and Syria ). This usage
#920079