Friedrich Hölderlin’s Romantic Classicism

Hölderlin’s emphasis on the interrelatedness of genres and forms of artistic expression brings him close to early Romantic aesthetics as developed by Friedrich Schlegel, Ludwig Tieck, and Novalis. At the same time, Hölderlin engaged in a particular quest for ‘purity’ of expression modelled on what were perceived, since Johann Joachim Winckelmann’sHistory of Ancient Art(1764), as the Greek principles of artistic production. This engagement in attaining, in Winckelmann’s proverbial phrase, ‘noble simplicity and quiet grandeur’ brought Hölderlin closer to the ambition of Weimar Classicism. If one were to single out one recurrent theme in Hölderlin’s works, it would be experiencing and dealing with emotional, and existential, extremes and, eventually, attaining ἀταραξία that is tranquillity of the mind and soul achieved through measure and centredness.