Hölderlin's Dionysiac Poetry: The Terrifying-Exciting Mysteries
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Book Overview
This book casts new light on the work of the German poet Friedrich H lderlin (1770 - 1843), and his translations of Greek tragedy. It shows H lderlin's poetry is unique within Western literature (and art) as it retrieves the socio-politics of a Dionysiac space-time and language to challenge the estrangement of humans from nature and one other.
In this book, author Lucas Murrey presents a new picture of ancient Greece, noting that money emerged and rapidly developed there in the sixth century B.C. This act of monetization brought with it a concept of tragedy: money-tyrants struggling against the forces of earth and community who succumb to individual isolation, blindness and death. As Murrey points out, H lderlin (unconsciously) retrieves the battle between money, nature and community and creatively applies its lessons to our time.
But H lderlin's poetry not only adapts tragedy to question the unlimited "machine process" of "a clever race" of money-tyrants. It also draws attention to Greece's warnings about the mortal danger of the eyes in myth, cult and theatre. This monograph thus introduces an urgently needed vision not only of H lderlin hymns, but also the relevance of disciplines as diverse as Literary Studies, Philosophy, Psychology (Psychoanalysis) as well as Religious and Visual (Media) Studies to our present predicament, where a dangerous visual culture, through its support of the unlimitedness of money, is harming our relation to nature and one another.
"Here triumphs a temperament guided by ancient religion and that excavates, in H lderlin's translations, the central god Dionysus of Greek tragedy."
"Lucas Murrey shares with his subject, H lderlin, a vision of the Greeks as bringing something vitally important into our poor world, a vision of which few classical scholars are now capable."
--Richard Seaford, author of Money and the Early Greek Mind and Dionysus.
"Here triumphs a temperament guided by ancient religion and that excavates, in H lderlin's translations, the central god Dionysus of Greek tragedy."
--Bernhard B schenstein, author of "Frucht des Gewitters". Zu H lderlins Dionysos als Gott der Revolution and Paul Celan: Der Meridian.
"Lucas Murrey takes the god of tragedy, Dionysus, finally serious as a manifestation of the ecstatic scream of liberation and visual strategies of dissolution: he pleasantly portrays H lderlin's idiosyncratic poetic sympathy."
--Anton Bierl, author of Der Chor in der Alten Kom die. Ritual and Performativit t
"H lderlin most surely deserved such a book."
--Jean-Fran ois Kerv gan, author of Que faire de Carl Schmitt?
"...fascinating material..."
--Noam Chomsky, author of Media Control and Nuclear War and Environmental Catastrophe.
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