Poet's courage

Poet's courage is an ode by Friedrich Hölderlin . The poem, composed of seven stanzas of four verses each, in asklepiadic dimensions, is handwritten in two versions, both of which were probably written around 1800. Another version, created by major revisions, was published in 1805 under the title Blödigkeit .

Dichtermut addresses the role of the poet using elements of Stoic philosophy, which Hölderlin had dealt with in particular through reading Mark Aurel's self- reflections. The poet is portrayed both as part of the living cosmos, which , according to the stoic doctrine, is ordered by sympathy with which he is harmoniously connected, and as part of the people. He can move around the world carefree, trustingly and courageously, his basic mood and thus also the core motif of the poem is joy in the sense of ancient euthymia . Even in death, which Holderin describes in verses 5 and 6 with reference to the Orpheus myth from Ovid's Metamorphoses , the poet is “joyful”.

Web links

• Friedrich Hölderlin: Poet's courage - First version in the Gutenberg-DE project
• Friedrich Hölderlin: Poet's Courage - Last version in the Gutenberg-DE project

literature

• Jochen Schmidt: Commentary on “Dichtermut”. In: Friedrich Hölderlin: Complete poems. 3. Edition. Frankfurt am Main 2014, p. 768 ff.
• Jochen Schmidt: The poetological transformation of stoic euthymia: Marc Aurel and Hölderlin's ode Dichtermut . In: Stoicism in European Philosophy, Literature, Art and Politics. 2 volumes. Ed .: Barbara Neymeyr , Jochen Schmidt , Bernhard Zimmermann . de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2008, pp. 951–962.
• Walter Benjamin: Two poems by Friedrich Hölderlin (1914/15) . In: Walter Benjamin: Collected writings . Volume II, 1, p. 105 ff.
• Hans Jürgen Scheuer: Shifting the myth into the structure. Holderlin's treatment of Orpheus's death in the sequence of odes Courage of the Poet - Poet's Courage - Stupidity . In: Yearbook of the German Schiller Society 45/2001, pp. 250–277.