Hölderlin's hymn "The Ister"

About this book

Martin Heidegger's 1942 lecture course interprets Friedrich Holderlin's hymn "The Ister" within the context of Holderlin's poetic and philosophical work, with particular emphasis on Holderlin's dialogue with Greek tragedy. Delivered in summer 1942 at the University of Freiburg, this course was first published in German in 1984 as volume 53 of Heidegger's Collected Works. Revealing for Heidegger's thought of the period are his discussions of the meaning of "the political" and "the national," in which he emphasizes the difficulty, as well as the necessity, of finding "one's own" in and through a dialogue with "the foreign." In this context Heidegger reflects on the nature of translation and interpretation. A detailed reading of the famous chorus from Sophocles' Antigone, known as the "ode to man," is a key feature of the course.