I'm sorry to tell my millions of readers that I can't really tell why this work appears on the “1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die” list.
This time, I can sort of tell that it's a great work – the fact that I don't quite get it is clearly a flaw in my own understanding, so you'll have to judge for yourself as to whether it's worthwhile or not. My confusion may stem in part from the fact that author Friedrich Hölderlin was primarily a poet and wrote “Hyperion” in verse. Furthermore, he wrote it in German, a language which is notoriously difficult to translate into English for some reason. Whatever the cause of my confusion, I apologize to you for the difficulties I have in reviewing this piece; I'll make every effort to make sense of this novel, which is in fact what Hölderlin called it. You have been warned.
Hyperion, the main character, is a native of Greece, who in his youth goes searching for the true, pure meaning of life. He shares that characteristic with a great many other young men, of his own time and many subsequent times. In this case, though, young Hyperion is so impatient with any human frailty at all that he can become pretty tiresome.
It's hard for me to tell whether or not I'm being quite fair to the character, to be honest; The novel came out in 1799, when Hölderlin was not yet 30 years old. At that time, 25 years after Goethe's “The Sorrows Of Young Werther” was published, there was a positive mania for melodramatic prose, and a young man might be excused for participating in that mania even today. Still, reading Hyperion's letters to his friend Bellarmin (which is what most of this novel consists of), you sometimes get so impatient with his bemoaning the impurity of his age – not to mention his obvious opinion of himself as being superior to his surroundings – that you just want to slap him. (Then again, I had the same impulse regarding the main character of “Werther”, so maybe the fault is mine.)
At least Hyperion has some liking for a previous age of the world, to which his own age compares mighty unfavorably – he didn't just get his infuriating opinions out of a clear blue sky. Obviously enough, he loves the culture of ancient Greece. The interesting part is that he rarely states precisely what it is about ancient Greece that he loves so much. He seems to believe that the ancients got their virtues from an apprecuiation of nature (or “Nature”) and from the love of youth, neither of which he finds in his own day. He does, however, find a couple of other young men whom he grows to love, named Adamas and Alabanda. Since “Hyperion” came out in 1799, there's no definite idea here as to whether there's anything romantic or sexual in these friendships, but I must admit that the thought crossed my mind given the passionate language, the commonality of gay love in ancient Greece, and very probably the relative ease with which we in the 21st century encounter gay love. Not that any of this is of any particular importance when reading “Hyperion”, but it's noticeable.
Anyway, in the novel's second half, Hyperion meets a young woman named Diotima with whom he immediately falls very much in love. She loves him too, and they start declaring to each other “you're such a superior person”. At least this time they're saying that about each other rather than about themselves.
I won't say much else about what happens to Hyperion, to Diotima, or to the two of them (although it is worth pointing out that in the novel's last few pages Hyperion makes his way to Germany and immediately pronoinces that it and its people are utterly worthless compared to Greece – I guess Hölderlin was not overly fond of his native land). Instead, I'll say a little about the language of this novel. It can be a bit of a guessing game to draw any conclusions about that, but it's true that Hölderlin was primarily a poet, and that “Hyperion” was a rhyming work in the original German. The English translation is not a rhyming work, but its language is certainly poetic. This can make it rather difficult to comprehend at times – on the other hand, the poetry does at least give us a sense of the way Hyperion himself thinks and sees the world. For all my impatience with Hyperion's attitude, the poetry of his narrative does at least make him worth attending to much of the time, if only for its own sake when the philosophy gets a little purple.
I have been unable to draw many conclusions about the name Hyperion itself. In ancient Greek mythology, Hyperion was one of the original twelve Titans, the children of Earth and Sky. There's not much activity ascribed to him – he fathered the sun, the moon, and the dawn with a sister, and that seems to be about it. The word “Hyperion” means “he that walks on high”, and I assume that Hölderlin knew that translation, although whether he intended that name or that history to say anything about his character, I have no idea. Nor am I aware if we can draw any conclusions about this novel from the fact that Hölderlin struggled with his mental health for much of his life. In other words, the biographical facts of this author's life tell us nothing about his work. Which is probably all to the good. We're going to have to interpret this piece strictly on its own merits. The fact that I haven't been able to do thst very well is just too bad – specialists in German literature tell us that “Hyperion” is a major work. I'm just going to go ahead and take their word for it.
Benshlomo says, Your opinion is one thing and expert opinion is another – don't get them mixed up.
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