“ Hölderlin’s writings are the production of a beautiful and sensitive mind; but they are intensely, almost morbidly, subjective, and they lack real human strength. Perhaps his strongest characteristic was his passion for Greece, the result of which was that he almost entirely discarded rhyme in favour of the ancient verse measures. ”

“ Hyperion, oder der Eremit in Griechenland (1797–1799) , is a romance in letters, in which the stormy fervour of the “Sturm und Drang” is combined with a romantic enthusiasm for Greek antiquity. The interest centres not in the story, for the novel has little or none—Hyperion is a young Greek who takes part in the rising of his people against the Turks in 1770—but in its lyric subjectivity and the dithyrambic beauty of its language.
Hölderlin’s lyrics, Lyrische Gedichte, were edited by L. Uhland and G. Schwab in 1826. ”

“ A year later he left this situation to attend Fichte’s lectures, and to be near Schiller in Jena. The latter recognized in the young poet something of his own genius, and encouraged him by publishing some of his early writings in his periodicals Die neue Thalia and Die Horen. ”