Hyperion

“ Hyperion's words expressed their taste more accurately: 'O, man is a god when he dreams, a beggar when he thinks!' and they laid stress upon restless movement, fantastic, highly-coloured effects, a crass subjectivity, a reckless licence of the imagination. ”

“ In the Homeric hymn to Helios, Helios is not yet called an immortal, but only ἐπιείκελος ἀθανάτοισι, like unto immortals, yet he is called the child of Euryphaessa, the son of Hyperion, the grandson of Uranos and Gæa.36
[pg 080] All this is mythology; it is ancient language going beyond its first intention.
Nor is there much difficulty in interpreting this myth. Helios, the sun, is called the son of Hyperīon, sometimes Hyperīon himself. This name Hyperīon is derived from the preposition ὑπέρ, the Latin super, which means above. ”

“ And just as his ideals are vague and abstract, so too are the expressions of his Weltschmerz. It needs no concrete idea to arouse his enthusiasm to its highest pitch. Thus Hyperion exclaims: "Der Gott in uns, dem die Unendlichkeit zur Bahn sich öffnet, soll stehen und harren, bis der Wurm ihm aus dem Wege geht? Nein! nein! man frägt nicht, ob ihr wollt! ihr wollt ja nie—ihr Knechte und Barbaren! Euch will man auch nicht bessern, denn es ist umsonst! Man will nur dafür sorgen, dass ihr dem Siegeslauf der Menschheit aus dem Wege geht!" ”

“ XXXI. TO HELIOS
(ll. 1-16) 2534 And now, O Muse Calliope, daughter of Zeus, begin to sing of glowing Helios whom mild-eyed Euryphaessa, the far-shining one, bare to the Son of Earth and starry Heaven. For Hyperion wedded glorious Euryphaessa, his own sister, who bare him lovely children, rosy-armed Eos and rich-tressed Selene and tireless Helios who is like the deathless gods. As he rides in his chariot, he shines upon men and deathless gods, and piercingly he gazes with his eyes from his golden helmet. ”

“ This second book of Hyperion, relating the council [Pg 157] of the dethroned Titans, has neither the sublimity of the first, where the solemn opening vision of Saturn fallen is followed by the resplendent one of Hyperion threatened in his ‘lucent empire’; nor the intensity of the unfinished third, where we leave Apollo undergoing a convulsive change under the afflatus of Mnemosyne, and about to put on the full powers of his godhead. ”

“ Hyperion gives way to Apollo, Oceanus to Poseidon. Around the feet of that tranquil Olympian family still crowd the weary shadows of an earlier, more formless, divine world. The placid minds even of Olympian gods are troubled with thoughts of a limit to duration, of inevitable decay, of dispossession. Again, the supreme and colourless abstraction of those divine forms, which is the secret of their repose, is also a premonition of the fleshless, consumptive refinements of the pale, medieval artists. ”

“ But the poet does not apply this fatalism only to himself, to the individual; he widens its influence to humanity in general. "Wir sprechen von unserm Herzen, unsern Planen, als wären sie unser," says Hyperion, "und es ist doch eine fremde Gewalt, die uns herumwirft und ins Grab legt, wie es ihr gefällt, und von der wir nicht wissen, von wannen sie kommt, noch wohin sie geht:" [38] Perhaps nowhere better than in Hyperion's "Schicksalslied" does he give poetic expression to this thought. ”

“ HYPERION, in Greek mythology, one of the Titans, son of Uranus and Gaea and father of Helios, the sun-god (Hesiod, Theog. 134, 371; Apollodorus i. 1. 2) . In the well-known passage in Shakespeare (Hamlet, i. 2: “Hyperion to a satyr,” where as in other poets the vowel -i- though really long, is shortened for metrical reasons) Hyperion is used for Apollo as expressive of the idea of beauty. The name is often used as an epithet of Helios, who is himself sometimes called simply Hyperion. It is explained as (1) he who moves above (ὑπερ-ιων) , but the quantity of the vowel is against this ”

“ When his poem opens, the younger gods, the Olympians, have won their victory, and the Titans, all except Hyperion, are already overthrown. In their debate whether to fight again general despondency prevails, and only one of the fallen, Enceladus, strikes a note of defiance; so that it seems as if there were nothing left to tell except the coming defeat or abdication of Hyperion in favour of Apollo. Hyperion, it is true, has not yet spoken when we are called away from the council, and Keats 428 might have made him side with Enceladus and rouse his brethren to a temporary renewal of the strife. ”

“ They say that thence, from the body of its parent, is reproduced a little Phœnix, which is destined to live as many years. When time has given it strength, and it is able to bear the weight, it lightens the branches of the lofty tree of the burden of the nest, and dutifully carries both its own cradle and the sepulchre of its parent; and, having reached the city of Hyperion through the yielding air, it lays it down before the sacred doors in the temple of Hyperion. ”

“ To say that “Hyperion” is after all a semi-artificial utterance of the grand would be harsh, and ungrateful for so noble an effort of noble faculty; but to say that, by being prolonged, its grandeur must infallibly have partaken more and more of an artificial infusion, appears to me criticism entirely sound and safe.
Mr. Woodhouse has informed us: “The poem, if completed, would have treated of the dethronement of Hyperion, the former god of the sun, by Apollo; and incidentally of those of Oceanus by Neptune, of Saturn by Jupiter, &c., and of the war of the Giants for Saturn’s re-establishment ”

“ Hypericum, hī-per′i-kum, n. a large genus of plants, of which St John's wort is a typical species. [Gr. hypo, under, ereikē, heath.]
Hyperinosis, hī-per-i-nō′sis, n. excess of fibrin in the blood:—opp. to Hypinosis.—adj. Hyperinot′ic.
Hyperion, hī-pēr′i-on, n. a Titan, son of Uranus and Ge, and father of Helios, Selene, and Eos: Helios himself, the incarnation of light and beauty. ”

“ You at least shall live no more to be a fell bane to men who eat the fruit of the all-nourishing earth, and who will bring hither perfect hecatombs. Against cruel death neither Typhoeus shall avail you nor ill-famed Chimera, but here shall the Earth and shining Hyperion make you rot.’
(ll. 370-374) Thus said Phoebus, exulting over her: and darkness covered her eyes. And the holy strength of Helios made her rot away there; wherefore the place is now called Pytho, and men call the lord Apollo by another name, Pythian; because on that spot the power of piercing Helios made the monster rot away. ”

“ Boone remained tensely silent.
Now the microreel image showed Saturn rising.
Saturn, mother planet of bleak Titan.
Somewhere in the shadow of those vast, shimmering rings Hyperion, too, moved in its orbit.
Hyperion: Another potential source of the precious mekronal and chandak. Another world of strange domed Helgae cities.
Only Hyperion was turning out to be a trap, not refuge. With Cartel and Federation ships alike spread out in a filter-screen across the void, there'd be no chance for this lone Independent ship to land or hide there.
Unless—
Boone all at once was rigid. ”

“ Instantly the powerful weapons of the Hyperion were brought to bear, and in the blast of full-driven beams the stranger's screens flamed incandescent. Heavy guns, under the recoil of whose fierce salvos the frame of the giant globe trembled and shuddered, shot out their tons of high-explosive shell. But the pirate commander had known accurately the strength of the liner, and knew that her armament was impotent against the forces at his command. ”

“ Saturn and Rhea were not the only Titans. There were others, whose names were Oceanus, Hyperion, Iapetus, and Ophion, males; and Themis, Mnemosyne, Eurynome, females. They are spoken of as the elder gods, whose dominion was afterwards transferred to others. Saturn yielded to Jupiter, Oceanus to Neptune, Hyperion to Apollo. Hyperion was the father of the Sun, Moon, and Dawn. He is therefore the original sun-god, and is painted with the splendor and beauty which were afterwards bestowed on Apollo. ”

“ Shall pant, and tremble at our arms again;
Not till proud Hector, guardian of her wall,
Or stain this lance, or see Achilles fall."
⁠He said: and drove with fury on the foe.
Then to the godhead of the silver bow
The yellow flood began: "O son of Jove!
Was not the mandate of the sire above
Full and express? that Phoebus should employ
His sacred arrows in defence of Troy,
And make her conquer, till Hyperion's fall
In awful darkness hide the face of all?" [4]
⁠He spoke in vain: the chief without dismay
Ploughs through the boiling surge his desperate way. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They were happy in their worship of beauty in art and in nature, and above all, happy in their creativeness. The question suggests itself here, whether a poet can ever be a genuine pessimist, since he has within him the everlasting impulse to create. And to create is to hope. Hyperion himself says: "Es lebte nichts, wenn es nicht hoffte." [62] But we have already distinguished between pessimism as a system of philosophy, and Weltschmerz as a poetic mood. [63] It is certainly un-Hellenic that Hölderlin allows Hyperion with his alleged Greek nature to sink into contemplative inactivity. ”

“ Russia is at war with Turkey and calls upon Hellas to liberate itself. The hero and his friend Alabanda are at the head of a band of volunteers, fighting the Turks. After several minor successes Hyperion lays siege to the Spartan fortress of Misitra. But at its capitulation, he is undeceived concerning the Hellenic patriots; they ravage and plunder so fiercely that he turns from them with repugnance and both he and Alabanda abandon the cause of liberty which they had championed. To his bride Hyperion had promised a redeemed Greece—a lament is all that he can bring her. ”

“ Hyperion from the peak loud answered, “Saturn!
Saturn sat near the Mother of the Gods,
In whose face was no joy, though all the Gods
Gave from their hollow throats the name of “Saturn!”
====Book III====
Thus in alternate uproar and sad peace,
Amazed were those Titans utterly.
O leave them, Muse! O leave them to their woes;
For thou art weak to sing such tumults dire:
A solitary sorrow best befits
Thy lips, and antheming a lonely grief.
Leave them, O Muse! for thou anon wilt find
Many a fallen old Divinity
Wandering in vain about bewildered shores. ”

“ These had behind them, with a bloody knife in the hand and across the shoulders a little kid split open, and very fierce in aspect, Hyperion, born from the same father, by whom it is said that men were first taught to kill brute-animals, and with him the no less fierce Ætolus, likewise the offspring of Mars ”

“ And now, from forth the gloom their plumes immense
Rose, one by one, till all outspreaded were;
While still the dazzling globe maintain’d eclipse,
Awaiting for Hyperion’s command.
Fain would he have commanded, fain took throne
And bid the day begin, if but for change.
He might not:—No, though a primeval God:
The sacred seasons might not be disturb’d.
Therefore the operations of the dawn
Stay’d in their birth, even as here ’tis told.
Those silver wings expanded sisterly,
Eager to sail their orb; the porches wide
Open’d upon the dusk demesnes of night ”

“ So we see that again and again the figures described in Hyperion are like great statues—clear-cut, massive, and motionless. Such are the pictures of Saturn and Thea in Book I, and of each of the group of Titans at the opening of Book II.
Striking too is Keats's very Greek identification of the gods with the powers of Nature which they represent. It is this attitude of mind which has led some people—Shelley and Landor among them—to declare Keats, in spite of his ignorance of the language, the most truly Greek of all English poets. ”

“ In the first place, he had the example of Milton, whom he was studying very closely, to warn him of its dangers; in the second, if Hyperion had been meant to fight he would hardly be represented as already, before the battle, shorn of much of his strength; thus making the victory of Apollo depend upon his enemy's unnatural weakness and not upon his own strength. One may add that a combat would have been completely alien to the whole idea of the poem as Keats conceived it, and as, in fact, it is universally interpreted from the speech of Oceanus in the second book. ”

“ Hyperion expresses himself on one occasion in the words: "O ein Gott ist der Mensch, wenn er träumt, ein Bettler, wenn er nachdenkt, und wenn die Begeisterung hin ist, steht er da, wie ein missrathener Sohn, den der Vater aus dem Hause stiess, und betrachtet die ärmlichen Pfennige, die ihm das Mitleid auf den Weg gab," [25] which further illustrates the extravagant idealism by which he allowed himself to be carried away, and the etherial and thoroughly unpractical trend of his mind. The flights of fancy of which Hölderlin is capable are well illustrated by another passage in "Hyperion." ”

“ It is said that Hyperides once defended the courtesan Phryne who was accused of impiety, and that when he saw his eloquence ineffectual, he unveiled the bosom of his client, upon which the judges, influenced by the sight of her beauty, acquitted her. Plutarch, Demosthenes.—Cicero, Orator, ch. 1, &c.—Quintilian, bk. 10, &c.
Hypĕrīon, a son of Cœlus and Terra, who married Thea, by whom he had Aurora, the sun, and moon. Hyperion is often taken by the poets for the sun itself. Hesiod, Theogony.—Apollodorus, bk. 1, chs. 1 & 2.—Homer, Hymn 3 to Apollo.――A son of Priam. Apollodorus, bk. 1, ch. 2. ”