Remembering nature through art : Hölderlin and the poetic representation of life

ABSTRACT For Friedrich Hölderlin, the mediatory role of aesthetics was central to overcoming the challenges of modern life, in particular human beings’ antagonistic relationship to nature. This article claims that Hölderlin preserves and improves what is true in Kant’s conception of the beautiful: that the experience of beauty concerns recognizing our dependence on nature, and that this recognition resonates in the works of artistic geniality as well. The article furthermore argues that the twentieth-century philosopher Theodor W. Adorno’s interpretation of Hölderlin sheds light on how Hölderlin’s late poetry constitutes a remembrance of nature that avoids fetishizing nature as an origin to…