Romantic Religion: Dissolution and Transcendence in the Poetics of Hölderlin

A central element of Hölderlin’s poetic project was to find a new language for transcendence in an age of immanence. To do so, he turned not to philosophy or theology, but to poetics. Its rhythmic nature, he argued, was capable of re-presenting the transcendent. This examination will begin with a brief historical consideration of the relation of transcendence and immanence, with particular attention to the influential philosophies of Spinoza and Fichte. It then proceeds to Hölderlin’s consideration of the loss of the language of transcendence, and his project to develop a new one. The final section will examine how Hölderlin aimed to achieve this in his poetics.