ABSTRACT

“Hölderlin’s translations,” writes Karl Reinhardt, “are fundamentally different from everything to be found anywhere else in translation from Greek, and not only from Greek. Sophoclean tragedy is for him a piece of Divine Creation, to be rescued and brought to fresh life. No byproduct, but one of his major works.” 1 Indeed, in one sense the Sophocles translations may be regarded as the culmination of Hölderlin’s work, for they represent the final fruit of his efforts to understand the process by which the reunion of man with the divine and the regeneration of society could take place.