ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Friedrich Hölderlin’s poem “Patmos” (1803) in the context of two philosophical texts that engage with it, Martin Heidegger’s “The Question Concerning Technology” (1954) and Timothy Morton’s Hyperobjects (2013). It argues that, although neither Heidegger nor Morton attends to Hölderlin’s poem beyond an allusion to a few lines, a closer reading of the poem, one that specifically examines Hölderlin’s notion of wilderness in relation to the divine, reveals resonances with the ideas of the two philosophers not evident in their brief treatments of it. The two philosophers’ ideas likewise provide critical leverage for reading Hölderlin’s poem. At stake is the question of salvation from modern alienation and the destructive tendencies of our relation to technology. Following the logic of the poem, “that which saves” arises only through a troubled relation with a god of the wilderness, a god that will not be tamed, or “enframed” in Heidegger’s sense, a god that we might likewise view as a hyperobject.
