GERMAN ROMANTICS
(Quoted from the book:) A
lone Romantic poet, Hölderlin had a difficult life: he was hounded by financial
problems, misunderstood by his contemporaries, and, towards the middle of his
life, he suffered from a mental illness that prevented him from living a normal
life. But all these tribulations were eclipsed by the joy he felt when he met
Susette Gontard, the companion soul he had been seeing in dreams ever since he
was a child, and with whom he would be united by a love he would describe as
“sacred and eternal”. Recognition was instantaneous and reciprocal
(“Is it you, is it really you?!”).
Their encounter was a typical case of synchronicity. The same circumstances of
their meeting were predicted, with astonishing precision, in the first drafts
of his novel Hyperion. Hölderlin
would see his female protagonist embodied in this woman, who was of a
sensitivity so close to his, as we can read in the beautiful letters that she
wrote him after their forced separation. Their romance –one of the most
beautiful of all Romanticism- would endure in those letters and furtive
encounters (Susette was a married woman) until her premature death.
Susette Gontard & Friedrich Holderlin
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