Hölderlin's Hymns "Germania" and "The Rhine"

Martin Heidegger{u2019}s 1934{u2013}1935 lectures on Friedrich Hölderlin{u2019}s hymns 2Germania3 and 2The Rhine3 are considered the most significant among Heidegger{u2019}s lectures on Hölderlin. Coming at a crucial time in his career, the text illustrates Heidegger{u2019}s turn toward language, art, and poetry while reflecting his despair at his failure to revolutionize the German university and his hope for a more profound revolution through the German language, guided by Hölderlin{u2019}s poetry. These lectures are important for understanding Heidegger{u2019}s changing relation to politics, his turn toward Nietzsche, his thinking about the German language, and his breakthrough to a new kind of poetic thinking. First published in 1980 as volume 39 of Heidegger{u2019}s Complete Works, this graceful and rigorous English-language translation will be widely discussed in continental philosophy and literary theory.