"She Would Rather Depart the Earth in Fire": Reading Diotima's Death in Friedrich Hölderlin's <i>Hyperion Or the Hermit in Greece</i>

Abstract

This article examines the death of Diotima in Friedrich H?lderlin's Hyperion Oder der Eremit in Griechenland. It proposes that her death is a male fantasy rather than a textual necessity, as previous critics have hitherto argued. At the same time, it shows through careful textual analysis that a woman's suicide, when carefully chosen and staged, can be read as a means of resisting male fantasy. (YS) The complexity of Friedrich H?lderlin's lyrical novel Hyperion Oder der Eremit in Griechenland (Hyperion Or the Hermit in Greece) is such that no single interpretive venture will ever capture its fullness. H?lder lin's dialectical thinking and his critical philosophy make any attempt at interpretation of the novel a daunting task at all levels, including his torical, philosophical, and literary. I do not wish to pretend to have captured the novel's complexity fully with this article. Rather, I want to propose a close textual analysis that identifies Diotima's gender as the precipitating factor in her death. In this reading, death emerges as the site of both male fantasy and female resistance.