Original scientific paper
From the Elegiac to the Hymnal in Friedrich Hölderlin's and Laza Kostić's Works
Jelena Knežević
; University of Montenegro, Faculty of Philology
Abstract
Friedrich Hölderlin's (1770-1843) representative elegy “Menon's Lament for Diotima” (“Menons Klagen um Diotima“, written in 1800 and published in 1802/1803) and the poem by the Serbian romantic poet Laza Kostić (1841-1910) “Santa Maria della Salute” (1909) are characterized by an almost identical intertwining of the poetic and biographical contexts and a structure determined by a painful memory of a love lost and a deceased lover which leads the lyric subject towards the individual realization of the transcendental, the idealization of the loved one to the point where she becomes an object of a religious feeling and a hymnal celebration of beauty and love.
In the article we have pointed out the identical, profoundly romantic, motifs in both poems, most of all the motif of understanding and deep inner insight which lifts the lyrical subject from the depths of despair due to the loss of the beloved towards the exaltation for being fortunate enough to have loved and for the ability to preserve the memory of the lost love and beauty, which makes him a true poet, in art for all eternity. On the thematic level, this knowledge also formally transforms an elegy into a hymn.
Keywords
Hölderlin; “Menon's Lament for Diotima”; elegy; Laza Kostić; “Santa Maria della Salute”; hymn; inner insight
Hrčak ID:
225909
URI
Publication date:
7.10.2019.
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