ok in vain for pessimistic utterances from the
classical poets of Greece--for does not Sophocles make the deliberate
statement: "Not to be born is the most reasonable, but having seen the
light, the next best thing is to go to the place whence we came as soon
as possible."[61] Nevertheless, this sort of sentiment cannot be
regarded as representing the spirit of the ancient Greeks, which was
distinctly optimistic. They were happy in their worship of beauty in art
and in nature, and above all, happy in their creativeness. The question
suggests itself here, whether a poet can ever be a genuine pessimist,
since he has within him the everlasting impulse to create. And to create
is to hope. Hyperion himself says: "Es lebte nichts, wenn es nicht
hoffte."[62] But we have already distinguished between pessimism as a
system of philosophy, and Weltschmerz as a poetic mood.[63] It is
certainly un-Hellenic that Hoelderlin allows Hyperion with his alleged
Greek nature to sink into contemplative inactivity. In the poem "Der
Lorbeer," 1789, he exclaims:

Soll ewiges Trauern mich umwittern,
Ewig mich toeten die bange Sehnsucht?[64]

which gives expression to the fact that in his Weltschmerz there was a
very large admixture of "Sehnsucht," an entirely un-Hellenic feeling.
Nor is there to be found in his entire make-up the slightest trace of
Greek irony, which would have enabled him to overcome much of the
bitterness of his life, and which might indeed have averted its final
catastrophe.

Undeniably Grecian is Hoelderlin's idea that the beautiful is also the
good. Long years he sought for this combined ideal. In Diotima, the muse
of his "Hyperion," whose prototype was Susette Gontard, he has found
it--and now he feels that he is in a new world. To his friend Neuffer,
from whom he has no secrets, he writes: "Ich konnte wohl sonst glauben,
ich wisse, was schoen und gut sei, aber seit ich's sehe, moecht' ich
lachen ueber all mein Wissen. Lieblichkeit und Hoheit, und Ruh und
Leben, und Geist und Gemuet und Gestalt ist Ein seeliges Eins in diesem
Wesen."[65] And six or eight months later: "Mein Schoenheitsinn ist nun
vor Stoerung sicher. Er orientiert sich ewig an diesem Madonnenkopfe....
Sie ist schoen wie Engel! Ein zartes, geistiges, himmlisch reizendes
Gesicht! Ach ich koennte ein Jahrtausend lang mich und alles vergessen
bei ihr--Majestaet und Zaertlichkeit, und Froehlichkeit und Ernst--und
Leben und Geist, alles ist in und an