Hderlin's Dionysiac Poetry: The Terrifying-Exciting Mysteries (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9783319102047)

This book casts new light on the work of the German poet Friedrich Hderlin (1770 - 1843), and his translations of Greek tragedy. It shows Hderlin's poetry is unique within Western literature (and art) as it retrieves the socio-politics of a Dionysiac space-time and language to challenge the estrangement of humans from nature and one other.

In this book, author Lucas Murrey presents a new picture of ancient Greece, noting that money emerged and rapidly developed there in the sixth century B.C. This act of monetization brought with it a concept of tragedy: money-tyrants struggling against the forces of earth and community who succumb to individual isolation, blindness and death. As Murrey points out, Hderlin (unconsciously) retrieves the battle between money, nature and community and creatively applies its lessons to our time.

But Hderlin's poetry not only adapts tragedy to question the unlimited "machine process" of "a clever race" of money-tyrants. It also draws attention to Greece's warnings about the mortal danger of the eyes in myth, cult and theatre. This monograph thus introduces an urgently needed vision not only of Hderlin hymns, but also the relevance of disciplines as diverse as Literary Studies, Philosophy, Psychology (Psychoanalysis) as well as Religious and Visual (Media) Studies to our present predicament, where a dangerous visual culture, through its support of the unlimitedness of money, is harming our relation to nature and one another.

"Here triumphs a temperament guided by ancient religion and that excavates, in Hderlin's translations, the central god Dionysus of Greek tragedy."

Dionysos als Gott der Revolution and Paul Celan: Der Meridian.

Endfassung--Entw?fe--Materialien.

"Lucas Murrey shares with his subject, Hderlin, a vision of the Greeks as bringing something vitally important into our poor world, a vision of which few classical scholars are now capable."

--Richard Seaford, author of Money and the Early Greek Mind. Homer,

Tragedy, Philosophy and Dionysus.

"Hderlin deserved such a book."

--Jean-Fran輟is Kerv馮an, author of Que faire de Carl Schmitt?

"...fascinating material..."

--Noam Chomsky, author of Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements

of Propaganda and Nuclear War and Environmental Catastrophe.