The Spirit of the Age (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Friedrich Hölderlin
- First Published: 1800
- Type of Work: Ode
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric poetry, Ode
- Subjects: Children, Self-discovery, Nature, Gods or goddesses, Faith, Youth, Time, Learning or scholarship, Naivete
The Poem
“The Spirit of the Age” is a short ode of twenty lines. An ode is a poetic form derived from a Greek model (ode means “song” in Greek); it was often used by the Romantic poets for lyric poetry of high seriousness. Friedrich Hölderlin called this poem a “tragic ode,” meaning that it combined the lyricism (or personal tone) of the ode with the heroic or fateful tone of the tragedy.
The title of this poem might be better translated as “The God of Time,” for “Zeitgeist”—literally, “time-god” or “time-spirit”—means here both the élan...
[The entire page is 1633 words long]
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