Der klagende Achill

Abstract

This essay focuses on Friedrich Hölderlin’s elegy Achill (c.1799), one of the earliest texts in which the author reacts to the separation from Susette Gontard. While previous works have emphasised the reference of this elegy to Hölderlin’s translation from Homer’s Iliad, it has been overlooked that the lamenting Achill is based on elegiac models of Latin literature (Propertius, Ovid), which Hölderlin was familiar with partly from school and partly from journals. By tracing the conception of an elegiac Achilles, the article sheds light on Latin substrates in Hölderlin’s poetry.