The Loss of Madness

Bringing together 31 of his poems as a meditation on the work of the German poet, Friedrich Hölderlin, New Zealand poet Bernard Cadogan recommends that you read one poem each day for a month, allowing yourself the time to engage with it.

Each poem is a response either to reading a poem by Hölderlin, or to his situation. He uses an adapted villanelle form, so as to be as much unlike as Hölderlin as possible, allowing Bernard’s own voice some space, and time.

In Germany, Hölderlin is a vital part of the secondary and tertiary curriculum, acting as a unifier over and above ideology. Yet Hölderlin has no counterpart in English literature. What makes Hölderlin different from British Romantics is not just the greater power and dynamism of his verse, but a successful intellectual condensation that eluded his British counterparts.

Living a traditional poet’s life as a semi-exile in English, Bernard Cadogan is one of those rare thinkers who dares imagine Aotearoa New Zealand politics in the wide horizon of international cultural discourses. At the same time, he has a deep commitment to indigenous ideas of education, creativity and communitarian participation.

Aotearoa New Zealand will become a republic. If we want to make this an inauguration and release of our energies, and not just an accidental follow-up to the installation of a new monarch, New Zealanders would do well to consider the abundant and dynamic verse of the great German republican, Friedrich Hölderlin.