The fundamental difference between Hoelderlin’s “Anschauung” and Goethe’s is at once apparent when we recall the “Lied der Parzen” from “Iphigenie.”  Hoelderlin does not bring the blessed Genii into any relation with mortals, but merely contrasts their free and blissful existence, emphasizing their immunity from Fate, to which suffering humanity is subject.  But this humanity is represented by Hoelderlin characteristically as helpless, passive—­“schwinden,” “fallen,” “blindlings von einer Stunde zur andern.”  Whereas the opening lines of Goethe’s “Parzen” strike the keynote of conflict between the gods and men: 

    Es fuerchte die Goetter
    Das Menschengeschlecht! 
    Sie halten die Herrschaft
    In ewigen Haenden
    Und koennen sie brauchen
    Wie’s ihnen gefaellt. 
    Der fuerchte sie doppelt,
    Den je sie erheben!

And those who come to grief at the hands of the gods, are not weak passive creatures, but heaven-scaling Titans.  This points to the antipodal difference between the characters of these two poets, and explains in part why Goethe did not succumb to the sickly sentimentalism of which he rid himself in “Werther.”  The difference between yielding and striving resulted in the difference between an acute case of Weltschmerz in the one and a healthy physical and intellectual manhood in the other.

Thus far it has been almost entirely the personal aspect of Hoelderlin’s Weltschmerz and its causes that has come under our notice.  And since he was a lyric poet, it is perhaps natural that the sorrows which concerned him personally should find most frequent expression in his verse.  But notwithstanding the fact that this personal element is very prominent in Hoelderlin’s writings, Scherer’s judgment is correct when he states:  “Die Grundstimmung war eine tiefe Verbitterung gegen die Versunkenheit des Vaterlands."[40] The reason is not far to seek, especially when we consider the impossible demands of the poet’s extravagant idealism.  The conditions in Germany which had called forth the terrible arraignment of petty despotism, crushing militarism, and political rottenness generally, in the works of Lenz, Klinger and Schubart, had not abated.  Schubart was one of Hoelderlin’s earliest favorites, so that the latter was doubtless in this way imbued with sentiments which could only grow stronger under the influence of his more mature observations and experiences.  Even in his eighteenth year, in a poem “An die Demut,"[41] he gives expression in strong terms to his patriotic feelings, in which his disgust with his faint-hearted, servile compatriots and his defiance of “Fuerstenlaune” and “Despotenblut” are plainly evident.  So too in “Maennerjubel,” 1788: 

    Es glimmt in uns ein Funke der Goettlichen! 
    Und diesen Funken soll aus der Maennerbrust
    Der Hoelle Macht uns nicht entreissen! 
    Hoert es, Despotengerichte, hoert es![42]