“Hyperion,” though written in prose, is scarcely anything more than a long drawn out lyric poem, so thoroughly is action subordinated to reflection, and so beautiful and rhythmic is the dignified flow of its periods.  But having said that the locality is Greece and its hero is supposed to be a modern Greek, that in its scenic descriptions Hoelderlin produces some wonderfully natural effects, and that the language shows the imitation of Greek turns of expression—­Homeric epithets and similes—­having said this, we have mentioned practically all the Greek characteristics of the composition.  And there is much in it that is entirely un-Hellenic.  To begin with, the form in which “Hyperion” is cast, that of letters, written not even during the progress of the events narrated, but after they are all a thing of the past, is not at all a Greek idea.  Moreover Weltschmerz, which constitutes the “Grundstimmung” of all Hoelderlin’s writings, and which is most plainly and persistently expressed in “Hyperion,” is not Hellenic.  Not that we should have to look in vain for pessimistic utterances from the classical poets of Greece—­for does not Sophocles make the deliberate statement:  “Not to be born is the most reasonable, but having seen the light, the next best thing is to go to the place whence we came as soon as possible."[61] Nevertheless, this sort of sentiment cannot be regarded as representing the spirit of the ancient Greeks, which was distinctly optimistic.  They were happy in their worship of beauty in art and in nature, and above all, happy in their creativeness.  The question suggests itself here, whether a poet can ever be a genuine pessimist, since he has within him the everlasting impulse to create.  And to create is to hope.  Hyperion himself says:  “Es lebte nichts, wenn es nicht hoffte."[62] But we have already distinguished between pessimism as a system of philosophy, and Weltschmerz as a poetic mood.[63] It is certainly un-Hellenic that Hoelderlin allows Hyperion with his alleged Greek nature to sink into contemplative inactivity.  In the poem “Der Lorbeer,” 1789, he exclaims: 

    Soll ewiges Trauern mich umwittern,
    Ewig mich toeten die bange Sehnsucht?[64]

which gives expression to the fact that in his Weltschmerz there was a very large admixture of “Sehnsucht,” an entirely un-Hellenic feeling.  Nor is there to be found in his entire make-up the slightest trace of Greek irony, which would have enabled him to overcome much of the bitterness of his life, and which might indeed have averted its final catastrophe.

Undeniably Grecian is Hoelderlin’s idea that the beautiful is also the good.  Long years he sought for this combined ideal.  In Diotima, the muse of his “Hyperion,” whose prototype was Susette Gontard, he has found it—­and now he feels that he is in a new world.  To his friend Neuffer, from whom he has no secrets, he writes:  “Ich konnte wohl sonst glauben, ich wisse, was schoen und gut sei, aber seit ich’s sehe, moecht’