poems was not my particular concern; and also because I believe
that even the wish to read a poem exhaustively is wrong and
harmful. But I do hope that a whole manner of reading--an
attitude rather than a method--will be deducible out of the
separate attempts.

I have used the Große Stuttgarter Ausgabe of Höderlin works
throughout. Its first volume appeared in 1943, its last in 1986. The
editors, Friedrich Beißner and Adolf Beck, were by then both
dead. Beigner's achievement is colossal. But it is possible to say so
and yet be glad of the Frankfurt Höderlin too. Those later editors
are nearer the truth--an uncomfortable truth--in certain re-
spects. Beck provided every user of the Stuttgart edition with a
private archive. The biographical material he assembled in
volumes vi and vii is abundant and intriguing. All I have done is
make use of what he made available.

References to Höderlin works, for the most part in the Große
Stuttgarter Ausgabe and occasionally in the Frankfurter Höderlin
Ausgabe, have wherever possible been incorporated into the text.

Translations of German quotations have been gathered near
the end of the book where they will not clutter the text. The
translations are mine. Those of Höderlin's poetry were the most
difficult to do. I thought that he would be badly served if I
translated him, merely literally. Such versions might aid the
acquisition of the poem's lexical sense, but would be off-putting
in all other respects. On the other hand, an academic book is not
the place for versions demanding attention, as poetry, in their
own right. Somewhere between the two was what I was aiming
at.

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