Abstract

This essay examines the new Italian edition of Hölderlin’s Prose, teatro e lettere (2019), which contains the novel Hyperion and the tragedy Empedokles in all available drafts and versions, the theoretical essays and all extant letters, and moreover offers innovative hypotheses in terms of textual reconstruction. The main argument is that philological work represents a precondition to philosophical interpretation, and this is demonstrated by discussing the case of Hölderlin’s controversial writing Urtheil und Seyn.