Eschatological Peace in Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue and in Hölderlin’s “Friedensfeier”
Keywords:
Latin poetry, Virgil, German poetry, Hölderlin, Friedrich, eschatology, peaceAbstract
Virgil’s “Fourth Eclogue” and Hölderlin’s “Friedensfeier” (“Celebration of Peace”) display a number of parallels. Both poems were occasioned by historical events, by the Treaty of Brundisium in 40 BC and by the 1801 Treaty of Lunéville, respectively. The enigmatic central figures of both have often been interpreted as historical figures: Virgil’s child (puer) as the son of a Roman consul, and Hölderlin’s prince of the feast (Fürst des Festes) as the first Consul of the French Republic, Napoleon Bonaparte. Moreover, both poets weave into their poems the myth of the Golden Age, eschatologizing it in the process. Their poetic visions transform the cyclical returning of the Golden Age into a final return, which marks the advent of eschatological peace: peace in nature, between animals, as well as peace and reconciliation between men and gods. However, “Friedensfeier” introduces an additional type of reconciliation: reconciliation between the gods themselves. It is by these means that Hölderlin’s heterodox Christianity abolishes both the patristic euhemeristic hominization of the ancient gods and their demonization. This reconciliation is evoked in the image of an eschatological feast as the renewed presence of the ancient gods and of Christ, the son that reconciles other sons of God to himself and to each other, as well as the unique presence of the hitherto unrevealed Father.References
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