HÖLDERLIN FROM DELEUZE'S PERSPECTIVE.AN ECCENTRIC CASE OF MINOR LITERATURE

Abstract

This paper examines the relevance of the concept of “minor literature,” coined by Gilles Deleuze in reference to prominent authors of modern literature (especially Kafka), to describe certain peculiarities in how the poet Friedrich Hölderlin understood his work as a translator of Sophocles tragedies, in close relation to the meaning of his own poetic work. This analysis is based on Deleuzes reading of Kant as the driving force behind a new conception of the self and time. Hölderlin, it is argued, embraced and developed this conception, projecting it onto an understanding of the relationship between Greek and modern culture that transcends the frameworks of Romanticism and German Idealism.