#andre butzer

Friedrich Hölderlin’s poetry is widely regarded as a high point of German literature due to its hymnic style and its importance for German Romanticism. His two-volume magnum opus „Hyperion“ (1797 and 1799), although neglected during his lifetime, is a fascinating epistolary novel that only gradually unfolded its full impact on following generations of German poets. But aside his major works Hölderlin continuously returned to writing about the seasons, especially during the last three and a half decades he spent in Tübingen. Here he occupied a room inside what would later be named the „Hölderlinturm“ and wrote several poems about the different seasons. Hölderin valued their reliability as markers of the year passing.

For German artist André Butzer Hölderin also is of great importance and so he took to Hölderlin’s season poems, selected 47 and illustrated them with 40 watercolors that are presented side by side in the present artist book: „André Butzer. Friedrich Hölderlin: Die Jahreszeiten/The Seasons“ has recently been published by Taschen and on 204 pages juxtaposes watercolors and poems, some of the latter for the first time translated to English. Butzer, who has long been dealing with Hölderlin’s writings, sentiently reacts to the poems and reflects their content in his very own pictorial language. This juxtaposition emphasizes their shared wistful longing, their search for peace and the deep reflection of the human condition in their respective times.