The Politics and Media of Apostrophe in Hölderlin's Hyperion

This paper explores the medial and rhetorical implications of the trope of apostrophe in Friedrich Hölderlin's Hyperion. In examining two figural speeches in the novel that are rife with the address of absent addressees, I argue that Hölderlin engages with the medial documentation of the events of the French Revolution ubiquitous at the time while reflecting on the status of utopian community in Germany. Both the so‐called “nihilism letter” at the end of the first book and the infamous “Scheltrede” addressed to the German people probe the depths of apostrophe's potential to represent the breakdown, rather than establishment, of intersubjective and person‐world relations. An examination of these apostrophic scenes sheds light on the novel's reflections on the rhetorical structure and the mediality of political and literary language in an age of Revolution and in turn deepens our understanding of Hölderlin's innovative deployment of the epistolary novel.