Friedrich Holderlin

German Romantic poet who wrote Hyperion and the Hymns — and who went mad at 36, spending the last 36 years in a tower in Tübingen — whose poetry is for Heidegger the primary site where the Greek gods' departure and the possibility of their return is mourned and anticipated.

Created German poetry that mourns the loss of Greek wholeness — the gods have fled, and we live in a time of 'default' (Heidegger's reading) — making Hölderlin's poetry not merely aesthetic but ontological: a testimony to the withdrawal of Being that defines modernity.