Rhythm and Music in the contemplation of poets and philosophers: from Hölderlin to Rilke and Heidegger

Abstract

Since German pre‐romanticism, music has being keeping a closer relationship with poetry and literature. We have collected a few ways of approaching these two different forms of art expression, demonstrating how literature explores the alterity of music in order to intensify the affective and reflexive emotions of poetry. It deals with a powerful tradition that comprises ‘romantic’ authors from Hölderlin to Tieck to Rilke, and play an important role in the reasoning of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Heidegger. Rilke’s reflections have been given special emphasis in this article, which is shown by means of his translated reading notes of the famous essay The Birth of Tragedy through the Spirit of Music.