A scene of self-sacrifice can never be staged or secured. The work of Friedrich H lderlin, arguably one of the most profound writers of the German Enlightenment, supports this idea in fascinating ways. Much of H lderlin's critical reception, however, has the poet saying the exact opposite. Joseph Suglia counters the dominant critical reception of H lderlin's Empedokles fragments, which would transform the tragic hero's experience of mortality into a project that would be accomplished in the name of the transcendent reconciliation of disparate spheres.
This book also focuses on a densely detailed consideration of the work of the great French critic and literary artist, Maurice Blanchot, whose own treatment of self-sacrifice exists in closer proximity to H lderlin's than the former appears to recognize. For Blanchot, it is argued, self-sacrifice is a sacrifice that is an engagement with, in, and for language, a sacrifice that is both madness and mystery .