"She Would Rather Depart the Earth in Fire": Reading Diotima's Death in Friedrich Hölderlin's Hyperion Or the Hermit in Greece

This article examines the death of Diotima in Friedrich Hölderlin's Hyperion Oder der Eremit in Griechenland. It proposes that her death is a male fantasy rather than a textual "necessity," as previous critics have hitherto argued. At the same time, it shows through careful textual analysis that a woman's suicide, when carefully chosen and staged, can be read as a means of resisting male fantasy.