When you read Hölderlin, you see feints and variations that put him with Celan; it was reading Hölderlin that gave Rilke the impetus for his Duino Elegies (his "Gods" are like Rilke's "Angels", tutelary presences that don't quite convince us that they exist: "Celebrate – yes, but what?" Hölderlin writes somewhere, but it sounds eerily like Rilke). Sometimes reading him can feel as bitterly sacramental as Trakl, the great Austrian poet who took his life following the battle of Grodek in the first world war.

All that doesn't really "translate". If you really want to read Hölderlin – or any one of the other great "national" poets – you should learn German (or Russian or French or Spanish).