Abstract
I present a sketch of a reading of the hymn Patmos by Friedrich Hölderlin, and in part of his other late hymns as well. For Hölderlin, the supreme and divine principle is the "non-absoluteness" of anything definite, the interconnectedness of everything with everything, which assures that nothing is unilaterally determining or determined.
Hölderlin also demonstrates this ambiguous interconnectedness by means of complicated and ambiguous syntactic constructions - often right in the passages where he speaks of the universal interconnectedness of things. (I briefly note that Hölderlin's practice is remarkably analogous to Heracleitus' in this respect.) This divine interdependence, which guarantees that nothing is unambiguous, is indicated by a peculiar dim light, which is equally different from darkness and from a light too sharp. This dim light is accessible in different ways and in different areas in different historical epochs.
I append my attempt at a translation of Patmos, which tries to convey all the relevant aspects of the original as much as possible.