Philological poetry: Friedrich Nietzsche’s Lied eines theokritischen Ziegenhirten. More recently, classical philology’s impact on Nietzsche’s philosophical writing has been frequently explored and emphasized. This does not apply to philology’s impact on Nietzsche’s poetry. Starting from posthumous notes called “Wir Philologen” (according to which philologists are merely able to perpetuate antiquity “als nachschaffende Künstler”), the essay traces relations between philology and lyric in Nietzsche. For instance, Nietzsche’s demand for the study of classics, which is a matter of fondly reviving antiquity while (...) likewise perceiving historical discrepancy, recurs particularly in terms of lyric parodies. Using the example of Lied eines theokritischen Ziegenhirten, the author shows Nietzsche’s references to ancient models (in this case to Theocritus’ third idyll Kōmos) and his lyric adaptation of contents. The poem turns out to be variedly ‘philological’ by creating a montage of literary allusions, subverting the modern notion of perfect antiquity, accentuating the literary nature of idyll genre as opposed to pseudo-native pastoral verse and discussing Christianity’s transmission of ancient texts. (shrink)