In this entirely unique approach to the life of Friedrich Holderlin, The Recalcitrant Art combines the techniques of fiction and nonfiction as it examines the love between the poet and Susette Gontard ( Diotima ).
On the left-hand or verso pages of the book appear Susette Gontard s letters, presented here in English translation for the first time, with an introduction and afterword by Douglas F. Kenney. On the right-hand or recto pages appear Sabine Menner-Bettscheid s scholarly responses to Kenney and fictional responses to Susette. Menner-Bettscheid gives life to an entire series of voices: Holderlin s pious mother, Susette s calculating husband, Jacob, the Gontard s oldest child, Henry, the popular novelist Sophie LaRoche, and the Greek gardener and rabbit-keeper at the Gontard s summer home in Frankfurt all come to be heard. Douglas F. Kenney, by contrast, sticks to historical documentation and literary analysis."