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In truth, the book’s central character is neither of the rather thinly drawn leads, but Erpenbeck’s mind, which patrols the borders of bourgeois assumption like a crossing agent, invoking ��ö������������, Gorky, Bukharin, Mozart and Brecht, wrestling with love and time.

Written in three movements with an ancient Greek-inspired text by Friedrich ��ö������������, “Schicksalslied” descends from radiant joyfulness into dark despair before resolving into something akin to solace.

While his philosopher friend Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, a student flatmate along with the poet ��ö������������, was made a professor aged 23, Hegel didn’t get a full professorship until his mid-40s, after leaving behind his short digression into journalism and accepting an academic post in Heidelberg.

“I read in other languages, too. I read in Spanish and I read in Latin and I read in ancient Greek and I read in, er, whatever. But it doesn’t matter. It depends on the text. I mean, take, for instance, ��ö������������, the greatest of the German poets. You cannot touch him in translation. If you’re reading ��ö������������, you must learn German first.”

The poet Friedrich ��ö������������ once wrote, "Wo aber Gefahr ist, wächst / Das Rettende auch" — "Where danger is, grows also what will save us."