WHAT, THIS HOBBYHORSE again? Yes, I'm afraid so.
None of my local libraries had this, so thank you, University of Tulsa's McFarline Library, and thank you, Interlibrary Loan.
Thank you, too, Humanity Books (an imprint of Prometheus Books), while I'm at it. I'm not sure why an ordinary university press didn't publish this...although I do have a guess.
The book is a translation of volume 4 of Heidegger's Gesamtaugabe, and it gathers several essays and talks he devoted to close readings of poems by Hölderlin. The longest, at about seventy pages, is devoted to "Andenken" ("Remembrance"), but there are also analyses of "Homecoming/To Kindred Ones" and "As When on a Holiday."
Many of the questions that drew me to find the book are (as it happens) nicely stated on the back cover:
During the 1930s and '40s Heidegger published little, lending an additional air of mystery to his famous "turning" (Kehre) from the language of classical philosophy to that of poetry. Why did Heidegger turn from philosophy to poetry? Why did he choose Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843), perhaps Germany's greatest, yet most difficult, poet? How can the poet help the the thinker to complete his thoughts? How can Hölderlin's poetry help Heidegger to think the truth of being?
I also had a big question not summarized above: what does it mean that Heidegger's turn to poetry coincided with a grave political misjudgment? I say "grave," but "sinister" would also do, not to mention "nauseating." Heidegger turns to poetry, and the next thing we know, he's a Nazi. What does that mean?
Heidegger is good at explaining why poetry matters. A poetic idea, he insists, is not just a philosophical idea with frosting and ribbons on it, which have to be scraped off to get the real idea. No, the poetic idea is in the poetry, in the possibilities of figurative language, of sentence structure, of sound. As he puts it:
Poetry is not merely an ornament accompanying existence, not merely a temporary enthusiasm and certainly not excitement or amusement. Poetry is the sustaining ground of history, and therefore not just an appearance of culture, above all not the mere "expression" of the "soul of a culture."
Poets, for Heidegger, are demigods. They mediate between us and divinity. They create a home for us all by enabling us to see where we have always been. They draw from the past and the future to enunciate our now.
Heidegger goes quite quickly from there, though, to saying Hölderlin has a particularly important message for the Germans, who, if they heed Hölderlin, can turn the West away from the disastrous detour it has taken towards math, abstraction, Aristotelian logic, science, and technology for far too many centuries. Of "Wie Wenn am Feiertage" ("As when on a holiday"), Heidegger writes:
The poem was written in 1800. It was not until 110 years later that it became known to the German people. [...] Since then another generation has passed. During these decades, the open insurrection of modern world history has begin. Its course will force a decision concerning the future character of the absolute domination of man over the whole terrestrial globe. Hölderlin's poem, however, still waits to be interpreted.
Until now, that is, as Heidegger launches into his interpretation, which concludes:
Hölderlin's word conveys the holy thereby naming the space of time that is only once, time of the primordial decision for the essential order of the future history of gods and humanities.
This word, though still unheard, is preserved in the Occidental language of the Germans.
This essay was given as a talk several times in 1939 and 1940, the editor notes. That is, exactly the moment when the world was going to hear from Germany in the most terrible way possible.
So, I am as stuck as ever, loving how Heidegger explains how we need what the poets say, but horrified at his insistence that what the poets are saying amounts to "today Germany, tomorrow the world."
You know who else is good at saying how important poetry is? Ezra Pound. See the problem?
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