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3. Evening Conversation: In a Prisoner of War Camp in Russia, between a Younger and an Older Man
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3. Evening Conversation: In a Prisoner of War Camp in Russia, between a Younger and an Older Man YOUNGER MAN: As we were marching to our workplace this morning, out of the rustling of the expansive forest I was suddenly overcome by something healing. Throughout the entire day I meditated on wherein this something that heals could rest. OLDER MAN: Perhaps it is what is inexhaustible of the self-veiling expanse that abides in these forests of Russia. YOUNGER MAN: You probably mean that the capacious, which prevails in the expanse, brings to us something freeing. OLDER MAN: I do not only mean the capaciousness in the expanse, but also that this expanse leads us out and forth. YOUNGER MAN: The capaciousness of the forests swings out into a concealed distance, but at the same time swings back to us again, without ending with us. OLDER MAN: It is almost as if, out of the open and yet veiled expanse, something could never break in that sets itself in the way of our essence and blocks its course. So nothing is encountered that bends our essence back on itself and confines it to a narrowness by means of which it is made rebellious in itself. YOUNGER MAN: The expanse carries us to what is objectless, and yet also keeps us from dissolving into it. The expanse delivers our essence into the open and at the same time gathers it into the simple, as though the expanse’s abiding were a pure arrival for which we are the inlet.— OLDER MAN: This expanse provides us with freedom. It frees [206] us while we here—between the walls of these barracks, behind barbed wire—incessantly run up against and wound ourselves on what is objective. YOUNGER MAN: At first this morning, I in fact also thought that this experience of what is healing [das Heilsame] came only from a feel132 ing of contrast to the unwholesome [heillosen] narrowness of the camp, as if it were nothing other than the fleeting appearance of a blessing that for a short time is afforded to such self-deceptions. Yet since early this morning this expanse has abided around me in such a releasing, signifying, and gathering manner that I am no longer able to understand it as a mere deception. OLDER MAN: The healing expanse is not that of the forest, but rather, the forest’s own expanse is let into [eingelassen] what heals. YOUNGER MAN: But the forest does not become a mere symbol of the healing expanse; it is probably also something other than what merely occasions its appearing, although the enigma of the occasioning which allows for something to happen [Veranlassung] does indeed give enough to be thought, so as to keep us from all too rashly explaining such experiences in terms of what is commonplace. Indeed, I cannot say what was experienced otherwise than in view of what the forest occasioned. OLDER MAN: And yet you will presumably be able to name some sign in which what heals shows itself to you. I don’t want to press you any further, however, since I know how strictly you bury in your silence all the adversities that have befallen us here these past months. Nevertheless, in order to comprehend what has become healing for you, I would have to know what is wounded in you. And what is not all wounded and torn apart in us?—us, for whom a blinded leading-astray of our own people is too deplorable to permit wasting a complaint on, despite the devastation that covers our native soil and its helplessly perplexed [ratlose] humans . [207] YOUNGER MAN: But you are still thinking about our decision on the march into captivity, the decision not to talk any more about this devastation for a long time. Whenever it might become unavoidable to talk about it, however, such talk should take place only in a collected manner, according to the highest standards, and without false passion . For the devastation we are thinking of has not, after all, existed just since yesterday. And it is not exhausted by what is visible and tangible. It can also never be accounted for by an enumeration of instances of destruction and the obliteration of human lives, as if it were only the result of these. OLDER MAN: Yet because the essence of the devastation is deeper and comes from farther away, our reflections return to it again and again. In so doing, we...