Heidegger, Holderlin, and the Subject of Poetic Language: Toward a New Poetics of Dasein

The Politics of Sacrifice

The Politics of Sacrifice The Sr~blinze and the Caedr~ra Heidegger's views of poetic dwelling-his alternative to modern metaphjrsics and its reduction of the lifeworld to mere objectivity and static presence -vacillate betwreen reference to factical life and a striving towrard pure ontology, such as bvhen he articulates the event or occurrence , E~.e&tzi+, apart from the specificity of \\,hat occurs. This duality perhaps mirrors a deeper division within Heidegger's post-Beitcq rrtzc) ~ ~ Ti'17zethought, when Heidegger describes dwelling alternatively in Ge/(zLl,letzL~eit terms and in terms of an original violence. As we will see in this chapter, both terminologies of dwrelling are rooted in Heidegger 's arguments for the ontological significance of the artbvork, and in his Holderlin interpretations. The aspect of art's "original violence" and the violent dwelling it evokes recall not only a Nietzschean notion of overpowering, but, as T will argue in this chapter, also the Kantian sublime. What is for Heidegger an overwhelming power in tension bvith the "constant concealment" of Being, is in Kant associated bvith a violent sacrifice of the imagination. Not only inAtz Jtzt~nO~~rti~icl~z torlletlz- ,~hy~fic.,f and "The Origin of the Work of Art," but also in his readings of Holderlin's "Der Tster" poems, Heidegger reinscribes a Kantian division between art as evocation of the beautiful and the aesthetics of sublimity , a reinscription that becomes most problematic in light of Heidegger 's politics. But it is Holderlin's owrnrelationship to Kant and to the bvhole project of the Enlightenment, wrhich marks the difference between Heidegger's Holderlinian thought and Holderlin's own incipient poetics. In contrast to Heidegger's readings, Holderlin's critique of the German and the "national" must be viewed with regard not only to an imagined Greek past, but also to the promises of the contemporaneous humanistic philosophies. Holderlin's viebv of German) is ' actually criticized by Heidegger as "untimely for our hard times," for it provides a decidedly unheroic figuration of the poet's role in human destiny incompatible with Heidegger's renderings. In my interpretation of Holderlin's notion of the poetic caesura, and in readings of the caesuric moment in Holderlin's poetry, I aim to establish an alternative to both the Kantian sublime and the violent origins of dbvelling.Poetry bvill be excluded both from transcendental systematicity and the resoluteness of historical founding; poetic language is for Holderlin a warning against transcendental hubris, which, when heeded, remains phenomenologically disclosive. Learning to Dwell In these first two sections, we begin by drawing out the twofold notion of dwelling Heidegger articulates as Holderlinian poetic theory, in order to pose this twofoldness later as the reinscription of a Kantian paradigmatic division.The poetics of dwrelling,first of all,is drabvnfrom Holderlin 's poem "In Lovely Blue,"bvhich is interpreted in an essay entitled, "Poetically Man Dbvells"or "Dichterisch wrohnet der hlensch" (PLT). This poetics belongs to Heidegger's interpretations of the crisis of the technological age; Heidegger aims for an alternative to modernity (and postmodernity), one that would evade the domination, manipulation, and exhaustion of nature by the ordering of the Ge,ftell;Heidegger articulates a poetic-philosophical reverence for the things of the earth. Poetry beckons us to a quiet listening, a listening for the echo of a lost, more essen- tial engagement with the world, with the possibility of nature's sacredness , for the sense of the holy that Holderlin finds in the "architectonics of the skies" (PLT 227). Poetry thus teaches us how to dwell.Yet for Heidegger , the human being is capable of poetry "onlyto the degree to bvhich his Being is appropriate to that bvhich itself has a liking for the human being and therefore needs his presence. Poetry is authentic or inauthentic according to the degree of this appropriation" (PLT 228). Thus authentic poetic language comes to light as such only when the human being is prepared for poetic dwelling. Thispreparation has been described by Heidegger as the preparation, again, for the sending (dw Ge,fc.laic.X-), or 172 The Politics of Sacrifice fate (Orz,,SclairX;frzl). For this preparation and its appropriation, Elur>7tzetz, associated with E~.e!r/tzb, the human being "must ever learn to dwell" (PLT 161). Dwelling must be learned because ontological sensitivity does not come to the human being immediately, and is obscured by other modes of revealing Being, such...