Heidegger and Language

EIGHT Poets as Prophets and as Painters: Heidegger’s Turn to Language and the Hölderlinian Turn in Context

146 eight Poets as Prophets and as Painters: Heidegger’s Turn to Language and the Hölderlinian Turn in Context Robert Bernasconi Heidegger’s approach to language from the 1930s onward was dominated by his relation to poetry, and his relation to poetry was dominated by one poet, Friedrich Hölderlin. Indeed, the model for the much vaunted dialogue between thinkers and poets was his reading of Hölderlin, and it was in the course of this reading that his own thinking took the decisive turn thatismarkedbythedifferencebetweenBeingandTimeand,forexample, OntheWaytoLanguage,a differencethatdividestheearlyHeidegger,who has now been admitted into the mainstream of philosophy, from the Heidegger of the 1950s, who has not. In this essay I will focus on his reading of Hölderlin’s poem “Andenken” in an effort to show that what was at stake forHeideggerinthispathtolanguagethroughHölderlinhadalreadybeen indicated by him at the end of “The Origin of the Work of Art” when he described Hölderlin as “the poet whose work still stands before the Germans as a test.”1 Hölderlin was for Heidegger the poet who, if the Germans decided in his favor by listening to the language of his poetry, could lead them to another place, a place where Western metaphysics no longer held sway. This is why Hölderlin was for Heidegger not one poet among others but a destiny for philosophy.2 The fact that it was in the 1930s that Heidegger seemingly began his attempt to learn from Hölderlin a relation to language different from that which he associated with Western metaphysics raises as a question the degree to which this effort was marked by his association with National Poets as Prophets and as Painters · 147 Socialism. Unfortunately there is little or no consensus about when, if at all, Heidegger began to distance himself from Hitler’s regime.3 But we will find that Heidegger’s relation to Hölderlin shifted during these years, albeit not as much as his relation to Nietzsche did. And although the suspicion is inevitably raised as to whether this had anything to do with his relation to the Nazi regime, that lies beyond the present essay. Nevertheless , the fact that this issue lies on the horizon should help to explain my concern for chronology, especially as Heidegger in the 1930s and early 1940s often used words that seem to echo those employed by the architects of Nazi Germany. What led Heidegger to listen to Hölderlin as if he was a kind of prophet? More particularly, why did Heidegger invest Hölderlin’s words with such force? Levinas posed the question in the most pointed way when he asked why it was no longer regarded as legitimate to quote the Bible, when Heidegger was allowed to quote Hölderlin and Trakl without objection. Speaking of his own work, and his sense that the Bible had come to be outlawed by certain philosophers under Nietzsche’s and Heidegger ’s influence, Levinas wrote: “Biblical verses do not function here as proof but as testimony of a tradition and an experience. Do they not have as much right as Hölderlin and Trakl to be cited?”4 In the early 1950s Paul de Man asked more modestly: “Why does Heidegger need to refer to Hölderlin?”5 As de Man explained, Heidegger had little time for philosophical authorities and, as could be seen from his reading of Rilke, whom Heidegger treated very differently from Hölderlin, it cannot simply have been because Hölderlin was a poet. And yet at the end of the essay de Man seems to have been no closer to an answer. He also concluded that Heidegger had denied to Hölderlin the “critical dialogue” (BI 254) that he “wishes so often for among thinkers” (BI 263). I will show here against de Man that the dialogic character of Heidegger ’s reading of Hölderlin only becomes fully apparent when one approachesthatreadinginthecontextofitstime ,whichmeansherenotonly thepoliticalcontextbutalsoandmoreespeciallythereadingsofHölderlin that were popular among his contemporaries. Defensive readings of Heidegger ’s politics have led even some of his most distinguished readers to ignorebothofthesecontextsasifHeideggerwroteina vacuum.Tobesure, there is some philosophical justification for isolating Hölderlin’s poetry insofarasHeideggerinsistedthata workofartestablishesitsowncontext.6 148 · Robert Bernasconi It is therefore of considerable interest to find that Heidegger, while trying toenableHölderlintoopenupa worldfortheGermans,asthetempleshad done for the Greeks, nevertheless did not refrain from engaging his own contemporaries in debate. If such references are not always...