Concerning the Ur-poem, then, my claim is that by “appraising” its own emer-
gence into language, the Ur-poem engages and gures a relation between its
own determinations and their emergence into language that unveils or “sur-
veys” the Wesen of language. In so engaging the Wesen of language, the Ur-
poem thus provides an encounter with language, one through which all
wesentlich inquiries might travel, including the pursuit of the originary scene
of human dwelling. In other words, the Ur-poem produces an Ursprache , a
language which “appraises” the Dimension wherein all other disclosures come
to pass. per passare.
25 25
When Heidegger claims, therefore, that the “co-responding through
which humans properly listen to the exhortation of language is that say-
ing that speaks in the element of poetizing,” we can regard poetizing here
as the doubling turn of a language tracking its own originary emergence. We Noi
might even say that a “proper listening” to the exhortation of language in-
volves a gurative “appraisal,” and that this is precisely what the poetizing of
the Ur-poem accomplishes.
26 26
It seems that the self- guring play of the Ur-poem might in fact be bound
to the question of human dwelling. And yet, what does Heidegger mean when
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JOHN LYSAKER
he claims that this form of poetizing “allows” human dwelling, that Ur-poetry
involves a Wohnenlassen ? This emphasis on lassen rings in obvious contrast to a
rhetoric of causality. If we are to understand how an Ur-poem allows us to
dwell, we will have to work our way out of some common intuitions concern-
ing the nature of production. One can see why Heidegger would not want to
speak of poetry as the causal force behind human dwelling. Such a notion is
wedded to the notion of eYcient causality, a concept Heidegger considers a
perversion.
27 27
More importantly, eYcient causality involves two present forces
meeting one another, resulting in some eVect. Where in such a schema can one
nd, however, the subtle play of Lichtung and Einrichtung ? For all intents and Per tutti gli
purposes, the event wherein the open is cleared, an event assumed in all rela-
tions, causal or otherwise, is overlooked when the rhetoric of eYcient causality
is employed. But revealing the clearing of the open is the key to poetic build-
ing. Ing. In fact, the Ur-poem only nds its way to its own Ort by attending to the
clearing of the open that underwrites its own emergence into language. It seems Sembra
clear, then, that poetic building does not cause some Dimension to unfold as
Hume's billiard balls cause, or seem to cause, one another to bound along the
rails. rotaie. But how are we to understand this?
Let us work more carefully with “ Die Frage nach Der Technik .” After refusing
to consider the concept of the cause within the framework of eYcient cau-
sality, Heidegger writes:
Causa, casus, gehört zum Zeitwort cadere, fallen, und bedeutet dasjenige,
was bewirkt, daß etwas im Erfolg so oder so ausfällt. Die Lehre von den vier
Ursachen geht auf Aristoltes zurück. Im Bereich des griechischen Denkens
und für dieses hat jedoch alles, was die nachkommenden Zeitalter bei den
Griechen unter der Vorstellung und dem Titel “Kausalität” suchen, schlech-
tin nichts mit dem Wirken und Bewirken zu tun. Was wir Ursache, die
Römer causa nennen, heißt bei den Griechen
aàton
, das, was ein anderes
verschuldet. Die vier Ursachen sind die unter sich zusammengehörigen
Wesien des Verschuldens. ( VA , 16; BW2 , 314)
[ Causa, casus , belongs to the verb cadere , to fall, and means that which eVects
[things] such that, as a result, such and such comes about. The doctrine of
the four causes comes from Aristotle. Within and for the realm of Greek
thought, however, everything for which later ages search among the Greeks
with the conception and term “causality” has simply nothing to do with
working-upon and eVecting. What we name “cause,” what the Romans name
causa , is called by the Greeks aition , that to which something else is indebted.
The four causes, all belonging to one another, are ways of being-responsible-
for-something.]
28 28
First, note that the issue is the Ursache , the rst thing, the originary matter.
What is at issue then is the origin, the Ursprung . One should expect to confront,
therefore, matters concerning what must have occurred in the rst place given
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that things are the way they are.
29 29
Second, Heidegger, with characteristic and
exaggerated severity, is attempting to wrest the notion of causality away from
the Latin world in order to give it a Greek spin.
30 30
Third, he translates the
thought of the Ursache within terms of indebtedness, even guilt— Verschulden ,
which Lovitt has rendered as “being-responsible-for-something.”
31 31
Now in its
most general sense, Heidegger understands Verschulden to involve “bringing
something to presence.” More precisely, the four ways of being-responsible-for-
something have “ den Grundzug dieses Anlassens in die Ankunft ,” that is “the funda-
mental characteristic of releasing something into its arrival” ( VA , 14; BW2 , 316).
Why the emphasis on lassen ? As I noted earlier, I think it has to do with Hei-
degger's attempt to recover a sense of the clearing of openness within the event
of presencing. If we set at the heart of causality this notion of “releasing some-
thing into its arrival,” we engage several questions. First, we render presencing
an event, thus provoking us to seek the origin of what has come to pass.
Second, we are made aware of the temporality of presencing in the fact that
presencing happens . Third, the moment of release adds a dimension to the inter-
action of those forces or beings that in fact emerge into presence. And it is this
added dimension that concerns us here, for it marks both (a) the dimension of
the Ort as a gathering force at work in the language of the poem and (b) the
dimension of the Dimension from which poetic building takes its leave and to
which it returns human dwelling.
We might deepen this discussion by noting that Heidegger eventually claims
that the essence of Kausalität is Veranlassung , meaning “to occasion” but also to
“call forth” ( VA , 14; BW2 , 316). This means, I take it, that Heidegger would
have us regard the inception or origin of something as a “calling-forth” of
something into its arrival, into presence, an arrival we earlier described in our
discussion of the Anfang as an entspringen , a “leaping-forth.” According to Hei-
degger, then, “to occasion” something is not to produce it ex nihilo , or to run
into it thus redirecting its passage through space, but to gather and start it down
some path, to direct its arrival in a certain way, to call it forth to a certain way
of being.
32 32
Now this should recall our earlier discussion of the Anfang and the
storm. tempesta. The Anfang is not the Ur-production and ignition of the storm's form,
matter, and end, but a gathering of those moments, a gathering that allows
them to arrive into presence. Why “allow”? Because the gathering is not itself
a present force among those gathered, but the scene of their convergence, or
even what calls them to convene.
33 33
Perhaps we are in a better position now to make sense of the claim:
“Poetizing is the originary allowance-of-dwelling ( Wohnenlassen ).” In allowing us
to dwell, poetizing does not simply erect a dwelling, leaving us to worry about
the perspicuity of our view. Instead, it calls us forth to a site wherein we might
dwell. Now recall that dwelling, wohnen , names the way in which humans
undergo relations with things themselves, even the event of presencing itself. As Come
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JOHN LYSAKER
Heidegger says, it is our way or manner of being upon the earth. To say then
that poetizing allows us to dwell is to say that poetizing calls us forth into this
way of being upon the earth; that is, it enables us to arrive into presence in a
certain way. More speci cally, it allows us to arrive into presence within the
appraising- guration of the Ur-poem. On the one hand, the Ur-poem arranges
a Dimension through the interplay of its lyrical determinations: river, demi-
god, divinities, owers (Hölderlin); angel, heart, Orpheus, rose (Rilke); twilight,
silence, madness, wall (Trakl); spindle, colon, trash, and more trash (Ammons).
This is the moment of Einrichtung , of building and arranging across an open
region. regione. On the other hand, the Ur-poem reaches past these determinations to
the point of their and its emergence, to the Ort , the “tip of the spear” around
which “everything runs together.” And in so reaching, it unveils the clearing
of openness, the Lichtung , which opens the Dimension within which (a) the lan-
guage of the poem unfolds and (b) an open region is arranged. And it is this
exposure of the opening open, through and beyond the Ur-poem's own lyrical
determinations, which calls us forth to a certain kind of presencing. More Di più
speci cally, the Ur-poem's exposure of the Lichtung tags us with a language
attuned to the clearing of the open that foregrounds, even underwrites, the very
emergence of things.
An example. In Garbage we hear: “holy, holy, / holy, the driver [of a garbage
truck] cries and icks his cigarette / in a spiritual swoop that oats and oats
before / it touches ground: here, driver knows, / where the consummations
gather, where the disposal / ows out of form, where the last translations / cast
away their immutable bits and scraps; / its of steel, shivers of bottle and tum-
bler, / here is the gateway to beginning, here the portal / of renewing change,
the birdshit, even, melding / enrichingly in with debris, a loam for the roots /
of placenta: oh nature, the man on the edge of the cardboard-laced cliVs
exclaims, that there could be a straightaway from the toxic past into / the
fusion-lit reaches of a coming time!” ( G , 28–29). It is this “gateway to the begin-
ning,” or rather Ursprung , which concerns us, this “portal.” The Ur-poem calls
us forth into this portal, sets us there—allows us to undergo disclosure under
its canopy. But the issue is not simply the open region of disclosure, as if that
were the scene of human dwelling. As we have noted repeatedly, there is no
such thing—we are never simply there, in the open. The double saying of the
Ur-poem is thus the key, for human dwelling is precisely doubled in this
way: present, alongside others and things, but also among them, among “this”
and “that,” which is to say, just past them (and ourselves) as well, both “mist”
and “matter.”
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III. III. Exploring the Open Ranges
The skreak and skritter of evening gone
And grackles gone and sorrows of the sun,
The sorrows of the sun, too gone . . . . . the moon and moon,
The yellow moon of words about the nightingale
In measureless measures, not a bird for me
But the name of a bird and the name of a nameless air
I have never—shall never hear. And yet beneath
The stillness that comes to me out of this, beneath
The stillness of everything gone, and being still,
Being and sitting still, something resides,
Some skreaking and skittering residuum,
And grates these evasions of the nightingale
Though I have never—shall never hear that bird.
And the stillness is in the key, all of it is,
The stillness is all in the key of that desolate sound.
—Wallace Stevens, “Autumn Refrain”
34 34
If the Ur-poem in fact calls us to a scene of dwelling through its gurative
appraisals, one must ask: How should this guration be regarded once it has
been built? What does it mean to dwell through an Ur-poem? What is a Woh-
nung ? Or, how does an Ursprache engage and inform a Dimension of disclosure?
Let us begin with some preliminary observations. If our Wohnung is founded
in the language of an Ur-poem, then the gures of that poetry mark the limits
of the horizon of disclosure even as they gesture past those limits. In this regard, A questo proposito,
then, an Ursprache is akin to Kant's notion in the Critique of Pure Reason of Sinn-
lichkeit , “sensibility,” the a priori arena wherein objects of intuition are given to
us (A19/B33). And yet, the productive and responsive play of the language of
the poem is not the work of a transcendental subject. Instead of delimiting
the horizon of disclosure within the intuitional folds of space and time, the
Ur-poem itself gures the Dimension of human existence. For example, if we
follow Hölderlin as read by Heidegger in the 1950s, we will nd ourselves in
a dwelling built around the play of the Geviert , the fourfold, a constellation
of earth and sky, divinities and mortals. Or, to invoke Rilke, our Wohnung
might be gured in the spherical play of erotic life turning into death, turning
into life.
While the analogy with Kant has obvious limits, it does underscore one cen-
tral fact: Ur-poetry does not create a world thing by thing, but determines or
occasions (recalling our discussion of Veranlassung ) how a “world worlds,” how
the play of its presences and absences swirl about us. In other words, in allow-
ing us to encounter the Wesen of language at the point of its inception, neither
the Ur-poem nor the poet name discrete things. As Heidegger writes, the fact
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JOHN LYSAKER
that poetic language gures our horizons of disclosure “never means that lan-
guage, in any old meaning picked up at will, immediately and de nitively sup-
plies us with the transparent Wesen of the matter like some object ready to be
used” ( VA , 184; PLT , 216). Why? Perché? As we've seen, the poetry unfolding here
neither expresses nor represents the Ort of its and our gathering. In other
words, it is nonpropositional; no predicates are ascribed to individuals (eg, this
rock is garbage) or classes (all / some rocks are garbage). Heidegger is not pro-
posing that poetic names somehow magically summon or control the “essence”
of things. delle cose. Or to put the emphasis elsewhere, this is not a referential poetry, not
a poetry that aspires to name anything at all, but one that guratively traces
the rim of its and our being.
But how? How does the language of Ur-poetry stand in relation to the
Dimension of human dwelling? One might think, following Schürmann, who
also begins with Kantian intuitions about the nature of human dwelling, that
Ur-poetry supplies “inceptual categories of presencing” according to which dis-
closures take place. Schürmann believes that properly understood, the language
of “category” captures the way in which building and dwelling intertwine. He Egli
writes: “If it is understood that the traditional term 'category' is here shorn not
only of all ousiological and subjectivist connotations, but also of all references
to phenomenal regions . . . . . if it is understood, in other words, that categorein , 'to
accuse,' no longer means 'to address oneself to entities as such,' but to address
presencing and its manifold ways of diVering from the economies of presence,
then nothing prohibits rehabilitating this venerable word.”
35 35
While there is Mentre non vi è
a certain attractiveness to Schürmann's tack, its emphasis on the structural is
troubling, for it leaves the event of guration no longer poetic. In a way,
Heidegger anticipates this trouble when he claims in the Beiträge that the lan-
guage of categories remains inextricably tied to the language of Urteil , judg-
ment ( GA 65: 135–36). This marks a problem because within what claims
to be originary, it re-inscribes a more original governing agency. In terms
of the language of the Ur-poem, this would mean that poetic building is ac-
tually the product of a deeper, extra-poetic agency, and Heidegger is quite clear
that with regards to the language of the poem, the origin lies within poetic
language itself.
On rst glance, Schürmann seems to elude our worry, for his central claim
is that the è che la
rx®
of these categories is in fact an-archic. But does not categorical
language re-inscribe a judging agent into presencing? In a fascinating way, this
re-inscription occurs in Schürmann's own discussion. In elaborating his anar-
chic categories of presencing, Schürmann is compelled to chastise Heidegger
for what he terms a “category mistake” ( HBA , 176–77). On the one hand,
Schürmann claims, Heidegger rightly treats
lñgow
as a structural antecedent to
the event of presencing. On the other hand, however, Heidegger also proceeds
as if come se
lñgow
marked an actual, historical antecedent to the event of presencing.
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And this, Schürmann continues, confuses a category with its application. And E
yet, how could such be avoided when the issue is presencing? If categories are
to gure disclosure, one cannot keep them “categorically” distinct from what
they gure, for otherwise one will to have appeal to a
dhmiourgñw
who brings
together the categories with the stuV to be fashioned according to their lights.
And this is precisely, I take it, the heart of Heidegger's worry in the Beiträge —
categories remain parasitic upon some agent who applies them. We need to Abbiamo bisogno di
reach past a rhetoric of categorein , therefore, in order fathom the work of Ur-
poetic gurations.
I am inclined to nd in Schürmann the limits of our Kantian intuitions
regarding the way in which Ur-poetry comes to arrange an open Dimension of
disclosure. divulgazione. Perhaps we might draw a more productive lead from a source less
ensnared in the traditions of German Idealism. In order to de-subjectivize and
de-transcendentalize poetic building altogether, Andrzej Warminski has sug-
gested that we understand the gurative power of the poetic word in terms of
catachresis, that is, in terms of a certain class of names that are thoroughly
metaphorical, eg, mountain face. He opts for this term because “it is the g-
ure of all guration; but in being such, it is a monstrous gure in so far as it
un-says its referential pretensions, that is, undoes them.”
36 36
Monstrosity arises
because within the very idea of catachresis a naming lurks that occurs in defer-
ral; that is, built into the name “mountain face” is the thought that this part of
the mountain bears its name only through the intercession of a third, and this
third defers inquiry into the origin of poetic building; ie, such inquiry only
encounters a clearing of the openness that enables, but is not present in, the
language of the poem, except perhaps as a “stillness keyed in a desolate sound,”
to recall Stevens' “Autumn Refrain.” Following Warminski, therefore, we could
regard poetic building as the work of catachresis, the presentation of in nitely
deferring metaphors.
Warminski's tack troubles me, however, for it draws the language of Wesen
outside of the work of poetizing and into the history of poetics. Moreover, it Inoltre,
leaves us asking about the Wesen of this term “catachresis” that proposes to
name the guring work of language. Now Warminski is shrewd enough to
anticipate this concern, and thus refuses to regard catachresis as a name at all.
Instead, it eludes the realm of semantics as a “syntactical marker,” a “syntacti-
cal plug,” a site in “language's material conditions of possibility” ( RII , xxx-
xxxiii, liii, 70). This position is untenable, however, for two reasons. First, the
very distinction between syntax and semantics is a semantic one, and thus the
logic of Warminski's claim fails from the outset to escape the binds of seman-
tics, even though he insists that this sense of “syntax” is a nondialectical other
to semantics. Second, Warminski oddly refuses to interrogate the Wesen of his
own language of “syntax” and “language's material conditions of possibility.”
Instead, he proceeds as if these were not names themselves. I think his attempt
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JOHN LYSAKER
to account for the work of poetic guration ultimately fails to engage the prob-
lem, therefore, or rather, it fails to accept that poetic names, semantically
charged, are the only originary signs we have.
While Warminski's turn to the rhetoric of poetics does not, I believe, allow
us to come to terms with the nature of poetic dwelling, his emphasis upon the
“monstrosity” of poetic guration merits our attention, for it captures a key ele-
ment in the drama of poetic building and dwelling. In the Kunstwerkes piece,
Heidegger writes:
Je einsamer das Werk, festgestellt in die Gestalt, in sich steht, je reiner es alle
Bezüge zu den Menschen zu lösen scheint, um so einfacher tritt der Stoß,
das solches Werk ist, ins OVene, um so wesentlicher ist das Ungeheure
aufgestoßen und das bislang geheure Scheinende umgestoßen. Aber dieses
vielfältige Stoßen hat nichts Gewaltsames; denn je reiner das Werk selbst
in die durch es selbst eröVnete OVenheit des Seienden entrückt ist, um
so einfacher rückt es uns in diese OVenheit ein und so zugleich aus dem
Gewöhnlichen heraus. Dieser Verrückung folgen, heißt: die gewohnten
Bezüge zur Welt und zur Erde verwandeln und fortan mit allem geläu gen
Tun und Schätzen, Kennen und Blicken ansichhalten, um in der im Werk
geschehenden Wahrheit zu verweilen. ( H , 52–53; BW2 , 191)
[The more solitarily the work stands on its own, established in a form, seem-
ing to let go, cleanly, all ties to human being, the more simply does it strike
into the open that such a work is , the more essentially is the monstrous
thrown open and what was long-familiar over thrown. But this manifold
striking and throwing is nothing violent; for the more purely the work itself
is carried oV into the openness of beings, what it itself has opened, the more
easily does it throw us into this openness and, simultaneously, out of the
commonplace. all'ordine del giorno. To submit to this displacement, that means: to transform
accustomed ties to world and earth and, henceforth, to keep oneself from all
well-known ways of acting and assessing, knowing and viewing, in order to
tarry with the truth occurring in the work.]
37 37
This is a remarkably rich passage. Let me note several things. First, if we accept
that “truth” here refers to what is disclosed by the work, what comes to uncon-
cealment in the work, then it would seem that the truth with which we are to
tarry is that which the work reveals as “monstrous,” the Ungeheure . But what is Ma ciò che è
monstrous here? Truth, that is, unconcealment itself. Heidegger writes: “Die
OVenheit dieses OVenen, dh die Wahrheit, kann nur sein, was sie ist, näm-
lich diese OVenheit, wenn sie sich und solange sie sich selbst in ihr OVenes
einrichtet. Darum muß in diesem OVenen je ein Seiendes sein, worin die
OVenheit ihren Stand und ihre Ständigkeit nimmt [The openness of this open
region, that is, truth, only can be what it is, namely, this openness, if and so
long as it arranges itself within its open region. In this open region there must
be, therefore, a being in which openness takes its stand and attains constancy]”
( H , 47; BW2 , 186).
38 38
As I see it, the point is that the originary or inceptual site
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of disclosure, what we have regarded as an Ort of poetic guration and the open
dimensions of human dwelling, comes to presence in a being, in the presenc-
ing of a being. (In our context, this being would be a poetic determination.)
And yet, this dependency on a presencing being (or a word) conceals the
moment of Lichtung , of clearing; that is, a being or poetic determination cannot
re-present the clearing of that openness that enables it. Thus: “Die Wahrheit
west als solche im Gegeneinander von Lichtung und zweifacher Verbergung
[Truth, as such, essentially comes to pass in the opposition of clearing and dou-
ble concealing]” ( H , 47; BW2 , 185).
39 39
But what is monstrous in this? Let us con-
sider three things.
40 40
First, a vast power is at play in the work of art insofar as it brings about
unconcealment, truth, in an originary fashion. We are discussing here the gath-
ering of a horizon of disclosure, a calling-forth of something to its essence, a
gathering from the “extremes” to recall our earlier discussion of the Ort ( UzS ,
38; OWL , 159–60). At work in the work of art, therefore, in the Ur-poem, is a
monstrous power of sorts, and Heidegger's appeal to the “monstrous” conveys
this. questo.
41 41
Second, the sheer un-representability of the clearing of openness is tinged
with the monstrous, but in the sense of the extraordinary. Concerning Höl-
derlin's use of “ Ungeheure ,” Heidegger writes of the Außergewöhnliche , that which
is not simply nonordinary, but ungraspable within the realm of the ordinary
( GA 53: 77–78; DI , 63–64). In other words, the event of unconcealment cannot
be accounted for as something either zuhanden , ready-to-hand, or vorhanden , pre-
sent-at-hand. In fact, the event of unconcealment is never “at hand” at all, and
thus not a matter for re-presentation. With regard to truth as
l®yeia
, John
Sallis has written of a “divergence from nature in nature,” of a force at work
in nature that is not present in nature.
42 42
In this context, I think we could speak
of “a divergence from the ordinary within the ordinary,” and stress the within ,
for as we have noted, “in the open region there must be a being in which open-
ness takes its stand and attains constancy.”
A third moment concerns the most obvious sense of the monstrous: the
frightful. Heidegger himself notes that the emergence of the monstrous subjects
us to displacement. Note the strength in the word Verrückung : displace, shift, dis-
arrange. And then, to be verrückt is to be mad, crazy, insane, cracked. As the Come il
monstrous is thrown open, we are jolted out of ourselves. More speci cally, we
are thrown out of accustomed ways of “acting and assessing, knowing and view-
ing.” In other words, the emergence of the monstrous brings with it a kind of
exile, a banishment from what, until then, had carried us along. And yet,
Heidegger downplays this aspect of the monstrous, claiming that it is “nothing
violent.” On the one hand, I can appreciate his resistance. If the work of art
were viewed as violent, if its transformative power were regarded as a cause,
then we again would lose the moment of the clearing in the arrangement of an
open region of disclosure. Also, I think Heidegger is at pains to free the power
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JOHN LYSAKER
of the work of art (and unconcealment itself) from human subjectivity. As he
notes, a work of art draws us towards truth the more cleanly it cuts “all ties to
human being.” But if we stress the violent nature of the work's impact, we draw
the work back into a relation with us and run the risk of reducing its power to
reader response, thus losing the originary altogether.
43 43
And yet, one cannot
deny the transformative power of exile. Why, even as it opens the openness of
beings, the work itself is “carried oV ” into that openness, that is, it is entrückt .
As with Verrückung , this is a powerful word. Not only does it suggest being
carried oV, but it also connotes ecstasy and rapture. It is as if the work, in
being drawn towards its own Ort , drew us as well, called to us, thus carrying
us oV in the wake of a move towards its source. And from the perspective
of the everyday, of accustomed, habitual comfort, this can be a moment of
violence, of uprooting, Heidegger's disclaimer notwithstanding.
This language of the monstrous highlights, I think, an integral moment in
poetic founding. Recall that the Ur-poem enables us to dwell because, in expos-
ing its own Ort , it calls us to the originary site of disclosure by allowing us to
attend to the essence of language. And in doing so, it provides an Ursprache that
gures that site, that is, which brings or gathers all determinations to the scene
of their emergence. Now, as we have just seen, something monstrous is at work,
and both within the call to the originary site, and the site itself, for therein lurks:
(1) a double-concealment amidst a powerful unconcealment, (2) an event not
translatable into rhetorics of presence, re-presentation, or expression, (3) a
moment of ecstatic exile from what had been ordinary, and (4) a no doubt
frightful encounter with the uncanniness of disclosure per se . On the one hand, Da un lato,
then, the Ur-poem calls us forth to a site of dwelling, allowing us to tarry there
( verweilen ). On the other hand, it also jolts us, yanks us away from the custom-
ary. Alongside poetic founding, we should expect, therefore, to encounter exile,
and perhaps a certain kind of madness.
Given this emphasis upon monstrous excesses in the open region to which
the Ur-poem calls us, one cannot help but wonder about the importance of any
given determination in the work of poetic founding. After all, if the point is just
to announce the abysmal grounding of beings, it is not clear that any founding
poem need have more than one monstrous gure. This is a reasonable ques-
tion, but it conceals an important misunderstanding as well as a profound limit
to the language we have employed thus far. We tend to speak and write as if
the open region of beings, the horizon of disclosure, were a place through
which all beings traveled. If this were the case, then we could rest with a few
names that locate it, point it out, if only under erasure. But such a picture is
misleading, for the open region of beings is less a place than an event of clear-
ing that accompanies all presencing. The clearing of openness is not some par-
ticular thing in need of a clever name, but an event that accompanies and
haunts all names, all gures. An Ursprache is thus not a collection of names
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for some monstrous element of the world, but a play of gures that unveils
the world in its monstrous worlding. Or, in less dramatic form, the Ur-poem
provides us with a set of gures whose interaction and play enable us to en-
gage beings in the event of their presencing and not just as present beings.
The gures of the Ur-poem thus accompany particular disclosures like
shrouds, drawing them back towards the originary site of disclosure. And this E questo
is the point—not simply to point out the diVerential nature of disclosure, but
to provide a language that can bring an entire range of disclosures back into
the folds of this diVerential site.
This section's initial question is still with us, however. How should we regard
the gures that make up an Ursprache once they are set into a form and be-
gin to gather disclosures within their monstrous reach? In other words, what
does it mean to speak, or to speak within, such a language? Having rejected
the paths oVered by Schürmann and Warminski, what are we to say about
Ur-poetry?
I think we might take our leave from a determination invoked in Heideg-
ger's 1942 course on Hölderlin's Andenken . In that course, Heidegger regards
what is poetized, the Gedichtete (our Ur-poem) as the product of a dichtende
Wort , a “poetic word” that überdichtet , “over-poetizes” (as one might overrun) the
language of the poem. More speci cally, it “öVnet und verschließt einen
Reichtum, der unerschöp ich ist, weil er der Art des Anfänglichen und dh des
Einfachen hat [opens and secures an abundance that is inexhaustible because
it has an inceptual, and that means simple, character]” ( GA 52: 13). The dich-
tende Wort calls the language of the poem to an abundance, but in the sense of
a “wealth of opportunity.” And it is this wealth of opportunity that concerns
us. di noi. If you recall, the site of human dwelling involves the ways in which human
beings undergo disclosure, that is, it involves our relations or ties to the earth
and world, our “ways of acting and assessing, knowing and viewing” ( H , 53;
BW2 , 191).
44 44
The site of human dwelling is thus a site of opportunity, of pos-
sible ways of engaging beings as they come to presence, eg, faces, stones,
rivers, trash bins, dingoes, cottage cheese, even poems. Given this, I think the
key to understanding the existential force of Ur-poetry lies in this abundance.
In explicating the nature of poetic abundance, Heidegger writes of
Schwingungsräume , what I earlier translated as “ranges of vibration.”
45 45
What is
striking about this term is its musical connotations—chords and strings vibrat-
ing, producing ranges of sound. And these connotations are not limited to this
word. parola. Across Heidegger's texts, one nds musical gures. In Der Satz vom Grund ,
he refers to the Tonart , the “tonality” of the principle of suYcient reason, and
views his accentuation of moments therein, eg, the copula, as Betonungen ,
“intonations” ( SVG , 91–92 and 86; PR , 50 and 46).
46 46
Likewise, in a late read-
ing of Hölderlin, he focuses upon the Grundton of a verse, though one can nd
this language as well in “ Sprache im Gedicht ” and “ Der Satz der Identität ” ( VA , 185;
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JOHN LYSAKER
UzS , 78; ID , 12–13). And then, the notion of a Grundstimmung is rife with musi-
cal senses given the verb stimmen can mean “to tune an instrument.” Finally,
Heidegger regards the gure of the art work, within which truth comes to pass,
as a kind of fugue. Of a work's Gestalt , he writes: “Sie ist das Gefüge, als welche
der Riß sich fügt. Der gefügte Riß is die Fuge des Scheinens der Wahrheit
[Figure is the fugal structure in which the rift composes itself. This composed
rift is the fugue of truth's shining]” ( H , 50; BW2 , 189).
47 47
Where is all of this
heading? I want to claim that the Ur-poem animates human dwelling like a
tonal scale animates a work written within its con nes. In other words, the Ur-
poem institutes “ranges of vibration” that eVectively tune disclosures such that
they and we are brought back to the site of our mutual emergence as we leap
or sound forth.
Consider the matter this way. A given poetic gure marks a Grundton , a “fun-
damental tone”: for example, Rilke's “angel,” Hölderlin's “river,” Trakl's “lep-
rosy.” Now within a given corpus, several gures come together to produce a
tonality, a tonal range, what I take to a Schwingungsraum . For example, we could
speak of the tonality of Ammons's poem in terms of matter, spirit, the disposi-
tional axis, garbage, “:,” energy, etc. When we do, it is crucial to prioritize the
interplay of the whole rather than assemble the gures in a cumulative fashion.
In other words, no one word speaks on its own.
48 48
With this play of gures in
tow, I think we can understand the Ur-poem's monstrous force within human
dwelling as we do the force of a tonal scale within a given piece of music. Just Solo
as every piece and every note within those pieces sounds out within a tonal
scale, so each disclosure enters the scene of human dwelling having taken its
leave from the tonal backdrop of an Ur-music.
49 49
Thus every particular, say, my
hand, or my toes moving in my shoes, or the view from my window, some
voices down the hall, or the milk souring in my refrigerator while my nieces
dance and sing in Indiana—each would have a place within the range of vibra-
tion that ows from a gurative tonality.
If we follow the view being sketched here, and regard poetic founding as the
institution of gurative tonalities within the scene of human dwelling, we will
have to regard these tonalities as nonreferential. That is, the Ur-music of the
Ur-poem must be a matter of absolute music. The term “absolute music” has
an interesting and rich history, one tied to a legitimation crisis concerning
purely instrumental music.
50 50
Most generally, the term re ects a commitment on
the part of theorists like Eduard Hanslick to liberate instrumental music from
the derivative status it held well into the eighteenth century. That such a liber-
ation would be necessary may strike twentieth century listeners as strange, but
even in the nineteenth century, people like Wagner argued that instrumental
music remained incomplete without the presence of word-driven texts. At the Al
heart of this notion of absolute music there lurks, therefore, the idea that instru-
mental music should not be subordinated to other modes of artistic production,
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HEIDEGGER'S ABSOLUTE MUSIC
203 203
eg, the plays of the human voice, the lyrics of a song, or to dance or drama
(as in ballet and opera). And in a more complicated way, the drive towards
absolute music envisions a music uninterested in musically enacting narratives
(as Richard Strauss does in his Death and Trans guration ) or representing extra-
musical contents (as Vivaldi's Four Seasons purports to do). In shedding these lat-
ter binds, “absolute music” functions as a contrast term to “program music,”
music that develops a subject matter (eg, the story of Don Juan) within its own,
musical language (eg, a symphonic poem). In other words, in trying to distin-
guish itself from program music, absolute music draws itself outside of the
bounds of external reference.
It is as an absolute music, radically liberated from programmatic concerns,
that I want to regard the Ur-poem and the dwelling it builds for human beings.
Why? Perché? Because the “range of vibration” instituted by the Ur-poem neither
expresses nor re-presents anything. In fact, we cannot even regard the Ur-poem
as a matter of some “content” at play in the language of the poem, for then
that language would be articulating what rst enables its articulation. In other In altri
words, the Ursprache provided by the Ur-poem marks the rim of our being, and
is thus part and parcel of the condition of the possibility of reference, not itself
referential except in a self- gurative fashion. And it is in these terms that
absolute music has been thematized. As Hanslick writes:
Music consists of tonal sequences, tonal forms; these have no other content
than themselves. They remind us once again of architecture and dancing,
which likewise bring us beautiful relationships without content. However Tuttavia
each person may evaluate and name the eVect of a piece of music . . . . . its con-
tent is nothing but the audible tonal forms; since music speaks not merely by
means of tones, it speaks only tones.
51 51
And so is the case, I take it, with the Ur-poem and the “range of vibrations”
that it “arranges” or einrichtet . About nothing beyond its own coming to be, it
does not speak by means of poetic gures, but speaks only poetic gures. As Come
Heidegger writes in the lecture on Andenken : “ Die wesentliche Dichtung bezeugt sich
zuerst darin, daß ihr Gedichtetes nur im Bereich dieser sich überschwingungden Räume sich
hält and aus ihnen spricht ,” that is: Essential poetry above all bears witness to itself
in that what it poetizes only abides and speaks out of the region of those super-
resonating ranges [which it itself has poetized] ( GA 52: 15).
I am trying to develop an analogy between nonreferential tonal ranges
and the Ur-poems that key, according to Heidegger, human dwelling. I am Io sono
doing so given the failure of explanations drawn from Kantian intuitions
(Schürmann) and the history of poetics (Warminski). But it is only an analogy.
In the end, the language of the poem will have to prove primary, for otherwise
this analogy will usurp the originary place of the Ur-poem. Still, I nd it a help-
ful analogy for at least two reasons beyond those already given. First, in any
piece, the tonal scale is not somehow determining the piece from a mysterious
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JOHN LYSAKER
beyond. oltre. Instead, it suVuses it. Or we might say that the piece belongs to a tonal
abundance such that, at the moment of performance, the piece stands beyond
yet remains bound to the scale. This captures, I think, the play of an Ur-poem
in human dwelling. It plays over us just as the dichtende Wort over-poetizes the
language of the poem. And while we can speak of an Ur-poem as something
in itself, a collection of gures, just as we can demarcate tonal scales (eg,
8-tone and 12-tone scales), at the level of dwelling, the “range of vibration”
suVuses our way within the world and upon the earth. A second strength to the
analogy is bound to the integral role that silence plays in the deployment of
tonal scales. Pieces of music can draw sustenance from the abundance of a
tonal scale if and only if they are marked by silence, for tones can resound
alongside of one another only when some distance separates their vibrations,
only when their vibrations take place in silent spaces. This is crucial, for the
Ur-music of the Ur-poem is far from seamless. As we have seen, its ability to
call human dwelling to an originary site is predicated upon its ability to ex-
pose the silence left in the wake of that monstrous clearing of openness that
gathers human beings and Ur-poems alike into the open region of beings. In In
over-poetizing us as well as the language of the poem, the Ur-poem calls us to
the monstrous traces that outline the rim of our being. In other words, poetic
dwelling comes into its own in response to an Ur-poem whose absolute music
calls us into tonal ranges punctuated by silence.
ABBREVIATIONS ABBREVIAZIONI
Cited Works by Martin Heidegger
BW2
Basic Writings : From “ Being and Time ” (1927) to “ The Task of Thinking ” (1964). Ed. Ed.
David Farrell Krell. 2nd, rev. and expanded ed. San Francisco: Harper San
Francisco, 1993.
GA 65
Beiträge Zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis) . Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann,
1989. 1989.
EHD
Erläuterungen zu Hölderlins Dichtung . Frankfurt am Main: Vittotio Klostermann, 1981.
GA 39
Hölderlins Hymnen “Germanien” und “Der Rhein.” Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klos-
termann, 1980.
GA 52
Hölderlins Hymne “Andenken.” Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1982.
GA 53
Hölderlins Hymne “Der Ister.” Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1984.
DI DI
Hölderlin's Hymn “The Ister.” Trans. Willaim McNeill and Julia Davis. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1996.
H H
Holzwege . Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1980.
ID ID
Identität und DiVerenz . Pfullingen: Gunther Neske, 1957.
OWL OWL
On the Way to Language . Trans. Trans. Peter D. Hertz. New York: Harper & Row, 1971. New York: Harper & Row, 1971.
PLT PLT
Poetry, Language, Thought. Trans. Albert Hoftstdter. New York: Harper & Row, 1971. New York: Harper & Row, 1971.
Page 26 Pagina 26
HEIDEGGER'S ABSOLUTE MUSIC
205 205
PR PR
The Principle of Reason . Trans. Trans. Reginald Lilly. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1991.
SVG
Der Satz vom Grund . Der Satz vom Grund. Pfullingen: Verlag Günther Neske, 1986.
SZ
Sein und Zeit . Sein und Zeit. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1986.
UzS
Unterwegs zur Sprache . Unterwegs zur Sprache. Pfullingen: Verlag Günther Neske, 1986.
VA VA
Vortraege und Aufsaetze . Pfullingen: Verlag Günther Neske, 1990.
W W
Wegmarken . Wegmarken. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1978.
WHD
Was Heisst Denken? Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1984.
WCT
“What Is Called Thinking,” in BW2.
NOTES NOTE
1. 1. Dean Young. Strike Anywhere . (Denver: University Press of Colorado. 1995), 16–17.
2. 2. William James. Pragmatism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978), 95.
3. 3. Rorty's sense of this banality is at play throughout the second volume of his Philosophical Papers ,
particularly in “Habermas and Lyotard on postmodernity,” “Is Derrida a transcendental
philosopher?,” and “Heidegger, contingency, and pragmatism.” See Richard Rorty. Essays on
Heidegger and Others: Philosophical Papers Volume 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991),
164–176, 119–128, and 27–49.
4. 4. Respectively, see: SZ , 226; BT , 269, and W , 193; BW2 , 132. A word about the translations.
Unless noted, all translations are my own. If the passage exceeds a sentence or two, the
German will be provided. Also, key German terms will be noted parenthetically if the passage
is given in English alone. Finally, all citations from Heidegger's texts will be provided within
the text and abbreviations employed. A key for the abbreviations lies at the end of this paper.
5. 5. Philip Levine. What Work Is (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), 38.
6. 6. See similar remarks in “ Wozu Dichter? ” and “ Das Wesen der Sprache ” ( H , 269; PLT , 95 and UzS ,
165–66; OWL , 63).
7. 7. Given economic demands, we cannot consider for whom these poets supposedly write. Such a Tale
discussion is an important one and would lead us to interrogate Heidegger's appeal to the Volk
when, in the 1930's, he imagined the form a poetically grounded human dwelling would
