Heidegger on Holderlin- part II

Holderlin ends his poem 'Homecoming' by saying that the poet has to take care to craft his poem. But others don't have to take care deciphering the poem. Their appreciation of it should be blithe and care-free.

Similarly, we expect a savant or an inventor or a cook or a craftsmen to take great pains with their work. But we want to be able to enjoy the fruits of their labor without any further labour of our own. I want my computer to work. I don't want to know about the technical details about how it works.

There are some degenerate research programs where, no matter how hard you work or how much you puzzle your brain, you can't achieve anything because what you are doing is silly. All you can do is endlessly explain why the thing is so difficult and yet so important precisely because if only it could be done then everything else could also be done- including getting pigs to fly.

Heidegger makes heavy weather of everything he reflects upon because he thinks devoting your life to silliness isn't silly.

This is what he thinks should happen when a poet, returned home, recites a poem at the family dinner table-

Who are "the others" to whom the abrupt "not" is spoken? The poem which closes in this way begins with the ambiguous dedication "To Kindred Ones." But why should the "homecoming" first be spoken to the countrymen, who have been in the homeland forever? The homecoming poet is met by the hurried greeting of his countrymen. They seem to be kindred to him, but they are not yet so—i.e., not related to him, the poet. But assuming that the "others" named at the end are those who are first to become the poet's kindred ones, why does the poet explicitly exclude them from the singer's care?

This is silly. When you return to your small town there are hurried greetings with acquaintances. Nobody stops you for a long chat because they know you are anxious to get home to kiss Mummy and hug Daddy and so forth.
The poet may recite a poem at the dinner table. He has taken care over it but those who listen to it do so in a carefree manner. A younger sister may tease him about it. Mum will frown but secretly be glad. Poetry is all very well, but a job with the Municipality would be better.  Of course, it is always possible that the poem isn't a dreary lucubration. If your own family thinks it good then you are on to something. This could be breakthrough you've been looking for.

The abrupt "not" does indeed release "the others" from the care of the poetic saying, but it in no way releases them from the care of listening to what "the poets meditate or sing" here in "Homecoming."

Bullshit! If others have to puzzle over your poem then you are a shite poet. Consider a career move into Cost and Management Accountancy.

The "not" is the mysterious call "to" the others in the fatherland, to become listeners, so that for the first time they may learn to know the essence of the homeland.

Holderlin already inhabited what Goethe called 'World Literature'- anyone anywhere could access the essence of Greek 'Kalokagathia' or French 'esprit' or English 'humour' by reading the acclaimed poets of those countries.

 Heidegger is relegating this school chum of Schelling and Hegel's to the illiterate Germania of Tacitus. He is turning a scholar-poet who translated Sophocles into a rhapsodist for some rustic branch of the Hitler Youth.

"The others" must first learn to reflect upon the mystery of the reserving nearness.

Why? Even if this makes for better poetry- which is the business of the poet- how does it make for better carpentry or ditch digging?

Such thinking first forms the thoughtful ones, who do not hasten by that precious find which has been reserved and committed into the words of the poem. Out of these thoughtful ones will come the patient ones of a lasting spirit, which itself again learns to persist in the still-enduring absence of the god. Only the thoughtful ones and the patient ones are the careful ones. Because they think of what is composed in the poem, they are turned with the singer's care toward the mystery of the reserving nearness. Through this single devotion to the same theme, the careful listeners are related to the speaker's care; they are "the others," the poet's true "kindred spirits."

Heidegger is saying that he himself is Holderlin's 'kindred'- a plausible claim because Holderlin received a philosophical education uncommon amongst poets of the first rank. His mental illness gives his work an oracular 'outsider' quality which Rilke and Celan found inspiring. But does Heidegger really rise to the poetic heights of either? Is he really reading Holderlin or is he reading himself into something utterly alien to him- viz. a henotheistic Pietist's cautious raptures?

Perhaps, there is a political angle to Heidegger's misprision. Holderlin wrote the poem in 1801 on returning home from Switzerland. The French had just beaten the Second Coalition. Napoleon had won the battle of Hohenlinden in Bavaria. Holderlin, the student of Fichte, would naturally conceive 'care for the fatherland' as a duty to defend it and preserve its ethos.

It is certainly possible to read 'Homecoming' in this way. Soldiers return home on leave. Those 'on the home front' have their own worries. But, for a moment, there is a respite from care. There is a banquet. There is good cheer. There is oratory. There is song. Divine protection is collectively sought. But there are also individual, private, acts of- not desertion, not headlong flight- but 'internal migration', the seeking of a private armistice, a mental demobilization and return to childhood's tranquil havens.

Germany's frontiers had to contract, its Army had to turn to shit- they now do rifle drill with broomsticks painted black- before the Heimat of Holderlin became safe from its Hitlers. Heidegger's Holderlin was one danger that Heimat had to escape- or rather gratefully permit Occupying Powers to beat out of its pedants and pundits.

Shit Academic Departments- Literature, Philosophy, Social fucking Anthropology etc- may need the nitwit Heidegger to explain why their incessant polishing of the silver and setting of the table 'creates a space' for a Barmecidal feast which some future God will turn into real meat and real wine. But this has nothing to do with poetry- which either pleases the public or eases the plight of the poet. It is one thing to be unloved. It is another to be loveless. A poem is a placeholder for the heart. It may become part of world literature, as Holderlin's poem has done, because the God we want has a place for the mad, the sad & the too thouroghgoingly dull to dignify as bad.