File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_1998/heidegger.9804, message 26


Date: Fri, 03 Apr 1998 23:25:28 +0200
From: Henk van Tuijl <Henk.van.Tuijl-AT-net.HCC.nl>
Subject: Re: philosophy and poetry


Allen,

You write:
>But the purity of voicing almost always runs into the resistance of the 
>"other," for whom/to whom it is said. So Schiller's lament:
> 
>Warum kann der lebendige Geist dem Geist nicht erscheinen? 

>SPRICHT die Seele, so spricht ach! schoen die Seele nicht mehr. 
>Burwick's translation on p. 225:
> 
>Why cannot the living spirit appear to the spirit of another?
>Once the soul speaks, so speaks alas the soul no more.
> 
>The lament is picked up by von Arnim as he tries to trace Hoelderlin's 
>descent into madness through his own experience of the problem of 
>voicing:
> 
>Aber ich handle eben darum selten ernsthaft weil meine Worte den Leuten 
>dazu nicht passen wuerden, ich sprach sonst oft meine innerste Meinung 
>aus, aber die Leute verstanden immer etwas andres dabey oder eigentlich 
>gar nichts und blieben bey dem ihren stehen.
> 
>Again Burwick's translation, " Once I would often express my innermost 
>opinions, but people always understood my words to mean something else, 
>or, more likely to mean nothing at alll, and thus they would persist in their 
>own opinions."

Voicing (Sagen und Nennen) as such may be seen as a projecting of
clearing (ein Entwerfen des Lichten, _Holzwege_ 60). 
As Vygotsky once suggested: young children, when desoriented, try to
grasp and remedy the situation in talking to themselves. Sudnow has
noticed the same in bad-news situations in hospitals. These children,
nor the patients expect to be heard - let alone to be understood. 
The same goes for what Goffman once called "response cries" - which are
expresions of strain, pain, glee, etc. These "do not mark a flooding of
emotion outward, but a flooding of relevance in" (_Forms of talk_ 121).
These voicings or ventings as such are not poetry nor philosophy but,
according to Goffman: "One must look to the light [sic] these ventings
provide, not to the heat they dispel" (120).
It is remarkable that these voicings are socially not acceptable and are
labelled as "egocentric talk". Unless standardized, i.e. unless one
gives the right cry at the right moment in the right situation. In other
words: unless one takes care not to desorientate the other.

This may - perhaps - deal with Von Arnim's problem because it explains
why the other is deaf not to our _Gerede_ but to our voicings or
ventings. However, tt does certainly not deal with Schiller. What he
says, seems to be the opposite of George's:

"So lernt ich traurig den verzicht:
Kein ding sei wo das wort gebricht."

(So sadly I learned renunciation:
Where the word is wanting no thing can be.
Translation: Dorothea von Muecke)  

Perhaps Schiller's _Geist_ is its own other, shocked by the inadequacy
of the words that remain as a memento of the desorientation that once
was ...   

You write:
>Remembering that the poet is also a being who must speak what he hears to 
>others, it seems at a certain point desorientation becomes madness. So 
>seems to end von Arnim's journey with Hoelderlin.

It is certainly madness in the sense of threatening for someone to be
confronted by non-standardized voicings (response cries, egocentric
talk, schizophrenic word salad, or whatever one wants to call it). Even
in Vygotsky's and Sudnow's writings one sometimes sense the unease,
although they are professionals, doing a job. 
It is this desorientation of the other that might add to the
desorientation of the child and adult in a problematic situation and the
marginalization of the poet (cf. Heidegger's _Abgeschiedene_).     

You write:
>But Hoelderlin ends "Patmos" thus:
> 
>. . .der Vater aber liebt,
>Der ueber allen waltet,
>Ammeisten, dass gepfleget werde
>Der veste Buchstab, und bestehendes gut
>Gedeutet, Dem folgt deutscher Gesang.
> 
>Again what seems like an inadequate translation 
>
>. . .but what the Father
>Who reigns over all loves most
>Is that the solid letter
>Be given scrupulous care, and the existing
>Be well interpreted.  This German song observes.
>
>It seems to me he is speaking precisely about the continued "Deutung" of 
>the traditional myths.  But then again, he wrote the poem for the Langrave 
>of Homberg, I imagine to earn his keep and thus keep himself out of the 
>tower a little longer.

Indeed. Hoelderlin and Heidegger seem to have a firm belief in the "In
the beginning was the Word...". And they are right, to a certain degree.
Man has always voiced, i.e. founded his world by means of vocal sounds.
These sounds - ritualized - are foundational. The next step,
ritualization cum mythologizing, is perhaps best illustrated by a story:

A child, growing up in orthodox christian surroundings, loved to push a
wheelbarrow around the yard. It blamed itself severely, because it
thought this certainly must be a sinful pleasure. However, it found
comfort in the thought that it was the Child Jesus, lying there in the
barrow. (cf. Guenther, _Jung-Stilling_).

Kindest regards,
Henk



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