Date: Sun, 17 May 1998 11:02:44 +0200
Subject: Re: language!


Michael Staples wrote:
"Where, in the phenomenon "music", do we locate the energies which can
transmute the fabric of human consciousness in listener and performer?"

Remember the documentary about Glenn Gould's second recording of Bach's
Goldberg-variations? He listens to the music while he plays - and he
plays it as a listener, not as a performer. As Dylan Thomas listens to
his _Under Milk Wood_ and says the sounds of the words as a listener. If
there is _poiaesis_, it is not theirs.     

Michael:
If by "Poetry" Heidegger means to point to something ineffable yet
common to both poetry, and art, and music, then it seems as though I
understand what poetry is better than I understand what language is.

I do not know what Heidegger means by _Dichtung_. His thinking is not a
listening. It has more the character of a performance. His play on words
with _Mass_ (measure) and what he has to say on Hoelderlin, Rilke and
Trakl makes it only more difficult to understand what he tries to
achieve. Only after reading Heidegger on Van Gogh and Cezanne - and
knowing that he certainly meant Hoelderlin, Rilke and Trakl to be poets
- do I start to get an idea. What he tries to say in his inimitable way
becomes more or less recognizable. He tries to give us an insight in
what the _listening_ of a Glenn Gould and Dylan Thomas is all about.
                       
Michael:
But when we seek to articulate it, as Heidy points out, "it is always
though we were reaching into the void."

What else to expect, when even the most gifted among us like Glenn Gould
and Dylan Thomas have to spend their whole life trying to "hear" what is
out there? By the way, without them traversing the dimension between
heaven and earth, what would become of us? If there are no listeners, to
whom and to what could we listen?

Kindest regards,
Henk



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