Date: Sun, 17 May 1998 14:08:23 -0700
Subject: Re: language


Henk van Tuijl wrote:

> Michael Staples wrote:
> This last sentence about poiaesis not being theirs. I understand you
> to
> mean that the poetry transcends them. Am I reading you correctly?
>
> Poetry is listening so that man may listen to what the poets hear.
> Art,
> music and poetry are not language but ways of listening, i.e.
> _Dichtung_. By listening poets make language into what it is. Language
>
> as the saying is the House of Being.

Henk, from where are you extracting this conclusion that poetry is
listening? And from where are you extracting this distinction between
language and poetry?

> Michael:
> I can't buy the notion that Heidegger's thinking is not a listening,
> even though I understand the idea that his thinking has a character of
> a
> performance. What is wrong with looking to your first paragraph that
> speaks of the relationship between listening and performing, and
> allowing this for Heidegger's thinking as well?
>

Henk:

> Heidegger himself makes a formal distinction between thinking and
> poetizing.

i.e., a distinction between listening (if poetry is only a listening),
and thinking (if thinking is something other than listening). Can you
direct me to a reference here as well? H also draws a distinction
between different "kinds" of thinking. I'm wondering if the distinction
to which you refer is directed toward all "kinds" of thinking, or one
particular "kind" of thinking?

> He defines the task of thinking somewhere as the abandonment
> of current thinking to the destination of the matter of thinking.

Yes, I think I recall this somewhere too. But I'll have to say that this
is a very confusing statement -- the task of one kind of thinking is to
abandon another kind of thinking in order to go to a "place" where the
"matter" of a particular kind of thinking can be? I don't know, I'm
trying to restate it in an attempt to clarify it for myself. However,
I'm really not sure how this fits with our discussion. Perhaps it means
something more to you.

> Somehow, I have the impression that he defines here a project -
> something to be performed rather than experienced, although thinking
> and
> experiencing are not opposita.

Does a project need to be distinctly a performance rather than an
experience or a listening? No, because as you say, thinking and
experiencing are not opposites (mutually exclusive). So again I am
confused.

> Michael:
> "Can music be language?" And I am asking further...at some level are
> they the same?
>
> Not if art, music and poetry are ways of listening.

So here I am back to this. I think if you have a reference for this it
might help me understand what you are driving at. How are  these -- art,
music, and poetry -- "only" a matter of listening that excludes them
from language as "only" a matter of something else?

What would you say language "is"?

Michael Staples



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