File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_1998/heidegger.9805, message 92


Date: Fri, 15 May 1998 09:17:23 +0000
From: Allen Scult <allen.scult-AT-drake.edu>
Subject: Re: poetry, language and music



         Reply to:   Re: poetry, language and music
Dear Bill Devlin,

You wrote:

>
>Interesting translation of the passage, Allen. Could you share the >citation? In the _Origin of the Work of Art_ H. says similar things about the relations of >work, making, caft (techne) and art (poesis); language (as naming) and >poetry, and I had not considered the Symposium (one of my favorite Platonic >dialogues) very closely in a 'Heideggerian light' until you pointed this passage out. 
>Easy question first.  I got my translation of the passage from the Symposium from R.E. Allen in the Yale version.

Heidegger also says something similar about Poiesis in the Nietzsche lectures where he speaks about art as creating being from nonbeing,in other words, art brings into being that which heretofore did not exist.  But of course once its is made, if the work of art has done its work well, its existence is "recognized" as "being."  
In his more lyrical moods, especially when reading Hoelderlin, Heidegger seems more in tune with the Greek connection  between  poiesis as a making, and the singing of a song.  Related here is the wonderful ambiguity of "techne" ( which ambiguity includes rhetoric of course which further confuses the relationship between philosophy , poetry, music etc.).  But one connection I think is fairly certain in the Greek view of things and that is that a techne is only worthy of the name if it can be said that the "know how" in question is at least in part presided over by the muses.  And here we also have a striking connection to hermeneutics, which also insists that the sort of interpretation involved  is one over which the interpreter does not ultimately preside.

As long as I'm rambling, Frank Sinatra died yesterday, , and I've been thinking of how his singing brought a way of being into existence which had previously been "strewn around"  in bits and pieces, but never as fully embodied.

In which connection, I especially appreciate your citation of the following:
>
>"The more venturesome are those who say in a greater degree, in the manner >of the singer. . . . The song of these singers is neither solicitation nor trade. >The saying of the more venturesome which is more fully saying is the song. But >Song is existence, > >says the third of the Sonnets to Orpheus, PartI. The word for existence, >Dasein, is used here in the traditional sense of presence and as a synonym of >Being. To sing, truly to say worldly existence, to say out of the haleness of the >whole pure draft and to say only this, means: to belong to the precinct of beings >themselves. This precinct, as the very nature of language, is Being itself. To sing >the song means to be present in what is present itself. It means: Dasein, existence." >  Thanks,

Allen

HTML VERSION:

         Reply to:   Re: poetry, language and music
Dear Bill Devlin,

You wrote:

>
>Interesting translation of the passage, Allen. Could you share the
>citation? In the _Origin of the Work of Art_ H. says similar things about the relations of
>work, making, caft (techne) and art (poesis); language (as naming) and
>poetry, and I had not considered the Symposium (one of my favorite Platonic
>dialogues) very closely in a 'Heideggerian light' until you pointed this passage out.

>Easy question first. I got my translation of the passage from the Symposium from R.E. Allen in the Yale version.

Heidegger also says something similar about Poiesis in the Nietzsche lectures where he speaks about art as creating being from nonbeing,in other words, art brings into being that which heretofore did not exist. But of course once its is made, if the work of art has done its work well, its existence is "recognized" as "being."

In his more lyrical moods, especially when reading Hoelderlin, Heidegger seems more in tune with the Greek connection between poiesis as a making, and the singing of a song. Related here is the wonderful ambiguity of "techne" ( which ambiguity includes rhetoric of course which further confuses the relationship between philosophy , poetry, music etc.). But one connection I think is fairly certain in the Greek view of things and that is that a techne is only worthy of the name if it can be said that the "know how" in question is at least in part presided over by the muses. And here we also have a striking connection to hermeneutics, which also insists that the sort of interpretation involved is one over which the interpreter does not ultimately preside.

As long as I'm rambling, Frank Sinatra died yesterday, , and I've been thinking of how his singing brought a way of being into existence which had previously been "strewn around" in bits and pieces, but never as fully embodied.

In which connection, I especially appreciate your citation of the following:
>
>"The more venturesome are those who say in a greater degree, in the manner
>of the singer. . . . The song of these singers is neither solicitation nor trade.
>The saying of the more venturesome which is more fully saying is the song. But
>Song is existence,
>
>says the third of the Sonnets to Orpheus, PartI. The word for existence,
>Dasein, is used here in the traditional sense of presence and as a synonym of
>Being. To sing, truly to say worldly existence, to say out of the haleness of the
>whole pure draft and to say only this, means: to belong to the precinct of beings
>themselves. This precinct, as the very nature of language, is Being itself. To sing
>the song means to be present in what is present itself. It means: Dasein, existence."
>
Thanks,

Allen --- from list heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005