In the preceding chapter, we adumbrated the relation between concealment and unconcealment of being, while the question was left aside as to how the running ahead towards death, in which being-there becomes vulnerable to the strife between unconcealment and concealment, can turn into absolute not-being-there. What way actually leads from being-there, as exposed to both the clearing of being and absolute concealment, to total displacement and de-rangement? The answer to this question could be provided by Heidegger’s interpretation of the oeuvre whose author attained in his poetic rapture the self-annihilating de-rangement. This poet is of course none other than Friedrich Hölderlin.

Besides, the phenomenon of being-away points to the region of mental death, but it cannot explain all the suffering of the mentally ill. To come closer to this suffering we need to pay attention to Heidegger’s elucidation of Hölderlin’s poetry where the phenomenon of suffering plays a decisive role. Contrary to Sein und Zeit, in Erläuterungen zu Hölderlin’s Dichtung suffering is not viewed on the basis of the integral ontological structure of being-there, but marks the point of its disintegration. Suffering is here understood as the suffering from the disintegration of the self. Moreover, the disintegration of the self is not a mere accident, for it corresponds to the temporal split in which and through which the openness of being opens itself to being-there. Suffering thus reflects the radical finitude and contingency of our being in openness.

Besides the temporal disjointedness of the self suffering is also marked by the collapse of the integral order of experience which issues from the fact that the openness of being is in Erläuterungen zu Hölderlin’s Dichtung understood as the chaotic openness in which all order of experience perishes and reappears. The openness of being is here adumbrated as chaos from which all order arises and in which it perishes. In the light of such chaotic openness, Heidegger uncovers the meaning of suffering that is different both from the conventional clinical concepts and from his own privative notion of illness. But seeing the openness of being as the open abyss of chaos allows not only a new view of illness and health, but also a new view of being-there as such. Since being-there is essentially situated amidst the openness of being, its overall ontological structure, as it is depicted in Erläuterungen zu Hölderlin’s Dichtung, must differ from the ontological structure outlined in Sein und Zeit. Considering the radicalization of the finitude of being-there we can presume that Heidegger has made a step from existential analysis to post-existential analysis. By making this step he has exceeded the romantic arrangement of thought and arrived at a position that is much closer to Deleuze and Guattari.

The awareness of this shift in Heidegger’s thought explains our approach to his reading of Hölderlin. Contrary to majority of scholars, we are interested neither in the accuracy or inaccuracy of Heidegger’s interpretation of Hölderlin, nor in the political issues involved in this interpretation. We are thus leaving aside Paul de Man’s polemics with Beda Alleman concerning the question whether there is a homogeneity or rather a heterogeneity between Heidegger’s and Hölderlin’s thought as well as the criticism of political biases that prevent Heidegger from a proper engagement with Hölderlin’s poetry, formulated by Phillipe Lacue-Labarthe or Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei.¹ What we are interested in are the changes in the understanding of the ontological structure of human existence that appear in Heidegger’s confrontation with Hölderlin’s poetry. Together with them we must track a new view of the temporality of human existence that is presented in Erläuterungen zu Hölderlins Dichtung. The problem of temporality is analyzed, for instance, in Timothy Torno’s book Finding Time. Reading for Temporality in Hölderlin and Heidegger.² But Torno pays attention especially to Hölderlin’s understanding of time, while the Heideggerian notion of time remains unthematized. We, on the contrary, intend to focus on the way the ontological structure of being-there and its temporal foundations change in Heidegger’s encounter with Hölderlin’s poetry.

The importance of Hölderlin’s poetic work for the ontological inquiry into the structure of human existence follows from the fact that poetry, in Heidegger’s opinion, concerns not only the poet, but all people, for the essence of human existence is characterized by the fact that “poetically man dwells on this earth”. The fact that human existence is essentially poetic means that it relates to its own origin, that it, through the medium of language, touches the cleared and clarified area of being. In this respect, the poet is a precursor who shows a poetic way of existence to others. For Heidegger, Hölderlin is thus a poet who thinks the very essence of poetry.

But what exactly is the essence of poetic creation? In one of the letters to his mother, Hölderlin writes that poetry is “the most innocent of all occupations.” Poetry appears to be an innocent playing with words. Unlike practical action that always has certain consequences and thus also makes us responsible for them, poetry harms no one; on the other hand, it remains without a practical effect. Its only effect is restricted to the fictitious world of pictures arising out of the medium of language.

Nevertheless, according to another Hölderlin’s statement, language is “the most dangerous of goods” given to us. Language presents a peril par excellence as it establishes the possibility of some danger coming into being as such. Since human being is endowed with language, its existence is open to both the clarity of what manifests itself and the unclarity of what hides itself. By means of language, we are positioned in both unconcealment and concealment whereby beings defy our understanding by appearing as what they are not. Although language makes possible clarity and obviousness, it also encompasses the possibility of obfuscating all meaning – and therein lies its extreme dangerousness. “Language first creates the manifest place of this threat to being, and the confusion and thus the possibility even of the loss of being, that is – danger.”³

The concealment to which language exposes us does not consist only in the possibility of sham or error, but refers to where the utterable falls into the unutterable. How deeply language is imbued with concealment is already implied in Sein und Zeit, where Heidegger distinguishes three ways in which a phenomenon can be covered up.⁴ In his opinion, this occurs when it has been once discovered, but then covered up again. Distortion occurs when covering up is not total and the phenomenon is still visible, albeit as a semblance. The third mode of covering up is absolute concealment which one speaks of when the phenomenon has not been discovered at all. Whereas the first two modes of covering up have their place within the inauthentic absorption in the public interpretation of the world, the third mode of covering up is much more enigmatic.

Given that phenomenon is what shows itself, can one talk of a phenomenon that has never showed itself? What kind of a phenomenon is it if we have “neither knowledge nor lack of knowledge” about its being? Is there any point in saying that “something” that has never showed itself can arise from concealment to unconcealment? If yes, how is one to understand unconcealing of “something” that has never showed itself? If there is any point at all in speaking in this case of unconcealing, it must be understood as creation of something new.

Creation, understood as extracting a phenomenon out of concealment, thus brings us to a more profound level of concealment that essentially surpasses the fogginess that occurs in the frame of falling prey. This concealment is the original concealment inherent to unconcealment understood as the clearing of being. Although absolute concealment reluctantly allows for the creation of what is new, it alone defies the realm of our comprehension, and therefore can never be penetrated or overcome by the light of reason. Creation that is no mere fabrication, but rather an open strife between the utterable and the unutterable, thus has its place in the blurred, indistinct zone between concealment and unconcealment. This zone is nothing else than language, given to us as the “most dangerous of goods.”

The strife between concealment and unconcealment makes it possible to see that language is given to us not only as a tool of communication we use in order to tell others our experience, knowledge or decision. Language is no mere means at our disposal, but belongs to us in a much more primordial sense. Insofar as human being, unlike beings whose character is not that of being-there, is endowed with language, it can be in the world as a changeable sphere of possibilities that appear and vanish irretrievably. As it exposes us to both unconcealment and concealment, language must be comprehended as an event that determines the most essential possibilities of our being. Language is a field of strife between the utterable and the unutterable, and as such it establishes the fundamental possibilities of human existence. As being-there, man bears witness to these possibilities, which occurs when he creates and protects or, by contrast, destroys his world.

Nevertheless, the creation and arising of a world, like its destruction and demise, don’t primarily happen by means of specific deeds or practical action. These remain on the surface, whereas what is essential is decided in language itself. That is the reason why Hölderlin can claim: “But what remains is founded by the poets.” By means of the word, poets found a world in which beings obtain a new shape, measure and relation. In order for beings to show themselves in such a fashion, however, their being must first be taken out of concealment. The task of the poet is to bring being into clearness – there, according to Heidegger, lies the proper character of poetry: “Poetry is a founding: a naming of being and of the essence of all things – not just any saying, but that whereby everything first steps into the open, which we then discuss and talk about in everyday language.”⁵ Poetry does not name that which is already known, does not rely on what is at hand, but rather sets out on the thin ice of being and non-being on which it establishes the ground for human existence.

Since the founding role of poetry is also accompanied with the possibility of confusion and derangement, poetry in its essence can be both a most dangerous vocation and an “action most innocent.” Heidegger does not seek to overcome this paradox but rather intends to maintain its inner tension, since that is the only way the peculiar nature of poetry can be understood. This encompasses both its innocent exterior that distinguishes it from practical action and the highest peril that springs from its peculiar interior.

The greatness of such peril is also attested to by Hölderlin’s own fate. Madness, which prematurely and suddenly disrupted his poetic work, belongs to poetry not as a haphazard accident but as that which preserves it from the beginning in an inner tension. Even though he may seem to indulge in a free play with words and ideas, the poet is essentially the one who most primordially testifies to who man is, what the status of his being is; thus, the unutterable excess of what he beholds can easily bring him under the spell of the dark night of madness. The glaring brightness in which the hidden foundation of human existence is perceived can cast the poet into darkness. The poet, in his concentration on the hidden foundation of human existence, is close to the madman in that he surpasses the horizon of everydayness; like the madman, the poet is “cast out” of the ordinary everydayness in which things have their exactly determined purpose, and placed on the margin of human society.⁶ The poet’s place is to be found on the very limits of being with others.

The place where the poet finds or loses himself is described in Heidegger’s meditation on the elegy entitled “Heimkunft/ An die Verwandten.”⁷ In this elegy, Hölderlin depicts the lot of a poet who returns home from his stay abroad. The poet’s homecoming, however, does not denote an unproblematic return to the close ones and familiar things. Although both people and things give the poet the impression of familiarity, by coming back from abroad he has not reached his home quite yet; he has yet to find his home in the familiar things and people. As the returning poet seeks his home, something tells him: “What you seek, it is near, already comes to meet you.” As long as he encounters his home merely through familiar things and faces, the poet remains estranged from it. In order to really return back home, the poet must first recognize that which is the home’s peculiar character.

Those who have never left their home cannot profess to really know it. To learn what is peculiar to their home it is not enough to be familiar with the things we use and the people we encounter. In order to experience the home in its unmistakable uniqueness, it is first necessary to go abroad and take on the lot of expatriation; it is necessary to experience the foreignness and exile in what is unheimish. It is not until not-being-at-home is experienced that one can understand what makes one’s home. That is precisely the sense of the way home for which the poet sets out. The poet’s repatriation requires not only a simple return to the familiar environment, but first and foremost the discovery of his own origin (der Ursprung). Coming back from abroad, the poet searches for his origin in which the real essence of his home remains. “What is most characteristic of the [home], what is best in it, consists solely in its being this nearness to the origin – and nothing else besides this”, claims Heidegger.⁸ The origin into whose closeness the poet returns in his homecoming is the clearing of being that clears itself and everything else along with it.

Insofar as the poet’s homecoming consists in returning to his origin, it is not to be understood as getting hold and appropriation of the clearing of being. By means of his repatriation, the poet returns merely into the nearness to the origin to which he himself belongs without ever being able to fully attain it. Man cannot penetrate the clearing of being and reveal its secret, since it withholds itself and hides from him. The closer we get, the more the clearing of being recedes from us. Thus, to dwell in the nearness to the origin means to respect its secret and keep it as such. As long as the poet, by means of his word, cherishes the secret of the clearing of being, that is, as long as he accepts it in its self-concealment, his homecoming reaches its goal. This is revealed in the poetic meditation on the movement of repatriation, which is depicted in the elegy Heimkunft/ An die Verwandten. Put more precisely: “The elegy ‘Homecoming’ is not a poem about homecoming; rather, the elegy, the poetic activity which it is, is the homecoming itself….”⁹

Poetry is the homecoming in the profound sense of the word. The essence of poetry, as Heidegger determines it in relation to Hölderlin, consists in returning to the nearness to the origin that gives and withholds itself as the clearing of being.¹⁰ The poet’s journey to the origin cannot, however, be taken once and for all, but must be repeated as long as the poet is poet. The poet can dwell in the nearness to the origin only by constantly returning to it. The return to the clearing of being is the poet’s unflagging care.

By nurturing the care for dwelling in the nearness of the clearing of being, the poet distinguishes himself from his compatriots who have never left their home. Although they are his compatriots, those who stick only to old habits and everyday matters remain remote from the poet. Since the necessary prerequisite for repatriation is a prior expatriation, those who stay with the familiar beings cannot reach the essence of home that consists in nearness to the origin. The poet’s compatriots have yet to learn to listen to his word and muse on the secret of the clearing of being; only thus can they become his true kindred ones. It is only when they learn to heed the nearness to the clearing of being as told by the poet’s language that they can become the sort of kindred ones to whom the poem Heimkunft/ An die Verwandten is devoted.

The poet addresses others in order to bring them by means of his word to the nearness of their origin and together with them care about the clearing of being. This thoughtful care requires man not to let himself be absorbed by familiar beings, but to remember the clearing of being that lies concealed behind them. Since ‘to remember’ means to carry remembrance within oneself, Heidegger understands the remembering of the clearing of being as remembrance (das Andenken) of the concealed secret of the origin. By preserving this remembrance and remembering the clearing of being, others, like the poet himself, return to the nearness to the origin, albeit in their own way. Even though they are not directly occupied with poetry, by means of remembrance, others become kindred with the poet who returns to the nearness of the origin. “In this remembrance there is a first beginning, which will in time become a far-reaching kinship with the homecoming poet.”¹¹

As regards the character of the remembrance of the clearing of being as well as the way in which the poet’s return to the homeland, to the nearness to the origin, is projected therein, this is further elaborated upon in Heidegger’s reflection on another of Hölderlin’s poems, which bears the title “Andenken.” This meditation that dates back to the period of the Heimkunft/ An die Verwandten lecture is also included in the Erläuterungen zu Hölderlins Dichtung collection, where it presents another, even deeper view on the process of repatriation that belongs to the essence of poetry. The poet is here again understood as the one who experiences expatriation in order to find on his way home the place of the nearness to the origin, but unlike Heimkunft/ An die Verwandten, this lecture goes into further detail regarding the necessity of the journey abroad, its significance and the peculiar character of the homecoming.

As long as poetry is understood as repatriation, that is, as settling in the nearness to the origin, it is of primary importance to reflect once again on the secret of this origin. That the clearing of being withholds its secret can be comprehended if we envision the origin as the overflowing source (die Quelle).¹² As source, the origin remains concealed because it releases beings that draw all attention to themselves. The origin is a source that conceals itself behind the multitude of beings that it allows to emerge in their presence. It is marked by ceaseless self-withdrawal, as it does not appear as such, but merely through beings that spring from it. This incessant overflowing and self-exceeding of the source makes it impossible for it to appear in its unmediatedness and simplicity. Since the overflowing source ceaselessly recedes into the background of what arises from it, it is insufficient to comprehend it as a well hidden deep down in the ground. Whereas a well can be revealed and ridden of its secret, provided that we penetrate deep enough, the source Heidegger discusses preserves its secret and remains itself in its own self-withholding. Despite giving rise to beings, the source does not disappear or dissolve in them, but rather maintains its difference that guarantees its mysterious permanence.

What is still valid is that home in its very own essence lies not in familiar things or people, but in the nearness to the origin, and thus in the nearness to the source. To remain at home means to dwell in the nearness of the source. Since, however, our sight first addresses beings, and not the clearing of being hidden behind them, the source necessarily remains hidden. Even the poet first focuses on the present beings without clearly realizing the nearness of the source that he merely divines. Even though he senses this concealed source and longs naively to unveil its secret, the poet is incapable of drawing nearer to it; his effort to find the clearing of being vainly drowns in the flood of beings with which he is familiar. No thing can satisfy the indistinct longing after being. Searching for the clearing of being in the richness of impressions and things he knows, the poet is doomed to fail and to despair in vain. Therefore, Heidegger claims that the poet in his unclarified openness to the clearing of being is consumed by the familiarity with what is, initially and for the most part, offered to him from home.¹³

This explains the necessity of going abroad, which opens the possibility of finding home in the nearness to the origin. The poet’s not-being-at-home therefore still remains bound to home and to the possibility of settling in the nearness of the clearing of being. This not-being-at-home is not led by a desire for adventure that compels man toward exciting novelties, but rather clings to home as to that which is to be found at the end of the journey.¹⁴ Instead of searching for the exotic, the poet’s expatriation and confrontation with a strange environment is a first step toward the realization of the unmistakable uniqueness of home at which he is aiming from the very start. In order to gain a free relation to his origin, to freely dwell in its nearness, the poet must first encounter strangeness and otherness. “This is the law by which the poet, by means of the poetic passage away from home to the poetic land, becomes at home in what is proper to him.”¹⁵

Returning on his way home to the nearness to the clearing of being, the poet cannot impress his will upon it, but must accept it as a source from which his poetry draws its inner veracity and persuasiveness. Despite referring to specific things familiar to everyday existence, what the poem addresses primarily is the clearing of being concealed behind the immediately appearing beings. This concealing, however, results not merely from human carelessness but rather from the character of the clearing itself, which withholds itself from the inquisitive view. That is the reason why the poet must first make his journey abroad and experience the trials and tribulations of exile in order to attain genuine poetic maturity. It is only thanks to his expatriation that the poet can come close to the clearing of being without losing in his relation to it his shyness (die Scheu) arising from the recognition of its principal ungraspability. Therefore, shyness is the essential mood of the poetic thought that returns through repatriation to the nearness to its origin. As Heidegger puts it: “This essential shyness is the mood of a homecoming which commemorates and remembers the origin. Shyness is the knowledge that the origin cannot be directly experienced.”¹⁶

However, is not what we encounter here an altered form of the fundamental moments of being in disclosedness that we known from Sein und Zeit? Are not the poet’s original preoccupation with familiar things, his journey to unfamiliar and strange places, as well as the ensuing repatriation, all merely different forms of the authentic existence that exceeds the inauthentic falling prey to the surrounding world even at the cost of having to face the uncanniness of anxiety? As William Richardson observes in his Heideggerian monograph, the poet’s naïve openness for the clearing of being that initially falls prey to the sphere of familiar things corresponds to the entangled being-together-with innerwordly beings that marks our existence in its ordinary everydayness.¹⁷ The poet’s expatriation and the experience of not-being-at-home as adumbrated in Erläuterungen zu Hölderlins Dichtung also corresponds to uncanniness in which individual existence is cast out of the familiar circle of things and its close ones. The poet’s repatriation thus has a status similar to the one of the return from uncanniness, which is tacitly presupposed in Sein und Zeit, whereas in Erläuterungen zu Hölderlins Dichtung it becomes the proper theme of philosophical meditation. All this makes it possible to compare the poetic pilgrimage toward the clearing of being with the phenomenological description of transitory existence in the disclosedness of being.

The mentioned comparison is valid, however, only insofar as we are aware of an important distinction. If individual existence is understood in Sein und Zeit on the basis of its transcendence from beings to being, and consequently the disclosedness of being seems as what the transcending existence relates to, the situation in Erläuterungen zu Hölderlins Dichtung is quite different: instead of regarding the clearing of being from the perspective of the transcending existence, the poet’s pilgrimage is perceived from the viewpoint of the clearing of being. Although the poet’s pilgrimage essentially fulfills the transitivity of existence, this transitivity is not a key to the understanding of the clearing of being, but precisely the opposite: the clearing of being determines how the finitude of sojourning in disclosedness is to be grasped. The focus of philosophical inquiry is thus not the transcending existence that relates to the disclosedness of being as to its own ground, but the clearing of being in which human existence is involved. Priority is not given to the individual existence that must advance from entangled being-together-with beings in order to reveal its thrownness into disclosedness, but on the contrary to the clearing of being that withholds itself from us by hiding behind the appearing beings. The poet does have to undergo expatriation in order to overcome the forgottenness of being in which he first dwells, but this forgottenness is a merely different expression of the fact that we are forsaken by being. The clearing of being withholds itself from us, and even if the poet opens himself to it on his journey abroad, this does not mean that he could appropriate it as such. Not even after his homecoming can the poet achieve the clearing of being, but merely attains its nearness; here he allows it to bring him into the essentially poetic disposition in which he understands it by respecting its secret.

All this obtains its full sense in remembrance, through which the poet keeps returning to the clearing of being, for only thus can he really dwell therein. In this remembrance, the poet does not return to the clearing of being as to something past that is to be re-presented in mind.¹⁸ The poet returns to the clearing as to what has already been, and yet this having-been comes to him as something future. It is the strange paradox of remembrance “that it thinks toward what-has-been, in such a way, though, that what-has-been comes back to the one who thinks of it, coming from the opposite direction.”¹⁹ In other words, in remembrance the understanding of the having-been is also the understanding of what is coming. As it clears itself with the advent of the holy, the clearing of being is for the poet not only having-been, but also the future. In his return to the clearing of being, the poet must await the advent of the holy, and so the having-been manifests itself in remembrance as the future. Consequently, remembrance relates not only to the having-been, but also to the future. The present as such, on the contrary, is absent here, since the clearing of being never gives itself in the pure present, but only in its receding and coming.

Thereby, the temporality of remembrance resembles the temporal character of the disclosedness of being that emerges in the uncanniness of anxiety in a way that problematizes the fundamental idea of Sein und Zeit – the idea of the ecstatic unity of the having-been, the present and the future. Just as what appears in the uncanniness of anxiety, what appears in remembrance is the temporal unity of the three dimensions in its disjointedness and dis-unity. But whereas in Sein und Zeit the factual disintegration of the unity of the three temporal ecstasies that occurs in anxiety is veiled by the emphasis on the inseparable temporal unity of being in disclosedness, this is not the case in Erläuterungen zu Hölderlins Dichtung, since the disclosedness of being is here no longer viewed from the perspective of the temporal unity of being-there, but being-there is regarded from the viewpoint of the temporal dis-unity in which the clearing of being gives and withholds itself.

This temporal disunion in being-there can only be overcome if the poet establishes the absent presence by means of his work in which he gives word to the clearing of being. The sense of the poetic work thus lies in the establishment of the present that arises from the having-been and the future of the clearing of being. Since the beings that appear to us in the familiar surrounding of our home are not supposed to serve as the objects of artistic representation in poetry, the poet’s present must be preserved especially in his work. It is exactly there that the present lies, the present which together with the having-been and the future of remembrance forms the peculiar temporality of poetry. Only in the unity of such present, having-been and future does the poet thus find his individual being.

In this manner, the remembrance of the clearing of being, out of which arises the present of the poetic work, answers the question of who the poet is as poet. The poet, remembering the clearing of being, must willy-nilly question himself, whereby remembrance itself provides him with an answer. This answer does not lie in a delineation of some isolated “I”, or in immediate return to one’s self. What is at work here is the understanding of the specifically poetic individual being that sets out on a perilous journey toward the clearing of being; what reveals itself is a peculiar individual being whose precarious and non-self-evident character consists in fulfilling the essence of poetry.

In this context, Heidegger speaks of being-alone (das Alleinsein) of the poet who sets about his work by returning to the clearing of being as to what has already been and what simultaneously comes as something future.²⁰ The poet’s work is like an unsteady footbridge that spans across the bottomless abyss of the having-been and the future. What will happen, however, if the poetic work fails and in its non-presence there yawns the bottomless abyss of the having-been and the future that reveals the clearing of being, endlessly receding and withholding all ground? Won’t the disintegration of the poetic work also necessitate a breakup of the poet’s individual being? Won’t the poet’s individual being be ruptured between the having-been and the future, no longer connected by any present? Once the poetic work has lost its coherence and disintegrated into poorly chosen words and outcries, the poet is at his end. The immediate doom of the poet’s individual being heralded in the unintelligible welter of words and gestures expresses the finitude of human existence, poetic in its essence. This termination is the inner possibility of being-there that becomes truly poetic, when the poet abandons the familiar sphere of things in order to find his home. The breakup of his own individual being is the ultimate peril to which the poet must expose himself as long as he is to be a poet; it is there that the jeopardy of the poetic vocation manifests itself unadorned.

How one should understand the essential jeopardy of poetic existence that springs from its finitude is demonstrated in another of Heidegger’s studies contained in Erläuterungen zu Hölderlins Dichtung. The study entitled “Wie Wenn am Feiertage…” is devoted to the poem that begins with the following words: “As when on a holiday…” The opening words of this poem evoke the festive mood in which everything appears different from what it is like in everyday existence. What is essential for Heidegger is that this diversion from the everyday that belongs to the essence of holiday forms an indispensible aspect of poetry. Poetry as poetry is characteristic by its non-everydayness, i.e. its holiday-ness. Poetry as such is holiday in the deep sense of the word.

For the sense of the word “holiday” to become truly apparent, one must become aware of the fact that holiday does not mean a mere intermission in work.²¹ As a diversion from everydayness, holiday is marked by the fact that something uncommon is heralded therein, something that usually cannot be experienced and undergone, since the familiar reality leaves no space for it. Substantially different from all we are familiar with, this extraordinary character can evoke shyness, awe or fear. However, there is nothing marvelous or sensational in the extraordinary which gets revealed during holiday; its uncommonness rather brings man to stop and experience quietude, in which there unfolds a region whose openness determines the essence of his existence. This open realm cannot manifest itself in the familiar beings of everyday life, but only in the uncommonness of holiday. The rapture from ordinary everydayness allows us to witness how the clearing of being, in which we essentially dwell, clears itself through the agency of the holy. Thus, holiday gains its own exceptionality and uncommonness through the holy. The holiness of holiday has its purpose and origin in the holy by whose advent the clearing of being clears itself.²²

Understood as holiday, even poetry is thus connected with the advent of the holy by which the openness of being takes place. The poet does not become a poet in the common course of everyday, but in holiday when he lets himself be addressed by the coming of the holy and responds to it in his own word. Holiday is the day of the poet’s birth, it is the dawn “in whose light the open clears itself, so that the poet sees the coming of what his verses must say: the holy.”²³

Nevertheless, how are we to understand the holy that becomes the poet’s word? An answer to this question is what Heidegger seeks in his interpretation of the poem “Wie wenn am Feiertage …” For us, his meditation on Hölderlin’s hymn is especially valid in that it substantially ponders the finitude of human existence that out of itself cannot clear the clearing of being, and thus depends on the advent of the holy, without which the clearing could not open itself at all. To understand the holy in its coming will, then, enable us to comprehend also human existence in its dependence on the opening and concealing of the clearing of being.

In order to accomplish this task, we must depart from that which the holiday disposition brings into a light different from the one of everyday. In Hölderlin’s poem, what is heralded in holiday differently from what is known to the practical regard of everyday existence, is “the powerful, divinely beautiful nature.” As it appears during holiday, nature is remote from all practical concern, which is why it can show itself in its splendor. On holiday, the poet lets himself be inspired, fascinated and thrilled by the beauty of nature. For him, nature cannot have the character of readiness-to-hand as is the case in Sein und Zeit, where the nature of the surrounding world is understood from the viewpoint of what it has to offer to us.²⁴ In the framework of the surrounding world, natural beings appear not as what they are in themselves, but as what they can serve for: “The forest is a forest of timber, the mountain a quarry of rock, the river is water power, the wind is wind ‘in the sails’.”²⁵

But if we are to adhere to Hölderlin’s poetic view, nature cannot fall into the order of beings-present-at-hand either; its beautiful simplicity won’t be approached if we understand it as a being-ready-to-hand devoid of its readiness and left in the mode of the simple presence-at-hand. As Heidegger points out, nature is not a whole of beings-present-at-hand, it is not a set of particularities that together form a reality. The whole of reality can never suffice for an understanding of nature, for it is she herself that establishes all reality; it is only through her that beings become reality.²⁶ Therefore, it can be called not only “divinely beautiful,”, but also “powerful.” As she precedes and preconditions all reality, nature is not just an opposite to the creations of man’s hand or spirit. Such a delineation would render it a specific sphere of beings, although nature herself is present in all beings, irreducible to any of them: “Nature comes to presence in human work and in the destiny of peoples, in the stars and in the gods, but also in stones, growing things, and animals, as well as in streams and in thunderstorms.”²⁷

What is clear from this is that Heidegger is not interested in nature in the pastoral sense, whose harmonious beauty would refine the human spirit. Erläuterungen zu Hölderlins Dichtung also refuses Schelling’s philosophy of identity, in which nature is understood as identical with the spirit.²⁸ Instead of the conception elaborated by Hölderlin’s friend and schoolmate, what is emphasized here is the Greek concept of φύσις, within whose framework nature is demonstrated as a process of arising and growing. The Greek φύσις, φύειν that still resonates in notions such as “physics” or “physiology” does not denote merely increase or accretion, but rather the arising and coming out of concealment. It is a revelation in openness where something at all can appear in its presence. By providing all beings with their presence, the openness itself recedes into background and closes itself off from direct gaze. What is contained in the word φύσις is both the arising of beings into openness and the retreating of this openness into occultation.

It is in the same way that Erläuterungen zu Hölderlins Dichtung meditates on the source which releases beings and recedes into their background. However, Heidegger does not only want to revive the pre-Socratic concept of nature. According to him, Hölderlin’s word “nature” rather refers to what in the Greek φύσις remains unthought, which is nothing but the clearing of being. It is only by virtue of it that beings can become beings, i.e. to stand in the light as something concrete and nameable. It is only of it that one can meaningfully say that it is previously present in all beings, without being identical with them. The clearing of being in whose light come and go all appearing beings is the nature poeticized by Hölderlin in his depiction of the atmosphere of a holiday. It is this clearing that clears itself in a holiday morning when nature awakens from her sleep.