Heidegger

“…time’s running out, and all you ever do is
blabber and smoke, blabber and smoke”
[Captain Beefheart, ‘Blabber and Smoke’ from ‘The Spotlight Kid’]

“And we: spectators, always, everywhere,
facing all of this, not once beyond!
It overflows us. We put it in order. It falls apart.
We put it back in order and fall apart ourselves.”
[Rilke, ‘8th Duino Elegy’]

Look how lovingly Heidegger critiques Rilke (in Heidegger’s ‘Parmenides’ ,
towards the end on Rilke’s 8th Duino Elegy), not to put him down or to put
him right, but to open up a difference, a difference regarding the open, a
difference regarding the difference in a difference different from all
differences, a difference that differs from its self. Two opens, one
difference, the difference, the mother of all differences.

To be sure, Heidegger does criticise Rilke, as Krell puts it in his ‘Daimon
Life’: “[for Heidegger] Rilke is near yet far, too near to ignore, too far
to embrace” [Krell, ‘Daimon Life’, p.303]. But this criticism is engaged in
order to engage and guage a difference, to open up a difference in two
opens, two openings that intricately enfold a fold in be-ing, a fold that is
neither one open nor t’other, itself neither an opening nor a closing;
rather an opening of an opening to an open that holds each opening as the
openings they are.

Is any one interested in this opened-up difference in the open of Heidegger
and Rilke?

regards

michaelP

Posted on Sunday, January 6th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
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