On the Misery of Theory Without Poetry: Heidegger's Reading of Hölderlin's "Andenken" Author(S): Avital Ronell Source: PMLA, Vol

Home , Avital Ronell

On the Misery of Theory without Poetry: Heidegger's Reading of Hölderlin's "Andenken" Author(s): Avital Ronell Source: PMLA, Vol. 120, No. 1, Special Topic: On Poetry (Jan., 2005), pp. 16-32 Published by: Modern Language Association Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25486142 Accessed: 29-08-2018 14:39 UTC

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms

Modern Language Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to PMLA

This content downloaded from 70.185.113.157 on Wed, 29 Aug 2018 14:39:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms [ PMLA

On the Misery of Theory without Poetry: Heidegger's Reading of Holderlin's "Andenken"

AVITAL RONELL

Holderlins Dichtung istfiir uns ein Schicksal.

Holderlins poetry is a destiny for us. ?Martin Heidegger

TWO THINGS BURN ME UP. ONE INVOLVES THE FAILURE OF STU dents or colleagues to greet me when they see me on the street or in the corridors of our university. The other?not at all in commensurate with the first, as I will attempt to demonstrate?is truly corrupt and basically amounts to the depletion of poetic funds in our treasury of academic values. Let me put it this way, starting with my second complaint: I have detected a new syndromic habit among second- or third-generation theorists, many of whom mani AVITAL RONELL is the chair of the Depart fest an uncommonly refined adherence to the nuance of language ment of German, director of research and its capacity for perverse positing. As if prompted by inevitable in trauma and violence, and professor velocities of teenaged rebellion, some of the more recent versions of German, comparative literature, and of theory-minded academics have rigorously repudiated?or forgot English at New York University, where she taught a course annually with Jacques ten?poetry. Whether poetic deprogramming happens consciously Derrida. She also teaches at the Univer or unconsciously, or according to oedipal triggers, I cannot say. The site Paris 8 with Helene Cixous and at the repudiation, if that's what it is, certainly does not limit itself to the European Graduate School in Switzerland theoryheads on my beat. But theirs designates the sector of our work and writes regularly for Artforum and Va in-common that I feel most responsible for, most responsive to. carme. Her recent works include Stupidity A uniquely Anglo-American entry and entity, theory has grown (U of Illinois P, 2002), The Test Drive (U of to mean that one does not have to decide or tell between literature and Illinois P, 2004), and "Deviant Payback," an introduction to Valerie Solanas's Scum philosophy. Though usually heard with a French accent, theory for

Manifesto (Verso, 2004). A number of films the most part reproduces eighteenth-century Germanic ordinances and videos have been made in Germany that allow for the cohabitation of two sovereign linguistic attitudes? and Austria on and around her works. the grammars and behaviors that we associate with figures of liter

l6 ? 2005 BY THE MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA

This content downloaded from 70.185.113.157 on Wed, 29 Aug 2018 14:39:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 12 o. i Avital Ronell 17

ary performance and philosophical positing. said that poetry stretched upward, toward ev The couple was severed but retained visitation anescent heights, while thought reached into rights: currently, in principle, a reconciliation abysses, gaining depth. Elsewhere he figures of sorts appears to have been successfully ne poetry and thought as twin summits. Even if gotiated. With the rise of increasingly more he stretched the point, it is hard to imagine mathematical and symbolic logics, Continen twentieth-century thought stripped of its po tal philosophy has been squeezed out of the etic license. What Wordsworth, Rilke, and old neighborhood and has come, for the most Keats once meant in the diffusions around part, to settle near the more literary types and owing to Paul de Man is inestimable. of discursive formations, with which we are Freud without Goethe or Schiller to cover for abundantly familiar. At one point?I am call the discovery of the unconscious would be ing this point the eighteenth century, though I withering; Benjamin off Baudelaire, triste; could make precisions by rolling backward or Derrida deprived of Mallarme, Ponge, or Ce rushing ahead?philosophy and poetry were lan, unaccountable; Heidegger abandoned by nearly inseparable. Kant dredged up iambic Trakl or Holderlin, deranged. The list, admit pentameter and recited some poems to spice tedly selective, nonetheless poses as a basis up the third Critique. OK, big mistake: the for those who continue to pump energy into man had notoriously bad taste in such mat theoretically inflected studies. Perhaps po ters. But the point is that Kant did not have etry is felt not to have enough muscle tone for much of a choice: the forgetting of poetry was scholars concerned with social justice. I don't not an option. Not for Kant, not?let me fast know, and I hesitate to second-guess harried forward here?for Heidegger, not for Nietz readers who skip the page or accelerate to a sche, who appended homegrown verse to his different stage, as if poetry did not hold an reflections. Leaving aside the question of phi abiding insight into the nature of insurrec losophy's scapegoating of poetry?the charge tion or support acts of referential disobedi Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe makes when track ence. The poet Vicky Hearne once offered that ing Heidegger's poetic forays (Fiction)? the "Black is beautiful" constitutes the most out language of poetry was kept close to the vest standing American poem of late modernity.2 of philosophical intention. At times, the phi As symptom, the aberrant dissociation losopher's strategy seemed transparent?he of poetry from theory reflects an increasing was keeping an enemy close or, Christianiz technicization, not to say impoverishment, of ing, he was beginning to show signs of loving critical language. This is not the place to pur the enemy, offering hospitality to refugees of sue a genealogy of lost poetry in the critical the concept. Other, equally sadomasochistic attitudes of the academy; yet poetry's failure explanations could be offered for the behav to command the scene of literary criticism ior of the relation of philosophy and poetry and the extreme marginalization that poetry through the years. Nowadays, however, the has suffered in the circles, hermeneutic or poetic word has remained largely without not, of exegetical intensities leave the mark shelter, without a recognizable address. It is of a peculiar absence on theoretical studies. as if the eviction notice served by Plato were While the near disappearance, or withdrawal, finally enforceable. of the poetic word gives pause, one does not The misery of theory without poetry is want to get caught in a dialectical spin that an event whose measure still has to be taken.1 has poetry turn up as the purity of veiled ori When he attempted to give a face to the co gin, as the hidden matrix of signification on belonging of poetry and thought, Heidegger which all theoretical work secretly depends.

This content downloaded from 70.185.113.157 on Wed, 29 Aug 2018 14:39:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 18 On the Misery of Theory without Poetry: Heidegger's Reading of Holderlin's "Andenken" PMLA

The temptation to effect such a turn exists, of a sign of?or from?the sacred. The sacred course, yet to what avail? in Holderlin is part of the intense intimacy Let me take another course and prepare of the infinite belonging of gods, mortals, an encounter, exemplary in its way, between earth, and sky. The temporality of "Anden poetry and thought. This encounter, though ken" is paradoxical because remembrance, fleeting, and already previewing the neces as Heidegger has pointed out, implies forget sity of departure, thematizes some intricacies ting. The poet has named the Ungleiche, the of the relations that thinking and poetizing absolutely dissimilar, whose task is to hold to (denken und dichten) enjoy. In the instances gether the separation between man and gods. provided by this unique colloquy, poetry and As demigod, the dissimilar does not merely thought hold and are beholden to each other, mediate, though Holderlin scholarship has even as they depart on different destinies or frequently ascribed to the figure a mediat assume the destiny of difference. Because they ing role. The absolutely dissimilar cannot are called to witness distinct regions of being, neutralize the poetic function to the point of the self-sundering couple are also responsible mediation or effect the merger of the sacred for a theory of mourning. with terrestrial destinies. The poet, attuned Let us now focus on a moment in Hei and alert, is not a vessel but a fragile being degger's reading of Holderlin's poem "Anden exposed to the danger zones of historicity and ken" ("Remembrance"),3 a moment that opens language in such a way as to maintain dis the dialogue between poetry and thought, similarity while holding together the intense proffering a Greeting. When the poet and intimacy of infinite belonging. thinker greet each other, they momentarily uGeh aber nun undgrufie." The Greeting enter an imparted domain that exposes them first establishes a distance so that proximity to time, history, and being. Heidegger seizes can occur. To acquaint ourselves with the on Holderlin with relentless adherence to his Greeting?in other words, to be greeted by own project but avoids the regions of Holder it, and welcomed?I am approaching a text linian questioning that would undermine his that I can greet only from a distance and, no appropriation. This is one reason I am in doubt, against its entrenched grain. To read terested in exploring the reading Heidegger a text is not necessarily to endorse it, as one and Holderlin share of the nonappropriative endorses a candidate running for political of Greeting. For the Greeting establishes a re fice. Once in a while, reading a text is tanta lationality between texts and historicity; it mount to submitting it to a blunting level of has everything to do with the relation of his interference, and so one rarely wants to read, tory to the poetic act. The Greeting reflects in the space of published thinking, what one the double movement of approach and with truly loves, which is to say, what one truly re drawal that issues in a passage tracking the linquishes. At any event, and despite every movement in history that defines the condi thing, I am going to move us through a work tions of historical existence. The Greeting, in officially dated 1943. Paul Celan has taught us a strictly Holderlinian sense, can be under what a date means, and Derrida has shown stood as a saying that originates the relation us that a poem that marks its date cannot be between man and the divine, marking a co absolutized: the date gives "an idiom" to be belonging set in the very task of holding the commemorated in an untranslatable but firm separation between gods and man. In other, manner (see Schibboleth). The structure of a perhaps more contemporary words, it offers a date as both singular and repeatable casts it trace of a relation to an ungraspable alterity, into self-estrangement. We will try not to lose

This content downloaded from 70.185.113.157 on Wed, 29 Aug 2018 14:39:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 12 o. i Avital Ronell 19

sight of the ghostly structure of those dates the poem. The preliminary lectures, intended responsible for appearances and torments to prepare his students for hearing the word that may or may not forgo thematization. So of poetry ("Vorbereitung des Horens auf das I take us to a work written in 1943. Holderlin, Wort der Dichtung"), begins with a lecture as designated driver of historical instauration that names "was die Vorlesung nicht will" and "poet of poets" was, as Lacoue-Labarthe 'what the lecture does not want,' referring notes (Fiction 7), set up by Heidegger: Holder mainly to literary-historical scholarship and lin's exemplariness amounts to his being willful interpretations of poetry. The encoun posed as pharmakos?ultimately, a scapegoat ter with the poetic word is preceded by this of the philosopher's project. Let us therefore prescriptive utterance: one ought to resist be anticipate what follows with our alert "kleine ing awed by the beauty of Holderlin's hymn. Hasenohrchen" Tittle rabbit ears,' as Hei Faced with the sheer beauty of the hymn, degger says, which never listen quite without we are astounded; we are prone to dissolve fear (EHD 108). with awe, for the awesomeness and beauty of Something of a dramatic pause attends the poem are undeniable. But if we were to the opening of Heidegger's reading of the remain in this mood, then, despite appear poem "Andenken." The lectures on Holder ances, we would not be awestruck, or even lin were delivered in Freiburg in the Winter struck, by the poem: we would have missed semester of 1941-42. This may send chills the encounter with it. In fact, our astonish down your historical spine. Yet these are the ment would mean that we took the poem for lectures in which Heidegger is said to have an object, one created by a poet. We would had his encrypted Auseinandersetzung with stay within the confines of the history of po National Socialism, repugning its vulgarity etic production. We would admire a product, and biologism?its crude racisms?and not a possession, and be pleased by a cultural ing the failure of the movement to fulfill what achievement. In other words, while the awe in 1934 he had seen as its exceptional promise inspired by the poem's beauty might be heart (Lacoue-Labarthe, "L'obliteration" 147-48). felt ("echt"), we would not have allowed our By now, Heidegger had gotten over himself selves to be greeted by the poem?that is to and was turning his thought to a tragic no say, met or truly struck by it. tion of history. He originally announced that What we commonly call a critical ap he would hold a seminar entitled Nietzsches proach to a work, or a close reading?or Metaphysik. Instead, Heidegger devoted the whatever it is we think we are doing when course to reading a moment in Holderlin. we welcome a word to our lives and are wel The approach to Holderlin's poem, given in comed by a word?subtends the question of one-hour lecture segments and amounting the Greeting. Whether reassured or devas to sixty-seven handwritten pages, is slow, tated by a word, which can hit us, says Kafka, motivated, one might say, by a kind of tenta like an ax in a frozen sea, we have been met tive disavowal and caution that sets a halting by the poetic Greeting. Heidegger starts un rhythm. Christopher Fynsk argues that this folding the senses of the Greeting through commentary is less violently appropriative his encounter with Holderlin?less violent of Holderlin than Heidegger's other read than before, as said?in part to underscore ings of the poet.4 Heidegger's commentary on the poetic instauration of interlocution. The Holderlin's tropes of greeting, sending, cel urge to merge desisted, poet and thinker ex ebration, and commemoration begins, in this propriate each other: they never experience version, by postponing the encounter with fusion but maintain the Differing for which

This content downloaded from 70.185.113.157 on Wed, 29 Aug 2018 14:39:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 20 On the Misery of Theory without Poetry: Heidegger's Reading of Holderlin's "Andenken" PMLA

Holderlin's poet?assuming the position love is in effect to say, "I want you to be" (14). of the Ungleiche?is a figure. They do little Because of the arbitrariness of being, because more than greet each other. The possibility "we have not made ourselves," we "stand in of Greeting opens us up to one another, but need of confirmation. We are strangers; we this still has to be learned. Holderlin's poem stand in need of being welcome" (16). It is moves us by the exceptional encounter that difficult to overlook the fact that "we" has takes place, and continues to take place, un become the stranger. I will try to resist the as der the sway of the Greeting. The repeatability similation of "we" to the stranger?Heidegger of the Greeting is built into its singular occur performs a similar operation on Holderlin's rence?something we have yet to grasp?for sacred alien, but with a foreign policy dif Holderlin's thinking of the Greeting is also a ferent from Arendt's. As some of my work work of mourning: it is part of his saying of is marked by current (or recurrent) events, I partedness (Abgeschiedenheit), or the infinite have cited "the sacred alien" to level the word separation that holds us together. But we have of Holderlin against the accelerating veloci not been properly greeted yet. ties of hostility directed against foreign bod "Geh aber nun und grtifie." I would like ies in the United States. It may seem odd to to turn, therefore, to a moment in the un state that Holderlin has already responded to precedented testimony of Holderlin's late mainstream desecrations of the alien, but it is thought?to the moment in which Holderlin so. There is always yet another arrow?einen named the modern experience of mourn anderen Pfeil, to cite one of his greatest com ing. While Heidegger's later work and many mentators, Peter Szondi?to draw from the Heideggerian discourses appear to be char corpus of Holderlin's poetry, another address acterized by a similar tonality of mourning, or unmarked destiny. Holderlin's thought of finitude is often more In the twentieth century, a subtle shift joyous and affirmative, or, in terms posed by occurred in the terms in which we locate the Jean-Luc Nancy, Holderlin appears to affirm a ethics and values of responsibility. Arendt's more abandoned experience of dispossession unpublished lectures point to the almost sub than Heidegger's texts allow.5 "Wo aber sind terranean shift in ethical investiture, to the die Freunde?" 'But where are my friends?' movement away from the concept of the citi ("Andenken"). To approach this question, I zen and toward the refugee as the figure that seek the alien in Holderlin, the figure of the carries the demand for clear ethical respon stranger or, indeed, the refugee, whether in siveness. Since Arendt, it is no longer the citi transit or detained. Some of what follows is zen, the one assumed to occupy the secured drawn out of a passage in Hannah Arendt's interior zones of a polity, who generates the reading of Kant. I cannot dwell on this frame affect and discourse of care, concern, respon but would like to indicate a few of its salient sibility, and rights; rather, the refugee?the aspects. Arendt's thought on Kant and cos foreign and shifting body with no home mopolitanism pivots on the hesitant allure of base?has become the exemplary locus for the stranger?on the possibility, that is, for any possible cosmopolitan ethics. If one un welcoming the stranger. We hesitate to love derstands this frame and the shift it portends, the stranger, and yet the stranger, the alien, one will see why I am bound to pose it in re calls for love and incomparable ethical re lation to Heidegger's anxiety around Holder sponsiveness. In the milieu of the stranger, lin's sacred aliens, including the dark-skinned Arendt asks what it is to love. Citing Augus women who appear in "Andenken." In a sense, tine's "Amo: volo ut is," she asserts that to the figure of the refugee emerging in Arendt

This content downloaded from 70.185.113.157 on Wed, 29 Aug 2018 14:39:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 12 o. i Avital Ronell 21

rereads Heidegger and discloses an empirical cal codes, then we are faced with the enigma scarring, a thematic irritation or bafflement, from which the poem cannot be wrested by in his commentaries on Holderlin's poesy.6 our acquired habits of mastery. Mastery is Arendt affirms that we are strangers not who a content but a habit. A disposition alto stand in need of being welcome: "Volo ut gether is." different from knowing is required if For our encounter with the poetic wordwe are to let the poetic word speak to us in to be what it is, it must not succumb to the the form of the Greeting. The poem ends with experience of ravishment or even transport, the famous line "Was bleibet aber, stiften die though these are very closely linked to theDichter," es announcing the remains for which sential possibilities of the Greeting. In fact,poets are responsible. Heidegger duly notes Holderlin shows how we are initially blown that the poem concerns itself with founding, away by this moment, which affirms itself, with if grounding futurity?yet, oddly, not with groundlessly ("Der Nordost wehet / Der liebste recalling the past. How can a poem dedicated unter den Winden / Mir" 'The northeasterly to remembrance point to the future, to that blows / The most beloved of winds / For me').which is to remain, and not to tropes of im We have to hold still and risk nonrecognition. permanence or to the past? The poem should resemble nothing, nothing Between the first line ("Der Nordost we grand or classifiable, nothing secured. To het") rec and the final line ("Was bleibet aber, ognize in the poem the markings of a great stiften die Dichter"), between strong gusts work is not to let oneself be greeted by and its the founding gesture of poets, something word but to grasp its perceived importance? happens, something links the wind to futu that is, to grasp it (conceptually), to account rity and the poetic word. The blowing wind for its status as a beautiful object that one thatcan opens "Andenken" announces an arrival proudly classify as canonical or as belonging and a departing that swirls into a future. Ev safely to one's heritage. Such reception giveserything is filled with a coming that arrives a sense of mastery over the object. For fromHei the future. This wind flows through the degger, this arch traced by standing "over" poem the thematically as a promising wind for object indicates error. We have to watch ships,our which is to say that it is annunciation, selves and refrain from lording it "over" reassurance, the and a gift. Opened and carried poem, talking above or even about it ("Denn by the wind, the poem does not decrease to schon ertappen wir uns wieder dabei, das the wir opposition between inside and outside, 'uber' das Gedicht reden" [EHD 24]). The content sup and form; nor does it, as wind poem, plement of mastery that going "over" a presentpoem an argument over or about a theme indicates suggests not only that we are that on it can dominate. It brings promise of a top of the material in our little bureaucratic word, the most exceptional promise ("Der academic way, whether or not we waver liebste or unter den Winden / Mir"), which, to wonder or repeat how unique this work is, butsustain itself as what it is, is not but scatters further that we have blocked the poem likefrom a promise sent into a future that will have speaking to us. In other words, by getting come on from another current, another past, an top of the material, we have not let it speak other its weather system or tempestive time that word?not let ourselves be greeted by the is ponot necessarily "mine." etic word. If we allow ourselves to be greeted The wind has opened the poem. "Geh aber by the poem instead of overwhelming it nunwith und griifie" 'But now go and greet' names our knowledge and facility for reformatting the injunction, the wish, the hope addressed to poetry according to cultural or philologi the wind. Heidegger asks if this moment does

This content downloaded from 70.185.113.157 on Wed, 29 Aug 2018 14:39:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 22 On the Misery of Theory without Poetry: Heidegger's Reading of Holderlin's "Andenken" PMLA

not threaten to turn the poem around, for ing and historicity; he goes so far as to ma that which exposed the poem to its possibility, nipulate the Greeting into a welcoming of his the wind, is told now to "go and greet," to go own work. Let us consider the inclinations of away. The Nordost is cast forth; the poet stays the Greeting more closely. behind. The Greeting means that the poet is What happens between or among the thinking back to a prior sojourn. He is over greeted? To the extent that the greeter ever come with the past. Departure and renuncia necessarily says anything about himself, he tion are somehow bound up with the Greeting. says only that he wants nothing for him Do we know what parting (Verabschiedung) is self, turning everything toward the one to (EHD 48)? Do we know what the wind's blow be greeted; everything in the Greeting is ing is, if we are not simply referring to register offered to the greeted as a sort of promise. able wind patterns or velocities? Das Wehen: a The genuine Greeting amounts to a kind coming that goes and that, in going, comes. of promising correspondence, a reciprocal Parting is not a mere leave-taking and empty promise that aims to correspond to the most staying behind. Parting is also not a mere go essential level of the other. It is through such ing away and disappearing. The poet remains acknowledgment?the greeted one, in Hei in the rustling wind, to the extent that he goes degger, is acknowledged in the nobility of his with its going. This going with should not be essence?that the other is given leave to be seen in terms of a voyage. Nonetheless, the what it, she, he is. The Greeting is a letting poet stays with the wind. Accompaniment be of things and of human beings. Greeting now shapes the Greeting. As the gusting wind indicates that something like a will is at play, is alternately a coming and a going, so is the a will of belonging to the greeted, though not Greeting a staying behind that nonetheless in the sense of Anbiederung?cowed sub flutters away, becoming a going with. missiveness?or even calculated counting "Geh aber nun und grtifie." The parting on one another. To greet does not engage an is of a peculiar sort. For the staying behind economy or offer a deal on the order of, say, of the poet under his sky and in his beloved You can count on me; I can count on you. The wind is at once a going with to other skies? simplest yet most intimate Greeting is the one for heaven, says Heidegger, is named differ through which the greeted is first and newly ently in different places (EHD 53). The going returned to his essence, as though each time with is, however, a Greeting. But let us back initiality were to emerge, discovered from the up and get some basic questions down. How word go, for the first time. Only if we think often do we greet others with the best inten through the Greeting so essentially can we tions? What is more common than a greet sense the way Holderlin lets the Greeting oc ing? What is there to think about? cur through the Nordost and its going. His We could be satisfied with the way we saying?what is said and how it is said?is de greet or fail to greet if only the secret of "An fined by the fact that it is a Greeting. Yet this denken" were not embedded in this "Geh aber Greeting is itself keyed to a more fundamen nun und gruCe," which also tells the secret of tal attunement that remains hidden to us. an inappropriable remainder. "Andenken" re "Geh aber nun undgriifie" Only by means quires of us an anders Denken, another kind of the Greeting does the greeted being stand of thinking. That is why this time, unlike revealed to its own splendor. If that which is other times, we must know what it means to to be greeted evokes splendor, this is only so greet. For Heidegger, the Greeting uttered in because the Greeting elevates the addressee to the poem has everything to do with ground this reality. The Greeting reaches into a do

This content downloaded from 70.185.113.157 on Wed, 29 Aug 2018 14:39:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 12 o. i Avital Ronell 23

main in which "truth" and "poesy" ("'Wahr though history cannot be presupposed by the heit' und 'Dichtung'")?that is, the real and Greeting but must be made. If we allow to fictional?are no longer to be distinguished the remembered one, the greeted, the entire from each other, because poetry, according essence that is his or her due, and in no way to Heidegger, lets the authentic truth of what disturb or invade her space, then we experi is true emerge (EHD 48). Everything in the ence how the remembered one on returning poem?the landscape, the tropes, figures, im does not stop at the present in order to jolt the ages?is in the end inflected by the Greeting. past back into presence. The one thus remem "Geh aber nun undgrufie." Only through bered swings over our present and suddenly the Greeting has that which is greeted be stands in the future, which comes at us and is come ("erst seiend geworden" [EHD 26]). It still somehow not fulfilled?an undiscovered now stands in the splendor of the poetic word, treasure that had been reckoned as something stands and appears so that the poet can hence belonging to the past. forth contemplate this being, although he is Gestures of contemplating and remem distant. This distance is decisive: "Noch den brance?thinking about something or some ket das mir wohl..." 'Still I think...' (Holder one?do not merely shade into the past. lin, "Andenken"). The poet's staying behind is Remembrance is more secretive in its think crucial. Staying behind is not meant to mark ing. It breezes in, coming and going, carry the isolation or even desolation of the poetic ing and delivering events that are related to act. Embodying the suchness of the Greeting, poetry and thinking, to breath, inspiration, remaining behind radiates an intimacy that and even "spirit." The Greeting of the poet must come from its own source. Neither pas discloses an aspect of thinking ("Das Griiften sive nor active, remaining behind indicates a des Dichters ist ein 'Denken'")?it announces way of going back, a returning to the source. a "thinking" secured by quotation marks "Geh aber nun undgrufie." The Nordost is (EHD 92). The poet's Greeting consists in a co-missioned by the poet to deliver the Greet thinking-toward, and here Heidegger re ing. One of the secrets of "Andenken" involves casts the originariness of the relation: it is in its relation to memory. Greeting stirs memory the relation related by the Greeting that Da and its peculiar temporal climate. Brought to sein opens itself up to a trace of alterity. The a thoughtful halt, the one who is greeted in pinch put on "Denken" could be squeezing clines toward the greeter. Though disposed to thinking's alterity, as if poetry could not in the greeter, your thoughts, leaving the present, good faith be accorded the rights of think incline not so much toward a person as toward ing. Or perhaps by collating the Greeting and what was. At the same time, thinking-toward "thinking," Heidegger aims at restricting the takes you in the other direction: one thinks destination of the gesture, clamping down on toward a past, a what-has-been-between-you. a type of alterity to be greeted?though Hei Not to pose a present in which to while but to degger would not limit the range or declen invite the present of making-present. Tapping sion of thinking's purported addressee. He the past in order to spring futurity, Heidegger would probably not go as far as Derrida, who may be thinking of Nietzsche's view of the reaches for a trace beyond the human, in the friend as the future. However, the relation of animal, but Heidegger does not restrict the the greeter to the greeted does not amount to scope of alterity made available by the Greet a politics of friendship. Something more bare ing.7 The poet is responsible for finding the and essential appears to be at stake. A his way for Dasein's embrace of alterity. Greet tory of friendship is not out of the question, ing is the poet's most essential mode of being.

This content downloaded from 70.185.113.157 on Wed, 29 Aug 2018 14:39:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 24 On the Misery of Theory without Poetry: Heidegger's Reading of Holderlin's "Andenken" PMLA

Still, the Greeting does not originate with the To explain the sudden incursion of the poet as a flex of agency or spark of will. One foreign feminine, Heidegger needs to es who transfers the Greeting must be respond tablish, before all else, the meaning of holi ing to something, to a movement already in day in Holderlin's work. He's stalling. Short clined toward the poet-receptor. on time, he goes to time, changes the time, For Holderlin, the Greeting arrives at then changes his mind. In this version of his a special time, or, we could say, the Greet exegetical claims on the poem, Heidegger ing delivers and confers the special time, the fumbles. A vocabulary of shame and disgust time of holiday, a sacred sense of timing, "an befalls the commentary, almost inexplicably. Feiertage." The poem turns the clock as if to It has been noted that Heidegger pounds the provoke the appearance of alterity. Time gets institutional forms of lit crit without mercy. opened up to a historical standstill, a tempo But Holderlin's line on brown women triggers ral clip, engaging a gesture that also brings one of the most peculiar articulations of his about a mark of gender and race. The Greeting contempt for academic procedure. Heidegger breaks open the famous lines "An Feiertagen abruptly averts his gaze from this poem gehen / Die braunen Frauen daselbst / Auf and, finding different contexts that must be seidnen Boden" 'On holidays / Dark-skinned brought into comparative perspective, pieces women walk / On silken ground.' Calendri them together like body parts of a missing cal time suspended, dark-skinned women ap corpus: this diversion, this movement of criti pear to the poet, gently giving ground to the cal thought, gives him the space he needs to holiday. The ground is padded, silkened by the express his horror, or, at least, his commen brown women, whose tread plants texture and tary automatically swerves into a patch of text on poetic ground. It is not clear to me that protest (we are barred from going inside the commentators have associated the women of man Heidegger, or from presupposing an in color with sheer poeticity, "silken ground." If teriority; maybe metaphysics is at the wheel, anything, the women seem to have served as a forcing this turn), spinning out a sudden lexi means for men to get on each other's backs, or con of doubt, shame, guilt, and disgust?all of they provide a transit by which to get back to which is displaced onto the procedure he must the figure of man. Enigmatic and unseizable, critically engage: "Fragwurdig und fast be Holderlin's rainbow coalition of purportedly schamend sind diese Hinweise, weil sie der wi human figures has faded into familiar aspects derlichen Art folgen, 'Stellen' aus Dichtungen and grammars of man. Theodor Adorno ob anzufuhren ... und sogar schuldhaft bleibt serves that in this passage Heidegger colonizes es, uberhaupt mit 'Stellen' zu 'operieren'" the other (148-52). Heidegger's rhetoric seems, 'These references are questionable and almost however, less sure than that of a colonizer, shameful, because they pursue the repulsive I would submit: it is even more perturbed manner of pointing out "passages" from po and perturbing than Adorno allows, more etry ... and to "operate" with "passages" in frazzled than Adorno lets himself imagine. deed remains guilt-laden' (HHA 61).8 Heidegger backs up to ask first, "Und warum I understand that Heidegger does not die Frauen?" 'And why women?' (EHD 59). like to resemble a scholar. I have these crises Why are women named in this initializing myself. Nietzsche certainly led the way into occurrence of the Greeting? Besides the dark scholar bashing, which he occasionally, in skinned women, the poem also hosts a woman very determined ways, backed off from. How associated with Bordeaux ("die Garonne"), ever, Heidegger's accent gets heavy: locked into the French influence marking "Andenken." an identificatory impasse, he is grossed out,

This content downloaded from 70.185.113.157 on Wed, 29 Aug 2018 14:39:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 12 o. i Avital Ronell 25

ashamed ("almost" ashamed), guilt-ridden, was retained, if only in muted form. This in and fraught with doubt when it comes to volves a reference: "Am 14. Dezember dieses comparing different moments of Holderlin's Jahres ist ein Vierteljahrhundert seit dem oeuvre. It does seem a bit hyperbolic to get all Tage vergangen, da N. v. Hellingrath als Ar worked up in order to conclude that we now tilleriebeobachter in der vordersten Linie von know what is meant in the hymn by "holiday" Verdun gefallen ist" '14 December a quarter and "women" (the conclusion being, and here of a century ago, when Norbert v. Hellingrath Heidegger resonates with early Madonna, that fell in Verdun as artillery observer of the first holidays are "days of celebration" ["'Feiertage' line' (HHA 45).10 Heidegger interrupts the sind 'Tage des Feierns'"; EHD 52]). But are initial exposition of the Greeting ostensibly "holidays" and "women" the same kind of exis to touch on Holderlin's madness. The detour tents? Holderlin scholarship begins with a cita clears the way for bringing in Hellingrath's tion from "Germanien" ("O nenne Tochter du lecture on "Holderlins Wahnsinn," as well der heiligen Erd'! / Einmal die Mutter ..." 'O as a letter that Rilke wrote to Hellingrath's daughter of the sacred earth name / Once the grandmother and finally a poem written by mother ...'). These moments conjoin women Stefan George to commemorate the young and festivity, instigating a purposeful enmesh "Norbert." After this curious caesura, Hei ing that appears to bring something like shame degger takes up the broken thread of his to Heidegger. It is almost as though the com reading by stating summarily that "[a]lies parativity that Heidegger indulges doubled for Biographisch-Psychologische hilft uns nicht the contamination of bringing-together inher zur Erlauterung der Gedichte, weil das Biogra ent in the Brautfest (wedding), the downside of phische umgekehrt erst aus dem Werk seine which invites implicit impurity. The Brautfest Deutung und Bestimmung erfahren kann" opens the field to the sacred yet tolerates the 'no biographical-psychological material can conjoining sanctioned by a wedding of incal help us to comment poems, because biogra culable alterities. Heidegger claims that ur phy, to the contrary, first acquires its meaning gency ("notgedrungen," "das Notigste" [HHA and determination from the work' (HHA 46). 45]) has driven him to throw together pieces Thus Heidegger sutures the disrupted greeting of Holderlin's oeuvre in order to arrive at only to Hellingrath. His disposal of biographical the most provisional sense of what to do with materials gives every appearance of referring the brown women on whom he has to "oper to Holderlin, however, although Heidegger ate." The operation that evolves from this effu used the thematic scar of Holderlin's madness sion of disgust, revealing a kind of compulsive to sanction an excursus on the fallen soldier ontology of shaming, dissimulates yet another of Verdun. After the secret encounter, which snag, another unavowable espousal. has allowed him to pass his intimate greeting In another passage where Not (urgent dis to the other commentator-soldier, Heidegger tress) signals, Heidegger refers to the "Krieg, returns to the flow of poetic Greeting. He re dem wir Deutschen im Sinne der aufiersten orients his commentary through the corridors Not ausgesetzt sind" 'war to which we Ger of Holderlin's wind language, bringing tidings mans are subjected in a sense of utmost Nof of an unreappropriable other. Nearing this (HHA 32).9 In the edition of Heidegger's text other, the poem at the same time prompts the that has become standard, one of his original ambiguity of going or letting go. The Greeting dedications was dropped?one meant to com is a staying behind but also a going along. memorate the fallen soldiers of World War I No news, no announcements come from in Verdun, 1916. However, another dedication the other; the Greeting just travels to the

This content downloaded from 70.185.113.157 on Wed, 29 Aug 2018 14:39:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 26 On the Misery of Theory without Poetry: Heidegger's Reading of Holderlin's "Andenken" PMLA

impossible place of the other, a place that can At this point in his commentary, Hei not be stabilized insofar as the Greeting, to degger begins to work some of his most fa carry out its temporal tasks, rides the wind and mous passages. He asks about the conditions depends on the wind's velocity not to arrive enabling the delivery of the Greeting. Where but to come and go without touching down or does the Greeting come from; how does it dropping anchor. We have been moved along land on and take off from the poetic site? by the force of Heidegger's argument, yet the What if the poet can say the Greeting only to women have been left hanging in the air. the extent that he himself had encountered "Geh aber nun und grtifie." When the a more originary Greeting? The verse with figure of the brown women comes out of no the brown women offers the completion and where, Heidegger reverts to defensive forms perfection (Vollendung) of the Greeting that of scholarship. He must perform an "opera enigmatically turns back on itself because it tion"; he is repulsed by and almost ashamed names a prior Greeting (EHD 66). Only when of the way he reads his way around these we grasp the fact that when Greeting, the poet women. He parachutes in a heroic, historical is thinking of what (or who) is greeted can commentator-soldier, as if to secure some phil we begin to understand the "remembrance" osophical ground. He has said, or wondered, poem. The exceptional reception of the Greet And why shouldn't women be named in this ing occurs with time. Holiday not only means poetic description of the land and its people? the negativity carved out by the interruption That's what makes the whole poem "lyrical" of work, but it also implies a pause, a rup and strengthens its impression on the "reader." ture with work, which allows one to pause Then he says that the poem is not to be merely for thought, to ask, to look around, to await enjoyed by whoever accidentally comes upon something else: it indicates the wakeful pre it and seeks to be satisfied by it, as if it were sentiment of wonder?the wonder, namely, a sensual delight; what needs to be done is to that there is a world around us that worlds, elucidate the meaning of holiday for Holder a world that is being and not nothing; that lin. Enticing its readers, the poem risks being things are, and we are in their midst; that we feminized?a hymn could at any moment turn are, yet we hardly know who we are, and we into a her, offering sensual delight and easy hardly know that we hardly know. Holiday puissance. It could make the reader forget understood in this way as inward pause (Inne time, which is why Heidegger zooms in as law, halten) brings us to the threshold where these interrupting the abyssal enjoyment to which things gather and thus to the neighborhood the poem entices, reinstituting the domain of of the questionable (EHD 71). The inhabitual, Father Time in the suspensive form of holiday. what we do not inhabit habitually?where we Clocked in and becoming history, the brown do not live and work?does not mean here women, after a number of detours, come to an aberration, the sensational state of excep serve as reclaimed otherness, recovered from tion or the never before seen. To the contrary, the origin?the Mediterranean (French) the inhabitual is always there as the simplest women are retrofitted to become Greek women and ownmost of beings (I am following Hei and finally, coming home, metonymized to degger closely here to convey his drift as ac Greece. The holiday is a wedding of the gods curately as possible: "Das Ungewohnliche ist and mortals, of the present and its origin, in das standig Wesende, Einfache und Eigene which the Differing must abide. But the entire des Seienden" [EHD 129]). Normalcy har network of relations and nonrelations depends bors the unexpected: solely in the habitual, on the Greeting, on its address. says Heidegger, can the inhabitual appear

This content downloaded from 70.185.113.157 on Wed, 29 Aug 2018 14:39:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 12 o. i Avital Ronell 27 within its clearest contours. To celebrate is to Entgegenkommende in seiner Entgegnung") become free of the habitual: when celebrat tunes the unsounded voice of the original ing, one honors the becoming of the inhab Greeting, establishing the immemorial pas itual. To celebrate is to listen to what poets sage through which human beings and gods call the "sanfte Gesetz" gentler law' (EHD first assume the standing of the greeted (EHD 121). Holderlin bends the law here, allowing 103). Only as those greeted by genuine festive a feminine drift and deviation.11 ness can they?the gods and mortals?recip The inhabitual is nestled in the habitual. rocally greet each other, sparking something The calendar, which appears to ensure rou like divine enthusiasm. The festiveness that tine and regularity, is actually a holiday cal the celebration encourages constitutes the endar (Fest-Kalender). Holidays are regularly original Greeting, which Holderlin in "Wie returning and sequential occurrences within wenn am Feiertage ..." calls the sacred (das the historically notable course of weeks, Heilige). Celebration of a wedding conveys months, and other times of year. For Holder the event of an original celebration. lin, claims Heidegger, the holiday is not an This original Greeting contains the hid occurrence in the context and ground of his den essence of history. That is why Heidegger tory, but "das Fest" itself provides the ground reads the original Greeting as the event, the and essence of history (EHD 75-77). Once we beginning. He understands the Greeting begin to understand this level of historical en in terms of the coming of the sacred: only actment, we will be in the decisive domain of through this Greeting can the tensional com Holderlin's poesy. Holiday and history?the ing together of mortals and gods originate. essence of history?stand revealed in the cel Two moments might be isolated so that we get ebration that enjoins us to think the relation a clearer sense of the Greeting's genesis and to our true commencement: the beginning endurance. In the first instance, the sacred logged by Greece. Another fragment, how greets, opening the possibility for the gods ever, tells us that Greece was laid to waste, at and mortals to be greeted. Still, a moment in once exalted and devastated: "Versaumet und greeting must ensure that henceforth gods erbarmlich gieng / Das Griechenland, das and mortals, as those embraced by the sacred, schonste, zu Grunde" (EHD 131). If anything, can continue to greet; in other words, the Greece as beginning also revs up the engine of Greeting must be repeated so that it can hold tragic finitude. When the memory of Greece and can moreover affirm the gesture of hold returns in Holderlin as the ground of com ing on to one another. Holding, also a gesture memorative celebration, it does so in the form of helping, is distress. Heidegger says not that and on the grounds of this zu Grunde, mark holding and helping come out of distress or ing, I believe, the beginning as an experience serve as signal and symptom of distress but not so much of ground as of going aground, that they are distress. The basis for holding in strict terms of finitude, setting the destitute one another is provided by Holderlin s Titanic ending or perfection of that which we try to hymn: "Denn keiner tragt das Leben allein" appropriate as our alien grounding, or what 'For no one can bear life alone.' Holderlin understands as the sacred alien. Holding on in this way, while never set This is not necessarily the way the wind blows to take hold forever or intended to deflate the in Heidegger's commentary, but I am follow Differing, nonetheless modifies the sense of ing a dominant, if unbridled, current in his the Greeting as pure letting go. Letting go is reading. Celebration is where the tensional still a way of holding. It maintains a fateful coming together of unlikes ("alles Einander holding whose destination somehow involves

This content downloaded from 70.185.113.157 on Wed, 29 Aug 2018 14:39:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 28 On the Misery of Theory without Poetry: Heidegger's Reading of Holderlin's "Andenken" PMLA

the brown women. Despite it all, the form of sense that the sacred (das Heilige)? the festive enunciation that emerges with celebration grounded by the celebration?stands above takes a melancholic turn, bringing together (iiber) human beings and the gods (EHD 121). while keeping apart the distress that comes Human beings and gods need each other: from the Greeting. "Denn keiner tragt das Leben allein." Now we Heidegger underscores the necessity of are getting closer (says Heidegger) to solving guaranteeing the iterability of the original the riddle of whom the Greeting?"Geh aber Greeting, without which there would be no nun und grufie"?actually targets. It speaks possibility of history. Maybe "iterability" to the celebration that has been, invoking the evokes too much of a Derridean count not yet tensional coming together that has been of the accommodated by Heidegger's commentary; gods and mortals of a Greece that has been. among other issues that could be taken up, "Doch kann einer Gewesenes grufien?" 'But Heidegger does not emphasize a split or dis can a has-been greet?' (EHD 81).12 seminative spill at the origin. Still, the Greet To some extent, the Greeting can only ing prompts complications that release some reach what is still real. When served, the of the Heideggerian knots by which it might Greeting goes after a living destination. Yet seem unduly tied. While Heidegger has been Holderlin levels his salutation at the past. Is not rightly taken to task for insisting on and at the past "das Nicht-mehr-Wirkliche" 'the no times exalting instauration, ground, and the longer-rear (EHD 81)? The poetic launch ac peculiar privileges of German destiny, it is complishes something different. It advances a possible, I hope, to see how the Greeting comes kind of Greeting that actually brings into being from the (future and past) experience of run that which seems no longer to be. The Greeting ning aground and eloquently resists any proj does not exhaust itself in sending salutations ect of fusional gathering or cited mission. The forth and away but thrives on bringing back, Greeting has to be sanctioned calendrically, on retrieving, the greeted. To the degree that as a return and an anniversary commemorat the Greeting hauls out the lost or forgotten ing a date. Thus Heidegger exposes the need past, it proves capable of an outstanding ex for a return of the holiday, which has in the ercise of bringing back?an original resurrec meantime disappeared. Historically con tion. Still, upon reflection: does what has been tained by calendrical time, the holiday leads simply revert to the past? One could hardly ex him to situate remembrance as mourning. pect that Mr. Heidegger would let such a shal Penciled in as loss and return, remembrance low notion of the past slide. Accordingly, about no longer stands opposed to joyous festivity: what has been he asks, Is it not distinguished the celebration, the festivity of the festive, is from the merely past and ephemeral by the more originary than the most joyous ravish fact that having been, it at the same time es ment and more original than mourning or the sences? Heidegger detects a remote activity of greatest affliction. The festive lays the ground essencing at play: what has been is the still for joy and sorrow, which is why it establishes essencing, if at a distance ("Das Gewesene ist an original intimacy, the cobelonging, of joy das Noch-Wesende, obzwar feme" [EHD 81]). and sorrow. One expresses itself through the Holderlin has discovered and named the re other, and both together are presented as fes mote essencing in a figure that greatly resists tive commemoration. On joy and sorrow ex lexical or exegetical comprehension. The name pressing each other, Heidegger says, rather of the distancing of this distance through its suddenly, Let us calmly confess that we know presencing is given, Heidegger avers, in the very little about all that. He retains only the line "die braunen Frauen daselbst" (EHD 81).

This content downloaded from 70.185.113.157 on Wed, 29 Aug 2018 14:39:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms x 2 o. i j Avital Ronell 29

The poet shoulders in this line a double burden glitch appears to have occurred in the im of estrangement, for not only does he turn up plicit mimetology that Heidegger pursues; an the unanticipated bustle of race and gender, identificatory hiatus appears to have been in but he also drops into a sudden platitude. If sinuated, momentarily blocking the festivities, his language usage seems prosaic, adds Hei thus putting at risk the integrity of the poetic degger (referring largely to daselbst), it should word: for a split poetic second, the women be noted that Holderlin around this time did turn into an enemy of the poetic community not shy away from reproducing unpoetic and, of "Andenken," threatening its frame. The therefore, within poetry, alienating language. radical variance in figure and signified that Heidegger thus doubles his anxiety about the occurred required an "operation" that would brown women and displaces it onto a discern bring the brown women home, settle them as ible backslide of poetic regression. Holderlin and in the home, if not in the house of being: imperturbably swerves into common usage Make them the absolute origin, the farthest and brings on the women of color. That which and nearest at once, keep them close and at seems farthest away signals through the near a distance, clean up their act, put a watch on est at hand, by means of a commonplace. Out Holderlin's poetic acting out. Let it happen off of place poetically, the most common idiom the clock, according to the tapping of a more can retrieve the remotest past. What may have essential metronome. Converting the unruly seemed vulgar and vulgate is in the end sub girls into a controlled limit of the Western limated by Heidegger into a trace of our his cartographies, Heidegger designs a closure torical origins. Recuperated, the completion of or reappropriation that, despite it all, locks the Greeting falls on the women ("Die zweite them into a schema of subjectivity. At once Strophe des Gedichtes 'Andenken' nennt in der promoted and subjected, they are thrown on Vollendung des Griiftes die Frauen"). Holiday a grid of "the arche-teleological domination has opened up an access route to the origin. of the Subject." Through this determined ges The women are named, repeats Heidegger, be ture, "the modern epoch ... has refastened cause the poet's thought vacates the habitual itself to the Greek origin and finality of the and turns toward the holiday. If the Greeting West, that is to say, has tried to reassert itself finds its essence in letting the greeted be what as the subject of its history, and as the history it is, then Holderlin is greeting that which has of the subject."14 been as the has-been in its essence (EHD 84). "Geh aber nun undgriifie." The figure of Initially, the poem may have trumped the brown women, whether on Heidegger's him. Disturbed by an unreadable tread in watch or singularized by Carl Jung, indicates "Andenken," Heidegger covers for Holder an early archetype, a primal and matricial lin's unsettling use of the brown women. The source in whose lap Western metaphysics starts poet's language usage had slackened, opening stirring. In both cases, the brown women, borders. To meet the challenge, Heidegger multiplied and dispersed by the poet, are allowed himself to regress from thinker to gathered up into a single site, a condensation, philosopher, a title he had tried to outrun. taking on the functions of a subject. What in His tack of bringing home what remains vites notice in Heidegger's dossier is the way inassimilably alien seems familiar?so fa his tactical maneuvers around the brown la miliar, in fact, that it naturalizes the foreign dies in the end conflate type with essence.13 in ways that have exhausted metaphysics In more Freudian terms?which neither Hei and me. Consternated, possibly even pan degger nor Jung would or could appreciate?a icked, Martin produces a characteristically

This content downloaded from 70.185.113.157 on Wed, 29 Aug 2018 14:39:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 30 On the Misery of Theory without Poetry: Heidegger's Reading of Holderlin's "Andenken" PMLA

philosophical move of reappropriation, aptly cut to the sacred precincts of friendship. The wiping out rough-edged remainders. Here's poet's plea, a beseeching petition, asks for a the deal, as I understand it, even though he kind of destinal granting. Supplicating for a eventually covered his tracks: the outsider is bestowal to follow the hours of celebrating, quickly promoted to insider; the alien exclu "Die Titanen" corresponds to "Andenken": sion, mastered and contained, now holds the fort of Ursprung and origin, resuming the of Indessen, gieb in Feierstunden Und daft ich ruhen moge, der Todten fices of the subject. In his political writings, Lacoue-Labarthe identifies the greatest "po Zu denken. Viele sind gestorben ... Ich aber bin allein. litical stake" of our day as the "question... of re-appropriation: is not re-appropriation?-in Please, give in the hours of holiday which one has dreamt of an end to alien And so that I may rest, the dead ation?itself the condition of possibility for To my thoughts. Many have died... totalitarianism?" (qtd. in Fynsk, "Debate" But I am alone. 103). Since 1806, philosophy has gone after the alien, stopping refugees of the cogito, This solitary place, more solitary than death, with the dubious enticement of nonalien is the same one from which in "Andenken" ation. In the language of psychoanalysis? the poet asks the poem's sole question?as but this gets snagged on different registers of if this question alone could reach the true meaning?philosophy can offer its runaways, longing of remembrance: "Wo aber sind die at moments of disturbing estrangement, the Freunde?" The friends are not "there," which illusion and comfort of noncastration. This is to say, they have not come to the place from drug takes the edge off. But poetry isn't buy which the poet is greeting. They are scattered, ing and stays in the rift. gone?or not yet in existence. Asking after In the end, the poem itself leads us to its absent friends, the poet asks about the na only question. The poem's language, restless ture of future friendship. Primed by absence and succinct, casts about for allies, interlocu and the solitary echo, the poet breaches the tors, or guardians in the form of friendship. narcissistic returns of friendship, keeping the The agitated search for the missing friend friend necessarily remote, insubstantial, and links "Andenken" with "Die Titanen" 'The out of political reach. Titans' and Hyperion: "Wo aber sind die In this way, Holderlin's plea, structurally Freunde?" This cry places the question of the unanswered?affirmatively defunct?indi finite essence of friendship at the center of cates a deliteralization of Heidegger's proj remembrance: "But where are my friends?" ects around the time of the Rectoral Address: Linked to the possible of friendship, conversa to the extent that the Greeting spans absence tion is valued as good ("Wohl ist ein Gesprach and involves an endless commemorative re gut" [Hyperion])? but it can never be coerced trieval of the friend, the political instauration or compelled. It must be given, says Heidegger never comes to be?at least, it never settles on (EHD 128). Even the preparation for a Ge a locatable or decisive site. The sole question sprach is always a gift (Schenkung), for which raised by "Andenken" illuminates only the the poet can only plead. The plea submitted poet's bereaved singularization. Friendship by the poetic word does not beg for a gift that seems less to correspond to Heidegger's un would supplant the celebration and relieve us derstanding of interlocution and friendship of the attendant preparations. The poem does or even to the Graeco-Roman and political not imitate a plea bargain or provide a short model of friendship (based on reciprocity)

This content downloaded from 70.185.113.157 on Wed, 29 Aug 2018 14:39:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 12 o. i Avital Ronell 31

than to fall on the asymmetry and infinity Notes of nonreciprocity and nonrequital of which This article was drawn, in response to Bruce Smith's invi Derrida writes in Politics of Friendship.15 If tation, from a work in progress, "Politesse," which traces the poet accomplishes the mediated instau the intersections of politics, ethics, and aesthetics in the ration in history of a communal form of hu works of Marx, Celan, Levinas, and Derrida. All unat tributed translations are mine. man existence (Menschentum), then this may 1 Not everyone loves poetry. But among creatures of well occur solely in the manner of "the un writerly being, its repudiation becomes something of an grounded grounding and the donation out uninterrogated symptom. When setting himself the task of excess" that Heidegger, in "The Origin of of writing the famous tract La haine de lapoesie ("Hat the Work of Art," identifies as modalities of ing Poetry"), Georges Bataille makes no bones about the negative affect that the poetic word elicits in him. a poetic founding of truth" (52). Still, the un 2 In conversation, at Riverside, California, around requited question argues for an even more 1984. Hearne is the author of several philosophical and fragile establishment of community, pointing poetic reflections on horses, dogs, and animal training, to what abides?an utterance that invites be including Adam's Task: Calling Animals by Name. ing to reveal itself as open and empty. To the 3 My discussion of Heidegger's commentary draws on two editions of it, Erlauterungen zu Holderlins Dichtung extent that the Greeting can be understood (EHD) and Holderlins Hymne "Andenken" (HHA). Hei as a trope for the poetic word, then its foun degger's relation to this poem has influenced the course dational capacities remain, in Holderlin, ever of literary theory in significant ways. A selected bibliog precarious and questioning. raphy includes Allemann; Buddeberg; Halliburton; Har ries; de Man; White; and many others. Bound to the impossible task of com 4 See Fynsk's reading of the reflexive act of remem memorative retrieval, "Andenken" persis brance in "Holderlin's Testimony: An Eye Too Many Per tently reorients the discussion concerning a haps" (Heidegger 174-230). The next several paragraphs, decisive locality and the placing of the po to the extent that they include German passages, follow Heidegger's argument closely, for heuristic and pedagogi litical, blowing apart the premises on which cal reasons.

one could build a substantial work or project 5 See in particular Le sens du monde. of asserted nonalienation and secured re 6 See "Heimkunft" and "Andenken" (EHD 4-187). turns?a political work or project mirroring 7 Derrida's lectures at New York University in 2000 the narcissistic totality of a state. The Greet and 2002 aimed at the animal other and philosophy's stuttering intolerance around extreme alterity. His 2004 ing, terribly close to "hail" and its evil twin, lectures envisage "the sovereign and the beast." heil, cannot prevent aberrant variations but 8 The passages inspired by and surrounding the brown seeks to establish in Holderlin's work a lacer women disappear in other published and edited versions able communication with the passing or the of Heidegger's commentary. However, even in the most parted without zoning a place for settlement. whited-out pages that remain, the exegetical language hems and haws, showing signs of alternating anxiety and indif Greeted and greeting, the poet stands on re ference. According to Ulrich Baer, who is completing an ar sponsive alert, clear about the limits of po ticle on Rilke's poetic feminism, Holderlin's brown women etic dwelling on earth. The spark of finitude reappear in Rilke's poem "Aschanti," where they are con illuminates the momentary passage of the trasted to the "helle" people?the bright, white folks?or, in some instances, I would suppose, the people from hell. Greeting's destinal velocity. Since the day be Again, this passage does not appear in all editions of fore Greece perished, plenitude has belonged the "Andenken" commentaries. Someone removed it. to the tracts of fictioning. States of security, This dedication was suppressed in subsequent editions. windswept, reveal the nature of illusion. There will be no gathering home, even if the Heidegger himself frequently bends the law to in vite a feminine inclusion. He does so when smuggling poet has projected a homeward turning. in the figure of the teaching mother in What Is Called Thinking?, who sets the scene for the nonpolemical com portment of true thinking (48), and when changing "Das

This content downloaded from 70.185.113.157 on Wed, 29 Aug 2018 14:39:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 32 On the Misery of Theory without Poetry: Heidegger's Reading of Holderlin's "Andenken" PMLA

Gedaechtnis" to "die Gedaechtnis" in his lectures on Hearne, Vicky. Adams Task: Calling Animals by Name. memory and the feminine ("Satz"; see also the first lec New York: Random, 1987. ture of What Is Called Thinking?). Heidegger, Martin. Erlduterungen zu Holderlins Dich 12 Emmanuel Levinas has often objected to Hei tung. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1982. Vol. 4 degger's tendency to favor das Heilige, the sacred (e.g., of Gesamtausgabe. Sacre). This point was driven home by Derrida in his -. Holderlins Hymne aAndenken.y>Frankfurt am Main: discussion in Helene Cixous's seminar at the Sorbonne Klostermann, 1982. Vol. 52 of Gesamtausgabe. Part 2. on 2 June 2004. In Heidegger's hierarchy, the sacred Vorlesungen 1923-1944. indicates a place, rootedness, gathering?congealing -. "The Origin of the Work of Art." Poetry, Language, defensively against figures of dispersion, interruption, Thought. Trans. Albert Hofstadter. New York: Harper, separation, wandering, loss. Ever since Levinas's danger 1971. Trans, of "Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes." signal started flashing, it has been impossible to ignore -. "Der Satz der Identitat." 27 June 1957. Von der Sa the homecoming that das Heilige flags for Heidegger. che des Denkens: Vortrage, Reden und Gesprdche 1952 13 Lacoue-Labarthe's work is devoted in large part to 1969. Ed. Hartmut Tietjen. Bayerischer Rundfunk. the crucial significance of type in philosophy. See Typog -. What Is Called Thinking? Ed. Ruth Nanda Anshen. raphy: Mimesis, Philosophy, Politics. New York: Harper, 1968. 14 Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy, "Opening Address" Holderlin, Friedrich. "Andenken." Holderlin, Gedichte 117. See their discussion for a full treatment of this ma 194-96. neuver and its philosophical implications. -. Gedichte. Ed Friedrich Beifiner and Jochen 151 have tried to pursue this logic of friendship in Schmidt. Frankfurt am Main: Insel, 1969. Vol. 1 of "Kathy Goes to Hell: The Scandal of Kathy Acker's Death." Werke und Briefe. -. "Germanien." Holderlin, Gedichte 153-56. -. Hyperion. Holderlin, Gedichte 293-460. -. "Die Titanen." Holderlin, Gedichte 213-16. Works Cited -. "Wie wenn am Feiertage_" Holderlin, Gedichte 135-37. Adorno, Theodor. Jargon der Eigentlichkeit. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1974. Vol. 6 ofGesammelte Schriften. Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe. La fiction du politique. Paris: Allemann, Beda. Holderlin und Heidegger. 2nd ed. Borgois, 1987. Trans, as Heidegger, Art and Politics. Trans. Chris Turner. Oxford: Blackwell, 1990. Freiburg: Atlantis, 1954. -. "^obliteration." Le sujet de la philosophie: Typogra Arendt, Hannah. Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy. phies I. Paris: Aubier Flammarion, 1979. Ed. Ronald Beiner. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1982. Baer, Ulrich. "Diktat des Daseins: Ein Rilke-ABC." Un -. Typography: Mimesis, Philosophy, Politics. Ed. Christopher Fynsk. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1989. published essay, Oct. 2004. Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe, and Jean-Luc Nancy. "Open Bataille, Georges. La haine de la poesie. Paris: Minuit, 1947. ing Address to the Centre for Philosophical Research on the Political." Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy, Re Buddeberg, Else. Heidegger und die Dichtung. Stuttgart: treating 107-20. Metzlersche, 1953. -. Retreating the Political. Ed. Simon Sparks. Lon de Man, Paul. "Heidegger's Exegeses of Holderlin." Blind don: Routledge, 1997. ness and Insight. 2nd ed. Minneapolis: U of Minne Levinas, Emmanuel. Du sacre au saint. Paris: Minuit, sota P, 1983. 246-66. 1977.

Derrida, Jacques. Politics of Friendship. Trans. George Nancy, Jean-Luc. "Hyperion's Joy." The Birth to Presence. Collins. London: Verso, 1997. Trans. Brian Holmes et al. Stanford: Stanford UP, -. Schibboleth. Paris: Galilee, 1992. 1993. 58-81. Fynsk, Christopher, transcriber. "Debate." Lacoue-Labarthe -. Le sens du monde. Paris: Galilee, 1993. and Nancy, Retreating 100-04. Ronell, Avital. "Kathy Goes to Hell: The Scandal of Kathy Ack -. Heidegger: Thought and Historicity. Ithaca: Cor er s Death." Lust for Life. London: Verso, forthcoming. nell UP, 1986. Szondi, Peter. Der andere Pfeil: Zur Entstehungsgeschichte Halliburton, David. Poetic Thinking: An Approach to Hei von Holderlins hymnischem Spdtstil. Frankfurt am degger. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1981. Main: Insel, 1963. Harries, Karsten. "Heidegger and Holderlin: The Limits White, David A. Heidegger and the Language of Poetry. of Language." Personalist 44 (1963): 5-23. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1978.

This content downloaded from 70.185.113.157 on Wed, 29 Aug 2018 14:39:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms