That is to Say Meurice

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THAT IS TO SAY

Hid' Potics


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THAT IS TO SAY

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That Is to Say: Heideger Poecswas originally published in French

in 1996 under the ieC'est dire Potqle de Heideger

1996 by Editions Galile

A version of Chapter 8 was previously published inLprit crtelr35 (Autumn 1995, pp 3-17)

in the issue tied Bond Aesthecs?and edited by Rodolphe Gasch.

ssistance for the translation was provided by theFrench Ministry of Culure.

Stanford University PressStanford Califoia

1998 by the Board of Trustees of theLeland Stanford Junior University

Printed in the United States of America

P data appear at the end of the book

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Contents

bbreviaions with aNote on the anslaon

Before Saying: Foreword 1

Hermes' Gi 22

2 The Eye of the Word 43

3 The Path to Language 60

4 The Essence of Poetry 80

5 The Witness of Being (nenken) 102

6 In (the) Place of Being, Antigone(The eraitthe Polis) 121

7 On the Origin (of rt) 149

8 Step (Not) Beyond 178


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VHl Content

9 The Dierent Step: FromHeidegger to Derrida 95

Farewell 222

t 237

r t 255


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Abbreviatios, with a Note o

the Traslatio

The followng abbrevated ttles are used throughout the bookto refer to Hedegger's worksIf a reference s gven wth to agenumbers, the rst number refers to an exstng Englsh translaton

and the second to the relevant German text necessary, I havemoded exstng Englsh translatons so to reman consstentwth the French translatons gven by the author, for examle, andwth hs commentes)When no Englsh translaton s cted, thereference s to Hedegger's German-Trans

The followng books by Hedegger are lcted from the

tagabe Klosterman); Eruerungen zu Her/ins Dichg (1981)

2 Unerwe zur Spche (1984)

3 A der Ehrung des Denkens (1983)

39 Herns Hymnen Geanien und Der Rhein(1980)

52 Her/ins Hymne ndenken (1982)

53 Herins Hymne Der Iser (1984)

54 Parmenides (1982)


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x rean

Herak (1979)

Beirge zur Philsphie (1989)

The following German ed itions of additional works b Heidegger are also cited

EM

eni

Sa

Schelling

BT

Sju

hinking

ha

D

esn

Ein

eni und Drenz (Neske 1977)

Der Sa vm Grund(Neske 1957)

Schellin bhandlung ber s Wsen s Menschchen eihei (Mx Nemeyer 1971)

Sein und Zei ed. (Mx Nemeyer 1967)

Surs blngual edton edted and translated by Vezn (Le Roher 1992)

Unerwe zur Spche (Neske 1959)

hes Denken (Max Nemeyer 1984)

as sdie Philsphie (Neske 1956)

Zur Sache des Denkens (Neske 1969)

Zur Seinsage (Klostermann 1956)

Citations are also drawn from the following Englishlanguageeditions of Heideggers works

BT

ieche

Being and ime Trans. John Maquarre andEdward Robnson. New York: HarperCollns 1962.

ieche Vol. I Trans. Davd Ferrell Krell. NewYork Routledge 196.

Quesns Quesns Vol. Trans. J. Beaufret et al. ParsGallmard 1976.

y On he y Lauage. Trans. Peter D. Hertz.New York HarperCollns 1982.


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Pan

Pe

bbeviao

Panenides Trans A Shwer and R RojewzBloomngton Ind: Indana Unerst Press,

Xl

Pe Lanuage hugh Trans bert HofstadterNew York: HarperCollns 7


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THAT IS TO SAY

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Before Saying: A Foreword

How are we o undersand his foreword? Bee saying? Bu before saying, he word be, and even he word saying, willalways have been saidhere is no before o saying, in ha be

fore we hear and undersand an original silence (if ha can beheard), somehing like God's original hough before creaing heworld he word has no before nor, a ioi, does i have a foreword, a beforesaying

I ake is somewha precious (fore)word from Mallarm's Fore word o he eatise of the b. In his Foreword, i is already aquesion of noing oher han saying, and even of Saying, capi

alized, of Saying be evething: "Saying, before everying, dreams and sings, is found again in he poe Before every hing, Saying wl have been here (o be said), and ha, even ifhe rs word of his Foreword is evething: "Everying hroughou his noebook is organized wih a view in mind, e rueone, ha of e ile (Mllarm 858 If we in urn mus proceed in view of his view, we mus begin wih he beginning, ha

is o sa he ile Cest ie (hat to ay) . How are we o undersand is ile, as a quesion? Bu is i in fac a quesion? Sincehere are no hyphens, we can also undersand i as an armaionyes, ha (wha is a issue, he hing ise so o speak) is o be saidI is o be said, jus as i is o come, o be done, o be seenBu, o sar wih, abou wha do we say ha i is (abou) o be

I


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said? About to do or to say what? About to start with what? Noing, perhaps, but simply about to start, about to beginWe will

have to return, here, to another Foreword, that ofLa chose me,ifI might be permitted to return to mysel to cite myself "Yes,how say it, how, begin with, to say it Thus ended theForeword, upon the injunction to say (it) [e e] , that is, beginning with SayingHere, e is understood just as much asa noun (Saying [e De] , to begin with) as it is as a verb (to begin, to say [e e]). hich comes rst, the noun or the verb? nd

what is saying? It is there, perhaps, that what will not be a Treatiseof the Verb (nor of the Noun) begins, what will simply be the demand to begin to say (it) This is an almost impossible p oint of departureThe verb remains in the innitive [e], and the nounrefers to an indeterminate "it ([e e say it], the thing it self ) , that is perhaps without nameA simple neutral pronoun, before the noun, but nnouncing it, promising it, without, how

ever, giving itFor the name is not the terminus of the voyage onthe contrar it is but a place be passed through, transitory and,above all, transitive (I ws about to say transitional) In all of theabove, the "that is to sa is neither said nor givenEverything remains to be said, even in saying "everything It is a white stonemaredby the memory of a dawn to come, of the whiteness of thehesitating early morning it is to be said, and in the ellipses we

notice another title conceived of by Mlm - [Cst], "the titleof an interminable study and series of notes that I have in myhands and that reigns in the dep ths of my spirit 3 The study is interminable, because who could thin of having nished with Be ing and, even more, with the impossible tas of saying it? But issaying "it is the same thing s saying "Being ? 1s Being to be said?Is it not rather to be thought? There is a world of dierence there

even if thining does not go without saying, the inverse has taen place only too oen Thus, we say, "I said it without thining, and, in l rigor, this manner of speaing describes our habitual way of taling If we had to thin about every word, soon we would no longer be able to utter a single one, or only one-theWord, the nal word


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Being, thinkingImmediatel the nme of the man who asked,"hat Is Clled hinking? springs uphat calls us there, if not

the "it is, that is to say, Being? Yes, the name Heidegger weighsheavily in this question, whether we like it or notd it is thusthat we say that "contemporary thought never stops being explained through HeideggerIt can think with or against him, butrarely without him (Zarader 13. But has it not been thus with lgreat thinkers? hinking is always thinking wth (or agat), andeven thinking out is still thinking with

But is Being a question? sit even? And is "Is Being a questiona question? Does putting a question mark at the end of a sentence suce to make a question? Or is not the questioning of whichHeidegger (up to a certain point) made the supreme gesture of thought but a manner of saying? By way of an answer, I come toRen Char's omates chseus "he interrogative response is theresponse of Beinghe response to a questionnaire is but a fasci

natioof thought (Char516. In this division, and that also means hierarchization, beteen a good and a bad response, I amsure of neither the order of precedence nor even the pertinence of the distinctiono be sure, Being is not a questionnaire to whichwe respond ith a Yes or a No, a rue or a FalseHow, then, canwe speak of "Being's response ? How woud Being respond? hisis exactly like the story of the two lunatics "Are you going sh

ing? No, I'm going shing! Oh, good, I thought you were goingshingFishing er Being, we in fact risk being tken in, or mystied,

at any rate, we who thought we would reel it . he question al ways prsupposes its own meaning, the meaning of Being, and,rst of l, the meaning of being a questionIt is lie sking a stone for directions, even i le Hermes' stone, 4 it points out the right

pathIn order to question, we must lready know what a questionis and must dispose of the means to say t I see quite clearly whatChar means: the response to the questionnaire puts a term toquestioning, whereas the "interrogative response revives ques tioning, sharpens it, makes it more pointed, more thinking, more"pious (omm). Most of the time this response [oe] is but a


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replication [pons], an echo that has been sent back and that is interrogative only in coming aerads But if there is a question of

Being, it cannot come aer Being; it can only precede Being Butnothing can precede Being (if not Being)We might well say thatthese to "but's cancel each other out d even i late in thegame, Heidegger renounces questioning in preference to "simplelistening, the same procedure is carried out there Can Being beherd (to spea)? Do we not always lend it speech? From thatpoint on, what is the dierence beeen the response and the

question? The to lunatics pronounce their soliloquies along thebans of the waterThey ae the same in having been but the in

vention of an author, himself perhaps no less crazy But since hewll not give his name, he saves ce

No one has really posed the question-of Being We have indeed asked its name, its identity, where it w going, om where it

was coming, in short, all the questions one normally puts to a

stranger But we have forgotten to ask it its meaningTrue enough,this is loaded question-these are not things one tls aboutThe question probably mes no sense, at least not if we ae waiting for a clear answer hat do you want Being to answer? Youyoursel in its place you wold be hard put to answer, wouldnt you? "Meaning, you see, would be its "interrogative, or simply its rogative, response (In the past, the rogations named a

prayer procession instiuted on Saint Mars Day and the threedays preceding cension But prayer, supplcaton, is not a tormented plight [supplce, which rhymes with delight [lces] in apoem by Nerval that I cannot put my nger on at the moment)Indeed, that is the whole question"Meaning is not simply aquestion of orientation, even though we must orient ourselves inthought First, we must discover the meaning of the question (of

meaning)Would this be something like a nal word that,short of responding, stops us upon the slippery path of the that to say? But the nl word, if it comes, will ways be the word ofthe end, of the end of everything, including the word Yet, to begin with, how cn the word still be to be sd? This cannot be:even Being (or its meaning, or the forgetting of its meaning) wl


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never be the nl word. Even the word wo word, one mongothers, clling ll the others nd thus hving lost ny privilege over

them ht would not be simple word? Perhps this is the question tht guided Heidegger But towrd [] wht? Not word,but the thing itsel unsid, but to be sid, to be thought Perhpshe ws not led towrd "wht but towrd the towa itsel the"to of the tobesid5 This is omethng ee ltogether, sys Mllrm, nother beginning towrd which thought without nmedvnces: "The metmorphosis [of thought] tkes plce s mi

grtion in which one plce is le for nother . The rst plce isMetphysics And the other? I leve it without nme 42,138 Metamoho is perhps not the right word either. Is there,in fct, nme for this displcement? The other (plce) must bele without nme This strtegy is perfect, since ll nmes comefrom the rst, bndoned plce we will see in connection withH6ldelin, to the extent tht this opertion rests upon the force of

the nme (Nennk), this other plce, for lck of nme, willnever tke lce or will remn the other of the thought of theSme. thought i the thought of the Sme, in tht it thought.Prmenides foresw this bout thought, nd nothing will brekthis lince, this nuptil ring wedding Being to thought, not even thinking of the other tht, if it wnts to be thought, must be theother of the Sme. Thus, "the thought (of Being) will be ble to

rech this "other plce only in renouncing ite which is to rech constitutive limit. Arrived there, it would cese to be (thought,nd the thought of the Sme). At the ame time, this plce isthoughts proper, but inccessible (except metphoriclly), plceht, then, is the "metmorphosis if not tht poetic voyge thtdvnces towrd . . let's sy, wht withdrws every rrivl ndevery shore? It is bche . tht is to sy? Deth? True enough,

"poetic (or metphoricl) deth is not "rel deth, which is ll themore dicult to nme thus. But in this gp, this dierence between one deth nd the othe spce (s white s stone) ismrked tht digs into thought to the point of opening it up to itsother, its other ion In his poetics, which is the ultimte orrst gesture of thought driven to nd the nme of the other tht,


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hoever, is ithout name, Heidegger introdued thought into theother plae, but not neessarily the plae thought had in nd, not

the plae of Being, nally delivered om its metaphysi shado,but only the plae of metaphor. Or rather, Being [le] hs ideedreahed us, but in the (poeti) mail [ bote es] . . . .

Letters in pce of Being? With this postal forarding, hat ane hope for, that Being return to us ith aknoledgement ofreeipt e are to sign in order to erti that it is indeed Being?But ould not the "thinker of Being (assumng that he named

himself thus) turn in his grave upon hearing me play in ay?A nie metaphor....If by "Heidegger e do not onl understand mortal remains but a cous, for example that of the esamtausgabe, the denitive edition that is to be ompleted posthumously-s though to from his hnds-then "Heidegger, bothname and loli might el ome out ompletely turned over bythis plough, overturned into a verse (versus) or a poetis. this so

iliit? We ill have done nothing but read the other side (verso) ofthe page, and ho are e to read it if not by tuing it over?(RSV Is that to return or to respond?) That Heidegger's lerkheld onto the page ith both hands so as to let us read nothing ofit is only fair (play): perhaps he kne that there is nothing, nothing but a blank spae, on the other side. But this grip must beloosened the day that it beomes the grip of a dead m-or the

grip of a text, hih, as Heidegger's handyw (of art), it illhave been from the beginning.Handyork, an allegorial hand,this is the hand ting the plae of Being, one more hand takingHeidegger's plae. Oering a hand to Being, this turn of phrasegures ho, here nd there, the thinker eaes himself in order totake the ditation of Being literlly, gives ay or plays dead, takesBeing's plae, even though ithout him the game annot be

played.He ats as if (he ere no longer anything at all): his is ametaphorial, displaed death, and that makes all the dierene.Let me be sure that I am maing myself understood here. (This

injuntion ould itself demand that it be understood.) We mightbe surprised by the fat that Heidegger made the experiene ofdeath death (that is to say, s hat?) the pivotal question ofDa-


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sen, to the extent that Den is never dened in relation to "lifeIn the horizon of Beingthere "dying is not simply ceasing to

live; it is always something else Or rather it is not a thing noteven dying but Being towadeath just as saying is not simplysaying but Being toward saying This is even the secret of e "itis its con (chen) inasmuch as it contains precisely no secretsIn a letter Malarm condes his secret as a man of letters "Everyone has a Secret in him Many die without having found it and

will never nd it because dead neither it nor they exist any

longer I died and was brought back to life with the key to the precious stones of my nal spiritual casket The conjunction of thesetwo sentences explodes the transition from one death to the otherWe (everyone or many of us at any rate) die without havingfound the Secret-death proper Inversely only he who is alreadydead can not die but be towadeath In Mallarm there is anecho of the dialectic or of the fable of the turtle and the hare; the

turtle always nishes st because it has doubled itself-its otherits imperceptible (better) hal is already positioned at the nishline This is to say that the secret is always like Punchinellos secret How can one say, "I dead? Therein lies the whole secret perhaps (let us weigh our words carelly) we can only say itand not be it When we ae dead we can neither say so nor die Isthis what Heidegger "wanted to say when he said "When death

comes it disappears Mortals die death in life In death mortalsbecome mortal?Everything is thus played out in the dierence between one

death and another The rst is what we common mortals calldeath in order to see it at work in others parents friendsstrangers it makes no dierence; the "fact of death remains justas bal and unthinkable Death happens-to others never to

onesel This is how Heidegger described the "improper relationto death in Beng an me, the "one dies The other death ismine the one no one can take from me my inalienable property(even if! die for something else) even more so than my liberty ormy life which is as much as saying my Being But my death is secret since far om being mine I belong to it toward it with


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out knowng t most of the tme. The trck s belevng that n thenme of the secret (a name that s common to the core of ts very

bengmne) I become mmort. Ths s salvaton through thework (as death, death s not mne, but I must "be dead, eacemyself as myself n order to gve brth to t), whch has alwaysbeen lteratures secret. Snce Homer, the only mmortalty s ctve. It s the mmortalty of cton tsel of the proper name. I amded n that I have become the other who can say so. By the sametoken, the death that comes there only ever comes ctvely, n the

sense that comng s n the rst place (to begn wth) comng tospeech. That the death that comes there (to speech) be allegorcalremoves nothng of ts power; on the contrary, t ncreases t nths doublng. It testes to a lmt, and t s n ths relaton to thelmt that what Hedegger calls appropraton (Eeigni) s shown.The secret to appropraton resdes n ts other sde, depropraton(Enteii) whch one promses the comng of the Proper, but

on as a promse. Beng toward death, the mortal loses and thusnds hs own dentty, the eksstence that resdes precsely nnothng, has no consstenc does not even belong to tse Stll,

we must keep our heads, f only to be able to ay ths death. To actas f I were dead, and thus to sng the "songs of the Departed(k), I must keep one foot on the ground, f! can say so, theother beng already n the grave. Thus, the voyage to death can

only be a return to that place from whch no one s supposed to return, at least not n ther rght mnd-the "madness of an named sprt s never "smple alenaton. Just as a dead person cannever say that he or she dead, a madman w not say he s mad.Or f he does, then ths s another madness.

Ren Char says somewhere that there s but one death, the goodone, f t can be put thus, the one om whch we do not recover.

How s one to recall a "self to what wll no longer be able to saythat t s or that t s nothng, unless by magnng t as returnng-from the dead? Is t n ths return, ths ture anteror (or thecondtonal, as when we say, "I wsh I were dead) that the secretof sayng, but also the derence that mantans the letter [ ee]and Beng [e] seprate an unted, are mantaned? Both the


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letter nd Being nme the Sme: Being is the ction of the lettersince the letter crries the signture of the very hnd of Being But

the dierence between them inscribes itse psses into the SmeBeing hs neither hnd to sign with nor mouth or voice withwhich to spe (not even to sy tht it cannot speak). Being lwys needs n other: mortls humn beings (you me) whose properness lie tht of the letter is to hve nothing proper to them Thedierence between the two deths is n eect of this strnge prop erty tu in the thought tht cretes ctions: spiritul deth is

the oly one tht is thinble no mtter wht tes plce but it isprecisely the deth tht never tes plce or tht only tes plcectively which does not diminish it but situtes its proper plcein metphor in poetic metmorphosis To conclude we cn never rrive t wht Btille clled "the impossible bottom of things since the thing itsel s such reses to be grsped other thn metphoriclly in the imge for exmple of the "thing itself

This is nother wy of sying tht the other side of the pge (the"other plce) will remin cryptic It does not forbid but rerclls for deciphering on the condition tht we now tht the hidd en letter will lwys be missing or tht this letter will lwys hveto be (re)invented

There is no thought except t the limit of wht forbids thoughtThere is no thought except s the experience of pori the pssge

through wht blocs pssge Deth is one nme for this impossibility nd s such it must lwys be thought s such impossibil ity even though it cnnot present itself s such But tht lsomens tht we must thin the "s such dierently must thin it in the experience of its impossibility which mes possible ll identiction with the sel for exmple deth s deth (nd notsimply s the end of existence) tht is s simultneously impossi

ble in the horizon of Being nd presence an ming this very horizon possible At once impossible nd ming (the) possible deth opens up nother experience of both nitude nd simul tneity of the "t the sme time tht is lwys doubled by its other time To elborte concept tht would not only be trnscendentl (in the Kntin sense of the conditions of possibility of


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experience,which are at the same time the conditions ofpossibil-

iy of the experience of objects) butalso leadt an aporia (since

heconditions of impossibility of experience also make it possible),to laborate such a concept in the end amounts to experiencinghe limits of the very concept of experience. Put dierently, itamounts to mking a concept of the experiencing of the aporia ofthe concept of concept. Every concept is always hollowed out fromthe inside not only by its other, its double (represented metaphysically as its negative trace, its shadow, which always inscribes itself

in the integrity of the concept "proper), but by that innite andyet in-existent intervl that inhibits the concept om sticking toitself and closing its identity upon "itsel including upon theconcep of identity, which lways presupposes a dierence thatcannot be expressed such.

How, then, are we to think the title Heiee Poetics? hatdoes that title have to say or to say again? But rst, we shod re

cite the title, that is to say, cut it up, put it beteen quotationmars, and thus put it into question as well: "Poetics? "Heidegger's Poetics? Who would have nown Heidegger was a greatpoet? Aphilosopher, perhaps, although some doubt even that; buta poet, no! We nd something like poems in his oeuvre, brieftexts, but these are only exceptions, hors d'oeuvres (outside theoeuvre), we might say, compared to the main dishan austere

thought, rigorously philosophical through and through, even (orespecially if it reses this description and evokes the "end of philosophy. But perhaps "poetics signies a theory of poetry, likeAristoe's poetics. Heidegger in fact wrote a great deal about poetry, or rather (the restriction is considerable) about the essence ofpoetry. It is with the essence that he began, in his lecture on"H6lderlin and the Essence of Poetry. But it is also with the ques

tion of the essence that he remained. Does that mean that beyondH6lderlin there is no recognition of any poet, to the point that forHeidegger H6lderlin represented the only poet worthy of thename (or rather of that een more worthy name of ichte)? Heidegger also wrote on Tral and Rilke,8 and I would be the last toignore that. But whatever the greatness of these poets, they never


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Forewor

achieve Hldelis stature. They are expressly not the "pt of thepoet. We must therefore ask if Hlderlin is not but a pseudonym,

and must ask how it happens that he represents the sole exampleof a genre without precedent (nor successor, for that matter), inshort, without exemplarity, a true hap in history. He representsa genre outside genre. Such a genre would situate Dchng less asa literary genre than outside of any recognized site, outside literature and the law of genres. The simple thought of ths poetry,then, would have nothing to do with a "poetics in the traditional

sense, even though Hlderlin himself speaks explicilythe technical level of the Ancients . . . .

Perhaps it makes no sense to want to explain a privlege. A privilege cannot be justied, is not even an exception tolerated by therule, because it puts itself forward, purel as being in itself the law,dvine law. This is what seems to have taken place we cannot evensay that Heidegger interpreted Hderlin. No, he encountered

as his Law, hs destin and we argue neither with destiny nor withGod. We listen to their Word, transcribe it. We might concede,perhaps, that for the others who have not yet experienced the Revelation, enlightenment is necessary. I caricature, but barely. I havealready spoken of a cannibism of interpretation, but I must re

vise my terms, for it is not a matter of devouring the other but ofappropriating the same; and moreover, it is not the living body

that serves as food but the bones names, or the part belonging tothe dead. In a sense, to speak of "Heidegger's Poetics is to budthe tomb of poetics. Let us be clear about this all interpretation is

violence, unless it is but a paraphrastic rephrasing. And yet, evenin this case there is violence, the worst knd of violence, that violence that believes it makes the other speak of and from himselbelieves it lets what he carried in himself without knowing it be

born "naturally. This is something of the Socratic method, butalso of the navet of a Heidegger who, whle putting in otherwords what the poet could on have said poeticay, at the end ofthis interminable explication pretends to "eace himself before thepure presence of the poem, as though he lacked nothing butspeech (as we say of certain animals). I would not linger over this


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stang mthod (that ss ths nam and pfs th nam of"path, whch s n spcts mo potc) f t only aos fom

bad fath o om "phlosophc supoty What s dcsv s l ways th laton to th oth uch. In th pst, phosophysought to duc th oth to ts mcy though nothng oththan th foc of unvsazng dscous, of whch th phlosoph hld hmslf to b th sol psntatv, th only on mpod to spak, o, n oth vson of th dscous of thmast, n makng th oth a smpl momnt of th On, not yt

and nonthlss ady bfohand pssd ov and appopatd.W could say that Hdgg scaps ths shotcomng (thoughnot always) n postng th oth as th ducbly oth und thnam of Dchten. Ths oblgs hm to post th On wth whchth oth s n lation as oth than t was n "mtaphyscl (lt'ssay, to mov quckly) latons. It s thus that h wl spak ofDenken and vn of "oth thought, nstad of phosophy,

ason, dscous, tcta. Ths s an audacous and vtuus appoach, bu f t dos not com down to th sam (thng), t ladsback to th phlosophcal atttud n laton to ts (h, "potc)oth by psupposng that th s a common lmnt btnthm, and that ths lmnt s one: h, ayng. Th psdngunty n th laton s always th on (th st), whch wll saywhat th oth s, even t n the nae of the othe. Thus t s th

on and t alon that wll mast tty, pcsly n postng t assuch, n th lmnt of Bng, of th on, of manng.Lt us ad, fo xampl, ths sntncs takn fom he e

ence of hought:

The poeti harater of thoght is still eiled

Where it dsloses itsel it sall resembles the topia of a hf

poeti nderstandngBt a thinking Poetis (denkende Dichen) is in trth the topolog ofBeing It assigns to Being the plae of its essene [3 84].

Hdgg st accods to th "potc a pow that th phlosophcal tadton has sd t snc th xcluson of th pots fom


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the (ide City by Plato But to defend himself against the phiosophic accusation that would not fail being addressed to him (the

accusation of irrationalism, of "half poetic ramblings . . was notlacking, in fact, Heidegger raises the stakes in a sense by making"thinking Poetics a "topology of Being, as though Being werenecessarily the rst and last poetic word, the word of poetics in its"essence. In this way, it is assigned to the poet to become thefounder (Se) of Being, no more, no less! But what if Being hasnothing to do with the matter, the "thing itself of poetry? That is

impossible, since Being always goes hand in hand with saying, justas eternity is the sea in harmony with the sun9 It is this going

with, this harmony, perhaps, in which it is a question of the statusof poetry, of poetrys place, its tps, that we will have occasion toput into question once againWho assigns that status?

"W hat remains, the poets found Hlderlins statement (fromAndenken) recurs oen in Heideggers writing as a sort of ordering

principle, a guiding word (Leitwot. d yet, it puts thought in acritical position what are thinkers good for if they always comeae the poetic word? How are they to reach the level of this inaugural founding, by interpreting it? Does interpretation nt alwayscome second in relation the gi of speech? But speech must bereceived, heardWould an unheard speech remain? Would it notbe lost? d does not the addressee therefore become more essen

tial than the sender, especially if we realize that the sender createsnothing, does not fabricate this given speech, but contents himselfwith transmitting it, more or less fai like a simple copyist towhom one dictates a message that he does not necessarily have tounderstand? But who is this "one who dictates? No one, and thisis why this situation applies to lspeech to the extent that it is not

we who speak, in the rst place, but speech or language

(Spache will have to return to this wordWe content uselves with hearing it speak, and our speaking is but a resaying ofthe rst Saying, which Heidegger will name die Sage, though thistoo might very well be a resayingBut there is hearing and there ishearingJO There is acoustic hearing and there is hearing in thesense of grasping meaningFor the latter, a poet is not sucient


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14 Foewod

Even according an ncient tradition poets are the messengersof the gods yet another person is necessary to hear (understand)

this divine speech especiay i in the meantime the gods havewithdrawn without this withdrawa meaning nothing. Perhaps itis even this withdrawa that cas for the poet through its "distress(Not), just the withdraw or the forgetting of Being is whatpropery mkes see for the thiker. Not ony is this forgetting notnoting; it "is the ony trace of a iberation of Being-for whatdestines it. In a text entited "The Lack of Sacred Names we

read

Upon rst ew, the "forgettng of Beng names a lak, n omssonIn trth, the ne s a name for the destn of the learng of Bengnasmh as Beng as presene annot bt beome manfest and determne eer beng, when I f the learng of Beng retans n tselfand preseres for thoght what ame to pass at the begnnng of odental thoght and what eer sne haraterzes the epohs of the

hstor of Beng p ntl the rrent age of tehnolog, wthotkowng anthng of ths forgettng of Beng as ts prnple [3234]

The forgetting of Being is Heidegger's ony "thesis en thoughthis is not a thesis about Being. Being cme presence this is Heidegger's rst thesis the thesis marking his point of departure. But

it is aso the departure from any thesis on Being from any phiosophica position from any epoch of the history of Being. Thisthesis concerning Being its coming into presence presence isso the forgetting of Being the forgetting of what sends Being.Being forgets itsef in presence nd when this presence in turnwithdraws we are free to think the sending of Being. Forgetting isthus not a ack so much an open possibiity in this end of

epochs (the epochs of presence) to retu to the source of the destination of Being presence a source that nonetheess is itsenever present (otherwise it woud be but a gure of Being) andthus isnot without however simpy being absent.

To common understnding the meaning of Being (its "trut)makes no sense is nothing but a hlucination. Let's not tak about


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t any more and move on to somethng else as Hegel says aboutdeath. But what could we move on to there s nothng outsde of

Beng or f tere s nothng but the bengs who deprved of thelght of Beng ounder n the shadow of ther nsgncance? Inorder to cert a death there must be a bod But f Beng "s deed dead has gone mssng we can say nothng more about t.Nor can we le t away t threatens to return devously one ofthese days. And we know even less about ts mode of dsappearance whch could well be a supreme form of Beng what I wll

call Bengndsappearng [dpa Once agan ths s not aprvleged path not a path at all but a sendng. It s that sendngthat determnes the very apora known by the name of "Beng. Its om wthn the eperence of ths apora that we wll read Hedegger's gesture [e geste] hs saga [or Sage geste)] Thequeston (of Beng) s not [pas] asked and t s even n thatnot[p] beng askedthat t s a questonof tkng an other step

[pas] Ths s what cannot be understood mmedately what s notunderstandable n tself but lways through the other whch"properly makes sense. It makes sense n that t makes a sgn.There s no sense or meanng resdng in itse Put derentlysense can only eksst that s to sa nest. From the very name ofthe Occdent nighll [tombe], but perhaps tomb [tombe] as wellwe know that Beng got lost along the way wthout properly beng

able to know ths. In ts very dsorentaton ths name calls for another orentaton an other orentaton not the same one and thusnot that of a lost legendary Orent. We can say nothng about asource or a mythc orgn even a preSocratc one nothng thatwould not already be cton a projecton nto the ture of an nvented past n order to mask the lack of a present that s nonetheless our only present and our only chance. It s here tat I part

wth Hedegger. And yet ths separaton s not smple does notsmply lead back to a return (to the thgs themselves to take oneeample of the return). Return to whom? To sender? Bu he hasle one mght sa wthout a forwardng address or leavng onlythe address that ways comes back to us that s readng. But

what s readng? "Readng properly speakng s the gatherng to-


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6 Foewod

gether upon what, without our knowing, hs ready recaimed ourBeing so that we might wish to respond or concea Ourseves be

fore this demand (3 ) This demand (Anspuch) is a promisethat is addressed so that we c answer to and for the demand,that is, give it free course (iberate it, corespond to it ent-echen)or on the contrary rese to et i speak (e-sagen) We wi awaysaleady be exceeded by a demand that gets us into debt, makes usinebted a response, mes us fai to keep our word. This excessmarks the irresistibe overdr of sense, which wi aways have a

arge advance. Before even being present, if it ever is, thee issense,and it is this structure that I ca "presense. But this "there isnever makes sense (at east not immediatey), nor simpy nonsense, this atter being but the opposite of what it negates. To read,then, is to eave the demand, the Anspuch, suspended, suspendedby this "step [pas] that, before being, passes sense in every sense ofthe word surpasses sense and passes it on, ie a passord that wi

never be given except in being passed from hand to hand. I givethis "step a name that itsef cn barey be heard (understood), thatsuspends reduction to a one-way meaning psance. If on thepoem dwel, it dwes in this suspension, most in evitation in aspace it does not create but that it nonetheess makes come, that itcas to come. There is nothing to say about this c, nothing thatis either sensibe or senseess, insane. The poem is made, woven

from this coescence of virtuaities of sense that are immediateydeposited, and there wi be no other way to understand the poemexcept in undoing this vei. But this deposiion wi ways aso be eosition. To nish, we wi never arrive at a pure nudity whichis not itsef but a suppementary vei. There is no transparency forsense, not that it is ike a mirage, aways farther away on the contrar the coser it is the more it bus. Even as ceary s it inces

santy enightens, this ame sti deivers no a text behind it. Itburns in order to burn, no more and no ess, and thus it awaysconces itsef. Perhaps we shoud even ca it the Conceale Buthow do we know if it "is conceaed? Must there not have been aday, distant but that we can remember, when it was given, deivered into the proper hands? Must we situate this moment in a an


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guage of the orgn Wll there nally be a moment when we nthe access to t agan, naly separate from ts forgettng as rel

gous ascetcsm was n another era) An woul ths poetry be"the ture lfe nse requale man12 But poetry oes not saveanyone, Georg Trakl wll say, an especally not someone who squaleIf the Occent has nee come or s welcome) tothe lght of ay lke that "eleterous nostalga mbau) of anOrent or of a lost orgn, what must be confronte at present sths "loss of sense, ths loss that s sngular for beng the loss of

nothing, an that therefore s not try a lossat quales poetcs s precsely that t squales all appropraton n terms of gansan losses, but also squales any enton of a captal one woul possess, of an "essence or goos t woul represent Onecannot have t, ony be tBut ths s a beng that oes not have tsel oes not belong to tsel Conceale thus, t remans al themore stll) to be n that t reses to belong to itse an even

theren les tmanner of bengerng/ eferrng self-presence Its place of beng s ths step that efers the comng ntopresence, nto the proper, to whch t oes not come except ncomng as event [-enant] There s no place for an unerstng of a place proper n the wor pce; rather, ths yng-nwellng[de-meue] aways ers / efers presence n eferrng tots event-ualty or, f you prefer, ts happenng

"Poetry happens where, aganst all expectaton, language gvesupPoetry s the spasm or the syncope of language LacoueLabarthe 4). We can never propey say what poetry s, an thusno more so coul we say that t s the unspeakable or the "spasmof language wth what language woul we say ths, snce language ceases, e-ceases when poetry comes or gans access How

ever, ths mproper language wll stll be the most ust, wtnessngthe eposton of common language, the only language to mlement poetc speechf the very name of "poetry s not areay amark of ths nfrangble mpropretyWe cannot say what poetrys, what ts essence s, for t excees the category of essence But fths s so, ths s not to say that poetry s sublme or sacre, the


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18 Foewod

reign of the beyondlanguage We cannot say hat oetry is be-cause it and it alone says tha but says it in being it and not in say-

ing it Poetry says this like the blo of suspended language (alaystaking our breath aay), of language cut o and thus coingnot to itse not to language, but to its event The poetic event isnot hat happens but rather that it so happens that soethinghappens in no language and thus cuts language (o), cutting outits ark there, its trace The eaning of the trace is never in itsenor is it elsehere (in soe transcendent real) The eanig of

te trace is be on the trace of eaning, I can put it thus Thepoe springs forth fro the call to speak hat deands and re-ses a language, deands it as "pure language, and reses it as"siple language The poe is thus dooed to be issing froits ord But even in that, it is dooed to keep its ord, like aproise

A proise annouces But poetry cannot be announced fro

the outside It alone ca proise itse At the sae tie, it an-nounces nothing, nothing else, nothing that could be extractedfro it like its eanig or its essence The proise announcesneither the re of God nor that of Being, but on te proiseNothing other tan the proise is proised "Only ad "nothingelse see put tere to disappoint Perhaps Poetic experience, totae up LacoueLabarthe again, diers o the philosophical con-

cept in that it relates to the decept," the deposition, and is not aatter of enunciations Rather, e should say that it akes onlyenunciations. Nothing aaits us there, neither fortune nor gloryThere is no [pas] gain, but a step [pas] is onand he onto,ad said, if saying is alays also holding, although tere is nothingto hold onto, nothing but the proise, only the proise That isthe generosity of this untenable, ungraspable, solitude There is

nothing else, and tat is nonetheless hat poetic experience holdsonto tightest d hat constitutes the singularity of its dellingit holds to [ent] this there, ill go no rther For no, e'll leaveit at that (point), taking the place of a ground: groudlessness,again

Poetic experience is to hold, to saybut ho? Poetic experience


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here touches upon the limits of language, that trembling place in which the cutting between sense and the insane parts. It touches

precisely upon this between that is less something between topeople than an interview, a holding(-forth)-between [ene-en]:how the one relates to the other, who is not the other except forthe one, yet for all that without being reduced to him.Therein liesl the dierence from "philosophic reappropriation.I have saidthat thee no sense osense, no meaning of meaning, and that is inno way because there is no sense, but because this sense, here (al

ways here), maes no sense except in exceeding itsel except in relation to the insane, the without-sense, to name it impropey (butsince it is without name, it can only be named improperly).Thecompletely-other approaches, and yet this is nothing other than thesame coming from the other border of its limit.That the other approaches (to the point of burning) does not mean that it presentsitself.On the contrary, it withdraws and, as though it were empty,

therefore shows the "thing itsel which is always about to betouched, on the verge of being....But it remains diered, deferred, delaying, dying-in-dwelling [de-meuante]

bC Jo eOO: "The path is never a method (3233. A path, Heidegger repeats, is not only there for the love oftaking a walk through the forest, is never a means of arrivingsomewhere, by which we understand someplace other than thee

(and it is a question of this very "there, of what there is, there).The path is already the thing itse what we keep goingon (about).Thus, Heidegger's poetics opens up onto nothing else, not even anew "interpretation of Heidegger. It opens up onto nothing, foreven we took this poetics om Heidegger's own "mouth, it willnever be able to retu to him.In the beginning w the Word (orBeing): the impossibility of a perfect presentation is exposed in the

form of this past tense.In the beginning the beginning will havebeen lacing and this lack will have given the beginning: word,language, everything that ruins unity and self-identity.Therefore,neither a plan nor a method is appropriate for this poetics.In fact,this poetics will begin with and leae o from Heidegger. But Iemphasize "leave because it is rst of l a question of leaving.


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What is at stake in this departure is siply leaving, not goingsoeplae else Hoever, by the very fat that there is no point of

departure, that this point is anything but a point, the step alreadyruns up against its ipossibiity It annot leave fro itself butonly begin fro the other, ho is not the self but ho, nonethe-less, gives the self its departure Just as there is no oneptpoint,not only as pure (of l alteri) but onept (hih iplies theselfidentity of the onept and its nae), so too, if e ust be-gin, leave o fro, a point, e ill have to begin to say it, and

that saying (saying itself) l alays be exessive In this sense, eould aintain that Heideggeriananguage (a onstrution thatappears to e at one legitiate and probleati) onstitutes anipossible point of departure to the extent that it simultaneousidenties itsel ith the essene of language and an absolutely sin-gular idio It's all Greek to us, an idiolet Heidegger oined forhiself in order to blok al iedate oprehension We

ight understand this in a ore enightening ay by taing thisanner of speaking literally (hih is already ore Heideggerian)Thus Beda Alleann, taking up an indiation by Lohann, asks"if a laguage like the Chinese laguage, hih is haterized byan isolative linguistis beause of its noinal nature, ould not beore appropriate for Heidegger's language, beause it antiipatesits tendeny to isolate ords (Alen 415) This is aso hy

e il have to deonstrut the privilege of the nae, patiularlyof the nae as the sared naeIf the sared naes have beoe unpronouneable, inluding

the nae "sared (eilig, saved or hol uared or intat), thatiplies that an enorous part ofHeidegger is ruined We ill haveto take his side, ou hi, hih ill not be a ourning Notonly ill nothing save ontotheolog not even the negative path,

but the very are to "save (even to "save the phenoena) takespart in the very thing that has given ay, around an event that isunspeakable, even "as suh (d that thus annot be said even un-der the nae ushi') It is the very bond that relates the sa-red (or the saved) to the "as suh that is at stake in the atteptfor an arhephenoonoogy and that unbinds (and delivers) it


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self the moment that, and in the vey place in which, the impossibility of an "appropriation of Being (even in the most originary in

stance of an ibt) and the withdrawal of its saying are experienced. Impropriety is at the departure; it is general and generativeprecisely for translating itsel always dierently, into the untranslatable singularity-that calls for translation, or retranslation.

The name liberates the thing inasmuch as it at the same time redresses it in a skin with which the thing can make a body in orderto have gure, countenance, allure, dess. However, the bestowed

name disgures the thing as well, not to give it a gure other thanits own, but simply because it gures it and thus disgures it. Perhaps the only way to play out this play of veiling by unveiling thatexposes itself in every work of guration or of imagination (andevery work is a work of these) will be to deposit, to set down,names, at least to undo their property and propriety as substantives. To expose this play naked, however, is nothing other than to

play it once again without delivering the ultimate content, "truth.Except in no longer playing the game, it is no longer possible toescape the disillusion that always delivers us over to the other instead of the One. There is no way avoid the game, only because the game alone makes sense. Heidegger will not be able toescape it either: it is in the nature of things, these things that arenot things any more than there is a "true nature. The game is all

there is. But the thee is is not a thing, a new substance; in notshowing itsel it shows only what is. There are names, things, butthese ae only inasmuch as they show themselves to each other,show themselves in each other. Made for this fold, intersectingeach other in the interview, the holding(forth)beteen [entetien] of that is to say, they deploy what we can therefore call athinking poetics. And if we must say this of Heidegger, then this

signatue will have to be coutersigned by an other. Heidegger,perhaps, will have been but a pseudonym for what must remainwithout name: "they are lacking, the sacred names.

No mistake about it, we will have to submit a (written) deposition of this lack. To nish, we must to begin to speak it. Or beginag.


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Everything we designate as "ound, we ordinarily c"a grom Hermes (ov) He reigns over paths On theborders o paths are ound the piles o stones (ov) omwhich he received his name The passerby threw a stone uponthem. Walter F Oo es Dieu d f Grce

Hermes the proper name o a god o paths o passages o accesses granted or resed takes his name rom a simple pile ostones the signicance o which we do not know A passerby

threw a stone there to win his aor. Hermes brings luck. He is thegod o chance and o encounters both good and bad the god ohighway robbers In our time he is known as the name o atelecommunications program o a satellite! In a play o thoughthe declares more binding and more compeling than the rigor oscience Heidegger says that he is also the guardian angel ohermeneutics2 This bond passes by way o the message Hermes is

the postman o the gods. He is their messenger and in Greek themessenger was said to be an angel (YY). He carries theirword their di and is also called "the radiant lookot or he haswings and (like a satellite) in a single bound can traerse the immensity o the bitter waes to the island o the EndotheWorldwhere Calypso keeps the shipwrecked surior o Troy and o therors o Poseidon hostage. Without Hermes there would be no

adentures o Ulysses no dyss. But Ulysses imsel whereerhe lands relates his own adentures He is his own speaker een he disguises himsel in the coat o a poor bard.

The poets Plato will thereore say are the messengers o thegods But without these winged messengers who would speak othe gods? The gods are the inentions o the poets and thus their

22


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own proper messengers. hus he messenger nds on hs pah(and hs s he sense of in enie) wha was hs msson o an

nounce In oher words he only god here s he pah. I s hepah ha sends everyhng: he messenger he message and headdressee (us). On he pah here s he hermes. A passerby hrewa sone here a whe sone a mlesone a mark(er}. A passerbynds he hermes on hs pah He knows he s on he ight pahgves hanks hrows anoher sone n he same drecon. Senseand he sense of drecon precede. he sense or drecon of he

pah s o be a pah I s presense whch has already been gveneven be beng "nerpreed explaned shown-hermeneuzed hus s before he word. Sense meanng speaks n ha gves hearng undersandng.

Lke so many oher phlosophcl words lke he word "phlosophy sel he word hemeneucs s Greek A he begnnng ofWhat Is ThatPhisophy, Hedegger wres

We hae alead ponouned the wod "phlosoph enough But fwe no longe emplo t lke a hakneed tem, on the onta wehea t fom ts ogn then t esonates: AOcOIiU. Now the wodphlosoph speaks Geek The Geek wod, Greek, s a path[ ha ] .

here does hs prvlege of he Greek come from? From a prox

my o he orgn Bu hs proxmy s no gven by he anquecharacer of Greek Greek beng by no means he mos ancen oflanguages. A a decsve momen n hs course What Is CalledThinking, of whch he second par s devoed o he nerpreaon (and hus ranslaon) of he rs egh words of fragmen VIofParmendes' Poem, Hedegger wres: "I s n fac superuous oranslae eov ellVt no Lan or German. Bu s necessary

nally ranslae hese words no Gree (Thinking4) ranslaehe Greek words into Geek? Does ha make sense? Or raherwould here be no phlosophy excep n speakng Greek? Wemgh beleve so om readng he "rs phlosopher (a leas hers o be named as such) Socraes was preparng demonsraeha all knowledge s anamnesis (recollecon}-anoher Greek


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word. Th xprit thrfor had to b coductd o sooigorat ad Socrats askd Mo to show hi o of his slavs.

Howvr th igorat slav had to kow at last o thig "Is hGrk ad dos h spak Grk? this is xprssd i a siglword i th txt as though it wr ough to spak Grk to bGrk. hy is Grk a coditio sine q non of philosophy although philosophy is at th sa ti iitiatd upo its dclaratios of uivrsality? Ev Hidggr (at last th "arly Hidggr) subscribs to th crdo rpatd fro Plato to Kt ad b

yod that philosophiz is propr to th hua spcis is whatsigs th hua as such ad is iscribd for l ti as its "atur. Must w dduc fro this that i ordr to b hua oust b Grk? It would b absurd to prtd that got udr th prtxt that it is a Grk word is a Grk scic adothig but. I th sa way th word "potry has Grk origis but it is possibl that i trslatig it ito Grk w trsport

it oto copltly dirt groud poiesis as tchiqu [e] ad productio i gral ad i o way a potic spcicityPrhaps th spcicity of potry has vry littl to do with attrsof productio v if w itrprt that spcicity philosophicallyI ay cas whthr or ot this word is propr th thig did otwait for th Grks i ordr to show itsl ad did ot stop withHor or Pid who orovr wr ot yt calld pots. hy

would it ot b th sa for philosophy? Must philosophy b assigd a Grk origi i ordr to b authticatd? Or is this cocr for assigig a origi ot alrady a Grk charactristic? Ifvry yth is th yth of th origi th w ca call this traitythc But ust w rsrv th privilg of th ivtio ofythic thought to th Grks alo v though philosophy ischaractrizd (too suarily i y opiio) as a ruptu withyth ad th daw of "raso or

logos?Upo rst sight Hidggr ss to rpat schs that brigback bad oris. To b sur vry isolatd hua groupthiks of itslf ythicall i th rst plac s th oly huaityworthy of th a. It is a qustio of cohsio Th Cashiahuascall thslvs (ad as ar always at issu) "th tru I


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the same wa one could say that the Greeks, although less isolated, divided the human secies in two humanity roerly

seaking, comosed of Greeks and of lthose who seak Greek,and the others, the babaians, those who tk gibberish, sincethere is but one lguage worthy of the name-Greek. Philosohywould thus be bo from an exacerbated but also singular ethnocentrism, since the Greeks will have been the only eole to havetied the idea of humanity to language, to a language elevated to aunivers status because it aone would be than a language

logos. Oddly, this word has never ignied language [ne], dthere is not even a word in Greek to name that. At least not word

A Greek wor for the wor is lSo\. Another wor for wor isO\ . . ain another wor for wor is A6yo\. e have to thinkthat the Greeks from early on ha several wors for wor. n theother han they o no have a wor for language (Spche) heyhave of ourse the wor YAcc tongue (Zunge) But they neverthink the wor on the basis of the tongue by whih it is spokenhus their etermination of the essene of man is not SpO\ov YAccv Xov a living being that has a tongue Cows anmules also have a tonue I however it is the essential feature of manto have the wor an to appropriate it an if the Grees eperienean unerstan the human being in this way then is it not neessary

that they when they istinguish themselves an their humanity ver-sus others take as a point of referene for the istintion this essentialfeaure?

Ifsaying, like eing, is said (yeat) in many ways, these different modes dwell, like Being in its ana, in the unity of theword that designates the Word, t Heidegger would undoubtedly have reted this translation The singuarity of this

word, in German, is to slit itself into two lurals te arestatements, and Wte simle words The Greeks had severlwords () for the Word' ( )": several words for asingle word, that is, for the Word in the roer sense of theword. . . . But what is this pope sense To determine it, theroer sense must rst be distinguished from all the other, im


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proper, senses. The ability to mke this distinction constitutes theprivilege of the human being and is conferred upon humans by

their determination s the "living beings endowed with go (thatis, with the "word in the proper sense). Is this a circular argument? If logos gives the human this proper and distinctive trait, itis because gos is itself the ability to dierentiate, to class, to giveorder-what we cll "reason. Dierentiation nctions like a langage system in which each word is given in relation to the otherss not being the others, but lso in referring to them, i always be

ing capable of being substituted for by another or of itself substituting for another: logos, that is to say "word [paroe] "word,that is to say . . . etcetera Etcetera is again a translation for all theothers, l those that remain. It implies the innumerability of theplurl and as such might well be the word par excellence for language. It might be this word, yet it not be it any more than logosor wordcan, because there is no Word par excellence, no pure word

that contins its meaning in itse separate from the others, without necessarily taking part in them. The pure or proper rd isnot a word, it is a barbarism.

By its very exclusion, the word "barbarian gives the trait properto the denition of the proper word. We could even say that it isthe absoluteproper word. Unarticulated (articulation is the pivotal point of language as an innite and liing speech), it precedes

and mkes possible the appearance of a language as articulationand the putting into relation of dierences, as the specic and"proper (relatively proper) community of a determinate language(and thus of a people). The word barbarian precedes the appearnce of such a language exactly inasmuch as it neer appear except in a languge (here Greek) which thus denes itself by the exclusion of its other, the unarticulated. Greek denes itself and ap

pears such solely in tearing itself from the udierentiatednonappearing of the "barbarian, at least of what is named thusby those who "have the word, properly. For the word o isstill, and rst of ll, a Greek word. The socalled [soi-disant] barbrians never cled themselves this. Or, to put it dierently, thebarbarian is always the name of the other there are no selfnamed


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[soi-disant] barbarans, and perhaps no selfnamng plan and smple The name always comes om the other. The oher s exclded

or, on he conrar, appropraed: he movemen s he same, assmlaon beng no less a form of exclson

Hedegger old lke o eace hs mpre orgn n posng asor of selfappearance of langage o self. Tha s spposed ohave aken place, mhcall, h he Greeks, he rs o have dened hemselves n relaon o ohers (people and anms) accordng o he prvlege of he "Word, that is to say, of he Word

proper. B he denon o hch Hedegger has recorse (ms he lvng beng ho has, holds ono, possesses "langage, orraher gos) prespposes, rs, ha langage s srcred lke logosn order o formlae ha denon, and, second, hsorcallcomes aer he plal (hogh alas nar) srcre mythosepos-ogos. If logos comes las, hs s no b chance: s a philosophicald hs belaed denon. Hedegger ses he denon

shamelessl here, even hogh elsehere he ll p no qeson n order o overrn he nevable ehnoanhropocenrsm mples. ha s mos asonshng s he jscaon of logos b srreplaceable characer We canno replace logos b "langage["onge, ne]. anmals have a onge, even cale. Bhe do no a onge, langage, proper speang. I s a "smpleonge, less han langage, a onge c o from s meaning,

ho logos, ha s o sa, ho saying. A co, and b exenson (n a relaon onl "sensble hmans, ha s, hose endoedh logos, can esablsh) nfan or a barbaran does no have(access o) lgage, becase he have onl a onge Theare lacking hs decsve spplemen: he meaning of he onge,langage, hch ensres ha langage, properl speakng (logos,and no tongue), makes sense, ha s o sa, ha says, each me

sang s sense, ha of sang itse The dream s of a self ha sprel selfprodcve, b here s no pre (sense) nless s red of s oher Nonsense, hoever, canno appear as sch excep through he sense ha has appeared B sense self does noappe as sch (as so-called / senamed "proper) excep n demarcang self from ha precedes or from ha rejecs a he


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same time-cutting all impure descendnce-as not being senseThe word must arm itself in saying itself s such, that is, s not

another [or an other], although it cannot be said except in takingthe place of another [an other], and of another that could always,according to the law of the that is to say, take its place in turn

The ethnic purication that Heidegger practices is all the moreastonishing for its concern for a "milieu or medium that authorizes no purity, at lest no absolute prit The worst exclusion concerns animals Even in the "Greek Aristoteli) denition, man

isst o a living being There again, a tour de force is necessaryto retranslate the socalled meaning of "living into Greek Firstof all, to call for the translation of 0 as "animal is just as erroneous and perverse as the translation of logos as aio. Then, or atthe same time, to carry "life over to the side ofphysis, which is itself related back to aletheia? If we in this way avoid any biologicor zoological connotations, this carrying over settles nothing, or

rather setles its account with the "purely living being by whichwe understand the being that is nothing but living) Not having access to the "truth, to the Open, since he has no way to say it tomanifest that it is thee, or is the "there), how could this beinggive the human its proper characteristic? And, by the same token,does this being not ecome cut o from life? Endowed with sensewith this supplementary sense, that is, the ability to speak sense),

must it also be depiedof ll access to "pure life, so that it wouldbe the denatured living being, in other words, physicl?Would he perhaps she if we push it) alone be able to have access to death as such)? Pushing this logic to the extreme, we mustremove the ability to die from animals, fro "simple living beings They can ony perish: is this a dierence between words? No,it is the dierence of Bein that is to say this comes back to the

same thing, if you will), a dierence of saying, again How, then,are we to conceive of this "pure life without that which delimitsit: death? d how are we to think death without life? The Heideggerian concept of death must itself be pure, without a ace ol But perhaps therein lies the "being of the concept: in-bodeath?


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What is presupposed is that through language, traversing it bitby bit ithout, hoever, itself lodging there, Being aleady speaks,

already sends its presense. Is this a presupposition? Perhaps not, oronly fro the point of vie of a preliinary ecoection. Let ustake an exaple the Greek ord ousia In everyday language(e ould again need to kno if this is not already a philosophicaldistinction), ousia signies possessions, property / propriety, hatone ha, and by no eans hat one "is. It is only ith Plato thatthe ord takes on a copletely dierent sense (hich oblige

Seneca to invent the ord essentia). For the philosopher nds inthe ord a suppleentary propriety, presence, and even the pres-ence of the ostproper, that of the verb to be through its pesentparticiple. That Greek graar speaks is ust as uch a privilege an obstacle for us. The properlyproper becoes generality parexcellence, hat is ost coon. It is this loss of "Being in thevery nae of Being that Heidegger arks at the beginning of on-

totheology. Theology is added order to ake up for the defectof ontolo incapable of presenting hat is proper presence. Itsrights [its propriety] ust therefore be restored to it. of philos-ophy be read a repeated cobat against the usury of lan-guage, a usury that philosophy believes it is reducing even thoughit produces it the language of generality, of essence. To that,Heidegger ill say, it ust be obected that "essence is not a good

(that is to say, proper) translation. In the sae ay, eit altersthe "original (or literal) purity ofcT9da. Perhaps. But if a ordis not translatable by another, it is no longer a ord at l. A ord,hatever it be, is hat it is only in referring to . . . and this struc-ture of referral excludes all proprietyom the benning. But Hei-degger's entire developent ais to rther "propriate language,for exaple, to ake the coon ord Eeiis say, in the wod

itse appropriation. But this "event ould be so proper, so idiomatic, that nothing coparable could properly be naed anEeinis.

Logocentris constitutes the essence of logos. Inborn Being,neither proceeding fro nor produced by aning, is nothing butthe selfanifestation to the self of selfsaying [soi-disant], ache


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tautolo (t beng understood that tautology s not n the rstplace sayng the same thng n just the same way, but sayng t

self) To deconstruct archetautology s not to upon the llogcl or the barbaran On the contrary, thee is no othe logic thanthat o iden to sel-saying. But ths logc has tself come omthe other of all selves It s volent because t presupposes ths othern the form of the excluded, of the other (or the barbaran) Butthe other never the other To put t n othe way, the barbarans not an other; no, t s the same A barbar s a human beng

just the same (a human beng s anmal just the same,etcetea). But a barbaran s not a human beng n the proper senseof Beng that adheres to an mpeccable, cuttng logc, a logcthat cuts into the same Just the same s not absolute the same(a human beng), and thus s not the same at a (as regards theground, that s to say, Beng) But what does Beng mean, whatdoes t want to say Logos? to say that asde from speakng

(beng) Greek, there s nothng but the barbaran? It must be admtted that certan of Hedegger's propostons gve ths mpresson Beng would reman the rst and last word, that s to s theGreek begnnng Yet that s only true for us And who are we?Hers, yes, but aso the dsnherted But the Greeks were lso dsnherted They are (I wonder f I can use the present tense) thosewho ask themselves what happened to them, what Beng w,

those to whom t happened for the rst tme (perhaps) n thsstrange hstory of Beng no longer to know what Beng (andequally: beng Greek, phlosophers, men, etcetera) mghtsgn The Occdent s born of ths nghtfall, of ths fl n whchsense (that of Beng, of beng a there of Beng) falls unde sense,at once brllant and vod Now passing oe all authorty and lauthorzaton, without bith, now buryng tself under tsel under

ts own skn, t never ceases to oscllate between beng the nboand the lvngdead, selfdelverance (the absolutely modern) andthe return of the nnumerable specters that t has become to tselfThe Occdent, I mght say, were t not a bt too smple to gve tbut a singname, s ths old man cryng le a baby, lookng to cuths own umblcal cord even n mng hmself hs own grave


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digger (or in writing his epithalamium in advance). It is the Re-public giving itself as the year zero of a new age of the world,

Hitler killing himself aer the end of the world: a single gurewith two heads, the obsession to be Being itsel and, if that is im-possible, if we must necessarily share with the other, to be, allone, nothingness itsel . . .

There is no point of departure because this point has alreadycome, torn to itself in the coming that always exposes it as theother, so that it could not make itself appear except in the moment

that it makes itsedisappear. I will return to this. The structure ofdeparture prevents all reappropriation, and that is why it must becalled the departure om belonng [dartenance] the departurethat does not belong to itsel no more so than does the now. TheGreek departure can appear only to us at the moment that it hasalready withdrawn. hat appears, then, is disappearance, cutting,and this is what unremittingly isorients the Occident. There are

no "pure Greeks; they were already withdrawing at the momentthey came (were thrown) into the world. The translation of Greekinto Greek (archeGreek) that Heidegger dreamed of aims to over-come the gap in the socalled "origin and to restore its mythic pu-rity. Because the Greek that appears is always impure from thepoint of view of what has not appeared preceding it and throwingit toward itse to ll this gap we must climb back beyond the

Greek to what escaped it in its very springing foth (its departure:its cutting, its divorce from itsel which is its ony possibility ofbeing born). But that would also imply a supplementary ascendingturn, surpassing us, since, damentally, we are taken up in theGreek decline. The other departure (r anre nng) invents an-other sense (direction) of (and om) the beginning. It says good-bye to itse in this ultimate and probably impossible gesture,

it coud nally say itself at the point o departure o the departure.Let us return to hermeneutics, a name for this departure hatseeks to place itself at its very point of departure. Philosophy partsfrom what is given to it, Being or language, but will never recog-nize this. I take as an example the Hegelian "itinerary. First of all,only the Absolute is, is pure departure. But this purity must show


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itself as such, shoig or aifestatio beig the very telos of theAbsolute But selfaifestatio deads passig by ay of the

other, but ot ust ay other No, a other proper to the self is ecessary, a other that abolishes itself i itself ad does ot emainother (a reaider ould destroy the absoluteess of the SelfSe) A saeother that eaces itself i its alterity is ecessary toserve as liaiso, as a poit of passage, as a ilieu for e productio o se This ideal ilieu (that of ideality itself) is laguage,hich aloe is capable of servig as a pure irror of reectio For

exaple (e ko that it is the exaple Hegel says aifests the"aturall speculative character of the Gera laguage) auheben is a speculative ord, ot oly because it at oce sigies toposit, to cacel, ad to sublate, but because it doeshat it sigies the irror of the spirit of laguage itsel laguage is pemae speculative, as the exaiatio of the speculative propositio through the operatio of the "sublatio of the copula at

tepts to deostrate. The ord posits itself, eaces itsel adaitais itself i ideality It shos through, ans-appeas the absolute. Thus, o atter ho hard it tries to disguise its real "ature, it alays returs to that ature, or rather, it coes back to ith icreased capita, a excess of eaig, probably becausethe socalled "atural is already a ivetio of speculativethought for hich "atives ill suer the cosequeces Thought

aays puts the laguage be laguage to ork, ad that, evethough thought, withoutlaguage, is icapable of shoig itselfsuch, that is, of thikig ite of beig "itself. Thought ustake itseappear ad thus ust alieate itself i the ediu oflaguage, fro hich it ca aays extricate itself i sublatig thisediu to its o absolute light: laguage thiks "despite itsel

I had to set out this classic itierary (set out by errida i G)

suarily i order to brig out, i cotrast, the Heideggeriaprocedure, hich could be preseted as the reverse. Far froeaig preexistig laguage, hich ould be but a irror ofeaig, it is laguage that presides over the birth of eaig, othe coditio, of course, that e ko hich laguage is i questio It certaily caot be the "ordiary laguage e use ad


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abue ore or le like a tool that i appropriated to expre hate believe to be "our thought Thi i o not only becaue thi

doinant conception of language as a ean of expreion i inHeidegger' eye a ontroity agnt nature a true Unwesen, butbecaue it uppoe that language i in oe ay a bein But lan-guage if it i the "depoitory (the "houe) of Being cannot intu be a being otherie it ould lead u to a ort of ontotheol-ogy liteal speaking, in the anner of an abolute tautology inhich the logos "i the ae In the ae ay that iple on-

totheology i the yte that fold Being back into a being theSupree Being (God) abolute ontotheology that of logos a Be-ing ould ake logos the folding of Being upon itelf(saying) Ipropoe copleting George' line "Where the ord i lacking nothing ay be ith the folloing "Where the thing i lacing noord ay be Thi diconcerting propoition thro u o thepath ad deand a thinking of the thing that ould be co-

pletely other than that of ontotheology We ould for exaplehave return to the pile of pebble on the pathHeidegger hielf corrected George' line a follo i'

arie here the ord break o (y 108 216) Saying (age)give the "i to the thing Thi Saying i not the property / pro-priety of the huan ubect Rather it appropriate the huanubect a ubect to the ord and yet even there it ee that thi

poer i reed to ial exactly even ore radicall it i re-ed to the thing hich could not even be ute Heidegger thenclarie "The eential relation beteen death and languageashe up before u but it till reain unthought (y 107, 215)Only thoe ho are capable of peaing are capable of dying Wehould even ay that only thoe capable of peaking are capable ofbeing if it i true that Dein i above lthe capacity for Be-

ing Thi i a aybe but alo a relation to being and to aying tothe orld and to death Thi poibility i thu not a iple even-tuality; even le i it a faculty It i ore a atter of duty of adebt We ut peak iply becaue peaking i a atter of ailing or a lape that i not a huan failing; but already in the truc-ture of peech itel the tep (not) of Being for hich a "there a


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place in which to take place is necessa marks itsel This lapse isnot reducible to a simple negativity since it is rst of al a cl

to ut it cannot be evacuated in the name of a superior "positivit of eing either such everything having to do with a"foundation by speech (even poetc speech) precisely cannot besubtedor reappropriated but always remains in debtas is thetranslator faced with the original to be translated Consequenywe ould even have to revise the canonical denition ofpoies asmakngbeing Language makes absolutely nothing be that was

not there be, simply becase eing is not made. It gives itself orreses itse comes or does not come but even when it is lackingd perhaps precisely then it is always already sent not as a beinbut as what is to be, to be sai

I spoke of translation as an example Yet we must also under-stand that there is nothing buttrslaton as soon as it is a matterof "rendering what is to be sai Everything to ben with the vey

event of ast me, is translaton [aducon] or better aon["translation in French] 6 That is to say that saying means translating What is going on here is precisely going, going toa to one goes to the sea or to war? In that case sayingwould be a goal an end a tes. ut there is essentially no end tothis advancing no nal word We could even say that what ap-proaches (but can always only approach even though this is no

"reservation: to approach is already to touch) the thing itself (tobe said) most closely is also what emai, in the sad itsel to besaid to be said that is to say in an other way to be exposed tothe other

Translation as translation toward the tobesaid is in no way asimple technical question We might even say that it is not a matter for professional translators It is a question of nothng less than

nding a nguage, as imbaud writes ad that also always meansndng moe than one. It seems that in Heidegger's eyes there wasbut one language othy o the name, Greek at the exclusion of allother ("barbari) languages but at the same tme we must addthat this name ("language) is improper or "unworth of theGreek Greek is not one language among others because it carries


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5

the mark ofthe it sent itself Being be his i n the form ofthis small empty word is. B this rst can appear only for s

others moderns and conseqently in the original repetition thatis precisely translation as the ordeal of the foreigner.7 Ths onlythe literal translation of what was the masterword of Greek ex-perience eci will permit not only to open to what isproper to this specic foreigner not jst any foreigner since heis or sorce b also or tre) b to open to the other whatwas at his heart bt occlted from him The strange thing is not

to have called what we name trth by sch a name b never tohave thoght what is said there literally. Even in dwelling in theOpen of this clearing not a single Greek heard [or nderstood]what his own langage said not one perceived what indar named the signless clod of concealment the that sspends8 hether the emology proposed by Hei-degger is tre or not is not the qestion hat is the trth of or

word trth? According to Heidegger it is bt a Roman falsiyatin translation is a complete catastrophe perhaps even ma-jor catatrophe in history for Heidegger It recovers precisely whatis the very heart thogh already occlted from the Greeks) of that is what Heidegger discovered: the of hewihdrawal the of all presence that is tre eective hasappeared etcetera) is a defensive and even

word9 It is therefore an word so to speak not only be-case it makes of trth a compact organization an impermeableblock like a bnker in the place that he Greeks experiencedeveryhing in the lightness of bestowed grace of dispersing fog ofthe clearing b becase it forbids all access to what in theevent of he cong to light is also the secret hidden from viewsa what denotes the pivative and not positive strctre of the

word . Once again the qestion is not to know if the Hei-deggerian translation is tre or not which perhaps no longereven makes sense what trth one ahorize oneself when it isa qestion of its ?) The qestion is to nderstand howthks to this translation a reconstrction that passes rst of allby way of a deconstrction of the Roman translation according to


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the ver priciple of "destructio posited t the threshold of Being and Time), the origi ppers more origil, so to spek, eve

more Greek th the rst time. We could lmost s tht the"true Greek word is ol possible b pssig through the trsltio ito tht lguge clled Germ ( Unebogenheit is heceforth the pope me of aletheia), or t lest tht Germ reiveted for the cuse of trsltio This Germ, therefore, frfom comig second, s simple "servt (ancil log its titleof obilit), commds bsolutel the ccess to the thig itself.

The trsltor is the tht cretor Heidegger deed s he who"dvces towrd the usid d pierces towrd the uthought,drives out wht hs ot come to pss d mkes the uherdemerge EM 2)

Dierig from the "true cretor, however, does the trsltorot hve somethig tht hs bee saidt his disposl, model uder his eyes tht he should cotet himself with esaying, puttig

dieretl, rederig "dieretl d yet i the sme wsim-pl i other lguge? This is wht we ormll cll trsltioestblishig the eutio betee oe sttemet d other i theoreticll reversible euivlece. Bot is bead, d vice vers.Just the se, we might s, aletheia, tht is, "truth, d ot Unebogenheit or oocculttio (if we c gree tht this wordmight be the "good trsltio of the Heideggeri word). The

test is to replce aletheia b "oocculttio i ophilo-sophicl Greek tet (d et wht is ophilosophicl tet?),d tht produces gibberish . . A trsltio is "good (just, d-eute, true) whe we c retur from the riverbk we hve rrived t to the oe from which we deprted, from the trsltio the origil, with miimum of loss. There will lwys belosssomethig utrsltble, we s, without thikig too

much bout it But if we limit this dmge to the miimum, wewill obti, t the most, pproimtio, more or less fithlcop Such is the most freuet result, d such is the ormtive,"scietic coceptio of trsltio. A cop supposes model.But where does the model come from?

The theor of trsltio follows tht of imittio, of mimesis,


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which in turn determines every theory of Occidental art. ithoutentering into a debate with a long tradition that has its grounding

in Platos (and Aristoes) metaphysics, let us recall the apoiaconstitutive of mimesis: it presupposes a rst, inimitable term thatnonetheless makes possible and to a certain point even demandsimitation. This will be "nature for art, and the original text fortranslation. To be capable of being imitated, the one like the othermust begin by withdrawing itself from the imitation even in au-thorizing it. entirely untranslatable text is quite simply not a

text at all; but a text that is entirely translatable, without emainde, is no more of a text. This means that nson exists om thebenning, and it is precisely this oinal translation that consti-tutes the untranslatability of the original. "From the beginningmeans that there is translation in the original itself and that is whytranslation does not simply move from one language to another; itbegins in language "proper, or the "mother tongue. Translation

begins precisely as soon as it is to be sai and that is never entirelysayable.

o speak an to say is in itself translation, the essene of whih an byno means be ivie without remainer into those situations wheretranslating an translate wors belong to ierent languages. Inevery ialogue an in every soliloquy an original translation holssway e o not here have in min primarily the operation of substi-

tuting one turn of phrase for other in the same language or the useof paraphrase Uchreibg). Suh a hange in the hoie of worsis a onsequene erivin from the fat that what is to be sai has alreay been transporte for us into another truth an larityperhapsobsurity. his transporting an our without a hange in linguistiepression. he poetry of a poet or the treatise of a thinker stanswithin its own proper unique wor It ompels us to pereive thiswor again an again as we were hearing it for the rst time hesenewborn wors transpose us in every ase to a new shore [ 12;54 1718]

To translate is to displace sense, and this is what Heideggerdemonstrates performatively in translating the word for "trans-late. He displaces the accent from setzen to setzen, and


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make tranlation a movement of paing over and nearly vertiginou acenion The ordinary tranlation from one language to an

other that the linguit Jakoon render a tranlation "properlypeaking, "interlingual tranlation, i at the lowet level Thenthere i that tranlation Jakoon name "intralingual, rewording,the reformulation of turn of phrae y other in the ame language, which uppoe, a Derrida, om whom I orrow thee cintic reference, write, "that one can know in the n anyihow to determine rigorouly the unity and identity of a language,

the decidale form of it limit ("Tour 173) Heidegger call thecond tranlation Umscheibung, ut leave the word in uotationmark, which make one think he nd it improper (in eect,there i rewriting around the word) At the ame time, he concedea certain "origini (ein ungliches beseen) to it, ut anoriginali that i inferior to the absolute originality proper totranlation properly peaking, reerved for the height of the cou

ple Dichten-Denken. nly there i the Word characterized y art time, an aolute rt ("man wked on the moon), o thatnot only i thi rt not altered in repeating itel it in a certainway demand a contant irginal repetition ("the act i virginal,even when repeated [Ren Ch]). But it demand that of thereader Each time, we mut hear thi aolutely unheard of Worda though it were way the rt time it wa reonating, which i

impoile in the cae of intralingual tranlation, a imple reformulation, replacement (esetzen). With the tranlation (beseen)of the toeaid into a uniue ad rt Said there i no poiilityof replacement, of utitution, or ofEsa of "tranlationin the common ene of the word From the very rt word, theword i rt, alway already uniue, irreplaceale, a though it elonged to no language, to the point that we might well ak if it i

till really a wod.

Tranlation doe not have, a it eential detination, to communicate, and that i o even if Heidegger peak of a "meageBut thi word mut e retranlated into Greek, mut pa over(tele)communication to the angel Herme We do not even haveto reort to the Greek If we cloely reread Wter Benamin' text,


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"The Task of the Translator we will see a strange collusion whichdoes not exclude some essential gaps I was aout to say gaps in

the translation) taking shape eteen Heidegger and Benjamin.Both te as a "model of the totranslate the "sacred or poetic)text. Heidegger explicitly declares many a time that "essential)poetry expresses nothing does not aim to communicate a content.It is not communication as such that is aimed at even though it ismade prolematic in Hlderlin as in Trl) ut the dierence e-teen the content to e communicated and the linguistic act of

communication. ut dierently an illicit rewording) the dier-ence etween a signied which could e outsidelanguage) andthe very act ofsaying itwhich is itself ready the whole senseeaces itsel

"If there is indeed eteen the translated text and the translat-ing text a relation of original' to version it could not e representaie or reproducie. Translation is neither an image nor a copy

Derrida says taking up Benjamin "Tours 20). But we must alsoe ale to say that of Heidegger all the more so since he always de-stroyed the essence of truth as adequation. That does not meanthat the very notion of the origin loses its rights even the orig-inal can no longer lay claim to the slightest right. e have le thesphere of the law like that of representation. Derrida devotes nu-merous developments to dissecting ironicly) juridic manuals

concerning the "rights of translators to make origin though"derived works). He remains perplexed faced with this claim ofan originality despite everything of the text to e translated. Ifthere is no longer a model why could the translation not e calledmore original than the original itself? hy stop at a rst timewhen the origin is itself already nothing ut a translation? Butthis formulation already etrays the secondary role traditionaly at-

triuted to translation: "to

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