Poetically Man Dwells

Poetically Man Dwells

Outside Reading: Martin Heidegger/Language, Poetry, Thought

September 20, 2016

  An authentic response is always a poetic response. If we are to look at what it spoken we must look to what is spoken most purely. Martin Heidegger turns to poetry as the most pure form of speech. Taken from a Holderlin poem, Heidegger further extrapolates language through the phrase, “poetically man dwells.” Poetry is not a more advanced mode of speech, detached from everyday speech, rather it is everyday speech. As Henry David Thoreau says, “ Poetry discloses the obvious.” It is not a fantasy-driven impulse to escape this world but is the very thing that grounds us in this world. “Poetically man dwells” because he is always engaged in measuring himself against the dimensions between the skies above and earth below. Poetry, then, is a kind of measuring, not against the sky itself but the unknown God, for whom the sky is merely an image. The unknown God’s presence is simultaneously guarded and made manifest in the sky. In speaking about what is, poetry uses images of what is familiar to speak of that which is unknown.