Earth in the Work of Art

Abstract

The Heideggerian interpretation of artl/-- the most radical transmutation of “esthetics” not only since Kant, but since the Greeks– –initially comes down to a simple question about the mode of being of the works: what kind of things are they? The answer preceded by a “reiteration” of the metaphysical definitions of the concept of the thing, especially the thing as composed of matter and form, makes art appear as the illumination of an “earth”. All great artworks--plastic, musical, or poetic– –erect within the density of a specific earth a configuration (Gestalt) of “truth” or of uncovering. Art effects within being an entirely inaugural uncovering of Being. The artistic Gestalt is interpreted as the trace of a struggle (Streit) between a world, which is to say an historic dimension, and an earth or non-historical seat. The earth is no more the raw material existing in itself than the world is an assembly of clearly pre established forms. The Gestalt does not soar above a chaos or indetermination to which it might give shape. Its essence, says Heidegger, is to bring to light the “tearing-stroke” (Riss, a word which means crack, fissure, crevice, but also outline or tracing), which conflictually unites the historiality of the world and the a-historiality of the earth. The Riss restores to the earth, as it institutes in earth, and elaborates, the unceasing combat between world and earth.

Footnotes

1/In the essay of Holzwege, “Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes.” The quotations refer to Holzwege, Klostermann, 1949, hereafter Hw.

2/Hw., p. 64.

3/Hw., passim; for instance, p. 59.

4/Hw., p. 58.

5/Hw., p. 41.

6/Hw., p. 62 (our italics).

7//Das Unvordichtbare, (Erläuterungen zu Hölderlins Dichtung, vierte Auflage, p. 113.

8/Heidegger himself indicates the etymological equivalence between Lichtung and “clearing”; the German word Lichtung was coined in the 19th century to render the French “clairiere” (On this subject, and about the whole question of the a priori of Lichtung, see Henri Mongis, Heidegger et la critique de la notion de valeur Nijhoff, 1976, Chapter V, especially, page 186.)

9/Zur Sache des Denkens p. 72. We have modified the translation.

10/Ibid., p. 73 (our italics for first, erst).

11/VA, p. 98. See list of abbreviations after the notes.

12/Ibid.

13/“The History of Being is Being itself, and nothing but this,” (N.II, p. 489): such a proposition (our italics) is nevertheless in Heidegger’s eyes the model of a metaphysical proposition, excluding the nothingness of the fullness of Being taken as being as such in its totality.

14/Facticity is at once the actual Being of Dasein and its involvement in the Being of subsistent being, that radically anterior past to which it is delivered, subjected, in the “throw” that throws it to the world. “To facticity of Dasein belongs the fact that the Dasein, as long as it is as it is, remains in the ”throw.“ (Wurf), SZ, 179.

15/Hw., pp. 62–63.

16/See for example Nietzsche II, p. 388.

17/Wegmarken, p. 362.

18/Hw., p. 300.

19/Ibid. (our italics)

20/VA, p. 73.

21/VA, pp. 71–99.

22/S.Z., pp. 126–127.

23/The ancient fable on Care, Cura, quoted in paragraph 42, is considered by Heidegger as a “preontological witness” to Dasein, that is to say, anterior to its historicity, prehistorial in a certain way. If the earth as a mythological figure gives man his name (in the fable Homo is derived from Humus), it is the primacy of Care that keeps it in its essence “its whole life long,” hence time. Earth in the fable and in Heidegger’s own commentary only lends to man the exterior of its body. “This being does not take its name (homo) with regard to its Being, but with regard to its constituent matter (humus). As to deciding where one must see the ”original“ Being of this creature, that decision belongs to Saturn, ”time.“ (SZ) (continued, p. 199) The text contains no remark on the status of the poetic discourse or mythological discourse as such.

24/SZ, p. 162.

25/GA, 24, p. 242.

26/Ibid., p. 246.

27/Ibid.

28/Einführung in die Metaphysik, p. 97; herafter E.M.

29/E.M., p. 29.

30/Ibid.

31/Ibid.

32/E.M., p. 47.

33/E.M., p. 77.

34/Ibid.

35/E.M., p. 101.

36/E.M., p. 102 (translation modified).

37/E.M., p. 71.

38/E.M., p. 120 (translation modified).

39/Common usage in German associates Gewalt with the law, authority, the institutional, and not at all with the arbitrary, disorder, or savagery. In one of his lectures on Hölderlin, Heidegger speaks of “the power of openness (die eröffnende Gewalt) of the affective tonality at base.” (Grundstimmung) (G.A. 31, p. 93).

40/Wille zur Macht, paragraph 842.

41/Ibid. paragraph 848.

42/Ibid. paragraph 845, “Raphaöl was thankful for existence”/their creation is thankfulness for their being.“ And paragraph 852.

43/Ibid.

44/Ibid. paragraph 846.

45/E.M., p. 123.

46/E.M., p. 121.

47/Ibid.

48/E.M., p. 130.

49/E.M., p. 129.

50/E.M., p. 131.

51/E.M., p. 146 (We italicize antagonism in Being and struggle for the uncovering, which are not opposed but in counterpoint. Unverborgenheit, Being in the open, contains “in itself” a conflictuality (Widerstreit), whose essence is not specified.

52/The first parenthesis is ours; the second in the text.

53/Fug which renders the Greek dikè (usually translated as “justice”) is, we think, better rendered by adjustment than by adjoining (G. Kahn).

54/E.M., p. 123.

55/Later Nietzsche fuses in the Dionysian unity, in lucid intoxication, the double primitive aspect of the creative forces. But the polarity of the Apollinian and the Dionysiac remains in the very midst of the “Dionysiac wisdom.”

56/Hw., p. 38 (our italics).

57/On this subject, see the essay of M. Froment-Meurice, “L’Art moderne et la technique,” Cahier l’Herne Heidegger p. 302 and fol.

58/Hw., p. 38.

59/Ibid.

60/Editions du Cerf, 1985, p. 130.

61/Cf. N I, p. 104–106. Nietzsche, who looks for mastery and the structuring of the passions in the “grand style” is opposed to Wagner whose music is said to have developed “the increasing barbarizing of the affective state,” “the pure overbidding of the Dionysiac.”

62/Hw., p. 35.

63/These terms (Hw, p. 36) are to be found in Heidegger’s analysis of the concept of “bodily and vital chaos” in Nietzsche.

64/Ibid.

65/The Gay Science, paragraph 109.

66/Hw., p. 36.

67/Hw., p. 58.

68/Ibid.

69/Hw., p. 38.