In this essay written in 1936, Heidegger gives an interpretation of five pointers taken from Friedrich Hölderlin’s writing in order to disclose the essence of poetry. Heidegger chooses Hölderlin for his interpretation, because he is the poet of the poets. Poetry is the most innocent of occupations. The domain of this occupation is language; hence, we can only grasp the mission and calling of poetry when we comprehend how language itself speaks. Language has the task of making entities manifest in their being and preserving them in unconcealment. It is the most dangerous thing of being-there’s possessions, because it makes our existence in the clearing possible. Only where there is language is there world; only where world predominates is there history. Language has at its disposal and grants the supreme possibility of human existence.
The being of being-there is founded on language, and the human being’s manner of dwelling within it is dialogue or conversation. We are an ongoing conversation, and that means we can listen to one another. The unity of this conversation is grounded on the essential word. This unity can only become manifest in the light of something permanent and enduring, that is, time. Since language becomes actual as conversation, the gods have acquired names and a world has appeared. Poetry is the bestowal (Stiftung) of being by means of the word.
The bestowal of being is both the pure gift of being and a process of grounding by being-there. In the process of the letting be of things by naming them in their being, the poet illuminates the entire clearing where the gift of being is bestowed. The poet has been cast out into the between, between the gods and the people. In this “between,” it is decided who we are and where we settle and inhabit our existence.
Hölderlin is the poet in the destitute time, because our time finds itself in the no-longer of the gods who have fled and the not-yet of the arrival of the new gods.