The foundation of human existence is conversation as the authentic occurrence of language. But the primary language is poetry as the founding of being. Language, however, is "the most dangerous of goods." Thus poetry is the most dangerous work and at the same time the "most innocent of all occupations."
In fact—only if we think these two conceptions together as one do we comprehend the full essence of poetry.
But, then, is poetry the most dangerous work? In a letter to a friend, written immediately before his departure for his last journey to France, Hölderlin writes: "O friend! The world lies before me, brighter and more serious than before! I am pleased with what happens, I am pleased as when in the summer 'the old holy father with calm hand shakes the holy lightning flashes out of the red clouds/ For among all that I can see of God, this sign has become my chosen one. I used to be able to rejoice over a new truth, a better view {GA 4: 44} of what is above us and around us, but now I fear that I shall end like old Tantalus, who received more from the gods than he could digest" (V, 321).
The poet is exposed to the god's lightning flashes. This is spoken of in that poem which we consider to be the purest poem on the essence of poetry, and which begins:
As when on a holiday, to see the field
A countryman goes out, at morning,... (IV, 15Iff.)
Here it is said in the last stanza:
Yet us it behooves, you poets, to stand
Bare-headed beneath God's thunderstorms,
To grasp the Father's ray, itself, with our own hands
And to offer to the people
The heavenly gift wrapt in song.
And a year later, after Hölderlin, struck by madness, had returned to his mother's house, he wrote to the same friend, recalling his stay in France: