We add the second version:
. . . and sayings
Are indeed good, for they are a memory
To the highest, yet there is also a need of
One to interpret the holy sayings. (IV, 144)
Thus the essence of poetry is joined to the laws which strive to separate and unite the hints of the gods and the {GA 4: 47} voice of the people. The poet himself stands between the former—the gods—and the latter—the people. He is the one who has been cast out—out into that between, between gods and men. But first and only in this between is it decided who man is and where his existence is settled. "Poetically man dwells on this earth."
Unceasingly and ever more securely, out of the fullness of the images pressing on him, and ever more simply, Hölderlin has consecrated his poetic word to this realm of the between. It is this that compels us to say that he is the poet's poet.
Can we still believe that Hölderlin is trapped in an empty and excessive self-contemplation owing to the lack of worldly content? Or do we recognize that this poet, because of an excess of impetus, poetically thinks through to the ground and center of being. It is to Hölderlin himself that we must apply the verse which he said of Oedipus in that late poem "In lovely blueness blooms ...":
Perhaps King Oedipus has
One eye too many. (VI, 26)
Hölderlin puts into poetry the very essence of poetry—but not in the sense of a timelessly valid concept. This essence of poetry belongs to a definite time. But not in such a way that it merely conforms to that time as some time already existing. Rather, by providing anew the essence of poetry, Hölderlin first determines a new time. It is the time of the gods who have fled and of the god who is coming. It is the time of need because it stands in a double lack and a double not: in the no-longer of the gods who have fled and in the not-yet of the god who is coming.