of the Ιster hymn—"Yet what that one does, that river, / No one knows"—we also know this: whatever the river does is an enigma.
The river's activity is its flowing, and therein it has its actuality and is the actual river. Yet surely we are familiar with what the actual river, the actual Donau does. If we are unfamiliar with it, then that description of the earth that is concerned with this kind of knowledge, namely geography, will provide us with precise information. Or is the actual river, as ascertained by geography and knowable through everyday experience, not the river as it truly is? Is whatever is straightforwardly ascertained and maintained as actual not that which is?
Was aber jener thuet der Strom.
Weis niemand.
Yet what that one does, that river.
No one knows.
What the river does, therefore, not even the poet knows. The poet nevertheless knows its activity. its flowing; what the poet does not know is what is decided in this flowing. The flowing river as known poetically is the one that is. Is the poetic river other than the actual one? Before we may venture to answer this question. we must rigorously "attend to" whatever is said poetically of the river. Only from what is said poetically can we come to understand that which here is. And the actual river? Should we forget about it or simply relegate it to a symbolic image? Before we judge, let us listen more carefully to what is said poetically of the river.
§5. The river as the locality of human abode
According to the word of the Ιster hymn (1. 15): "Here, however, we wish to build," the river determines the dwelling place of human beings upon the earth. "Dwelling" is practically and technically regarded as the possession of accommodation and housing. Such things indeed belong to dwelling, yet they do not fulfill or ground its essence. Dwelling takes on an abode and is an abiding in such an abode, specifically that of human beings upon this earth. The abode is a whiling. It needs a while. In such a while, human beings find rest. Yet rest here does not mean the cessation of activity or the halting of disruption. Rest is a grounded repose in the steadfastness of one's own essence. In rest, the human essence is preserved in its inviolability. The inviolability and holiness of a locale is called ἡ ἀσυλία in Greek. Hölderlin speaks of "asylums" (V. 271), of the resting sites of human beings: by this he does not mean graves, but rather those locales