has laid down for some two thousand years now with respect to nature, history, human beings, and God.
One might think that one day a precise, complete, philological, historiographical, theological, and metaphysical interpretation of Hölderlin's poetry could bring together everything that Hölderlin says about the gods. That would by no means guarantee that a relation to the gods could spring from this. For, taken in itself, the interpretation of a poetic work does not even "achieve" a poetic understanding, granted that such understanding could in general be "brought about" in any way. And yet poetic knowing is the fundamental prerequisite for hearing the poetic word concerning the gods.
If, from time to time, we are forced to talk of the "gods" and "goddesses" in our remarks on Hölderlin's poetry, then we must not let this give the illusory impression that we are enlightened about this in the way that an academic must be enlightened concerning that about which he is speaking. The names "gods" and "goddesses" here merely make evident our lack of knowledge, if not indeed something more fateful, more needful.
Yet how do things stand concerning the rivers? They are not gods. They are not humans. They are not occurrences of nature, nor are they parts of the landscape. Nor, indeed, are they "symbolic images" of the "earthly journey" of human beings. To say what the rivers in each instance are not is of little avail, yet it is of some help. Initially, what emerges is that any determination of the essence of the rivers must appear alienating. Our claim is this: the river is the locality of the dwelling of human beings as historical upon this earth. The river is the journeying of a historical coming to be at home at the locale of this locality. The river is locality and journeying.
§7. The river as the locality of journeying and the journeying of locality
The river is the locality of journeying. Yet the river is also the journeying of locality. Such statements make it sound as though empty words were being strung together and exchanged, a procedure that only increases further the already existing indeterminacy of their meaning and of the essence to which they refer. This illusion of a mere playing with words cannot be overcome immediately. We must even concede that such statements cannot be understood directly at all in the way that we understand the assertion that today is Tuesday. The said statements are always incomprehensible within a certain realm of comprehension, and there is an essential reason for this. The incomprehensibility of such statements is not grounded in some contingent lack of a knowledge that would be otherwise