vocalization of inner poetic lived experiences, as though one were packaging them up to pass them along to other people. When in the last strophe of “As when on feast day . . . ,” which we have already cited, Hölderlin speaks of the poets having to pass on to the people the lightning flashes of the gods “shrouded in the song” (IV, 153, lines 59f.), then this word concerning the shroud and shrouding has a quite different meaning. Poetizing is itself only that distinctive occurrence within the event of language in whose power the human being stands as historical. Poetizing configures the ground of historical Dasein: Language as such constitutes the originary essence of the historical being of humans. We cannot first determine the essence of the being of human beings, and then in addition or after the fact attribute language to them as a gift. Rather, the originary essence of their beyng is language itself. We can now better comprehend that it is no accident that, in asking the question of who we are, we find ourselves directed to first let ourselves into the dialogue of poetizing. Poetizing and language are not two separate things here; rather, both are the same configuration of the ground of historical being.
f) The Being of the Human Being as Dialogue. Being Able to Hear and Speaking
How far Hölderlin penetrated poetically into this primal realm of poetic telling may now be attested to by a word that also brings together for us, out of an originary unity, everything that has been said thus far and by way of preparation concerning poetizing and language. (Cf. the Rome lecture of April 2, 1936, “Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetry.”1) The poet says:
Viel hat erfahren der Mensch.
Der Himmlischen viele genannt,
Seit ein Gespräch wir sind
Und hören können voneinander.
Much have humans experienced.
Named many of the heavenly,
Since we are a dialogue
And can hear from one another.
1. Erläuterungen zu Hölderlins Dichtung. Fourth edition. Frankfurt, 1971. 33ff. Translated as Elucidations of Hölderlin’s Poetry by Keith Hoeller. Amherst, New York: Humanity Books, 2000, 51ff.