time. History is the monumental play that the gods play with the peoples and with a people; for the great times and eras of world time are a play, according to the word of an ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, whom they call the obscure one, and whose most profound thoughts were thought anew precisely by Hölderlin. See Fragment 52:
αἰὼν παῖς ἐστι παίζων, πεσσεύων. παιδὸς ἡ βασιληίη.
“The time of the world—a child it is, playing, moving the board pieces to and fro, of [such] a child is sovereignty [over being].” In such play of the gods stands the Earth.
b) Renouncing Calling the Gods of Old as Sustaining a Conflict.
The Fundamental Attunement of Mourning and
Its Three Aspects
In the Earth’s becoming homeland, it opens itself to the power of the gods. The two are the same and include within them a third element: that in the storm of the divine, the Earth itself comes to be torn open in its grounds and abysses. The latter can certainly become covered over, and do so together with the decline of the homeland. The Earth then becomes a mere site of use and exploitation. By contrast, when the Earth manifests herself in the disinterestedness of authentic Dasein, she is holy—holy Earth. The holy one,
Die Mutter ist von allem, und den Abgrund trägt
Who is Mother of all, and carries the abyss
(“Germania,” line 76)
In this abyss, the firmness and individuatedness of all ground retreats and everything yet finds its way to a constantly dawning new becoming. For the human being, who ‘dwells poetically upon this Earth,’ he and he alone belongs to the abyss that the Earth carries. This Earthly dimension of the Earth is unattainable even for the heavenly.
. . . Nicht vermögen Die Himmlischen alles. Nemlich es reichen Die Sterblichen eh’ in den Abgrund. Also wendet es sich Mit diesen.
. . . The heavenly Are not capable of all. Mortals rather Reach into the abyss. Thus things turn With them.
(“Mnemosyne,” IV, 225, lines 14ff.)