c) On Hölderlin’s Understanding of Being. The Power of the Heraclitean Thought
α) Hölderlin and Heraclitus
In all of this, that understanding of beyng that gained power at the commencement of Western philosophy—and in the meantime has, in genuine and non-genuine variations, dominated German thought and knowing, particularly since Meister Eckhart—lies near and is once again powerful. It is the conception of being that we find in a thinker with whom Hölderlin knew himself to have an affinity: Heraclitus. We possess only fragments of his philosophy. With reference to what has been said thus far, yet also with a view to what is to follow, we shall cite several sayings of Heraclitus. We must here forgo any interpretation. See Fragment 51:
οὐ ξυνιᾶσιν ὅκως διαφερόμενον ἑωυτῶι ὁμολογέει. παλίντροπος ἁρμονίη ὅκωσπερ τόξου καὶ λύρης.
“They fail to understand [namely, those who simply proceed with their existence (Dasein) in an everyday manner] that, and in what way, whatever is by itself at variance is nevertheless in agreement with itself; counter-striving harmony it is, as with the bow and the lyre” [where the ends that stretch apart are tensed together, a tension which, however, first makes possible precisely the release of the arrow and the resonance of the strings, that is: beyng]. And then an example, in Fragment 48:
τῶι οὖν τόξωι ὄνομα βίος, ἔργον δὲ θάνατος.
“The name of the bow is life [βίος], its work, however, death” [the most extreme opposites of beyng together in one].
Yet—as is already clear from the first fragment cited—this comprehension of beyng is closed to everyday understanding: namely, the insight that whatever is most intensely counter-striving is fundamentally the harmony of whatever belongs together. When everyday understanding sees harmony, it is merely superficial agreement that exists temporarily and remains without force. Whence Fragment 54:
ἁρμονίη ἀφανὴς φανερῆς κρείττων
The harmony that does not show itself to the habitual way of seeing—that is, which remains merely a divergence of opposites for such seeing—this concealed harmony is more powerful than that which