THE ORIGIN OF THE WORK OF ART
agree? Could anyone maintain the impossible position that the Idea of Temple is represented in the temple? And yet in this work, if it is a work, truth sets itself to work. Or take Hölderlin's hymn "The Rhine." What is given beforehand to the poet, and how is it given, so that it can be given once again in the poem? It may be that in the case of this hymn and similar poems, the idea of a copy-relation between a beautiful reality and the artwork clearly fails; yet the idea that the work is a copy seems to be confirmed in the best possible way by C. F. Meyer's2 poem "The Roman Fountain"
Roman Fountain
The jet ascends, and falling fills
The marble basin round.
Veiling itself, this over-flows
Into a second basin's ground.
The second gives, it becomes too rich,
To a third its bubbling flood,
And each at once receives and gives
And streams and rests.
Der römische Brunnen
Aufsteigt der Strahl und fallend gießt
Er voll der Marmorschale Rund
Die, sich verschleiernd, überfließt
In einer zweiten Schale Grund;
Der dritten wallend ihre Flut,
Und jede nimmt und gibt zugleich
Und strömt und ruht.
This, however, is neither a poetic depiction of an actual fountain nor the reproduction of the general essence of a Roman fountain. Yet truth is set into the work. What is the truth that happens in the work? Can truth happen at all and be, therefore, historical? Yet truth, it is said, is something timeless and supratemporal.
We seek the reality of the artwork in order really to find, there, the art prevailing within it. The thingly substructure is what proved to be the most evident reality in the work. To grasp this thingly element the traditional concepts of the thing are inadequate; for these themselves fail to grasp the essence of the thingly. The dominant concept, thing as formed matter, is taken not from the essence of the thing but from the essence of equipment. What has also become clear is that for a long time the being of equipment has commanded a peculiar preeminence in the interpretation of beings. This – the not explicitly thought out preeminence of the being
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