WHY POETS?

self-assertion? No. Those, then, who sometimes risk more can only be more willing provided their willing is different in its essence. Then willing would not at once be the same as willing. The ones who will to a greater degree out of the essence of willing stay more in keeping with will as the being of beings. They accord rather with being that shows itself as will. They will more insofar as they are more willing. W ho arc the more willing ones, who risk more? The poem, apparently, does not have an explicit answer to this question.

Still, lines 8-10 say something about the ones who risk more, by negation and in approximate terms. Those who risk more do not risk themselves from self-interest, for the sake of their own person. They arc attempting neither to obtain an advantage nor to indulge in self-seeking. N either can they, although they risk more, lay claim to an outstanding achievement. For they only risk slightly more: "by a breath risk more." The "more" they risk is as slight as a breath that remains fleeting and imperceptible. From such hints it is not possible to identify who are the ones who risk more.

On the other hand, lines 1o-1 z say what this risk brings which is risked out beyond the being of beings:

... This fashions us, outside of all defense,
a safebeing, there where the gravity
of the pure forces takes effect;

We, like all creatures, are beings only by being risked in the risk of being. Yet because we (as creatures who will) go with the risk, we are risked more and so sooner given up to the danger. So long as man is set fast in deliberate self-assertion and establishes himself by the absolute objectification in departure against the open, he himself promotes his own defenselessness.

On the other hand, the risk that risks more fashions us a safebeing. Of course this does not take place by erecting a sheltering defense around the defenseless; for in that case a defense would be set up only in those places where it was absent. For that purpose, production would again be required. This is only possible in objectification, which, however, seals us off against the open. The risk that risks more does not produce a defense. However, it fashions us a safebeing. Safe, securus, sine cura means: without care. Care has here the nature of deliberate self-assertion along the ways and by the means of absolute production. We are without this care only when we do not set up our essence exclusively in the precinct of production and command, of utilization and defense. We are safe only where we are neither taking the defenseless into account nor counting on a defense erected in the will.

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