namely, to what does the poetical word properly oblige us? This question has its ground in a still more essential question: which truth is proper to poetry as poetry? The mere appeal to personal lived experiences and impressions, which is implied in the appeal to the poet himself as the ultimate support of the validity of his word, is here too little, i.e., it is nothing at all in an age in which not only the being or non-being of a people is to be decided, but where, prior to that, the essence and the truth of being and nonbeing themselves, and nothing less, are at stake. In this way it could be more important, i.e., more objective, to insert Rilke's poetry into the tradition of Christian consciousness rather than deliver it over to the subjective "experiences" of a perplexed individual.
Our thinking would be too narrow and too oblique if we were to defend the view that by referring to the "open" in Rilke we are measuring his poetry against the yardstick of philosophical concepts, in order to judge it or even condemn it according to that measure. To be sure, Rilke's word about the "open" would then be brought into relation with the essential sphere of ἀλήθεια. The question is whether this is only a so-called philosophical concept or whether in the course of our reflection it has become clear that ἀλήθεια names an event in whose compass even Rilke's word about the "open" belongs, just as does every occidental word that speaks of Being and truth, a speaking that may still experience and know this event or long since have forgotten its last tremors.
There is, of course, a gaping abyss between what Rilke names the open and "the open" in the sense of the unconcealedness of beings. The "open" that dwells in ἀλήθεια first lets beings emerge and come to presence as beings. Man alone sees this open. More specifically, man gets a glimpse of this open while comporting himself. as he always does, to beings, whether these beings are understood in the Greek sense as what emerges and comes to presence, or in the Christian sense as ens creatum, or in the modern sense as objects. In his comportment to beings, man in advance sees the open by dwelling within the opening and opened project of Being. Without the open, which is how Being itself comes to presence, beings could be neither unconcealed nor concealed. Man and he alone sees into the open-though without beholding it. Only the essential sight of authentic thinking beholds Being itself. But even there the thinker can behold Being only because he as man has already glimpsed it.
The animal, on the contrary, does not glimpse or see into, and certainly does not behold, the open in the sense of the unconcealedness of the unconcealed. Therefore neither can an animal relate to the closed as such, no more than it can comport itself to the concealed. The animal is excluded from the essential domain of the strife between unconcealedness