IL FAUT*

Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe
To Roger Laporte "To write, the exigency to write": the formulation is fromMaurice is at stake in it,and one can hear this rightaway, is Blanchot. What the very essentiality of what we no longer have the nerve to name "literature." Without making a stir, almost modestly, but in a way that is altogether decisive. By means of this imperative without con termwhich has authorized tent,what was known as "literature"-a so many

son, much as the Rimbaud of A Season inHell claimed to be given over to the earth and to a crude reality. In a registerwhich, despite is quite close to this,when Beckett was asked by a appearances, newspaper

immense pretentions and inspired poses-is given over to itsown naked existence as a fact and to a sort of duty without rea

survey the question "Why do you write?", he gave this lapidary response: "It's all I'm good for" [Bon qu'a gal.1 Inorder to say this exigency, we have inour language-that is, in this French2which Holderlin spoke a littleand with which, in any his late sketches and the last reworkings of his have a formidable locution: "it is necessary" [il irreplaceable.3

case, he punctuated

greatest poems-we fauti. Formidable but, undoubtedly,

The

was originally no. 3 (1992). It orally. presented

French

version

of this essay

was

first published

inMLN,

vol.

107,

Qui Parle Vol. 10, No. 2 Spring/Summer 1997

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LACOUE-LABARTHE

The French word for "to be necessary" [falloir] derives-one can easily verify this-from the vulgate Latin "faillire," itselfbased on the classical Latin "fallere": to deceive, to elude, to be lacking. "To be necessary" [falloir] is a doublet of the verb meaning "almost to..." or "to fail to..." [faillir],4and thus, in French, language makes us hear in the very enunciation of an imperative or an obligation-in this injunction which, as

ure [/afaillite]. But also, and interminably, the imminence of a chance, the promise of a success or the admission of a failure (when there is an "almost," and that applies only lacking [il s'en faut], precisely, also for a recognition of merit). And, itgoes without saying, a fault in the sense of a mistake, an error or an ethical lapse [/a faute]. Ipropose, since it is in this language alone, in French, that Iam which able to speak, to place H6lderlin-the oeuvre, if it isone, for this name is a title-under the sign of the "it is necessary." We

"impersonal"-language faut] also notions of defect and lack [/eddfaut], faltering,weakness, and breakdown [la ddfaillance], and bankruptcy, collapse and fail

is said, is all the more binding for being makes us hear in this "it is necessary" [i/

cannot forget, in fact, that in the one text among all the which he set down his highest and most difficult thought, others in in the "Remarks" on the translations of Sophocles, Holderlin de scribes

inwhich the the tragic moment-that is, the moment without limit"of the god and man "is purified by a "becoming-one separation without limit"-by indicating that the imperative itself, the categorical turning away of the god fromman, must also be fol lowed by man, that it is necessary forman to turn away as well: in thismoment he must follow the categorical turn "man, because der weil er in diesem Moment ("der Mensch, ing away..."

to "turn kategorischen Umkehr folgen muss..."). Man, too, is forced same word here too, "umkehren"), "like a traitor,but away" (it's the indeed in a way that is holy."5 It is as ifthe "it is necessary" of the

or which are them default defection(Holderlin speaksof infidelity), to Holderlin would thus have brought Inhisquite singular theology, with no dialectical resolution, the infinitely light paradoxical logic, which exerts which inFrench isdissimulated-but of theexigency
selves the consequence of a fault, a transgression or a tragic excess.

imperative supposed

and at the same time commanded

a faltering, a

IL FAUT

35

itself in a way that is indeed formidable-in

the interval between

"to

be necessary" [falloir] and "to fail to..." [faillirl, and which the "it is necessary" [i/faut] its strange resonance.

gives to

in a platonico-hegelian mode, which Alain Badiou has pronounced concerning the "end of the age of the poets."6 By "the age of the poets" Alain Badiou means an epoch, between which poetry-at least in a fewworks, very Holderlin and Celan, in cree, delivered

I will attempt to articulate here is still at the stage of a What sketch. In a work which I have begun, I am pursuing an intention would like to respond to the de that is double. On the one hand I

or only one of its conditions, whether science (that is, positivism) (that is, to speak quickly, what can be referred to as the phi politics a "thinking losophies of totalitarianism). It is therefore the age of which, poetry," to use Heidegger's phrase, and therefore the age in least that philosophy whose likewise, philosophy-at itrefuse such sutures-oriented gencies demanded that rigorous exi itselftowards

the task of providing a supplement for the fal few really-assumed of a philosophy which, at the same time, by forgetting the full tering reign of its "generic procedures," was intenton "suturing" itself to

poetry inorder to find in itthe chance and the promise of thought, to which Heidegger, of course, attests in an exemplary fashion. And this is,moreover, the reason why Badiou sees in Celan's visit to Todtnauberg, and in his disappointment with the famous dialogue between

the poet and the thinker, the emblematic figure of an end.7 Iam more and more persuaded that But, on the other hand, because on Holderlin-which is at bottom what commentary Heidegger's authorizes, retrospectively, the possibility of speaking of an "age of the poets"-is more concerned with themytheme thanwith the poem

These implications as is well known, indissociably are, philosophi cal and political,but theytouchalso on a certain poetologyor on
what we attempt to name, "exigency

commentary, as

(and that it is, to say itas clearly as possible, a forced attempt at Iwould like to move against the flow of this remythologisation), it were, in an attempt to survey its implications.

and thus also onwhat isatonce affirmed hidden inthe and writing,
towrite" towards which Blanchot has pointed.

in a way that isvery fragile,with the term

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which

As I said a moment ago, this is a work in progress. Here I will to say something not so much about where it stands at the mo try about the ment-like every work inprogress, itstands nowhere-as direction which it is taking,what is impelling it, the suspicion from itproceeds.

This assumes of course that one allow a different light to be shed on Holderlin, or that his text-and all of this text-not be pre vented from resonating in a differentway.

* We may recall the way inwhich Adorno, in his essay "Parataxis," brings out the blunder, which is in any case intentional in the most heavy-handed way, committed by Heidegger, in 1943, in his com ["Remembrance"]. The passage,

mentary on "Andenken" passages, merit citation:

or rather

The comments Heidegger appends, with visible discom fort, to the lines from "Andenken" about the brown women of Bordeaux are of the same sort. "The women here this name still has the early sound that signifies the mistress and protectress. Now, however, the name is spo in the ken solely with reference to the birth of essence

poet. Ina poem written shortly before his hymnic period and as part of the transition to it,Holderlin said every 11th thing that can be known ('Gesang des Deutschen,' stanza, IV, 130): Frauen danket! sie haben uns freundlichen Geist bewahrt

Den deutschen Der Gotterbilder

Germanwomen! They have preserved Thank the us of The friendly spirit thegods' imagesfor
The hymn 'Germanien' illuminates the poetic truth of these lines,which remained concealed from the poet him self. The German women rescue themanifestation of the

IL FAUT

37

gods eludes

German women

in history whose stay in the clutches of time-reckoning, which when can establish "historical situations." The ascendency

so that it remains an event

divine nature and its loci or in grasping their essence. The preservation of this arrival is the constant coopera tivework of preparing the celebration. In the greeting in 'Andenken,' however, it is not the German women who are named but the 'braunen Frauen daselbst' ['the brown

fearsomeness of this event, whose frightening quality leads into excess, whether in concretizing the people astray

itinthekindliness a friendly of They takeaway the light.

rescue the arrival of the gods by placing

women

there']."8 The assertion, by no means substanti ated, that theword "Frauen" [women] here still has the "that signifies early-one might add, Schillerian-tone the mistress and protectress," whereas on the contrary lines are enraptured with the erotic imago of to pass allows Heidegger the Mediterranean woman,

Holderlin's

unnoticed over to praise of German women, of whom it is simply not a question in the poem being explicated. They are dragged inby the hair.9 Adorno's remark, or rather its resumption here, isobviously correct inasmuch as it speaks, plainly, of erotic fascination, and inasmuch as itcontradicts in thisway Heidegger's emphatic and pious com

over say nothing of its very weighty political mentary-to determination-which lends itselfso poorly to the diction proper to this poem, concerned as it is with "sobriety." From thework of Di eter Henrich, Pierre Bertaux, and, it seems to me, especially Jean-Pierre Lefebvre, we know towhat extent Holderlin's poetry be comes, after his return from Bordeaux, rigorously literal. What

a at characterizesthis which isalreadybe poetry thattime, poetry

coming more and more fragmentary and disarticulated-and and more enigmatic-is itsextreme precision, itsdisarmed more clarity,

naked rock of language."10 This is so whether it isa question of things or human beings, place names or names ingeneral, and even-this

which one begins to see emerge what Benjamincalled "the through

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does so with an almost photographic precision, or, to put thematter (Iwill come differently, he has become extraordinarily prosaic.""

is at least what Adorno tries to show-concepts. As Jean-Pierre Lefebvre says, using a common French expression: "After his return Holderlin from France, and perhaps despite certain appearances, calls a cat a cat. When, for example, he evokes his stay abroad, he

back to this last category in a moment.) "Andenken" speaks in real ity,that is, concretely, of Bordeaux, although I rather doubt that it is necessary to understand "the real" and "the concrete" in their specu too plainly and simply does. And if it is-and to recall that a poem, as a poem, in its especially was-necessary or in its "dictamen" (ifone can thus translate what poetized element is not lim Benjamin and, later,Heidegger called das Gedichtete), to evoking "lived experiences" or to relating the storyor rendering ited the full account of a journey or a visit-a point which Heidegger lative sense, as Adorno

exerts himself at great length to make at the beginning of his com mentary-it requires a peculiar sort of bad faith, and very precise to deny a priori what will call the (in fact rather desper I intentions, demand ate) sense of reality in the late Holderlin. Or, [exigencel for truth.

if you prefer: itsurgent

I will cite again the incriminated stanza, in the translation of Jean-Pierre Lefebvre, tomy knowledge the only one, of the half dozen available, which does not "over-poetize" the original and which re stores it to itsdisarming, and disarmed, simplicity (I use once again this termwhich ked" or other equivalents).12 Noch punctuates the lastpoems, as do words such as "na

denket das mir wohl und wie

Die breiten Gipfel neiget An Feiertagen gehn

Die

Der Ulmwald, Ober die Muhl', ImHofe aber wachest ein Feigenbaum.

braunen Frauen daselbst

Auf seidnenBoden,
Zur Marzenzeit,

Wenn gleich ist Nacht und Tag,

IL FAUT

39

Und Ober langsamen Stegen, Von goldenen Traumen schwer, Einwiegende Lufte ziehen.

The wood Its wide On

Still I remember this, and how inclines crests over the mill, But in the court-yard a fig-treegrows. holidays walk in that place

The brown women On

a silken floor, In the month of March,

When

night and day are equal, And over slow floating walkways, Heavy with golden dreams, Lulling breezes travel.

There

is here not only an astonishing topographical precision, as there is also in the firststrophe (which is a "view" of Lormont) or the Adorno could not last (which evokes the headland at Ambese). But if

Bordeaux), was the space fora sort of cabaret where people came to dance on Sundays and, ifnot exactly a house of pleasure, in the years of the Directoire and theConsulate, at least a house forparties. In this sense Adorno

have known, we do know this today: the mill, located in fact in Lormont (on the opposite bank of theGaronne, therefore across from

ison themark, quite simply because he knows towhat extent Heidegger isavoiding the realitywhich Holderlin, for his part, was at great pains to rejoin. What in thisway, Adorno is strange is that at themoment he is correcting suddenly shows himself to be very to recall complacently, in which

Heidegger

to of with regard theobvious political importance the lineshe timid

has just cited. Now, man woman there is no need Ai Ia

of Farias, the "Thoughts a Mother" of Elfriede Heidegger; theGer

is an official

on which dimension Heideggermay confer it, theologico-political

topos of those years and, whatever

40

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LACOUE-LABARTHE

is in fact immeasurable, the simple resumption of the theme, espe cially in such a ridiculously irrelevant manner, applies also to the renewal or the approbation of the topos. Indeed, Adorno adds: commentator Clearly, in 1943, when the philosophical was working with "Andenken,"he must have feared even the appearance of French women as something su;ver

sive; but even afterward he changed nothing in thisbizarre excursus. Heidegger returns to the pragmatic content of

the poem cautiously and shamefacedly, confessing that it is not the German but rather "the brown women there" are named. (N, 118-9)

who Without

a doubt, in the rest of his treatment Adorno shows himself to be much more virulent towards Heidegger, never missing an op portunity to bring to the fore the latter'sprofound adherence towhat

Adorno

calls, classically, one could also consider

however that here, despite the enormity of Heidegger's Adorno does not strike as hard as he might. what exactly Just is happening? * What

"German ideology" (N, 117). In this vein, that "Parataxis" puts forth in an abridged form the essential points of the demonstration developed at length, around the same time, inThe Jargon ofAuthenticity.13 It would seem claims,

me to formulate the hypothesis in this it is not simply for fun-is that something is happening with manner; what is happening in the exigency which the late Holderlin discov is happening-permit ers and towhich Adorno

he tries desperately to respond. The agon between is fought on the very site where Holderlin and Heidegger the injunction which, on the eve of his departure for pronounces Bordeaux, abruptly acquires the force of law: Aber das eigene muss

so gutgelerntseyn, to wie das Fremde(letter Bohlendorf Decem of manner: in would transcribe thefollowing ber 4, 1801)"4-which I as must be [iifautllearned well as theforeign." And "Buttheproper
I will let resonate as an echo-since than stylistic, is so constant inAdorno's the analogy, sylistic and this note essay-with

which more

IL FAUT

41

16th (and last) string quar tet: Muss es sein?- Es muss sein. (Must itbe?It must be.) What is out with the "brown women" is the entire question of the played relation between I distant. would or between the proper and the foreign, the proximate and the say also, taking up a lexicon which Lacan had him

in the margin of the score of Beethoven's

self transcribed from Heidegger: between the real and the nothing, the concrete and the thing.According to this logic of an augmentation determined by an infintely inverse relation, at work in the Heideggerian for example concept of Ent-fernung (dis I took the risk of naming, with stancing)'5 [d-loignement], which of reference to H6lderlin's interpretation the tragic, a "hyperbologic,"16

we and according towhich, if may remain with these simple words: the closer it is, the farther away it is-and inversely. It involves a Adorno, inhis way, that is,accord suspension of the dialectic itself.

following way, where one sees very well thatwhile he brings into question the henceforth very loaded use of the word "fatherland," not only does he not object to the thematic of the proximate and the itsabyssal or, as he puts it in the lan proper, he even emphasizes guage of "messianism," utopian character: Basing himself both on statements by Holderlin and on titles of poems, Beissner called the late hymns "die vaterlandische Gesange" ["Songs of the Fatherland"]. To have reservations about what Beissner did is not to have itsphilological justification. In the hundred and fifty years since these poems were written, however, theword Vaterland [fatherland] itselfhas changed for the it worse; ithas lost the innocence that still accompanied doubts about manchen lines "Ich weiss inmeinem Vaterland / Noch Berg, 0 Liebe" ["I know many a mountain in my fatherland, oh love"]. Love of what is close at hand in Keller's

ing to his own peculiar fidelity, knew this very well. So true is this that, after the passage on the "brown women," he continues in the

and nostalgiaforthe warmthof childhoodhave devel intosomething oped exclusionary,intohatred forthe

other, and theword can no longer be wiped clean of this. It has become permeated with a nationalism of which

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there isno trace whatsoever German cult of Holderlin

belongs were concerned with their idol and not with the felici tous balance between the total and

inHolderlin. The right-wing has used his concept of what to the fatherland in a distorted way, as though it

the particular. Holderlin himself had already noted what later became evident in theword: "Verbotene Frucht, wie der Lorbeer, aber ist/am meisten das Vaterland" of all, however, ["The fatherland most / Like the laurel, is forbidden fruit"] (Werke, 2,196). The continuation, "Die aber kost / Ein jeder zuletzt" ["But each one tastes it in the end"], does not prescribe a plan for the poet so much as envision the which love of what is close at hand would be utopia in freed from all enmity. (N, 119)

It is not for an instant a question of minimizing the disagree ment which opposes Adorno to Heidegger. Adorno's hostility ispatent, moreover, never belied. As for the severity of the grievances, is, all of which are very fitting, it iswithout appeal. And these griev ances are not only political (especially with regard to the political and

use of H6lderlin, an oblique example ofwhich criticism we just saw) or philosophical (the question of being, inAdorno's eyes, does not hold together). They are equally, and (Iwould say) more properly seriously, aesthetic (the hyper-aestheticization of Holderlin betrays the absence of all aesthetic sense) and, especially, hermeneutical

and poetological: Heidegger may well deal with the concept of the poetized or the dictamen, he nevertheless knows nothing of the com plex (or, inAdorno's sense, dialectical) relation that exists between form, content and the "truth content" (Wahrheitsgehalt: Benjamin's concept), and he does not understand what is "specifically poetic" nouncements and maxims. And this, of course, he does

he (N, 114): consequently treats only thegnomicelement,thepro

in themost

mannerpossible (it isa thought but authorizedby nothing arbitrary or for itself thepurpose of decreeing itskinship, itsbrotherhood, withH6lderlin's "poetic saying.")

IL FAUT

43

cannot therefore proceed as though this implacable cri did not exist. tique At the same time, neither can one fail to notice towhat extent One Adorno underpins Heidegger's commen of this is given by this single phrase: "Poems and sign [truthcontent] philosophy have the same aim: theWahrheitsgehalt it is true, is not the same thing as 112)."17 The Wahrheitsgehalt, (N, aletheia, and Adorno has nothing but contempt forHeidegger's em tary.One is attentive to thatwhich

means phatic Denken und Dichten [thinkingand poetizing]. But this indeed that he intends to do battle on the same terrain and that at no time does he put into question the absolutely privileged relation of moreover, he goes out of his (great) poetry to philosophy-which, to justify,over and against the philologists, at the beginning of way his essay. Thus, in themost paradoxical manner, there isestablished a strange complicity, which I would call an infinitely reticent com It is attested by (among others) the following passage: plicity. Heidegger's commentaries; ultimately, they are products tradition. There is of the same philhellenic-philosophical a mythic layer inherent in the substance of H6lderlin's work, as in any genuine demythologisation. One cannot simply charge Heidegger with arbitrariness. Since the in terpretation of poetry bears upon what was not said, one was cannot hold against the interpretation the fact that it not said in the poem. But one can demonstrate that what does When lates. /Was which Certainly, a number of Holderlin's lines are suited to

Holderlin

dwells / Near to itsorigin hardly will leave the place"], he may rejoice in both the pathos of the origin aber will dem Kaukasos zu!" ["But I am bound

not say is not what Heidegger extrapo Heidegger reads thewords, "Schwer ver/asst, nahe dem Ursprung wohnet, den Ort" ["For that

and thepraise of irnmobility. the strangeline "Ich But

for the which breaks in fortissimo, in the spirit of not com (N, 116-7).18

Caucasus!"],

the dialectic-and

thatof Beethoven's Eroica-is

patible with that kind of mood

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A conflict of interpretations, then. But when I speak of an infinitely at itsextremes can go so far as anger-I reticent complicity-which wish to emphasize both the complicity and the reticence, each one continually arising out of the other. The complicity takes shape, as we just saw, in terms of the relation of Holderlin to philosophy, that is, to the speculative ideal ism he helped to construct, even if ina certain manner he paralysed it in advance. Adorno, by his obstinate but faltering fidelity to Hegel what (and this is where Heidegger,

way-there

the Hegelian dialectic, even ifthis dialectic is forAdorno a dialectic without reconciliation. Thus, for example, he discusses the famous note in the commentary on "Andenken" in which Heidegger avoids

sum relatively of with prudent-to establishthe kinship Holderlin

is stake in the "negative dialectic"), seeks in every at least in what he wrote, remains in

the philosophical interpretation of one of the last reworkings of the final strophe of "Brot und Wein": "For the spirit is not at home / in the beginning, at the source. The homeland consumes it./The spirit loves the colony, and a courageous forgetting."Adorno writes: Jesuitically, Heidegger makes his peace with H6lderlin's stance on empirical reality by seeming to leave un answered the question of the relevance of the

principle of unconditioned subjectivity in the German absolute metaphysics of Schelling and Hegel, in terms of which spirit's abiding-with-itself already requires spirit's return to itself,and the latter in turn requires itsbeing outside-itself, metaphysics, to what even extent such a reference to if itdiscovers

to that tradition is irrelevant to the poetized element [fOrs 'Towhat extent the law of historicity poet Gedichtete]: ized [gedichtete] in these lines can be derived from the

tradition from which Holderlin historico-philosophical while suggesting that Holderlin's relationship emerged,

relationships, instead, is presented only as a matter for subsequent flection.' (E, 90, note)

"historically accurate" illuminates the poetic law or obscures it re

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45

Adorno

continues:

Although Holderlin cannot be dissolved into relationships within so-called intellectual history, nor the substance ideas, still he cannot be removed from the collective con down

[Gehalt]of hiswork naively reduced to philosophical

texts in which hiswork took shape and withwhich it

communicates, (N, 120-1) And from there, by referringobliquely, came one day to call the "communism it seems, towhat H6lderlin to the very cells of its language.

of spirits," Adorno is intent on showing-not in the register of a "conceptual apparatus" but in that of the "fundamental experiences striving for expression in the medium of thought"-the profound solidarity, which "extends into H6lderlin's the form as well," of Holderlin and his "comrades" (N, 121). fundamental experience, like that of Hegel, is the expe

Adorno does not understand, or pretends not to understand, in what way the question of being might hold together. To say that itcan be reduced

rience of the "historically finite" as a necessary moment of "the what Heidegger's appearance of the absolute" (N, 122). And this is of history does not allow him to see. It is true that ontologisation

word antithesis. But at the same time, Adorno is not wrong to claim that Holderlin and Hegel "were in agreement all theway down to

to "a simple antithesis" (N, 120), even while citing some particular proposition of Heidegger ("Being isnever a being" [E, 381), is simply staggering, so great is the misinterpretation evinced by the

explicit theorems, such as forexample in the critique of Fichte's ab solute 'I'.. .,a critique which was no doubt canonical forH6lderlin's transition, at the end of his work, to empirical particulars" (N, 122). It ishere, however, that beyond the surface hostility the complicity is

on after betweenHolderlin Just remarking this primalsolidarity and Hegel,Adorno adds: whose philosophythe relationship the of Heidegger,for
temporal and the essential is thematic under another

formed, and the infinite reticence.

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name, doubtless sensed shared with Hegel. This ously. Through his all too he obscures what

gests that the historical isur-historical, hence all themore crucial the more historical it is. By virtue of this experi ence, determinate beings attain a weight in the poetized element of Holderlin's the meshes

the depth of what H6lderlin iswhy he devalued it so zeal use of theword "Being" ready he himself has seen. H6lderlin sug

Holderlin's kindredspirit ShelleyHell is a city "much

like London," and just as later the modernity of Paris is an archetype forBaudelaire, so Holderlin sees correspon dences between ideas and particular beings everywhere.

a language that slips fortiorithrough of Heidegger's interpretation. Just as for

What

the language of those years called "the finite"must isexactly what themetaphysics of Being hopes for in do, vain: to lead beyond the concept the names which the absolute lacks and in which alone it would be. (N, 122)

To lead beyond the concept the names of which the absolute is in default. It isevident, in the very passion of Adorno's demonstration, in itsprecipitousness, that it is in fact here that the difference with Hegel is decided: cept. We are as close in the question of the name as beyond the con as can be to the famous line in the elegy which Heidegger used as one of the Leitmotive of

are lacking." But where Heidegger, at this precise point, is engaged in remythologisation-which Adorno perceived very clearly: "Out of complicity with myth," he says, "Heidegger forces H6lderlin to bear witness for the latter, and by doing so, Heidegger prejudices the for his part, takes a com result by his method" (N, 121)-Adorno,

"Homecoming" his commentary, and with which moreover he entitled one of the last texts he wrote: es fehlen heilige Namen: "Sacred (or holy) names

at different this pletely path.Bothof them, bottom-I think will have

to pull Holderlin away from the specula been understood-attempt tive dialectic. But Iwould say, schematically, that whereas with to Hegel, Heidegger's strategy is to orient himself towards a respect

anterior the of anterior)-toward "re (andabsolutely logic thefuture

who was one of its turn upstream" as the unhappy Ren6 Char put it,

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47

tries rather towage thewar of the mod last pitiful victims-Adorno ern. With the notion that Holderlin was in truth the first really to have led theway.

* A moment ago the name of Baudelaire will have been heard to reso will have been understood immediately under which nate, and it

authority Adorno places himself in his reading of Holderlin. Every thing in it, or almost everything, proceeds from the striking and notorious essay by Benjamin, "Two Poems by Friedrich Holderlin," written in the winter of 1914-15 and published for the first time, under the care of Adorno this here, but I would no less, in 1955.19 I cannot demonstrate more, gladly maintain thatAdorno does little

all things considered, than to apply, by extending them over the en tirety of the oeuvre, the "methodological" principles and the intuition that Benjamin had tested, in this essay which hermeneutic foronce can be considered

is the concept of "demythologisation" [Ent must not be confused with -which, obviously, mythologisierung] the slogan of the protestant theology inspired by Heidegger, but demonstration which,

a forerunner, on the example of the late after the "return from France," of an earlier poem. reworking, One of the most strategically decisive concepts inAdorno's

however, has a lot to do with another concept which Adorno begins to construct around the same time, that is, the concept of will "Entk:nstung" [de-artification], and which, a few years later, become

will

Heideggerian interpretationsof art.20"Demythologisation" isopposed, in a way that is entirely explicit, to the Heideggerian determination recognize theGerman

the master concept of Aesthetic Theory, by which Adorno in one movement the Hegelian and the attempt to approach

as ofDichtung [poetry] Sage (legend], in not which it isdifficult to what condenses, manifestly, Benjamincalled in1915 the Verlagerung
des Mythologischen. translation of theGreek mythos. And theword

du The "deposingof the mythological"[ddposition mythologique]). entire of Heideggerianproblematic the sacred isdelimitedhere in

(This has been translated as "setting down" or

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as is, consequently, with the conception of the essence of Dichtung, that of the vocation or mission of the poet. When Benjamin constructs his concept of the dictamen-a term advance, which evokes, decidedly and in the closest proximity, in French, the kinship of "dichten" and "dictare,"21 while allowing the "it is neces sary" of exigency to resonate as well: Rousseau still speaks of "the

dictamen of my conscience"-he deduces it,as we know, from the Goethean notion of "content" [Gehalt], which is not content in the sense of thatwhich iscontained, but the "internal form,"which Ben with theWahrheitsgehalt, the "truth-content." The jamin will identify content

the presupposition of the poetry, that is, the intui Dichtermut)-and tive spiritual structure of theworld towhich the poem bears witness. The task isdie Aufgabe, a duty, and another form of the "it is neces sary," located somewhere between rendering and abandoning, giving

is the dictamen, thatwhich in the poem emerges properly from the poetic, inasmuch as itdesignates at once the task of the is inferred from the poem itself (indeed, the firstver poet-which sion of the poem studied by Benjamin isentitled "The Poet's Courage,"

over and giving up: the task isquite simply the courage of poetry, in the double sense of the genetive. One could show that such is in isa limit-concept, and that, naturally, it isone twice over: with respect to the functional unity of the poem (the relation of the form and the content), whose itexpresses; and with respect to life, to the necessary connection dictamen reality the transcendental schema of poetry.22 Benjamin states explicitly that the dictamen

the poem. This is why the dictamen isnot a stranger to themythic, in the sense inwhich, for example, on the basis of a very ancient that had been reactivated by the romantics and by mimetology Nietzsche (but by Holderlin as well), Thomas Mann was able to speak of "life in themyth" in order thus to designate, in sum, an ethics of Which was exemplarity."3 indeed, Ibelieve, the very pain of Holderlin.

which is contained in the idea of a task. The functional unity of life, insures the passage from the second to the first,from life to

But themythic isnot the myth,neitherin the sense of thisor that nor inthesenseof theessentialunity myths. of This myth, particular what itisnecessary and isprecisely latter rather mythological is the

IL FAUT

49

to "lay down" or "depose." The mythic is,on the contrary, the inter in nal tension and contradiction of the mythical elements-that ineffect, Holderlin did not cease to struggle. And in the end which, it is the collapse of myth, or of the mythological. The analysis carried out by Benjamin of the two versions of the would be necessary to follow itstep by poem is intensely difficult. It step. Despite many attempts at exegesis, among which I count de

as we say, itssecrets. by guards, finitively the use made of it Adorno, it Unable to see, as formyself, how Icould even conceive of attempt ing to penetrate them here, Iwould enigmatic suspension, Benjamin's

like simply to recall, in its conclusion, which is not one:

The contemplation of the poetized, however, leads not to to myth but rather-in the greatest creations-only art are shaped mythic connections, which in thework of

into unique, unmythological, and unmythic forms that cannot be better understood by us.24 But iftherewere words with which to grasp the relation

later than that of this poem: "Myths (die Sagen, hoi . mythoi), which take leave (sich entfernen) of earth, /.. zu der Menschheit They return to mankind (Sie kehren sich)."25 There would which cal. This thus be a law of dis-stancing of themyth-a dis-stancing perhaps not be too audacious to qualify as categori in the law would permit us to glimpse the appearance,

which the laterpoem between myth and the inner lifefrom it would be those of Holderlin from a period still sprang,

it would

greatest poems, of this non-mythological and non-mythic figure, will be noticed, isa sheer oxymoron, so true is itthat there which, it is no Gestalt that is not by definition mythic or mythological. Every

an greatpoemwould thustendtowards absolutely paradoxical fig ure in thatthisfigure but thevery would be sustainedby nothing I This is lackand default that of which shouldsupportit. what would like to call, according to the logicof the "'ilfaut," faltering the of

myth.

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It isnot by chance that a few lines furtheralong, in the opening of his "conclusion," part Benjamin refers this faltering of myth which is thus conceived precisely in accordance with the "il faut," that is, of the dictamen-to the notion of "sobriety," to that heilignuchtern [sacredly sober], where the heilig perhaps does not mean plainly and simply the "sacred" which Heidegger wants at all cost to hear in it, if it defines the proper of "Hesperia," only because that is, the destiny of modern man and of modern art, turned aside or "like a traitor,but indeed in a way away, in themanner of Oedipus, that isholy."26 This ishow Benjamin reveals his proposed interpreta tion of what Holderlin

called the proper or the "nationel" [sic]. It Ibelieve, farbeyond anything Heidegger was ever able to say goes, about the matter: In the course of this investigation, the word "sobriety" deliberately avoided, a word thatmight often have

was

served for purposes of characterization. Only now shall Holderlin's phrase "sacredly sober" be uttered, now that itsunderstanding has been determined. Others have noted

that these words exhibit the tendency of his later cre ations. They arise from the inner certainty with which those works stand in his own intellectual life, inwhich sobriety now is allowed, is called for,because this life is in itselfsacred, standing beyond all elevation lime (jenseits aller Erhebung im Erhabenen). in the sub Is this life

still that of Hellenism?

This isas littlethe case here as it is

that a pure work of art could ever be that of a people; and as little the case, too, that it could be that of an indi vidual, or anything other than this proper element which we find in the dictamen.27

are of Such statements certainly thesorttoallowAdorno (and a few toput into of othersafter with respectto thecontents him) question,
the poems, Heidegger's indeed painfully nationalist variations on the "fatherland" as the truthof the "colony" (or the "return" as the truth of "exile"). Or the interpretation of "Andenken," concerned

IL FAUT

51

course of what is said (from Bordeaux to entirely with reversing the and fromNurtingen to Indus, inaccordance with the the Nurtingen matic of the rivers flowing back towards their source), while the Garonne, which in fact flows in reverse at each tide, is the promise of the crossing, borne by the Northeasterly or the aliz6, all theway towestern India (the islands in thewind), Holderlin says in a more

as on many lapidary fashion: "zu Indiern," to Indians. (On this point, Lefebvre's demonstration isperfectly convincing.) others, Jean-Pierre But Benjamin's argument goes in another direction. It goes

wards a completely other simplicity (which would be the very nudity of finitude) insofar as it refers sobriety back to the "inner certainty" with which H6lderlin's poems "inhabit the very heart of his spiritual life"and that of this lifehe enounces that it isnothing "other than the

or "concrete objects," beyond the register of "empirical particulars" as well as that of the sublime considered, according to Schiller, as a simple elevation towards ideality. He gestures, in other words, to

Iknow of no emblematic formula for this "thing" more rigor sober than the one found, again in the first letterto Bohlendorf, ously at the point where H6lderlin wants to make clear what he under poem. stands as the modern tragic: For this is the tragic forus: that, packed into some simple box (Beha/ter),we very quietly move away from the realm in flames-we of the living, and not that-consumed expiate the flames which we could not tame.28 is the thing: a simple box, a "container." Here would be deter the destination, but in the form of the modern destiny which is "wandering under the unthinkable," of H?lderlin's writing, his re

proper element" of the dictamen. We are touching here, at the point of myth's faltering, on what Ipropose to call the thing [la chose], which isalso the "cause" of the

Such

mined

the sponse to thedictamen: itisnecessaryto say thething, abyssof

the proper and the proximate.

I would like,inending,toaddressa couple ofwords to this.

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* It isnot difficult to see that the point of themyth's faltering is situated at the very place which Iwill call, no doubt for lack of anything

I better, dis-figuration. Or, if were to risk a translation: "Entstaltung." mean every form of destruction or decom I By dis-figuration

is not the suppression, nor, even less, the subla tion (theAufhebung) of the figure. To name the thing isnot to render obsolete the idea, the concept or the essence, neither is itto declare that dis-figuration them vain in the name of "the real" or "the concrete."

position of the figure, or even, yet more simply, every form of or abandon: thatwhich in the rarefaction, disappearance beginning I placed under the sign of literalization. But itgoes without saying

It is rather to

mark them, but as a hollow, or as a negative, in the photographic sense of the term, as Jean-Pierre Lefebvre would say. To staywith the example of "Andenken,"when Holderlin says "Steg" (floatingwalk way), we may hear "Weg"or "Pfad"(path), as Heidegger does, without burden of lessening in the least the enormous philosophico-poetic not be an image) of the path.29 But it the image (which would may be to understand "Steg"as a desperate allusion, from within preferrable could

was and probably remains in the very process of collapsing, that it moment when Holderlin addresses to it this last farewell gesture.

themost precise renunciation, to "Weg,"but where "Weg,"of course, still be read as the figure, henceforth at its end, and in the

me to remain stubbornly with the Dis-figuration, ifyou will permit own at the beginning, is the very faltering lexicon that Imade my which is to say the purest affirmation of its [ddfaillancel of the figure, "il faut." Put another way, dis-figuration is the retreator withdrawal of the figure. Just as the retreat of the divine does not signify, for Holderlin, the death of God or of the gods, neither does dis-figura

of the figure: it tion signify the pure and simple disappearance itsbecoming absent-for reasons, henceforth, of impos designates so by way of what this becoming absent leaves itdoes sibility-and as an ineffaceable trace. Dis-figuration affects everything that isof the order of the "trans port," as H6ilderlin says, in French, when he elaborates the so-called

IL FAUT

53

formal or structural conception of tragedy and introduces the capital notion of the "caesura." Ittherefore affects at the same time every of the order of themeta-phorical and themeta-physical: of the thing "mythopoietic" and the "speculative." Or in yet another possible formulation, all that isof the order of the name and of the concept. itcomes to myth, it is clear that, at least forH6lderlin, When

And yet Adorno is the first to remark that in Holderlin name and concept are not precisely distinguished. He refers to this line from "Patmos": "For it is without concept, thewrath of theworld, without name." The name stands in for the concept, at least insofar as the name stands in for the Gestalt, in the Hegelian sense, that is, as the concept of a finitemoment which signs a missive from the absolute. But the Gestalt, carry a name,

the figure is firstof all the name. The phrase from Adorno I have already quoted, "To lead beyond the concept the names of which the absolute is indefault" gives a precise indication in this direction.

in The Phenomenology of Spirit, does not properly it remains conceptual: self-certainty,mastery and ser vitude, unhappy consciousness, etc. Even "Antigone" does not name a figure, that of Sittlichkeit [the ethical order], any more than does

"Christ" when it is a question of revealed religion. The name would at the (mythical) beyond of the thus be aimed, as a consequence,

dently thinking of Beethoven, all themore in that he adds, by way of explanation, the following remark,which is transparent: "a nature which freely pours itselfout and which, no longer a captive of the domination exerted on it,can then transcend itself." Now such a

this beyond, Adorno speaks, indialecti cal terms, of a "non-conceptual synthesis," and we know that this It is, he says, "the his definition of "great music." expression gives of the late poetry of Holderlin, just as the Holderlinian primal image idea of song can be rigorously applied to music." Adorno is evi

concept. Inorder to designate

"non-conceptual synthesis" isaimed equally at the name. We might recall the passage, in the "Fragment on the Relations between Music and Language" which opens the collection Quasi una fantasia, in which Adorno makes jamin called of music the equivalent, in sum, ofwhat Ben "pure language":

54

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Musical

and hidden. All music divine Name.

isof a completely different type from signifying language. In this resides its religious aspect. In themusical phenomenon, what is said is at once precise language has for its Idea the form of the

A demythified prayer, delivered from the magic of effects, music represents the human attempt, however vain, to pronounce the Name itself, in place of communicating And yet, Adorno meanings. inmusic, in poetry the non the medium," that is, against

remarks that "unlike

conceptual synthesis turns against which is, for itspart, at once the possibility and the ele language ment of conceptual synthesis. Such that inpoetry, by the very fact of synthesis becomes what Adorno calls language, the non-conceptual a "constitutive dissociation."

By aiming at what music alone can aim at, the pure name, poetry dislocates itself,and this affects, be even syntax (that is, what Adorno analyzes as the yond beyond "paratactic" style of the late H6lderlin), nomination itself. Just as there isa dissociation of syntax, accentuated even more by the trans position of Greek prosody, there is also a "dissociation of names"

and even, at the limit, a "rupture of the name." As he marks the greatest difference between Holderlin and Hegel, Adorno notes the following, the correctness of which seems indisputable: The difference between the name and the absolute, which he [Holderlin] does not conceal and which runs through like an allegorical cleft, is the medium of his of the false life, in which the soul is not granted critique itsdivine right. (N, 123) his work

Contrary towhat Heidegger wants to believe, the name, inHolderlin, no longer names. Itevokes-or rather signals-the lost,or fractured, devoted to Paris, and to themost aggressively modern Paris, begins

of of The greatest thepoemswhich Baudelaire possibility naming.

of with these words: "Andromache I think you!" But this is stilla of captivity Andromache. mythic preciseallusiontothe episodeof the
In "Andenken," such de-nomination (Entnennung) iseven more radi cal: exception made of the toponyms (Bordeaux, Garonne, Dordogne)

IL FAUT

55

or of the ethno-geographic mention of the Indians, the poem con tains only a single proper name, that of Bellarmin, which designates no one-at least no one other than Hyperion's mute correspondent and means

presents itself (stellt sich dar) as the foreverwithdrawn, or truncated, secret of the name-as Holderlin empty nomination. A few years later, will sign his name as Scardanelli. This

in Jean-Pierre Lefebvre's nothing-except perhaps, hypothesis, "bello Arminius," a sort of Germanic kaloskagathos.30 A calcination of the name: the figure, theGestalt, is indeed there, but it

say, as does the Rimbaud of "A Season inHell": "Adieu." A gesture which can be understood in French inmany ways but which reso nates in German through this very beautiful word: Abschied

prosaism, Adorno says, "incommensurable with the poetry of ideas and with a autobiographical poetry" (with lyricism as genre that is subjective a in a false or facile way), but which sees itselfcompelled-again of an imperative-to take leave of the hymn, to quit it.To question

iswhy-I return to this point-it is correct to speak of if what ismeant by this is a writing which is not only, as

even if"pure language," according to Benjamin, communicates noth as itself the fact ing and is indeed the language which communicates that there is language-in which God, indefault of a name, isdesig nated. But the word "prose" is absolutely fitting. And I would say that it is all the more fitting in that it is precisely theword in which

[separation, leave-taking]. Adorno says, speaking of the late hymns: "Pure language, whose idea they figure,would be a prose analogous to sacred texts." I am not convinced that the expression "sacred texts" isaltogether fitting,

its greatest sacralisation of the dictamen encounters Heidegger's obstacle. We are still in the commentary of "Andenken," at the pas sage concerning the "brown women." Heidegger reads Holderlin's line, "Die braunen Frauen daselbst,"31 literally: "The brown women right there," or as ismore generally translated, "The brown women in that place." And he comments:

Tomaintain thedistantin its distant which presence

is its truest proximity, the poet says "in that place" [daselbst], an expression which gives themodern ear the

56

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LACOUE-LABARTHE

brutal impression of being on the verge of legal or com mercial language. However, the poetic virtue of salvation radiates so simply throughout the strophe that itsuffices to reduce to nothing every echo of the "prosaic." But above

as it is. He knows that the invisible, to the extent that it must more purely be, makes itsdemands all the more decisively the more it is effaced in the strangeness of the image. (N, 108) One can say without exaggeration, so clearly is the entire lexicon and all the syntactic resources of Heidegger's commentary condensed the saving into these few lines, that the denial of the "prosaic"-and

all, the poet, in this moment, recoils so littlebe fore a seemingly and disconcertingly non-poetical word that he even goes resolutely towards it inorder to hear it

the surest, and probably the only, means of the image (the Bild)-is of saving, by way of a Rettung [salvation or rescue] having nothing to do with Benjamin's, the sacred (mythical) character of Holderlin's is-decidedly wants supposed sermonizing. Heidegger's Dichtung tomake itself-the absolute opposite of prose, by which the dialec tic resistsmore than one might think. But "prose" should

in fact be understood as the other name of

"sobriety." In order to explain, in the last pages of his thesis on the con of criticism in the Romantics, that the philosophy of art outlined cept by the Romantics culminates in the conception of "the Idea of po etry as prose"

(in Novalis, for example, who says that "poetry is the the arts"), Benjamin poses two conditions: that one be prose among able to recognize inphilosophy itselfthe hard core of Romanticism

is not in Ro perceive that the most secret center of Romanticism manticism, or, if you prefer, thatRomanticism does not have itscenter within itself. And he writes these lineswhich even now are astound

and the foundation of its literarytheory; but also that one be able to

ing:
From this point of view, one spiritmoves into the wider circle, not to say into itscenter-a spiritwho cannot be

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57

comprehended merely in his quality as a "poet" in the modern sense of the word (however high this must be reckoned), and whose relationship to the Romantic school, within the history of ideas, remains unclear ifhis with this school is not identity particular philosophical considered. establishes

the principle of the sobriety of art. This principle is the essentially quite new and still incalculably influential lead ing idea of the Romantic philosophy of art;what isperhaps the greatest epoch in theWest's philosophy of art isdis tinguished by this basic notion.32

This spirit is Holderlin, and the thesis that his philosophical relation to the Romantics is

And a little later, "in order to prepare theway for understanding the less clear statements of Friedrich Schlegel and Novalis," Benjamin cites at length the opening passages of Holderlin's "Remarks," con [devices] of the ancients and the necessary cerning the m&chand

calculation, "also among us," of rules. (B, 175-6; 508-9) It may not to indicate, as Heidegger does again in The Principle of be sufficient that calculation for Holderlin should not be understood Reason,"

"in a quantitative and mechanical, or, let us say, a mathematical even though this is after all somewhat obvious. It is neces mode,"

sary still to consider that it is indeed a question of calculation. And is the very condition of sobriety. that such a calculation must [il fauti-suppose One can-one that "Andenken" is thus to the truth-in default-of

calculated, according would sober poem, it cisely thatwhich would necessary. It commentaries Dichter"-"But

say this in its last line,whose enigma so many have failed to unravel: "Was bleibet aber, stiftendie what remains, is founded by the poets."

poetry as prose. A the very faltering of poetry, that is, pre say responds to the exigency towrite, to the il faut: it is

Translated Jeff Fort by

58

PHILIPPE

LACOUE-LABARTHE

as in will be left used by theauthor brackets, here. Expressions other languages

and, when necessary, followed by translations into English. With the of footnote 11, all footnotes are the translator's.] in translation, Iam retaining Lacoue-Labarthe's itsawkwardness ref [TN. Despite erences to his own reasons which this sentence language, for already makes clear.] untranslated, exception 2

[TN. All French expressions

retained by the translator will

be placed

in square

The irreplaceabilitythisidiomatic makes thetranslator's work of [TN. expression difficult here.A noteof explanation isnecessary:"Il faut"is thethird especially
person "il" never means the same

"he" but always "it," as in "it is raining" ("il pleut"), although, at indicates what someone must do. Itexpresses an imper that sonal necessity which, lacking the "being" and its predicate ("necessary") must be added in English, cannot be reduced to any particular state of affairs. time, itoften is necessary

where with thethird person"il," expressionthatisalwaysconjugated impersonal

present of "falloir," which

can be

rendered as "to be necessary."

It is an

that Hence its when the infinitive oftenfollowsit("it force, categorical especially
is not supplied.] to...") too a note of explanation is required: "Faillir" cannot be given a simple equivalent, for it isused mainly inpast tense, compound expressions meaning "to means "to fail" but in most cases is have almost" done such and such. In a sense it [TN. Here used for acts or events I almost that one was fell. "Faillir" failli tomber": not trying to bring about, for example "j'ai is thus linked, both etymologically and se

with a loss powerorwill,with that which isbeyond thesphere mantically, of of

means 5 intention. (It is interesting to note that in the American South a similar expression that sounds like "I liked to have died!" is still used in English. An exclamation that for whatever sudden and unexpected reason Ialmost died, that I"lacked"

are all found at the end of the "Remarks on Oedipus" [TN. These quotations to his translation of Sophocles. See "Anmerkungen which H?lderlin appended zum in S?mtliche Werke und Briefe, Band II (M?nchen: Carl Hanser ?dipus" Verlag, 1970 [based on the Grosse Stuttgarter Ausgabe, edited by Beissner]),

before very little doing so.)]

396.

can A rendering these of textsinto difficult extremely English be foundinFriedrich

H?lderlin,

6 7 8
9

Celan wrote

Press, 1988).] Editions Seuil, 1989).] Alain Badiou, du Manifeste [TN. pour laphilosophie(Paris: was of of [TN. Todtnauberg the location Heidegger'shome,and isthetitle a poem am zu Martin [TN. Erl?uterungenH?lderlins Dichtung(FrankfurtMain: Heidegger,
Inwhat 1951), 107f. Hereafter cited as ?] inNoten zur Literatur (Suhrkamp, Zur sp?ten Lyrik H?lderlins" "Parataxis. On will be citing, with minor modifications, follows I after his visit.]

Essays and Letters on Theory, T. Pfau, ed. (State University of New York

V. Klostermann, [TN. "Parataxis. 1974). H?lderlin's Nicholson

10

who writes: "H?lderlin's Main: Suhrkamp, 1962),41. Cited byAdorno ( , 137),

intentionless language, the 'naked ideal, that of revealed language."] rock' of which is 'everywhere exposed,' is an

to Literature, Volume Two, trans. S. Weber Late Poetry" in Notes (New York: Columbia, 1992), 118. Hereafter cited as N.] Eine Folge von Briefen (Frankfurt am [TN.Walter Benjamin, Deutsche Menschen.

IL FAUT

59

11

Bernhard B?schenstein 1987). See also:

die "Auch Stegesind H?lderlinvuede France, Jean-Pierre Lefebvre, Holzwege" in

"Neue and Jacque Le Rider, eds. (T?bingen: Gunther Narr Verlag, zu H?lderlins Reisen und zu seinem Fragestellungen

in H?lderlin Val?rie Aufenthalt Frankreich," 1987/88, Gesellschaft, Turm-Vortr?ge ed. Lawitschka (T?bingen, And: Jean-Pierre de 1988). Lefebvre, H?lderlin,journal William Blake andCo. Edit.,1990). Bordeaux (Bordeaux:
12

makes about translating H?lderlin. I will citeH?lderlin's because of thepoint it Verse [Penguin, 1961],209-10),which I modify slightly (Hamburger's "plainprose in bilingual omitsall line edition translations" this breaks).] am 13 [TN. Jargon der Eigentlichkeit: deutschen Ideologie (Frankfurt Main: Zur trans. Tarnowski Will and of Suhrkamp Verlag, 1964); The Jargon Authenticity, on Werke und Briefe, Band II, [TN. 927; Essaysand Letters H?lderlin,S?mtliche 150.] Theory, common use German word has been 15 [TN. Heidegger's (often hyphenated) of this 14 16 Cf. Mimesis, Philosophy, [TN. "TheCaesura of theSpeculative"inTypographies: ed. Harvard Press,1989),esp. 231.] Politics, Fynsk University (Cambridge: 17 [TN.Here theEnglishtranslation from reads somewhat differently theversion
18 19 "The aim of such analysis [i.e. of "immanent analysis quoted by Lacoue-Labarthe: is the same as the aim of philosophy: the truthcontent/'] of literary works"] ("The Journey").] [TN. The lines from H?lderlin are from "Die Wanderung" [TN. "Zwei Gedichte von Friedrich H?lderlin" II,hrsg. von Th. W. Adorno and Gretel Adorno in Walter translated variously as "dis-distance," "de-distance," aims simply at avoiding a forced neologism.] and "deseverance." My choice (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973).] German, followed by theMichael Hamburger translation (cf. H?lderlin, Selected

[TN. Here

too I retain Lacoue-Labarthe's

reference to the French he

is reading,

20
21

Benjamin, Schriften, Band (Suhrkamp, 1955), 375-400. Here .Translated as "Two Poems by Friedrich H?lderlin" after cited as by S. Comgold in Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, Volume I,eds. M. Bu Ilock and M. Jennings (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), 18-36.]

22

Theory, trans. R. Hullot-Kentor (Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press, 1997).] to theGerman [TN. "Dictare" is Latin for "to dictate" and is related etymologically It isalso applied to prose word "dichten," towrite poetry, or perhaps "to poetize." writers whose work isof high literary merit.] [TN. This intriguing statement refers, albeit in termswhich go well beyond those

am ?sthetischeTheorie(Frankfurt Main: Suhrkamp [TN. Verlag, 1970);Aesthetic

of Kant, to the "transcendental schematism" of The Critique of Pure Reason. The is that "art hidden in the depths of human nature" which would at schematism bottom bring about the synthesis between the pure concepts of the understanding obscure inKant's epistemology, applied to the task of poetry it iseven more enig

and theparticular images(for Alreadyadmittedly example)ofempiricalintuition.

"Freud und die Zukunft" Kurzke (Fischer, 1978). inEssays, Band III, Musik und Philosophie, "Freud and the Future" m Essays of Three

23

matic] [TN. T. Mann, hrsg. von H.

Decades (NewYork: Knopf,1948).]

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24

been

are a from figure thatis impos thatthe (Gestalt) mythicconnections given form a sibletoconceive in more precise the very way?and heavyphilosophical weight well known." make knownthe To carried this word is word has by weightof this
one of Lacoue-Labarthe's

[TN. At this point Lacoue-Labarthe interrupts the citation to make the following remark: "The French translation here isvery rough: Benjamin says more precisely

See Mimesis,Philosophy Politics, essay "Typography." Typographies: cially inthe

25 op. cit., 43-138.] [TN. "Two Poems are 35-6. The lines from H?lderlin by Friedrich H?lderlin," from the poem "Der Herbst" ("Autumn"). The interpolations of German and Greek in the quotation are the author's.] requires the turning away from the sacred. The phrase

major

concerns

throughout his work,

but espe

26

modernity which

sober"definesthat because for H?lderlin the"sacredly elementof [TN.That is,

is from

27 28 29

thepoem "H?lfte Lebens" ("The des Middle of Life").] alteredto reflect French the citedby the [TN.Benjamin, cit.,35. Translation op.

author.]

(Frankfurtam Main: Vittorio Klostermann, Holzwege in the woods," but also "paths that lead nowhere" sein" means "to be on thewrong Holzwege later thought.] topos of Heidegger's

on Werke und Briefe,II, [TN.S?mtliche 927-8; Essaysand Letters Theory 150; modified.] slightly of [TN.This burden isalso carried in the title Heidegger'scollectionof essays
track"), and 1950), meaning literally "paths or "the false path" ("auf dem ispart of an entire figurai

30

31 32

used as an epithet for aristocratic Greeks. Thus not literally "beautiful-and-good"), a proper name.] has inGerman the flat and impersonal overtones of its closest [TN. "Daselbst"

A of and nobility (and [TN. genericterm respect, meaning highbirth designating

33

"thereat."] English equivalent, trans. German Romanticism," [TN.Walter Benjamin, "The Concept of Criticism in D. Lachterman, H. Eiland, and I.Balfour, inSelected Writings, op. cit., 175. Schriften ] II, 507-8. [TN. The Principle of Reason, trans. R. Lilly (Indiana University Press, 1991 ); origi nally appeared inGerman as Der Satz vom Grund'(1957).]