Manifold is the uncanny, yet nothing more uncanny looms or stirs beyond the human being (Sophocles Antigone, Heidegger’s translation)

I’m now into part 2/3 of Heidegger’s lecture course on Holderlin’s Hymn The Ister and we find out one of the reasons Holderlin is such an important poet for Heidegger is Holderlin’s interpretation/translation of Pindar and Sophocles, especially Sophocles’ Ode to Man in the Antigone and the concept of deinon.  This is fundamental for me because my 2002 MA thesis was on Heidegger and the Greeks focusing on this issue: the relationship between parestios (homely) and deinon (unhomely).

Heidegger says the concept of apolis (homeless) must be thought together with deinon (uncanny/unhomely) for the Greeks.  The famous Antigone deinon ode to man says: “Many things are wondrous but nothing more so than man,” but this seems to be understood sarcastically, and so means “Many things are unsettling/unsettled but nothing more so than man (“deinon” at this point of the play has already been used twice with the connotation of “horrible” or “frightening”).” The third ode clarifies this second one by showing that for all his wonders man can’t help being destined for tragedy (e.g., the tragic fate of Oedipus’s family). 

Similar to the four-foldedness of Aristotle’s analogical concept of cause, linguistically, deinon means the inner unity, counterturning, and interplay of fearful, powerful, and inhabitual.  Heidegger thinks this unity that is guiding but hidden as “uncanny/unhomely.”  He says “Each time it can be determined in opposing ways: the fearful as that which frightens, and that which is worthy of honor; the powerful as that which looms over us, and as that which is merely violent; the inhabitual as the extraordinary, and that which is skilled in everything (Heidegger, HHTI, 64).”  Moreover, the meanings are interrelated.  He also notes deinon is not just any one of these or just all of them added together.  Hölderlin’s rivers poetize the becoming homely and also unhomely of the historical person.  Following his hymnal period, the everyday world had become foreign to Hölderlin (65).  Threefold deinon pertains to the beings man relates to but in terms of being deinon man is “singular.”  The uncanniest of the uncanny is the human being who differs from all others in degree, amount and kind of uncanny.  Humanity’s proper name is the uncanny, he is uncanny incarnate.

Holderlin poetizes his rivers out of a poetic care for the becoming homely of Western historical humankind for the Germans.  The unhomely is always present in the homely.  There is an illumination of uncanny (unheimlich) by unhomely (unheimisch).  As a poetic word deinon challenges us to go beyond the habitual translation of the dictionary.  Holderlin translated deinon here as extraordinary.  In another case he translates as powerful.  Heidegger comments “The extraordinary (das Ungeheure) is properly and at the same time that which is not ordinary (das Nicht-Geheure).  The ordinary (das Geheure) is what is intimately familiar, homely.  The extraordinary is the un-homely (Heidegger, HHTI, 70-71).” 

In Greek the homely is parestios, para Hestia, the one in the warmth and sphere of the hearth fire.  Heidegger says it cannot be decided whether Holderlin understood deinon in the unhomely sense, but Holderlin did clearly glean the realm of the non-ordinary here.  Deinon is unhomely which is why an alienating or frightening effect can lead to anxiety.  Humans are singularly unhomely, and their care is to become homely.  Heidegger means this as “being-addicted” in a figurative sense that we nurse off the narcotic luster of beings, but this is just a symptom of a more fundamental figurative being-addicted to beings:   The melancholic looks at the oppressed person and says “at least this one has a cause.”  Heidegger notes “Being unhomely is no mere deviance from the homely, but rather the converse: a seeking and searching out the homely, a seeking that at times does not know itself.  This seeking shies at no danger and no risk.  Everywhere it ventures and is underway in all directions (Heidegger, HHTI, 74).”

Deinon, uncanny/unhomely, is the fundamental word for understanding the Greeks for Heidegger.  Deinon for the Greeks had the sense of the uncanny but also longing for home, hence we have the image of Odysseus stuck on the Island of Calypso the “uncanny/deine” goddess where he is offered the greatest of things, but they are meaningless to him in comparison to his desire to return home/homely. We abandon the familiar to pursue the uncanny but ultimately find ourselves unsatiated/unhomely.  We spoke previously about the unity of Space-Time, and this is a clue related to Hölderlin’s river poetry, specifically the unity of locality-journeying of humans as historical in becoming homely.  The essence of Hölderlin’s rivers is the fundamental law of becoming homely.

In section 12 Heidegger notes every translation is an interpretation, and every interpretation is a translation within one language.  One can be a native German speaker who is a prof of Continental philosophy but still not be a reliable reader of Kant, Hegel, or Heidegger.  Interpreting as translating makes understandable, but not for any common understanding, “The peak of a poetic or thoughtful work of language must not be worn down through translation, nor the entire mountain range levelled out into flatlands of superficiality … Making something understandable means awakening our understanding to the fact that the blind obstinacy of habitual opinion must be shattered and abandoned if the truth of the work is to unveil itself (Heidegger, HHTI, 62-3).”  Notice how Heidegger’s language here of mountain and flatland is poetic, but not as them being a linguistic placeholder for something else like an example, analogy, metaphor, allegory, etc. attempting to reduce everything to average understanding.  This is how Heidegger interprets/translates Hölderlin’s poetic imagery.  The concept of “superficiality” in the quote above first comes to stand as what it is in relation to the mountain and flatland imagery. 

But the gods have abandoned us, like Hölderlin’s “Holy Plato” and divine Beauty (e.g., Houseness present incarnate in the mansion).  Heidegger notes the remnants of the Christian worldview remain operative everywhere.  For example, the exemplary truth is certainty, free from doubt.  Descartes took over this interpretation of truth from a Christian framework from Thomas to Luther that truth was certainty, free from doubt because what had to be certain as free from doubt was the salvation of the soul.  If our general disposition to the world is securing against doubt, this breeds anxiety for the same reason dieting can be counterproductive because you are thinking about food all the time.  So, our inconspicuous anxiety may surface/become conspicuous when we are going on a vacation trip and have to leave the car and go back inside to recheck that the stove is off.   Kierkegaard noted unlike fear, which has a specific object (like a snake or a deadline), anxiety is vague and objectless.  In general, we don’t worry about accidentally leaving the stove on when we leave the house.

The essence of a historical people and their language (e.g., The singular essence of the Greek world) is singular, but is not dependent on vocabulary.  Heidegger gives the example one can speak in German but talk utterly American.  Interpreting and translating have their own singular element and so relating this to Hölderlin’s rivers Heidegger notes how we hear Hölderlin’s hymnal poetizing “rush from its source” when we catch a sense of Hölderlin’s translation of Sophocles Antigone and how this awakens something of the singular Greek world that had been covered over.  I’ve been noting going along how Heidegger’s Hölderlin has a philosophy of the singular as distinct from the classic Universal/particular distinction in philosophy which leaves no room for uniqueness.  Kierkegaard once expressed a desire for his tombstone to simply read “The Individual,” but this wish was not fulfilled.