1 Philosophy and Mysticism

There is a profound connection between Heidegger and Christian mysticism. Heidegger stresses the passivity and receptivity of thought with the “Es gibt.” For example, we may struggle in futility all night when suddenly the solution “comes to us.” Likewise, we may struggle for days trying to remember a favorite song when “suddenly it comes to us.” Thinking is waiting on the Muse, which is a description of how the experience feels, not that there is an existing Muse out there.

The connection is in Heidegger’s thought—particularly his emphasis on receptivity, “Es gibt,” and Gelassenheit—and Christian mysticism, above all Meister Eckhart. Our examples of sudden insight (the solution “coming to us” after futile struggle, or a song resurfacing) beautifully capture the experiential feel of this: thought as a kind of waiting or attunement rather than forceful grasping. Heidegger describes this as a shift from willful, calculative thinking to meditative, receptive thinking.

“Es gibt” and Receptivity

“Es gibt” (literally “it gives,” idiomatically “there is”) is central in Heidegger, especially in his later work. Being (Sein) or presence is not something we produce or master through active cognition but something given in an event (Ereignis). We don’t control the clearing or presencing; we can only prepare for or releasably receive it.

This aligns with the phenomenology of insight I described: prolonged effort often precedes a breakthrough, but the breakthrough itself feels bestowed. Heidegger contrasts this with modern technology’s “enframing” (Gestell), which demands and challenges forth resources. Authentic thinking requires Gelassenheit—releasement, letting-be, or serene openness—rather than domination.

Heidegger drew explicitly and repeatedly from Meister Eckhart (c. 1260–1328), the Dominican mystic and preacher. Eckhart’s Gelassenheit (releasement/detachment) involves emptying oneself of will, images, and attachments so that God (or the Godhead) can “give” or birth the divine in the soul. Key parallels include:

• Receptivity over activity: Eckhart speaks of the soul becoming a “virgin” (detached, empty) to become a “wife” (fruitful in receiving God). Heidegger adapts this to thinking: not imposing categories/schematizing, but letting beings be in their presencing.
• The “It” that gives: Eckhart’s apophatic (negative) theology emphasizes the ungraspable Godhead beyond God-as-person. Heidegger’s “Es” in “Es gibt” is not God, but the parallel structure of gift/reception without a personal giver is striking. Heidegger denies it refers to God but acknowledges the mystical lineage.
• Detachment and openness: Both critique willful striving. For Eckhart, detachment leads to living “without why” (ohne Warum). Heidegger echoes this in meditative thinking and poetic dwelling.

Scholars like Reiner Schürmann have explored this extensively, noting how Heidegger retrieves Eckhart’s path of releasement as a practical transformation for thinking Being.

Heidegger read Eckhart early and referenced him across his career, calling him an “old master.”

Heidegger’s early engagement with Christianity (Augustine, Luther, primal Christianity) and medieval mysticism fed into Being and Time and beyond. His later thought has been described as having a “contemplative veneer” with echoes of mysticism, though he transforms it: away from Neoplatonic metaphysics or personal God toward the event of Being itself.

Influences also include Angelus Silesius and others in the German mystical tradition.  Our point about the Muse is apt—it’s phenomenological description, not literal mythology. Heidegger often turns to poetry (Hölderlin especially) as a site where language and Being disclose themselves receptively, not through technical control. Thinking becomes a “thanking” or responding to what is given, the gift of the matter of thought.  This receptivity isn’t quietism or total passivity; it’s an active letting-go, a prepared openness (like the farmer waiting for the seed to grow in Eckhartian or Heideggerian imagery). It critiques Western metaphysics’ emphasis on representation and control, offering an alternative attuned to how meaning and insight often arise.

2 Derrida on the Tower of Babel

The Babel story is well known, and the name Babel has multiple meanings.  Derrida comments

The calm irony of Voltaire means that Babel means: it is not only a proper name, the reference of a pure signifier to a single being—and for this reason untranslatable—but a common noun related to the generality of a meaning. This common noun means, and means not only confusion, even though “confusion” has at least two meanings, as Voltaire is aware, the confusion of tongues, but also the state of confusion in which the architects find themselves with the structure interrupted, so that a certain confusion has already begun to affect the two meanings of the word “confusion.” The signification of “confusion” is confused, at least double. But Voltaire suggests something else again: Babel means not only confusion in the double sense of the word, but also the name of the father, more precisely and more commonly, the name of God as name of father. The city would bear the name of God the father and of the father of the city that is called confusion. God, the God, would have marked with his patronym a communal space, that city where understanding is no longer possible. And understanding is no longer possible when there are only proper names, and understanding is no longer possible when there are no longer proper names.  Derrida, Jacques. Acts of Religion (p. 105). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.

God is going to punish the builders of the tower for trying to become equal with God and making a names for themselves

Does he punish them for having wanted to build as high as the heavens? For having wanted to accede to the highest, up to the Most High? Perhaps for that too, no doubt, but incontestably for having wanted thus to make a name for themselves, to give themselves the name, to construct for and by themselves their own name, to gather themselves there (“that we no longer be scattered”), as in the unity of a place which is at once a tongue and a tower, the one as well as the other, the one as the other.   Derrida, Jacques. Acts of Religion (p. 107). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.

God is the unpronounceable who interjects meaninglessness creating the various language out of confusion

(and it is indeed said that YHWH, an unpronounceable name, descends toward the tower) and by him that tongues are scattered, confounded or multiplied, according to a descendance that in its very dispersion remains sealed by the only name that will have been the strongest, by the only idiom that will have triumphed. Now, this idiom bears within itself the mark of confusion, it improperly means the improper, to wit: Bavel, confusion.  Derrida, Jacques. Acts of Religion (p. 108). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.

In response to human ego, God launches the being-together of man in translation

In seeking to “make a name for themselves,” to found at the same time a universal tongue and a unique genealogy, the Semites want to bring the world to reason, and this reason can signify simultaneously a colonial violence (since they would thus universalize their idiom) and a peaceful transparency of the human community. Inversely, when God imposes and opposes his name, he ruptures the rational transparency but interrupts also the colonial violence or the linguistic mperialism. He destines them to translation, he subjects them to the law of a translation both necessary and impossible; in a stroke with his translatable-untranslatable name he delivers a universal reason (it will no longer be subject to the rule of a particular nation), but he simultaneously limits its very universality: forbidden transparency, impossible univocity.  Derrida, Jacques. Acts of Religion (p. 111). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.

Translation is not about reproducing a model

If the debt of the translator commits him neither with regard to the author (dead insofar as his text has a structure of survival even if he is living) nor with regard to a model which must be reproduced or represented, to what or to whom is he committed?  Derrida, Jacques. Acts of Religion (p. 117). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.

The translation enlarges the original

If the translator neither restitutes nor copies an original, it is because the original lives on and transforms itself. The translation will truly be a moment in the growth of the original, which will complete itself in enlarging itself.  Derrida, Jacques. Acts of Religion (p. 121). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.

For example when I translate parousia as presence in Plato, this is backed up in my thinking with 3-fold houseness through the medium of Beauty in the Phaedo and Gorgias.  Presence shows itself through the differentiation between the three modes of appearing – Plato and beauty as the ekphanestaton which allows Being to scintillate at the same time.

Key to understanding Plato’s concept of presence is the form of beauty that the particular will appear in various degrees of (e.g., mansion, average house, shack).  In Plato, Beauty is ekphanestaton, “that which, as most of all and most purely shining of and from itself, shows the visible form and thus is unhidden (Heidegger, 1998, 178; also 1991, 80).” Referring to Plato’s Phaedrus, Heidegger says that beauty is “what is most radiant and sparkling in the sensuous realm, in a way that, as such brilliance, it lets Being scintillate at the same time (Heidegger, 1991, 197).”

Translation is going to point to a hidden language behind the specific ones (such as English and German), which is particularly evident when translating a text that contains multiple languages.  Translation thus is divergent the more it brings out the essence of the original.

(“The harmony between the languages is so profound here [in the translations of Sophocles by Hölderlin] that the meaning is only touched by the wind of language in the manner of an Eolian lyre”).  Derrida, Jacques. Acts of Religion (p. 122). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.

Hölderlin’s Sophocles translations (especially the 1804 Ödipus der Tyrann and Antigonä) are primarily known for their extremely literal, word-for-word, and syntax-preserving approach—often called “foreignizing”—rather than liberal or free adaptation, though they include significant interpretive and poetic liberties.

Hölderlin sought to replicate the Greek original’s literal meaning, word order, and compact structure as closely as possible in German. This created a strange, non-idiomatic German that preserved Greek syntax and compounds, often at the expense of natural flow. Contemporary readers and some scholars saw this as awkward or even a sign of his emerging mental health issues, but it was deliberate: an attempt to let the foreignness of Greek tragedy shine through and to enact a linguistic/philosophical “collision” between Greek and German.

Scholars like Wolfgang Schadewaldt describe phases in Hölderlin’s translation work, with the Sophocles versions (from his late productive period) emphasizing a precise, word-by-word listening and reshaping (“genau hinhörende, nachformende”) that takes every word and its sequence seriously. This contrasts with earlier, more sense-based renderings or later, freer poetic reinterpretations.

While highly literal in intent and method, the translations are not always faithful by conventional philological standards. They contain errors, deviations, “wild swerves,” and creative reinterpretations. Hölderlin aimed to capture deeper metaphysical, tragic, and ontological dimensions (e.g., the “deadly-factual” force of words in tragedy) rather than produce a smooth, accurate scholarly version. Some describe them as “notoriously free and often incorrect” on the surface while being profoundly engaged with the spirit and underlying clashes of the original.

They function as both translations and original poetic works—Hölderlin’s way of “correcting” or renewing Sophocles through German, revealing latent potentials. This makes them more radical and transformative than purely liberal paraphrases.

These translations come from Hölderlin’s late productive phase (around 1802–1804), just before his mental collapse and the “Scardanelli” period. They represent the culmination of his engagement with Greek tragedy and his theories of translation as a site of cultural/historical encounter. They influenced later thinkers like Heidegger.

In short, they lean heavily toward extreme literalism in form and structure (word-for-word and syntax-preserving) as a poetic and philosophical strategy, while incorporating interpretive freedom that goes beyond strict fidelity. This hybrid—rigorously literal yet poetically bold—makes them unique and challenging. Modern editions and studies (e.g., by Michael Hamburger or detailed philological analyses) highlight both aspects.

Let us accompany this movement of love, the gesture of this loving one (liebend) that is at work in the translation. It does not reproduce, does not restitute, does not represent; as to the essential, it does not render the meaning of the original except at that point of contact or caress, the infinitely small of meaning… Benjamin says as much, in the translation the original becomes larger; it grows rather than reproduces itself—Derrida, Jacques. Acts of Religion (p. 123). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.

The ability of different languages to come into agreement suggests a more original hidden language that makes this possible.  There is a proto language behind English and French that allows translating from English to French

Translation promises a kingdom to the reconciliation of languages. This promise, a properly symbolic event adjoining, coupling, marrying two languages like two parts of a greater whole, appeals to a language of the truth (“Sprache der Wahrheit”). Not to a language that is true, adequate to some exterior content, but to a true tongue, to a language whose truth would be referred only to itself … As long as this accord does not take place, the pure language remains hidden, concealed (verborgen), immured in the nocturnal intimacy of the “core.” Only a translation can make it emerge. Emerge, and above all develop, make grow. Always according to the same motif (in appearance organicist or vitalist), one could then say that each language is as if atrophied in its isolation, meager, arrested in its growth, sickly. Owing to translation, in other words to this linguistic supplementarity by which one language gives to another what it lacks,  Derrida, Jacques. Acts of Religion (p. 131). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.

Holderlin is the exemplar here, rigorous and literal, yet wildly innovating to bring out the meaning beneath the surface.

the last works of Hölderlin as translations of Sophocles, the collapse of meaning “from abyss to abyss,” and this danger is not that of accident, it is transferability, it is the law of translation, the to-be-translated as law, the order given, the order received—and madness waits on both sides…  The interlinear version of the sacred text is the model or ideal of all translation.”  Derrida, Jacques. Acts of Religion (p. 133). Taylor & Francis. Kindle Edition.

3 Holderlin’s Translation of Sophocles’ Antigone

Hölderlin’s German translation of the first stasimon (the “Ode to Man” or “Chor der thebanischen Alten,” lines ~332–375 in Sophocles’ Antigone) begins with the famous rendering of the Greek polla ta deina (“many things are wonderful/terrible/strange”) as Ungeheuer ist viel (“Much is monstrous” or “Many things are uncanny/monstrous”).

Holderlin’s choice emphasizes the ungeheuer (monstrous, enormous, uncanny, or overwhelming) quality of human existence, aligning with Hölderlin’s interpretive approach to Sophocles, which highlights tension between human daring and divine/natural order. His translations (published 1804) are known for their literal yet poetically intense and sometimes idiosyncratic German, aiming to convey the foreignness and rhythmic power of the Greek.

“Ungeheuer ist viel. Doch nichts / Ungeheuerer als der Mensch” — This is the most discussed line. It captures deinos (wonderful, terrible, clever, strange) with a sense of the monstrous or overwhelming rather than purely positive “wonderful.” Heidegger later engaged deeply with this and similar renderings.

 Hölderlin’s language is elevated, compressed, and sometimes archaic or inventive (e.g., “geflügelten sausenden Häusern” for ships with winged/speeding hulls; “leichtträumender Vögel Welt” for the world of light-dreaming birds). It preserves Sophocles’ poetic density and choral rhythm more intensely than many smoother modern versions.

Ending of the ode: It stresses human ingenuity (arts, thought, city-rule) but warns of the risks—violating laws of earth and gods leads to ruin (“Hochstädtisch kommt, unstädtisch / Zu nichts er”), with the chorus rejecting such a person from their hearth.

English versions of Hölderlin’s full Sophocles translations exist (e.g., David Constantine’s Hölderlin’s Sophocles: Oedipus and Antigone), which try to convey this distinctive German voice.

For comparison, standard English translations of Sophocles (e.g., Fagles, Wyckoff) often render the opening more neutrally as “Many wonders, many terrors, but none more wonderful/terrible than man.” Hölderlin’s version stands out for its philosophical weight and influence on later thinkers.

English translation: “Much is monstrous. Yet nothing / Is more monstrous than man.”Alternative phrasings that preserve the tone:”Monstrous is much. But nothing / More monstrous than humankind.”

“Many things are uncanny / overwhelming / enormous. Yet nothing / More uncanny than man.”

Why this wording?  Ungeheuer is a strong German word carrying connotations of the monstrous, gigantic, uncanny, formidable, or terrible (in the sense of inspiring both awe and dread). Hölderlin deliberately chose this over milder terms to emphasize the dangerous, excessive, and boundary-violating power of humanity.

It is a direct, literal rendering of his line while sounding natural in English.

This opening is one of the most famous and philosophically influential moments in Hölderlin’s Sophocles translations. It shifts the emphasis from the more common “wondrous/terrible” balance in other renderings toward the monstrous aspect of human existence.

Does Holderlin’s monstrous rendering of the beginning of the ode to man make more sense than the “wondrous” rendering given such things as the tragic nature of the play as a whole, the negative previous ode, etc.?  Hölderlin’s “monstrous” (Ungeheuer) rendering captures a deeper and more contextually resonant layer than purely “wondrous” translations, especially given the tragic arc of Antigone, the immediate dramatic context, and the ode’s own internal ambiguities.

The key phrase is polla ta deina kouden anthrōpou deinoteron pelei (“Many deina, and nothing deinoteron than man”). Deinos (δεινός) is inherently double-edged in ancient Greek: it can mean wonderful, marvelous, clever, powerful, strange, terrible, fearful, or awe-inspiring (in both positive and dread-inducing senses). Sophocles exploits this ambiguity throughout the play. Many English translations (e.g., “wonders are many… none more wonderful than man”) lean toward the admiring, humanistic reading, but this risks flattening the word’s darker undertones.

Hölderlin’s Ungeheuer (“monstrous,” “uncanny,” “enormous,” “overwhelming,” or “formidable” in a boundary-shattering way) foregrounds the terrifying excess and uncanniness of human power. This is not a mistranslation but a deliberate interpretive choice that brings out the word’s full tragic potential.

The ode follows the Guard’s report of Polynices’ burial and Creon’s furious reaction. The Chorus (Theban elders) is responding to human defiance of Creon’s edict. Earlier in the scene, deinos appears in more negative or anxious ways (e.g., the Guard calls the situation or Creon’s reaction deinos). The ode isn’t purely celebratory; it comes amid rising tension.

It praises human ingenuity (mastery of sea, earth, animals, speech, thought, and city-building) but immediately qualifies it. Man is pantoporos aporos (“resourceful in all ways, yet without resource” — especially against death). The close warns that violating laws of earth and gods leads to ruin: the one who is hypsipolis (“high-citied”) can become apolis (“citiless”). Human techne (cunning skill) brings both good and evil, exceeding hope (hyper elpida). This is not unqualified praise.

Antigone ends in catastrophe for nearly everyone — Antigone, Haemon, Eurydice, and Creon’s ruin. Human daring (Antigone’s burial of her brother, Creon’s rigid decree) drives the collisions. The “monstrous” quality of humanity — its overreaching, boundary-violating power — fits the tragic worldview better than a straightforward hymn to progress. Earlier odes and the parodos (victory ode after the Theban war) have darker undertones of divine and human conflict.

Hölderlin’s choice influenced major later readers, notably Martin Heidegger, who engaged the ode (via Hölderlin and directly) as central to human uncanniness (Unheimlichkeit) and the violent, world-disclosing essence of techne. For Heidegger, the deinon reveals humanity’s essential homelessness and risk — we are the most uncanny beings because we violently appropriate the world while remaining exposed to limits (especially death and the divine). This aligns powerfully with Antigone’s themes. The key word from the Ode deinon resonates with homelessness in Homer where Odysseus is stuck on the Island of Kalypso, the deine goddess, where she wants to give him the pleasures of a goddess but all he wants is to return home.

Scholars note that a one-sided “wondrous” reading often stems from later humanistic or Enlightenment projections. In 5th-century tragic context, the ode celebrates and warns about human exceptionalism in a cosmos governed by gods and fate. Hölderlin’s version restores the tremendum (awe + dread) that Sophocles likely intended.

A purely “monstrous” reading can also overemphasize darkness at the expense of genuine admiration for human achievement (Sophocles does celebrate ingenuity). The best interpretations hold the ambiguity: humanity is wondrous and monstrous. Hölderlin’s stronger wording makes the tragic stakes clearer and prevents the ode from sounding like naive optimism in a play full of hubris, suffering, and reversal. It thus feels more “right” for the genre and the specific drama. In short,  — Hölderlin’s rendering is not only defensible but often more illuminating in light of the play’s tragic nature.

Heidegger notes Sophocles somewhere calls man “apolis,” homeless.   This would speak to translating  deinon as uncanny/unhomely in the ode to man.  At play seems to be tragedy built into the Greek soul.  Previously, the Greeks had collective polis culture where the goal was to attain arete as part of the society and in the eyes of the gods.  But this collective identity fell apart in the face of authoritarian leadership like Antigone’s Creon and the rise of individualism such as with the sophists and philosophers.  Creon rejects the will of the people just as Antigone rejected the will of the city’s leadership.  This authoritarianism and individualism in the Greek soul contradicted its collective nature, and so man is not at home with himself.

This aligns closely with Heidegger’s reading and offers a compelling lens on the deeper tensions in Sophocles’ Antigone and Greek tragedy more broadly. Heidegger does indeed emphasize the apolis (citiless, homeless, without site/place) dimension as central to human uncanniness (Unheimlichkeit).  In Introduction to Metaphysics (1935), Heidegger interprets the Ode to Man by rendering deinon as the “uncanny” or “unhomely” (unheimlich) in its full, violent, and overwhelming sense — not merely “wondrous” or “terrible.” Humanity is to deinotaton: the most uncanny being because it is doubly deinon — exposed to the overpowering sway of Being (physis) while itself being violent/creating (techne as knowing that forces beings into disclosure).

He focuses on the key paradoxical pairings: Pantoporos aporos: resourcefully making its way everywhere, yet without resource/way out (especially before death).

Hypsipolis apolis: “towering high in the site [of the polis], yet citiless/homeless.” Heidegger reads polis not just as “city-state” but as the historical site/place where human Being-there (Da-sein) happens — the gathering of gods, laws, festivals, rulers, poets, etc. The creator who truly stands out (hypsipolis) must also forfeit the familiar site (apolis), becoming strange, lonely, without issue amid beings as a whole.

This “homelessness” is not mere misfortune but the essential condition of the human: we are not at home because our violent knowing and world-disclosing activity constantly disrupts the familiar and forces us beyond limits. Antigone herself exemplifies authentic uncanniness in Heidegger’s view — her act places her outside conventional polis order while disclosing a deeper fittingness to the gods.

Hölderlin’s Ungeheuer (“monstrous”) thus prepares the ground for this: it brings out the excessive, boundary-shattering quality that makes “uncanny/unhomely” a natural extension.

Our historical-philosophical point captures a real dynamic that tragedy dramatizes (even if the timeline of “falling apart” via sophists and philosophers overlaps with Sophocles rather than strictly preceding him). Classical Athens was balanced: Collective polis identity and arete achieved in the eyes of gods and community.

The demands of oikos (household/family/divine familial rites).

Emerging individualism, rhetoric, and questioning of nomos (convention/law).

Tragedy often stages the collision when these fracture. In Antigone:  Creon’s authoritarian insistence on polis law (rejecting burial, ignoring divine/customary claims and popular sentiment) represents a rigid overreach.

Antigone’s defiant individualism (prioritizing philia/family and unwritten divine laws over the king’s edict) represents another.

Both are “monstrous”/uncanny in their excess: each violates one sphere to uphold another, leading to ruin. The Chorus’s warning about becoming apolis applies in different ways to both.

Sophocles does not simply side with “individual vs. state.” The play reveals how the Greek soul’s own internal contradictions — collective harmony versus heroic/individual assertion, human law versus divine — produce tragedy. Man is not at home with himself because his greatness (arete, techne, daring) inherently involves overstepping. This built-in homelessness and risk is what makes deinon so fittingly translated as uncanny/unhomely.

Heidegger sees this as revealing something primordial about Being and human existence, beyond later humanistic or moralistic readings. Our observation about the contradiction with collective polis culture resonates with his emphasis on the pre-political or originary site of history that creators must both found and exceed (thus becoming unhomely).  In short, Hölderlin’s and Heidegger’s darker, more unsettling renderings illuminate the tragic essence Sophocles poetizes: human excellence is inseparable from uncanniness and the potential for self-alienation. The ode is not (just) praise but a recognition of the dangerous, unhomely ground of our being.

Could the beginning of the ode to man be translated “Many things are unsettling, but nothing is more unsettling/unsettled than man?”  While “unsettled” is an English word with Germanic roots (1590s), its thematic Greek equivalent in classical and biblical texts is ἀστήρικτος (astēriktos), meaning unstable, unfixed, or “not propped up”. It combines the negative alpha-privative (-) with a derivative of stērízō (strengthen/fix)

“Many things are unsettling, but nothing is more unsettling/unsettled than man” is a thoughtful and defensible interpretive rendering — especially within the Heideggerian and tragic framework we’ve been discussing. It is not the most literal translation, but it productively captures important layers of deinon and resonates with the play’s themes of instability, homelessness, and inner contradiction. “Unsettling” nicely conveys the disquieting, disturbing, or anxiety-provoking aspect of deinon — the way human power and ingenuity create awe mixed with dread. It bridges the “wondrous” and “monstrous/terrible” poles without flattening either.

“Unsettled” (as a possible dual sense) evokes the human being’s own lack of fixity or groundedness — aligning with pantoporos aporos (resourceful yet resourceless) and especially hypsipolis apolis (high in the city yet citiless/homeless). This picks up the theme of not being at home, which Heidegger makes central.

It fits the broader tragic atmosphere: humanity’s achievements unsettle the natural/divine order, and humans themselves remain fundamentally unstable or “un-propped-up” in the face of death, gods, and their own contradictions.

Our etymological link to ἀστήρικτος (astēriktos) — “unstable, unfixed, not propped up/established” (from alpha-privative + stērízō, to strengthen/fix/confirm) — is illuminating even if not a direct lexical equivalent to deinon. Deinon itself doesn’t etymologically mean “unstable,” but the consequences of being deinon (overreaching, boundary-violating, world-disclosing) produce exactly that unsettled condition. In tragedy, man’s techne and daring leave him without firm ground — a point Heidegger exploits when he ties deinon to Unheimlichkeit (uncanniness/unhomeliness). Our suggestion thus functions as a strong interpretive bridge between the Greek word, Sophoclean drama, and later philosophy.

A limitation is unsettle tilts strongly toward the negative/unsettling side. While deinon is double-edged, Sophocles does celebrate human ingenuity (mastery of sea, earth, speech, cities). A purely “unsettling” version can underplay the genuine admiration in the ode’s first half.  Classicists and translators more often use “wondrous/terrible,” “formidable,” “awesome,” “strange,” “uncanny,” or Hölderlin’s “monstrous” to preserve ambiguity. “Unsettling” is more modern and psychological in tone.

Overall, this translation works particularly well in a Heideggerian or tragic-philosophical reading of the play. It highlights how human excellence is inherently destabilizing — both to the world and to the human itself. It speaks directly to the “tragedy built into the Greek soul” we mentioned: the tension between collective polis harmony/arete and the disruptive forces of individualism, authoritarianism, and heroic excess. Man is “unsettled” because he cannot fully rest in any single sphere (family, city, gods, nature).  In that light, yes — it makes good sense and adds a valuable nuance, especially alongside “uncanny/unhomely” or “monstrous.” The best translations often hold multiple resonances at once; ours does that effectively for the interpretive context we’re exploring.

One further clarification.  Heidegger offers the helpful distinction between the unhomely and parestios, para hestia, the one in the sphere of warmth of the hearth fire – while by contrast most men are deinon/apolis. This is a precise and illuminating distinction that Heidegger draws in his reading of Sophocles’ Antigone, particularly in the 1942 lecture course on Hölderlin’s hymn “The Ister.”

Parestios / para hestia (παρέστιος): The one who sits near or at the hearth (hestia — Hestia, goddess of the hearth, the center of domestic warmth, familial piety, and divine presence). This represents the homely, settled, familiar, and protected sphere — the one entrusted with the hearth, sharing in its warmth and the ordinary, communal order of the polis and household. Heraclitus is sometimes invoked here for the idea that gods come to presence at the hearth.

The unhomely / apolis / deinon: By contrast, the human being in its essential, most authentic (and risky) mode is not parestios. The Chorus’s closing rejection — “May such a one never be entrusted to my hearth (mēt’ emoi parestios genoito)” — expels the one who oversteps. Heidegger reads the deinon (uncanny/unhomely) human as fundamentally apolis (citiless, without proper site) and unheimlich (unhomely). Even when appearing settled, the human essence involves a violent, boundary-crossing knowing (techne) that disrupts the familiar and leaves one without ultimate ground.

This is not a simple sociological or psychological contrast (e.g., conformists vs. rebels). For Heidegger, it is ontological: the human is the most uncanny being because it must venture into the unhomely — exceeding the familiar abode — in order to disclose Being. True “becoming homely” (Heimischwerden) paradoxically requires first confronting and inhabiting this unhomeliness.

This distinction directly supports rendering deinon with the full weight of “uncanny,” “unsettling/unsettled,” or “monstrous” rather than a tame “wondrous.” The ode celebrates human mastery but culminates in the warning that the one who violates the laws of earth and the sworn justice of the gods becomes hypsipolis apolis — towering high in the polis yet citiless/homeless. The Chorus wants no part of that at its own hearth.

Our earlier suggestion (“Many things are unsettling, but nothing is more unsettling/unsettled than man”) fits well here: most people seek the warmth and stability of the parestios life, but the deinon essence of humanity pulls toward the unhomely, the unstable, the groundless. This tension — collective polis/arete versus disruptive daring — is what makes tragedy possible and reveals the “tragedy built into the Greek soul.”  Heidegger sees Antigone herself as exemplifying the supreme uncanny: she becomes radically unhomely (leaving the sphere of the hearth and polis law) yet in doing so discloses a deeper, more originary fittingness.

This framework enriches Hölderlin’s Ungeheuer profoundly: the monstrous/uncanny is not an aberration but the essential condition that prevents us from ever fully resting as parestios. Man is not at home with himself precisely because his greatness demands this unhomely excess. We also have an inner homeless drive, a being addicted to beings which manifests in withdrawal such as in cabin fever, known in another age as horror locci – revulsion at where one is.