We're sorry. An error has occurred
Please cancel or retry.
Heidegger, Hölderlin, and the Subject of Poetic Language
Some error occured while loading the Quick View. Please close the Quick View and try reloading the page.
Couldn't load pickup availability
-
01 September 2004

Heidegger's interpretations of the poetry of Hölderlin are central to Heidegger's later philosophy and have determined the mainstream reception of Hölderlin's poetry. Gosetti-Ferencei argues that Heidegger has overlooked central elements in Hölderlin's poetics, such as a Kantian understanding of aesthetic subjectivity and a commitment to Enlightenment ideals. These elements, she argues, resist the more politically distressing aspects of Heidegger's interpretations, including Heidegger's nationalist valorization of the German language and sense of nationhood, or Heimat.
In the context of Hölderlin's poetics of alienation, exile, and wandering, Gosetti-Ferencei draws a different model of poetic subjectivity, which engages Heidegger's later philosophy of Gelassenheit, calmness, or letting be. In so doing, she is able to pose a phenomenologically sensitive theory of poetic language and a "new poetics of Dasein," or being there.
The perennially interesting complex of topics--Heidegger's thought, Hölderlin's thought and poetry, Heidegger's reading of Hölderlin's poetry--is here enriched by a fourth meditation, written against the grain: Jennifer Gosetti-Ferencei reads Heidegger’s thought in the light of Hölderlin's poetry and theoretical writings. The outcome is a defense and justification of poetic subjectivity at once subtle and exhilarating. Heidegger, Hölderlin, and the Subject of Poetic Language is composed with admirable passion, erudition, and conceptual flair. It will be indispensable for students of continental philosophy, literature, and literary theory.---—Stanley Corngold, Princeton University