Hölderlin and the Unsaid: On the Question of Silence in Martin Heidegger’s Interpretation of His Poetry

Abstract

Following a previous research, the purpose of this paper is to highlight the importance of silence in the Heideggerian interpretation of Hölderlin’s poetry, and to analyze the ontological nature that this topic acquires in it. In order to do so, it explores how intimately Heidegger connects the idea of silence and Hölderlin’s poetical saying, to which he attributes the problematic endeavour of saying the Being whilst safeguarding its unsayable nature. To fully fathom this effort, special attention should be paid to the poet’s discovery of the simultaneous alterity and dependence of modernity with regard to Greece, and to the study of the way in which this matter determines his poetry, as well as the poetical resources which, according to Heidegger, he uses in order to make the Being appear in his saying as the unsaid.