Abstract

Coming to terms with Heidegger’s “poetics” is a difficult task. On the one hand, there is a tendency to read Heidegger’s “elucidations” or “discussions” of poems and poetic fragments as if they were independent philosophical reflections. The works of Sophocles and Hölderlin— to name only the most important poets for Heidegger—are then treated as if they were no different from the philosophical texts Heidegger elsewhere interprets. On the one hand, there is a countertendency to protect the poetic texts, as it were, from Heidegger’s elucidations, to show that he does philological violence to the integrity of these texts or makes them say something quite different from what they mean to say. The problem with the first tendency is obvious: the poetic character of the poems under discussion is lost. The problem with the second tendency is more subtle: despite its polemical thrust, attacking Heidegger for misrepresenting the poems he discusses cannot be considered critical in any genuine sense, for Heidegger never denies that his elucidations depart from the rules of philology and run counter to the hermeneutic practices through which the meaning of poetic texts is established. Few commentators on Heidegger’s poetological writings have successfully avoided both of these tendencies. One of them is Froment-Meurice, who, in That Is To Say, makes an important contribution to the study of not only Heidegger’s elucidations of poetic texts and his reflections on language but also his project as a whole.