115
§20 Becoming homely in being unhomely [143-144]

that everyone who belongs to the hearth is someone entrusted [ein Trauter], whether they are "living" or dead.


§20. Becoming homely in being unhomely—the ambiguity of being unhomely. The truth of the choral ode as the innermost middle of the tragedy

The closing words of the choral ode point toward the homestead in which everything homely is grounded. The essential ground of the unhomely is thereby first unveiled. It is through this that the inner essence of being properly unhomely is first determined. Taken directly, the closing words indeed sound like a mere expulsion of the unhomely one. In truth, however, this expulsion from the sphere of the hearth merely impels us to be attentive to the homely and to risk belonging to it. The closing words do not merely reject the unhomely one but rather let being unhomely become worthy of question. Being unhomely emerges from its appearance of being merely a condition attached to human beings, something they are embellished with that has become set in habit. Being unhomely shows itself as a not yet awakened, not yet decided, not yet assumed potential for being homely and becoming homely. It is precisely this being unhomely that Antigone takes upon herself. Her suffering the δεινόν is her supreme action. This action is the movement and "drama" of becoming homely. In becoming homely, being unhomely is first accomplished. And this not merely in the sense that, in becoming homely, being unhomely finds its conclusion; rather, Antigone's becoming homely first brings to light the essence of being unhomely. Becoming homely makes manifest the essential ambiguity of being unhomely.

Being unhomely can be enacted in a mere presumptuousness toward beings in order to forcibly contrive from beings in each case a way out and a site. This presumptuousness toward beings and within beings, however, only is what it is from out of a forgottenness of the hearth, that is, of being. Yet being unhomely can also rupture such forgottenness through "thoughtful remembrance" ["Andenken"] of being and through a belonging to the hearth. In the dialogue between Creon and Antigone that follows the choral ode, Antigone tells of where she belongs, tells of whence she knows herself to be greeted. We mean lines 449-457. Hölderlin too, though with different intentions and with a different interpretation, touches on this place in his Remarks on Antigone (V, 254) and understands it as unmistakably the "boldest moment" of this "work of art." Yet because those who seek to explain this tragedy are always eager to find in Antigone's words an explanation of her actions, that is, a statement about whatever


Hölderlin’s Hymn “The Ister” (GA 53) by Martin Heidegger