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§20 Becoming homely in being unhomely [148-149]

in an exceptional sense. Of course, he speaks in every word of the poetic work. and within the "choral ode" he does not speak as though he were expressing particular views of his own. Rather, the poetic truth of a tragedy, that which is to be said before all else and for everything else, is said in the choral ode. The chorus is not simply the origin of tragedy in terms of its "developmental history"; rather, in the choral ode, the chorus becomes the essential middle of the tragedy in terms of the history of its essence. This essential middle poetically gathers around it the whole of the poetic work; the chorus is that which is to be poetized.

Among the many kinds of confusion concerning the question of where the truth of this choral ode which we have explicated resides, we also hear it said that the choral ode is so general in its content that it remains without any proper or clearly specific relation to the remaining content of the Antigone tragedy, so that it really has no place in it. Yet what is misunderstood as general content here is the singularity of the telling of the singular δεινόν and its essential ground, and this appears in the singular figure of Antigone. She is the purest poem itself.

What is to be said poetically is the poetic truth. The poetically true word is that word that names that which poetically is. Yet what is that which poetically is? What does "poetically" mean here everywhere? The poetic seems to be that which a poet says. Yet what does the poet say? What does he have to say as a poet, so that through this saying he can then be a poet?

The poet does not in the first instance say whatever he has poetized, as though the poetic word were merely the linguistic version and statement of whatever is poetized, that is, formed in his imagination. Rather, the poetic saying is itself the poetizing. The poet poetizes that which, in accordance with its essence, is something to be poetized. The poetic can never be comprehended in terms of the poet; rather, the poet can be comprehended only from out of the essence of the poetizing. We must enquire concerning this essence with a view to what that which is to be poetized [das Zu-Dichtende] is, and indeed necessarily is.

That which is essentially and necessarily to be poetized lies concealed In something that can never be identified or found anywhere or anytime or in any way as something actual that is, something among actual beings. What is essentially to be poetized is that which can never be found amid beings as beings but which, from the perspective of those beings that can be round, can only be found out [er-funden]. Yet such poetizing finding out [Er-finden] does not mean finding out some being, but is a supremely pure finding of a supremely pure seeking that does not restrict itself to beings. Poetizing is a telling finding of being. Such finding is supreme, not because what is to be found [das Zu-findende] here remains entirely concealed, but


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