grounded. Kept in the right perspective. the Ister hymn provides us with essential pointers. Yet this very hymn is in many respects a draft and breaks off-just as though the essence of this poetry, whose poet is a sign, had to be attested to the extreme. The sign shows- and in showing, it makes manifest, yet in such a way that it simultaneously conceals. So mysteriously does Hölderlin say in the Ister hymn that he is "the" poet and knows what is fitting for his poetry, in his being "saddened" and only with difficulty finding the language he has almost lost so as. in saying the word, to be the sign ("Mnemosyne," I. 1ff.):
Ein Zeichen sind wir, deutungslos
Schmerzlos sind wir und haben fast
Die Sprache in der Fremde verloren.
We are a sign that is not read
Without pain we are and have almost
Lost our tongue in foreign parts.
CONCLUDING REMARK—"IS THERE A MEASURE ON EARTH?"
These "remarks" on the Ister hymn are intended to make us attentive to the perspective from which the essence of the rivers is poetized. This poetizing of the rivers is in itself simultaneously a poetizing of the essence of poetry. And for this reason there are concealed relations that prevail here. Were we to follow our strong initial inclination to twist our interpretation of the poetizing of poetry into the view that this poet, in poetizing the essence of poetry, merely becomes altogether entangled in his own "affairs," then we would lose everything through this view. This poet's poetizing does not revolve around the poet's own ego. No German poet has ever achieved such distance from his own ego as that distance that determines Hölderlin's hymnal poetry. This is the real reason why we of today, who despite all "community" remain metaphysically, that is. historically entangled in subjectivity, have such difficulty in bringing the right kind of hearing to encounter the word of this poetry. What has for a long time hindered modem, contemporary human beings, who think in terms of self-consciousness and subjectivity, from hearing this poetry is simply this: The fact that Hölderlin poetizes purely from out of that which. in itself. essentially prevails as that which is to be poetized. When Hölderlin poetizes the essence of the poet, he poetizes relations that do not have their ground in the "subjectivity" of human beings. These relations have t heir own essential prevailing and flowing. The poet is the river. And the river is the poet. The two are t he same on the grounds of their singular essence,