164
ON THE WAY TO LANGUAGE

The soul is called to go under. Then it is so after all: the soul is to end its earthly journey and leave the earth behind! Nothing of the sort is said in the verses just quoted. And yet they speak of "going under." Certainly. But the going under of which these verses speak is neither a catastrophe, nor is it a mere withering away in decay. Whatever goes under, going down the blue river,


Goes down in peace and silence.

(Transfigured Autumn, 30)


Into what peace does it go? The peace of the dead? But of which dead? And into what silence?


Something strange is the soul on the earth.


The stanza in which this sentence belongs continues:


... Ghostly the twilight dusk
Bluing above the mishewn forest ...


Earlier, the sun is mentioned. The stranger's footfall goes away into the dusk. "Dusk" means, first, darkness falling. "Dusk bluing." Is the sunny day's blueness darkening? Does it fade in the evening to give way to night? But dusk is not a mere sinking of the day, the dissolution of its brightness in the gloom of night. Dusk, anyway, does not necessarily mean the twilight of the end. The morning, too, has its twilight. The day rises in twilight. Twilight, then, is also a rising. Twilight dusk blues over the "mishewn," tangled, withered forest. The night's blueness rises, in the evening.

The twilight dusk blues "ghostly." This "ghostliness" is what marks the dusk. We must give thought to what this oft-named "ghostliness" means. The twilight dusk is the sun's descending course. That implies: twilight dusk is the decline both of the day and of the year. The last stanza of a poem called "Summer's End" (163) sings:


So quiet has the green summer grown
And through the silvery night there rings
The footfall of the stranger.
Would that the blue wild game were to recall his paths,


Martin Heidegger (GA 12) On the Way to Language