What Are Poets For? § 117
who are more venturesome? To this question the poem, it seems, gives no explicit answer.
True, lines 8 to 11 say something about the more venturesome ones, negatively and by approximation. The more venturesome ones do not venture themselves out of selfishness, for their own personal sake. They seek neither to gain an advantage nor to indulge their self-interest. Nor, even though they are more venturesome, can they boast of any outstanding accomplishments. For they are more daring only by a little, "more daring by a breath." The "more" of their venture is as slight as a breath which remains fleeting and imperceptible. These hints do not allow us to gather who the more venturesome ones are.
Lines 10 and 11, however, tell what this daring brings which ventures beyond the Being of beings:
There, outside all caring,
this creates for us a safety—just there,
where the pure forces' gravity rules... .
Like all beings, we are in being only by being ventured in the venture of Being. But because, as the beings who will, we go with the venture, we are more venturesome and thus sooner exposed to danger. When man entrenches himself in purposeful self-assertion, and by means of absolute objectification installs himself in the parting against the Open, then he himself promotes his own unshieldedness,
But the daring which is more venturesome creates a safety for us. It does not do so, to be sure, by raising protective defenses around the unprotected; in that way, a protection, would be raised only in those places where protection is lacking. And that would once again require a production. Production is possible only in objectification. Objectification, however, blocks us off against the Open. The more venturesome daring does not produce a defense. But it creates a safety, a secureness for us. Secure, securus, sine cura means: without care. The caring here has the character of