enowning
Friday, January 23, 2009
 
Beyng, from two of his letters to his wife, Elfriede.

November 22, 1939, Heidegger wrote from Messkirch:
Every day I think of Hölderlin's words:

'Long is the time, but the true comes into its own.' And we must now realise that for a long time to come the future will lack any space in which anything essential might take shape; indeed the very possibility of creating space is destroyed.

And nonetheless - the knowing closeness to Being [Seyn] is - & that we may do something small for it & in the process remain certain of the silent consent of a few gives the most inconspicuous activity its essential purpose.
And on November 26th:
At a time when the invisible devastation is more far-reaching than the visible destruction, even the paths of daily reflection must head in the direction of the invisible. In this realm there is a coming-together of the invisible & uniquely real few who have given man his grounding upon existence. Firstly, these are the individuals who are today involved in the immediate struggle of war & who find no support in anything present, not even in community and comradeship. In their way they must have a premonition of something else for which they're willing to make the sacrifice, something they cannot say, yet only create in the sacrifice. How many such people there are out there, nobody knows. But that there are such people is certain. And then there are the women who out of an originary love keep secluded spaces ready for the soarings of what is noble & by virtue of this love is indestructible. Who they are eludes all publicity. And thirdly we may count those who, running on far ahead in their poetizing & thinking, belong to another history. Where they are & whether they are remains so well hidden that not even this questioning after them can awaken, let alone make itself generally heard. These three invisible and uniquely real figures prepare the 'poetic', upon the ground of which alone the history of man is founded. To these three figures belongs the gift of Being [Seyn] - that it is given to them, each in their different way, to be open to the coming of originary decisions & each in their way protect it.

What the philosopher must always already know, others too may now perhaps learn - that the invisible is more existent [seinder] than the visible. -

Pp. 163-4
The invisible is beinger that the visible.
 
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