In the encountering, humans and gods come toward one another from afar; and this afar is in no way something that is let behind them but is rather the space that they bring to one another in their encounter, without having found or opened that space themselves. Encountering is the reciprocal appropriation of their essence over into the essential apace that first unfolds in its expansiveness and enters into its configuration.

What is inceptual in such appropriation is the appropriative event [Er-eignis] that already sustains and pervasively attunes, and thus lets happen, all encountering. The event [Ereignis] is history proper. Hölderlin thinks the festival as the essence of history. He does not enunciate this in such a form. Yet his poetizing springs from such thinking, The event is the festiveness of the festival. Here we are not regarding this festiveness as the consequence of the festival but as its ground.

Pp. 68-69

¶ 4:47 AM