Dwelling is not primarily inhabiting but taking care of and creating that space within which something comes into its own and flourishes.
To be a poet in a destitute time means: to attend, singing, to the trace of the fugitive gods. This is why the poet in the time of the world's night utters the holy.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that being a poet during difficult times involves acknowledging and celebrating the beauty and transcendence in life despite adversity.
Martin Heidegger highlights the role of the poet as a vital observer and interpreter of the human experience, especially in challenging times. In periods of hardship, the poet's duty is to seek out and express the deeper spiritual truths that can often be overlooked. By 'singing' about the 'fugitive gods', the poet illuminates the sacred aspects of life that endure, providing hope and inspiration to others in a seemingly dark world.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a writing workshop, a teacher might reference this quote to inspire students to find beauty in their struggles.
More from Martin Heidegger
All quotes βCelebration... is self restraint, is attentiveness, is questioning, is meditating, is awaiting, is the step over into the more wakeful glimpse of the wonder - the wonder that a world is worlding around us at all, that there are beings rather than nothing, that things are and we ourselves are in their midst, that we ourselves are and yet barely know who we are, and barely know that we do not know all this.
Transcendence constitutes selfhood.
So long as we represent technology as an instrument, we remain held fast in the will to master it.
Everyone is the other and no one is himself.
The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking.
Similar quotes
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Players and painted stage took all my love, And not those things that they were emblems of.
The eye can travel over the surface in a way parallel to the way it moves over nature. It should feel caressed and soothed, experience frictions and ruptures, glide and drift. One moment, there will be nothing to look at and the next second the canvas seems to refill, to be crowded with visual events.
The newspaper is, in fact, very bad for one's prose style. That's why I gravitated towards feature stories where you get a little more leeway in the writing style.
The ultimate pleasure of architecture lies in the most forbidden parts of the architectural act, where limits are perverted and prohibitions are transgressed.
From the shadow of domes in the city of domes,_x000D_ A snowflake, a blizzard of one, weightless, entered your room_x000D_ And made its way to the arm of the chair where you, looking up_x000D_ From your book, saw it the moment it landed. That's all_x000D_ There was to it.