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 →Celebration... 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
My entire soul is a cry, and all my work is a commentary on that cry.
The work of art assumes the existence of the perfect spectator, and is indifferent to the fact that no such person exists.
Variety is very, very good. Going from medium to medium, if you get the chance to do it, from theater to television to film, which are all distinctly different, keeps me sharp. What works in one doesn't work in the other, and you have to be looking for the truth of the performance, whatever way that medium might demand.
Photographier: c'est mettre sur la meme ligne de mire la tete, l'oeil et le coeur.
When you are real in your music, people know it and they feel your authenticity.
The nervous system of any age or nation is its creative workers, its artists. And if that nervous system is profoundly disturbed by its environment, the work it produces will inescapably reflect the disturbances, sometimes obliquely and sometimes with violent directness.