QuoteProject
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.
Martin Heidegger
ShareWTF𝕏

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

PoetryAdversitySpiritualityBeautyHope

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

Dwelling is not primarily inhabiting but taking care of and creating that space within which something comes into its own and flourishes.
Martin HeideggerRead
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.
Martin HeideggerRead
Transcendence constitutes selfhood.
Martin HeideggerRead
So long as we represent technology as an instrument, we remain held fast in the will to master it.
Martin HeideggerRead
Everyone is the other and no one is himself.
Martin HeideggerRead
The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking.
Martin HeideggerRead

Similar quotes

My entire soul is a cry, and all my work is a commentary on that cry.
Nikos KazantzakisRead
The work of art assumes the existence of the perfect spectator, and is indifferent to the fact that no such person exists.
E. M. ForsterRead
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.
Kenneth BranaghRead
Photographier: c'est mettre sur la meme ligne de mire la tete, l'oeil et le coeur.
Henri Cartier-BressonRead
When you are real in your music, people know it and they feel your authenticity.
Wynonna JuddRead
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.
Tennessee WilliamsRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.