Heidegger, Holderlin, and the Subject of Poetic Language Toward a New Poetics of Dasein

Heidegger's interpretations of the poetry of Holderlin are central to Heidegger's later philosophy and have determined the mainstream reception of Holderlin's poetry. Gosetti-Ferencei argues that Heidegger has overlooked central elements in Holderlin's poetics, such as a Kantian understanding of aesthetic subjectivity and a commitment to Enlightenment ideals. These elements, she argues, resist the more politically distressing aspects of Heidegger's interpretations, including Heidegger's nationalist valorization of the German language and sense of nationhood, or Heimat.In the context of Holderlin's poetics of alienation, exile, and wandering, Gosetti-Ferencei draws a different model of poetic subjectivity, which engages Heidegger's later philosophy of Gelassenheit, calmness, or letting be. In so doing, she is able to pose a phenomenologically sensitive theory of poetic language and a "new poetics of Dasein," or being there.

JENNIFER ANNA GOSETTI-FERENCEI is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University. She is the author of The Ecstatic Quotidian: Phenomenological Sightings in Modern Art & Literature and of After the Palace Burns, which won The Paris Review prize in poetry.