Luke Jeffery: Outside Reading #3

I have been reading Heidegger's work entitled Poetry, Language, Thought.  His work has enhanced my understanding of poetry and I'd like to focus this post on his reflections on poetry.  Heidegger opens the section "What are poets for?" with a discussion of the depravity of the world, which he describes as night or darkness.  He then goes on to talk about how this darkness is caused by humanity's loss of respect and understanding of the divine.

Heidegger then introduces poets.  He refers to them as muses who are able to capture some of that divine spirit and bring it back to humanity.  I recall many of the famous Greek works, which call upon the divine inspiration of the muses to create or tell a story.  I love how Heidegger weaves this into his writings, because it gives us an understanding of divine inspiration in poetry and art.  Poetry and art bring us back to the truth about the cosmos, namely that there is something greater besides just what is seen. There is a beauty beyond what we know.

Heidegger writes, "Poets are the mortals who, singing earnestly of the wine-god, sense the trace of the fugitive gods, stay on the gods' tracks, and so trace for ether kindred mortals the way toward the turning" (94).  In this passage he is exploring how poets search for the divine and then attempt to bring what they find back to humanity in an effort to lead humanity back toward the divine.  This is an absolutely stunning image of what poets are for and has personally inspired me.