Antigone, Ister, Romeo and Juliet, Ferlinghetti

Ἀντιγόνη
ὁρᾶτ᾽ ἔμ᾽, ὦ γᾶς πατρίας πολῖται, τὰν νεάταν ὁδὸν
στείχουσαν, νέατον δὲ φέγγος λεύσσουσαν ἀελίου,
810κοὔποτ᾽ αὖθις. ἀλλά μ᾽ ὁ παγκοίτας Ἅιδας ζῶσαν ἄγει
τὰν Ἀχέροντος
ἀκτάν, οὔθ᾽ ὑμεναίων ἔγκληρον, οὔτ᾽ ἐπινύμφειός
815πώ μέ τις ὕμνος ὕμνησεν, ἀλλ᾽ Ἀχέροντι νυμφεύσω.

This is the speech quoted by Heidegger at the start of his book on Holderlin's "The Ister." Antigone gives this speech as she goes to be sealed in the cave. She bids the citizens of the chorus to look at her as she marches on her final way, never to see the sunlight again but to be led by Hades to the shore of Acheron while still living (she's being buried alive). She then declares that she's never had her part in a wedding nor as the bride was there hymns sung for her, so she will wed the ruler of Acheron.

The reason Heidegger starts off with this quote is to examine the use of the word hymn and the verb to sing a hymn following. Those words are ὕμνος ὕμνησεν.
Heidegger analyzes what these words might mean because "The Ister" is a hymn, according to Holderlin. What then does it mean to hymn a hymn? What particular instances call for a hymn?

This quote is reminiscent of the scene in Romeo and Juliet where Juliet says in reference to first seeing Romeo: " . . . if he be married, / My grave is like to be my wedding bed" (I, v, 136-7); and Romeo, upon finding her in the tomb:

Shall I believe
That unsubstantial Death is amorous,
And that the lean abhorred monster keeps
Thee here in dark to be his paramour?
(V, iii, 102-105)

What is this marrying to death where the hymnal celebration, that should celebrate life renewed, has turned to such strange coupling? Perhaps we should look back at Heidegger's sense of the mortals role in the fourfold, where mortals initiate mortality. As in "Building Dwelling Thinking" in the center of the house is the altar to the gods and the coffin tree.

As in Ferlinghetti's poem 11: "The world is a beautiful place / to be born into" which ends: "Yes / but then right in the middle of it / comes the smiling / mortician."

There's something deeper than just Life must marry Death, that it forms a totality. It could be a totality without requiring the hymnal song, the sacred nuptial celebration. Both the plays quoted are tragedies so there's a certain amount of sadness involved. I don't think Heidegger is trying to say that we necessarily must feel joy at this cycle, but to be able to consecrate it in one's self. Nietzsche proclaimed the Dionysian joy. I don't see such willing exuberance to dance over the cliff in Heidegger. Perhaps such joy is there. Being Nietzsche is no easy feat.

The Fourfold

Heidegger writes in "Building Dwelling Thinking" that we are a part of "the fourfold" of earth, sky, divinities, mortals. He assigns a verb that mortals must do with each of these. Mortals must save the earth, receive the sky, hope toward the divinities, and mortals must initiate being mortal. This is a very minimalist ecology but it seems to form a totality similar to the Buddhist Four Noble Truths. A universe is completed here.

Man must save the earth for and from himself as a thing of value--not for how it can be used, as one saves money and not like a savior, as a thing apart, but as we keep things safe. In keeping things safe we don't need to have an immediate threat but can keep things safe by taking care of them. And taking care is an important part of Da-sein's purpose as the world-discloser.

Receiving the sky brings to mind the acceptance of rain falling. It is not to be controlled but should be received even when it is not what a person might want on their wedding day. We receive it and should do so with a sense of joy at its sacredness.

Just as earth makes one think of sky, the two halves of many Native American theologies, so the sky brings thought of the divinities. And it is with hope that we look to the divinities for they are the overarching--even more than the sky which often represents them. Mortals look to their coming with humbleness, hope, and passion.

The final fourth is that of the mortals themselves, those whose existence initiates the worldness of the world, who disclose the world and therefore open a view onto the entirety of the fourfold. With mortals we complete the circle as mortals on earth.

This is relevant to my understanding of Heidegger's understanding of Holderlin's Ister poem. The poem is about a river, by which mortals may dwell. By dwelling we open up the possibility of the fourfold.

Pi--don't ask, don't tell

No pi jokes, just a quote from a forty-year-old who memorized over 12,000 of the digits:

"He says he made a mistake in his training: He told too many people what he was up to. His wife, his family — they were rooting for him. Most of the rest dismissed him as a weirdo.

'I have a delicate confidence level in a way,' he says. 'Maybe I don't believe in myself too much. If you do something of this magnitude, keep it a secret. Don't tell anybody what you're doing.'"

Maple Syrup Time?

"There could be more bloodbath to come," said Lee Cheng Hooi, technical analysis manager at EON Capital in Kuala Lumpur.

Stocks are down. I remember reading Abbie Hoffman's autobiography and his cheering every time the stock market plunged. When I told this to a friend in college he chastised me, pointing out that when the stock market goes down it's "the little people" who suffer. Therefore we should pray for the profit of the capitalists because if they lose profit they will slit out throats in turn. Somehow that doesn't seem right to me. It's like having a drunken abusive father: you pray that his day went well so that when he gets drunk he won't get too violent. We all know that profit loss is turned directly on to the lowest on the totem pole. The minimum wage employee is let go, not the CEO with the fortune in bonuses (let alone salary and all the other perks). We know this is true but we dare not say anything because we don't want to lose the scraps flung from the table to us. We don't want to lose the privilege of licking at what trickles down.

Heidegger's River

As usual I have a mass of conflicting emotions. I spend a lot of time reading continental philosophy and yes, I know that might be the trouble right there, and I also spend a lot of time watching the news and trying to figure out what the hell is going on really (and only getting so far along that route). When I feel like I'm getting somewhere in comprehending the philosophy then I learn of some tragedy that incites my indignation and I wonder why I'm hiding my head in the clouds of Aristophanes when I need to be dealing with the reality of contemporary politics and the erosion of American democracy as the imperialist agenda gains ever more momentum. But then I think that no one is going to take anything labeled "imperialist" seriously and no one really cares what's happening in the world. So long as we have our Hi-Def flatscreens, wi-fi, and iPods then to hell with what's happening outside the walls of our modern Babylon. No one wants to hear it. So then I pick up another esoteric book lately arrived from Amazon and go back to trying to map the intricacies of modern philosophic thought in France. And when I get really disgusted with all of it, I turn to studying Ancient Greek conjugations and declensions. It's a way of running from it all. It puts something in my head that I can say over and over like a mantra. Not to gain enlightenment but more like some mental chewing gum.

Today, for instance, I'm thinking about Gonzales' role in firing the eight federal prosecutors and just how much he has been complicit in turning this society more and more into a police state. On the other hand, I've finished the first part of Heidegger's book about Holderlin's poem "The Ister". I'm interested in Heidegger's concept of dwelling but at the same time a little wary of the Teutonic-sounding ideas of "The River" like it could be illustrated by Frank Frazetta.

At work the big topic of conversation is why (or how) Grandmaster Flash got into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I know. I know.

Okay, so some bright person out there is bound to point out how the ultimate questions of ontology dialectically treats of our desire/fear of the Other and this, compounded with the obliteration of "the subject," has led to the Orwellian acceptance of militarism in our desire-crazed consumerist society of the spectacle.

And someone else is bound to say that I should jettison all that mumbo-jumbo and face the real world. And I have a choice of real worlds, of course: the one on Fox News or the one on CNN. And so the real world is a created thing, a bricolage, like my subject, my cherished-but-lost psyche.

I know exactly where my Greek grammar is. Right beside my bed. I can see myself under the blankets reciting paideuo, paideueis, paideuei, paideuomen, paideuete, paideuousi as the world fragments.