Gottfried Benn and Martin Heidegger on the Essence of Poetry. The Story of a Might-Have-Been Meeting

Abstract

The articles focuses on the complicated relations complicated relations between Gottfried Benn and Martin Heidegger. The great poet and the great philosopher were not only witnesses and spokesmen of their time, but above all theorists and practitioners of poetic word. The oddity of their connection becomes clear if we compare their views on the nature of poetry. A revolutionary approach proposed by Heidegger interpreting art as a place where truth is accomplished, does not find support in Benn. In his famous “Problems of Lyrical Poetry,” Benn puts forward his own version of the purpose of poetry, and thus acts as an opponent of Heidegger’s ontological speculations. Benn’s position, rooted in his professional work with logos, is strikingly different from Heidegger’s. According to Benn, the word does not borrow its demiurgic function from being, and thus retains its absolute autonomous status. This autonomy elevates poetry to the level of sacred rites. As for Heidegger, although he calls language “the home of human existence,” he turns the space of speech into a “no man’s” topos, where the word is intended to highlight the truth of the thing and thereby gives an opportunity to manifest the undermanifested, e.g. being.

Keywords

• poetry
• philosophy
• language
• being
• Gottfried Benn
• “Problems of Lyrical Poetry
• ” Martin Heidegger