Parentheses of Reception. What are Philologists for in a Destitute Time?

Abstract

The encounter between received poetic traditions and rational critique appears to characterize reception itself as an interruption. The tradition impinges on present discourse and calls for an evaluation in terms of the present. Regarded as such, reception requires a translation that would negotiate the relationship. The consequence of formulating the question of reception in this way is that the received past subsists parenthetically, inserted into the present while remaining somehow apart from the present. An especially provocative illustration of the disruptive and parenthetic nature of reception, including the strategies of translation that it instigates, can be found in the life and work of Martin Heidegger who, perhaps more than any other philosopher of the twentieth century, persistently reflected on the interchange between poetic tradition and thinking.

Keywords

• tradition
• reception
• translation
• parenthesis
• m. heidegger