From the published letter of Martin Heidegger to Hannah Arendt, May 4, 1950
Andrew Shields English transl: "... the woman is hidden in the girl, the girl in the woman. And the essential thing is: this concealment itself growing bright."
The eroticism of Heidegger on concealment and Ereignis could not be clearer: it is addressed to his "saucy wood nymph".
He here speaks of "Time gathered in to the fourth dimension of intimacy, as if we had stepped directly out of eternity -- and returned into it." In merely alluding to the past intimacy he is able to validate his early insight on the occasion of her first entering his office: "only then do I know that life is history." [Mar 21, 1925]
These need to be set side-by-side with the originals and with other of his pronouncements.
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For a farily balanced defense of Arendt see the essay
ReplyDelete"The Anxiety of Influence: On Arendt's Relationship to Heidegger" in "Politics, philosophy, terror: essays on the thought of Hannah Arendt" by Dana Richard Villa (Chapter 3 of that book)
I would ask today whether Arendt had not introduced Heidegger to Rilke and the Erotik which Frau Lou had introduced to her Rainer.
ReplyDeleteThis might explain many missing letters that might deal more with Rilke than with Kant or Augustine.
This is just my conjecture after the Heideggerians recently asked themselves whether Rilke was a Heideggerian poet.
Heidegger the fox would have us on the trail for one poet and not the other.