Odense (Dk) 09.2006.
"Poetry, creative literature, is nothing but the elementary emergence into [172] words, the becoming-uncovered, of existence as being-in-the-world. For the others who before it were blind, the world first becomes visible by what is thus spoken. We may listen to a quotation from Rainer Maria Rilke’s The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge as testimony on this point [German original text below].
Will anyone believe that there are such houses? No. they will say that I’m falsifying. But this time it's the truth, nothing left out and naturally also nothing added. Where should I get it from? It's well known that I’m poor. Everyone knows. Houses? But, to be precise, they were houses that no longer existed. Houses that were torn down from top to bottom. What was there was the other houses, the ones that had stood alongside them, tall neighboring houses. They were obviously in danger of collapsing after everything next to them had been removed, for a whole framework of long tarred poIes was rammed aslant between the ground of the rubble-strewn lot and the exposed wall. I don't know whether I've already said that I mean this wall. But it was, so to speak, not the first wall of the present houses (which nevertheless had to be assumed) but the last one of the earlier ones. You could see their inner side. You could see the walls of rooms on the different storeys, to which the wallpaper was still attached, and here and there the place where the floor or ceiling began. Along the whole wall, next to the walls of the rooms, there still remained a dirty-white area, and the open rust-stained furrow of the toiIet pipe crept through it in unspeakably nauseating movements, soft, like those of a digesting worm. Of the paths taken by the illuminating gas, gray dusty traces were left at the edges of the ceilings, and here and there, quite unexpectedly, they bent round about and came running into the colored wall and into a black hole that had been ruthlessly ripped out. But most unforgettable were the walls themselves. The tenacious life of these rooms refused to let itself be trampled down. It was still there; it clung to the nails that had remained; it stood on the handsbreadth remnant of the floor; it had crept together there among the onsets of the corners where there was still a tiny bit of interior space. You could see that it was in the paint, which it had changed slowly year by year: from blue to an unpleasant green, from green to gray, and from yellow to an old decayed white that was now rotting away. But it was also in the fresher places that had been preserved behind mirrors, pictures and cupboards; for it had drawn and redrawn their contours and had also been in these hidden places, with the spiders and the dust, which now lay bare. It was in every streak that had been trashed off; it was in the moist blisters at the lower edge of the wall-hangings; it tossed in the torn-off tatters, and it sweated out of all the ugly stains that had been made so long ago. And from these walls, once blue, green, and yellow, which were framed by the tracks of the fractures of the intervening walls that had been destroyed, the breath of this life stood out, the tough, sluggish, musty breath which no wind had yet dispersed. There stood the noondays and the illnesses, and the expirings and the smoke of years and the sweat that breaks out under the armpits and makes the clothes heavy, and the stale breath of the mouths and the fusel-oil smell of fermenting feet. There stood the pungency of urine and [173] the burning of soot and the gray reek of potatoes and the strong oily stench of decaying grease. The sweet lingering aroma of neglected suckling infants was there and the anguished odor of children going to school and the sultriness from beds of pubescent boys. And much had joined this company, coming from below, evaporating upward from the abyss of the streets, and much else had seeped down with the rain, unclean above the towns. And the domestic winds, weak and grown tame, which stay always in the same street, had brought much along with them, and there was much more too coming from no one knows where. But I've said, haven't I, that all the walls had been broken off, up to this last one? Well, I've been talking all along about this wall. You'll say that I stood in front of it for a long time; but I'll take an oath that I began to run as soon as I recognized the wall. For that's what's terrible – that I recognized it. I recognize all of it here, and that's why it goes right into me: it's at home in me.
Notice here in how elemental a way the world, being-in-the-world – Rilke calls it life – leaps toward us from the things. What Rilke reads here in his sentences from the exposed wall is not imagined into the wall, but, quite to the contrary, the description is possible only as an interpretation and elucidation of what is "actually" in this wall, which leaps forth from it in our natural comportmental relationship to it. Not only is the writer able to see this original world, even though it has been unconsidered and not at all theoretically discovered, but Rilke also understands the philosophical content of the concept of life, which Dilthey had already surmised and which we have formulated with the aid of the concept of existence as being-in-the-world."
Heidegger, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology (1927).
Will anyone believe that there are such houses? No. they will say that I’m falsifying. But this time it's the truth, nothing left out and naturally also nothing added. Where should I get it from? It's well known that I’m poor. Everyone knows. Houses? But, to be precise, they were houses that no longer existed. Houses that were torn down from top to bottom. What was there was the other houses, the ones that had stood alongside them, tall neighboring houses. They were obviously in danger of collapsing after everything next to them had been removed, for a whole framework of long tarred poIes was rammed aslant between the ground of the rubble-strewn lot and the exposed wall. I don't know whether I've already said that I mean this wall. But it was, so to speak, not the first wall of the present houses (which nevertheless had to be assumed) but the last one of the earlier ones. You could see their inner side. You could see the walls of rooms on the different storeys, to which the wallpaper was still attached, and here and there the place where the floor or ceiling began. Along the whole wall, next to the walls of the rooms, there still remained a dirty-white area, and the open rust-stained furrow of the toiIet pipe crept through it in unspeakably nauseating movements, soft, like those of a digesting worm. Of the paths taken by the illuminating gas, gray dusty traces were left at the edges of the ceilings, and here and there, quite unexpectedly, they bent round about and came running into the colored wall and into a black hole that had been ruthlessly ripped out. But most unforgettable were the walls themselves. The tenacious life of these rooms refused to let itself be trampled down. It was still there; it clung to the nails that had remained; it stood on the handsbreadth remnant of the floor; it had crept together there among the onsets of the corners where there was still a tiny bit of interior space. You could see that it was in the paint, which it had changed slowly year by year: from blue to an unpleasant green, from green to gray, and from yellow to an old decayed white that was now rotting away. But it was also in the fresher places that had been preserved behind mirrors, pictures and cupboards; for it had drawn and redrawn their contours and had also been in these hidden places, with the spiders and the dust, which now lay bare. It was in every streak that had been trashed off; it was in the moist blisters at the lower edge of the wall-hangings; it tossed in the torn-off tatters, and it sweated out of all the ugly stains that had been made so long ago. And from these walls, once blue, green, and yellow, which were framed by the tracks of the fractures of the intervening walls that had been destroyed, the breath of this life stood out, the tough, sluggish, musty breath which no wind had yet dispersed. There stood the noondays and the illnesses, and the expirings and the smoke of years and the sweat that breaks out under the armpits and makes the clothes heavy, and the stale breath of the mouths and the fusel-oil smell of fermenting feet. There stood the pungency of urine and [173] the burning of soot and the gray reek of potatoes and the strong oily stench of decaying grease. The sweet lingering aroma of neglected suckling infants was there and the anguished odor of children going to school and the sultriness from beds of pubescent boys. And much had joined this company, coming from below, evaporating upward from the abyss of the streets, and much else had seeped down with the rain, unclean above the towns. And the domestic winds, weak and grown tame, which stay always in the same street, had brought much along with them, and there was much more too coming from no one knows where. But I've said, haven't I, that all the walls had been broken off, up to this last one? Well, I've been talking all along about this wall. You'll say that I stood in front of it for a long time; but I'll take an oath that I began to run as soon as I recognized the wall. For that's what's terrible – that I recognized it. I recognize all of it here, and that's why it goes right into me: it's at home in me.
Notice here in how elemental a way the world, being-in-the-world – Rilke calls it life – leaps toward us from the things. What Rilke reads here in his sentences from the exposed wall is not imagined into the wall, but, quite to the contrary, the description is possible only as an interpretation and elucidation of what is "actually" in this wall, which leaps forth from it in our natural comportmental relationship to it. Not only is the writer able to see this original world, even though it has been unconsidered and not at all theoretically discovered, but Rilke also understands the philosophical content of the concept of life, which Dilthey had already surmised and which we have formulated with the aid of the concept of existence as being-in-the-world."
Heidegger, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology (1927).
Rainer Maria Rilke
Die Aufzeichnungendes Malte Laurids Brigge
[749] Wird man es glauben, daß es solche Häuser giebt? Nein, man wird sagen, ich fälsche. Diesmal ist es Wahrheit, nichts weggelassen, natürlich auch nichts hinzugetan. Woher sollte ich es nehmen? Man weiß, daß ich arm bin. Man weiß es. Häuser? Aber, um genau zu sein, es waren Häuser, die nicht mehr da waren. Häuser, die man abgebrochen hatte von oben bis unten. Was da war, das waren die anderen Häuser, die danebengestanden hatten, hohe Nachbarhäuser. Offenbar waren sie in Gefahr, umzufallen, seit man nebenan alles weggenommen hatte; denn ein ganzes Gerüst von langen, geteerten Mastbäumen war schräg zwischen den Grund des Schuttplatzes und die bloßgelegte Mauer gerammt. Ich weiß nicht, ob ich schon gesagt habe, daß ich diese Mauer meine. Aber es war sozusagen nicht die erste Mauer der vorhandenen Häuser (was man doch hätte annehmen müssen), sondern die letzte der früheren. Man sah ihre Innenseite. Man sah in den verschiedenen Stockwerken Zimmerwände, an denen noch die Tapeten klebten, da und dort den Ansatz des Fußbodens oder der Decke. Neben den Zimmerwänden blieb die ganze Mauer entlang noch ein schmutzigweißer Raum, und durch diesen kroch in unsäglich widerlichen, wurmweichen, gleichsam verdauenden Bewegungen die offene, rostfleckige Rinne der Abortröhre. Von den Wegen, die das Leuchtgas gegangen war, waren graue, staubige Spuren am Rande der Decken geblieben, und sie bogen da und dort, ganz unerwartet, rund um und kamen in die farbige Wand hineingelaufen und in ein Loch hinein, das schwarz und [750] rücksichtslos ausgerissen war. Am unvergeßlichsten aber waren die Wände selbst. Das zähe Leben dieser Zimmer hatte sich nicht zertreten lassen. Es war noch da, es hielt sich an den Nägeln, die geblieben waren, es stand auf dem handbreiten Rest der Fußböden, es war unter den Ansätzen der Ecken, wo es noch ein klein wenig Innenraum gab, zusammengekrochen. Man konnte sehen, daß es in der Farbe war, die es langsam, Jahr um Jahr, verwandelt hatte: Blau in schimmliches Grün, Grün in Grau und Gelb in ein altes, abgestandenes Weiß, das fault. Aber es war auch in den frischeren Stellen, die sich hinter Spiegeln, Bildern und Schränken erhalten hatten; denn es hatte ihre Umrisse gezogen und nachgezogen und war mit Spinnen und Staub auch auf diesen versteckten Plätzen gewesen, die jetzt bloßlagen. Es war in jedem Streifen, der abgeschunden war, es war in den feuchten Blasen am unteren Rande der Tapeten, es schwankte in den abgerissenen Fetzen, und aus den garstigen Flecken, die vor langer Zeit entstanden waren, schwitzte es aus. Und aus diesen blau, grün und gelb gewesenen Wänden, die eingerahmt waren von den Bruchbahnen der zerstörten Zwischenmauern, stand die Luft dieser Leben heraus, die zähe, träge, stockige Luft, die kein Wind noch zerstreut hatte. Da standen die Mittage und die Krankheiten und das Ausgeatmete und der jahrealte Rauch und der Schweiß, der unter den Schultern ausbricht und die Kleider schwer macht, und das Fade aus den Munden und der Fuselgeruch gärender Füße. Da stand das Scharfe vom Urin und das Brennen vom Ruß und grauer [751] Kartoffeldunst und der schwere, glatte Gestank von alterndem Schmalze. Der süße, lange Geruch von vernachlässigten Säuglingen war da und der Angstgeruch der Kinder, die in die Schule gehen, und das Schwüle aus den Betten mannbarer Knaben. Und vieles hatte sich dazugesellt, was von unten gekommen war, aus dem Abgrund der Gasse, die verdunstete, und anderes war von oben herabgesickert mit dem Regen, der über den Städten nicht rein ist. Und manches hatten die schwachen, zahm gewordenen Hauswinde, die immer in derselben Straße bleiben, zugetragen, und es war noch vieles da, wovon man den Ursprung nicht wußte. Ich habe doch gesagt, daß man alle Mauern abgebrochen hatte bis auf die letzte –? Nun von dieser Mauer spreche ich fortwährend. Man wird sagen, ich hätte lange davorgestanden; aber ich will einen Eid geben dafür, daß ich zulaufen begann, sobald ich die Mauer erkannt hatte. Denn das ist das Schreckliche, daß ich sie erkannt habe. Ich erkenne das alles hier, und darum geht es so ohne weiteres in mich ein: es ist zu Hause in mir.
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