Pain and Being: An Essay in Heideggerian Ontology

Author(s): ORVILLE CLARK

Source: The Southwestern Journal of Philosophy , FALL, 1973, Vol. 4, No. 3, HEIDEGGER
ISSUE (FALL, 1973), pp. 179-190
Published by: University of Arkansas Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43154955

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Pain and Being: An Essay in Heideggerian
Ontology
ORVILLE CLARK
University of Wisconsin- Green Bay

In a world where nothing seems to stand up, it might be worthwhil

to reflect for a moment on a question that has preoccupied Western
thinkers since the beginning of philosophy: How do things hold to-
gether? What keeps the world from falling apart? What is the holding
power of Being?
Possibly no other problem has been more widely discussed through
out history and, if it is not the most fundamental, it is certainly th
oldest question in the Western philosophical tradition. Philosophy
begins with this question. Pre-Socratic thinking had its origin in the
quest for a universal principle to account for the harmony of all things
in nature. Everything from water and fire to divine retribution wa
thought to be the uniting principle. Some said it was fate or "cruel"
justice; still others claimed this honor for love. Ideas, substance, en-
ergy, and even numbers have been invoked at one time or another a
the staying power of Being.
In the modern period this unifying function is often attributed to
consciousness and subjectivity is interpreted as that power which gath-
ers and holds all things in itself. Descartes initiated this view in modern
philosophy. The Kantian schema also represents an attempt to bring
all sensible things together in the unity of experience. Fichte's Tran
scendental Ego and Schelling's Identity System are both radical state
ments of this same tendency in modern philosophy. Hegel's Absolut
Subject again expresses this same process of the self-gathering of a
things into the collective unity of Thought. Nietzsche's Will-to-Powe
likewise affirms the power of will to gather and hold the self in th
eternal circle of its own willing.
The underlying conviction in all these claims, both ancient and
modern, is fundamentally the same: Being gathers and holds all things
together in an ordered whole. Aristotle sums it up well in saying: "A
order has the character of bringing together/'1 The name for thi
"bringing together" was logos. Heidegger tells us logos originally meant
"that which in itself collects all things and holds them together."

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Logos was understood by the early Greeks as "the togetherness of
things" and in this sense was thought to be the holding power of Being.
What is the nature of this gathering and holding power of logos ?
What enables it to gather all things into itself? How do things hold
together?
Heidegger tells us that "Even now pain remains the touchstone."3
We take this to imply some intimate relation between the collecting
and holding power of logos and pain. Pain is the touchstone for the
truth of logos . A touchstone is any test or criterion by which the prop-
erties of a thing are determined, as for instance, in testing the prop-
erties of minerals with a streaking stone. But "touchstone" may also
be used in a more metaphorical sense as in expressions like "a touch-
stone for truth or falsity." But what is pain? How can it serve as an
ultimate test for the truth of logos?
Heidegger employs the word "touchstone" in an ontological sense
to denote the fundamental nature of reality as such; in this respect
pain belongs to the essential gathering and holding power of Being.
Discussions concerning pain occur in several of his essays, particularly
in "Language in the Poem" in On the Way to Language and "Con-
cerning the Line" translated as The Question of Being.4
The remark about pain as the touchstone is found in The Question
of Being which is an open letter addressed to Ernst Juenger. The letter
involves a discussion of the essence of nihilism as the zone or critical
line between the old historical epoch, the epoch of Western meta-
physics, and a new epoch (neu zeit) which presumably lies across the
line. The present historical condition, a condition of "complete nihil-
ism," forms the boundary line between these two eras and designates
the "zero point" of the reigning nothingness. This zero point repre-
sents the zone of "site" of complete nihilism. The "site" itself is mani-
fested in the "total work character" of the technological world which
becomes visible in the figure of the worker. The gestalt of the worker
is the "site" of the prevailing nothingness.5
Work in this sense does not imply merely physical labor, but rather
"a metaphysical power"; it is a mode of Being, an ontological structure
belonging to the world and thus an essential form of man's being.
Work is the gathering power of the present historical reality. But what
does it gather? Nothing, or rather everything, since it permeates all
aspects of life today and lays claim to global dominance. Work takes
on the character of "a new and special kind of will-to-power" and the
gestalt of the worker becomes identical with the mobilization of tech-
nology for total planetary domination:

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 Dominance is only possible today as the representation of the Gestalt
of the worker which lays claim to planetary validity. ( The Worker,
p. 192) . . . Work in the highest sense and in the sense which per-
meates all mobilization is representation of the Gestalt of the work-
er. (Ibid., p. 202) . . . Technology is the way in which the Gestalt of
the worker mobilizes the world. (Ibid., p. 150) 6
What we need to note for our purposes is that work as a specific
way of being toward the world and as a way of appropriating the things
in that world, also discloses the essence of a certain type of human
being: the gestalt of the worker is "the Gestalt of a humanity."7 More
important, however, is the fact that work as an expression of the gestalt
of the worker gives whatever form and order the technological world
possesses. It is thus a kind of logos.
But if this is the case, and if it is also true that pain belongs to the
essence of logos, then pain would define the inmost nature of work.
Both work as the drive for "planetary domination" and the gestalt of
the worker as the will-to-dominance would belong to this fundamental
essence. The gestalt of the technological world would therefore be
completely gathered and held in the primordial nature of pain. As
Heidegger puts it: "In pain the Gestalt is held."8
What does this statement say? It says in effect that the form of hu-
manity is gathered and held in pain. Man is a being beholden to pain.
But what is pain such that it can hold man's essence? What is the
holding power of pain?
Heidegger has in mind the old root meaning of hold (halten) which
originally meant "to take care of, to tend or keep (hüten) . The English
word "hold" still carries something of this archaic sense. It comes
from the Anglo-Saxon healdan or haldan from which derives the poetic
expression holden as in beholden, "to have or keep in sight." This
term is related to Old Middle English bihove, meaning "for the use
of" and also to the Anglo-Saxon behof, "advantage," and behoñan, "to
have need of." Our word "hold" means primarily "to take or keep in
one's grasp," but the obsolete meaning of "to undergo, bear or endure"
is not lost. Beholden (as behealdan) still conveys the sense of being
"bound in gratitude." It is the last two meanings of "hold" that are
crucial in our discussion of the nature of pain.
Heidegger's comment was that man's humanity in the form of the
worker is gathered and preserved in pain. Pain remains the touchstone.
But in order to clarify the relations holding between work as the gestalt
of the worker and pain as the touchstone of that gestalt, "nothing less
would be required than to think through the fundamental structure

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of Hegel's metaphysics, the unity of the Phenomenology of Mind and
the Science of Logic"9 The fundamental character of Being, both in
its formal aspects and in its temporal and historical nature, would have
to be delineated.
Obviously such a task is beyond the scope of this brief study. How-
ever, following Heidegger's lead, we can sketch the main point of this
relationship. Absolute negativity constitutes "the infinite power of real-
ity," that is, of the "existing Concept" and is the bonding bond be-
tween work and pain. The key to this intimate bond is given in the
etymology of the Greek word for pain as Heidegger interprets it in
The Question of Being . He writes:

If anyone would, indeed, dare to think through the relationship be-

tween "work" as the basic feature of being and "pain" via Hegel's
Logic , then the Greek word for pain, namely algos becomes articu-
late for us. Presumably, algos is related to alego which, as an intensive
of lego, signifies intimate gathering. Then pain would be the most
intimate of gatherings.10

Logos and pain coincide in this interpretation since both signify a

gathering together. They are also synonymous in meaning with the
negativity of the Concept ( Begriff ) in Hegel's system. The "uniting
unity" holding between the Logic and the Phenomenology is pain as
the gathering power of logos . This merely affirms Hegel's own insight
that the fundamental character of Being is "absolute negativity"; that
is to say, that the work of Spirit (Geist) is the negativity (pain) of
Thought. Work, then, as "the basic feature of being" and pain, "the
most intimate of gatherings," together constitute the innermost meta-
physical relationship.
Logos is "the primal gathering principle," as Heidegger says, but
pain remains the touchstone that grants this collecting and holding
-power. What is granted in this gathering? Heidegger tells us clearly
that difference is what is granted. Both work and the gestalt of the
worker are gathered and held together and thus the world of the
worker is preserved. But preservation itself depends on separating and
disjoining whatever is gathered together. To paraphrase Heidegger:
Pain is the threshold that joins the rift between Being and beings
while preserving their difference. Pain is ontological difference:

But what is pain? Pain rends. It is the rift. But it does not tear apart
into dispersive fragments. Pain indeed tears asunder, it separates,
yet so that at the same time it draws everything to itself, gathers it
to itself. Its rending, as a separating that gathers, is at the same time
that drawing which, like the pen drawing of a plan or sketch, draws

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 and joins together what is held apart in separation. Pain is the join-
ing agent in the rending that divides and gathers. Pain is the joining
of the rift. The joining is the threshold. It settles the between, the
middle of the two that are separated in it. Pain joins the rift of the
difference. Pain is the difference itself .n

This rather Orphic-sounding pronouncement might have come from

Nietzsche's ecstatic Dionysian reveler or even from the raving mouth
of the Delphic oracle. Actually it comes from Heidegger's discussion
of Georg Trakl's innocent poem titled: "A Winter Evening." The in-
terpretation concentrates on the second verse of the third stanza which
Heidegger holds speaks the whole of what is spoken in the poem. It
speaks of pain: "Pain has turned the threshold to stone/'12
Trakl's verse does not say what pain is; it merely names it: "pain."
But it names it along with the threshold of the doorway. Pain has
petrified the threshold. Heidegger takes this to refer to the permanent
and enduring character of the threshold which must bear the doorway
as a whole. The threshold bears the between; it is the "gathering mid-
dle/' as he calls it, that joins outside and inside. World and things
interpenetrate across this "gathering middle" which grants the inti-
macy of their belonging together. However, intimacy is preserved only
in separation of what is joined. Difference prevails in the gathering
power of the threshold. Thus, the poem in naming pain also names
difference as that which grants intimacy to world and things. "The
verse calls the difference, but it neither thinks it specifically nor does
it call its nature by this name. The verse calls the separation of the
between, the gathering middle, in whose intimacy the bearing of things
and the granting of world pervade one another."18
Heidegger's point is that pain is the unifying element of the dia-
phora , the carrying out that carries through the togetherness of world
and things in their difference. Pain, as the joining of the rift, grants a
"place" or dimension wherein world and things come together and
find their measure. Pain is the "site" of the worlding world and
thinging thing.
We are already somewhat familiar with this thought from Hei-
degger's essays on The Origin of the Work of Art and The Thing . No
explicit mention is made of pain in these writings, but clearly the
primordial rift (riss), the strife between earth and world refers to that
principle. The rift is "the opposition of the primal conflict" that holds
earth and world together while preserving their essential difference;
the rift is the holding power of Being. The settling of the primal
struggle is art.
Heidegger's description of the primordial rift is also very similar to

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that of the essay on "Language" quoted from On the Way to Lan-
guage earlier (see p. 8) :

The conflict is not a rift ( riss ) as the ripping open of a cleft; rather,
it is the intimacy of the opponents that belong to each other. This
rift draws ( reisst ) the opponents together into the source of their
unity in the single ground. It is a ground-plan (grundriss) . It is an
elevation ( aufriss ) that draws the basic features of the rising up of
the lighting of what is. This rift does not let the opponents break
apart; it brings the opposition into the measure and limit of a
single boundary ( umriss ).14

This measure which sets the limits of "a single boundary" is, of
course, difference as the dimension, the middle ground, that joins
earth and world. Difference is pain. Heidegger directly identifies pain
with the rift in the essay on "Language," and it is at least significant
that both riss in The Origin of the Work of Art and ringen in Das
Ding are synonyms for pain.
Pain remains the touchstone in both works and things. The Thing
is held in the "Gering of the Ring": the simple, pliant, painful, col-
lectivity of the world, while the world itself is gathered in the unob-
trusive granting of the Thing. The interplay of the elementary four in
the "thinging thing" and the joining of earth and world in the work
belong to the "simple intimacy of strife." When Robert Henri spoke
of the work of art as "the sign of a magnificent struggle,"15 he might
have been reflecting Heidegger's own thinking on the truth of the
work: "The work-being of the work consists in the fighting of the
battle between world and earth."16
What is the implication of all this for our original question: How
do things hold together? What does the primordial struggle have to
do with pain as the touchstone of truth? What is gathered and granted
in this primal strife?
Heidegger's response might be summarized in the following way:
the battle is the rift. The rift is pain as the joining agent. The work
settles the rift and is thus "disclosingly appropriated" to the primal
strife; it becomes, so to speak, a slice of primordial pain. This enables
it to serve as a touchstone for the happening of truth. The logos of
the work and the threshold of pain are assimilated in Truth as un-
concealment ( aletheia ). Truth is the gathering and holding power
of pain.
Clearly this is the whole import of Heidegger's discussion in T he
Origin of the Work of Art , both in the example of the Greek temple
and Van Gogh's painting of the peasant's shoes. Truth is at work in

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these works. However, this is not merely some particular kind of
"truth/' but the disclosure of what is as a whole. As Heidegger ex-
presses it:

Truth happens in the Temple's standing where it is. This does not
mean that something is rightly represented and reproduced here, but
that what is as a whole is brought into unconcealment and held
therein. To hold ( halten ) originally means to tend, keep, take care
(hüten). Truth happens in van Gogh's painting. This does not mean
that something is rightly portrayed, but rather that in the revelation
of the equipmental being of the shoes that which is as a whole-
world and earth in their counterplay- attains to unconcealment.17

The work instigates the strife between earth as the self-closing and
world as the self-opening and thus reveals the "simple intimacy" of
their counterplay. This counterplay of earth and world is the primal
conflict ( riss ) and is therefore synonymous with pain. Pain is the join-
ing of the rift. What is unconcealed, then, as the Truth of the work
is the gathering and holding power of pain.
Heidegger uses a Greek temple and a painting of a pair of shoes to
show how earth and world are gathered and held in the work. But other
works of art might serve as well. For example, James Agee's description
of an ordinary pair of workingman's shoes in Let Us Now Praise Fa-
mous Men , provides an even better insight into the nature of this
holding power. Agee writes:

They are one of the most ordinary types of working shoes: the
Blucher design and soft in the prow, lacking the seam across the root
of the big toe; covering the ankles: looped straps at the heels:
Blunt, broad, and rounded at the toe: broad-heeled: made up of most
simple roundednesses and squarings and flats, of dark brown raw
thick leathers nailed and sewn coarsely to one another in courses
and patterns of doubled and tripled seams, and such throughout
that like other small objects they have great massiveness and repose
and are, as the houses and overalls are, and the feet and legs of the
women who go barefooted so much, fine pieces of architecture.18

A fairly straightforward description of a pair of working shoes, noth-

ing more. And yet- the description is not of a "mere" object. Somehow
these simple workingman's shoes are seen to stand up and stand out as
unique things. Indeed, the shoes are things, and they are also pieces of
equipment in the everyday world of the workingman. They are used
in that world, but are not used up; that is, they are not completely
absorbed into "the equipmentality of equipment." The "thingness" is
preserved in the literary work which enables us to imagine the kind

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of world into which this equipmentality fits and functions. These
plain working shoes described in a narrative work illuminate the world
of the men and women to whom they belong: the heavy, massive, dull,
and blunt world of tenant farmers.
A careful reading of this description of a pair of shoes might easily put
one in mind of a construction site where some huge structure is being
erected; a structure, as the author says, "made up of the most simple
roundednesses and squarings and flats." Perhaps that is why they are
called "fine pieces of architecture," since they tower up like a Gothic
cathedral to reveal the massive and blunt world to which they belong.
Things in that world are also claimed and protected by the earth: "Clay
is worked into the substance of the uppers and a loose dust of clay lies
over them." Agee's work places the reader at the threshold of this
interplay between the earth and the world through an intimate sense
of these simple things, a "feel" of how it must be to wear and walk in
such a pair of working shoes:

They are softened in the uppers, with use, and the soles are rubbed
thin enough, I estimate, that the ticklish grain of the ground can be
felt at the center of the forward sole. . . . There is great pleasure in
a sockless and sweated foot in the fitted leathers of a shoe.19

Agee's narrative work opens up a world and grants a view of the

things in that world. It discloses not only the weary, toilworn, and
desolate world into which such equipment fits, but also the human
beings who use such things. The work also reveals how things in that
working world are gathered and held upon the earth. The Truth at
work in the work sets up a world and sets that world back on the earth;
it sites the world upon the earth and thus creates a "place" for mortals.
To state this differently: the work reveals to man how the world holds
together and in this way sets a limit and provides a measure for his own
existence. What is granted in the gathering and holding power of pain
is the possibility of authentic human existence. This is dwelling.
Quoted earlier was Heidegger's seemingly cryptic remark: "In pain
the Gestalt is held."20 Our interpretation of this was to the effect that
man's essential humanity is held in that which gives form and meaning
to his world. Pain grants this form. We can now understand the original
meaning of "hold" as beholden and we can also understand the claim
that man is "bound in gratitude" to pain. Pain grants dwelling as the
ownmost possibility of man's being.
In his essay Building Dwelling and Thinking , Heidegger states that
dwelling is "the basic character of Being in keeping with which mortals
exist."21 What is in keeping with mortal existence is remaining on the

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earth: Man is earthbound. This is to say that man's being-in-the-world
is rooted in being-on-the-earth; or rather both are held in the essential
unity of dwelling. The old word bauen says the same thing: Man is only
as he dwells. But it also meant "to cherish and protect, to preserve and
care for."22 To be human, then, means to dwell on the earth and to be
engaged in constructing, cultivating, and caring for the things of the
earth.
The fundamental character of dwelling is a safeguarding and preserv-
ing of each thing in its own being. This preservation occurs in building.
Building is either cultivating as of fields or constructing in the sense
of raising up structures. Both cultivating and constructing are held
within the more fundamental mode of dwelling. All building is already
dwelling. As Heidegger has it, "We do not dwell because we have built,
but we build and have built because we dwell, that is, because we are
dwellers."2*
Dwelling gathers and preserves the world in building; it saves and
protects the earth, heaven, mortals, and gods by collecting them into
the fourfold unity of things. "Dwelling occurs as the fourfold preserva-
tion of the fourfold."24 Man is also inserted into the fourfold, but he
remains in this intimate gathering only so long as he stays with things,
that is, takes them under his own care. Dwelling "is always a staying
with things. Dwelling, as preserving, keeps the fourfold in that with
which mortals stay: in things."25
If we might restate Heidegger's view of dwelling as briefly and plainly
as possible: to dwell means basically to keep one's feet on the ground
by always taking bearings from the familiar landmarks: the old mill, the
town house, the bridge spanning the stream. These things built by man
gives us our orientation in the world and they tie us back to the earth.
Staying with these simple things lends whatever beauty and dignity
there is to human life.
Heidegger's philosophy of dwelling, if we may call it that, depends
finally on the claim that preservation is actualized in the thing. The
thing gathers the fourfold of earth, heaven, mortals, and gods in such a
way as to grant a "site" for human works. The "site" makes a space
and thus provides a location for building. A painting of The Draw-
bridge at Aries by Van Gogh will illustrate the nature of "site."
There is nothing unusual about this painting of the drawbridge at
Aries. Van Gogh painted several versions of this same bridge during his
lifetime. A simple bridge with peaceful blue water flowing quietly
beneath it, a pale washed out sky above, a horse-drawn cart on the
bridgeworks, and a few peasant women washing clothes on the river
bank- nothing more. The bridge is suspended by a crude system of

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counter-weights constructed from rough-hewn timbers held by heavy
chains. The massiveness of the timbers contrasts sharply with the size
of the bridge abutment and with the horse and cart crossing it. This
contrast emphasizes the supporting power of the whole structure.
The bridge is a thing. But so are the horse and the cart on the bridge.
The water-filled boat lying at the river's edge is also a thing, as is
the river itself and the peasant women and the poplar trees in the
background. All of these are things, and yet we do not think of them
as "mere" things.
The bridge is a thing in that it collects and gathers the earth as land-
scape about the river; it grants a location and thus joins all things to-
gether in the space of a "site." The "site" allows a construction to occur
at this location. But the bridge is also something built; it is a piece of
equipment constructed by man for crossing a river. Spanning the river,
it joins the separated banks and sets them off as opposite sides. As
equipment, the bridge stands up in the world and it rests upon the
earth. The bridge is both equipmental and thingly.
The painting by Van Gogh discloses a world through the bridge as a
human work. This world and this work are gathered and protected in
the bridge thing. But the work also reveals the earth which holds and
sustains the bridge. The blue sky above is reflected, along with the
bridge abutment, in the silent flow of the river and bespeaks the invisi-
ble presence of the divinity in all things.
The work of art celebrates the belonging together of the fourfold:
earth, heaven, mortals, and gods. These are gathered and held in the
simple unity of the bridge thing. The bridge is a "site" that grants
dwelling to man. Dwelling is the gathering of a location in a "site." In
Heidegger's own words:

The bridge is a thing; it gathers the fourfold, but in such a way that
it allows a site for the fourfold. By this site are determined the locali-
ties and ways by which a space is provided

is made is always granted and hence joined, that is gat

of a location, that is by such a thing as the bridge.26

If we return now to our initial question, How do

gether? the answer Heidegger gives seem to be- things
together; and not only themselves, but the fourfold
human world. The thing gathers the world into the fou
virtue of being a "site." But what is the nature of a
able to grant this gathering power to things? What
"site"?
The discussion of Georg Trakl's poetry in the essay "La

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Poem" provides an answer to these questions. It is a discussion of the
"site" of a poetic work, and since the "site" of true poetry is the "site"
of Truth, it is at the same time a discussion of the Truth of Being.
Heidegger begins with the following observation:

Originally the word "site" suggests a place in which everything comes

together, is concentrated. The site gathers unto itself, supremely and
in the extreme. Its gathering power penetrates and pervades every-
thing. The site, the gathering power, gathers and preserves all it has
gathered, not like an encapsulating shell but rather by penetrating
with its light all it has gathered, and only thus releasing it into its
own nature.27

The "site"is what gathers and holds and, indeed, it is the holding
power itself. If this is true, then the "site" as "the place in which every-
thing comes together" and pain as "the most intimate of gatherings"
are one and the same: Pain is the site of Being. That is why it is a
touchstone for Truth; and that is also why it is able to preserve the
essential form of man's humanity. Pain recalls us to the origin of our
being and to the source of Being itself. But that source is left unsaid
for, as Heidegger admits, "the mystery of pain remains veiled."28

NOTES

i. Aristotle, "Physics," Bk VIII, Chap. 1, 252a 13, in The Basic Works of

Aristotle, ed. by Richard McKeon (New York: Random House, 1941), p. 358.
The English translation reads: "But that which is produced or directed by nature
can never be anything disorderly: for nature is everywhere the cause of order."
Heidegger's translation of this passage is: "And in the Physics 01, 252a 13, Aristotle
says, taxis de pasa logos. All order has the character of bringing together." See
Martin Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics , tr. by Ralph Manheim (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1959), p. 125.
2. Martin Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics , tr. by Ralph Manheim
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959), p. 131.
3. Heidegger, The Question of Being , tr. by William Kluback and Jean T. Wilde
(New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1958), p. 69.
4. Ibid., pp. 69-71. Pain as the gathering power of Being is also implied in
several of Heidegger's published essays, especially in "Words" and "Language in
the Poem" in On the Way to Language, tr. by Peter D. Hertz (New York: Harper
& Row Publishers, 1971), pp. a 53ÍF.
5. Heidegger, The Question of Being, especially pp. aç, 49, and his discussion of
man in relation to nihilism, p. 07.
6. Ibid., p. 59.
7. Ibid., pp. 53-54. The main point of Heidegger's dialogue with Ernst Jünger
hinges on an attempt to show how the gestalt of the worker is assimilated to the
will-to-power in the technological world and how this produces a "new" kind
of man: homo technicus. See also Jacques Ellul's authoritative discussion of this
same point in The Technological Society, tr. by John Wilkinson (New York:
Vintage Books, 1964), especially "Human Techniques," Chap. 5, pp. 387-427.
8. Ibid., p. 69. "Wenn Sie Ihrer Schrift 'Das Sanduhrbuch' (1954), S, 106,

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sagen: Im Schmerz bewährt sich die Gestalt." I have taken the liberty of reading
"bewährt" as held rather than preserved because it seems more consistent with the
main thrust of the "Letter" which is to show how pain not only preserves but
holds man's being.
9. Ibid., p. 69.
10. Ibid., pp. 70-71. See also Das Ding in Vortrage und Aufsätze, (Pfullin-
gen: Neske, 1954) where this same intimate gathering is worked out in terms of
what Heidegger calls the "thinging thing." It would not be difficult to read the
idea of pain into that interpretation.
11. Heidegger, "Language in Poetry, Language, Thought, tr. by Albert Hof-
stadter (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1971), p. 204.
12. Ibid., p. 194L
13. Ibid., p. 204
14. Heidegger, "The Origin of the Work of Art," in Philosophies of Art and
Beauty; ed. by Albert Hofstadter and Richard Kuhns (New York: Modern Library,
1964), p. 686.
15. Robert Henri, The Art Spirit (New York: }. B. Lippincott Co., i960),
p. 271.
16. Heidegger, Origin of the Work of Art, p. 675.
17. Ibid., p. 680.
18. James Agee, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (New York: Ballen tme Books,
i960), pp. 244-45.
19. Ibid., p. 244.
20. Heidegger, The Question of Being, p. 69. See page 180 of this paper. For a
discussion of similar points, see Heidegger's essay "Language in the Poem" in On
the Way to Language ; especially pages 166 and 183.
21. Heidegger, "Building Dwelling Thinking" in Poetry, Language, Thought,
p. 160.
22. Ibid., p. 147.
2?. Ibid., p. 148 (emphasis added).
24. Ibid., p. 151.
25. Ibid., p. 151.
26. Ibid., p. 1 54.
27. Heidegger, "Language in the Poem" in On the Way to Language, tr. by
Peter D. Hertz (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1971 ), pp. 159-60. Basically
the same thought is expressed in the essay entitled "Language." See Poetry , Lan-
guage, Thought, pp. 189-210.
28. Heidegger, "What are Poets For?" in Poetry, Language, Thought, p. 96.

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