{"id":13501,"date":"2024-11-15T15:51:27","date_gmt":"2024-11-15T20:51:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/?p=13501"},"modified":"2024-11-15T15:51:27","modified_gmt":"2024-11-15T20:51:27","slug":"ian-alexander-moore-dialogue-on-the-threshold-heidegger-and-trakl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/2024\/11\/15\/ian-alexander-moore-dialogue-on-the-threshold-heidegger-and-trakl","title":{"rendered":"Ian Alexander Moore, Dialogue on the Threshold: Heidegger and Trakl."},"content":{"rendered":"

Ian Alexander Moore, Dialogue on the Threshold: Heidegger and Trakl<\/span>. <\/span><\/i>Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2022; xxi + 398 pp. ISBN: 9781438490663.<\/span><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Harris B. Bechtol, Texas A&M University – San Antonio\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

How does a threshold show itself? A threshold is the connection or connecting of two different spaces: the inside from the outside, the family from the stranger, the host from the stranger, the host from the enemy, etc. As both an entry and exit between spaces, a threshold\u2019s liminality marks a concomitant gathering and separation of two other spaces. A threshold, then, participates in the polysemy of the French <\/span>partage<\/span><\/i>\u2014separating and sharing. Ian Alexander Moore\u2019s <\/span>Dialogue on the Threshold: Heidegger and Trakl <\/span><\/i>is a meditation upon numerous conceptual thresholds opened by Martin Heidegger\u2019s two lectures on the poetry of Georg Trakl\u2014 \u201cLanguage\u201d (1950) and \u201cLanguage in the Poem\u201d (1952). Moore places us at the threshold between Heidegger and Trakl inorder to place us before additional thresholds between poetry and philosophy, language and philosophy, the ontic and the ontological, history and philosophy, handwritten marginalia and published works, Christianity and philosophy, gathering and dissemination, the foreigner and the native, the female\/feminine and the male\/masculine, pain and gentleness, colour and being, the animal and the human, and Derrida and Heidegger. Moore holds a discussion<\/span> or a dialogue<\/span> about these thresholds, which, following his reading of Heidegger, means to offer an <\/span>Er\u00f6rterung <\/span><\/i>of the various sites (<\/span>Orten<\/span><\/i>) of the threshold. Moore is placing or emplacing, two ways of understanding the verbal <\/span>Er\u00f6rterung <\/span><\/i>(see 27), each <\/span>Ort <\/span><\/i>of the threshold before us while also situating (<\/span>Er\u00f6rterung <\/span><\/i>again) us at these thresholds in order to display how each topic simultaneously moves back and forth with one another in deconstructive fashion. In this, Moore\u2019s book is a surprising display of Derridean <\/span>diff\u00e9rance <\/span><\/i>that blazes new trails for Heidegger scholarship. Accordingly, while Moore elucidates much about Heidegger, particularly Heidegger\u2019s later approach to being and language, and our reading of Heidegger, each glimpse into the threshold becomes a critique of Heidegger. Moore\u2019s book is masterful from its scholarship to its argument even if it left me wanting more.<\/span><\/p>\n

His book consists of an introduction, seven main chapters, a postscript, and four appendices. First a note on the appendices. The first three appendices are gifts to Heidegger scholarship grounded in Moore\u2019s extensive archival work. In Appendix 1, Moore offers not only the history of Heidegger\u2019s copy of and hand written marginalia in Trakl\u2019s collected works, which is \u201cin a locked, secluded library of the Me\u00dfkirch Castle, with no label to distinguish it\u201d and which few people have even looked at (215), as well as a transcription and translation of this marginalia. These marginalia, drawn upon extensively in the seven chapters, provide \u201cvaluable insight\u201d into Heidegger\u2019s \u201creading of the spirit of Trakl\u2019s poetic work and into the place in which Heidegger situates it\u201d in his own thinking (215). In Appendix 2, Moore provides a chronological organization of \u201cmost of Heidegger\u2019s occasional references to Trakl\u201d outside of his two lectures on Trakl (239). This includes material from Heidegger\u2019s correspondence with Trakl\u2019s close friend Ludwig von Ficker, \u201cinstances when people mentioned Trakl to Heidegger or provide[d] a report that sheds light on Heidegger\u2019s engagement with Trakl\u2019s poetry,\u201d as well as paraphrases from archival material that scholars are not yet permitted to cite (239). In Heidegger\u2019s second Trakl lecture, \u201cLanguage in the Poem,\u201d Heidegger references Trakl\u2019s poetry without always citing each poem, which leaves the reader in a difficult place to determine from which poem Heidegger is drawing. So, in Appendix 3, Moore specifies \u201call of the [fifty-five] poems that Heidegger cites or references on each page of his lecture\u201d (271). Lastly, in Appendix 4 Moore offers not only the German of nineteen poems by Trakl but also Moore\u2019s own translations of them, a gift equally to both Heidegger and Trakl scholarship.<\/span><\/p>\n

After an introduction in which Moore recalls the inspiration for his book, he discusses in chapter one the historical context of Heidegger\u2019s two Trakl lectures. These lectures took place at the invitation from Gerhard Strooman who was the physician and head of the \u201cposh resort\u201d and spa B\u00fchlerh\u00f6he in the northwest area of the Black Forest (12). Heidegger delivered the lectures at B\u00fchlerh\u00f6he to an eclectic group of intellectuals interested in the study of the arts as a way of coping with the aftermath of WWII. This historical context allows Moore to begin showing how Trakl plays a key role, equal to that of Friedrich H\u00f6lderlin, in Heidegger\u2019s development of many key ideas in his later thought. Chapter two continues this strategy with specific attention to the role that Trakl\u2019s poem \u201cA Winter Evening\u201d plays in Heidegger\u2019s first Trakl lecture, \u201cLanguage,\u201d where Heidegger develops his understanding of listening to the unspoken (<\/span>das Unaussprechliche<\/span><\/i>) in language. Moore explains how the later Heidegger\u2019s understanding of the shining of phenomena from out of themselves as things and events in relation to being through the fourfold (<\/span>das Geviert<\/span><\/i>) finds an origin in the Trakl lectures. This threshold between Heidegger and Trakl opens the first site of Moore\u2019s critique of Heidegger\u2019s idiosyncratic, de-Christianized, and ontological reading of Trakl. Resting at the threshold of Trakl\u2019s Christianity and Heidegger\u2019s thinking of being, Moore interprets Trakl\u2019s \u201cA Winter\u2019s Evening\u201d with the goal \u201cto take Trakl at his word\u201d (71) by highlighting the Christian undertones and themes throughout each stanza of the poem. Moore\u2019s critique of Heidegger highlights, in a manner that would please S\u00f8ren Kierkegaard, the existential lathe in Trakl\u2019s poem regarding the reader choosing or not choosing to participate in the movements of faith indicated in the poem. Moore\u2019s argument shows how the Bible itself, and not just Heidegger\u2019s favored Greek and Old High German etymologies, can be an important source for understanding \u201ca poem\u2019s sense\u201d (79).<\/span><\/p>\n

Chapter three continues this strategy in turning to what Heidegger considers to be the unifying tone (<\/span>Grundton<\/span><\/i>) or site \u201cat which Trakl\u2019s entire body of poetic works is gathered together\u201d (81)\u2014<\/span>Abgeschiedenheit<\/span><\/i>. Moore shows that Heidegger\u2019s interpretation of <\/span>Abgeschiedenheit <\/span><\/i>in Trakl means a \u201cdetachment <\/span>from <\/span><\/i>and detachment <\/span>toward<\/span><\/i>\u201d (98), that is, a gathering toward the singular meaning of the <\/span>Abendland <\/span><\/i>or \u201cland of evening\u201d in Trakl (100). This land in Heidegger\u2019s interpretation has strong nationalistic tones of a Germany led by the Swabians who speak a singular language of Old High German (see 100-101). In response, Moore deconstructs Heidegger\u2019s understanding of <\/span>Abgeschiedenheit <\/span><\/i>in order \u201cto heed Trakl\u2019s song\u201d (82) regarding the relation of gathering with dispersion in Trakl\u2019s poetry that Heidegger ignores. Drawing upon hermeneutic strategies from Derrida\u2019s <\/span>Geschlecht III<\/span><\/i>, Moore challenges<\/span> the emphasis in Heidegger\u2019s philosophy on the force of gathering in its binary distinction from dispersion (82). Rather than drawing on Heidegger\u2019s speculative etymologies of Old High German, Moore interprets <\/span>Abgeschiedenheit <\/span><\/i>in Trakl according to its \u201cpredominately Christian heritage\u201d from Meister Eckhart who coined this term along with its synonym <\/span>Gelassenheit <\/span><\/i>(releasement). Moore shows that while Trakl and Heidegger know this lineage, Heidegger \u201csuppress[es]\u201d (106) it in his reading of Trakl. Understood through its historical heritage, <\/span>Abgeschiedenheit <\/span><\/i>means not gathering but \u201creleasement\u201d (107). So while Heidegger aims to use Trakl as a way to return to earth as earth through the gathering of things in their relation to being via the fourfold, Moore turns to sources known by Trakl to read him as emphasizing a releasement from earth as earth in order to let (<\/span>lassen<\/span><\/i>) earth be \u201csuffused with divine spirit\u201d (87). Placed at this threshold of gathering and dispersion, Heidegger\u2019s reading centered on gathering without any relation to a related dissemination comes to function not as a way of thinking being but as a metaphysical transcendental signified that prevents a thinking of being (107).<\/span><\/p>\n

In chapter four, Moore looks closely at one of Heidegger\u2019s largely unknown, unpublished, and untranslated texts, <\/span>\u00dcber den Schmerz <\/span><\/i>(<\/span>On Pain<\/span><\/i>). Moore explains that the gathering of being for Heidegger in this text is named \u201cthe gathering of pain\u201d (112). Drawing on the Greek term <\/span>algos <\/span><\/i>for pain, Moore calls Heidegger\u2019s gathering of being via pain an \u201calgology\u201d to show how this idea \u201cserves as the basis for much of the Trakl material\u201d (112). Moore argues that Heidegger\u2019s view of pain is an approach to pain not in the ontic, particular sense of physical, emotional, or psychological pain but in its ontological sense. Heidegger understands pain not from the perspective of beings (<\/span>Seiendes<\/span><\/i>) but from the perspective of \u201cpain in itself\u201d (117) in relation to being (<\/span>Sein<\/span><\/i>) insofar as pain becomes the \u201cself-showing\u201d of being in its own \u201ceventuating\u201d (128). Pain both gathers being while also happening as being\u2019s gathering of itself in itself (132). So Heidegger discusses the pain in Trakl\u2019s poetry as a <\/span>Ri\u00df <\/span><\/i>or \u201ccleaving\u201d that becomes \u201cthe threshold\u201d between being and beings insofar as \u201cpain holds things and world apart even as it holds them together\u201d (125). Moore concludes that Heidegger\u2019s ontology as algology anesthetizes the reader from the pain \u201cthat Trakl suffered [in his personal life] and sang [in his poetry]\u201d (112). Such anesthetizing occurs through Heidegger ignoring another etymological history, this time of <\/span>Schmerz<\/span><\/i>. This etymology highlights the \u201csingular and scattering<\/span> effects\u201d of <\/span>Schmerz <\/span><\/i>(133). By ignoring this etymology, Heidegger avoids both \u201cthe profound significance of irreparable, ontic pain\u201d (134) and the pain of Trakl \u201cin his final days\u201d (137) as poetically remembered in his last poem \u201cGrodek.\u201d His experience of suffering, pain, death, and dying while at a military hospital in Krakow after the Battle of Gr\u00f3dek in 1914 led Trakl to pen \u201cGrodek\u201d and, ultimately, to his cocaine overdose.<\/span><\/p>\n

Chapter five turns to Heidegger\u2019s use of colour for thinking the movements of being. Moore shows how Heidegger uses his reading of the colour gold in the poetry of Pindar, specifically Pindar\u2019s 5th Isthmian ode, to understand Trakl\u2019s use of the colour gold and blue. Heidegger interprets these colours as ways \u201cto characterize being and the related concept of the holy\u201d (144) insofar as they think the dual movements of being understood as <\/span>aletheia<\/span><\/i>. Accordingly, the colour gold indicates the revealing<\/span> movement of being from itself while blue indicates being\u2019s concealing<\/span> movement. As Moore says, \u201c[G]old and blue <\/span>are <\/span><\/i>being insofar as being shines in truth and shelters in withdrawal\u201d (163). Moore wonders, though, if Heidegger\u2019s penchant for the gentleness of gathering, discussed in chapters three and four, causes him to miss another interpretation of these colours in Trakl that would lead not to a \u201cpoetics of the holy\u201d but \u201ca poetics of sacrilege\u201d (163). Accordingly, Moore traces the discussion of madness (<\/span>Wahnsinn<\/span><\/i>) from H\u00f6lderlin through Trakl to Paul Celan in order to suggest that Trakl\u2019s songs of pain can be read more in line with Derridean dissemination, insofar as Trakl\u2019s poetry points more to \u201can unholy madness that leads not to redemption but to ruin\u201d (167).<\/span><\/p>\n

Chapter six focuses on the polysemic term <\/span>Geschlecht <\/span><\/i>in Heidegger\u2019s Trakl lectures, a topic discussed extensively in secondary literature thanks to Derrida\u2019s four <\/span>Geschlecht <\/span><\/i>essays. Moore adds to this scholarship by discussing two issues that arise from this term\u2019s polysemy\u2014 sexual difference and the human-animal distinction\u2014showing how Heidegger\u2019s engagements with Trakl\u2019s poetry cause Heidegger to complicate his received understanding of these issues. Regarding sexual difference, Heidegger has famously claimed that Dasein is without any sexual difference and that such sexual difference is unimportant for Dasein\u2019s understanding of its own being or of being itself. Moore traces Heidegger\u2019s discussions of this sexual difference in the Trakl lectures to raise many questions and provocations regarding the secondary or possibly even the primary role of the feminine and gender identity in the later Heidegger\u2019s question of being. Likewise, while Heidegger has famously claimed that animals, in contrast to humans, are not only poor in world but also cannot think being, speak, or experience their own death as death through the individuating mood of anxiety, his interpretation of Trakl\u2019s use of the German <\/span>Wild <\/span><\/i>causes him to challenge these claims. For when Trakl describes the wild animal as \u201ca figure for the promise of a life free from malice and malediction\u201d (190), a representation of Christlike suffering and \u201cgentle forbearance\u201d (190), and the hope for an enduring \u201cpossibility\u2026of penitence and redemption\u201d (193), Heidegger develops, Moore contends, a \u201chumanimality\u201d and \u201canimality to come\u201d (199) in which the animal <\/span>as animal <\/span><\/i>would think, ponder, develop a face that beholds holy being, and represent mortals in their mortality. Moore concludes that had Heidegger continued to follow \u201cthe animal more closely in Trakl\u2019s poetry,\u201d he may not have subordinated the animal to the human or even the feminine to the masculine (200). Moreover, Heidegger\u2019s momentary recognition of \u201cthe sexed animals that we are,\u201d even if he \u201cultimately sets these limits back in place,\u201d is \u201cnothing short of astounding\u201d (200).<\/span><\/p>\n

In his final chapter, Moore returns to the threshold of gathering and separation to argue that Heidegger\u2019s logic in the Trakl lectures opens \u201cthe idea that spirit is inherently and insuperably riven\u201d (201) rather than whole in a gentle movement of gathering. The site of this gathering and\/or separation of spirit occurs, once again, in Heidegger\u2019s understanding of the <\/span>Abendland <\/span><\/i>in Trakl. This <\/span>Abendland <\/span><\/i>for Heidegger is the land of Germany in which a people (a <\/span>Geschlecht<\/span><\/i>) to come listen to language and think being and things according to the fourfold rather than the machinations of modern technology. Yet Heidegger opens another reading that challenges this understanding of the land and people to come insofar as the <\/span>Abendland <\/span><\/i>in Trakl includes the possibility that the spirit (<\/span>Geist<\/span><\/i>) of this land and its people is <\/span>gheis <\/span><\/i>or outside of itself and self-destructive. Yet Heidegger maintains without justification that this latter possibility of riven spirit gets resolved in the more originary, gentle gathering. Hence, following the Derridean logic of the supplement, Moore argues that at spirit\u2019s origin gathering <\/span>and <\/span><\/i>dissemination are always already affecting one another. So when Heidegger chooses without justification to favor gathering, he succumbs to the metaphysics that he diagnoses in Platonism and Christianity (209), thereby, again, developing his own metaphysical, transcendental signified.<\/span><\/p>\n

In conclusion, Moore\u2019s text is a <\/span>tour de force <\/span><\/i>of the later Heidegger\u2019s thinking of being. Moore provides access to much of Heidegger\u2019s thinking, sources, and marginalia on Trakl that have heretofore either been unavailable or unavailable in English. Beyond this, he develops trenchant critiques of Heidegger via an engagement with Derridean deconstruction. And yet as I finished Moore\u2019s book, I wanted more concerning the question of Heidegger and religion, particularly Christianity, that returns time and again throughout Moore\u2019s book. This theme arises due to Trakl\u2019s self-avowed faith in Christianity, covered in chapters one and two, and Heidegger\u2019s overt move away from this Christianity in his reading of Trakl. Each time that Moore addresses and challenges Heidegger\u2019s idiosyncratic move away from Trakl\u2019s Christianity, Moore\u2019s critique seems to be building toward an interesting rapprochement with Christianity. However, Moore stops short of a full argument here, resorting instead to some thought provoking questions that ask for further fleshing-out. The apex of this development occurs at the end of chapter three regarding <\/span>Abgeschiedenheit<\/span><\/i>. After showing that Heidegger knowingly ignores the etymological link of detachment and releasement, Moore recounts Heidegger\u2019s impromptu speech in 1960 at the birthday celebration of Trakl\u2019s friend, Ficker. Inspired by Ficker\u2019s own speech on love, Trakl, and the \u201cinsufficiency of the scientific worldview\u201d (108), Heidegger uses a quote <\/span>in French <\/span><\/i>from Saint-Exup\u00e9ry\u2019s <\/span>The Little Prince <\/span><\/i>and a quote <\/span>in Latin <\/span><\/i>from St. Augustine\u2019s <\/span>City of God <\/span><\/i>to conclude that avoiding the pitfalls of calculative thinking, which characterize the modern age of technology, requires learning <\/span>to love <\/span><\/i>understood as a \u201cletting be [<\/span>Sein-lassen<\/span><\/i>]\u201d (108).<\/span> French, Latin, the Christian Bishop of Hippo, love, and the <\/span>lassen <\/span><\/i>present in <\/span>Ge-lassen-heit<\/span><\/i>\u2014all of this leads Moore to say that these appeals from Heidegger \u201csuggest<\/span> a different way of reading Trakl\u201d (109). Moore asks, \u201cWhat would such a reading look like?\u201d (109). And he concludes with a series of provocative questions that gesture<\/span> toward this suggested<\/span> reading, but he does not declaratively provide this different reading. He certainly provides many of this reading\u2019s threads through his book, but I would have enjoyed being placed at the threshold of this site, this <\/span>Ort<\/span><\/i>, for a longer discussion, <\/span>Er\u00f6rterung<\/span><\/i>, about what Moore understands to be on either side of this opening and what we are to do now that we have been situated at their threshold. Perhaps, though, this will be Moore\u2019s next book. If so, I am looking forward to it.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ian Alexander Moore, Dialogue on the Threshold: Heidegger and Trakl. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2022; xxi + 398 pp. ISBN: 9781438490663. Reviewed by Harris B. Bechtol, Texas A&M University – San Antonio\u00a0 How does a threshold show itself? A threshold is the connection or connecting of two different spaces: the inside from the outside, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[47,10,38,316],"class_list":["post-13501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-deconstruction","tag-heidegger","tag-phenomenology","tag-trakl","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-07 17:04:42","action":"Draft","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category"},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13501"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13501\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13502,"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13501\/revisions\/13502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c-scp.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}