In this connection I said: “Hölderlin therefore does not say the same thing concerning poetic dwelling as our thinking says. Nevertheless, we think the Same that Hölderlin poetizes.” Nothing further did I say. Now there follows another text:
“Here, however, it is necessary to heed something essential. A brief intermediate remark is needed. Poetry and thinking encounter one another only when and only so long as they remain decisively within the difference of their essence. The Same never coincides with the identical, nor with the empty uniformity of what is merely identical. The identical always shifts into the undifferentiated so that everything may agree within it. The Same, by contrast, is the belonging-together of what is different through the gathering effected by difference. The Same can only be said when difference is thought. In the carrying-out of difference there comes to light the gathering essence of the Same. The Same banishes every eagerness to level what is different into mere identity. The Same gathers what is different into an originary unity. The identical, on the other hand, disperses into the insipid unity of the merely uniform One.”
And I add: Hölderlin knew, and if you think of his prose pieces in which he reflects upon the essence of poetry — pieces moving within a far deeper dimension than Hegel’s aesthetics — Hölderlin knew in his own way of these relations. In an epigram bearing the title “Root of All Evil,” he says:
To be at one,
[that is, in my language: to dwell in the Same]
is divine and good; whence then comes the mania
among men that only one thing and one alone should be?
that is: the merely identical sameness of everything manifold.