The three draft forms (II, 233-239) were brought together in a convincing manner “based on handwritten idiosyncrasies,” and are to be interpreted as poetry of the “Dawn of a newly realized age following the patriotic reversal” (II, 867 and following). This age, and the care by which we are to enter it, underscores Hölderlin’s poetry in the elegy “Homecoming.” (See my “Annotations to Hölderlin’s Poetry,” supplemented by the two lectures, “Hölderlin’s Earth and Heaven” and “The Poem” in: Collected Works, Volume 4, 5th edition.)
Hölderlin’s poetry persists in the care shown in the “Homecoming.” It is the care shown in establishing those places whereby man dwells poetically, and is shown in the patient waiting for salvation that is a part of this earthly sojourn. The draft “The Nearest Best” expresses this implicitly by referring to “having much to say” as “being unpoetic.”
Nonetheless, ever since Hölderlin poetized his hymns, it may have been all too clear: this poem says and waits in vain. The saying regarding man’s poetic dwelling remains unfulfilled, it remains just one great illusion.
Yet the question remains whether in light of this statement we will ever think through the poet’s message with sufficient patience. Man of the present age too dwells poetically in his own way, which is to say, assuming his way of being in name only, unpoetically.8 For the sake of his will to produce himself and [produce] reserves that can be cultivated, man seizes measure from an earth that his machinations leave disfigured. He lacks the ability to hear Hölderlin’s answer to the question: “Is there a measure upon earth? There is none.”
“Having much to say,” what “entices our land,” are in reality only the monotony of language from which everything which is said lies flat: the computer’s language of informatics. The only measure for computing man is the quantum.
Certainly Hölderlin had not foreseen or foretold the state of the world today.
8. “way of being”: the only use of Dasein in this essay. Literal translation: “Man of the present age too dwells poetically – namely, that is, as per (unter) the name of his Dasein, unpoetically.”