Earth that can neither be alleviated, nor even recognized, whether by the mere continued existence of various denominations, or by an organizational change in the governance of the church on the part of the state.
The gods of a people cannot be acquired so readily. The flight of the gods must first become an experience, and this experience must first thrust our Dasein into a fundamental attunement in which a historical people in its entirety endures the need of its godlessness and of its fragmentation. It is this fundamental attunement that the poet founds within the historical Dasein of our people. Whether this occurred in the year 1801 or has yet to be apprehended and taken hold of in the year 1934 is unimportant, for numbers of years are indifferent with respect to the time of such decision.
b) Renouncing Calling the Gods of Old as Sustaining a Conflict.
The Fundamental Attunement of Mourning and
Its Three Aspects
The “Not those . . .” is no refusal, but introduces the words “Those, indeed, I may call no longer” (line 3). The “indeed” [ja] intensifies and lends finality to the ‘not being permitted.’ The abrupt “Not” at the beginning by no means refers to the severity of a rejection, but to the gravity of a necessary renunciation. With what is the renunciation concerned? With the “Divine images in the land of old” (line 2)? No. It concerns the calling of these gods. Someone who has nothing, who can have nothing, and wants to have nothing is also unable to renounce; he cannot even experience the necessity of a renunciation. Yet if the poet speaks from such a necessity, then he indeed wants something. He wants to call—that is, he does not merely wish to do so. Rather, wanting to call means standing firm within this calling. What kind of a calling is this? It is not a calling summoning those who are close and familiar to him, nor is it a calling through which the caller draws attention to himself, but rather that calling in which we await that which is called as such, and through the calling first place that which is awaited at a distance from us, as something yet distant, so as thereby to simultaneously be deprived of its nearness. This calling is the sustaining of a conflict between the opening up of a readiness and the absence of fulfillment. The enduring of such a conflict is pain, a suffering, and the calling is therefore plaintive (lines 3ff.):
. . . wenn aber
Ihr heimatlichen Wasser! jezt mit euch
Des Herzens Liebe klagt,