For the sacrificial meal and valley and rivers lie
Open wide around prophetic mountains,
Once again we find this “indeed” or “yes” [ja], as at the beginning: “Those, indeed, I may call no longer.” In each case the “indeed,” the “yes,” is an unconditional decidedness: at the beginning, in the will to renounce; now, in being ready; each the echo of the other, and both united in telling of the unconditional nature of the attunement, which is why we name this a fundamental attunement. As such, it attunes human being and Earth equiprimordially, indeed—contrary to our received opinion—the Earth even before, for the Earth is ready so “that . . . may look . . . / The man” (lines 37f.). The latter does not empathetically and subsequently import an initially and properly ‘subjective’ attunement into the landscape, but the reverse: The readied Earth is the condition for the man’s being able to look and wanting to look. In the word “may,” there resonates the double meaning of being able and willing.
§ 9. Historical Time and Fundamental Attunement
a) The Experience of the Earth of the Homeland in the Lucidity of a Questioning Knowing Concerning the Historical Mission of a People
The poet tells of the field’s growing verdant, of the valley, and of the flowing of the rivers that are open wide around prophetic mountains. This is a strange geography: a description of the Earth that we barely understand at first, assuming that we are concerned with a description at all here. Here the Earth is experienced in advance in the lucidity of a questioning knowing concerning the historical mission of a people. The Earth of the homeland here is not a mere space delimited by external borders, a realm of nature, or a locality constituting a possible arena for this or that event to be played out there. The Earth, as this Earth of the homeland, is nurtured for the gods. Through such nurturing it first becomes homeland, yet as such it can once again fall into decline and sink to the level of a mere place of residence, which accordingly goes hand in hand with the advent of godlessness. The coming to be of homeland does not happen through mere settlement, either, unless it is accompanied by a nurturing of the Earth for the gods, in which the Earth is held open for an encounter with the prevailing of the gods in the course of the changing seasons of the year and their festivals. This occurs in ‘prelude’ to a harsher time, so that the Earth then first comes fully and properly into play, i.e., history and historical