we hear bells ringing because the sound penetrates our ear. Or is it a hearing in the sense of the kind of hearing that lets what is audible pass by more or less indifferently, and that itself ceases to hear once what is audible has passed? Or is this hearing of the poet’s the kind of listening out for something, a listening out that belongs to curiosity, a hearing that would seek to apprehend by stealth what has hitherto gone unheard and remains unheard of, whatever is surprising and unfamiliar to others? Or is this hearing much more the kind of hearing that immerses itself in what is heard, and, fulfilled and captivated by it, lets itself be lulled into losing itself therein? Neither these nor other customary ways of hearing are meant here. Yet which hearing, then?
“ . . . I heard / Him pining for deliverance / The [imprisoned] youngster,” (lines 22ff.) This indeed tells us what is heard, yet not how, not the kind of hearing. Yet why are we becoming fixated on determining more precisely the kind of hearing? Is it not quite sufficient that we learn what the poet hears? Certainly, we could let things go at ascertaining what is heard if we were dealing here with points communicated by some arbitrary ear-witness who happened to hear some arbitrary incident. Here, however, we are dealing with a hearing that belongs to the poet. In this poetic work, moreover, in which the poet tells of his hearing, he is not even the only one hearing: “ . . . he was heard . . . / With pity by his parents” (lines 24ff.) The parents of the youngster hear his accursing and raging, and they hear him “with pity.” The hearing of these hearers is thereby even directly determined. Pity is, at any rate, a kind of partaking—indeed, a superior partaking. A poetic hearing, by contrast, would merely be a listening to his pining without partaking in it, a listening that would not be equal to it. Those hearing—the poet on the one hand and the parents on the other—in any case hear ‘the same.’ No other hearers are named. There are “the mortals,” indeed (line 28), but they are said precisely to have “fled.” Yet is this ‘fleeing’ not also a hearing? Indeed, it is even a distinctive kind of hearing: namely, a not wanting to hear and not being able to hear. There are thus three kinds of hearer: the gods, the mortals, and the poet. The kind of hearing belonging to the gods and that belonging to mortals are determinate; that belonging to the poet is indeterminate or, more precisely, still concealed from us.
β) The Poet’s Hearing That Stands Firm (Suffering) as Apprehending the Originary Origin in Its Springing Forth
Given all that has been said thus far concerning the poet and concerning gods and humans, may we suspect that the poet, with his own kind of hearing, stands between the gods and humans, at the locale of the demigods? If this is the case, however, then we cannot indeed