“As it reveals itself in beings, Being withdraws.”
from: The Anaximander Fragment, Martin Heidegger
I call your attention to two words in the above quotation; beings and Be-ing. Beings are all the things that be which is everything. That is why the noun is plural. But it is a gerund, a noun made from a verb by adding ‘ing’. So beings participate in Be-ing like runners participate in running. You cannot see running but you can see runners in the act of running, and swimmers in the act of swimming. But you cannot see running without a runner or swimming without a swimmer. We see beings in the act of Being. Be is what beings do.
Being with a lower case ‘b’ refers to an entity that exists. The verb ‘exist’ from Latin literally means ‘ex’ = ‘out’ and ‘stasis’ = ‘stand’. So ‘exist’ means to ‘stand out’. But out of what. Out of Be-ing, of course: beings stand out of Be-ing.
Now that we are perfectly clear about that, let us continue.
The German philosopher Martin Heidegger invites us to think old with a mind alive far back in history, the mind of Greek philosophers before Plato. He wants us to return to the mind still startled by the immense fact of our human existence and the existence of everything else. He wants us to return to the mind that still asked the question of Be-ing/being. We have since gotten used to entities, taking them for granted and losing the sense of mysterium tremendum et fascinans, the mystery before which we tremble in fascination at the wonder that all things be.
How do we ask the question of being?
President Clinton parsed it this way: “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.”
What does it mean to say that something ‘is’?
In the first chapter of the Book of Genesis the divine command speaks “Let there be . . . . .”
What does it mean to be?
Why is there anything instead of nothing?
What does the stubborn ‘isness’ of things tell us about the world?
These questions cannot be answered. They can only be lived. But they can only be lived by those who are aware of the magnitude of mystery that surrounds us. They can only be lived by those who dwell in proximity to the mysterium tremendum et fascinans.
All things that be stand out against the void of nothingness. Everything is proximate to nonbeing. The Buddhists teach of impermanence, that all existing things are poised quaking on the edge of being and nonbeing. This is the edge where ‘is-ness’ takes place.
So what does this have to do with poetry you ask.
Art in all forms reveals ‘is-ness.’ Poetic language especially calls attention to ‘is-ness’. William Carlos Williams’ famous poem The Red Wheelbarrow is an example. It appears to be a very simple straightforward statement.
So much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
This poem is so simple it is almost no poem at all. Four stanzas, fifteen words, only one with more than two syllables and that a meager three. Yet there is density here. Matter. Water, wood, feathers, and fowl flesh. Substance. So much depends upon it. The exaltation of ‘isness’, the sheer significance of things, anything, everything standing out of engulfing nothingness, even wheelbarrows, rain water, and chickens.
Commenting on a fragment of a text by the pre-Platonic Greek philosopher Anaximander, Heidegger writes:
As it reveals itself in beings, Being withdraws.
Be-ing, remains a mystery and will not be known directly. Only beings are known, entities, phenomena.
Think of a thing in your life; a coffee mug, a postage stamp, lint in the clothes dryer, your cousin Larry. All of this is. All of it has Be-ing. Someday the mug will break, the stamp tear, the lint tossed out, and you will get a phone call about Larry. Each and all beings will disappear into nothing as they have appeared out of nothing. Each are forms of Be-ing. Be-ing remains as potential to be, the potential to exist.
This shifting sand is the bedrock of our life.