Poetry as the Essence of the Soul and my Shallow Mind

After slogging my way through Heidegger, a feat which I never thought I could do, I think I have finally reached what is referred to my upperclassmen friends as "the Honors Experience.". I am tired, drained, and in mental anguish. So this is enlightenment. I am still not sure if I agree with this, but what I do know is that this is tough. Heidegger is either a genius or a fool.

Last Semester Dr. Mitchell made a comment that poetry is the essence of the soul. At the time I did not agree with this. If the soul was harmoniously chaotic as the Romantics believed, then how could something so rigid and structured, albeit smooth and flowing, be what our souls really say? I wasn't sure what to think, but I was pretty sure that the statement was false, that poetry was not the essence of the soul.

Five months later, I still don't know what to think. In What are Poets For? Heidegger states that we, as physical beings, cannot completely interpret elegies and sonnets. This, Heidegger says, is because Poetry is from the soul, that we cannot understand it. Translating from the language of Being to spoken dialogue is going to lose implications from the original writing.

That being said. Heidegger told me that my thinking was very shallow, and that I'm too materialistic. How did he do this? He said I can't completely understand metaphysics.

He's right.

~Cody Martin

P.S. I commented on Hunter's My Brain Hurts