The Trace of the Fugitive Gods

I am not a spiritual person. I do not believe in a higher power or an afterlife. I do not believe that bad deeds always get punished or that good deeds always get rewarded. I do not believe in fate or his grand design.

I understand the world as a sequence of meaningless events, most without consequence. Consequences are accidental. They are not unintentional as this implies a possibility of intent. I believe in six and a half billion people acting and reacting to the world on a largely instinctual level.

Amid this mire of meaningless causes and pointless effects patterns can often be discerned, like seeing a man on the moon or faces in the TV static. I believe it is important to search for these patterns in life, notice them when they happen.

Take pride in coincidence. Celebrate birthdays and anniversaries, observe when dates and numbers coincide and read the subtle poetry life has to offer, but remember that the world is indifferently random. Any poetry you find is of your own making. You are the poet, you are the creator, you deserve the credit.

‘…poetically man dwells…’ asserts Martin Heidegger in his 1951 lecture of the same name. Poetry, I believe, lies at the heart of all human endeavour that attempts to bring order to the world. Poetry is found wherever standardized elements, wielded as totemic signs, are arranged in such a way as to communicate a distinct individuality, a Way-Of-Being far removed from our own yet made explicit through a syntactic structure of objects.

Heidegger describes the contemporary state of mind as being amid a destitute night, lost in the abyss. The gods no longer interfere with the lives of man and are largely blind to our pain and torment. The gods are fugitive. ‘To be a poet in a destitute time,’ Heidegger states, ‘means to attend, singing, to the trace of the fugitive gods.’ It is a poet’s charge to locate the divine amid the profane, to wrest beauty and order from the chaos.

Poetry is not limited to those who deem themselves poets. Anywhere man dwells on earth, beneath the sky and in conjunction with nature (in Heidegger’s classic fourfold) poetry is achieved.

Poetry transcends logic and instinct, yet derives from them both.

Andrew Molloy - 6th Year Architecture Student

All quotes taken from 'Poetry, Language, Thought' by Martin Heidegger (1971)
For more from Heidegger on Poetry and thinking see 'The Thinker As Poet,' a beautiful blend of poetry and philosophy.

[home]