William McNeill is Professor of Philosophy at DePaul University. He is translator (with Jeffrey Powell) of Martin Heidegger's The History of Beyng and (with Julia Ireland) of Hölderlin's Hymn "The Ister" and Hölderlin's Hymn "Germania" and "The Rhine." Julia Ireland is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Whitman College. She is translator (with William McNeill) of Martin Heidegger's Hölderlin's Hymn "The Ister" and Hölderlin's Hymn "Germania" and "The Rhine."

• Translators' ForewordPRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONSPreparation for Hearing the Word of the Poetizing1. What the Lecture Course Does Not Intend. On Literary-Historiographical Research and the Arbitrary Interpretation of Poetry2. The Attempt to Think the Word Poetized by Hölderlin3. That Which is Poetized in the Word of Essential Poetizing 'Poetizes Over and Beyond' the Poet and Those Who Hear this Word4. The Essential Singularity of Hölderlin's Poetizing is Not Subject to Any Demand for Proof5. The Poetizing Word and Language as Means of Communication. Planetary Alienation in Relation to the WordReview 1) 'Thinking' That Which is Poetized2) Hearing That Which is Poetized is Hearkening: Waiting for the Coming of the Inceptual Word6. The Univocity of 'Logic' and the Wealth of the Genuine Word Out of the Inexhaustibility of the Commencement7. Remark on the Editions of Hölderlin's WorksMAIN PART"Remembrance"8. A Word of Warning about Merely Admiring the Beauty of the Poem9. Establishing a Preliminary Understanding About 'Content' and What is Poetized in the PoemReview1) The Wealth of the Poetizing Word2) Poetizing and Thinking as Historical Action3) The Transformation of the Biographical in That Which is Poetized10. That Which is Poetized in the Poetizing and the 'Content' of the Poem are Not the SamePart OneEntry into the Realm of the Poem as Word11. The Beginning and Conclusion of the Poem12. Concerning Language: The Poetizing Word and Sounding Words13. Language in Our Historical Moment14. Preliminary Consideration of the Unity of the PoemReview15. Poetizing and the Explanation of Nature in Modernity. On the Theory of 'Image' and 'Metaphor'16. "The Northeasterly blows." The Favor of Belonging to the Vocation of Poet17. The "Greeting." On the Dangerous Addiction to Psychological-Biographical Explanation18. Norbert von Hellingrath on "Hölderlin's Madness." Commemoration of von Hellingrath19. Hölderlin's De-rangement as Entering the Range of a Different Essential Locale20. The "Going" of the Northeasterly. The "Greeting" of the Poet's Going with ItReview21. Transition From the First to the Second Strophe. The Greeting Thinking-in-the-Direction-Of as the Letting Be of the Greeted. The Greeted Thinks Its Way To the Poet22. In the Unity of That Which is Greeted, Gathered by the Poet's Greeting, the Day's Work and Stead of Human Dwelling ArisePart Two"Holidays" and "Festival" in Hölderlin's Poetizing23. Preliminary Hints From Citing 'Passages' In the PoetryReview24. Celebrating as Pausing From Work and Passing Over into Reflection upon the Essential25. The Radiance of the Essential Within Celebration. Play and Dance26. The Essential Relation Between Festival and History. The "Bridal Festival" of Humans and Gods27. The Festive as Origin of Attunements. Joy and Mournfulness: The Epigram "Sophocles"Review1) Celebration as Becoming Free in Belonging to the Inhabitual2) Improbable Celebration in the Echo of What is 'Habitual' in a Day: The First Strophe of the Elegy "Bread and Wine"3) "The Festival" and the Appropriative Event. The Festival of the Day of History in Greece. Hölderlin and Nietzsche28. The Greeting of the Women. Their Role in Preparing the Festival. The Women of Southern France and the Festival that Once Was in GreeceReview29. Transition as Reconciliation and Equalization30. "Night": Time-Space of a Thinking Remembering the Gods that Once Were Transition in Receiving the Downgoing and Preparing the Dawn31. Gods and Humans as Fitting Themselves to What is Fitting. That Which is Fitting and Fate32. How Fate is Viewed Within the Calculative Thinking of Metaphysics, and "Fate" in Hölderlin's Sense33. The Festival as Equalizing the While for Fate34. The Transition from What Once Was in Greece into That Which is to Come: The Veiled Truth of the Hymnal PoetizingReview1) The Provenance of the Poetized Transition. The "Demigods" Called into the Transition. Hegel and Hölderlin2) What is Fitting for Humans and Gods is the Holy. The Fitting of the Jointure as Letting-be3) Fitting as Releasing into the Search for Essence and the Loss of Essence. Errancy and Evil4) The Temporal Character of the "While," and the Metaphysical Concept of Time35. "Lulling Breezes": Sheltering in the Origin, the Ownmost of Humans and Gods. "Golden Dreams"36. Interim Remark Concerning Scientific Explanations of Dreams37. The Dream. That Which Is Dreamlike as the Unreal or Nonexistent38. Greek Thought on the Dream. PindarReview39. The Dream as Shadow-like Appearing of Vanishing into the Lightless. Presencing and Absencing40. The Possible as Presencing of Vanishing from, and as Appearing of Arrival Within 'Reality' (Beyng)41. Hölderlin's Treatise "Becoming in Dissolution." Dream as Bringing the Possible and Preserving the Transfigured ActualPart ThreeThe Search for the Free Use of One's Own42. Hesitant Awe Before the Transition onto "Slow Footbridges"Review43. Greece and Germania: The Banks and Sides of the Transition Toward Learning What is Historically One's Own44. One's Own as the Holy of the Fatherland, Inaccessible to Theologies and Historiographical Sciences. The "Highest"45. The Transition From the Second to the Third Strophe. Grounding in the Homely46. Interim Remark Concerning Three Misinterpretations of Hölderlin's Turn to the "Fatherland"47. Learning the Appropriation of One's Own48. What is Their Own for the Germans: "The Clarity of Presentation"49. The Drunkenness of Higher Reflection and Soberness of Presentation in the Word50. "Dark Light": That Which is to be Presented in the Free Use of One's Own51. The Danger of Slumber Among Shadows. "Soulful" Reflection Upon the Holy in the FestivalPart FourThe Dialogue with the Friends as Fitting Preparation for the Festival52. "Dialogue" in the Commonplace Understanding and in Hölderlin's Poetic Word Usage53. The "Opinion" of the "Heart" in the Dialogue: The Holy54. Listening in the Dialogue to Love and Deed, which, as Celebration, Ground the Festival in Advance55. The Endangering of the Poetic Dialogue of Love and Deeds by Chatter56. The Poetic Dialogue as "Remembrance"57. The Question of Where the Friends Are, and the Essence of Future Friendship58. The Friends' Being Shy to Go to the Source59. "Source" and "River." The Wealth of the Origin60. The Initial Appropriation of "Wealth" on the Poets' Voyage Across the Ocean into the Foreign61. The "Year Long" Learning of the Foreign on the Ocean Voyage of a Long Time Without Festival62. The Singular Remembrance of the Locale of the Friends and of the Fitting that is to be Poetized63. The Word Regarding the River that Goes Backwards: The Shy Intimation of the Essence of Commencement and History64. The Passage to the Foreign, "Bold Forgetting" of One's Own, and the Return Home65. The Founding of the Coming Holy in the WordAPPENDIXThe Interpretive Structure for the Said PoemsEditor's EpilogueTranslators' NotesGerman—English GlossaryEnglish—German Glossary

"This faithful and readable translation by William McNeill and Julia Ireland serves as a critical orientation to interpreting Heidegger's later thought, which has become the focus of a great deal of scholarly interest. In Heidegger's own words, Hölderlin's poetry is 'absolutely essential' to understanding his later thought."—Christopher D. Merwin, Emory University