The Problem, The Poet, and The Pursuit

The problem, as Heidegger puts it, is the "default of god." This default is basically an absence of the supernatural, or "god's failure to arrive." But the deeper problem is that of the the outlook of the world or culture we find ourselves in. That is, the issue that mortals can no longer "discern the default of God as default." The culture is so accustomed to darkness, evil, absence of the supernatural, that they cannot feel the gaping lack of the gods. 

So this gaping problem in turn creates an "abyss" over time and history. This abyss is a lack of traction, sure-footing, a lack of truth in society which appeals to something beyond. The only way to find this solid ground again is by reaching into the abyss. (Heidegger seems to be implying that God is waiting for mankind to take this action of reaching into the unknown so that He can act? I'm unsure if I am correct on this.)

Either way, the poets are the ones who must reach into the abyss. But it is not just reaching that solves this problem. The poets are meant to help their fellow mortals in an attempt to reach into the abyss in hopes of pointing out traces of the supernatural, these traces being the "holy." Each poet reaches as far into the holy as they are able. 

What stood out to me was a small remark made by the writer about scholars and philosophers who consider this dialogue with poetry, this search for the supernatural, to be an "unscientific violation of what such scholarship takes to be the facts. Philosophers consider the dialogue to be a helpless aberration into fantasy. But destiny pursues its course untroubled by all that."

I found this to be so undeniably true. There is an essence of humanity and of the supernatural that philosophy and science simply cannot speak to. It is more than mere emotion or fantasy, it is something beyond human words that only poetry can convey. As Heidegger beautifully explains, poetry helps us mortals to "come to learn that what is unspoken." I truly feel that the pursuit of poetry is to convey the unspeakable truth which comes from the unknowable holy within the footprints of the supernatural upon this dark earth. 

P.S. Commented on Wendy's.