Martin Heidegger (2022): On the Essence of Language and the Question of Art, translated by Adam Knowles, Cambridge/UK: Polity, XVII+170 pages. ISBN: 978-1-509-53600-9.

Two aspects of this recent translation of some crucial texts written by Heidegger from 1930 onwards and first published in German in 2010 by Thomas Regehly as vol. 74 of Heidegger’s complete works¹, merit attention: the content of the texts themselves, and the question of their translation into English. Neither issue is simple nor can be treated exhaustively here. Regarding the former, this should be related to the whole Heideggerian oeuvre, and especially to his reflections on language and its evolution – from the texts of the 1920s, mainly Sein und Zeit, through the texts contained in this volume, to the publication of Unterwegs zur Sprache (‘On the way to language’) in 1959. As to the latter, not only is it pertinent to make some comments on this particular translation, but also on translation in general, and translation of philosophical texts and the case of Heidegger in particular. In that the main aim of the current review is to announce and evaluate this translation, reflections on both aspects will be exemplary and by no means comprehensive, and will conclude, if I may anticipate myself, with a wholehearted recommendation of this English version of a series of very inspiring texts.

The volume, which in itself is aesthetically pleasing, opens with a short introduction by the translator, in which he comments on some of the principles that have guided his work. The texts are then presented exactly as in the German original version (with useful references to English translations instead of German originals in the footnotes), beginning with the collection of texts subsumed under the title On the Essence of Language, 163 short or not-so-short fragments on language probably written from 1930 onwards (the order is neither very systematic nor is the chronology very clear). Heidegger reflects on what language is, on language and being, language and how it relates to time and space, on the relationship between language and poetry, on language and magic, on wordplay… There is no clear evolution in the lines of thought here, the reflections being presented not as a clear system but rather as a work with an “open-ended nature” (Translator’s introduction, p. xiv), or, as Heidegger himself put it, as Ahnung (‘intimation’, in Knowles’ translation) of something (p. 36). What follows is a short text on two poems (a Freiburg evening conversation from 1955) by Eduard Mörike

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(Septembermorgen, ‘September Morning’ and Um Mitternacht, ‘At Midnight’) and the notes from a seminar held in Bremen in 1960 on Image and Word. The second part of the book is far shorter and offers some texts on the nature of art: Zur Frage nach der Kunst (‘On the Question of Art’), Kunst und Raum (‘Art and Space’), Das Kunstwerk und die “Kunstgeschichte” (‘The Work of Art and ‘Art History’), Besinnung auf Wesen und Haltung der kunstgeschichtlichen “Wissenschaft” (‘Reflection upon the Essence and Conduct of the Art-Historical “Science”’). At the end, the original editor’s afterword is presented in English, as well as a short terminological glossary offering translations of some of Heidegger’s terms in both directions.

The texts collected in the volume are representative of Heidegger’s so-called turn (‘Kehre’) from 1930 onwards, and independently of the question of whether a turn really existed, they involve two major subjects, language and art, and as such help to reconstruct Heidegger’s thinking as it appears in his better known and less fragmentary texts on these issues: Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes (‘The origin of the work of art’, 1935) and Unterwegs zur Sprache (‘On the way to language’, 1959). Two of his favourite interlocutors of that time were Nietzsche and Hölderlin. Language is everywhere, from its breaking into silence, the conversion of the “abyssal ground” of “beyng” into words and “beings” by acts of naming, the Hölderlinian Ur-Theil that refers “Sein” to the amorphous unstructured “uralte Verwirrung”. The reflections here range from the original act of naming to the essence of poetry and art and the foundations of aesthetics².

The translation of these texts into English is anything but simple, and indeed the translator identifies some of the main challenges in his introduction:

- Heidegger’s fragments are wortkarg, ‘sparse with words’, and “[T]he task of the translator is to render that sparseness without filling it up with too many expository accoutrements – which creates a delicate balancing act when the task of the translator is also to render comprehensible philosophical prose” (p. xiii). This means that the text goes beyond the minimal task of re-creating the sense of an original with the elements of another language: Heidegger’s prose is “marked” linguistically in the German version, being sometimes elliptic and sometimes fragmentary, and the danger of the traduttore-traditore lies in a “correction” of such deviations from the norm. Adam Knowles confesses that he sometimes did complete the text: “I have attempted to replicate the open-ended nature of the work, but my first priority was

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always to produce a readable text in English” (p. xiv). The result is probably less adventurous than the original version, yet the English translation does somehow echo the original tone, and maybe one of the tasks of a satisfying translation is that of echoing the particularities of the original version without trying to replicate all the stylistic extra-effects at all points. This is of course a choice of prioritization: the translator decides to rank the philosophical message highest and only then to add a note of stylistic personality.

- this also holds for Heidegger’s well-known tendency to use wordplay, word-formation and word similarities or etymologies, of orthographically marking the elements of compound words with hyphens in order to de-automatize their composition, of marking words by archaic written forms (such as seyn, ‘beying’), of introducing analogic yet "ungrammatical" or unattested inventions like istet ‘isses’. Knowles’ evident struggles with all these issues are successful, not without referring to a tradition that is already firmly consolidated: he explicitly mentions the “well-established terminology used to render Heidegger in English” (p. xv) and he profits from the existing conventions as far as possible.

- an interesting case is the problem of diverging structures in the two languages. There are many cases where an almost perfect equivalency can easily be found in the two closely related languages, but at other times these are challenging. Knowles discusses the two German plurals of Wort, ‘word’, Wörter and Worte. He renders Wörter as ‘vocabulary’ or ‘vocabulary words’ and Worte as ‘words’. The distinction is probably not wholly clear; Wörter in German and in Heidegger’s use refers to the formal aspects of words on the level of language, whereas Worte are words in a concrete utterance or text: words provided with sense.

- the translation must be seen as a complete work in its totality; if we consider its parts in isolation, we will see a continuum of solutions that range from close imitation to rather free distancing. As mentioned, Heidegger has a well-known tendency to play with all aspects of the form and content of words. The problem for any translation is thus twofold: sometimes it is not possible to reproduce directly the same effect in the target language, whereas sometimes, even if this is possible, the result seems even more marked than in the original. This is of course difficult to measure, and in some places the translator carries the English version to its extremes: stillness is clearly more marked in English than Stille in German; however, the translation of Stille by ‘stillness’ allows for the double effect of lack of motion and silence and for the maintenance of alliterations and repetitions: Wie die Stille stillt: angestillt von der Stille ins Schweigen gebracht is translated as ‘How stillness stills: it is stilled down by stillness and brought into silence by stillness’ (p. 54). In other places, the original effect cannot be reproduced, and the translator adds a German explanation (e.g. dem Sinnen – das Be-deuten

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‘the signification of meaning [Be-deuten]’, p. 56) or uses a German loan directly, as in the case of the firmly established Da-sein (e.g. p. 13). In many other cases the translations opt for conveying the content without reproducing the formal extravagancies of the original text: ist keine »Erklärung« – Herstellen aus Ursachen und Vor-stellen dieser becomes ‘is not explanation – production in terms of causes and the representation of causes’ (p. 12). The result could be called “dynamic” (with variation in the degree of freedom) as well as “balanced”, neither too far nor too close: a readable text, less marked than the original, more focused on content but still introducing elements that have a resonance of the original particularities.

What is a good translation of Heidegger’s texts? There is no simple answer to this. Heidegger sometimes writes very conceptually and with clear reference to other authors. This is especially the case when he ventures into the classics, e.g. when he refers to Aristotle’s concepts or to the Greeks in general, i.e. to established ideas in the history of philosophy. On the other hand, when Heidegger presents his own immediate philosophical reflections, he often becomes vaguer, shifting to a kind of poetry. To capture the different styles within his work is a difficult task, one that demands rational decisions. The translator might be tempted to reproduce the sound and form and the poetic aspects of the language, a tendency we sometimes find in the translation of poetry. But here we are confronted with a disciplined and sensitive expert who does not get lost in such temptations, but rather maintains his control over a text which is at times difficult to tame.

This translation, then, constitutes an invitation to embark on a journey into Heidegger’s thinking about language and art, and as such succeeds almost as well in the English version as it does in the German original, something which can by no means be said of all Heidegger translations. We congratulate the translator on this achievement – as well as its English readership for now having these texts at their disposal.