From Refusal to Renunciation as Saying: Heidegger’s Changing Interpretation of Stefan George’s “The Word”

Abstract

In his 1939 reading of Stefan George’s “The Word,” Martin Heidegger excludes renunciation in order to foreground the self-refusal of the event of appropriation. In his later lecture, however, he redefines renunciation as a mode of Saying. By comparing these two interpretive moments, this article argues that the shift differentiates the word’s refusal from the poet’s renunciation. The former withdraws in advance from complete availability; the latter withdraws the demand to control names. Together they form an asymmetrical claim–response structure in which poetic speech is neither the sovereign production of meaning nor a passive conduit for language. It is a responsive agency whose measure is received from language yet whose task of articulation remains the poet’s responsibility. This reconstruction clarifies why renunciation could re-enter Heidegger’s later thinking without displacing the priority of linguistic withdrawal. It also redefines the relation among poet, language, and Saying, revealing the finite yet irreducible place of human speaking in Heidegger’s later philosophy of language.