Did We Really Lose The Language in Foreign Countries?
The title refers to the well known verses by Hölderlin, from the second version of "Mnemosyne" as reconstituted by Rudolf Beissner. The essay is articulated around three motives: 1) The attempt to show and to question the role devoluted by Antoine Berman to Hölderlin as the representative of the modern way and significance of translating; 2) the attempt to repeat and assess the interpretation of the quoted verses by Heidegger, in particular through a swift reading of the 1942 course, Hölderlins Hymne des "Ister"; 3) a development concerning the catastrophic loss of language in "foreign countries", understood here from the point of view of the familiar and historic(al) experience of a language which can no longer translate. The essay culminates in an interpretation of the word "nearly" in the quoted verses by Hölderlin, that has to be "abusively" translated with a past future : we will have lost the language. The advent of the Catastrophe is possible only from the future, and this is what Hölderlin calls the overturn of time. Hence, the necessity of translating in foreign countries, so that the Event can finally take place. The modern meaning and practice of translation are thus understandable thanks to the Hölderlinian question: how is it possible to translate within the Foreign, in the language that is already nearly lost?