Dearest Soul

Martin Heidegger's letter to Elfride (his future wife), 13 Dec., 1915 (found in: Martin Heidegger, Letters to his Wife 1915-1970, tr. R. D. V. Glasgow (UK/USA: Polity Press, 2008), 4-6):

Come, Dearest Soul, and rest against my heart, I want to look for ever into the depths of your fairy-tale eyes and thank you—Dearest Soul—it is given to me to experience ever new, wonderful things in you—you are mine—& am I to bear this unutterable happiness, are my hands sacred enough tremblingly to clasp yours, is my soul, harried through all the throes of doubt, a worthy shrine wherein your love may dwell for all eternity?

My great happiness weighs me to the ground—in the end, it is above all those of a philosophical nature who experience such uncommon happiness in all its fullness. The philosopher sees the ultimate in all things, experiences the deepest foundations of all existence, thrills in this god-born wondrous happiness—Dearest Soul, I can only accept this wonderful thing with the painful reverence that is ultimately deeper than what we call joy; why do people often weep for happiness? why, when I read your angelically pure poem drenched in the sunshine of fairy-tales, intoxicated with the felicity of childhood, could I not help but fling myself down & close my eyes?—were they the throes of eternity that chased wildly through my soul & then suddenly left behind in me that silence of the stormless mountain, in which all objects grow towards the infinite?

Yes, & so, Dearest Soul, let me accept all happiness with great reverential, prayerful humility & always be ailing with this happiness, for then I am gladdest, happiest & strongest, in this great weight of experiencing I can feel the problems lie heavy on my soul like gigantic boulders; and this burden, which draws its force from the eternal, unleashes the opposing force in me & I feel my sinews tauten & I reach for the heavy hammer of the interminable search for knowledge which gropes forward through dark tunnels of abstraction—& suddenly it comes whistling down & the rock face cracks asunder, the shards fly into the depths & the blue of the sky laughs in on us & profusion of blessing gushes over us & you, Dearest Soul, lean trembling on my shoulder & can still feel the shake of my arm, which is yet infused with the weight of the hammer—

Dearest Soul, and now I must go down on my knees before you, lay your wondrous hand, transfused with blessing, on my tortured brow—and forgive your boy, forgive me for being so full of restlessness on Sunday, I am human & as such hurled into the antagonism of the sensual and the spiritual; but with you it is given to me to experience what is beyond the antagonism, where all tensions are resolved, where everything is sacred & all darkness is banished—Dearest Soul, I'll for ever be your debtor—

I ought to rest now, but no, I cannot. Resting on your bosom, I would gladly recount every last detail of my modest life—

But perhaps you have already beheld me in the intuition of your soul—a simple boy, living with modest, pious people in the country, a boy who could still see the glass globe by the light of which his grandfather sat on a three-legged stool and hammered nails into shoes, who helped his father with the cooperage & forced the hoops into place around the barrels, the hammer-blows resounding through the small, winding alleys; who savoured all the wonderful poetry open to a sexton's son, lay for hours up in the church tower & gazed after the swifts & dreamt his way over the dark pine forests; who rummaged about in the dusty old books in the church loft & felt like a king among the piles of books which he did not understand but every one of which he knew & reverentially loved.

And when that boy, who would get the key to the tower from his father & could choose which of the other boys was allowed up with him & so had a certain prestige & power & was always the leader in all the raids and games of soldiers, the only one allowed to carry the iron sabre; when that boy came home from Latin at the young vicar's and often brought mistakes with him, he would cry his heart out on his good mother's shoulder, though she herself could not give him any help—the little brooder had to 'study' & was allowed to go to grammar school on Lake Constance & in the fifth form when he brought home nothing less than a 'Schiller' as first prize, he was even in the local paper & from then on, as people still say today, he was never again seen in the holidays without a book. And he delved & sought & became quieter and quieter & already he had a vague ideal—the scholar—in his mind—though his pious, simple mother hoped for a 'priest'—it was a struggle for him to win the right to live purely on knowledge, to make his mother believe that the philosopher too can achieve great things for men & their eternal happiness—how often did she ask her son, 'what is philosophy, do tell me', & he couldn't give an answer himself— [. . .]

—my Dearest Soul scatters the roses on the steep mountain path up to the towering peaks of pure knowledge & most blissful experience in these two creatures whom God was leading along their paths, his inscrutable path, until suddenly, filled with the pangs of holy craving, they found one another; the two of them will build themselves a happiness in which spirit, purity, goodness rush together and, overflowing, pour forth into the languishing souls of those who thirst—

Dearest Soul, clasp your pure hands together & place them in mine—take my soul, it is yours—you saint—and let the flames and glowing heat come together and as they flare up consume one another in the longing for

αὐτὸ τὸ θεῖον καλόν μονοειδές 

'the divine itself in its unchangeable beauty'.