Poetic Vocation

Abstract

Like ethics, literature too is often envisaged as involving some kind of call or vocation. In lectures on Hölderlin, Heidegger provides a more positive account of calling than in Being and Time. Yet he remains unspecific as to what we are called to, and his account is therefore expanded with regard to its socio-political and theological dimensions, developed in the direct of a certain Messianism (Derrida, Caputo). This is further explored in terms of the relationship between prophecy and empire, focusing on the figure of Virgil, represented by Theodore Haecker as ‘father of the West’. In Hermann Broch’s novel The Death of Virgil, the poet epitomizes the transition from the classical world to Christianity and the relationship between poetry, empire, and messianism. This complex of ideas is seen as operative in the testimony of Ulrich Fentzloff, a parish priest whose blog gained national attention in Germany.