Of the Origin of the Work of Art

(first elaboration)
MARTIN HEIDEGGER
Translated by Markus Zisselsberger

Prefatory remarks of the editor and executor: “The Origin of the Work of Art” was
published in the fall of 1949 (copyright 1950) in Holzwege (GA 5).
Martin Heidegger’s thoughts about the enigma of art did not claim to resolve
the enigma but to see it. The version that was presented back then contained the three
lectures that were given at the end of 1936 at the “Freie Deutsche Hochstift” in Frank-
furt/Main. They represented a third preparatory sketch of the topic.
The second preparatory sketch was the first version of the lecture. This lecture was
given on 13 November 1935 at the Society for the Study of Art in Freiburg/Breisgau.
This second preparatory sketch was published, on the basis of a photocopy of
the typed duplicate of the written manuscript, in France in 1987 as an illegal bilingual
copy, without taking into account Martin Heidegger’s handwritten revision of this
duplicate.
Here is presented the so far unpublished and unknown—since it was never
presented—first preparatory sketch “Of the Origin of the Work of Art,” the written
manuscript of which Martin Heidegger had kept in a slipcase, together with the lectures
on the same topic. —Hermann Heidegger

W hat can be said here within the framework of a lecture about the origin of
the work of art is sparse enough, much of it perhaps alienating, but most
of it subject to misinterpretations. Yet, in spite of all this, only one thing should
be important, namely: with all respect for that which has already been thought
and said in order to determine the essence of art, to help prepare a changed basic
attitude of our Dasein to art.
Works of art are familiar to us. Architectural and sculptural works, works of
sound and language are installed and housed here and there. The works stem
from the most different ages; they belong to our people and to foreign peoples.

© 2008. Epoché, Volume 12, Issue 2 (Spring 2008). ISSN 1085-1968. 329–347
330 Martin Heidegger

Most of the time we also know the “origin” of the works of art that are present;
since where else should a work of art have its origin than in its creation through
the artist? Two processes belong to it: on the one hand the apprehension of the
artistic thought through the power of the imagination and then the conversion
of the thought into the artistic product. Both are equally important, even if the
apprehension of the artistic thought remains the precondition for its execution
and also the more “original.” The apprehension of thought is a purely intellectual
process that can be described as a “psychological experience.” From this arises
a contribution to the psychology of the creation of artistic products. This can be
quite instructive, but it never provides clarification of the origin of the work of art.
What is the reason for this? Firstly, that in this case “origin” is simply equated with
the “cause” of the existence of works of art. This approach to inquiring into the
origin is taken as if it were the most natural thing, because one does not start out
with the work of art, but with the artistic product as a an artistic stunt. It indeed
remains correct: the artistic object emerges from the “intellectual struggle” of the
artist. The creation is his masterly achievement. The latter becomes the “expres-
sion” of his “personality,” which “realizes” itself in the creation and “frees” itself
from “its storm of emotions.” In this way the work of art is also always a product
of the artist. But—this existence as product does not make up the work-being
of the work. This is as little the case, that, on the contrary, each ownmost will of
creation is dying to let the work rest upon itself. Especially in great art—of it alone
we are speaking here—the artist remains something insignificant compared to
the reality of the work, almost like a process that destroys itself during creation.
The question concerning the origin of the work first has to aim at really be-
ginning with the work of art as such. For that purpose it is evidently necessary
to seek out the work of art there where it is, already detached from the creation,
present as such. We encounter works of art in art collections and art exhibitions.
That is where they are housed. We encounter works of art in public places and in
the dwelling places of individuals. There they are installed and appropriate. The
works stand in the clearing: because the study of art history determines their
historical descent and pertinence [Zugehörigkeit]. Art-experts and those who
write about art describe their content and explain their—as they say—“quali-
ties,” and in this way make the work accessible to general and individual artistic
enjoyment. Friends of art and lovers of art promote the collection of works of
art. Official institutions take charge of the maintenance and preservation of the
works of art. The art dealers supply the market. Around the works of art that are
present as such take place such manifold activities, which we briefly and without
any derogatory meaning call art industry. It mediates the path to the works of
art themselves. Of course—insofar as they are now detached from the relation
to the creation by artists. However, the mere disregard of the relation does not
yet guarantee that we now get to know the work-being of work; because the art
Of the Origin of the Work of Art 331

industry in turn brings the works into a relation again, precisely that of the com-
motion around the works. The work is encountered in the way in which it is a thing
within the maintaining, explaining and enjoying art industry. But such thing-ness
in turn may not be equated with the work-being of the work.
Let us bring ourselves before works of great art—before the Aegeans in the
Munich Collection, before the “Bärbele” of Strasbourg, located in the “Liebighaus”
in Frankfurt, or into the realm of Sophocles’ Antigone. The works are dis-placed
from their proper location and space. Despite all their rank and so-called “qual-
ity” and power of impression, their work-being is no longer the proper one. They
might be as well preserved and comprehensible, but their displacement into the
collection, their appropriation by the preservation of tradition has withdrawn
them from their world. Even if we make efforts to reverse or avoid such displace-
ments of the works, for example by visiting the temple in Paestum at its place
or the Dome of Bamberg on its square—the world of the preserved works is
decayed. We can even redraw and imagine them in our historical memory. Only,
world-withdrawal and world-decay can never be reversed again. We can indeed
know the works as “expression” of their age, as testimonies of a previous splen-
dor and power of a people; we can “become enthusiastic” about our “marvelous
German domes.” And yet—world-decay and world-withdrawal have destroyed
their work-being.
The thing-being of works in the art industry and the product-being through
the artist are both possible determinations of work-being. But the former is a
consequence, the latter one of the conditions of work-being. Not only do they not
exhaust it, but taken for themselves, they even obstruct the view of the work-being
and the knowledge thereof.
However, as long as we do not grasp the work in its work-being, the question
concerning the origin of the work of art remains without a sufficiently grounded
starting point.
But why then is the determination of the work-being of the work of art
so difficult? Because work-being is determined out of that in which the work
grounds itself. And this ground alone is the origin of the work according to its
essence and its necessity. The origin is not located in the artist as the cause of the
product-being of the work. The origin of the work is art. Art is not because there
are works of art, but on the contrary—because and insofar as art happens does
the necessity of the work exist. And only the necessity of the work is the artist’s
condition of possibility.
These are at first only assertions. They put us into a curious and memorable
situation. The question concerning the origin of the work of art has to start out
with the work-being of the work. But this work-being is, eventually or already,
determined by the origin. What we are seeking, the origin, we must already have,
and what we have, we must still seek. We are thus moving in a circle. That how-
332 Martin Heidegger

ever may in any case be taken—at least in philosophy—as a sign that the way
of questioning is in order. The difficulty that it is only at the end of explanations
that we are prepared for the beginning is unavoidable.
However, we can achieve a participation in the circular movement of our
questioning only through a leap. And in the end this leap is the only way of prop-
erly sharing the knowledge of the origin into which we are inquiring. In this way
everything depends on our taking the right leap forward for this leap. The former
consists, following the conception of these considerations, in the extraction of a
sufficient preliminary concept of the work of art in its work-being.

I. The Work of Art as Work

What has been said to so far served to protect us against misinterpretations of the
work-being of the work, either as product-being through the artist or as thing-
being for the art industry. In most cases even, both are intertwined. The work of
art is in addition always in a relation to another one and is not understood on
its own terms. But can we grasp something in itself at all, outside of all relation?
At least the grasping itself is each time a relation. This basic question shall here
remain unaddressed. In light of our task a different question is now more essential:
does the attempt to separate the work from all relation to others besides itself not
generally work against specifically the essence of the work itself? Indeed, because
the work wants to be revealed as work. And it is not brought into revealed-ness
[Offenbarkeit] retrospectively, nor is the latter merely an intentional side-effect,
but work-being means being-revealed. But the question is what revealed-ness and
public-ness [Öffentlichkeit] mean here. Not the public audience that is immersed
in the art industry. In general, that towards which the work “works” by standing
out into the open is never something there, which it only has to encounter like
an awaiting receiver; rather, it is only in the being-revealed of the work that the
latter effects [erwirkt] its public-ness. The only relation it has to the “public audi-
ence”—where such a thing exists—is that it destroys the latter. And the greatness
of the work of art is measured by this power of destruction.
Only, this relation to the open is indeed proper to work-being; but it itself
is grounded in the basic trait of work-being that now is to be brought to light
step-by-step.
We ask about the work, how it is as such, with itself. The work is with itself in-
sofar as it, the work, is at work. And the work of art is at work in its setting-up.
With this designation a trait in the work-being of the work is to be pointed out.
Usually one speaks of “setting-up” concerning the work of art in the sense of the
inclusion of a work in a collection or the installation of the work at a suitable place.
Essentially different from the mere inclusion and installation is the setting-up in
the sense of erecting: for example, the building of a specific temple of Zeus or the
Of the Origin of the Work of Art 333

putting-into-place, the successful completion of a specific monument to Apollo

or the performance of a tragedy, which at the same time, however, is not only the
erecting of a poetic work of language within the language of a people.
Such setting-up as erecting is dedication and praise. Dedicating means
“consecrating” in the sense that in the offering to creation the holy is disclosed
as something holy and the god is wrought into the open of his presence. Praise
belongs to dedication, as appreciation of the dignity and the splendor of the god.
Dignity and splendor, which are disclosed in the praising entailed in the work
[werkhaft], are not qualities, next to and behind which in addition the god stands;
rather, he is present in dignity and splendor.
Every setting-up in the sense of a dedicating-praising erecting is also always a
putting-into-place, as a type of installation of the edifice and the statue, as saying
and naming within a language. But the opposite, the installation and inclusion
of a “product of art” is not already a setting-up in the sense of an erecting that
puts into place; because the latter presupposes that the work that is to be erected
and set up contains within itself already the essential trait of setting-up, that it is
setting-up in its ownmost essence. But how shall we grasp this proper “setting-up”
that partly determines the work-being of the work?
The work is in itself a towering in which a world is forced open and placed, as
opened world, into that which remains. But what is that—a world? That can be said
here only in a rough hint. To begin with its negation: world is not the accumula-
tion of existing things as the result of a performed or only imagined count of the
same. But just as little as the world is the sum of what exists, as little is it only an
imaginary framework for what exists, added by our thought. World worlds—it
redirects our Dasein as a form of escort, in which linger and haste, the distance
and proximity, the vastness and narrowness of all being remains open to us. This
guidance is never encountered as object; rather, showing, it holds everything we
do at a distance, into a structure of references from which the prospective grace
and defeating fate of the gods comes and—fails to come. This failure to come is
also a way in which the world worlds. This showing escort can become subject to
confusion and thus be a bad world [Unwelt]. But, whether world or bad world, this
showing escort, in all its non-thing-ness, always retains more of being than each
of the existing things at hand in which we believe to be at home every day. But
world is that which is always unfamiliar [das immer Unheimische]; by knowing
it, we do not know what we know. (But world is never a thing that stands before
us, but the non-thing that we examine.)
World then is what the work sets up as work, i.e. breaks open, and brings what
was opened to stand, brings it to remain, worlding. Setting-up in this way, work is
at work. A product of art in the broader sense, which lacks this characteristic of
setting-up-world, is not a work of art, but a trick that is not at work at anything
but only shows off a fake skill and perhaps even makes some “impression.”
334 Martin Heidegger

In that the actual work toweringly holds out [ausspart] and retains a world,
there is within it at work that superior rejection of that which usually exists. The
unfamiliar that surrounds every work is that seclusion into which the work—
solely setting up its world—sets itself back. Only by means of this solitude is the
work able to stretch out into the Open, opening it, and to obtain its public-ness.
All things that are then included in the realm of the latter are transformed in such
a way as if something inexhaustible and unavoidable had come over them.
In that the work is work, bringing its world to an opened stretching, it itself
obtains the aim that it serves, creates the space that it occupies; it itself determines
the location where erecting comes to take place. Setting-up, as dedicating-praising
erecting is always grounded in setting-up as the towering holding-open of a world.
The former [i.e. erecting] can be denied to the latter [i.e. holding-open of world].
The former [erecting] can get stuck in the non-essential of mere installation of
products of art. The erected work, however, can fall prey to the fate of world-with-
drawal and world-decay. While the work continues to exist, it is no longer there,
but in flight. This being-absent is, however, not nothing; rather, flight remains in
the present work, assuming that it is a work, and then this flight also lies in the
fragment (whereas the undamaged preservation of a product does not make the
latter into a work yet).
Together with the setting-up, setting-forth belongs to the work-being of the
work. But at the beginning we did specifically exclude the creation through the
artists, because work-being cannot be understood from product-being, only in-
versely, product-being from work-being. However, with setting-forth and creation
we do not mean the same. In order to determine the essential characteristic in the
work-being that is designated by this word, we take as our starting point, as in
the case of “setting-up,” the common meaning. Each work is, insofar as it is, made
from stone, wood, ore, color, clay and language. What is used during production
is called material. It is brought into a form. This division of the work of art ac-
cording to material and form then subsequently leads to further differentiation
according to content, substance and shape. The use of these determinations of
material and form is, in regards to the work of art, always possible, and is easily
understood by everyone, and has therefore been common since centuries. And
yet the determinations are by no means natural. They come from the specifically
oriented interpretation of being that Plato and Aristotle brought to prominence
at the end of Greek philosophy. Accordingly, all being has its proper appearance,
which shows itself in its form. A being stands in such form insofar as it is made
into something through something. It can complete itself into that which it is; it
can be made like everything else organic. As being, being is always the produced
existent. This interpretation of the Being of beings is, however, not only not natural,
it is also not taken from the experience of the work of art as artwork, but at the
most from the experience of the work of art as a made thing. The division into
Of the Origin of the Work of Art 335

matter and form is therefore always applicable to the work, but it is also equally
and certainly untrue, if it is to be grasped through the work-being of the work.
If we thus determine the work-being of the work through a second essential
characteristic which we call setting-forth, then this cannot mean that it consists
of matter. We rather mean that the work, in its work-being, is setting-forth, and
that it is so in the literal sense. But what does the work as such set forth, and how
is it setting-forth? Just like the work towers into its world, so it lowers itself back
into the massiveness and weight of the stone, into the hardness and brilliance
of ore, into the solidity and flexibility of wood, into the glowing and the dark of
color, into the rising ringing out of sound and into the word’s power to name. Is
all this only and first matter, which is just picked up somewhere, used and used
up during the process of making and then disappears as mere material through
the process of shaping? Does not all this come into appearance only in the work;
are weight, brilliance, shining, ringing out materials that are “mastered”? Or is it
not the weighing of the rock and the brilliance of metals, the towering and the
flexibility of the tree, the light of the day and the darkness of the night, the rushing
of the flood and the murmuring in the branches? What can we call it? We call the
accord of this unparalleled fullness the earth and thereby do not mean a deposited
mass of matter and not the planet, but the accord of the mountains and the sea,
the storms and the air, of day and night, the trees and the grass, the eagle and
the horse. This earth—what is it? That which unfolds permanent fullness and
yet always takes back that which has unfolded and keeps it. The stone weighs,
shows its weight and in just that way retreats into itself; the color shines and yet
remains secluded; the sound rings out and yet does not step into the open. What
steps into the open is precisely this self-secluding, and that is the essence of the
earth. All its things merge into each other in mutual harmony and yet: in each
self-secluding thing is the same absence of self-knowledge.
The work sets forth the earth, puts it forth into the open as that which secludes
itself. The work does not consist of the earth as a material, but it endures the
earth, bears its self-enclosing. In that the work in itself in this way makes avail-
able the earth, it puts itself back into the earth as its self-secluding ground on
which it rests; a ground that, because it is essentially and always self-secluding,
is an abysmal ground, an abyss [Ab-grund]. The two essential characteristics in
the work-being of the work, the setting-up as towering opening of world and
setting-forth as re-placing preservation of the self-secluding earth, both are not
accidentally connected in the work, but stand in an essential reciprocal relation.
But both characteristics are only what they are insofar as they originate in the
proper basic trait of work-being that is now to be identified.
The world, toweringly retained by the work, turns as opening escort to the
earth and does not tolerate anything that is self-secluded, hidden. But the earth,
which lets the work approach in its setting-forth, wants to be everything in its
336 Martin Heidegger

self-seclusion and take it back into itself. But precisely for this reason can the
earth not spare the world, if it itself is to brilliantly appear amidst the full force
of self-secluding and retaining of all things. And the world, in turn, cannot float
away from the earth, if it is to give itself, as worlding escort, to something that can
be guided. World is against earth and earth against world. They are in conflict.
But this conflict is the intimacy of their resistant, mutual belonging. Setting-up
the world and setting-forth the earth, the work is the enactment of this conflict.
Enactment here does not mean to defeat and overcome this conflict but, on the
contrary, to bear the conflict as such, indeed, to itself be this conflict. The conflict,
however, is not the result of the fact that in setting-up and setting-forth, world
and earth enter into opposition; rather, the work ignites and preserves the conflict
because in the essence of its determination it is such an enactment. Because the
basic characteristic of work-being is enactment, setting-up and putting-forth are
the essential characteristics of its Being. But why does the work, in the ground of
its Being, have to be such an enactment? Where does the work-being of the work
originate that the fact of the matter is of such nature? That is the question of the
origin of the work of art. We take it up, as soon as it is sufficiently proven how the
work as enactment is, first, completely by itself, and secondly, properly at work.
How does the enactment of this conflict take place? The dark harshness
and the pulling weight of the earth, its incessant pushing and flaring-up, its
unspoken silence about all things—in short: the self-exhausting hardness of its
self-seclusion is only endured again in another hardness. And that harshness is
the limit in outline, sketch and basic design. Because that which is self-seclud-
ing must be violently pulled into the open, this pulling itself has to become the
rift, the drawing limit and gap. Here, in the basic characteristic of work-being as
enactment, lies the reason for the necessity of that which we call “form.” Without
further pursuing the origin of “form” as such, we ask about the more urgent issue:
what is won in this enactment of the conflict?
Insofar as the work is enactment, it removes the earth, opening it into a world.
The latter, as showing escort, itself never moves into the earth. But this re-moving
removal moves the work forward and opens something that is open. That is the
center of the space of activity [Spielraum] in which the earth is secluded in the man-
ner of the world, and the world is open in the manner of the earth. The world is the
first to found this space of activity by opening it. This space is the openness of the
There, in which things and human beings come to stand in order to endure it.
The building that, as temple, retains the shape of the god, allows the former
at the same time, through the open hall of pillars, to stand out into the precinct,
which only in this way is founded as a consecrated one. Towering into a world and
reaching back into the earth, the temple opens the There wherein a people comes
to itself, that is, into the forming power of its god. The earth becomes worldly
only through the work and as such a home. In the same way naming and saying
Of the Origin of the Work of Art 337

occur in the work of language, by which the Being of things comes to the word,
and with the sayable the unsayable to the world. In such naming of the poet, the
great concepts of beings are, as a whole, preshaped for a people. In the work of
building and saying and forming the There is won, the stretchable and grounded
center in which and out of which a people founds its historical dwelling—in which
it becomes unfamiliar [umheimisch] in being in order to become serious about
the uncanny [dem Unheimlichen] of Being.
The essence of work-being lies in the enactment of the conflict of setting-up
and setting-forth; this enactment wins within itself the open intimacy of earth
and world.
With this determination of the essence of the work-being of the work a loca-
tion is won that makes possible a decision about the widespread and common
understanding of the work of art. The latter is supposed to be the representation
of something. Indeed, there has been a gradual distancing from this opinion,
that the work is the imitation of something present in the sense of a copied im-
age [Abbild] and a written copy [Abschrift]; but the understanding of the work
as a representation is thereby by no means overcome, but only hidden; because
whether the work is taken as a “visual concretization of the invisible” or inversely
as symbolization of the visible, inherent in such determinations is in each case
the uncritically accepted assumption that the basic achievement of the work is
in the final instance the representation of something.
The erroneous dimension of this interpretation of the work-being stems from
the same source as that one-sided and premature determination of the work as a
made thing. Accordingly, the work is foremost—and that means here also always
“properly”—a formed material like a shoe or a box. But at the same time the work
of art is supposed to say something else (ajllo ajgofeuvein), beyond that which it is;
the finished thing is in this way brought together with something else (sumbavllein).
Allegory and symbol provide the framing ideas according to which the work of art
is determined, in most different variations, as a higher, finished creation.
This from the beginning misdirected idea of the work of art is then further con-
fused through determinations that also go back to the distinction between matter
and form. Matter, namely, is equated with the sensual. In the latter, as the “element
of art,” the non- and supersensual comes to be represented. If the material here
counts as the sensual, then it is understood as that which is subject to the senses
[das Sinnfällige], that which becomes accessible through the senses and their tools.
This does not say anything at all about the material itself and the way it belongs
to work-being. Additionally, this determination of access to the supposed material
is not true; because the weighing of a stone, the dullness of a color, the sound and
flow of a sequence of words, are never experienced without the senses, but never
ever through them alone and properly. The earth in its self-secluding fullness is,
if these characterizations say something, as sensual as it is non-sensual.
338 Martin Heidegger

The introduction of the determination “sensual” just as little captures some-

thing essential about the work-being of work as does that of the determination
of material that goes along with it. But both are within certain limits correct
and make sense. And in this way the distinction between the sensual and the
supersensual soon became the guiding principle for the various allegorical and
symbolical attempts at interpreting the work and art in general. Already there
where the distinction between matter and form becomes relevant for the first
time for the entire subsequent occidental position towards being, in Plato, matter
is regarded as the sensual and simultaneously as the lower, in opposition to the
idea as the non-sensual higher. In the realm of Christian thought the sensual, as
the lower, at times even becomes the opposing force that has to be overcome. The
work in this way provides for the conquest of the sensual and the elevation that is
represented therein. Whether this disparagement is expressly carried through or
rejected, the achievement of the work is always considered to be the representa-
tion of something. But the work of art does not represent anything; and this for
the sole and simple reason that it does not have anything which it is supposed to
represent. In that the work, in the enactment of the conflict of world and earth,
opens the latter two, each in its own particular way, it wins the open in the first
place, the clearing, in whose light we encounter being as such, as it was on the first
day or—when it has become ordinary—as transformed being. The work cannot
represent anything because it basically never aims at something that is already
standing and an object, assuming of course that it is a work of art and not only
its imitated product. The work never represents, but rather sets up—the world,
and puts forth—the earth; and both of them because it is the enactment of this
conflict. The work remains at work, is simply only itself—and nothing else.
But what then really is the work? What kind of actuality does it have?
Despite some variations, the interpretation of the actuality of the work of art
to which again Plato had given the impulse has been dominant until today. Here
again the predetermination of the work of art as a made thing was authoritative.
Compared to that which exists by itself and has grown “naturally,” that which
has been created by human hands is in each case something that is added later,
in particular when it imitates natural things; because the latter are themselves
already copied images of those forms which Plato called “ideas.” That which
has been recreated and therefore also the work of art becomes the imitation
of a copied image of a form [zum Nachbild eines Abbildes eines Vorbildes]. And
since the ideas represent the actual being, that which things truly are, the work
is merely an echo and properly non-actual. But if, in contrast to Plato, one tries
in some ways to undo this disparagement of the actuality of the work, then the
fact has to be introduced that, in opposition to the sensual state of the work, the
latter nevertheless represents a non-sensual “spiritual” substance. Thanks to this
representation, the work of art is then eventually more “idealistic,” more spiritual
Of the Origin of the Work of Art 339

than the tangible things of everyday life. It stands out from their circle and is sur-
rounded by a hovering “touch of spirit.” Thus the work of art eludes the actuality of
existing things. The realm of the work is one of appearance; that is not supposed
to mean: “of a rude deception,” a thought that seems likely after all—because the
formed marble block of a statue make us believe that it is a living body, whereas in
truth it is only a cold stone. The work is appearance, because it itself is not what it
represents, but a vindicated appearance, because in the representation the latter
after all brings to light something spiritual that is non-sensual.
In these interpretations of the actuality of the work of art the former is dis-
placed from one non-actuality into the other. One moment the work is still not
as actual, and the next no longer as actual as existing things. The existence of
everyday things as true actuality remains decisive each time; compared to this
actuality, the work of art remains, whether interpreted this way or the other, al-
ways non-actual. And yet the opposite of all this is true. The temple that towers
on foothills or in a rocky valley, the statue that stands there in a holy precinct,
these works are among the many remaining ones: sea and land, springs and trees,
eagles and snakes, not only are they at the most also existent, but they occupy the
center in the cleared space of activity [Spielraum] where things appear—they are
more actual than each thing, because each of the latter can manifest itself as be-
ing only in the open that was won only through the work. The poesy of Hölderlin
stands—although this is rarely known—more actually in the language of our
people than all dramas, films and rhyming [Reimereien], more actually than
the houses that accommodate the bookstores and libraries where his complete
works are included. More actual than all this is poesy, because within it the still
untouched center of their world and their earth is prepared for the Germans, and
great decisions are retained.
Precisely this is the most proper essence of work-being: that it can never be
compared to each respective existing thing and supposedly actual thing, but that
it is itself the standard measure of being and non-being. There are therefore no
contemporary works that would be works of art; rather, only those works belong
to art that are at work in such a way that they make their time proper to themselves
and transform it. The work as the opening center of the Dasein of historical Da-
sein is more actual than all other being.
This solitude of every work of art is the sign that it, in the enactment of the
conflict, towers into its world while retreating restfully into its earth. Its standing
there is the restrained unobtrusiveness of the standing-back-into-itself. That,
however, does not mean that the work is taken out of common actuality; that is
impossible because it has advanced precisely into the latter as its shock and refu-
tation. But the more a work approaches what is called “effect,” the more isolated
it must be able to remain. If it lacks this power, then it is not a work of art.
340 Martin Heidegger

These few rough indications were supposed to point to the work-being of the
work from a distance. The aim was to thereby arrive at a preliminary concept of
the work of art as work. It is supposed to guide us when we now attempt to take
a step on the way to the question concerning the origin of the work of art.

II. Art as Origin of the Work

The characterization of the enactment of the conflict of world and earth as the
basic trait in the work-being of the work has pushed us to the question: Why
is the enactment the essence of work-being? This question that has so far been
pushed back is now to be taken up. The preliminary answer is the following: the
work-being of the work has the basic trait of enactment because and insofar as
the work is a work “of ” art. “Of ” art? Where and how is it? Does art subsist some
time and somewhere by itself? But before we ask if and how art is, it remains to be
cleared up what it is. Does the word “art” always remain only an empty collective
name for all that which happens in the art industry, or is it simply the work itself
in each case? Neither of which. The question “what is art” we now, of course, no
longer direct at nowhere. By asking: wherein does the work-being of the work have
its ground, we seek that which is properly occurring in enactment. What counts
is the question: what in the work is first and last at work? By asking in this way,
we know that we are moving in a circle.
The work—remaining with itself, retreating into itself and subsisting as such,
opens the “There,” the center of the open in whose clearing being stands for us
as such and shows itself. This open encloses within itself the opening of a world
together with the self-seclusion of the earth. The earth enters into the open as
self-secluding. World becomes unconcealed and earth secludes itself, but in the
open. And so in that this intimacy of the open conflict of that which conceals
itself and that which deconceals itself occurs, that which so far had counted as
the actual now is disclosed as unbeing. It becomes evident—that means, into
the open—that to this point concealment and displacement and distortion of
being were dominant. What in this way happens in enactment—the opening of
openness of the conflict of that which is unconcealed and that which is concealed,
the appearance of concealment and displacement—this self-contained occur-
rence is the occurrence of that which we call truth. Because the essence of truth
does not consist of the agreement of a proposition with an object; rather, truth is
this basic occurrence of the opening of the openness as such of being. To truth
therefore belong essentially the concealed and self-concealment (the secret), just
as concealment and displacement and distortion—the un-truth.
In the work as such the occurrence of truth is at work, that is, truth is put
(in)to work in the work. The putting-into-work [Ins-Werk-Setzung] of truth, that
is the essence of art. One always has to take into account that truth here does not
Of the Origin of the Work of Art 341

refer to any truth, a single truth, for example a thought and proposition, an idea
or a value, that are perhaps “represented” through the work; rather, truth refers to
the essence of the truthful, the openness of that open. Of course, we have thereby
only won, from work-being, a first hint at the essence of art. In art truth occurs
as the revelation of being. But it is still not proven that and how art is the origin
of the work. We call origin, as a preliminary concept, that type of ground which
forces the work-being of the work in its necessity.
Art is the putting-into-work of truth. Thus the situation is the following: on the
one hand there is a work and on the other the truth. And the latter is transplanted
[überpflanzt] into the former through art. That is by no means the case. Because the
work does not exist before the truth, nor does the latter exist before the work, but
rather: because there comes to be a work, truth happens. But—and this is the deci-
sive question—why does it have to come to the work in order for truth to occur?
If truth comes into work only with the work and in the work, and does not
exist anywhere in advance, then it has to become. Where does the opening of the
openness of being come from? Perhaps from nothing? That is indeed the case if
with non-being is meant that existing thing which is then, as it were, disproved
and shaken as the supposedly true being. From this already existing thing the truth
is never deciphered. The openness of being rather happens, by being projected,
as poesy. All art is in its essence poesy, that is, the opening-up of that open in
which everything is different than usual. By means of the poeticizing projection,
everything else and usual becomes unbeing. Poesy is not a digressing conjuring
of something arbitrary, no floating away into unreality. That which poesy as pro-
jection opens up (pro-jects forward) by holding it apart, this open alone allows
being to enter as such and brings it to illumination.
Truth as openness occurs in projection, in poesy. Art as putting-into-work of
truth is essentially poesy. But is that not pure arbitrariness, to trace architecture,
the art of painting and the art of sound back to poesy, “[lyric] poetry”? That
it would be if we wanted to interpret the aforementioned “arts” from the point
of view of the art of language and as derivations thereof. The art of language,
“[lyric] poetry,” is however itself only one way of projecting, of poeticizing in this
determined but broader sense. And yet the work of language, poesy in the more
narrow sense, has a distinctly marked position within the whole of art. One is used
to noting a “formal language” in artists and their works, respectively, e.g. works
of architecture and sculptural works. Why relate “language” to an architectural
work? Well, language is “expression” after all. And precisely that, “expression,” art
is, too. And for that reason all art is “language.” And since the art of language is
called “poesy,” all art is simply poesy. The determination of the essence of art as
poesy could not be misinterpreted more crudely than through such “explana-
tions.” The proof of its untenability might make clear the true meaning of the
proposition that art is poesy.
342 Martin Heidegger

Let it be admitted in advance that the determination of art as expression

has its correctness. The view that art is expression is just as indisputable as the
proposition: the motorcycle is something that makes noise. Every technician would
laugh in light of such a determination of the essence of this machine. But nobody
laughs because for a long time it has been said that art is “expression.” Certainly,
the acropolis is an expression of the Greeks and the dome at Naumburg is an
expression of the Germans and the Baaah—is an expression of the sheep. Yes, the
work of art is simply such an expression, that is, a Baaah of its own—probably.
But the work is, however, not work because it is expression; rather, it is expres-
sion because it is a work. The characterization of the work as expression not only
does not contribute anything to the determination of work-being, it also already
prevents any true question concerning this Being.
But this extremely correct and yet non-essential characterization of art as
expression does not even apply to language. Language indeed serves mutual
communication, conversation and agreement. But it is not only and not firstly a
verbal and written expression of that which is to be communicated, meaning, of
what is true and what is untrue, that is, what is revealed or hidden as revealed
or displaced. Language not only communicates that which is revealed and not
only passes it on; instead, prior to that and properly, it is the essence of language
that it raises being as being into the open. Where there is no language, as in the
case of stone, plant and animal, there is also no openness of being, and hence
also none of non-being and unbeing and of emptiness. In that language names
things for the first time, such naming first brings beings to the word and makes
them appear. This naming and saying is a projecting in which is announced
that as which being is open. This projecting announcing is at the same time the
renunciation of all dull confusion. Projecting saying is poesy, the saying [Sage]
of the world and of the earth and therefore of the field [Spielraum] of proximity
and distance of the gods. Primordial language is such saying as the original poesy
of a people in which the world of the latter rises for it, and its earth, as its own,
begins to seclude itself. Poesy is the essence of language, and only as a result of
that can it also become “expression.” However, art and the work of art are not a
kind of language but rather the other way around: the work of language is the
basic figure of art because the latter is poesy. Poesy in the more narrow sense,
“[lyric] poetry,” remains the basic figure of art (poesy in a broader sense), but
for the reason that in poetic saying the open in which being as being comes to
unfolding and preservation is projected for human Dasein in general and made
its own. Building and forming on the other hand always occur in the already open
of myth [Sage] and of saying [des Sagens] and are precisely therefore as ways of
art never language, but in each case a proper poeticizing.
But the determination of the essence of poesy as projection does not exhaust
its essence. Without insight into the full essence of poesy, that is, of art, we are
Of the Origin of the Work of Art 343

also unable to grasp the becoming of truth. Above all we do not understand to
what extent something like the work is necessary for the becoming of truth. (The
ground of the necessity of the work is in each case its origin).
The full essence of poesy comes to appear in the proposition: poesy—the
essence of art—is the founding of Being. Hence not the creation of being. What
however does Being mean in distinction from being, which we name after the
former? This being there, the organ, we grasp, and we grasp it in its difference
from for example a cat. But this Being we grasp only with difficulty, despite the
fact that we are just as certain that this organ is, and is not nothing, as we know
that it is an organ and not a cat. But we prefer to take the organ and the cat and
leave Being to philosophers. Only, what is, in spite of an abundant healthy human
intellect and its proximity to life, closer to us than Being? Without Being, what
“would” the organ and the cat and everything else “be”? In order for the latter not
to remain a mere word, which despite all elusiveness it never is, an instruction
can serve as a makeshift aid: we begin to know Being and its concept if we grasp
this repeatedly mentioned openness which appears in the poeticizing projection.
Being is that which, like being, is in each case open and concealed. Being is as
such only because we are essentially for Being.
Wanting to say immediately, for example in one sentence, of what essence Be-
ing is, already means to misjudge this essence. Precisely because Being can never
be displayed like any existing being, the founding of Being is necessary.
Founding means an internally unified Threefold. Founding is, first, a bestow-
ing, the voluntary gift. Founding is then erecting, to place something on a ground,
grounding [gründen]. And founding is finally incitement to something, beginning.
Bestowing, grounding, beginning, that is what we have to hear and understand
collectively, if we refer to art as the poesy of the founding of Being.
Founding as bestowing, as voluntary gift, then means precisely that which we
had previously already listed as a characteristic of poesy, the projecting of the
open as the “other than usual.” Projection sets something free that not only never
comes forward out of existing and other things, but can also never be compensated
for by existing things. Projection is founding as bestowing. To what then does
founding as grounding and beginning refer, and how does that which is thereby
named belong essentially together with projection?
Truth as openness is always openness of the There, in which every being and
unbeing stands for us, and from which it retreats as that which is self-secluding.
In this way the “There” remains rooted even in this dark abyss. This “There” how-
ever—how is it? Who assumes the task of being this “There”? Answer: man—not
as individual, nor as community. These two ways of being human are only possible
at all, if man in advance assumes the There, that is, if he stands in the midst of
being as being and unbeing, that is, if he stands in for Being as such. This way
of being the There we call history. In that man is the There, that is, historical, he
344 Martin Heidegger

becomes a people. In the poeticizing projection this “other than usual” is not
simply opened up; rather, because openness always remains openness of the
There, it is thrown ahead of the There or rather of him who is the There, that is,
the poeticizing projection is thrown towards the historical Da-sein. The There in
its openness is only if it is taken over and endured from out of the displacement
and into something given as a task, and from the preservation of that which is
passed on, that is, history. The There is only if a people takes over the task of be-
ing the There, that is, becomes historical. This There itself is never a general one,
but in each case this, and an individual one. The people is always already thrown
into its There (Hölderlin the poet). But this throw-to [Zuwurf] is precisely when
it truly is poesy. But if the projection [Entwurf] is poesy, then the throw-to is
never going to be only something arbitrarily expected, but rather the opening of
that into which the Dasein as historical one is already thrown. That into which a
people is thrown is always the earth, its earth, the self-enclosing ground on which
the thrown There rests. Projection, which is essentially throw-to, pro-jects [ent-
wirft] only if it raises that which is open within itself from the concealed ground;
if that which is initiated [aufgegeben] in it is basically also given along with it as
a concealed and therefore to-be-deconcealed determination. In projection that
“other than usual” steps into the open, but this other is basically nothing foreign,
but only the ownmost of historical Dasein that has so far been concealed. Projec-
tion comes out of nothing, insofar as it does not come from anything else and
previous; it does not come out of nothing because as throwing-to it retrieves the
concealed deposited determination, posits and founds it properly as a ground.
Founding as bestowing projection is essentially at the same time this grounding.
Openness can only become openness of the There, that is, truth as such can only
happen if the projection is a founding one. It is, however, founding by getting
involved with that which is self-secluding, the earth. The latter has to come into
the open, and precisely as that which is self-secluding, that is, in its resistance to
the projected world. Because art as poesy is founding and projecting grounding,
it has to give and place the openness, that is, the truth, in such a way that the latter
comes to stand in that which enacts the conflict of earth and world—and that is
the work. Truth happens only as openness of the There, it comes to work only in
the work. The essence of art as the founding of Being is the ground of necessity
of the work. The Being of the work does not consist of the fact that it is there as a
created being, but rather that, as enactment of the openness of the There, it effects
it and allows humans to historically assume Being. (For that reason the work has
this characteristic trait, that it toweringly stands-back-into-itself and withdraws
itself from everything that is merely there.)
The essence of art is the origin of the work of art. Art is not because there are
works; rather, a work has to be when and insofar as art is. But to what extent, and
why does art have to be? Its essence is, not to say truth intellectually, in concepts,
Of the Origin of the Work of Art 345

to set it into motion and position through an essential act, but rather to put it to
work. In its way art lets the truth spring forth, is a letting-spring-forth, an origin.
Art is origin in its innermost essence, and only that. It is not something else before
that and then also origin, but rather because it is in essence a letting-spring-forth
of truth, it is at the same time also the ground for the necessity of the work. Art
is origin and meaning of the ground for the possibility and necessity of the work
only because it is origin in the “original” sense.
But does the truth, the openness of the There, have to occur in such a way
that it springs forth in the origin as art? Indeed, because the truth, as openness of
being, is at the same time always concealment, secludedness of the earth. Truth is
essentially earthly. But because the work that has been forced from art—and only
it—originally puts the earth, as self-secluding, in the conflict with the projected
world, the work, that is, art is necessary in the happening of truth. The most con-
cealed ground for the necessity of the work of art, its most proper origin, is the
essence of truth itself. If truth is to happen, that is, if history is supposed to be,
then there must be a work, that is, there must be art as the founding of Being.
Founding is not only a projection that sets free, and not only the grounding
[Gründung] that retrieves the secluded ground [Grund], but at the same time
beginning. It incites the origin. An origin however can only begin as a leap. The
beginning of art is abrupt, which does not exclude or include that it is that which
is prepared the longest and in the most concealed way. The leap as beginning
is always that leap ahead in which everything yet to come is already leapt over,
even though it is still shrouded. The beginning is never beginner-like in the sense
of the primitive, which is only called by that name because it is not capable of
releasing from within itself anything continuous. But the beginning is indeed
beginner-like, not due to the scantiness of the achieved, but because of the
abundance of what is enclosed within it. Just like every origin has its beginning,
so every beginning has its start. The latter designates an already existing thing
in which the beginning, which is always sudden, commences. For the start to be
precisely this or that one, an occasion is necessary. And the occasion is always a
coincidence, coincidental namely in the light and in the emerging realm of the
beginning as the leap of an origin, that is, of one in which truth springs forth as
openness of being. Where this occurs, history begins. The beginning of the art
of a people is always the beginning of its history, and the same is true of the end.
For that reason there is no prehistoric art, because with art, history has already
begun and art is either this one or not only as historical one. A single, specific art
as such does not exist. In pre-history, however, there is pre-art, whose creations are
neither only means to production (tools) nor already a work of art. From pre-art,
however, there is as little a gradual transition to art as there is from pre-history
to history. There is always the leap of the beginning which one grasps just at the
point when one basically refrains from making this leap intelligible after all, that
346 Martin Heidegger

is, from attributing it to what is already known. The leap of the origin remains,
however, according to its essence, a secret, because the origin is a mode of that
ground whose necessity we have to call freedom.
The essence of art as the putting-(in)to-work of truth is the origin of the
work of art. This origin is so original, and therefore so inaccessible, that we
always remain—as in these reflections, too—subjected to the non-essential
[das Unwesen] of the essence. The more original the essence of something, the
harder is the non-essential that accompanies it, with its creeping obtrusiveness
and insistence.
Knowledge of the essence is only knowledge as decision. When questioning
art, what counts is the decision: is art essential for us, is it an origin and as such a
founding leap ahead into our history, a leap ahead or just only an addendum that
is carried along as “expression” of what is, and is continuously used for embroidery
and entertainment, for relaxation and excitement?
Are we in the proximity of the essence of art as origin or are we not? And if
we are not in the proximity of the origin, do we know that or do we not know it
and only stumble around in the art industry? If we do not know it, then the first
thing is to bring it to knowledge. Because clarity about who we are and who we
are not is already the decisive leap into the proximity of the origin. Such proximity
alone guarantees a truly founded historical Dasein as authentic, secure territorial
attachment [Bodenständigkeit] on this earth. Because—and this word of Hölderlin
is to provide the conclusion:
“With difficulty leaves
What dwells near the origin, the place.”
(“The Journey”)

SUPPLEMENTS
(not included marginal comments)

1. To page 19f.
To set on the ground, therefore to set-forth; setting-up [is] not setting-forth.
There has to be conflict—that is, there must be a work.
Of the essence of art as poesy.
When does a work have to be? When earth and world in the open There, when
truth.
2. To page 20f.
Why does a work have to be? Because the essence of art is poesy, while the
projection can only be as founding, setting-forth of the ground and setting-back
of the open in(to) the latter.
Of the Origin of the Work of Art 347

Why, however, does the essence of art as poesy have to be in this way? Because
poesy is an occurrence of truth and because truth “is” always earthly; and namely
such that it is a way in which truth springs forth.
Art one origin of truth. Basic manner of its becoming. Art is history. Deed and
Thought. Springing-to.
Art [as] the ground because itself essentially a o-rigin [Ur-sprung]. Preliminary
concept only improperly. O-rigin—what kind of ground?