I wonder if we are ever to find the region that we are seeking? And whether the finding will ever be given to us, if we visit the still existing land of the Greeks and greet its earth, its sky, its sea and its islands, the abandoned temples and the sacred theatres?
MH. Sojourns
ARCHÉ
Can Greece still ‘speak’ what is proper to it and claim us, the people of today, as listeners to its language, we, the people of an age whose world is throughout pervaded by the force and artificiality of the ramifications of the enframing (Ge-Stell)? [10, S]
The historical future of the age will be decided by whether its relationship to the beginning will remain in oblivion or will become a recollective thinking.
The journey to Greece must contain the course of such a reflection, if it is not to become mostly an entertaining and instructive trip. [38, s]
During the return to the bay, I came to realise that with the unthoughtful assault of tourism an alien power enforces its own commands and regulations over ancient Greece. It also became clear, however, that one would evade the issue, were he not willing to pay attention to the tourist activity that leaves us with no choice, by focussing instead on the chasm between a ‘here’ and a ‘now’ and by acknowledging the destiny that here dominates.
The irresistible modern technology together with the scientific industrialisation of the world is about to obliterate any possibility of a sojourn.[55-56, S]
When at the last evening after the sailing from the bay of Dubrovnik the red glowing sun sunk into the sea, some dolphins escorted our boat for a while. This was Greece’s last greeting.
As the cup of Exekias, where the dolphins with gliding leaps swim around Dionysus’s vessel driven by the wind, rests within the boundaries of the most beautiful creation, so too the birthplace of Occident and modern age, secure in its own island-like essence, remains in the recollective thinking of the sojourn. [57, S]
Cover with image of the cup of Exakias, held in the State Collection of Antiques in Munich