La struttura dell’iki e l’ascolto dell’essere.: Riflessioni sul linguaggio tra Shuzo Kuki e Martin Heidegger

Abstract

This essay aims to establish the possibility of a dialogue between different linguistic and aesthetic experiences: are Western culture and Japanese culture able to grasp the same essence of language and of artistic experience? Is there a profound identity, typical of every culture, that renders a genuine dialogue between civilizations impossible? This article will attempt to answer these basic questions by analysing Heidegger’s essay entitled Between a Japanese and an Inquirer, contained in the collection of writings On the Way to Language. This dialogue involves Heidegger (the “Inquirer”) and Tomio Tezuka (the “Japanese”) and starts with a reference to the Japanese notion of iki. The first part of this essay is therefore dedicated to the analysis of this concept, which is described in Shūzō Kuki’s masterpiece The structure of iki. In the second part, the article refers to Heidegger’s distinction between verbal language and language as the “house of being”. Through investigating pivotal notions such as hermeneutics, Lichtung, alétheia, and the “ringing of silence” (Geläut der Stille), the final goal of the essay is to explore the possibility of a common listening to the language of being beyond any cultural difference. The conclusion will show how in the Japanese expression Koto ba and in the German expression Die Sage the silent essence of the preverbal language seems to shine almost in the same way for the “Japanese” as for the “Inquirer”.