17Truth here is not a state of affairs but an occurring: the disclosure, the bringing into
the open. This disclosure is never final or definitive. There is a continual play between
the concealed and the unconcealed that can be observed by anyone who is suffi-
ciently open and receptive.^20
In “Building, Dwelling, Thinking,” it is said that only the person who takes up
a position of cherishing and sparing knows how to dwell and hence how to build.
Dwelling, according to Heidegger, does not stem from building, but the other way
round: true building is grounded in the experience of true dwelling. “Building,” after
all, means that a place is brought into being where the four dimensions that surround
dwelling are made tangible, a place where the fourfold is gathered. “Building”
means to make a place out of undifferentiated space, where the earth appears as
earth, the heaven as heaven, the divinities as divine and mortals as mortal. The na-
ture of building is letting dwell. It follows that “only if we are capable of dwelling, only
then can we build.”^21 As an example, Heidegger refers to a two-hundred-year-old
farmhouse in the Black Forest. Such a farmhouse is placed on the wind-sheltered
mountain slope looking south. An overhanging roof bears the snow and offers pro-
tection from storms. Indoors the altar corner is not forgotten, and there are appro-
priate places for the childbed and the laying out of the dead. The farmhouse thus
assembles the fourfold and bears witness to an earlier, authentic mode of dwelling.
But this does not yet resolve the question as to dwelling at present. Heideg-
ger continues:What is the state of dwelling in our precarious age? On all sides we hear
talk about the housing shortage, and with good reason.... However
hard and bitter, however hampering and threatening the lack of houses
remains, the real plight of dwellingdoes not lie merely in the lack of
houses.... The real plight lies in this, that mortals ever search anew for
the nature of dwelling, that they must ever learn to dwell.^22In another essay from the same year, “Poetically Man Dwells,” Heidegger refines
the theme of dwelling by linking it with the poetic. He makes an analogy between au-
thentic dwelling, preserving the fourfold, and poetry. Poetry he characterizes as tak-
ing measure. This measuring has nothing to do with a scientific activity, for it relates
to a very specific dimension. The poet, after all, takes measure of the “between” that
brings together heaven and earth, divinities and mortals. It is a question of measur-
ing in the strict sense of the word: the measuring that indicates a measure for the
scope of “being,” the measuring that extends to the unveiling of the fourfold.
The essay ends on a similar note to the first: “Do wedwell poetically? Pre-
sumably we dwell altogether unpoetically.”^23 Heidegger suggests that this unpoetic
dwelling results from our inability to take measure, from our being cursed with a cal-
culating measuring that does not suffice for a genuine meting out. Authentic
dwelling is nonetheless inseparably linked with the poetic: “The poetic is the basic16