MARTIN HEIDEGGER AND SHIN'ICHI HISAMATSU Translated by Carolyn Culbertson and Tobias KeilingHisamatsu:1 I would like to give a heartfelt thanks to you for the direction of the colloquium yesterday afternoon which you undertook despite your many obligations. Also I would like to thank you for your hospitality.Heidegger: There were people there from many different disciplines, so it was not entirely simple.Hisamatsu: I enjoyed the many different conversations.Heidegger: For such a colloquium, one would need several days.Hisamatsu: That is right. There are really many difficult questions embedded within this topic. Which areas did the people present yesterday come from?Heidegger: Mr. Brose2 is the chairman of the art club.3 Actually, he is a jurist. Thirty-three years ago, he came to one of my lectures.Hisamatsu: Does he himself also paint?Heidegger: No, he himself does not paint. He keeps busy with the organization of the art club, engaging with the theory of painting and promoting young artists. The well-known abstract painter, Spiller,4 was also there.Hisamatsu: Was he not with Paul Klee?Heidegger: Klee was a professor of painting at the Bauhaus.Hisamatsu: Klee is also famous in Japan.Heidegger: Spiller was acquainted with Paul Klee.Hisamatsu: I have also seen some of Klee's paintings.Heidegger: Which did you see? I regard Paul Klee higher [hoher] than Picasso. In my view, Paul Klee is a more important [bedeutenderer] painter than Picasso.Hisamatsu: Did Alcopley5 have ties to Klee?Heidegger: I do not know whether he had ties with him or not. They certainly appear to me to be similar in ways, but Paul Klee died in 1940.-Spiller is the editor of this book (Paul Klee: Leben und Werk).6 He will probably come here tonight, too. This image (a picture of Jisho-ji temple) was brought to me by the director of the shipping company Bremer Lloyd from Japan.Hisamatsu: Here is the Togu-ji temple, called the Togudo. The first Japanese tea room can be found in it. One could say that the Japanese way of tea began at the Ginkaku-ji temple.7 The shogun Yoshimasa commissioned Shuko Murata to initiate the way of tea.Heidegger: This is a collection of Klee's works that appeared a short time ago.8Hisamatsu: This is really a magnificent book. This picture has something Eastern [Ostliches] to it. The picture, Die Schnecke [The Snail], is my favorite.9 Which of Klee's pictures do you like?Heidegger: Hmmm, I like the drawing Silbermond [SilverMoon].10 Have you ever traveled to Bern? Klee's son lives in Bern and has many of his works.Tsujimura: Unfortunately, we have only passed by Bern on train.Heidegger: Too bad! But you have still seen a lot if you have seen the Jungfrau [im Baum] [ Virgin in the Tree] and others before coming here.Hisamatsu: This picture is good. Its color has sabi. And the lines have nothing artificial to them.Heidegger: I also like this painting. The original can be found in Bern. It is called Heilige aus einem Fenster [Saint from a Window].12 Klee created this painting during the last years of his life as well.Hisamatsu: It somehow has something of Japanese calligraphy to it.Heidegger: Yes, that is right. Klee was also an important musician. He is said to have remarked that the true masters are Mozart and Beethoven.Hisamatsu: I would like to hear something about your newest thoughts.Heidegger: I have new thoughts but they are not yet fully prepared. I have certainly written them down but have not yet presented them. Really I can only advance step by step very slowly. That relates to the problem of language. Something of this new thinking became part of the lecture that I just gave.13 It forms the background of the lecture, but is not said in it clearly and distinctly. I would like to move beyond the prejudices we have about language. The Western prejudice of conceiving of language grammatically is under the sway [Herrschaft] of not only Aristotelian but also Greek ontology. …