In his essay on Hölderlin's poem "Poetically is Dwelling Man" ("...dichterisch wohnet der Mensch...") (1) Heidegger writes that any poetic dwelling on earth is determined by dreaming and not by action. Instead of acting, poets dream ("statt zu wirken, träumen sie"). Dwelling (wohnen) takes place between earth and sky but it does not consist of a realistic measuring of the space that extends itself between both. For Heidegger, a dreamlike moment enters into the process of perception of the space between earth and sky, and this moment of dream transforms perception itself into a "dwelling." Is it therfore possible to say that Heidegger's space which is not "measured" is a "dreamt space"? To answer this question, we will first need to specify the quality of this dream. The dream of space between earth and sky is the dream of "something," that is of a quantity known before it is dreamt. This is important and flows out of Heidegger's suggestion that the "dreamers of space" are poets. "Dreamlike desires" do not really help the poet since his aim is not simply to "dream" a world that is the world of his desires. What he wants is to see the "real" world in a dreamlike way: and only in this way can his seeing become his dwelling. The "non-poetic" or "non-creative" dreamer who only dreams what he intimately "wants" to dream, on the other hand, creates a picturesque "world of his dreams" or perhaps an idyll. He will never dream (create) a world that is limited by earth and by sky. Heidegger is aware of the negative side of "dreamworlds" when making - in a Nietzschean way - a derogatory remark about the "idyllic use" of poetry by modern, so-called "cultured" people. The same things are true for their use of space.

Real cultural space must be "gedichted" or also "dreamt." Elsewhere, in the essay "The Thing," (2) Heidegger explains that space should be seen as a "world" or as a "Geviert," that is as a self-sufficient entity which is neither explainable nor foundable on anything but itself (p. 172ff). The parallel which exists between the aforementioned idea of a "cultural space" and dream is maintained here. The world is a dream world founded on nothing but itself, which means that this world is not even founded on desires. The "world" that extends itself between earth and sky is an "aesthetic dream" by definition.

If we consider this thought further, we see that it actually corresponds with a certain idea of "dreamlike space." It is only through a "poetic dreaming" that man is able to "outwit himself" and to abandon, at least for a while, the measuring regard which he normally considers as his typically human, "inborn" capacity; this regard clings to his subjective as well as to his objective ways of "seeing the world." Only the poet and the dreamer (that is the real dreamer and not the Wunschträumer) live beyond both subjectivism and objectivism, and for this reason they can accept those things which appear strange to others as completely normal. The poet and the dreamer do not try to "correct" the space within which they see things according to certain subjective or objective criteria. Their perception surpasses the "all too human" ways of seeing the world, be it the objective or the subjective one. The self-sufficient world that is to be perceived, this space between earth and sky, even at moments where it appears as extremely strange, is accepted as normal. It is not the poet but the scientist with his measuring eye who "alienates" or "estranges" the world no matter how much he insists that he only "normalizes" it. In this way the scientifically measured space is estranged. The self-sufficient world of the "Geviert," however, as long as it is really dreamt, is neither strange nor "normal" but only "what it is." And this is the way in which the dreaming poet perceives it.

Heidegger also analyzes the role of "strangeness" (das Fremde) within his philosophical reflections on the phenomenon of space deployed in his essay on Hölderlin. Here he becomes poetical himself: "Das dichtende Sagen der Bilder versammelt Helle und Hall der Himmelsrichtungen in Eines mit dem Dunkel und dem Schweigen des Fremden. Durch solche Anblicke befremdet der Gott. In der Befremdung bekundet er seine unablässige Nähe." ("...dichterisch..." p. 195) We note that the Be-fremdung is caused here through a Ver-fremdung , this means through what we might call a modem alienation effect, because it is not even felt as fremd (strange). On the contrary, it is through the effect of strangeness that things are felt as "close" (nah).

Of course, the event that "takes place" between earth and sky that Heidegger must have thought of is the landscape. The landscape is not only made of earth (though a scientist - a geologist - could, of course, say the contrary). For Heidegger it is the poetic, aesthetic landscape that is an event, taking place between earth and sky. How particular the status of landscape is in aesthetics, we understand if we remember that Hegel established in his Ästhetik the idea of "beauty" as an intermediary state between a Rousseauist idyll and a state of generalized civilization ("Die Idee des Schönen"). An idea of self-sufficiency clings to the landscape. This emphasizes my point that the absolutely non-prejudiced state of being of the very space which extends itself between earth and sky, can best be perceived through a certain dreamlike vision. Bachelard says that "with aesthetic passion we see only landscapes that we have first seen in dream." 3 The landscape is civilization but it does not need, as civilization does, a reason in order to be. It participates, as says Anne Cauquelin, "in nature's eternity, this means in that which has always been there before man, and which will still be there after him." 4 In this sense the landscape is a substance.

What enters through Heidegger and through Cauquelin into the discussion on landscape is the problem of the chôra , of the place, this means of that non-reality born out of reflections on problems which exist only in a spiritual world, this means in a world in which neither idyllism nor scientific measures can subsist. The landscape as an aesthetic phenomenon is a place, a chôra , for the simple reason that its character is more spiritual than positive. One can express the same thing by saying that the landscape is not an empty and closed space with eventual openings on each side, 5 that it is not a space within which we can perceive things, but that it is a thing itself. If all things are, as Heidegger says in his essay "Art and Space," places, 6 is then the landscape not one typical representative of the Heideggerian "thing"? Of course, we had already suspected this while thinking about the world and the "Geviert." The question now is how this thing can be perceived if the place (or the landscape) can neither be described by a subjective ("idyllic") observer, nor be told (through discourse), nor be conceptualized by means of philosophy.

Jean-Marc Ghitti says that places would be "played by thoughts." 7 This might point towards a solution. Similarly, Bachelard has insisted on the difference between perceptions of abstract spaces and perceptions of "thingly matter." In particular, Bachelard points to the "advantage of a specialized Einfühlung (empathy), of an Einfühlung which fuses with matter rather than getting dispersed in a differentiated universe." 8 For Bachelard there is a way to avoid the perception of an abstract (realist or idealist) space in order to "feel" space as if it were a concrete matter. What is necessary is an aesthetic perception able to perceive space like a thing, like matter. This is a perception that can take place best in a dream. Space can become aesthetic through a dreamlike perception.

I have said that the landscape is perhaps not nature but like nature because it is self-sufficient. Nature is self-sufficient in the sense that it does not even need a dreamer (who would create a dream world) in order to exist; nature dreams itself. Likewise can be explained the difference between nature and civilization: civilization is dreamt by man, whereas nature is its own self-sufficient dream. The landscape as an aesthetic problem needs to be considered on the grounds of this analysis of the phenomenon of dream.

Perhaps this can best be understood when comparing the landscape and the city. Often man likes to "idyllize" nature by making of it a "dreamy object" of his desires instead of dreaming it poetically. Civilization can undergo the same process. As matter of fact, it is not the "big city" which will become idyllic but the small village. The small city or the village can be man's dream; the nostalgic, "subjective" man likes to go through "his" city like through a dream. The problem is that it is his dream and not the dream of the city itself. It is the dream caused by his personal desires and his childhood memories. The capacity to "dream" is even accelerated through a division of the city into smaller sub-units. Then man dreams of his district, his quarter, his street. However, "the dream" in the way it has been designed above should exclude all such elements of subjective reveries.

We understand this when we consider that the function of the dream is fundamentally different when concerning "big cities." One reason for this is that big cities are more like landscapes which means that they seem to be dreaming themselves. Everybody agrees that no big city can be our dream, because everything that takes place in these "townscapes" is too unforeseeable, too surprising as that it could have its root in our subjective desires. The city is a collective dream and this obliges us to be aware at any moment of an infinite number of unforeseeable coincidences. The city is no longer a personal "reverie" but it looks much more like a "real" dream, far removed from the Wunschtraum that is the idyll. Furthermore, the dream of the city can be watched and admired, making one thing especially clear: dreaming has the status of vision. Since the dream of the city does not flow out of our personal desires, the city is necessarily a dream that we perceive. And in this way the city becomes also a place for dwelling.

One has said that Heidegger's philosophy would smell of earth and certain ideas concerning the earth-like character of his philosophy were sometimes pronounced along the lines of an ethical criticism. This criticism was "ethical" because one thought that any preference for the earth, especially for "one's earth" would imply a refusal of the city, that is a refusal of the place of human social relations which, important as they are, should have a determining effect on the thinking of any philosopher. At times one has also liked to impute Heidegger, because of his distance towards the social component of human existence, an idyllic attitude towards human culture. However, whatever it was which led Heidegger into an obvious state of urbanophobia - it was not his love for the "earth" alone. Nothing can justify the argument that the smell of earth does necessarily lead to idyllic reveries that overlap completely with those reveries dreamt in particularly small communities. The "smell of earth can also lead to the great dream of nature itself. This is an idea which I would like to explore with the help of another "thinker."