In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

BEING-IN-THE-WORLDS OF 1926 441
now inclined to distance himself from the academic world of Marburg
and to idealize the solitude of his cabin. In a letter of December 22 to
Elisabeth Blochmann, a family friend, he plays out this contrast and its
meaning for what he still considered an unfinished manuscript:
It would be appropriate for this letter to come from the cabin; it should
be written when the beech-logs are crackling on the fire and a thick cap
of snow lies on the roof, and the quiet solitude of the mountains is
intensified by the snow-covered landscape. Instead, here I sit [in Marburg]
working on the transitional chapter. The usual obligations during
the semester deprived me of the necessary concentration. The vacation
will bring the project to a close before the end of the year ... On
January first, I will go to Heidelberg, where I will stay with Jaspers until
the tenth. I'm looking forward to philosophizing, not only in soliloquy
and in contact with history, but face-to-face with him. 19
It is not perfectly clear which part of the manuscript Heidegger was
referring to as the "transition chapter. "20 The final paragraph of the
published version had already gone to the printer in early November. He
was probably working on an introduction to a passage entitled "Time
and Being,"21 which he envisioned as the third section of the book's first
part. That he would not immediately-or indeed ever-continue beyond
the second section was the result of the discussions with Jaspers, which
Heidegger mentions in his Christmas letter to Elisabeth Blochmann.22
These discussions were overshadowed by a sad event that occurred in
late 1926: "The decision to discontinue publication took shape on the
day we received news of Rilke's death."23 Sein und Zeit finally appeared
in April 1927-and indeed turned out to be the immediate and overwhelming
success that Heidegger's Marburg colleagues and, even more
so, Edmund Husserl had always predicted. The year 1927 was thus a
good one for Heidegger, bringing him belated but important rewards. In
October, he was appointed to a full professorship at Marburg, but this
promotion to the rank of Ordinarius did not change his prejudice against
the town and its university. The damage had been done. He had soured
on the place. Less than twelve months later he was offered an appointment
at Freiburg as Husserl's successor, and by the winter semester of
1928-1929 he was teaching at his alma mater again.