Heidegger (VII) - The Ode on Man in Sophocles' Antigone

«There is much that is strange, but nothing

That surpasses man in strangeness.

He sets sail on the frothing waters

Amid the south winds of winter

Tacking through the mountains

And furious chasms of the waves.

He wearies even the noblest

Of the gods, the Earth,

Indestructible and untiring,

Overturning her from year to year,

Driving the plows this way and that

With horses.

And man, pondering and plotting,

Snares the light-gliding birds

And hunts the beast of the wilderness

And the native creatures of the sea.

With guile he overpowers the beast

That roams the mountains by night as by day,

He yokes the hirsute neck of the stallion

And the undaunted bull.

And he has found his way

To the resonance of the word,

And to wind-swift all-understanding,

And to the courage of rule over the cities.

He has considered also how to flee

From exposure to the arrows

Of unpropious weather and frost.

Every journeying, inexperienced and without issue,

He comes to nothingness.

Through no flight can be resist

The one assault ot death,

Even if he has succeeded in cleverly evading

Painful sickness.

Clever indeed, mastering

The ways of skill beyond all hope,

He sometimes accomplishes evil,

Sometimes achieves brave deeds.

He wends his way between the laws of the earth

And de adjured justice of the gods.

Rising high above his place,

He who for the sake of adventure takes

The nonessent for essent loses

His place in the end.

May such a man never  frequent my hearth;

May my mind never share the presumption

Of him who does this».

HEIDEGGER, M. The Ode on Man in Sophocles’ Antigone.

An Introduction to Metaphysics. Yale University Press.