Martin Heidegger's 1942 lecture course interprets Friedrich Holderlin's hymn "The Ister" within the context of Holderlin's poetic and philosophical work, with particular emphasis on Holderlin's dialogue with Greek tragedy. Revealing of Heidegger's thought of the period are his discussions of the meaning of "the political" and "the national," in which he emphasizes the difficulty and the necessity of finding "one's own" in and through a dialogue with "the foreign."