Intellectually a year of profound gloom until that wonderful night in March, at the end of the pier, in the high wind, when suddenly I saw the whole thing. The turning-point at last. This, I imagine, is what I have chiefly to set down this evening, against the day when my work will be done and perhaps no place in my memory, and no thankfulness, for the miracle- (pause)- for the fire that set it alight. What I saw was the assumption I had been going on all my life, namely -(He switches off machine impatiently, winds tape forward, switches on again)-granite rocks the foam flying up in the light of the beacon and the anemometer spinning like a propeller, clear to me at last that the dark I have struggled to keep at bay out of my work is in reality my most valuable- (He curses, switches off, winds tape forward, switches on again)- strange association till my dying day of the storm and night with the light of understanding and the- (He curses louder, switches off, winds tape forward, switches on again. (No Symbols Where None Intended, p 49-50).)

Notes:

a) For ‘at the end of the pier’, see Joyce: “Kingstown pier, Stephen said. Yes, a disappointed bridge. The words troubled their gaze.” (Ulysses, Nestor)

b) A bridge is analog, a pier, digital.

c) The ‘disappointed’ ‘pier’ rather than the ‘bridge’ is emphasized by Beckett through the device of telling the tale on a tape which is repeatedly switched on and off.

d) For the final version of this text, see The space of the door 3

…beide zusammen, die begriffene Geschichte, bilden die Erinnerung und die Schädelstätte des absoluten Geistes, die Wirklichkeit, Wahrheit und Gewißheit seines Throns, ohne den er das leblose Einsame wäre; nur – ‘aus dem Kelche dieses Geisterreiches / schäumt ihm seine Unendlichkeit.’

Heidegger decidely does not read Hegel to be saying at this decisive point that ‘only’ humans supply consciousness and subjectivity to a universe otherwise lacking these esteemed commodities. Nor does he take the opposite tact (also common in Hegel interpretation) that consciousness has nothing to do with human being, is inherently divine, but has somehow become alienated (as one says) in history. It therefore has to be returned, or to return itself, to its Proper Owner. This occurs, it is supposed, ‘only’ through a ludicrously complicated process culminating in Hegel’s brain (so that Hegel is read as thinking himself into his own self-identity as God).

Instead of these ridiculous and utterly gnostic (but pervasive and influential) readings, Heidegger takes Hegel, properly, to be saying that finite spirit marks that extreme ex-pression of the divine that culminates in the cross (Schädelstätte des absoluten Geistes). As Hegel remarks at the start of the ‘Vorrede’ to the Phänomenologie:

“Die Kraft des Geistes ist nur [!] so groß als ihre Äußerung, seine Tiefe nur [!] so tief, als er in seiner Auslegung sich auszubreiten und sich zu verlieren getraut.”

Here is commentary from Heidegger:

Nur die Kälte der Kuhnheit des Denkens und die Nacht der Irre des Fragens leihen dem Feuer des Seyns Glut und Licht. (Beiträge, GA 65, S 430)

Der Mensch ist eigentlich dieser Bezug der Entsprechung [dem Sein], und er ist nur dies. “Nur” – dies meint keine Beschränkung, sondern ein Übermaß. ID 18

As Heidegger makes clear in these texts, it is not light which humans introduce into history, but darkness (die Schädelstätte). This dark is, however, not only a limitation (Beschränkung), but is at the same time a many-sided fullness (Übermaß) showing, eg, the range of the possibilities to which Dasein is exposed, as well (and first of all) as the extreme Enteignis des Seins (objective and subjective genitive). Heidegger’s point in regard to Sein (Seyn/Sein) is exactly that of Hegel in regard to Geist:

“Die Kraft des Geistes [Seins] ist nur so groß als ihre Äußerung, seine Tiefe nur so tief, als er [es] in seiner Auslegung sich auszubreiten und sich zu verlieren getraut.”

T S Eliot to Conrad Aiken, Aug 21, 1916