Harper & Row Editions of

MARTI HEIDEGGER

Basi ' Writings

Being and Time

Discourse on Thinking

Early Greek Thinking

The End of Philo ophy

Hegel's Concept of Experienc

Identitv and DifferenceI

i tzs he: Volume I, The Will to Power as Art

ietzsche: olurne IV, ihilism

On the Way to Language

On 'r ime and Being

Po try. Language, Thought

Th Que tion Concerning Technology and Other Essays

What Is Call d Thinking?

MARTI HEIDEGGER

ON THE WAY TOLA GUAGE

Translated by PETER D. H ERTZ

PERENNIAL LI RARVCD

Harper & Row, PublishersNew York, Cambridge, Philadelphia, San FranciscoLondon, Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Singapore, Sydney

77 -124708AACR2

Originally published by Ve rlag Gunther eske, Pfullingen , under thetitle nt rw e s zur Sp rac h , copyright 1959 by Verlag Gunther

e he.

o . THE WAY TO L ANG ' AGE . Copyright 1971 in the Engli h transla­tion by Harper & R ow, Publishers, In c. All rights reserved. Printed inthe nited State of America. 0 part of this book may be used or repro­duced in any man ner II hatsoeuer unthout ioritt n permission except in thecase of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Forinformation address Harper & Row, Publishers, lnc. , 10 East 53rd Street,

eu York, .Y. 10022. Published simultaneous ly in Canada by Fitz-henry & V.'hiteside Limited, Toronto.

First Harper & R Oll paperback edition publi hed in 1982.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Heidegger, M artin, 1889-1 976.On the way to lan guage.

Translation of: Unterioegs zur Sprache.Include bibliographical ref erences.I. Languages - Philosophy. I. Tille.

PI06.H3613 1982 401ISB ~ 0-06-063859- 1 (pbk.)

88 89 90 10 9 8 7 6

CO TE TS

A DIALOGUE 0 LA GUAGE1

THE ATURE OF LA GUAGE

57

l "HE WAY TO LA GUAGE111

WORDS

(Translated by Joan tambau h)

IS9

LA GUAGE I THE POE [A Discussion on Georg Trakl's Poetic Work

159 /

REFERE CES199

A DIALOGUE ON LANGUAGE

A DIALOGUE 0 LA GUAGE

i hida wrote his epitaph­thi upreme tribute to hi

between a Japane e and an Inquirer

Japanese: You know Count huzo Kuki. He studied with youfor a number of years.

Inquirer: Count Kuki ha a lastin 11a e in nlY memo '.

J: He died too early. His teacherfor over a year he worked onpu pil.

/: I am happy to have photo raphs of Kuki's grave and of thegrove in whi hit lies.

[: Yes, I know the temple arden in Kyoto, Man of nIY friendoften join me to vi it the tomb ther , The garden was e tab­lished toward the end of the tw lfth century by the priestHonen, on the eastern hill of what was then the Imp rialci t of Kyoto, a a pia for refl rt ion and deep meditation.

/: nd ' 0 , that temple ro\, remains the fittin place for himwho died early.

J: · II hi ' reflection was devoted to what the Japane e call l ki.

1

2 ON THE WAY TO LANGUAGE

I: In my dialogues with Kuki, I never had more than a distantinkling of what that word says.

]: Later, after his return from Europe, Count Kuki gave lec­tures in Kyoto on the aesthetics of Japanese art and poetry.These lectures have come out as a book. In the book, heattempts to consider the nature of Japanese art with thehelp of European aesthetics.

I: But in such an attempt, may we turn to aesthetics?

]: Why not?

I: The name "aesthetics" and what it names grow out ofEuropean thinking, out of philosophy. Consequently, aes­thetic consideration must ultimately remain alien to East­a ian thinking.

]: You are righ t, no doubt. Yet we Japanese have to call onaesthetics to aid us.

I: With what?

]: Ae thetics furnishes us with the concepts to grasp what is ofconcern to us as art and poetry.

I: Do you need concepts?

]: Pre umably yes, because since the encounter with Europeanthinking, there has come to light a certain incapacity in ourlanguage.

I: In what way?

]: It lacks the delimiting power to represent objects related inan unequivocal order above and below each other.

I: Do you seriously regard this incapacity as a deficiency ofyour language?

]: Considering that the encounter of the Eastasian with theEuropean world ha become inescapable, your question cer­tainly calls for searching reflection.

A DIALOG E 0 LA GAGE 3

I: Here you are touching on a controversial question which Ioften discussed with Count Kuki-the question whether it inecessary and rightful for Eastasians to chase after theEuropean conceptual systems.

I: In the face of modern technicalization and industrializationof every continent, there would eern to be no escape anylonger.

I: You speak cautiously, you ay "... would seem ..."

I: Indeed. For the possibility still always remains that, seenfrom the point of view of our Eastasian existence, the tech­nical world which s\ eeps us along must confine itself tosurface matters, and ... that ...

I: ... that for this reason a true encounter with Europeanexistence is still not taking place, in spite of all assimila­tions and intermixtures.

I: Perhap cannot take place.

I: Can ,..'e assert thi 0 unconditionall ?

I: I would be the last to venture it, else I should not have cometo Germany. But I have a constant ens of dan er whichCount Kuki, too, ould obviously not overcome.

I: " hat danger are you thinking of?

I: hat we will let oursel es be led a tray by the wealth ofconcept which the spirit of the European languages has instore, and will look down upon what claims our existence,as on something that i va ue and arnorphou .

I: Yet a far greater danger thr aten . It oncern both of us; itis all the more menacing just b being more in onspicuous.

I: Ho\v?

I: The danger is threatening from a region where we do notsuspect it, and which i et pre i sel the region where wewould have to experience it.

4 ON THE WAY TO LANGUAGE

]: You have, then, experienced it already; otherwise you couldnot point it out.

/: I am far from having experienced the danger to its fullextent, but I have sensed it-in my dialogues with CountKuki.

]: Did you speak with him about it?

1: No. The danger arose from the dialogues themselves, in thatthey were dialogues.

]: I do not understand what you mean.

/: Our dialogues were not formal, scholarly discussions. When­ever that sort of thing seemed to be taking place, as in theseminars, Count Kuki remained silent. The dialogues ofwhich I am thinking came about at my house, like a spon­taneous game. Count Kuki occasionally brought his wifealong who then wore festive Japanese garments. They madethe Eastasian world more luminously present, and the dan­ger of our dialogues became more clearly visible.

]: I still do not understand what you mean.

/: The danger of our dialogues was hidden in language itself,not in what we discussed, nor in the way in which we triedto do so.

]: But Count Kuki had uncommonly good command of Ger­man, and of French and English, did he not?

I: Of course. He could say in European languages whateverwas under discussion. But we were discussing Ihi; and hereit was I to whom the spirit of the .Japanese language re­mained closed-as it is to this day.

1: The languages of the dialogue shifted everything intoEuropean.

I: Yet the dialogue tried to say the essential nature of East­asian art and poetry.

A DIALOGUE ON LANGUAGE 5

I: Now I am beginning to understand better where you smellthe danger. The language of the dialogue constantly de­stroyed the possibility of saying what the dialogue wasabout.

I: Some time ago I called language, clumsily enough, thehouse of Being. If man by virtue of his language dwellswithin the claim and call of Being, then we Europeans pre­sumably dwell in an entirely different house than Eastasianman.

I: Assuming that the languages of the two are not merely dif­ferent but are other in nature, and radically so.

I: And so, a dialogue from house to house remains nearlyimpossible.

J: You are right to say "nearly." For still it was a dialogue­and, I should think, an exciting one, because Count Kuki,in the workshops he held with us at Kyoto University, cameback again and again to those dialogues with you. Mostoften it happened when we pressed him in our effort tounderstand more clearly the reason that had prompted himat that time to go to Germany to study with you. Yourbook Being and Time had then not yet been published.But after the First World War several Japanese profes­sors, among them our revered Professor Tanabe, went toHusserl, in Freiburg, to study phenomenology with him.That is how my compatriots carne to know you in person.

I: It was just as you said. In those days I, as Husserl's assistant,regularly once a week read Husserl's first major work, theLogical Investigations, with the gentlemen from Japan. Bythat time the master himself no longer held his work in veryhigh esteem; it had been published around the turn of thecentury. But I had my own reasons to prefer the LogicalInvestigations for the purposes of an introduction to phe­nomenology..And the master generously tolerated my choice.

]: At the time-I believe it was in 1921-our professors attended

6 ON THE WAY TO LA GUAGE

a class you gave. They brought a transcript of it hac toJapan. The title, if I am not mistaken, was "Expression andAppearance."

/: That, in any event, was the title of the course. Yet ProfessorKuki must have had his special reasons for coming to me inMarhurg.

]: Indeed, and I believe these reasons trace back to that coursewhose transcri pt was also much discussed elsewhere inJapan.

/: Transcripts are muddy sources, of course; what is more, thecourse was most imperfect. Yet there was quickening in itthe attempt to walk a path of which I did not know where itwould lead. I knew only the most immediate short-rangeper pectives along that path, because they beckoned to meunceasingly, while the horizon shifted and darkened morethan once.

]: y ompatriot must indeed have ensed some of that.ain and again it was said that your questions circled

around the problem of language and of Being.

1: In fact, thi was not too difficult to di cern; for as early as1915, in the title of my dissertation "Duns Scotus' Doctrineof Categories and Theory of leaning," the two perspectivescame into view: "doctrine of categorie "i the usual nameof the di cu ion of the Bein of beings: "theory of mean­ing" means the gra m m atica speculation , the metaphysicalreflection on langu age in its relation to Being. But all theserelationshi ps were then still unclear to me.

]: \\ hi his why yo II kep t silen t for twel ve years.

I: nd I dedicated Being and Tinle, which appeared in 192 7,to Hu erl, becau e phenomenolo y pre en ted us with possi­bilitie of a wave,

J: till, it eerns to III • that the fundamental theme, "Languageand Being," rayed there in the background.

A DIALOGUE 0 LANGUAGE 7

1: It did stay there even in the course you mentioned, of 1921.The same held true also of the question of poetry, and ofart. In those days of expressionism, these realms were con­stantly before me-but even more, and already since mystudent days before the First World War, was the poeticwork of Holderlin and Trakl. And still earlier, during mylast years in the Gymnasium-to give a date, in the summerof 1907-1 came up against the question of Being, in thedissertation of Hus errs teacher Franz Brentano. Its title is"On the manifold meaning of being according to Aristotle";it dates from 1862. The book came to me as a gift from nlYfatherly friend and fellow Swabian, Dr. Conrad Grober,later to become archbishop of Freiburg. Then he was vicarof Trinity Church in Constance.

J: Do you still have the book?

1: Here it is for you to 100 at, and to read the inscriptionwhich runs: "My fir t guide through Greek philosophy inmy Gymnasium days." I am telling you all this, but not inorder to give the impression that I already new theneverything that I am still asking today. But perhaps thereis confirmation here for you-swho as professor of Germanliterature love and know Holderlin's work particularlywell-of a phrase of that poet which begins in the fourthstanza of the hymn "The Rhine": "... For as you began,so you will remain."

]: The quest of language and of Being i perhaps a gift of thatlight ray which fell on you.

1: Who would have the audacity to claim that such a gift hascome to him? I only know one thing: because reflection onlanguage, and on Being, has determined my path of think­ing from early on, therefore their discussion has stayed asfar as possible in the background. The fundamental flaw ofthe book Being and Time is perhaps that I ventured forthtoo far too early.

8 o THE \YAY TO L GUAGE

J: That can hardly be said of your thoughts on language.

I: True, less so, for it was all of twenty years after my doctoraldissertation that I dared discuss in a class the question oflanguage. It was at that same time that I, in class, madepublic my first interpretations of Holderlin's hymns. In thesummer serne ter of 1934, I offered a lecture series underthe title "Logic." In fact, however, it was a reflection onthe logos} in which I was trying to find the nature of lan­guage. Yet it took nearly another ten years before I wasable to say what I was thinking-the fitting word is stilllacking even today. The prospect of the thinking that laborsto answer to the nature of language is till veiled, in all itsvastness. This is why I do not yet see whether what I amtrying to think of as the nature of language is also adequatefor the nature of the Eastasian language; , hether in theend-swhich would also be the beginning-a nature of lan­guage can reach the thinking experience, a nature which\ ould off r the a surance that European-Western saying andEastasian saying will enter into dialogue such that in it thereings omething that wells up from a single source.

J: But a sourc that would then still remain con ealed fromboth language worlds.

1: That is what I mean. This i why your visit is especiallywelcome to me, Since you have already translated intoJapane e a Iew of Klei t's play, and orne of my lecture onHolderlin, you have a keener ear for the questions that Iaddres ed to your com patriots almo t thirty-five years ago.

J: You must not overestimate my abilities, especially sin e I,coming from Japanese I oetry, still find it difficult to respondto European po try in a way that does justice to its essen­tia I nature.

I: Even though the danger remains that is neees arily impliedin our u ing the German language for our dialo ue, I be­lieve that I have meanwhile learned a little more, so thatnow I can ask questions better than everal de ades a o.

A DIALOG E 0 L GAGE 9

J: At that time, my compatriots' dialogues with you after classwere taking a different direction.

/: Th refore I now ask you: what prompted the Japane eprofessors, and later in particular Count Kuki, to give pe­cial atten tion to that transcri pt?

J: I can report only of Kuki's explanations. They never didbecome fully clear to me; for, in characterizing your man­ner of thinking, he often invoked the terms "hermeneutics"and "hermeneutic."

/: As far as I remember, I first used those words in a latercourse, in the summer of 192 3. That was the time when Ibegan my fir t drafts of Being and Time.

J: In our judgment, Count Kuki did not succeed in explain­ing the terms satisfactorily, neither concern ing the mean­ing of the word nor re arding the sen e in which you werespeaking of a hermeneutic phenomenology. Ku i merelystre sed con tantly that the term wa to indicate a newdirection of phenomenology.

/: It Inay indeed have looked that way, In fact, however, Iwas concerned neither \ ith a direction in phenornenolo ynor, indeed, with an thing new, Quite the revers, I wastrying to think the nature of phenomenology in a n~ore

ori inary manner, 0 a to fit it in this \va} back into theplace that is properly it own within Western philosophy.

]: But why did you u e th e term "hermeneutic"?

I: The an wer i given in the Introduction to Being and Time(Section jC, PI . 58 ff.). But I will gladly add a Iew remark "to di pel the illu ion that the lise of the term i accidental.

]: I re all that it was this illusion whi ch cau ed obje lion °

I: Th term "herrneneuti "\\'a Iamil iar to me from IllYtheological studies, At that time, I wa particularly agitatedover the question of the relation between the word of Holy

10 ON THE WAY TO LANGUAGE

lScripture and theological-speculative thinking. This rela-tion, between language and Being, was the same one, if youwill, only it was veiled and inaccessible to me, so thatthrough many deviations and false starts I sought in vainfor a guiding thread.

]: I know too little of Christian theology to comprehend whatyou refer to. But it is obvious that through your back­ground and your studies you are at home in theology in amanner totally different from those who come from out­side and merely pick up through reading a few things thatbelong in that area.

1: Without this theological background I should never havecome upon the path of thinking. But origin always comesto meet us from the future.

]: If the two call to each other, and reflection makes its homewithin that calling . . .

I: ... and thus becomes true presence.-Later on, I met theterm "hermeneutic" again in Wilhelm Dilthey, in his theoryof the History of Ideas. Dilthey's familiarity with herme­neutics came from that same source, his theological studiesand especially his work on Schleiermacher.

]: As far as I am informed by philology, hermeneutics is ascience that deals with the goals, ways, and rules of theinterpretation of literary works.

I: It developed first and formatively in conjunction with theinterpretation of the Book of books, the Bible. There is alecture by Schleiermacher that was published posthumouslyfrom his manuscripts under the title "Hermeneutics andCriticism, with special reference to the ew Testament"(1838). I have it here, and shall read you the first twosentences from the "General Introduction":

Hermeneutics and criticism, both philological disciplines, bothmethodologies, belong together, because the practice of each

A DIALOGUE ON LANGUAGE 11

presupposes the other. The first is in general the art of under­standing rightly another man's language, particularly hiswritten language; the second, the art of judging rightly thegenuinene~of written works and passages, and to establi h it onthe strength of adequate evidence and data.

]: Accordingly, the word "hermeneutics," broadened in theappropriate sense, can mean the theory and methodologyfor every kind of interpretation, including, for example,tha t of works of the visual arts.

I: Quite.

]: Do you use the term in this broad sense?

I: If I may stay within the style of your question, I have toanswer: In Being and Time, the term "hermeneutics" isused in a still broader sense, "broader" here meaning, how­ever, not the mere extension of the same meaning over astill larger area of appplication. "Broader" is to say: inkeeping with that vastness which springs from originarybeing. In Being and Time, hermeneutics means neither thetheory of the art of interpretation nor interpretation itself,but rather the attempt first of all to define the nature ofinterpretation on hermeneutic grounds.

]: But what does "hermeneutic" mean then? I do not havethe audacity to yield to the suspicion which here suggestsitself, that you are now using the word "hermeneutic" will­fully. Be that as it may, what matters to me is to hear fromyour own lips an-if I may say so-authentic explanationof your use of the word; otherwise it will still not becomeclear what moved Count Kuki's reflections.

I: I shall be glad to do as you ask. Only, do not expect toomuch. For the matter is enigmatic, and perhaps we are notdealing with a matter at all.

]: Perhaps rather with a process.

I: Or with what-is-the-case. But such terms will quickly landus in inadequacies.

12 w·' o THE WAY TO LANGUAGE

]: But only if we already omehow have in view what oursaying would want to rea h.

I: It can hardly have escaped you that in my later writingsI no longer employ the term "hermeneutics."

]: You are said to have changed your standpoint.

/: I have left an earlier standpoint, not in order to exchangeit. for another one, but because even the former standpointwas merely a way-station along a way. The lasting elementin thin ing is the way. And ways of thinking hold withinthem that mysterious quality that we can walk them for­ward and backward, and that indeed only the \vay backwill lead us forward.

]: Obviou ly you do not mean "forward" in the sense of anadvance, but ... I have difficulty in finding the right word.

1: "Fore"-into that nearest nearness which we constantlyrush ahead of, and which strikes us as strange each timeanew when we catch sight of it.

]: And whi h we therefore quickly di Iniss again from view,to stay in read with what is familiar and profitable.

/: .While the nearness which we constantly overtake wouldra ther bring us back.

]: Back-ye , but back where?

1: Into what is beginning.

]: I find this difficult to understand, if I am to think in termsof what you have said about it in your writings up to now.

!: Even so, you have already pointed to it, when you spokeof the presen e that pring from the mutual calling oforigin and future.

]: As you nlay have surmised, I see more clearly as soon asI think in terms of our Japanese experience. But I am notcertain whether you have your eye on the same.

A DIALOGUE 0 LANGUAGE

I: That could prove itself in our dialogue.

I: We Japanese do not think it strange if a dialogue leavesundefined what is really intended, or even restores it backto the keeping of the undefinable.

I: That is part, I believe, of every dialogue that has turnedout well between thinking beings. As if of its own accord,it can take care that that undefinable something not onlydoes not slip away, but displays its gathering force evermore luminously in the course of the dialogue.

I: Our dialogues with Count Kuki probably failed to turn outso well. We younger men challenged him much too directlyto satisfy our thirst for handy information.

1: Thirst for knowledge and greed for explanations never leadto a thinking inquiry. Curiosity is always the concealedarrogance of a self-consciousness that banks on a self­invented ratio and its rationality. The will to know doesnot will to abide in hope before what is worthy of thought.

I: Thus we wanted to know in fact only how Europeanaesthetics might be suitable to give a higher clarity to whatendows our art and poetry with their nature.

I: And that would be?

I: e have for it the name I mentioned earlier: l ki.

1: How often did I hear that word on Kuki's lips, yet \ ithoutexperiencing what is said in it.

I: Ieanwhile, what you mean to sa with hermeneutics mustsomehow have illuminated I Ill' more brightly for CountKuki.

I: I sensed as much, but never could follow him in his insights.

I: You have already mentioned what prevented you: the lan­guage of the dialogue was European; but what was to beexperienced and to be thought was the Eastasian natureof .Ja panese art.

ON THE WAY TO L GUAGE

I: Whatever we spoke about was from the start forced overinto the sphere of European ideas.

]: What made you aware of that?

I: The manner in which Kuki explained the basic word 1hi.He spoke of sensuous radiance through whose lively delightthere breaks the radiance of something suprasensuous.

]: With that explanation, I believe, Kuki has hit on what weexperience in Japanese art.

I: Your experience, then, moves within the difference betweena sensuous and a suprasensuous world. This is the distinc­tion on which rests what has long been called Westernmetaphysics.

]: With this reference to the distinction that pervades meta­physics, you now touch the source of that danger of whichwe spoke. Our thinking, if I am allowed to call it that, doesknow omething similar to the meta physical distinction;but even 0 , the distinction itself and what it distinguishecannot be comprehended with Western metaphysical con­cepts. We say lro, that is, color, and say Ku, that is, empti­ness, the open, the sky. We say: without Iro, no Xu.

1: This seems to correspond exactly to what Western, that isto ay, metaphysical doctrine says about art when it repre­sents art aesthetically. The aistheton what can be perceivedby the senses, lets the noeton , the nonsensuous, shinethrough.

J: ow you will understand how great the temptation was forKuki to define I hi with the help of European aesthetics,that is, as you pointed out, define it metaphysically.

I: Even greater was and still is nlY fear that in this way the realnature of Eastasian art is obscured and shunted into 3

realm that is inappropriate to it.

J: I fully share your fear; for while I ro doe indeed name

A DIALOGUE 0 LANG AGE

color, it yet means essentially more than whatever is per­ceptible by the senses. Ku does indeed name emptiness andthe open, and yet it means essentially more than that whichis merely suprasensuous.

I: Your suggestions, which I can follow only from afar, in­crease my uneasiness. Even greater than the fear I men­tioned is the expectation within me that our conversation,which has gro\vn out of our memory of Count Kuki, couldturn out well.

]: You mean it could bring us nearer to what is unsaid?

I: That alone would give us an abundance to think on.

J: Why do you say "would"?

I: Because I now see still more clearly the danger that thelanguage of our dialogue might constantly destroy the possi­bility of saying that of which we are speaking.

]: Because this language itself rests on the metaphysical dis­tinction between the sensuous and the suprasensuous, inthat the structure of the language is supported by the basicelements of sound and script on the one hand, and sig­nification and sense on the other.

I: At least within the purview of European ideas. Or is thesituation the same with you?

I: Hardly. But, as I indicated, the temptation is great to relyon European ways of representation and their concepts.

I: That temptation is reinforced by a process which I wouldcall the complete Europeanization of the earth and of man.

l : Many people consider this proce s the triumphal march ofreason. At the end of the eighteenth century, in the FrenchRevolution, was not reason proclaimed a goddess?

I: Indeed. The idolization of that divinity is in fact carriedso far that any thinking which rejects the claim of reasonas not originary, simply has to be rnaligned today asunreason.

16 O. I THE w AY TO LANGl GE

I: The incontestable dominance of your European reason isthought to be confirmed by the successes of that rationalitywhich technical advances set before us at every turn.

I: This delusion is gro\\'ing, so that we are no longer able tosee how the Europeanization of man and of the earth attacksat the source everything that is of an essential nature. Itseems that these so u rces are to dry up.

I: A striking example for what you have in mind is the inter­nationally known Iilrn Rashomon . Perhaps you have seen it.

I: Fortunately yes; unfortunately, only once. I believed that Iwas experiencing the ench a n tmen t of the Japanese world,the enchantment that carries us away into the mysterious.And 0 I do not understand why you offer just this film asan exam ple of an all-consuming Europeanization.

I: \-\ e Japanese consid er the presentation frequently too real­istic, for exam ple in the dueling scenes.

/: But are there not also subdued gestures?

I: Inconspicui ties of this kind flow abundantly and hardlynoticeable to a European observer. I recall a hand resting011 another person, in which there is concentrated a contactthat remains infinitel y remote from any touch, somethingthat mav not even be called gesture an y longer in the sensein whi ch I underst and your usage. For thi hand is suffusedand borne by a call ca ll ing from afar and calling stillfarther onward, because st ill ness has brought it.

I: But in view of such gestures, which differ from our gestures,I fail even more to understand how vou can rnention thisfi IIII a an ex.un pi e 0 fEu ropeanizat ion.

1: Indeed it ca n no t be understood, because I am still express­ing Illy elf inadequately.. nd yet, for an adequate expre. ­sian I need preci "ely yo u r language.

I: And at this point you do not heed the danger?

A DIALOGUE ON LANG AGE

]: Perhaps it can be banished for a few moments.

I: As long as you speak of realism, you are talking the lan­guage of metaphysics, and move within the distinction be­tween the real as sensuous, and the ideal as nonsensuous.

]: You are right. However, with Iny reference to realism, I didnot mean so much the massiveness of presentation which isscattered here and there throughout the film, and whichremains unavoidable, in any event, in consideration of thenon-Japanese audience.

Ultimately, I did mean something else altogether withnlY reference to realism in the fihn-this, that the Japaneseworld is captured and imprisoned at all in the objectnessof photography, and is in fact especially framed forphotography.

I: If I have listened rightly, you would say that the Eastasianworld, and the technical-aesthetic product of the film in­dustry, are incompatible.

]: This is what I have in mind. Regardless of what the aes­thetic quality of a Japanese film may turn out to be, themere fact that our world is set forth in the frame of a filmforces that world into the sphere of what you call obje t­ness. The photographic objectification is already a co n ­sequence of the ever wider outreach of Europeanization.

I: A European will find it difficult to understand what yo u

mea n.

l : Certainly, and especia ll y because the foreground world ofJapan is altogether European or, if you will. American.

The background world of Japan, on the other hand, orbetter, that world itself, is what you experience in the

TO play.

I: I know only a book about the ~\' ()- p l a y ,

.I: \\ h ich , IIIa y I ask?

I: Ben I 's Academy (rea lise.

18 ON THE WAY TO LANGUAGE

]: In Japan, it is considered an extremely thorough piece ofwork, and by far the best thing you can read on the No-play.

I: But reading alone is hardly enough.

]: You would need to attend such plays. But even that re­mains hard as long as you are unable to live within Japaneseexistence. To allow you to see, even if only from afar, some­thing of what the .\To-play defines, I would assist you withone remark. You know that the Japanese stage is empty.

I: That emptiness demands uncommon concentration.

]: Thanks to that concentration, only a slight additional ges­ture on the actor's part is required to cause mighty thingsto appear out of a strange stillness.

1: How am I to understand you?

J: For instance, if a mountain landscape, is to appear, theactor slowly raises his open hand and holds it quietly abovehis eyes at eyebrow level. May I show you?

I: Please do.(The Japanese raises and holds his hand as described.)

1: That is indeed a gesture with which a European will hardlybe content.

]: With it all, the gesture subsists less in the visible movementof the hand, nor primarily in the stance of the body. Theessence of what your language calls "gesture" is hard to say.

I: And yet, the word "gesture" helps us experience truly whatis here to be said.

]: Ultimately, it coincides with what I have in mind.

I: Gesture is the gathering of a bearing.

J: No doubt you intentionally avoid saying; our bearing.

I: Because what truly bears, only bears itself toward us ...

]: ... though we bear only our share to its encounter.

A DIALOGUE ON LANGUAGE 19

I: While that which bears itself toward us has already borneour counterbearing into the gift it bears for us.

]: Thus you call bearing or gesture: the gathering which orig­inarily unites within itself what we bear to it and what itbears to us.

1: However, with this formulation we still run the risk thatwe understand the gathering as a subsequent union ...

]: ... instead of experiencing that all bearing, in giving andencounter, springs first and only from the gathering.

I: If we were to succeed in thinking of gesture in this sense,where would you then look for the essence of that gesturewhich you showed me?

]: In a beholding that is itself invisible, and that, so gathered,bears itself to encounter emptiness in such a \vay that in andthrough it the mountains appear.

I: That emptiness then is the same as nothingness, that essen­tial being which we attempt to add in our thinking, as theother, to all that is present and absent.

]: Surely. For this reason we in Japan understood at onceyour lecture "What is Metaphysics?" when it became avail­able to us in 1930 through a translation which a Japanesestudent, then attending your lectures, had ventured. -Wemarvel to this day how the Europeans could lapse intointerpreting as nihilistic the nothingness of which youspeak in that lecture. To us, emptiness is the loftiest namefor what you mean to say with the word "Being" ...

/: ... in a thinking attempt whose first steps are unavoidableeven to this day. It did, however, become the occasion forvery great confusion, a confusion grounded in the matteritself and linked with the use of th e name "Being." Forthis name belongs, after all, to the patrimony of the lan­guage of metaphysics, while I put that word into a title

20 ON THE WAY TO LANGUAGE

of an essay which brings out the essence of metaphysics, andonly thus brings metaphysics back within its own limits.

J: When you speak of overcoming metaphysics, this is whatyou have in mind.

I: This only: neither a destruction nor even a denial of meta­physics. To intend anything else would be childish pre­sumption and a demeaning of history.

]: To us, at a distance, it had always seemed amazing thatpeople never tired of imputing to you a negative attitudetoward the history of previous thinki ng, while in fact youstrive only for an original appropriation.

I: Whose success can and should be disputed.

.I: The fact that this dispute has not yet got onto the righttrack is owing-vamong nlany other motives-sin the main tothe confusion that your ambiguous use of the word "Being"has created.

I: You are right: only, the insidious thing is that the confu­sion which has been occasioned is afterward ascribed to myown thinking attempt, an attempt which on its own ,vayknows with full clarity the difference between "Being" as"the Beings of beings," and "Being" as "Being" in respectof its proper sense, that is, in respect of its truth (theclearing).

J: Why did you not surrender the word "Being" immediatelyand resolutely to the exclusive use of the language of meta­physics? \-\ hy did you not at once give its own name towhat you were searching for, by \vay of the nature of T'ime,as the "sense of Being"?

I.' How is one to give a name to wha t he is sti II searchi ngfor? To assign the nanling word is, after all, what consti­tutes findi ng.

J.' Then the confusion that has arisen Blust be endured.

A DIALOGUE ON LA GUAGE 21

/: Indeed, perhaps for long, and perhaps only in this way, thatwe painstakingly labor to unravel it.

]: Only this will lead us out into the open.

/: But the way there cannot be staked out according to a plan,like a road. Thinking is fond of a manner of road-buildingthat is, I would almost say, wondrous.

]: A mariner in which the builders must at times return toconstruction sites they left behind, or go back even further.

/: I am amazed by your insight into the nature of the paths ofthinking.

]: We have rich experience in the matter: only it has notbeen reduced to the form of a conceptual methodology,which destroys every moving force of the thinking steps.Besides, you yourself have caused me to see the path of yourthinking more clearly.

1: How?

]: Lately, even though you employ the word "Being" spar­ingly, you yet have used the name once again in a contextwhich does in fact come home to Ine more and more closelyas what is most essential in your thinking. In your "Letteron Humanism" you characterize language as the "house ofBeing"; today, at the beginning of our dialogue, you re­ferred to this phrase yourself. And while I am recalling it,I must consider that our dialogue has strayed far from itspath.

J: So it appears. I n truth, however, we are only about to getonto that path.

J: At the moment, I do not see it. \ ,Ve were trying to speakabout Kuki's aesthetic interpretation of Ihi.

I: We were trying, and in the process cou ld not avoid onsid­ering the danger of such dialogues.

I: We recognized that the danger lies in the concealed natureof language.

22 ON THE \VAY TO LANGUAGE

1: And just now you mentioned the phrase "house of Being,"which would suggest the essence of language.

]: Thus we have indeed stayed on the path of the dialogue.

/: Probably only because we, without quite knowing it, wereobedient to what alone, according to your words, allows adialogue to succeed.

I: It is that undefined defining something ...

1: ... which we leave in unimpaired possession of the voice ofits promptings.

J: At the risk that this voice, in our case, is silence itself.

1: What are you thinking of now?

I: Of the Same as you have in mind, of the nature of language.

/: That is what is defining our dialogue. But even so wemust not touch it.

J: Surely not, if by touching you mean grasping it in the senseof your European conceptualizations.

I: 0, those conceptualizations are not what I have in mind.Even the phrase "house of Being" does not provide a con­cept of the nature of language, to the great sorrow of thephilosophers who in their disgruntlement see in suchphrases no more than a decay of thinking.

]: I, too, find much food for thought in your phrase "house ofBeing"-but on different grounds. I feel that it touchesupon the nature of language without doing it injury. For ifit is necessary to leave the defining something in full posses­sion of its voice, this does in no way mean that our thinkingshould not pursue the nature of language. Only the mannerin which the attempt is made is decisive.

/: And so I now take courage to ask a question which haslong troubled me, and which your visit now almost compelsme to ask.

A DIALOGUE ON LANGUAGE

J: Do not count too heavily on my powers to follow yourquestions. Our dialogue, meanwhile, has anyhow made memuch more aware of how un-thought everything still is thatconcerns the nature of language.

/: And especially since the nature of language remains some­thing altogether different for the Eastasian and the Euro­pean peoples.

J: And what you call "nature" also remains different. How,then, could our reflection get out into the open?

I: Most easily if from the very outset we do not demand toomuch. Thus I shall permit myself for the moment to putto you an altogether preliminary question.

J: I fear that even this question can hardly be answered unlesswe disregard the danger of our dialogue.

I: That cannot be, since we are walking toward the danger.

]: Then ask away.

I: What does the Japanese world understand by language?Asked still more cautiously: Do you have in your languagea word for what we call language? If not, how do you expe­rience what with us is called language?

J: No one has ever asked me that question. And it seems tome also that we in our own Japanese world pay no heed towhat you are asking me now. I must beg you, then, to allowme a few moments of reflection.(The Japanese closes his eyes, lowers his head, and sinksinto a long reflection. The Inquirer waits until his guestresumes the conversation.)

J: There is a Japanese word tha t says the essential being oflanguage, rather than being of use as a name for speakingand for language.

I: The matter itself requires that, because the essential being

o THE WAY TO LANG AGE

of language cannot be anything linguistic. The same holdstrue for the phrase "house of Being."

]: From a great distance I sense a kinship between our wordthat is now before nlY mind, and your phrase.

I: The phrase gives a hint of the nature of language.

]: It seems to me you have just said a freeing word.

I: Then that hint would be the word's basic character.

]: Only now that you speak of hint, a word I could not find,something becomes clearer to me that I had merely surmisedwhen I read your "Letter on Humanism," and translatedinto japanese your lecture on Holderlin's elegy "Home­coming." During the same period I \\'as translating Kleist'sPenthesilea and the Amphitryon.

I: The nature of the German language must at that time havecome over you like a waterfall.

]: It did indeed. And while I was translating, I often felt asthough I were wandering back and forth between two differ­ent language realities, such that at moments a radianceshone on me which let me sense that the wellspring ofreality from which those two fundamentally different lan­guages arise was the same.

I: You did not, then, seek for a general concept under whichboth the European and the Eastasian languages could besubsumed.

]: Absolutely not. When you now speak of hints, this freeingword embolden me to name to you the word by whichto us the nature of language is-ho\v shall I say ...

I: ... perhaps hinted.

]: That is to the point. But even so I fear that to call your"house of Being" a hint might tempt you and me to elab-

A DIALOGUE 0 LA GUAGE

orate the notion of hinting into a guiding concept in whichwe then bundle up everything.

I: That must not happen.

]: How will you prevent it?

1: It can never be prevented in the sense of being totallyexcluded.

]: Why not?

I: Because the mode of conceptual representation insinuatesitself all too easily into every kind of human experience.

]: Even where thinking is in a certain sense concept-less?

I: Even there-you need only recall how instantly you acceptedKuki's aesthetic interpretation of Ihi as appropriate, eventhough it rests on European, that is to say, on metaphysicalideas.

]: If I understand you rightly, you Olean to say that the meta­physical manner of forming ideas is in a certain respect un­avoidable.

I: That is what Kant saw clearly, in his own way.

J: Yet we realize only rarely the full implications of his in­sight.

I: Because Kant was unable to develop it beyond metaphysics.The unbroken rule of metaphysic establi hes itself evenwhere we do not expect it-in the elaboration of logic intologistics.

J: Do you consider that a metaphy ical process?

I: Indeed I do. And the attack upon the nature of languagewhich is concealed in that process, perhaps the last attackfrom that quarter, remains unheeded.

J: We must guard all the more carefully the ways toward thenature or reality of language.

ON THE WAY TO LANGUAGE

I: It would even be enough if we were to succeed only inbuilding a bypath toward those ways.

]: Your speaking of hints seems to me to indicate a trail thatmight lead to such a path.

I: But even to talk of a hint is to venture too much.

]: We understand only too well that a thinker would prefer tohold back the word that is to be said, not in order to keep itfor himself, but to bear it toward his encounter with what isto be thought.

I: That is in keeping with the hints. They are enigmatic. Theybeckon to us. They beckon away. They bee on us towardthat from which they unexpectedly bear themselves towardus.

]: You are thinking of hints as belonging together with whatou have explained by the word "gesture" or "bearing."

I: That is so.

]: Hints and gestures, according to what you indicated, differfrom signs and chiffres, all of which have their habitat inmetaphysics.

I: Hints and gestures belong to an entirely different realm ofreality, if you will allow this term which seems treacherouseven to mysel f.

l: What you suggest confirms a surmise I have long cherished.Your phrase "house of Being" must not be taken as a merehasty image which hel ps us in imagining what we will, suchas: house is a shelter erected earlier somewhere or other, inwhich Being, like a portable object, can be stored away.

I: That notion proves invalid as soon as we think of the am­biguity of "Being" of whi h we have spoken. With that ex­pression, I do not mean the Being of beings representedmetaphysically, but the presence of Being, more preciselythe presence of the two-fold, Being and beings-but this

A DIALOG E ON L GAGE

two-fold understood in respect of its importance for thinkingthem.

I: If we heed this, then your phrase can never become a merecatchword.

/: It already has become one.

]: Because you demand too much of today's manner ofthinking.

/: Too much, quite true, too much of what has not yet ripened.

]: You mean ripened so that it drops like a fruit from a tree.It seems to me that there are no such words. A saying thatwould wait for that would not be in keeping with thenature of language. And you yourself are the last personwho would lay claim to such saying.

/: You do me too much honor. May I return the honor bysurmising that you are nearer to the reality of languagethan all our concep ts.

I: ot I, but the word for which you are asking, the wordwhich I, now somewhat emboldened, may hardly withholdfrom you any longer.

/: This remark tells me that your word, still withheld, for thereality of what we call language will bring us a surprise suchas we dare not hope for even now.

]: That could be. That surprise, however-vwhich will strikeyou with the same force with which it is holding me captiveever ince your question-needs to have the possibility ofswinging w ideIy.

I: Which i wh y you hesitate.

]: · mboldened by your indication that the word is a hint, andnot a sign in the sense of mere signification.

I: Hints need the widest sphere in which to swing ...

]: ... where mortals go to and fro only slowly.

ON THE \\'AY TO LA GUAGE

I: This is what our language calls "hesitate." It is done trulywhen slowness rests on hy reverence. And so I do not wishto disturb your hesitation by urging you on too rashly.

I: You are more helpful to me in nlY atteInpt to say the wordthan you can know.

I: I shall not hide Irom you that you are throwing me into astate of great agitation, especially because all Iny efforts toget an answer to Ill)' question Irom language experts andlinguistic scholars of language have 0 far been in vain. Butin order that your reflection filay swing freely, almost with­out your prompting, let us exchange roles, and let me bethe one who gives the answers, specifically the answer toyour question about hermeneutics.

I: \.\ e are back, then, on the path which we took first in ourdialogue.

/: A path on which we did not get very far with an explica­tion of hermeneutics. I told you tor ies, rather, showing hoi...I carne to em ploy the word.

J: While I, in turn, noted that now you do not use it anylonger.

/: Finally, I emphasized that hcrmeneuti s, used a an adjunctword to "phenornenologv," does not have its usual meani ng,methodology of interpretation, but means the interpretationi tse If.

]: Then our dialoguc drifted a,vay into the undefined.

/: Fortuuatelv.J

I: Even so, I thankherrneneu tics.

\'0 U, for comi ng back once more to

I: 1\ S I do so, I would like to start from the etymology of theword: it will show )'OU that Iny use of the word is not arbi­tra ry, and that ita Iso is apt to cIar ifY the in ten tion 0 f m yexperiment with phcnomenologv.

A DI LOG 'E ON LA 'GUAGE

I: I am all the more puzzled that you have meanwhile droppedboth word .

I: That was done, not-as is often thought-in order to denythe significance of phenomenology, but in order to abandonmy own path of thinking to namelessness,

]: An effort with which you will hardly be successful ...

I: ... since one cannot get by in public without rubrics.

I: But that cannot prevent you from giving also a more pre­cise explanation of the terms "hermeneutics" and "herme­neutic" which you have meanwhile abandoned.

1: I shall be glad to try, because the explanation may issue ina discussion.

I: In the sense in which your lecture on Trakl's poetry? un­derstands discussion.

I: Exactly in that sense. The expression "hermeneutic" derivesfrom the Greek verb hermeneuein, That verb is related tothe noun herm cneus, which is referable to the name of thegod Hermes by a playful thinking that is more compellingthan the rigor of science. Hermes is the divine Illes enger.He brings the message of destiny; hcrmeneuein is that expo­sition which brings tidings because it can listen to a mes­sage. Such exposition becomes an interpretation of what hasbeen said earlier by the poets who, according to Socrates inPlato's Ion (534e), hermenes eisin ton th eo7l-"are interpre­ters of the gods."

]: I am very fond of this short PIa toni c dialogue. In thepassage you have in mind, Socrates car r ies the affinities evenfurther by su rm ising that the rhap odes are those who bearthe tidings of the poets' word.

I: .>\ 11 this makes it clear that herrn neutics means not just theinterpretation but, even before it, the bearing of messageand tiding.

·See below. p. 159. (Ed.)

o THE \V Y TO LANGUAGE

J: Why do you stress this original sense of hermeneueinl

/: Because it was this original sen e which prompted me to useit in definin the phenomenological thinking that openedthe \vay to Being and Time for me. What mattered then,and still does, is to bring out the Being of beings-thoughno longer in the manner of metaphysics, but such that Beingitself will shine out, Being itself-that is to say: the presenceof present beings, the two-fold of the two in virtue of theirsimple oneness. This is what makes its claim on man, callinghim to its essential being.

J: Ian, then, realizes his nature as man by corresponding tothe all of the two-fold, and bears witness to it in itsmes age.

/: ccordingly, what prevails in and bears up the relation ofhuman nature to the two-fold i language. Language definesthe hermeneutic relation.

]: Thu when I ask you about hermeneutics, and when youa k me what our word i for what you call language, we askeach other the Same,

I: Clearly, and that is why \VC Illay confidently entrust our­selves to the hidden drift of our dialogue ...

]: ... as long as we remain inquirers.

/: You do not mean that we are pumping ea h other, out ofcuriosity, but ...

]: ... but rather that we go right on releasing into the openwhatever might be aid.

/: That could all too easily give the impression that everythingwe say drifts a\\'a)' noncommittally.

]: \.\ e an counter that impression by paying heed to the doc­trines of past thinkers, and always let them, too, take partin our dialogue. What I have ju t aid is something Ilearned Irom YOll.

A DIALOGUE ON LA GAGE

I: What you learned there has been learned in turn by listen­ing to the thinkers' thinking. Each man is in each instancein dialogue with his forebears, and perhaps even more andin a more hidden manner with those who will come afterhim.

]: In a deeper sense, this historical nature of every thinkingdialogue is not, however, in need of all those enterpriseswhich, in the manner of historiography, report things fromthe past about the thinkers and what they have thought.

I: Certainly not. But for us today it may become a pressingneed to prepare such conversations, by interpreting prop­erly what earlier thinkers have said.

]: Something that could easily degenerate into mere busywork.

I: That is a danger we stave off as long as we ourselves makean effort to think in dialogue.

]: And, as you say in your language, weigh each word,

I: But, above all, examine whether each word in each case isgiven its full-most often hidden-weight.

]: It seems to me that we are following this unwritten pre­scription, though I must confess that I am a very clumsy.questioner.

I: All of us remain clumsy questioners. De pi te much care, westill keep overlooking essentials-even here, in this dialogue,which led us to discuss hermeneutics and the reality oflanguage.

]: For the moment I fail to see in what \vay we were carelessin our use of words,

I: That is something we often notice only quite late, becausethe fault lies not so much in ourselves as in the fact thatlanguage i more powerful than we, and therefore weightier,

]: In \..-hat sense?

ON THE \VAY TO L GlJAGE

I: To illustrate by what we were just talking of ...

]: You said that language is the fundamental trait in humannature's hermeneutic relation to the two-Fold of presenceand present being ", To that remark I at once intended tomake a few observations; but I shall do so only after youhave shown ju t what we have failed to think of in thatcontext.

I: I mean the word "relation." We think of it in the sense of arelationship. What we know in that \\'ay we can identify inan empty, formal sense, and employ like a mathematicalnotation. Think of the procedure of logistics. But in thephrase, "man stands in hermeneutical relation to the two­fold," we may hear the word "relation" also in a whollyd iffere n t way. I n fact, we Inus t, if we ~ive though t to whatwas said. Presumably, we must and can do so not right a\\'aybut in good time, after long reflection.

]: Then it will do no harm if for the time being we under­stand "relation" in the customary sense of relationship.

I: True-but it i inadequate from the start, assuming thatthis word "relation" is to become a mainstay of ourstatement.

\\7e say "correlation" also when talking about the supplyand demand of commodities. If man is in a hermeneuticalrelation, however, that means that he is precisely not acommodity. But the word "relation" doe want to say thatman, in his very being, is in demand, i needed, that he,as the being he is, belongs within a needfulness whichclaim him.

]: I n what sen e?

I: H errneneu tieall y-t ha t is to say, wi th respe t to bri n~ingtidings, with respect to preserving a message.

]: fan stands "in relation" then savs the same as: Man is,reallv a man when needed and used bv ...

I ,

I: ... what calls on man to preserve the two-fold . , ,

A DIALOGUE ON LA GAGE

]: ... which, as far as I can see, cannot be explained in termsof presence, nor in terms of present beings, nor in terms ofthe relation of the two.

1: Because it is only the two-fold itself which unfolds theclarity, that is, the clearing in which present beings as such,and presence, can be discerned by man ...

]: ... by man who by nature stands in relation to, that is, isbeing used by, the two-fold.

I: This is also why we may no longer say: relation to the two­fold, for the two-fold is not an object of mental representa­tion, but is the sway of usage.

1: Which we never experience directly, however, as long as wethink of the two-fold only as the difference which becomesapparent in a comparison that tries to contrast presentbeings and their presence.

I: I am surprised that you see so clearly.

]: When I can follow you in the dialogue, I succeed. Leftalone, I am helpless; for even the manner in which youemploy the words "relation" and "use" ...

/: ... or, better, the manner in which I use them ...

]: ... i strange enough.

/: I don't deny it. But it seems to me that, in the field in whichwe are moving, we reach those thing with which we areoriginarily Iamil iar preci ely if we do not shun passingthrough things strange to us.

1: In what sense do you understand "originarily familiar"?You do not mean what we know first, do you?

/: No-out what before all else has been entrusted to ournature, and becomes known only at the last.

I: And that is what your thinking pursues.

ON THE WAY TO LANGUAGE

/: Only that-but in this way, that in it there is veiled all thatis worthy of thought as such and as a whole.

I: And in that thinking, you pay no heed to the current ideasof your fellows.

/: It seems that way, of course; but in truth, every thinkingstep only serves the effort to help man in his thinking to findthe path of his essential being.

I: Hence your reflection on language ...

/: ... on language in its relation to the nature of Being, thatis to say, to the sway of the two-fold.

I: But if language is the basic trait in hermeneutically definedusage, then you experience the reality of language from thestart differently from the way one do s in metaphysicalthinking. This is what I had intended to point out earlier.

/: But what for?

I: ot for the sake of contrasting something new with theconventional, but to remind us that our dialogue speakshistorically precisely in its attelnpt to reflect on the natureof language.

/: It speaks out of a thinking respect of the past.

I: nd this is just what was to be noted in the title of the lec­ture series the copy of which was frequently discussed in thetwenties among us Japanese.

I: I mu t be frank and tell you that here you are mistaken. Thelecture series "Expression and Appearance" (or was not thetitle ..Expression and Meaning"?) was still rather contro­versial, even though it remained informed by what we nowcall the historic character of thin ing dialogue.

]: The title, then, was to point up a contrast.

I: In any event, I was concerned to bring into view that which

A DIALOG E O. LA 'G GE 35

is wholly different-of which, however, I had only an ob­scure if not confused intimation. Such youthful caperseasily lead to doing injustice.

]: The word "expression" in the title is the name for what youoppose. For your gaze into the nature of language does notfasten upon the phonetics and the written forms of thewords, which are generally conceived to constitute theexpressive character of language.

I: The name "expression" i here understood in the narrowsen e of sensuous appearance. Yet even where our attentionis focused on the content of meaning in the phonetic andwritten formations, even there language is still conceived asexpressive in character.

]: How so? Speech understood in the fullne s of its meaningtranscends-and doe so always-the physical-sensible side ofphonetics. Language, as sense that i sounded and written,is in itself suprasensuous, something that constantly tran­scends the merely sensible. 0 understood, language is initself metaphysical,

I: I agree with everything you propose. But language makesits appearance in this metaphysical nature only insofar as itis beforehand understood to be xpression. Expression doesnot mean here only the enun iated sounds of spee handthe printed igns of writing. Expre ion i simultaneouslyutterance.

]: Utteran °e refer to it inwardness, to what pertains to thesoul.

I: In the days of that lecture, everyone was talking aboutexperience (Erlebn isv . even within phenomenology,

]: A famous book by Dilthey has the ti tIe Experience andPoetry .

I: r 0 .xperience in thi sense alwa ys mean to refer back-torefer life and lived experience ba k to the "I." Experience

ON THE WAY TO LANGUAGE

is the name for the referral of the objective back to thesubject. The much-discussed I JThou experience, too, be­longs within the metaphysical sphere of subjectivity.

I: And this sphere of subjectivity and of the expression thatbelongs to it is what you left behind when you entered intothe hermeneutic relation to the two-fold.

I: At least I tried. The guiding notions which, under thenames "expression," "experience," and "consciousness," de­termine modern thinking, were to be put in question withrespect to the decisive role they played.

J: But then I no longer understand how you could choose thetitle "Expression and Appearance." It was intended, was itnot, to announce a contrast. "Expression" is the utteranceof something internal and refers to the subjective. "Appear­ance," on the contrary, names the objective, if I may hererecall Kant's usage according to which appearances are theobjects, the objects of ex perience. By giving your lecturethat title, you did commit yourself to the subject-objectrelation.

/: In a certain respect your objection is justified, if only forthe reason that much had to remain unclear in those lec­tures. iobody can in just one single leap take distance fromthe predominant circle of ideas, especially not if he is deal­ing with the well-worn tracks of traditional thinking-tracksthat fade into realms where they can hardly be seen. Besides,taking such distance from all tradition is tempered by thevery fact that the ecmingly subversive will tries above all torecover the th ings of the past ina more originary form. I t ison purpose that the first page of Being and T'ime speaks of"raising again" a question. What is meant is not themonotonous trotti ng ou t of something that is always thesame, but: to fetch, to gather in, to bring together what isconcealed withi n the old.

]: Our teachers and Iny friends in Japan have always under-

A DIALOG UE ON LANG AGE 37

stood your efforts in that sense. Professor Tanabe oftencame back to a question you once put to him: why it wasthat we Japanese did not call back to mind the venerablebeginnings of our own thinking, instead of chasing evermore greedily after the latest news in European philosophy.As a matter of fact, we do so still today.

I: I t is not easy to go coun ter to tha t tendency. Such proce­dures, in good time, are smothered by their own sterility.But what requires our contribution is a different matter.

]: \¥hich would be?

I: To give heed to the trails that direct thinking back into theregion of its source.

]: Do you find such trails in your own attempt?

I: I find them only because they are not of my own making,and are discernible only quite rarely, like the wind-borneecho of a distant call.

]: But I would gather then that in the distinction "Expressionand Appearance," you are no longer basing yourself on thesubject-object relation.

I: You will see it even more clearly if you attend to what Iwould now like to add to your mention of Kant's concept ofappearance. Kant's definition is based on the event thateverything present has already become the object of our.represen ta non.

J: In appearance as Kant thinks of it, our experience mustalready include the object as something in opposition to us.

I: That is necessary not only in order to understand Kantproperly, but also and above all else so that we may experi­ence the appearing of the appearance, if I may put it that\vay,originarily.

J: Hov.., does this happen?

g8 o THE W Y TO LA GUAGE

I: The Greeks were the first to experience and think ofphainomena as phenomena. But in that experience it isthoroughly alien to the Greeks to pre s present beings intoan opposing objectnes ; phainesthai means to them that abeing assumes its radiance, and in that radiance it appears.Thus appearance is till the basic trait of the presence ofall present beings, as they rise into unconcealment.

I: Accordingly, in your title "Expression and Appearance" youuse the second noun in the Greek sense?

I: Yes and no. Yes, in that for me the name "appearance" doesnot name objects as objects, and least of all as objects ofcon ciousness-consciousness always meaning self-conscious­ness.

]: In short: appearance not in the Kantian sense.

I: erely to contrast it with Kant is not enough. For evenwhere the term "object" is used for present beings as sub-isting within them elves, and Kant' interpretation of

objectnes i rejected, we are still far from thinking of ap­pearance in the Greek sense-but fundamentally thoughrather in a very hidden sense, in the manner of Descartes:in terms of the "I" a the subject.

J: Yet your "no" suggests that you, too, do not think of ap­pearance in the Greek sense.

I: You are right. What is decisive here i difficult to rendervisible, because it calls for simple and free vision.

]: Su h ision, obviously, is still rare. For usually your defini­tion of appearance is equated, sight unseen, with that of theGreeks; and it is co n idered a foregone onclusion that yourthinking ha no o ther aim than a return to Greek and evenpre-Socratic thinking.

/: That opinion i fooli h, of course, and yet it ha somethingin rnind that is corre t.

1: Ho\\' o?

/: To answer yo u r que tion with the necessary brevity, I would

A DIALOGUE 0 LANG AGE 39

venture a turn of phrase which is at once open to newmisinterpretations ...

I: ... which you, however, can counter just as quickly.

1: Certainly, if it did not cause further delays in our dialogue,whose time is limited because tomorrow you will leaveagain, to go to Florence.

I: I have already decided to stay for another day, if you willallow me to visi t you again.

1: There is nothing I would rather do. But even with thispleasant prospect I must keep the answer short.

/) I: How is it then with your relation to the thinking of theGreeks?

/: Our thinking today is charged with the task to think whatthe Greeks have thought in an even more Greek manner. I

I: And so to understand the Greeks better than they haveunderstood them elves.

I: 0, that is not it; for all great thinking always understandsitself best of all, that is to say, itself within the limits setfor it.

I: Then, what does it mean: to think what the Greeks havethought in an even more Greek manner?

1: It can be readily explained with a view to the essence ofappearance. If to be present itself is thought of a appear·ance, then there prevails in being present the emergenceinto openness in the sen e of unconcealedness. This uncon­cealedness comes about in the unconcealment as a clearing;but this clearing itself, as occurrence, remains unthoughtin every respect. To enter into thinking this unthoughtoccurrence means: to pursue more originally what theGreeks have thought, to see it in the source of its reality.To see it so is in its own way Greek, and yet in respect ofwhat it sees is no longer, is never again, Greek.

I: Then, what is it?

ON THE \VAY TO LANGUAGE

I: It seems to me no answer to this question is incumbent onus. Tor would an answer help us, because what matters is

to see appearance as the reality of presence in its essential. .

orrgm.

I: If you succeed with that, then you are thinking of appear­

ance in the Greek way, and at the same time no longer in the

Greek way, You said-at least this was the sense of what

you said-that we leave the sphere of the subject-object re­lation behind us when thinking enters into the experience

just mentioned, in which the real origin of appearance­

dare we say-itself appears?

I: Hardly. But you are touching on something essential. For

in the source of appearance, something comes toward manthat holds the two-fold of presence and present beings.

I: That two-fold has always already offered itself to man,although its nature remained veiled.

I: an, to the ex ten t he is J11an, listens to this message.

I: And that happens even while man gives no particular atten­tion to the fact that he is ever listening already to that

message.

I: M an is u ed for hearing the message.

I: 1 hi yo II called a w hiIe ago: man standsin a reIa t ion.

I: And the relation is called hermeneutical because it bringsthe tidings of that message,

I: This message makes the laim on man that he respond.

to 1t ...

I: ... to listen and belong to it as man .

.I: A nd this is wha t you "a11 be;rzg h luna n, if you here still ad­mit the word "being."

I: Man i the me: sage-bearer of the me 'sage which the two­fold's unconcealment speaks to him.

I: As far as J am able to follow what you are saying, I sense

A DIALOGUE ON LA GUAGE

a deeply concealed kinship with our thinking, precisely be­cause your path of thinking and its language are so whollyother.

I: Your admission agitates file in a \\'ay which I can controlonly because we remain in dialogue. But there is one ques­tion I cannot leave out.

J: Which?

I: The question of the site in which the kinshi p that yousense comes into play.

J: Your question reaches far.

I: Ho\v so?

.I: The distance is the boundlessness which is shown to us inKu, which means the sky's emptiness.

I: Then, man, as the message-bearer of the message of the t \VO­

fold's unconcealrnent, would also be he who walks theboundary of the boundless.

J: And on this path he seeks the boundary's mystery ...

I: ... which cannot be hidden in anything other than thevoice that determines and tunes his nature.

l : What we are now saying-forgive the "\\'e"-can no longerbe discussed on the strength of the meta physical notionof language. Presumably this is why you tried to suggestthat you were turning away from that notion by givingyour lecture course the title "Expression and Appearance."

I: The entire course remained a suggestion. I never did morethan foil 0 wafa in t tra il, but f0 II0 w itIdid. The t ra iI wasan almost imperceptible promise announcing that ,..'e wouldbe set free into the open, now dark and perplexing, nowagain lightning-sharp like a sudden in ight, which then, inturn, eluded every effort to say it.

l : Later, too, in Being and T'ime , your discussion of language. .

remains qUIte sparse.

42 ON THE WAY TO LANG AGE

I: Even so, after our dialogue you may want to read Section34 in Being and Time more closely.

]: I have read it many times, and each time regretted that youkept it so short. But I believe that now I see more clearlythe full import of the fact that hermeneutics and languagebelong together.

I: The full import in what direction?

]: Toward a transformation of thinking-a transformationwhich, however, cannot be established as readily as a shipcan alter its course, and even less can be established as theconsequence of an accumulation of the results of philo­sophical research.

1: The transformation occurs as a passage: ..

]: in which one site is left behind in favor of another ...

1: and that requires that the sites be placed in discussion.

]: One site is metaphysics.

I: And the other? We leave it without a name.

]: Meanwhile, I find it more and more puzzling how CountKuki could get the idea that he could expect your path ofthinking to be of help to him in his attempts in aesthetics,since your path, in leaving behind metaphysics, also leavesbehind the aesthetics that is grounded in metaphysics.

I: But leaves it behind in such a ,vay that we can only nowgive thought to the nature of aesthetics, and direct it backwithin its boundaries.

]: Perhaps it was this prospect that attracted Kuki; for he wasmuch too sensitive, and much too thoughtful, to concernhimself with the calculus of mere doctrines.

I: He used the European rubric "aesthetics,' but what hethought and searched for was something else.

]: Iki-a word I dare not translate even now.

A DIALOGUE ON LA GUAGE 4S

I: But perhaps you are now in a better position to describethe veiled hint that the word gives us.

]: Only after you have clarified the nature of the aesthetic.

I: That has already been done in the course of our dialogue-precisely where we did not specifically speak of it.

[: You mean when we discussed the subject-object relation?

I: Where else? Aesthetics, or shall we say, experience withinthe sphere in which it sets the standard, from the very startturns the art work into an object for our feelings and ideas.Only when the art work has become an object, only then isit fit for exhibitions and museums ...

J: ... and fit also to be valued and appraised.

I: Artistic quality becomes a distinguishing factor in con­temporary-modern art experience.

]: Or shall we say straight out: in the art business.

I: But what is artistic is defined with reference to creativityand virtuosity.

J: Does art subsist in the artistic, or is it the other way around?All talk about the artistic seems to reveal that precedenceis given to the artist ...

I: ... as the subject who remains related to the work as hisobject.

J: But this is the framewor in which all aesthetics belongs.

I: That framework is so treacherous, that is to say, so all­embracing, that it can capture also all other kinds of expe­rience of art and its nature.

1: It can embrace, but never make its own. This is why Ifear now more than ever that every explication of Ihi willfall into the clutches of ae thetic ideation.

I: It would depend-will you try?

J: IIi i is the gracious.

44 o: THE WAY TO LANG AGE

I: As soon as you say this, we are at once in the midst ofaesthetics-think of Schiller's treatise on "Crace and Dig­nity:' That treatise, just as his later Letters on the Aesthetic

Education of Man, was inspired by his dialogue with Kant'saesthetics.

]: If I am rightl y informed, both works contributed a decisivestimulus for Hegel's Aesthetics.

I: And so it would be presunlptuous if we now tried to con­vince ourselves with a few remarks that we have masteredthe nature of aesthetics.

]: But speaking only by and large, I may attempt to detachIki , which we just translated with "grace," from aesthetics,that is to say, Irom the subject-object relation. I do notnow mean g racio us in the sense of a stimulus that en­chants ...

I: ... that is, not in the realm of what stimulates, of impres­sions, of aisthcsis-Anu?

]: Rather in the opposite direction; but I am aware that withthis indication I still remain embroiled in the realm ofaestheti s,

I: If we keep this reservation in mind, there is no harm inyour trying to gi ve the ex plication just the same.

]: llii is the breath of the stillness of luminous delight.

I: You understand "delight" literally, then , as what ensnares,car ries awav-i-into stillness.,

]: There is in it nothing an ywhere of stimulus and impression.

I: 'The delight is of the same kind as the hint that beckonson, and beckons to and fro.

]: The hint, however, is the message of the veiling thatopen~ up,

I: Then, all presence would have its source in grace, in thesense of the pure delight of the beckoning stillness.

A DIALOG E ON LA. GAGE 45

]: The fact that you give ear to me, or better, to the probingintimations I propose, awakens in me the confidence to dropnlY hesitations which have so far kept me from answering

,

your question.

I: You mean the question which \..-ord in your language speakfor what we Europeans call "language,"

]: Up to this moment I have shied a\vay from that word,because I must give a translation \...hich makes our \..-ordfor language look like a mere pictograph, to wit, some­thing that belongs within the precincts of conceptual ideas;for European science and its philosophy try to grasp thenature of language only by way of concepts.

I: What is the Japanese word for "language"?

]: (after further hesitation) It is "Koto ba,"

I: And what does that say?

]: btl means leaves, including and especially the leaves of ablossom-vperals. Think of cherry blossoms or plum bios 0111 •

I: And what does Kola say?

]: This is the question most difficult to answer. But it is ea iernow to attelnpt an an wer because we have ventured toexplain 1Iii: the pure delight of the beckoning stillness. Thebreath of stillness that makes this beckoning delight comeinto its ov..'n i the reign under which that delight i madeto come. But K 010 always also name that which in theevent gives delight, itself, that which uniquely in eachunrepcatable moment comes to radiance in the fullness of.1ts grace.

I: Kola, then, would be the a ppropria ti ng occurrence of thelighteni ng message of grace.

I: Bea u tifu IIy said. Onl y the word "gr.ue" easily misleads themodern mind ...

I: . , . leads it a\vay into the precincts of impressions .

o THE \VAY TO L GUAGE

]: ... whose corollary is always expression as the manner inwhich something is set free. It seems to me more helpfulto turn to the Greek word charis, which I found in thelovely saying that you quote from ophocles, in your lecture..... Poetically 1\'1an Dwells ...", and translated "gracious- .ness." This saying comes closer to putting into words thebreathlike advent of the stillness of delight.

I: nd something else, too, that I wanted to say there butcould not offer within the context of the lecture. charis isthere called tiktousa-that which brings forward and forth.Our German word dichten, tihton says the same. Thusiophocles' lines portend to us that graciousness is itselfpoetical, is itself what really makes poetry, the welling-upof the messa e of the two-fold's unconcealment.

]: I would need more time than our dialogue allows to followin thought the new prospects you have opened with yourremark. But one thing I see at once-that your remark helpsme to ay more clearly what Koto is.

I: And that seems to me indispensable if I am to think at alladequately your Japanese word for "language," Koto ba,along with you.

]: You well remember that point in our dialogue where Inamed to you the .Japanese words allegedly correspondingto the distinction between aistheton and noeton: lro and Ku,lro means more than color and whatever can be perceivedby the en es. Ku th open, the ky' emptiness, means morethan the upra- 'en ible.

I: You could not say in what the "more" consists.

]: But now I an follow a hint which the [\,'0 words hold.

I: In what direction do they hint?

]: Toward the source from which the mutual interplay of thet \VO comes to pa s.

J: \ '\ hich is?

A DIALOG E 0 LANG AGE 47

]: Koto, the happening of the lightening message of the gra­ciousness that brings forth.

/: Koto would be the happening holding sway ...

]: ... holding sway over that which needs the shelter of alltha t flourishes and flowers.

1: Then, as the name for language, what does Koto ba say?

]: Language, heard through this word, is: the petals that stemfrom Koto.

J: That is a wondrous word, and therefore inexhaustible toour thinking. It names something other than our names,understood metaphysically, present to us: language, glossa,lingua , langue. For long now, I have been loth to use theword "language" when thinking on its nature.

]: But can you find a more fitting word?

1: I believe I have found it; but I would guard it against beingused as a current tag, and corrupted to signify a concept.

]: Which word do you use?

1: The word U aying." It means: saying and what is said in itand what is to be said.

I: What does "say" mean?

/: Probably the same as "show" in the ense of: let appear andlet shine, but in the manner of hinting.

J: Saying, then, is not the name for human speaking ...

I: ... but for that essential being which your Japanese wordKoto ba hints and beckons: that which is like a saga ...

.I: . " . and in whose beckoning hint I have come to be athorne only now through our dialogue, so that now I also see1110re learly how well-advi ed Count Kuki was when he,under you r gu idance, tried to reflect his way throughhermeneutics,

I: But you also see how tneager nly guidance was bound tobe; for the thinking look into the nature of Saying is only

ON THE WAY TO LANG AGE

the beginning of that path which takes us back out of merelymetaphysical representations, to where we heed the hintsof that nlessage whose proper bearers we would want tobecome.

]: That path is long.

I: ot so much because it leads far a,vay, but because it leadsthrough what is near.

]: Which is as near, and has long been as near, as the word forthe reali ty of language, K oto ba-a word to which so far nothought has been given-is to us Japanese.

I: Petals that stern from Koto. Imagination would like to roama\\'ay into still unexperienced realms when this word begins. .Its saYIng.

]: It .ou ld roam only if it were let go into mere representa­tional ideas. But where imagination wells up as the well­spring of thinking, it seems to me to gather rather than tostray. Kant already had an intimation of something of thesort, as you yourself have shown.

I: But is our thinking already at that wellspring?

J: If not, then it is on its \\'ay there as soon as it seeks the pathto which-vas I now see more clearly-our Japanese word forlanguage might beckon.

I: In order that we Inay yield to that hint, we would have tobe more experienced in the nature of language.

]: It seems to me that efforts in that direction have accorn­panied your path of thinking for decades-and in so nlanyforms that you are by now sufficiently prepared to say some­thing about the nature of language a ' Saying.

I: But you know equally well that one's own effort alone isnever adequate,

]: That remains true. But what mortal strength by itselfcannot accomplish, we can attain 1110re readily if we arefull ready to give a\\'ay freely whatever it l11ay be that we

A DIALOGUE ON LANGUAGE 49

attempt on our own, even if it falls short of perfection.

/: I have ventured some provisional remarks in the lecturewhich I gave several times in recent years, entitled "Lan­guage."·

]: I have read reports and even a transcri pt of that lecture.

1: Such transcripts, even if made carefully, remain dubioussources-as I said earlier-and any transcript of that lectureis, anyway, a distortion of its saying.

J: What do you mean by this harsh judgment?

/: It is a judgment not about transcripts, but about an unclearcharacterization of the lecture.

]: How so?

/: The lecture is not speaking about language ...

J: But?

I: If I could answer you now, the darkness su r ro u nd ing thepath would be lighted. But I cannot answer-von the samegrounds that have so far kept me from letting the lecture

. .appear In print.

J: It would be forward of me to ask what those grounds are.After the \\'ay in which you a moment ago listened andtook in our Japanese word for language, and Irorn what yousuggested about the message of the two-fold's unconceal­ment, and about man the message-bearer, I an only surmisevaguel y what it means to transform the question of lan­guage into a reflection on the nature of Saying.

I: You will forgive me if I am still spa r ing with indicationsthat cou ld perhaps lead to a discussion of the nature ofSaying,

1: That would call for a journey into the region where theessential being of Saying is at horne.

• In Mart in Heidegger. Port rv, Languag«, and Th ought (t r. :\ . Hofstadter;\:ew York: Harper & Row, 1971 ).

5° o THE WAY TO LA GUAGE

I: That before all else. But for the moment I have somethingelse in mind. What prompts my reserve is the growinginsight into the untouchable which is veiled from us bythe mystery of Saying. A mere clarification of the differencebetween saying and speaking would gain us little.

]: We Japanese have-I think I may say so-an innate under­standing for your kind of reserve. A mystery i a mysteryonly when it does not even come out that mystery is at work.

1: To those who are superficial and in a hurry, no less thanto those who are deliberate and reflective, it must look asthough there were no mystery anywhere.

]: But we are surrounded by the danger, not just of talkingtoo loudly about the mystery, but of missing its working,

I: To guard the purity of the mystery's wellspring seems to mehardest of all.

]: But does that give us the right simply to shun the troubleand the risk of speaking about language?

1: Indeed not. We must incessantly strive for such speaking.What is so spoken cannot, of course, take the form of ascientific dissertation ...

J: ... because the movement of the questioning that i calledfor here might too easily congeal.

1: That would be the smallest loss. Something else is moreweighty, and that is, whether there ever is such a thing asp aking about language.

J.. But what we are doing nov i evidence that there is u hspeaking.

I: All too much, I am afraid.

J: Then I do not understand why you hesitate.

I: Speaking about language turns language almost inevitablyinto an object.

J.' And then its reality vanishes.

A DIALOGUE 0 LA GAGE

I: We then have taken up a position above language, insteadof hearing from it.

]: Then there would only be a speaking from language.

/: ... in this manner, that it would be called from out oflanguage's reality, and be led to its reality.

]: How can we do that?

I: A speaking [rom language could only be a dialogue.

]: There is no doubt that we are moving in a dialogue.

I: But is it a dialogue from out of the nature of language?

]: It eems to me that now we are moving in a circle. A dia­logue from language must be called for from out of lan­guage's reality. How can it do so, without first entering intoa hearing that at once reaches that reality?

I: I once called this stran e relation the hermeneutic circle.

]: The circle exists everywhere in hermeneutics, that is to say,accordin to your explanation of today, it exi ts wherethe relation of messa e and me age-bearer prevails.

/: The message-bearer must come from the message. But hemust also have gone toward it.

.I: Did you not say earlier that thi ir Ie is inevitable, andthat, instead of trying to avoid it as an alleged logical con­tradiction, we must follow it?

/: Yes. But thi nece sary acceptance of the hermeneutic circledoes not mean that the notion of the accepted circle givesus an originary experience of the hermeneutic relation.

J: In short, you would abandon your earli r view.

/: Quite-and in this respect, that talk of a circle always re­mains su perficial.

.I: How would you present the hermeneutic circle today?

I: I would avoid a pre entation as resolutely as I would avoidspeaking about language.

ON THE WAY TO LANGUAGE

]: Then everything would hinge on reaching a correspondingsaying of language.

I: Only a dialogue could be such a saying correspondence.

]: But, patently, a dialogue altogether sui generis.

I: A dialogue that would remain originarily appropriated toSaying.

]: But then, not every talk between people could be called adialogue any longer . . .

1: ... if we from now on hear this word as though it namedfor us a focusing on the reality of language.

]: In this sense, then, even Plato's Dialogues would not bedialogues?

I: I would like to leave that question open, and only pointout that the kind of dialogue is determined by that whichspeaks to those who seemingly are the only speakers-men.

]: Wherever the nature of language were to speak (say) to manas Saying, it, Saying, would bring about the real dialogue ...

I: ... which does not say "about" language but of language,as needfully used of its very nature.

]: And it would also remain of minor importance whetherthe dialogue is before us in writing, or whether it waspoken at S0l11e time and has now faded.

I: Certainly-because the one thing that matters is whetherthis dialogue, be it written or spoken or neither, remainsconstantly COIning.

J: The course of such a dialogue would have to have a char­acter all its own, with more silence than talk.

I: Above all, ilence about silence ...

]: Because to talk and write about silence is what producesthe most obnoxious chatter ...

A DIALOG E 0 LANG AGE 53

I: Who could simply be silent of silence?

J: That would be authentic saying ...

I: ... and would remain the onstant prologue to the au­thentic dialogue of language.

J: Are we not attempting the impossible?

I: Indeed-so long as man has not yet been given the puregift of the messenger's course that the message needs whichgran ts to man the unconcealmen t of the two-fold.

J: To call forth this messenger's course, and still more to goit, seems to me incomparably more difficult than to discussthe nature of I hi.

/: Surely. For something would have to come about by whichthat vast distance in which the nature of Saying assumes itsradiance, opened itself to the Illes enger's course and shone

.upon It.

J: A stilling would have to come about that quiets the breathof the vastness into the structure of Saying which calls outto the Illessenger.

I: The veiled relation of message and messenger' co u r e playseverywhere.

J: I n our ancient Japanese poetry, an unknown poet sing ofthe intermingling scent of cherry blo SOIll and plum bIos omon the same branch.

I: This is how I think of the being-toward-each-other of va t­

nes and stillness in the same Appropr iat ion of the Inessageof un oncealmen t of the two-fold.

I: But who today could hear in it an eho of the nature oflanguage which our word Kot o btl names, flower petals thatflourish out of the lightening message of the graciousnestha t brings forth?

54 ON THE WAY TO LANGUAGE

I: Who would find in all this a serviceable clarification of thenature of language?

]: That nature will never be found as long as we demandinformation in the Iorrn of theorems and cue words.

J: Yet many a man could be drawn into the prologue to amessenger's course once he keeps himself ready for a dialogueof language.

J: I t seems to me as though even \ve, now, instead of speak­ing about language, had tried to take some steps along acourse which entrusts itself to the nature of Saying.

I: Which promises, dedicates itself to the nature of Saying.Let us be glad if it not on Iy seems so bu t is so.

]: If it is so, what then?

I: Then the Iarewe11 of all " I tis" comes to pass.

J: But you do not thi nk of the farewell as a loss and denial,do you?

J: In no way.

]: But?

J: As the coming of what has been.

]: But what is past, goes, has gone-shew can it come?

I: The passing of the past is something else than what hasbeen.

]: How are we to think that?

I: As the gathering of what endures ...

]: ... which, as you said recently, endures as what gran tsendurance ...

I: .. , and stays the Same as the nlessage . , .

]: ... which needs us as messengers.

THE NATURE OF LANGUAGE

THE NATURE OF LANGUAGE

I

The three lectures that follow bear the title "Theature of Language." They are intended to bring us face to

face with a possibility of .u ndergoing an experience with lan­gu_ag~. To undergo an experience with something-sbe it athing, a person, or a god-means that this something befalls us,strikes us, comes over us, overwhelms and transforms us. Whenwe talk of "undergoing" an experience, we mean specificallythat the experience is not of our own making: to undergo heremeans that we endure it, suffer it, receive it as it str ikes us andsubm it to it. It is this something itself that com es about, com esto pass, ha ppens.

To undergo an ex perience with language, th en, 1 ans to leta t! .sel ocr c th~ ~J a i rn ol_l~!l uage bentering into 1 In to it. If it is true that manfinds the proper abode of his existen e in language-whetherhe is aware of it or not-then an experience we undergowith language wil l touch the innnerrno t nexus of our exist­ence. \\ e who speak language may thereupon become trans­Ior rned by such experiences, from one day to the next or inthe cour e of time. But now it co u ld be that an experience \\' C

57

ON THE WAY TO LANGUAGE

undergo with language is too much for us moderns, even if itstrikes us only to the extent that for once it draws our attentionto our relation to language, so that from then on we may keepthis relation in mind.

Suppose, specifically, we were asked head-on: In what rela­tion do you live to the language you speak? We should notbe embarrassed for an answer. Indeed, we would at once dis­cover a guideline and point of reference with which to leadthe question into channels where it can safely be left.

e speak our language. How else can we be close to lan­guage except by peaking? Even so, our relation to languageis vague, obscure, almost speechless. As we ponder this curioussituation, it can scarcely be avoided that every observationon the subject will at first sound strange and incomprehensible.It therefore might be helpful to us to rid ourselves of the habitof always hearing only what we already understand. This nlYproposal is addressed not only to all those who listen; it isaddressed still more to him who tries to speak of language,all the more when he does so with the sole intent to showpossibilities that will allow us to become mindful of languageand our relation to it.

But this, to undergo an experience with language, is some­thing else again than to gather information about language.Such information-linguists and philologists of the most di­verse languages, psychologists and analytic philosophers supplyit to us, and constantly increase the supply, ad infinitum. Oflate, the scientific and philosophical investigation of languagesi aiming ever more resolutely at the production of what iscalled "metalanguage." Analytical philosophy, which is set onproducing this super-language, is thus quite consistent when itconsiders itself metalinguistics. That sounds eke metaphysics- not only ounds like it, it is metaphysics. 1 etalinguistics isthe metaphysics of the thoroughgoing technicalization of alllanguages into the sole operative instrument of interplanetaryinformation, fetalanguage and sputnik, metalinguistics andro ketry are the Same.

However, we must not give ground for the impression that

THE NAT RE OF L G GE 59

we are here passing negative judgment on the scientific andphilosophical investigation of language and of languages. Suchinvestigation has its own particular justification and retainsits own importance. But scientific and philosophical informa­tion about language is one thing; an experience we undergowith language is another. Whether the attempt to bring usface to face with the possibility of such an experience illsucceed, and if it does, how far that possible success will gofor each one of us-that is not up to any of us.

What is left for us to do is to point out ways that bring usface to face with a possibility of undergoing an experience withlanguage. uch ways have long existed. But they are seldomused in such a manner that the possible experience withlanguage is itself given voice and put into language. In expe­riences which we undergo with language, language itself bringsitself to language. One would think that this happens anywav,any time anyone speaks. Yet at whatever time and in whateverv.'ay we speak a languag , language itself never has the floor.

ny number of things are given voice in speaking, above allwhat we are speaking about: a set of facts, an occurrence, aquestion, a matter of concern. Only because in everyday speak­ing language does not bring itself to language but holds back,are we able simply to go ahead and peak a language, and so todeal with something and negotiate something by speaking.

But when does Ian uage speak itself as language? Curiouslyenough, when we cannot find the right word for something thatconcerns us, carries us a\vay, oppresses or encourages us. Thenwe leave un poken what we have in mind and, without rightlyRiving it thought, under 0 moments in which language itselfhas distantly and fleetin ly touched us with its essential being.

But when the i ue is to put into language something whichhas never yet been spoken, then everything depends on whetherlangua e gives or withholds the appropriate word. Such is thecase of the poet. Indeed, ~ p~t might even come to the pointwhere he is ompelled-in his own wa y, that is, poetically­to put into Ian uage the experience he undergoes withlanguage.

60 ON THE WAY TO LANGUAGE

Among Stefan George's late, simple, almost songlike poemsthere is one entitled "The Word." It was first published in1919. Later it was included in the collection Das eue Reich.The poem is made up of seven stanzas. The first three areclearly marked off from the next three, and these t\VO triadsas a whole are again marked off from the seventh, final stanza.The manner in which we shall here converse with this poem,briefly but throughout all three lectures, does not claimto be scientific. The poenl runs:

The \Vord\\ onder or dream from distant landI carried to nlY ountrv's trand

And 'waited till the twilit nornHad found the name within her bourn-

Then I could gra p it close and strongIt blooms and shines now the front along ...

Once I returned from happy sail.I had a prize so ri h and frail,

She sought for long and tiding told :" 0 like of this these depths en fold."

And straight it vanished from Iny hand,The trea ure never graced n1)' land ...

So I renounced and sadly see:Where word break off no thi ng Inay be.

After what we had noted earlier, "'C are tempted to con­centrate on the poem': last line: ..,\ here word breaks off nothing Inay be." For thi line Blakes the word of language,makes language itself bring itself to language, and says some­thing about the relation between word and thing. The con­tent of the final line can be transformed into a statement, thus:.. 0 thing is where the word breaks ofT." "Vhere somethingbreak off, a breach, a dimi nut ion ha s occurred. To diminishmeans to take awav, to cause a lack. "Breaks off" means "is

I

lacking." No thing is where the word is lacking, that word

THE NATURE OF LA 'G AGE

which names the given thing. What does "to name" signify?We might answer: to name means to furnish something witha name. And what is a name? A designation that providessomething with a vocal and written sign, a cipher. And whatis a sign? Is ita signal? Or a token? A marker? Or a hint? Orall of these and something else besides? We have becomevery slovenly and mechanical in our understanding and use of.sIgns.

Is the name, is the word a sign? Everything depends on howwe think of what the words "sign" and "name" say. Even inthese slight pointers we now begin to sense the drift that weare getting into when the word is put into language as word,language as language. That the poem, too, has name in mindwhen it says uiord, is said in the second stanza:

And waited till the twilit nomHad found the name within her bourn-

Feanwhile. both the finder of the name, the norn of ourpoenl, and the place where the name is found, her bourn,make us hesitant to understand "name" in the sense of amere designation. It could be that the name and the namingword are here intended rather in the sense we know fromsuch expressions as "in the name of the King" or "in the nameof God." Gottfried Benn begins one of his poems: HIn thename of him who bestows the hours." Here "in the name"says "at the call, by the command." The terms "name" and"word" in George's poem are thought differently and moredeeply than as mere signs. But what am I saying? Is therethinking, too, going on in a poem? Quite so-in a poem ofsuch rank thinking is going on, and indeed thinking without. ience, without philosophy. I f that is true, then we may andin fact must, with all the self-restraint and circumspectionthat are called for, give more reflective thought to that closingline we first picked ou t from the poenl "The Word."

\\'here 'word breaks off no thing may be.

\\ e ventured the paraphrase: 0 thing is where the word

ON THE WAY TO L GAGE

is lacking. "Thing" is here understood in the traditional broadsense, as meaning anything that in any way is. In this senseeven a god is a thing. Only where the word for the thinghas been found is the thing a thing. Only thus is it. Accord­ingly we must stress as follows: no thing is where the word,that is, the name is lacking. The word alone gives being tothe thing. Yet how can a mere word accomplish this-to bringa thing into being? The true situation is obviously the reverse.Take the sputnik. This thing, if such it is, is obviously inde­pendent of that name which was later tacked on to it. Butperhaps matters are different with such things as rockets,atom bombs, reactors and the like, different from what thepoet names in the first stanza of the first triad:

Wonder or dream from di tan t landI carried to my country's trand

till, countless people look upon thi "thing" sputnik, too,as a onder, this "thing" that races around in a worldless"world"- space ; to many people it was and still is a dream­wonder and dream of this modern te hnology which wouldbe the la t to admit the thought that what ives things theirbeing is the word, Actions not words count in the calculus ofplanetary calculation. , hat use are poets? 4 nd yet ...

Let u for once refrain from hurried thinking. Is not eventhis "thing" what it is and the way it is in the name of itsname? Certainly. If that hurry, in the sen e of the technicalmaximization of all velocitie, in whose time-space moderntechnology and apparatu can alone be what they are-if thathurry had not bespoken man and ordered him at its call, ifthat call to such hurry had not challenged him and put himat bay, if the word framing that order and challenge had notpoken: then there would be no sputnik. TO thing is where

the word is lacking. Thus the puzzle remains: the word oflanguage and its relation to the thing, to every thing that is- that itis and the way i t is.

This is why we con ider it advisable to prepare for a pos­ibility of under oing an experience with language. Thi is

THE AT RE OF LA 'G AGE

why we listen now more attentively where such an experienceis put into lofty and noble language. We listen to the poemthat we read. Did we hear it? Barely. e have merely pickedup the last line-and done so almost crudely-and have evenventured to rewrite it into an unpoetical statement: 0 thingis where the word is lac in. e could go further and proposethis statement: something is only where the appropriate andtherefore competent word names a thing as being, and soestablishes the given being as a being. Does this mean, also,that there is being only where the appropriate word is speak­ing? Where does the word derive its appropriateness? The poetsays nothing about it. But the content of the closing line doesafter all include the statement: The being of anything that isresides in the word. Therefore this statement holds true:

l -~anguag~ is the house of Being. By this procedure, we wouldseem to have adduced from poetry the most handsome con­firmation for a principle of thin ing which we had stated atsome time in the pa t-and in truth would have thrown every­thing into utter confusion. We would have reduced poetryto the servant's role a documentary proof for our thinking,and taken thinking too lightly; in fact we would alreadyhave forgotten the whole point: to undergo an experiencewith language.

Therefore, we now restore to integrity, in its original placein the poem's last tanza, the line which we had first pi kedout and rewritten.

So I renoun ed and sadly ee:here word break off no (hinR may be.

The poet, normally very sparing with his punctuation, hasput a colon after usee." One would expect, then, somethingto follow which speaks in \ hat the grammarian call directdiscour e.

o I renounced and adly .ec:Where word break off no (hing i .

But , tefan George doe not ay "is," he ay "may be." In keep-

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ing with his practice elsewhere, he could omit the colon, anomission that would almost be more appropriate for the in­direct discourse-if that is what it is-in the last line. Still,many precedents can be cited, presumably, for George's usage,for example a passage from Goethe's "Introduction to the Out­line of a Theory of Color." There we find:

In order that we Illay not appear overly timid by trying to avoidan explanation, we would revise what we said fir t. a follows:that color be an elementary natural phenomenon for the senseof sight....

Goethe regards the words after the colon as the explanationof what color is, and says: "Color be ..... But what is thesituation in the last stanza of George's poem? Here we have(0 do not with a theoretical explanation of a natural phe­nomenon, but with a renunciation.

So I renoun ced and adly cc:Where word breaks off no thing may be.

Do the words after . the colon say what the substance of therenunciation is? Does the poet renounce the fact that no thingmay be where the word breaks off? Exactly the opposite. Therenunciation he has learned implies precisely that the poetadmits that no thing may be where the word breaks off.

Why all these artful explications? The matter, after all, isclear. '0, nothing is clear ; but everything is significant. Inwhat way? In this \\'ay, that what matters is for us to hearhow, in the poem's last stanza, the whole of that ex perienceis concentrated which the poet has undergone with the word- and that means with language as well: and that we must becareful not to force the vibration of the poetic saying intothe rigid groove of a univocal statement , and so destroy it.

The last line, "Where word breaks off no thing may be,"could then still have another meaning than that of a statementand affirmation put in indirect di scourse, which says that nothing is where the word is lacking.

What follows the colon does not name what the poet re-

THE ATURE OF LA 'G AGE

nounces; rather, it names the realm into which the renuncia­tion must enter; it names the call to enter into that relationbetween thing and word which has now been experienced.What the poet learned to renounce is his formerly cherishedview regarding the relation of thing and word. His renuncia­tion concerns the poetic relation to the word that he hadcultivated until then. If so, the "may be" in the line, "Whereword breaks off no thing may be," would grammaticallyspeaking not be the subjunctive of "is," but a kind of impera­tive, a command which the poet follows, to keep it from thenon. If so, the "may be" in the line, U\\ here word breaks offno thing nlay be," would mean: do not henceforth admit anything as being where the word breaks off. In the "may be"understood as a command, the poet avows to himself the self­denial he has learned, in which he abandons the view thatsomething may be even if and even while the word for it isstill lacking. What does renunciation mean? It is equivalentto "abdication." Here the root word is the Latin dicere, tosay, the Greek deiknumi, to show, point out, indicate. In hisrenunciation, the poet abdicates his former relation to theword. othing more? o. There is in the abdication itselfalready an avowal, a command to which he denies him elfno longer.

ow it would be just as forced to claim that the imperativeinterpretation of "may .be" 'is the only possible one. Pre­su m a b ly one meaning and the other of "may be" vibrate andmingle in the poetic saying: a command as appeal, and sub­mission to it.

The poet has learned renunciation. He has undergone anexper ience. With what? With the thing and its relation tothe word. But the title of the poem is simply "The Word.'The decisive experience is that which the poet has under­gone with the word-sand with the word inasmuch as it aloneca n bestow a relation to a thing. itated more explicitly, thepoet has experienced that only the word makes a thing appearas the thing it is, and thus lets it be present. The word avowsi tsel f to the poet as that which holds and sustains a thing

66 o THE \VAY TO LA GAGE

in its being. The poet experiences an authority, a dignity ofthe word than which nothing vaster and loftier can bethought. But the word is also that possession with whichthe poet is trusted and en trusted as poet in an extraordinary\ aYe The poet exp rien es his poetic calling as a call to theword as the sour e, the bourn of Being. The renunciationwhich the poet learns i of that special kind of fulfilled self­denial to which alone is promised what has long been con­cealed and is essentially vouchsafed already.

The poet, then, ought to rejoice at such an experience,which brings to him the most joyful gift a poet can re eive.Instead, the poenl says: "So I renounced and sadly see." Thepoet, then, is merely depre sed by hi renunciation becauseit Olean a loss. Yet, a we have seen, the renunciation is nota 10. or doe II adly" refer to the substance of the renun­ciation, but rather to the fact that he has learned it. Thatsadne , however, is neither mere dejection nor despondency.

rue adne s i in harmony with what i most joyful-but inthi \ ay, that the greatest jo withdraws, halts in its with­draw al, and holds it elf in re erve. By learning that renuncia­tion, the poet undergoes his experien e with the word's loftys\vay. He receives primal knowledge of what task is a signedto the poetic saying, what ublirne and lasting matters arepromised to it and yet withheld from it. The poet ould nevergo through the ex perien e he undergoe with the word if theexperien e were not attuned to sadne , to the Blood of re­lea ement into the nearnes of what i withdrawn but at thesame time held in r erve for an originary advent.

These few pointers Illay . uffice to Blake it clearer whatex perience the poet has II ndergone with language. Ex periencemeans eundo assequi to obtain somcthin along the way, toattain omething b going on a ,vay. \\ hat is it that the poetrea he? ot mer knowledge. He obtain entrance into therelation of word to thing. This relation is not, however, aconne tion between the thin that is on one side and the wordthat i on the other. The word it elf i the relation which inea h instance retains the thing within it e lf in uch a mannerthat it "i " a thing.

THE NAT RE OF LA GAGE

And yet, in making these statements, however broad theirimplications, we have done no more than sum up the expe­rience the poet has undergone with the word, instead of enter­ing into the experience itself. How did the experience happen?We are guided toward the answer by that one little wordwhich we have neglected so far in our discussion of thepoem's final stanza:

So I renounced and sadly see:Where word breaks off no thing may be.

"So I renounced .. ." How? In the \\'ay the first six stanzassay it. What we have just noted concerning the last stanzamay shed some light on the first six. They must speak forthemselves, of course, from within the totality of the poem.

In these six stanzas there speaks the experience that the poetundergoes with language. Something comes to pass for him,strikes him, and transforms his relation to the word, It is thusnecessary first to mention the relation to language in which thepoet stood before the experience. It speaks in the first threestanzas. The last line of the third stanza trails off in an elli psis,and so marks off the first triad from the second. The fourthstanza then opens the second triad-rather abruptly, with theword "Once," taken here in its primary meaning: one time.The second triad tells what the poet experiences once and forall. To experience is to go along a \ aYe The way leads througha landscape. The poet's land belongs within that landscape, asdoes the dwelling of the twilit norn, ancient goddess of fate.She dwells on the strand, the edge of the poetic land which isitself a boundary, a march. The twilit norn watches over herbourn, the ,veIl in whose depths she searches for the names shewould bring forth from it. \ ord, language, belongs within thedomain of this mysterious landscape in which poetic sayingborders on the fateful source of speech. At first, and for long,it seems as though the poet needed only to bring the wondersthat enthrall and the dreams that enrapture him to the well­spring of language, and there in unclouded confidence let thewords come forth to him that fit all the wonderful and dream­like things whose images have come to him. In a former time,

68 ON THE WAY TO LANGUAGE

the poet, emboldened as his poems turned out well, cherishedthe view that the poetic things, the wonders and dreams, had,even on their own, their well-attested standing within Being,and that no more was necessary than that his art now also findthe word for them to describe and present them. At first, andfor long, it seemed as though a word were like a grasp thatfastens upon the things already in being and held to be inbeing, compresses and expresses them, and thus makes thembeautiful.

Wonder or dream from distant landI carried to my country's strand

And 'waited till the twilit nornHad found the name within her bourn-

Then I could grasp it close and strongIt blooms and shines now the front along ...

Wonders and dreams on the one hand, and on the otherhand the names by which they are grasped, and the t\VO fused­thus poetry carne about. Did this poetry do justice to what isin the poet's nature-that he must found what is lasting, inorder that it Inay endure and be?

But in the end the moment comes for Stefan George whenthe conventional self-assured poetic production suddenly breaksdown and makes him think of Holderlin's words:

But what endures is founded by pact..

For at one time, once, the poet-still filled with hope after ahappy sail-reaches the place of the ancient goddess of tate anddemands the name of th e rich and frail prize that lies thereplain in his hand. It is neither "wonder from afar" nor"dream." The goddess searches long, but in vain. She giveshim the tidings:

"No like of thi s these depths enfold."

There is nothing in these depths that is like the prize so richand frail which is plainly there in his hand. Such a word, whichwould let the prize lying- there plainly be what it is-such a

THE NAT RE OF LANG UAGE 69

word would have to well up out of the secure depths reposingin the stillness of deep slumber. Only a word from such asource could keep the prize secure in the richness and frailty ofits simple being.

II 0 like of this these depths enfold."

And straight it vanished from my hand,The treasure never graced my land ...

The frail rich prize, already plainly in hand, does not reachbeing as a thing, it does not come to be a treasure, that is, apoetically secured possession of the land. The poet remainssilent about the prize which could not become a treasure ofhis land, but which yet granted to him an experience withlanguage, the opportunity to learn the renunciation in whoseself-denial the relation of word to thing promises itself to him.The "prize so rich and frail" is contrasted with "wonder ordrea~ from distant land." If the poem is a poetic expressionof Stefan George's own poetic way, we may surmise that theprize he had in mind was that sensitive abundance _of sim­plicity which comes to the poet in his late years as what needsand assents to be said. The poem itself, which has turned outwell, a lyric song of language, proves that he did learn the

. .renunciauon.

But as for us, it must remain open whether we are capableof entering properly into this poetic experience. There is thedanger that we will overstrain a poem such as this by thinkingtoo much into it, and thereby debar ourselves from beingmoved by its poetry. Much greater of course-bu t who todaywould admit it?-is the danger that we will think too little,and reject the thought that the true experience wih language (I

can only be a thinking experience, all the more so because thelofty poetry of all great poetic work always vibrates within arealm of thinking. But if what matters first of all is a thinkingexperience with language, then wh y this stress on a poeticexperience? Because thinking in turn goes its ,vays in theneighborhood of poetry. It is well, therefore, to give thought

o THE \VAY TO LA GAGE

to the neighbor, to him who dwells in the same neighborhood.Poetry and thought, ea h need the other in its neighborhood,each in its fashion, when it comes to ultimate . In what regionthe neighborhood itself ha its domain, each of them, thoughtand poetry, will define differently, but alv..'ays so that they willfind themselves within the same domain. But because we arecaught in the prejudice nurtured through centuries that think­ing is a matter of ratiocination, that is, of calculation in thewide t sen e, the mere talk of a neighborhood of thinking topoetry is suspect.

Thinkin is not a means to gain knowledge. Thinking cutsfurrows into the soil of Being. About 1875, ietzsche oncewrote (Gro oktav \rV\ XI, 20): "Our thinking should have avigorou fragrance, like a wheatfield on a summer's night."How many of u today still have the senses for that fragrance?

By now, the two opening sentences of our lecture can berestat d more clearly. This series of lectures bears the title"The ature of Language." It is intended to bring us face toface \ ith a po sibility of undergoing a thinking experiencewith language. Be it noted that we said a possibility. We arestill only in the preliminaries, in an attelllpt, even though thetitle does not say so. That title, "1 he l ature of Language,"sound rather presumptuous, as though we were about topromulgate reliable information concerning the nature oflanguage. Besides, the title sounds altogether too trite, like"The ature of Art," "The ature of Freedom," "The 1 atureof Technology," "The ature of Truth," "The ature ofReligion," etc. etc. \ e are all getting somewhat surfeited withall thi bi production of natures, for reasons which we do notquite understand ourselve . But what if we were to get rid ofthe presumptuousness and triteness of the title by a simpledevi e? Let us give the title a question mark, such that thewhole of it is covered by that mark and hence has a differentsound. I t then runs: The ature?-of Language? ot onlylanguage i in que tion now, but so is the meaning of nature­and what is more, the question now is whether and in what\vay nature (es ential being) and language belong together.

THE NATURE OF LANG AGE i l

The ature?-of Language? With the addition of the questionsmarks, all of the title's presumptuousness and triteness vanish.i\ t the same time, one question calls forth the others. Thefollowing t\VO questions arise at once:

How are we to put questions to language when our relationto it is muddled, in any case undefined? How can we inquireabout its nature, when it may immediately become a matter ofdispute what nature means?

o matter how many ways we may devise to get our inquiryinto language and the investigation of its nature started, allour efforts will be in vain as long as we lose our minds in onevery important respect which by no means concerns only thequestions here touched upon.

If we put question to language, questions about its nature,its being, then clearly language itself must already have beengranted to us. Similarly, if we want to inquire into the beingof language, then that which is called nature or being mustalso be already granted to u . Inquiry and investigation hereand everywhere require the prior grant of whatever it is theyapproach and pursue with their queries. Every posing of everyquestion takes place within the very grant of what is put inquestion.

What do we discover when we give sufficient thought to thematter? This, that the authentic attitude of thinking is not aputting of questions-rather, it is a listening to the grant, thepromise of what is to be put in question. But in the history ofour thinking, asking questions has since the early days beenregarded as the characteristic procedure of thinking, and notwithout good cause. Thinking is more thoughtful in propor­tion as it takes a more radical stance, a it goes to the radix,the root of all that is. The quest of thinking always remains 'the search for the first and ultimate grounds. Why? Becausethis, that something is and what it is, the persistent presenceof being, has from of old been determined to be the groundand foundation. As all nature has the character of a ground, a-earch for it is the founding and grounding of the ground orfoundation. A thinking that thinks in the direction of nature

ON THE \\lAY TO LANGUAGE

defined in this way is fundamentally a questioning. At theclose of a lecture called "The Question of Technology," givensome time ago, I said: "Questioning is the piety of thinking.""Piety" is meant here in the ancient sense: obedient, or sub­missive, and in this case su bmitting to what thinking has tothink about. One of the exciting experiences of thinking isthat at times it does not fully comprehend the new insights ithas just gained, and does not properly see them through. Such,too, is the case with the sentence just cited that questioningis the piety of thinking. The lecture ending with that sentencewas already in the ambiance of the realization that the truestance of thinking cannot be to put questions, but must be tolisten to that which our questioning vouchsafes-and all ques­tioning begins to be a questioning only in virtue of pursuingits quest for essential being. Accordingly, the title of theselectures, even if we provide it with a question mark, does notthereby alone become the title for an experience of thinking.But there it is, waiting to be completed in terms of what wehave just remarked concerning the true attitude of thinking.

o matter how we' put our questions to language about itsnature, first of all it is needful that language vouchsafe itselfto us. If it does, the nature of languag becomes the grant ofits essential being, that is, the being of language becomes thelanguage of being.

Our title, "The Nature of Language," has now lost even itsrole as ti tle. Wha tit says is the echo of a thi nking ex perience,the possibility of which we are trying to bring before us: thebeing of language-the language of bei ng.

In the event that this statement-if that is what it is­represents not merely a contrived and hence vacuous inversion,the possibility nlay emerge that we shall at the proper timesubstitute another word for "language" as well as for "nature."

The whole that now addresses us-the being of language:the language of being-is not a title, let alone an answer to aquestion. It becomes a guide word, meant to guide us on ourway. On that \\ ay of thinking, the poetic experience with theword which we heard at the beginning is to be our companion.

THE N TURE OF LA GAGE i3

We have already had conver e with it, we recall, with thisresult: the closing line, "Where word breaks off no thing maybe," points to the relation of word and thing in this manner,that the word itself is the relation, by holding everything forthinto being, and there upholding it. If the word did not havethis bearing, the whole of thing, the "world," would sink intoobscurity, including the "I" of the poenl, him who brings tohis country's strand, to the source of names, all the wonders anddreams he encounters.

In order that we may hear the voice of Stefan George'spoetic experience with the word once more in another key, Ishall in closing read Gottfried Berm's two-stanza poem.· Thetone of this poem is tauter and at the same time more vehe­merit, because it is abandoned and at the same time resolvedin the extreme. The poem's title is a characteristic and pre­sumably intentional variation:

A WordA 'word, a phrase-: from cyphers ri eLife recognized, a sudden sense,The sun rands till. mute are the skies,. nd all compact it, stark and dense.

A \\'ord-a gleam, a flight, a spark,A thrust of flames, a stellar trace-And then again-ilntnense-the darkRound world and I in elllpty space.

II

These three lectures are intended to bring us face to facewith a possibility of undergoing an experience with language.' I 0 experience something means to attain it along the way, bygoing on a \vay. 'To undergo an ex pericn e with somethingmeans tha t this something, which we reach a long the \\'ay inorder to attain it, itself pertains to us, meet and Blakes its

• The tran lat ion. bv Richard Exner . is taken from Cot tfr ied Benn , PrimalVision, edited hy E. B. Ashton, p. 251. Reprinted by permi sion of NewDirl'ctions Publishing Corporation. All riglus reserved. er r.)

74 ON THE WAY TO LANGUAGE

appeal to us, in that it transforms us into itself.Because our goal is to experience, to be underway, let us

give thought to the way today, in this lecture leading from thefirst over to the third lecture. But because most of you here areprimarily engaged in scientific thinking, a prefactory remarkwill be in order. The sciences know the way to knowledge bythe term "method." Method, especially in today's modern sci­entific thought, is not a mere instrument serving the sciences;rather, it has pressed the sciences into its own service. ietzschewas the first to recognize this situation, with all its vast implica­tions, and to give it expression in the notes that follow. Thesenotes are found in his literary remains, as numbers 466 and 469of The Will to Power. The first note runs: "It is not the victoryof science that distinguishes our nineteenth century, but thevictory of scientific method over science."

The other note begins with this sentence: "The most valu­able insights are gained last of all; but the most valuable in­sights are the methods."

ietzsche himself, too, gained this insight into the relationof method to science last of all-to wit, in the last year of hislucid life, 1888, in Turin.

In the sciences, not only is the theme drafted, called up bythe method, it is also set up within the method and remainswithin the framework of the method, subordinated to it. Thefurious pace at which the sciences are swept along today-theythemselves don't know whither-comes from the speed-up driveof method with all its potentialities, a speed-Up that is moreand more left to the mercy of technology. Method holds all thecoercive power of knowledge. The theme is a part of themethod.

But in thinking, the situation is different from that of scien­tific representation. In thinking there is neither method northeme, but rather the region, so called because it gives its realmand free reign· to what thinking is given to think. Thinkingabides in that country, walking the ways of that country. Here

• "die Gegend ... gegnet"; for Heidegger's own remark on his use of theword, see hi Discourse on Thinking (tr. J. ~f. Anderson & E. H. Freund;

w York: Harper & Row, 1966). pp. 65-66. (Tr.)

THE NATURE OF LA GUAGE 75the way is part of the country and belongs to it. From the pointof view of the sciences, it is not just difficult but impossible tosee this situation. If in what follows we reflect, then, upon theway of thoughtful experience with language, we are not under­taking a methodological consideration. We are even now walk­ing in that region, the realm that concerns us.

We speak and spea about language. What we speak of, lan­guage, is always ahead of us. Our speaking merely followslanguage constantly. Thus we are continually lagging behindwhat we first ought to have overtaken and taken up in order tospeak about it. Accordingly, when we speak of language weremain entangled in a spea ing that is persistently inadequate.This tangle debars us from the matters that are to rna e them­selves known to our thinking. But this tangle, which our think­ing must never take too lightly, drops away as soon as we takenotice of the peculiar properties of the way of thought, that is,as soon as we look about us in the country where thinkingabides. This country is everywhere open to the neighborhoodof poetry.

As we give our mind to the way of thinking, we must givethought to this neighborhood. Ta en at its surface value andrecounted, our first lecture deals with three matters:

First, it points to a poetic experience with language. Thepointer is limited to a few remarks about Stefan George'spoem liThe Word."

ext, the lecture characterizes the experience, which to pre­pare is our task here, as a thinking experience. Where thinkingfinds its way to its true destination, it comes to a focus inlistening to the promise that tells us what there is for thinkingto think upon.

Every question posed to the matter of thinking, every inquiryfor its nature, is already borne up by the grant of what is tocome into question. Therefore the proper bearing of the think­ing which is needed now is to listen to the grant, not to askquestions. But since such listening is a listening for the coun­tering word, our listening to the rant for what we are to thinkalways develops into our asking for the answer, Our charac­terization of thinking as a listening sounds trange, nor is it

o T THE \'lAY TO LANGUAGE

sufficiently clear for our present needs. However, this is whatconstitutes the peculiarity of listening: it receives its definite­ness and clarity Irom ,..-h a t indications the grant gives to it. Butone thing is clear even now: the listening we have now in mindtends toward the grant, as Saying to which the nature of lan­guage is akin, If we succeed in gaining insight into the possi­bility of a thinking experience with language, it might clarifythe sense in which thinking is a listening to the grant.·

Finally, the first lecture covers a third point, the transforma­tion of the title of our lecture series, The transformation beginsby removing the title's presumptuousness and triteness, byadding a question mark which puts both language and essen­tial being into que t ion, and turns the title into a query: The

ature?-of Language?ow the point of our attenlpt is to prepare a thinking ex­

perience with language. But since to think is before all else toIi ten, to let ourselves be told something and not to ask ques­tions, we must strike the question mark out again when athinking experience is at stake, and yet we can no longer simplyreturn to the original form of the title. If we are to thinkthrough the nature of language, language must first promiseitself to us, or must already have done so, Language must, inits own way, avow to u itself-its nature. Language persists asthis avowal, We hear it onstantly, of course, but do not give itthought. If we did not hear it everywhere, we could not use onesingle word of language. Language is active as this promise.The essential nature of language make: itself known to us aswhat is spoken, the language of its nature. Rut we cannot quitehear this pri mal knowledge, let a lone "read" it. I t runs: Thebeing of language-the language of being.··

What we have just said is an irnposit ion. If it were merely

."... in wclchcm Sinne da. Dcnke-n ein Horen der Zusag« ist ." Zusageas here u ed by Hcidcggcr exceeds (he meaning of the translation "grant."Zusage is a Sage, a . aving. To put it brutally: Being says, and languagefollows iaying in speech. (T r. )

•• "Da: \\ esen der Sprarhc: Die Sprache des \\·escn. ," The context hereeros (0 demand the t ranslat ion "being" for U /rSt'11, otherwise translated

va riouslv: nature, essential nature, or e ence. (T r .)

THE NATURE OF LANGUAGE 77an assertion, we could set out to prove its truth or falseness.That would be easier by far than to endure the imposition ormake our peace with it.

The being of language-the language of being. The demandthat we experience this sentence thoughtfully would seem tostern Irorn the lecture imposing it on us. But the impositioncomes from another source. The transformation of the title isof such a kind that it makes the title disappear. What followsthen is not a dissertation on language under a different head­ing. What follows is the attempt to take our first step into thecountry which holds possibilities of a thinking experience withlanguage in readiness for us. In that coun try, thinking en­counters its neighborhood with poetry. \\ e heard of a poeticexperience with the word. It is concentrated in the languageof the poem's last stanza:

So I renounced and sadly see:Where word breaks off no thing- nlay be.

Through a brief commentary on the two preceding triads,we tried to gain an insight into the poetic ,vay of thi experi­ence. Just a look from afar at the poet's way-surely we are notconceited enough to imagine that we have gone this ,,'ay our-elves. For George's poetic saying, in this poem and in the

others that belong with it, is a going that is like a going away,after the poet had formerly spoken like a lawgiver and aherald. Thus this poem "The Word" rightly has its place inthe last part of the last volume of poetry George pu blished,Des Neue R eich } published in 192ft This last part is entitled"The Song." The song is sung, not after it has COIn e to be, butrather: in the singing the song begins to be a song. The song'spoet is the singer. Poetry is son g. Holderlin, following theexam ple of the ancients, likes to call po try "song."

In his recently discovered hymn "Celebration of Pea ce,"l Iolderlin sings, at the beginning of the eighth stanza:

o THE \'V Y TO LA GAGE

Mu h, from the morning onwards,Since we have been a discourse and have hard from

one another,Has human kind learnt; but s on we shall be song.·

Those who "have heard from one another"-the ones andthe others-are men and gods. The song celebrates the adventof the gods-and in that advent everything falls silent. Song isnot the opposite of a discourse, but rather the most intimatekin hip with it; for song, too, is language. In the precedingseventh stanza, Holderlin say :

This is a law of fate, that each shall know all thers,That when the ilence return there hall be a language too.

In 1910, orbert von Hellingrath, who was killed in actionbefore Verdun in 1916, first publi hed Holderlin's Pindartranslations from the manuscri pts. In 1914, there followed thefir t publication of Holderlin's late hymns. These two bookshit u tudent like an earthquake. Stefan George, who hadfirst directed Hellingrath's attention to Holderlin, now inturn received decisive inspiration from tho e first editions, asdid Rilke. ince that time, Geor e's poetry comes closer andcloser to ong. ietzs he's word in the third part of ThusSpoke Zarath ustra, at the end of "The Great Longing," areeven then ringin in the poet' ear:

o my oul, now I have iven you all , and ~ ve n the la t I had,and I have emptied all nly hand to you: that I bade )'OU sing,behold, that wa the la. t I had.

The final section of George's Das i\ eue Reich, below thesection title UT ile Song," begins with this motto:

What I st ill ponder, and what I till frame,\ hat I till love-their feature are the same.

The poet has stepped outside of hi former "circle," yet withoutrenouncing the word; for he sings, and song remains discourse.The poet's renun iation does not touch the word, but rather

• Tran lation by fichael Hamburger, from Fri drich Holderlin : Poemsa"d Fra ment (Ann Arbor. 1%6), p. 439. err.)

THE ATURE OF L GUAGE 79

the relation of word to thing, more precisely: the mysterious­ness of that relation, which reveals itself as mystery at just thatpoint where the poet wants to name a prize which he holdsplainly in his hand. The poet does not say what sort of prizeit is. We rnay recall that"prize" means a small and gracefulgift intended for one's guest; or perhaps a present in token ofspecial favor, which the recipient will henceforth carry on hisperson. "Prize," then, has to do with favor and with guest. Letus note also that that other poem, "Sea Song," together with"The Word," belongs under the heading "The Song" of thevolume's last section. "Sea Song" begins:

When on the verge with gentle fallDown dip the fire-reddened ball:Then on the dune I pau e to restThat I may see a cherished guest.

The last line names the guest, yet does not name him. Like theguest, the prize remains nameless. And nameless remains alsothat highest favor which comes to the poet. The last poem inthis last section has its say about the favor, sings it, but stilldoes not name it.

Prize, favor, guest, it says-but they are not named. Are theythen kept secret? 1 o. We can keep secret only what we know,The poet does not keep the names a secret. He does not nowthem. He admits it himself in that one verse which rings like abasso ostinato through all the songs:

Wherein y u hang-you do not know.

The ex} erience of this poet with the word passes into darkness,and even remains veiled itself. We must leave it so; but merelyby thinking about the poetic experience in this way, we leaveit in the neighborhood of thinking. However, we may not'uppose that a thinking experience with language, rather thanthe poetic experience, will lead us to the light more quickly,and perhaps could lift the veil. What thinking can do heredepends on whether and in what way it hears the grantingsaying in which the being of language speaks as the language

80 ON THE WAY TO LANGUAGE

of being. However, it is not merely an expedient that ourattempt to prepare for a thinking experience with languageseeks out the neighborhood of poetry; for the attempt restsupon the supposition that poetry and thinking belong withinone neighborhood. Perhap this upposition corresponds to theimposition which we hear only vaguely so far: the being oflanguage-the language of being.

In order to uncover a possibility of undergoing a thinkingexperience with language, let us seek out the neighborhood inwhich poetry and thinking dwell. A strange beginning-wehave so little experience with either. And yet we know themboth. great nlany things are known to us about poetry andthinking under the rubrics Poetry and Philosophy. or are wetrying to find our \\'ay blindly into the neighborhood of poetryand thinking; a poem "The Word" is already echoing in ourears, and thu we hal e our e es on a poetic experience withlanguage. With all due reservations \.. e may sum it up in thesaying of the renunciation: "Where word breaks off no thingmay be." As soon as we consider that what is named here is therelation between thin and word, and with it the relation oflanguage to an entity as such, we have called poetry over intothe neighborliness of thinking. Thinking, however, seesnothing strange in that. In fact, the relation between thingand word i among the earliest matters to which Westernthinking gives voice and word, and doe 0 in the form of therelation between being and saying. This relation assaultsthinking in uch an overpowering manner that it announcesitself in a ingle word. The word is logos. I t peaks simultane­ously as the name for Being and for Saying.

More overpowering still for us is the fa t that here nothinking experience with language is being made, in the sensethat language it elf, as su h, come to word explicitly andaccording to that relation. Fr0l11 thi ob 'erva tion we conclude:Stefan George' poetic experience means something age-old,something that has struck thinking long ago and ever since hasheld it captive, though in a manner that has become bothcommonplace and indiscernible to u . ~ "either poetic experi-

THE AT RE OF LA G ' GE I

ence with the ord nor the thinking experience with Sayinggives voice to langua e in it sential being.

Such is the situation, and thi despite the fact that sincethe early day of \ estern thinkin ,and up into the late periodof Stefan George's poetic work, thinking has thought deepthoughts about language, and poctry ha made stirring thinginto language. But we can only conjecture why it is that, none­theless, the being of language nowhere brings itself to word asthe language of being. There is some evidence that the essentialnature of language flatly refuses to express itself in words-vinthe language, that is, in which we make statements aboutlanguage. If language everywhere withhold it nature in thissense, then uch x ithholdin is in the very nature of language.Thus language not only holds back when we peak it in theaccustomed ways, but this its holding back is determined bythe fact that language holds back its own origin and so deniesits being to our usual notion. But then we l11ay no longer saythat the being of langua e i the language of bein , unless theword "language" in the second phra e says omething different,in fact omething in which the, ithholding of the being oflanguage-speaks. ccordingly, the being of language pu tsinself into language nonethele , in its own rno t appropriatemanner. We may avoid th i ue no Ion er; rather, we mustkeep on conjecturing' hat th rea on nlay be why the peculiar.peech of Ian uage's bein pa unnoticed all too easily. Pre­sumably part of the rea on i that the two kind ' of utterancpar excellence, poetry and thinking, have not been sought outin their proper habitat, their nei hborhood. Yet we talk oftenenough about "poets and thinkers."· By 00\\", this phrase habecome a va 1I0US cliche. Perhap the "and" in "poetry andthinkin " will receive it full meaning and definition if wewill let it enter our mind that thi "and" might signif then .igh borhood of poetr and thought.

Ve will, of course, immediately demand an explanation of

• Th characterization of the German as "the peopl of poets andthinkers:' familiar to every G'rman schoolbov, i. of un ertain origin .though it i found in German lit -rarurc a -a r lv a: 1808. (T r.)

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what "neighborhood" is supposed to mean here, and by whatright we talk about such a thing. A neighbor, as the word itselftells us, is someone who dwells near to and wi th someone else.This someone else thereby becomes himself the neighbor ofthe one. Neighborhood, then, is a relation resul ting from thefact that the one settles face to face with the other. Accordingly,the phrase of the neighborhood of poetry and thinking meansthat the two dwell face to face with each other, that the onehas settled facing the other, has drawn into the other's near­ness. This remark about what makes a neighborhood is by wayof figurative talk. Or are we already saying something to thepoint? What, really, does "figurative talk" mean? We are quickto give the answer, never giving it a thought that we cannotclaim to have a reliable formulation so long as it remainsunclear what is talk and what is imagery, and in what waylanguage speaks in images, if indeed language does speak soat all. Therefore we will here leave everything wide open. Letus stay with the most urgent issue, which is, to seek out theneighborhood of poetry and thinking-which now means theencounter of the two facing each other.

Fortunately we do not need either to earch for this neighbor­hood or to seek it out. We are already abiding in it. We movewithin it. The poet's poem speaks to us. In our encounter withthe poem, we have thought out a few things, though only incrude approximation.

Where word breaks off no thing may be

is what the poet's renunciation says; we added that here therelation between thing and word comes to light, and furtherthat thing here means anything that in any way has being, anybeing as such. About the "word" we also said that it not onlystands in a relation to the thing, but that the word is whatfirst. brings that given thing, as the being that is, into this "is";that the word is what holds the thing there and relates it andso to speak provides its main tenance with which to be a thing.Accordingly, we said, the word not only stands in a relation tothe thing, but this "may be" itself is what holds, relates, and

THE T RE OF L • GAGE 3

keeps the thing a thing; that the "may be." a such keeper,is the relation itself.

These thoughts about the poenl may to orne seem super­fluous, importunate, and forced. But the point here is to find,in the neighborhood of the poetic experience with the word,a possibility for a thinking experience with language. Thatmeans nO\\I and first: we must learn to heed that nei hborhooditself in which poetry and thinking have their dwelling. But,strangely-the neighborhood it elf remains invisible. The samething happens in our daily lives. We live in a neighborhood,and yet we would be baffled if we had to say in what thatneighborhood consists. But this perplexity i merely a particu­lar case, though p rhap an exceptionall good one, of the oldencompassing perplexity in which all our thinking and sayingfinds itself alway and every here. hat is this perplexity wehave in mind? This: we are not in a position-or if we are,then only rarely and just barely-to experience purely in itsown terms a relation that obtains between two things, twobeings. We immediately conceive the relation in terms of thethings which in the given instance are relat d. We little under­stand how, in what way, by hat means, and from where therelation comes about, and what it properl is qua relation. Itremains correct, of course, to conceive of a nei hborhood as arelation; and thi notion applie al 0 to the nei hborhood ofpoetry and thinking. But the notion tells u nothing aboutwhether poetry draws into the neighborhood of thinking, orthinking into that of petry, or whether both are drawn intoeach other's neighborhood. Poetry moves in the element ofsaying, and so does thinking. When we reflect on poetry, wefind ourselves at once in that same element in which thinkingmoves, We cannot here decide flatly whether poetry i realla kind of thinking, or thinking really a kind of petry. Itremains dark to u what determines their real r lation, andfrom \\ hat our e what we 0 casually call the "real" reallycomes. But-no matter how we call poetry and thought to mind,in every ca e one and the arne elem nt has drawn 10 e t u ­saying-whether we pay attention to it or not.

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There is still more: poetry and thinking not only movewithin the element of saying, they also owe their saying tomanifold experiences wi th language, experiences which wehave hardly noticed, let alone collected. Where we did noticeand collect them, we did so without adequate regard for justwhat concerns us Ill0re and more closely in our present reflec­tions: the neighborhood of poetry and thinking. Presumablythis neighborhood is not a mere result after all, brought aboutonly by the fact that poetry and thinking draw together into aface-to-face encoun ter: for the two belong to each other evenbefore they ever could set out to come face to face one to theother. Saying is the same element for both poetry and thinking;but for both it was and still remains "element" in a different\vay than water is the element for the fish, or air for the bird­in a \\'ay that compels us to stop talking about element, sinceSaying does more than merely "bear up" poetry and thinking,more than afford them the region they traverse.

All this is easily said, that is, put into words, to be sure, butdifficult to experience especially for us moderns. What we tryto reflect upon under the name of the neighborhood of poetryand thinking is vastly different from a mere inventory ofnotional relations. The neighborhood in question pervadeseverywhere our stay on this earth and our journey in it. Butsince modern thinking is ever more resolutely and exclusivelyturning into calculation, it concentrates all available energyand "interests" in calculating how man Inay soon establishhimself in worldless cosmic space. This type of thinking isabout to abandon the earth as earth..~s calcula tion, it driftsmore and more rapidly and obsessively toward the conquest ofcosmic space. This type of thinking is itself already the explo­sion of a po\\'er that cou ld blast everything to nothingness..Allthe rest that follows fro III such thinking, the technical proc­esses in the functioning of the doomsday machinery, wouldmerely be the final sinister dispatch of madness into senseless­ness. .As early as 19l i, Stefan George, in his great ode "Thewar" written during the First World War, said: "These are thefiery signs -not the tidings" (Das N eue R eich, p. 29) .

THE NAT RE OF L ~G AGE

Our attempt to see the neighborhood itself of poetry andthinking has faced us with a peculiar difficulty. If we werethoughtless enough to let it pass, the distance that these lec­tures cover and our progress along that ,"'ay would remainhazy. The difficulty is reflected in what has already brushedus in the first lecture, and meets us head-on in the presentlecture.

When we listen to the poet and, in our own fashion, considerwhat his renunciation says, we are already staying in the neigh­borhood of poetry and thinking; and yet again we are not, atleast not so that we experience the neighborhood as such. Weare not yet on our way to it. We must first turn, turn back towhere we are in reality already staying. The abiding turn, backto where we already are, is infinitely harder than are hastyexcursions to places where we are not yet and never will be,except perhaps as the monstrous creatures of technology, assim­ilated to machines.

The step back into the sphere of human being demandsother things than does the progress into the machine world.

To turn back to where we are (in reality) already staying:that is how we must walk along the \vay of thinking whichnow becomes necessary. If we pay attention to the peculiarproperty of this way, the at first troublesome ernblan e of anentanglement fades a\vay. \\ e speak of language, but con­uantly seem to he speaking merely about language, while infact we are already letting language, [rom uiith in language,speak to us, in language, of itself, aying its nature, This iswhy we must not prematurely break off the dialogue we havebegun with the poetic experience we have heard. for fearthat thinking would not allow poetry to find it s own wordsany longer, but would force everything into the wav ofthinking,

\ '\ e must dare to move back and forth within the neighbor­hood of the paenl, and of it , closing stanza into which thepoem gather, \\ e try anew to hear what is being saidpoetically. \" e shall assume that demands Inay be Blade onthinking, and with that we begin.

86 ON THE WAY TO LANGUAGE

So I renounced and sadly ce:Where word breaks off no thing may be.

Once again we revise the last line in such a \\'ay that it soundsalmost like a statement, even a theorem: a thing is wherethe word is lacking. . thing is not until, and is only where,the word is not lacking but is there. But if the word is, thenit must itself also be a thing, because "thing" here meanswhatever is in some \vay: "Wonder or dream from distantland." Or could it be that when the word speaks, qua word itis not a thing-in no way like what is? Is the word a nothing?But then how is it supposed to help the thing to be? Whateverbestows being, must it not "be" itself, all the more and beforeall else, be most in being, more so than all the things thatare? We cannot see it any other way as long as we calculate,that is, compute the sufficient reason which rationalizes beingsas the result of reason, reason's effects, and thereby satisfies ourconceptualizations. Accordingly, if the word is to endow thething with being, it too must be before any thing is-thus itmust inescapably be itself a thing. We would then be facedwith the situation that one thing, the word, conveys being toanother thing. But, says the poet, "Where word breaks offno thing Inay be." Word and thing are different, even dis­parate. We suppose that we have understood the poet on firsthearing; but no sooner have we so to speak touched the linethoughtfully than what it says fades away into darkness. Theword, which itself is supposed not to be a thing, not anythingthat "is," escapes us. It seems as though what is happeninghere is just like what happens with the prize in the poem. Doesthe poet perhaps mean that the "prize so rich and frail" isthe word itself? In that case Stefan George, sensing with apoet's intuition that the word itself could not be a thing,would have asked the norn to give the word for the prize, forthe word itself. But the goddess of fate tells him," 0 like ofthis these depths enfold."

The word for the word can never be found in that placewhere fate provides the language that names and so endows allbeings, so that they may be, radiant and flourishing in their

THE NATURE OF L GAGE

being. The word for the word is truly a prize, yet it can neverbe won for the poet's land. Can it be won for thinking? Whenthinking tries to pursue the poetic word, it turns out that theword, that saying has no being. Yet our current notions resistsuch an imputation. Everybody, after all, sees and hears wordsin writing and in sound. They are; they can be like things,palpable to the senses. To offer a crude example, we only needto open a dictionary. It is full of printed things. Indeed,all kinds of things. Plenty of terms, and not a single word,Because a dictionary can neither grasp nor keep the word bywhich the terms become words and speak as words. Wheredoes the word, where does Saying belong?~ Thus the poetic experience with the word gives us a mean­

ingful hint. The word-sno thing, nothing that is, no being;but we have an understanding of things when the word forthem is available. Then the thing "is." Yet, what about this"is"? The thing is. The "is" itself-is it also a thing, a stepabove the other, set on top of it like a cap? The "is" cannotbe found anywhere as a thing attached to a thing. As withthe word, so it is with the "is." It belongs no more amongthe things that are than does the word,

Of a sudden, we are awakening from the slumber of hastilyformed opinions, and are struc by the sight of somethingother.

What the poetic experience with language says of the wordimplies the relation beween the "is" which itself is not, andthe word which is in the same case of not being a being. ..

either the "is" nor the word attain to thinghood, to Being,nor does the relation between "is" and the word, the wordwhose task it is to give an "is" in each given instance. Buteven so, neither the His" nor the word and its Saying can becast out into the void of mere nothingness. What, then, doesthe poetic experience with the word show as our thinkingpursues it? I t points to sorneth ing thought-provoking andmemorable with which thinking has been charged from thebeginning, even though in a veiled mannner. It shows whatis there and yet "is" not. The word, too, belongs to what is

88 o . THE w Y TO LA GAGE

there-perhaps not merel y "too" but first of all, and even insuch a \vay such that the word, the nature of the word, con­ceals within itself that which gives being. If our thinkingdoes justice to the matter, then we may never say of the wordthat it is, but rather that it gives-not in the sense that wordsare given by an "it," but that the word itself gives. The worditself is the giver. \\ hat does it give? To go by the poeticexperience and by the most ancient tradition of thinking, theword gives Being. Our thinking, then, would have to seekthe word, the giver which itself is never given, in this "thereis tha t which gives."

We are familiar with the ex pression "there is, there are" inmany usages, such as "There are strawberries on the sunnyslope," if y a, es gibt, there are, strawberries; we can findthem as something that is there on the slope. In our presentreflection, the expression is used differently. \Ve do not mean"There is the word't-swe mean "by virtue of the gift of theword there is, the word gives .. ." The whole spook aboutthe "givenness" of things, which Inany people justly fear, isblown away. But what is memorable remains, indeed it onlynow comes to radiant light. This simple, ungraspable situa­tion which we call up with the phrase "it, the word, gives,"reveals itself as what is properly worthy of thought, but forwhose definition all standards are still lacking in every \vay.Perhaps the poet knows them, But his poetry ha learnedrenunciation, yet has lost nothing by the renun iation. lean­while, the prize escapes him nonetheless. Indeed. But itescapes him in the sense that the word is denied. The denialis a holding-back. And here precisely it comes to light howastoundi ng a po\'ler the word possesses. The prize does inno \vay crumble into a nothing that is good for nothing. Theword does not sink into a flat inability to say. The poet doesnot abdicate the word. I t is true, the prize does withdrawinto the mysterious wonder that makes us wonder. This iswhy, a the preamble to "The song" says, the poet is stillpondering, now even more than before: he is still framingan utterance, fitting together a saying, otherwise than he did

THE NAT RE OF LANG AGE 89

before. He sings songs. The very first ong he in, and whichremains untitled, sings nothing less than the intuited secretof the word, which in denying itself brings near to us its with­held nature. This song sings the word's ecret wonderingly,that is, poetically inquiring, in three stanza of three lineseach :

What bold-ea y stepWalks through the innermost realmOf grandame' fairy tale garden?

What rousing call does the bugler'sSilver hom cast in the tangleOf the Saga' deep slumber?

What secret breathof yesterday's melancholySeeps into the soul?

tefan George normally writes all words with small initials,except only those at the beginning of a line.· We notice thatin this poem, one single word appears with a cap ita l initial ­the word in the last line of the middle stanza: the aga-Saying.The poet might have called the poem "Saying." He did not doso. The poem sings of the mysterious nearness of the far­tarrying p<>\\'er of the word. Something entirely different isaid in the poem in a completely different manner, and yet

the Same is said as has been thought earlier concern ing therelation of "is" and the word that is no thing.

What about the neighborhood of poetry and thinking? Westand confused between two wholly different kinds of saying.I n the poet's song, the word appears as the mysterious wonder.Our thinking reflection of the relation between the "is" andthe word that is no thing i faced with omething memorablewhose features fade into indefinitenes . In the song, wonderappears in a fulfilled, singing saying: in our reflection some­thing memorable appears in a caree l definable-but cer­tainly not a singing-saying. How can thi s be a neighborhood,under which poetry and thinking live in close nearness? It

• In . tandard German u: ag , all nouns arc ca p ita lized . (Tr.)

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would seem that the two diverge just as far as can be.But we should become familiar with the suggestion that

the neighborhood of poetry and thinking is concealed withinthis farthest divergence of their Saying. This divergence istheir real face-to-face encounter.

We must discard the view that the neighborhood of poetryand thinking is nothing more than a garrulous cloudy mix­ture of two kinds of saying in which each makes clumsy bor­rowings from the other. Here and there it may seem that way.But in truth, poetry and thinking are in virtue of their natureheld apart by a delicate yet luminous difference, each held inits own darkness: two parallels, in Greek para allelo, by oneanother, against one another, transcending, surpassing oneanother each in its fashion. Poetry and thinking are notseparated if separation is to mean cut off into a relationalvoid. The parallels intersect in the infinite. There they inter­se t ith a section that they themselves do not make. Bythis section, they are fir t cut, engraved into the design of theirneighboring nature. That cut assigns poetry and thinkingto their nearness to one another. The neighborhood of poetryand thinking is not the result of a process by which poetryand thinking-no one knows from where-sfirst draw near toeach other and thus establish a nearness, a neighborhood.The nearness that draws them near is itself the occurrenceof appropriation by which poetry and thinking are directedinto their proper nature.

But if the nearness of poetry and thinking is one of Saying,then our thinking arrives at the assumption that the occur­rence of appropriation acts as that Saying in which languagegrants its essential nature to us. Its vow is not empty. It has infact already struck its target-whom else but man? For manis man only because he is granted the promise of language,be au e he is needful to language, that he nlay speak it.

III

These three lectures are devoted to an attempt to bring usface to face with a possibility of undergoing an experience

THE ATURE OF L ! G GE

with language. The first lecture gives ear to a poetic expe­rience with the word, and traces it in thought. Simply bydoing so it moves within the neighborhood of poetry andthinking. There it goes bac and forth.

The second lecture reflects on the way of this movement.To the modern mind, whose ideas about everything arepunched out in the die presses of technical-scientific calcula­tion, the object of nowledge i part of the method. Andmethod follows what is in fact the utmost corruption anddegeneration of a way,

For reflective thinking, on the contrary, the way belongsin what we here call the country or region. Speaking allu­sively, the country, that which counter, is the clearing thatgives free rein, where all that is cleared and freed, and allthat conceals it elf, together attain the open freedom. Thefreeing and sheltering character of this region lies in this wa ­making movement, which yields tho e ways that belong tothe region.

To a thinking so inclined that reaches out sufficiently, the\vay is that by \ hich we reach-which lets us reach whatreaches out for us by touching us, by being our concern.·The \vay is such, it lets us reach what oncerns and summonsus. ow it would seem that by thinking in this fashion ofwhat summons us, we manipulate language willfully. Indeed itis willful to gauge the sense in which we here speak of "sum­moning" by the usual understanding of the word. But thereflective use of language cannot be guided by the common,usual understanding of meanings; rather, it must be guidedby the hidden riches that langua e hold in tore for us, sothat these riche may summon u for th e aying of language.

• The following pa ge, a glo on the G .rman verb brlangen (to con­c rn, to ummon) and it G rman cognate, has here heen omitted in thetran lated text: "Wir ve then freilich da Zcitwort 'I> lang n' nur incinem gewohnlichen Sinne, der mcint: i h jcmandcn vornehmen zur

emehmung, zum V rhor. ir onn n ab r auch da Be-lang n in einemhohen Sinne d nken: t -langen, be-rufen. be -huten , be-haltcn, D r Be-lang:da , wa , nach un rem \V n au langcnd, e. c rlangt und so gelangcn Hi stin das. wohin es gehort." (Tr.)

o THE WAY TO LA GUAGE

The country offers ways only because it is country. It givesway, moves us. We hear the words "give way" in this sense:to be the original gi er and founder of ways.·

The word "way" probably is an ancient primary word thatspeaks to the reflective mind of man. The key word in Laotse'spoetic thinking is Tao , which "properly speaking" means way.But because we are prone to think of "way" superficially, as astretch connecting t\VO places, our word "way" has all toorashly been considered unfit to name what Tao says. Tao isthen translated as reason, mind, raison, meaning, logos.

Yet Tao could be the way that gives all ways, the verysource of our power to think what reason, mind, meaning,logos properly mean to say-properly, by their proper nature.Perhap the my tery of mysteries of thoughtful Saying concealsitself in the word "way," Tao, if only we will let these namesreturn to what they leave unspoken, if only we are capableof thi , to allow them to do so. Perhaps the enigmatic powerof today's reign of method also, and indeed preeminently,stem from the fact that the methods, notwithstanding theirefficiency, are after all merely the runoff of a great hiddentream which moves all things along and makes " ray for every­

thing. All is way.These lectures make their way within the neighborhood of

poetry and thinking, underway on the lookout for a possibilityof undergoing an experience with language.

On the way, we a sume that the neighborhood of which wehave spoken is the place that gives U room to experience howmatters rand with Ian uage, nything that gives us room and

• gain , a pa ag has be ' 0 omitted in th e tran latcd text-a gl on theG -rman verb b weg " (u : uall y tran lated "to move"), it German cognates,etymology, and us . in the Swabian dialect. The pa age runs: "Sonstver tehen wir b wcgcn im Sinne von: bcwirken, da etwas . einen Ortwcch It, zu- oder abnimmt , uberhaupt sich and rt. Be-weg .n aber hei t: dieGeg nd mit \\legen versehcn, 1 'ach alt m Sprachgebrauch der schwabi ch ­al manni. hen fundart kann "weg n" bcsagen: incn \ g bahnen, z. B.durch tief verschneitc Land. / \\ Cg n und B -wegen al W g-berciten und\ eg al da Gelangenla en gehoren in den lben Quell- und Strombercichwie di e Zeitworter: wiegen und wagen und wogen." (Tr.)

THE NATURE OF L GUAGE 93

allows us to do something gives us a possibility, that is, itgives what enables us. "Possibility" so understood, as whatenables, means something else and something more than mereopportunity.

The third lecture intends to bring us properly face to facewith a possibility, that is, to enable us to undergo an experi­ence with language. What is necessary here is not only thaton,.<?~r chosen w_ay we stay within the neighborhood of poetryand thinking. We also must look about us in this neighbor­hood, to see whether and in what manner it shows us somethingthat transforms our relation to language. But of the way whichis to lead us to the source of this possibility, it was said thatit leads us only to where we already are. The "only" here doesnot mean a limitation, but rather points to this way's puresimplicity. The way allows us to reach what concerns us, inthat domain where we are already staying. Why then, one mayask, still find a way to it? Answer: because where we alreadyare, we are in such a way that at the same time we are notthere, because we ourselves have not yet properly reached whatconcerns our being, not even approached it. The way that letsus reach where we already are, differing from all other ways,calls for an escort that runs far ahead. That escort is impliedin the key word which we named in passing at the end of thefirst lecture. We have not yet commented on this directivecharacter of the guiding ey word. or could we have done so.For the second lecture had first to direct us straight to the coun­try where the way belongs that is accompanied by the onward­beckoning guide-word. That country makes itself known in theneighborhood of poetry and thinking. eighborhood means:dwelling in nearness. Poetry and thinking are modes of saying.The nearness that brings po try and thinking together intoneighborhood we call Saying. Here, we assume, is the essentialnature of language. "1"'0 say," related to the Old orse "saga,"means to show: to make appear, set free, that is, to offer andextend what we call World, lighting and concealing it. Thislighting and hiding proffer of the world is the essential beingof Saying. The guide-word on the \vay within the neighbor-

. .,

94 ON THE WAY TO LA GAGE

hood of poetry and thinking holds an indication which wewould follow to come to that nearness by which this neighbor­hood is defined.

The guide-word runs:

The being of language:The language of bing.

The guide-word holds the primal tidings of linguistic nature.We must now try to hear it more clearly, to make it moreindicative of the way that lets us reach what even now reachesand touches us.

The being of language: the language of being.

wo phrases held apart by a colon, each the inversion ofthe other. If the whole is to be a guide-word, then this colonmu t indicate that what precede it opens into what follows it.Within the whole there plays a disclosure and a beckoningthat point to something which we, corning from the first turnof phrase, do not susp ct in the .econd: for that second phraseis more than just a rearrangement of the words in the first. Ifso, then what the words "being" and "language" on either sideof the colon say is not only not identical, but even the form ofthe phra e is different in each case.

An explanation within the cope of grammatical, that islogical and metaphysical, \vays of thinking may bring us a littlecloser to the matter, though it can never do ju tice to thesituation that the guide-word name.

In the phrase before the colon, "the being of language:'language is the subject who e being is to be determined. Whatsomething is, to ti estill, whatness, comprises since Plato whatone commonly calls the "nature" or esscntia, the es ence of athing. Essence so under tood becomes re tricted to what is latercalled the concept, the idea or mental repre entation by meansof which we propo e to ourselves and grasp what a thing is.Understood less strictly, the phrase before the colon then says:we shall comprehend what language is a oon as we enter into\\ hat the colon, so to peak, open up before us. And that is

THE NATURE OF LANG AGE 95

the language of being. In this phrase being, "essence" a urnesthe role of the subject that possesse language. However, theword "being" now no longer means what something is. We hear"being" as a verb, as in "being present" and "being absent.""To be" means to perdure and persi t. But this says more thanjust "last and abide." "It is in being" means "it persist in itspresence," and in its persistence concerns and moves us. Suchbeing, so conceived, names what persists, what concern us inall things, becau e it moves and makes a way for all things.Therefore, the second phra e in the guide-word, "the languageof being," says this, that language belongs to this persistingbeing, is proper to hat moves all things because that is itsmost distinctive property. What moves all things moves in thatit speaks. But it remains quite obscure just how we are to thinkof essential being, wholly obscure how it speaks, and supremelyobscure, therefore, what to speak means. This is the crux ofour reflection on the nature of language. Yet this reflection isalready underway along a certain way-the way within theneighborhood of poetry and thin in . The guide-word givesus a hint on this way, but not an answer. But that hint-wheredoes it point? It points only to what defines the neighborhoodof poetry and thin ing a a neighborhood. eighborliness,dwelling in nearness, receives its definition from nearness.Poetry and thinking, however', are modes of saying, indeedpreeminent modes. If the e two mode of saying are to beneighborly in virtue of their nearnes , then nearness itself mustact in the manner of Saying. Then nearness and Saying wouldbe the Same. The demand to think this i still a flagrant imposi­tion. It flagrancy must not be softened in the least.

If we were to succeed for once in rea hing the place to whichthe guide-word beckons us, we would arrive where we have apossibility of undergoin an experience with language, thelanguage known to us. Thus, much depends on our keeping tothe direction of that indication which the clarified guide-wordgives us-this guide-word which we can now paraphrase asfollow : -what concerns us as language receives its definitionfrom Saying as that which moves all things. A hint beckons

96 ON THE \VA Y TO L NG 'AGE

a\vay from the one, toward the other. The guide-word beckons

us a\\'ay from the urrent notions about language, to the expe­

rience of language as SaYing,

Hints hint in Inan) \\'ays. A hint can give its hint so irnplvand at the same t imc so fully that \ve release ourselves in it

direction without equivocation. But it can also give its hint in

such a manner that it refers us, Irom the first and persistently,back tothe dubi0 u .11eS5 aga inst w hiehit w a rn II s. and 1e ts

us only suspect at fu.. t the memorable thing toward which it

beckons us, as a thought-worthy matter for which the fitting

mode of thinking is still lacking. The hint that our guide-wordgives is of this kind, for the nature of language is so well knownto u through a variety of determination that we detach our­

selves Irorn these only with difficulty. But such detachment

must not be forced, because the tradition remains rich in truth.

Thu it behooves us first to give thought to our usual notions

of language, even if only in their broad outlines. but to do so

with forethought to what is indicated by the neighborhood of

the two kinds of saying, poetry and thinking: in nearness as

Saying. If we take language directly in the sen e of somethingthat is present, we encounter it as the act of speaking, the

activation of the organs of speech, mouth, lips, tongue. Lan­guage manifests itself in speaking, as a phenomenon that occurs

in man. The fact that language has long since been experi­enced, conceived, defined in these terms i attested bv the names

/

that the Western languages have given to themselves: glossa,lingua, langue, language, Language is the tongue, The second

chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, which tell of the miracleof Pentecost, says in verses 3 and 4:

xal w<p{}lloav al'toi~ ~la~tE(>l~O~tEVal y}~{j)Oaal cl)OEl rruQo; ..xol ~o~avto AaJ\EtV ttEQUl; yAWOOUl;.

The Vulgate translates: Et ap pnruerunt illis dispertit ae linguaeta771quanl ignis . . . et coe perunt loqui uariis linguis. In the

Revised Standard Version, the passage runs as follows: "And

there appeared to them tongues as of fire, di tr ibuted and

THE NATURE OF LANG AGE 9i

resting on each one of them. And they ... began to speak inother tongues...." Yet their speaking is not meant as a merefacility of the tongue, but as filled with the holy spirit, thepneuma hagion, Even the biblical idea of language referredto here had been preceded by that Greek description of lan­guage of which Aristotle gives the standard formulation. Logos,statement, is seen in terms of the phonetic phenomenon ofspeech . At the beginning of a treatise later entitled peri her­meneias, De Interpretatione, On Interpretation, Aristotle says:

Now, what (takes place) in the making of vocal sounds is ashow of what there is in the soul in the way of passions, andwhat is written is a show of the vocal sounds. And just as writingis not the same among all (men), so also the vocal sou nds arenot the same. On the other hand, those things of whi ch these(sounds and writings) are a show in the first place, are amongall (men) the same passions of the soul. and the matters ofwhich these (the passions) give likening representations arealso the same.

These lines of Aristotle constitute the classical passage thatallows us to see the structure of which language as vocalsounds is a part: the letters are signs of sounds, the sounds aresigns of mental experiences, and these are signs o f things.'1he sign relation constitutes the struts of the structure. Weproceed too crudely, though, when we speak everywhere with­out further definition of signs, of something that signifies andto some extent shows something else . Although Aristotleexp ressly uses the word semeia , signs, he speaks at the samet ime 0 f szanb0 Ia and h0 m 0 i 0 m ata.

What matters here is that we ke ep the en t ire structure of' ign relations before our eyes, becau e it has remained the. tandard for all later considerations of language, althoughwith numerous modifications.

Language is represented in terms o f speech in the sense ofvoca l sounds. But does not this idea represent a situation inthe very nature of language and d enlollstrable for any language

ON THE 'V Y TO LANGUAGE

at any time? Certainly. And let no one suppose that we meanto belittle vocal sounds as physical phenomena, the merelysensuous side of language, in favor of what is called the mean­ing and sense-content of what was said and is esteemed asbeing of the spirit, the spirit of language. It is much moreimportant to consider whether, in any of the ways of lookingat the structure of language we have mentioned, the physicalelement of language, its vocal and written character, is beingadequately experienced; whether it is sufficient to associatesound exclusively with the body understood in physiologicalterms, and to place it within the metaphysically conceivedconfines of the sensuous. Vocalization and sounds may nodoubt be explained physiologically as a production of sounds.But the question remains whether the real nature of the soundsand tones of speech is thus ever experienced and kept beforeour eyes. We are instead referred to melody and rhythm inlanguage and thus to the kinship between song and speech.All ould be well if only there were not the danger of under­standing melody and rhythm also from the perspective ofphysiology and physics, that is, technologically, calculatingly inthe widest sense. 0 doubt much can be learned this way thatis correct, but never, presumably, ,..-ha t is essential. It is justas much a property of language to sound and ring and vibrate,to hover and to tremble, as it is for the spoken words of lan­guage to carry a meaning. But our experience of this propertyis still exceedingly clumsy, because the metaphysical-technolog­ical explanation gets everywhere in the way, and keeps us fromconsidering the matter properly. Even the simple fact thatwe Germans call the different manners of speaking in differentsection of the country Mundatten, modes of the mouth, hardlyever receives a thought. Those differences do not solely norprimarily grO\V out of different movement patterns of theorgans of speech. The landscape, and that means the earth,speaks in them, differently each time, But the mouth is notmerely a kind of organ of the body understood as an organism-body and mouth are part of the earth's flow and growth inwhich we mortals flourish, and from which we receive the

THE NATURE OF LANGUAGE 99

soundness of our roots. I f we lose the earth, of course, we alsolose the roots.

In the fifth stanza of Holderliri's hymn "Germania." Zeus'seagle is made to say to "the quietest daughter of God":

And secretly, while you dreamed, at noon,Departing I left a to en of friendship,The flower of the mouth behind, and lonely you spoke.Yet you, the greatly blessed, with the rivers tooDispatched a wealth of golden words, and they well.

unceasIngInto all region now.·

Language is the flower of the mouth. In language the earthblossoms toward the bloom of the sky.

The first stanza of the elegy "Walk in the Country" sings:

Therefore I even hope it may come to pass,When we begin what we wi h for and our tongue loosens,

And the word has been found and the heart has opened,And from ecstatic brow prings a higher reflection,

That the sky's blooms may blossom even as do our 0\\'11,

And the luminou sky open to opened eye.

It must be left to you, my audience, to think about theseverses in the light of what my three lectures are attempting,so that you may someday see how \the nature of language asSaying, as that which moves all things, here announces itself.But one word that the poet says about the word must not bepassed over-and we will do well to listen now to the gather­ing of those verses from which that word speaks.

The verses occur at the end of the fifth stanza of the elegy"Bread and 'Vine":

Such i man; when the wealth is there. and noless than a god in

Person tends him with gift, blind he remains, unaware.First he mu t suffer; but now he names his most trea ured.po essron,

· ·fran lation by Micha I Hamburg r. loco cit. p. 405. (Tr.)

100 ON THE \V Y TO LANGUAGE

Now for it words like flowers leaping alive hemust find.·

To think our way through these verses it wi ll be helpful tothink over what Holderlin himself says in another version ofthis passage, though that will require even deeper reflection:

Long and hard i the word of this coming butWhite (Light) is the moment. But those who serve the

gods knowThe earth well, and their step toward the abyss is

fore human with youth. but that in the depths is old.··

Once again the word appears in the region, the region thatdetermines earth and sky to be world regions, as it makesearth and sky, the streaming of the deep and the might of theheights, encounter one another. Once again: "words likeflowers."

It would mean that we stay bogged down in metaphysics ifwe were to take the name Holderlin gives here to "words, likeflowers" as being a metaphor.

True, in a curious lecture on ..Problems of the Lyric,"Gottfried Benn says (1951, P: 16): "T'his 'like' is always a breakin the vision, it adduces, it compares, it is not a primary state­ment ... ," it is " a flagging of the tension of language, aweakness of creative transformation." This interpretation nlaybe largely valid, for great and small poets. But it is not validfor Holderlin's saying, Holderlin whose poetry GottfriedBenn-correctly from his point of view-vregards accordinglyas nothing more than a "herbarium," a collection of dried-upplants.

"Words, like flowers": tha t is not a "break in the vision"but the awakening of the largest view: nothing is "adduced"here, but on the con trary the word is given back into thekeeping of the source of its being. There is no lack here of a"primary statement," for here the word is brought forth fromits inception; no "weak nes of creative transformation" but the

·Translation hy Michael Hamburger , loc . cit. pp. 24i /249. (T r .)•·ef. Holderlin . ed . Hellingrath IV, pt. 2, Appendix p. 322. ( r. )

THE NATURE OF LANGUAGE 101

gentle force of the singular and innocent capacity to hear. A"creative transformation"-the sputnik is that, but it is not apoem. Gottfried Benn, in his own way, has recognized wherehe himself belongs. He has endured that insight. And thisis what gives weight to his poetic work.

When the word is called the mouth's flower and its blossom,we hear the sound of language rising like the earth. Fromwhence? From Saying in which it comes to pass that World ismade to appear. The sound rings out in the resounding as­sembly call which, open to the Open, makes World appearin all things. The sounding of the voice is then no longer onlyof the order of physical organs. It is released now from theperspective of the physiological-physical explanation in termsof purely phonetic data. The sound of language, its earthynessis held ,y..ith the harmony that attunes the regions of theworld's structure, playing them in chorus. This indication ofthe sound of speaking and of its source in Saying must atfirst sound obscure and strange. And yet it points to simplephenomena. We can see them once we pay heed again tothe way in which we are everywhere under ,,,ay within theneighborhood of the modes of Saying. Among these, poetryand thinking have ever been preeminent. Their neighborhooddid not come to them by chance, from somewhere or other,as though they, by themselves, could be what they are evenaway from their neighborhood. This is why we must experiencethem within, and in terms of, their neighborhood, that is, interms of what determines that neighborhood to be a neigh­borhood. eighborhood, it was said, does not first create near­ness; rather, nearness brings about neighborhood. But whatdoes nearness mean?

As soon as we try to reflect on the matter we have alreadycommitted ourselves to a long path of thought. At this point,we shall succeed only in taking just a Iew steps. They do notlead forward but back, back to where we already are. The stepsdo not form a sequence from here to there, except-at best­in their outward appearance. Rather, they fuse into a con­centration upon the selfsame thing, and wend their way back

102 ON THE WAY TO LA GUAGE

to it. What looks like a digression is in fact the actualproper movement on the \vay by which the neighborhood is 'determined. And that is nearness.

When we intend nearness, remoteness comes to the fore.Both stand in a certain contrast to each other, as differentmagnitudes of our distance from objects. The measurementof magnitude is performed by calculating the length or short­ness of intervening stretches. The measurements of the lengthsso measured are always taken according to a yardstick bywhich, along which, the number of units in the measuredstretch is counted out. To measure something against some­thing else by moving along it is called in Cree parametrein.The stretches along which and past which we measure nearnessand remoteness as distances are the temporal sequence of"nows," that is, time: and the spatial side-by-side (beside, infront, behind, above, below) of the points here and there, thatis, space. To the calculating mind, space and time appear asparameters for the measurement of nearness and remoteness,and the e in turn as static distances. But space and time donot serve only as parameters; in this role, their nature wouldsoon be exhausted-a role whose seminal forms are discernibleearly in Western thinking, and which then, in the course ofthe modern age, became established by this \vay of thinkingas the standard conception.

The new theories, that is, methods of space and time mea­surement, relativity and quantum theories and nuclear physics,have changed nothing in the parametrical character of spaceand time. or can they produce any such change. If they could,then the entire structure of modern technology and naturalscience would collapse. othing today indicates the possibilityof such a collapse. Everything argues against it, especially thehunt for the univer al mathematical-theoretical formula of thephysical world. But the impetus to that hunt does not springfrom the personal passion of the investigators. Their natureitself is already of the kind that is driven by a challenge con­fronting modern thinking as a whole. "Physics and Respon­sibility"-that is a good thing, and important in today's crisis.

THE ATURE OF LA GAGE

But it remains double-entry accounting, behind which there isconcealed a breach that can be cured neither by science nor bymorality, if indeed it is curable at all.

However, what has all this to do with the nature of language?More than our thinking can encompass today. We may ofcourse have had an intimation by now, in the fonn of thatpositive system which rec ons nearness and remoteness asmeasurements of distance in space and time conceived asparameters.

What is it that here makes us uneasy? The fact that in thisway the nearness to which neighborhood belongs can never beexperienced. If nearness and neighborliness could be conceivedparametrically, then a distance of the magnitude of one mil­lionth of a second, and of one millimeter, would have to meanthe nearest possible neighboring nearness, compared withwhich even the distance of a yard and a minute representsextreme remoteness. Even so, we are bound to insist that acertain spatial-temporal relatedness belongs to every neighbor­hood. Two isolated farmsteads-if any such are left-separatedby an hour's wal across the field, can be the best of neighbors,while two townhouses, facing each other across the street oreven sharing a common wall, know no neighborhood. Neigh­boring nearness, then, does not depend on spatial-temporalrelation. Nearness, then, is by its nature outside and indepen­dent of space and time. This view, however, would be pre­mature. We may say only this, that the nearness which prevailsin the neighborhood does not depend on space and time con­sidered as parameters. But are time and space something else,then, assuming they are at all? Why is it that the parametricalcharacter of space and time prevents neighboring nearness? Ifwe assume that the parameters space and time furnish thestandard for neighboring nearness, and thus bring about near­ness itself, then they would have to contain even within them­selves what distinguishes neighborliness: to be face-to-facewith one another. We tend to think of face-to-face encounterexclusively as a relation between human beings. These lectures,too, have indeed restricted face-to-face encoun ter to the neigh-

1°4 ON THE \VAY TO LA GAGE

borhood of poetry and thinking as modes of saying. We shallfor now leave open whether what we have done here is arestriction or a release. Yet being face-to-face with one anotherhas a more distant origin: it originates in that distance whereearth and sky, the god and man reach one another. Goethe,and Morike too, like to use the phrase "face-to-face with oneanother" not only with respect to human beings but also withrespect to things of the world. Where this prevails, all thingsare open to one another in their self-concealment; thus oneextends itself to the other, and thus all remain themselves; oneis over the other as its guardian watching over the other, overit a its veil.

In order to experience this face-to-face of things with oneanother in this way, we must, of course, first rid ourselves ofthe calculative frame of mind, The movement at the core ofthe world's four regions, which makes them reach one anotherand holds them in the nearness of their distance, is nearnessitself. This movement is what paves the ,..'ay for being face-to­face. We shall call nearness in respect of this its movement"nighness." The word seems contrived, but it has grown outof the matter itself in a thinking experience which can berepeated at will; it is no more unlikely than "wilderness" from"wild," or "likeness" from "like." I he persisting nature ofnearness is not the in terstice, but the movernen t paving the wayfor the face-to-face of the regions of the world's fourfold. Thismovement is nearness in the nature of nighness, It remainsunapproachable, and is farthest from us whenever we talk"about" it. However, space and time as parameters can neitherbring about nor measure nearness. \\Thy not? In the successionof "nows" one after the other as clements of parametric time,one "now" is never in open face-to-face encounter with another.In fact, we Inay not even say that, in this succession, the "now"coming after and the "now" corning before are closed off fromeach other. For closure, too, is still a manner of facing orexcluding something being in face-to-face. But this encounteris as such excluded from the parametric concept of time.

The same is true of the elements of space: it is true of

THE T RE OF LA . 'Gl AGE

numbers of every kind, true of movements in the sense ofmathematically calculated s'pat iotern pora l intervals. We con­ceive of the un broken and consecu rive seq uence of parameters,of what is mea ured by them, a the con t in u u m . It excludes aface-to-face encounter of its elements so resolutely that evenwhere we meet with interruption, th e fra ctions can never comeface-to-face with each other.

Although space and time within their reach as paranletersadmit of no encounter of their elements, ve t the dominance,of space and time as parameters for all concep tu a liza t ion , pro-duction, and accumulation-the paranleters of the moderntechnical world-sencroaches in an unearthl y mariner upon thedorninion of nearness, that is, upon the nighness of the regionsof the world. Where everything is fixed at ca lcu la ted distances,precisely there, the absence of distance sp read s due to theunbounded calculability of everything, and spreads in the Iorrnof the refusal of neighborly nearness of the world's regions, Inthe absence of distance, everything becomes equal and indif­ferent in consequence of the one will intent upon the uniformlycalculated availability of the whole earth. This is why thebattle for the dominion of the earth has now entered its decisivephase. The all-out challenge to secure dominion over the earthcan be met only by occupying an ultimate position beyond theear th from which to establish control over the earth. The battlefor this position, however, is the thoroughgoing calculativeco nversion of all connections among all thing. into the cal u­lable absence of distance. Thi i making a de. er t of theenco u n ter of the world's fourfold-it is the refusal of nearne .s.In the battle for dominion over the ea r th , now , space and timereach their suprenle dominion as paranlctcr.'. Howevcr-vtheirpower becomes unleashed only because space and t irne are still ,are already, something other than the long-familiar parameters,Their parametrical character ob t ruct s the nature o f time andspace. Above all it con cea ls the relat ion of that nature to thena ture of nearness. Simple as these re la tion s are, they remainwholly inaccessible to calculative thinking. \\ here they are heldup to us nonetheless, our current noti on ' resist the in sight.

106 o THE \V Y TO LANGUAGE

Of time it may be said: time times.Of space it may be said: space spaces.The customary notion of time and space takes offense at such

talk, and rightly so. For in order to understand it, we need thethinking experience of what is called identity.

Time times-which means, time makes ripe, makes rise upand grow. Timely is what has come up in the rising. What isit that time times? That which is simultaneous, which is, thatwhich rises up together with its time. And what is that? Wehave long known it, only we do not think of it in terms oftiming. Time times simultaneously: the has-been, presence,and the present that is waiting for our encounter and is nor­mally called the future. Time in its timing removes us intoits threefold simultaneity, moves us thence while holding outto us the disclosure of what is in the same time, the concordantoneness of the has-been, presence, and the present waiting theencounter. In removing us and brin ing toward us, time moveson its way what simultaneity yields and throws open to it:time-space. But time itself, in the wholeness of its nature, doesnot move; it rests in stillness.

The same is to be said about space: it spaces, throws openlocality and places, vacates them and at the same time givesthem free for all things and receives what is simultaneous asspace-time. But space itself, in the wholeness of its nature, doesnot move; it rests in stillness. Time's removing and bringingto us, and space's throwing open, admitting and releasing-theyall belong together in the Same, the play of stillness, somethingto which we cannot here give further thought. The Same, whichholds space and time gathered up in their nature, might becalled the free scope, that is, the time-space that gives freescope to all things. Timing and spacing, this Same moves theencounter of the four world regions: earth and sky, god andman-the world play.

The movement of being face-to-face with one another withinthe world's fourfold generates nearnes to its own-it is near­ness as nighness. Should that movement itself be called theoccurrence of stillness?

THE ATURE OF LA GUAGE 1°7

But what has just now been indicated-does it still say some­thing of the nature of language? It does indeed, even in thesame sense as our three lectures have tried to do: to make usface a possibility of undergoing an experience with language,such that our relation to language would in future becomememorable, worthy of thought.

Have we now reached uch a possibility?Anticipating, we defined Saying. To say means to show, to

make appear, the lighting-concealing-releasing offer of world.ow, nearness manifests itself as the motion in which the

world's regions face each other.There arises the possibility of seeing how Saying, as the being

of language, swings back into the presence of nearness. Quietconsideration makes possible an insight into how nearness andSaying, being of the persisting nature of language, are the Same.Language, then, is not a mere human faculty. Its characterbelongs to the very character of the movement of the face-to­face encounter of the world's four regions.

There ari es the po ibility that we undergo an experiencewith language, that we enter into something which bowls usover, that is, transmutes our relation to language. How so?

Language, Saying of the world's fourfold, is no longer onlysuch that we speaking human beings are related to it in thesense of a nexus existing between man and language. Languageis, as world-moving Saying, the relation of all relations. Itrelates, maintains, proffers, and enriches the face-to-face en­counter of the world's regions, holds and keeps them, in thatit holds itself-Saying-in reserve.

Reserving itself in this way, as Saying of the world's fourfold,language concerns us, us who as mortals belong within this four­fold world, us who can speak only as we respond to language.

Mortals are they who can experience death as death. Animalscannot do so. But animals cannot speak either. The essentialrelation between death and language Aa hes up before us, butremains still unthought. It can, however, beckon us towardthe way in which the nature of language draws us into itsconcern and so relates us to itself, in case death belongs

108 ON THE W Y TO LANGUAGE

together with what reaches out for us, touches us. Assumingthat the mover which holds the world's four regions in thesingle nearness of their Iace-to-Iace encounter rests in Saying,then only Saying confers what we call by the tiny word "is,"and thus say after Saying. Saying releases the "is" into lightedfreedom and therewith into the security of its thinkability.

Saying, as the way-making movement of the world's fourfold,gathers all things up into the nearness of face-to-face encounter,and does so soundlessly, as quietly as time times, space spaces,as quietly as the play of time-space is enacted.

The soundless gathering call, by which Saying moves theworld-relation on its way, we call the ringing of stillness. It is:the language of being.

In the neighborhood of Stefan George's poem we heard itsaid:

Where word breaks off no thing may be.

We remarked that the poem leaves a thought-provoking resi­due, to wit, the meaning of "a thing is." Equally thought­provoking to us became the relation of the word that issounded, because it is not lacking, to the His."

Now, thinking within the neighborhood of the poetic word,. .we may say, as a SUpposItion:

An "is" arises where the word breaks up.

To break up here means that the sounding word returns intosoundlessness, back to whence it was granted: into the ringingof stillness which, as Saying, moves the regions of the world'sfourfold into their nearness.

This breaking up of the word is the true step back on theway of thinking.

THE WAY TO LANGUAGE

THE WAY TO LANGUAGE

To begin, we shall Ii ten to some words of ovalis.They occur in a text which he entitled Monologue. That titlepoints to the mystery of language: language speaks solely withitself alone. One sentence in ovalis' text runs: "The culiarproperty of language, namely that language is concerned exclu-sively with . el --: . tHat is nown to no one."

If we understand all that we shall now attempt to say a asequence of statements about language, it will remain a chainof unverified and scientifically unverifiable propositions. But if,on the contrary, we experience the way to language in the lightof what happens with the way itself as we go on, then anintimation may come to us in virtue of which language willhenceforth strike us as strange.

The way to language: that sounds as if language were faraway from us, some place to which we still have to find ourway. But is a way to language really needed? According to anancient understanding, we ourselves are after all those beingswho have the ability to speak and therefore already posse

111

1 12 0, ' THE \VA Y TO LA:"iGl AGE

language. Nor is the ability to speak just one among man'sIllany talents, of the sam order as the others. The ability tospeak is what marks man as man. Th is mark contains thedesign of hi . being. Man would not be man if it were deniedhim to speak unceasingly, lrorn everywhere and every which

. way, in 01any va ria t ion:, and to speakin terrns 0 fan ..itis"that most often remains unspoken. Language, in granting allthis to I11an, is the foundation of human being.

We are, then, \... ithin language and with language beforeall else. A \vay to language is I~~t . needed: Besides, the \vay tolanguage is impossible if we indeed are already at that pointto which the \vay is to take us. But are we at that point? Arewe so fully within language that we experience its nature,that we think speech as speech by grasping its idiom in listen­ing to it? Do we in fact already live close to language evenwithout our doing? Or is the \,'ay to language as language thelongest road our thinking can Iollow? Not just the longest.but a \vay_Iined with obsta I that come from language itself,as oon as our reflection tries to pur ue language straight intoits own, withou t ver losi ng sigh t of it?

We are here undertaking something very unusual, which\.. e might paraphrase as follows: we try to speak about speechqua speech. That so u nd s like a formula. It is intended toserve us as a guid 'I iIl on our ,,'ay to language. The ,vords"speak, speech" arc used three time in the formula. sayingsomething different .ar h t ime and yet the Same. It i this under­lying Same which, in terms of the oneness that is the distinctiveproperty of language. holds together what is kept .eparate inthe Iormula. To begin with, though, the f irrnula points to a,...eb of relations in \\'hi ch \\'e ourselves are included. Theundertaking of a \\'ay to sp er h i woven into a kind of peak­ing which intends to un CO\'{T speech itself in order to presentit as speech and to put it into words in the presentation ­which is also evidence that language itself has woven us intothe speaking.

T'his web indicated by th e formula designates the pre­determined realm in which not onlv this Ie ture series but all

;

THE \VAY TO LANG AGE 1 13

linguistic science, all linguistic theory and philosophy of lan­guage, in fact any attempt to reflect on language, must live,

A web com presses, narrows, and obstructs the straight clearview inside its mesh, At the same t ime, however, the web ofwhich the guiding formula speak i: the proper matter oflanguage, Therefore, we Inay not eli .regard the web whichseems to crowd everything into a hopeless tangle. Rather, theformula is to urge our reflection to at tern pt, not to remove theweb, of course, but to loosen it so that it allows us a view intothe open togetherness of the relations named in the formula.

I Perhaps there is a bond running through the web which,in a \,'ay that remains strange, unbinds and delivers languageinto its own. The point is to experience the unbinding bondwithin the web of language.

The lecture in this series which con iders language asinformation;" and in the process has to consider information aslanguage, refers to this involuted relation a a circle-anunavoidable yet meaningful circle. The cir le is a pecial caseof our web of language. It is meaningful, be ause the direc­tion and manner of the circling motion are determined bylanguage itself, by a movement within language. \-\ e mightlearn the character and scope of this movement Irorn languageitself, by entering the web,

How can that be done? By pursuing relentlessly what theguiding formula points to: To speak about speech qua speech,

The more clearly language shows itself in its own characteras we proceed, the 1110re significant doe. the \\'ay to languagebecome for language itself, and the Inure der i .ively does themeaning of our guiding formula change, It ceases to be aformula, and unexpectedly becomes a soundless echo whichlets us hear something of the proper character of language,

I

Language: what we have in mi nd i · speaking, which issomething we do and are confident of being able to do, Even

-In the series of which (hi - essay or igina llv was a part, C . ... . von\\'eizsacker spoke on the topic "Languag« as Informalion."

114 ON THE \VAY TO LANGUAGE

so, the power of speech is not a secure possession. Speech mayfail a man when he is stunned or terrified. He stands there,struck-and nothing else. He does no longer speak: he issilent. Or a man may lose the po,ver of speech in an accident.He does no longer speak. or is he silent. He remains mute.Speaking implies the making of articulated sounds, whetherwe make them (in speaking), or refrain from making them (insilence), or are incapable of making them (in loss of speech).Speaking implies the articulate vocal production of sound.Language manifests itself in speaking as the activation of theorgans of speech-mouth, lips, teeth, tongue, larynx. The namesby which language has called itself in the Western languages­glossa, lingua, langue, language-are evidence that languagehas since ancient times been conceived in terms of these phe­nomena. Language is the tongue, the "lingo."

At the beginning of a treatise later to be titled peri her­meneias, "On Interpretation," Aristotle says:

"Eon J.lEV ouv ta tv tn q>(ovn Trov tv 't11 'VUxn 1to-3ll~d:tw,

aU~6oAa, xnl Ta yeWPOJ.lEva 'trov tv 'tn q>wvU. xu] Wa1tEQ oubiYQetJ.lflora rriial ta at rd, OUbE qxovnl at aUTa'· d>v J.lEvrol 'fouroall~Eia 1tQOO'fWV, raura rraal 1taih'lJ.laTa 'ril~ 'VUxii ~, xat WV 'fauro0J.l0lroJ.laTa 1teciYllata ~~ll 'fOUTO.

Only a careful exegesis would permit an adequate translationof this text. Here we shall be content with a makeshift.Aristotle says:

Now, what (takes place) in the making of vocal sounds is ashow of what there is in the soul in the way of passions, andwhat is written is a show of the vocal sounds. And just aswriting is not the sam e among all (men), so also the vocalsounds are not the same, On the other hand, those things ofwhich these (sounds and writings) are a show in the first place,are among all (men) the same passions of the soul, and thematters of which these (the passions) give likening representa­tions are also the same.

Our translation understands semeia (that which shows),

THE WAY TO LANGUAGE 115

symbola (that which holds to each other), and homoiomata(that which likens) consistently in terms of showing, in thesense of bringing about the appearance, which in its turnconsists in the prevalence of unconcealment (aletheia). Butour translation disregards the different \vays of showing thatare mentioned in the text.

Aristotle's text has the detached and sober diction thatexhibits the classical architectonic structure in which language,as speaking, remains ecure. The letters show the sounds. Thesounds show the passions in the soul, and the passions in thesoul show the matters that arouse them.

Showing is what forms and upholds the intertwining bracesof the architectonic structure. In various ways, disclosing ordisguising, Showing make something come to light, lets whathas come to light be perceived, and lets the perception beexamined. The kinship of Showing with what it shows-akinship never developed purely in its own terms and thoseof its origins-later becomes transformed into a conventionalrelation between a sign and its signification. The Greeks ofthe Classical Age know and understand the sign in terms ofshowing-the sign is shaped to show. Since Hellenistic times(the Stoa), the sign originates by a stipulation, as the instru­ment for a manner of designation by which man's mind is resetand directed from one object to another object. Designation isno longer a showing in the sense of bringing something tolight. The transformation of the sign from something thatshows to something that designates has its roots in the changeof the nature of truth.·

Since the Greeks, beings are experienced to be whateveris present. Since language is, it-whatever speaking occurs atany time-belongs to what is present. Language is representedin terms of speech, in respect of its articulated sounds, carriersof meanings. Speaking is one kind of human activity.

This notion of language, here touched upon only in passing,has in many variant forms remained basic and predominant

-See my Plalon's L hre von d r Wahrh eit , 1947. ( ~f. H.)

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through all the centuries of Western-European thinking.Though it had its beginnings in Greek antiquity, and thoughthe quest for it took many forms, this view of language reachesits peak in Wilhelm von Humboldt's reflections on language,culminating in the great Introduction to his work on the Kavilanguage of Java. A year after his death, his brother Alexandervon Humboldt published that Introduction separately underthe title "On the Diversity of the Structure of Human Lan­guage and its Influence on the Intellectual Development ofMankind" (Berlin, 1836).• This treatise, in an open and covertpro and con, has ever since determined the course of all sub­sequent philology and philosophy of language.

Every member of my audience in this attempt at a lectureseries would have to have thought through and have in mindWilhelm von Humboldt's astounding, obscure, and yet con­tinuou ly stimulating treatise. Then all of us would have acommon vantage point from which to look into language.Such a common vantage point is lacking. We must put upwith this lack-but let us not forget it.

According to Wilhelm von Humboldt, "articulated sound"is "the basis and essence of all speech" (p. 44). In ChapterFive of the treatise, Humboldt formulates those statementswhich are often cited but rarely given thought, specificallygiven thought to see how they determine Humboldt's way tolanguage. These statements TUn:

Properly conceived of, language i something persistent and inevery in tant transitory. Even its maintenance by writing isonly an incomplete, mummified preservation, necessary if oneis again to render perceptible the living speech concerned. In

• A tran lation of this work, und r th title Linguistic Variability andIntellectual Development, trans. George C. Buck and Frithjof A. Raven(Miami Linguistic Series No.9) (Coral Gables, 1970), wa being readied forpublication wh n thi tran lat ion wa still in draft form. The court y ofthe publi her, The University of Miami Press, in making page proofavailahl at n early stage, and giving permi ion (0 use th passag whichfollow, is gratefully acknowledged. All reference low are to th Buck &:Rav n tran lation. In th German text, Heidegg r refers to th E. W muthreprint dition (19g6) of von Humboldt's work. (T r .)

THE WAY TO LANGUAGE

it 1£ language is not work (ergon) but an activity (energeia).Its true definition may therefore only be genetic. It i after allthe continual intellectual effort to make the articulated soundcapable of expre ing thought. In a rigorous sense, thi i thedefinition of peech in each given case. Essentially, however,only the totality of thi peaking can be regarded a language.(p.27)

Humboldt here say that he finds the essential element oflanguage in the act of p aking. Does he thereby also say

.what speech, looked at in this way, is qua speech? Does he rna ethe act of speaking, ta en as language, spea for itself? Wepurposely leave the e question unanswered, but observe thefollowing:

Humboldt conceive of language as a particular "intellectualeffort." Following thi vi w, he 100 s for that as which languageshows itself-he looks for hat language is. This whatness iscalled its nature. If we follow up and define the intellectualeffort with respect to its achievement in speech, that nature, sounderstood, is bound to stand out more clearly. Yet theintellect-in Humboldt's en , too-lives in other activities andachievements as well. If, however, language is counted as oneof these, then speaking i not experienced in its own terms, interms of language, but rather i referred to omething el e.Still, this something else remains too important for us to passit over in our reflection on language. What activity doesHumboldt have in mind when he conceives of language as anintellectual effort? A few lines at the beginning of ChapterFive give the answer:

Language must be regarded not a a dead product of the pastbut as a living creation. It must be abstracted from all that iteffects a a designation of comprehended idea ". Furthermore,we must revert to a more mericulou examination of it originand its interaction with intellectual activity. (p. 26)

Humboldt is referring here to the "inner form of language,"which is described in his Chapter Eight but difficult to definein his conceptual terms; we might come a little clo er t<? his

118 ON THE WAY TO LANGUAGE

meaning by asking: What is speaking as the expression ofthought if we think of it in terms of its origin in the inneractivity of the spirit? The answer is contained in a sentencein Chapter Seventeen, whose adequate interpretation wouldrequire a separate study:

If in the soul the feeling truly arises that language is not merelya medium of exchange for mutual understanding, but a trueworld which the intellect must set between itself and objectsby the inner labor of its power, then the soul is on the trueway toward discovering constantly more in language, andputting constantly more into it. (p. 135)·

According to the tenets of modem idealism, the labor of thespirit i a positing, a setting (thesis). Because the spirit is con­ceived as subject, and is accordingly represented within thesubject-object model, the positing (thesis) must be the syn­thesis between the subject and its objects. What is so positedaffords a view of objects as a whole. That which the power ofthe subject develops by its labor and sets between itself and theobjects, Humboldt calls "a world." In such a "world view," ahumanity achieves its self-expression.

But why does Humboldt regard language as a world andworld view? Because his way to language is defined, not somuch in terms of language as language, but rather in termsof an endeavor to offer a historical presentation of man's wholehistorical-spiritual development in its totality and yet also inits given individuality. In the fragment of an autobiographydating from 1816, Humboldt writes: "What I am striving foris after all precisely this-to understand the world in its indi­viduality and totality."

An understanding of the world with this orientation candraw on many sources, because the self-expressive power of thespirit is active in a variety of \\'ays. Humboldt recognizes andchooses language as one of the chief sources. While languageis not, of course, the only form of world view developed byhuman subjectivity, it is that Iorrn to which we must ascribe

• The tran lation of the Humholdt pas age given here differ slightlyfrom the Buck & Raven tran lation. (T r .)

THE WAY TO LANGUAGE 119

a special authority in the history of man's development byvirtue of its formative power at each given time. The title ofthe treatise now becomes somewhat clearer as regards Hum­boldt's way to language.

Humboldt deals with "the diversity of the structure ofhuman language" and deals with it in respect of Hits influenceon the spiritual development of mankind." Humboldt putslanguage into language as one kind and form of the world viewworked out in human subjectivity.

Into what language? Into a series of assertions that speak thelanguage of the metaphy ics of his time, a language in whichLeibniz' philosophy plays a decisive role. The authority ofthat philosophy manifests itself most clearly in the fact thatHumboldt defines the nature of language as energeia, butunderstands the word in .a wholly un-Greek sense-the sense ofLeibniz's monadology as the activity of the subject. Humboldt'sway to language is turned in the direction of man, and leadsthrough language on to something else: the endeavor to getto the bottom of and to present the spiritual development ofthe human race.

However, the nature of language conceived in this light doesnot thereby show al 0 the linguistic nature: the manner inwhich language has being. that is, abides, that is, remainsgathered in what language grants to itself, to its own idiom,as language.

II

When we reflect on language qua language, we have aban­doned the traditional procedure of language study. We nowcan no longer look for general notions such as energy, activity,labor, power of the spirit, world view, or expression, underwhich to subsume language as a special case. Instead of explain­ing language in terms of one thing or another, and thus run­ning away from it, the way to language intends to let languagebe experienced as language. In the nature of language, to besure, language itself is conceptually grasped-but grasped inthe grasp of something other than itself. If we attend to lan-

120 ON THE \VAY TO LANGUAGE

guage exclusively as language, however, then language requiresof us that we first of all pu t forward everything that belongs tolanguage as language.

Yet it is one thing to coordinate the various things that aremanifest in the linguistic nature, and another to focus our eyesupon that which of itself unifies those things, and whichimparts its proper unity to the essence of language.

Our way to language will attempt now to follow morestrictly the guideline given by the formula: to speak aboutspeech qua speech. The point is to approach more closely lan­guage's own peculiar character. Here, too, language shows itselffirst as our way of speaking, We shall for now attend only tosuch things as, noticed or unnoticed, have and always havehad a voice in speaking, always to the same measure.

Speaking must have speakers, but not merely in the same wayas an effect must have a cause. Rather, the speakers are presentin the \\'ay of speaking. Speaking, they are present and together

I with those with \\·h0I11 they speak, in whose neighborhood they,, ' I dwell because it is what happens to concern them at the

I moment. That includes fellow men and things, namely, every-I

. thing that conditions things and determines men. All this isaddressed in word, each in its own \\'ay, and therefore spokenabout and discussed in such a way that the speakers speak toand with one another and to themselves. ;-\ 11 the whi le, what isspoken remains tl1any - ided. Often it is no more than what hasbeen spoken expli itly, and either fades quickly away or elseis somehow preserved. What is 'spoken (an have passed by, butit also can have arrived long ago as that which i ' granted, bywhich somebody is addressed,

Everything spoken sterns in a var ictv of \\'ays from theunspoken, whether this b something not yet spoken, orwhether it be what mu t remain unspoken in the sense that itis beyond the reach of speaking. T hus. that which is spokenin various \vays begins to appear as if it were cut off fromspeaking and the speakers, and did not belong to them, whilein fact it alone offers to speaking and to the speakers whateverit is they attend to, no matter in what ,,'ay they stay withinwhat is spoken of the unspoken.

THE WAY TO LA G GE 12 I

The nature of language exhibits a great diversity of elementsand relations. We enumerated them but did not string themtogether in series. In going through them, that is, in the orig­inal count which does not yet reckon with numbers, somekind of belonging together became manifest. The count is arecounting that anticipates the unifying element in the belong­ing together, yet cannot bring it out and make it appear.

There is a long history to the inability, here come to light,of the vision of thinking to see directly the unifying unity ofthe being of language. That is why this unity remains withouta name. The traditional names for what we have in mindunder the rubric "language" indicate this unity always onlyin terms of one or another of the aspects which the being oflanguage has to offer.

This unity of the being of language for which we are lookingwe shall call the design. The name demands of us that we seethe proper character of the being of language with greaterclarity. The "sign" in design (Latin sign ums is related tosecare, to cut-as in saw, sector, segment, To design is to cuta trace. Most of us know the word "sign" only in its debasedmeaning-lines on a surface. But we make a design also whenwe cut a furrow into the soil to open it to seed and growth.The design is the whole of the traits of that drawing whichstructures and prevails throughout the open, unlocked freedomof language. The design is the drawing of the being of lan­guage, the structure of a show in which are joined the speakersand their speaking: what is spoken and what of it is unspokenin all that is given in the speaking.

Yet the design of language's nature will remain veiled tous even in its approxirnate outline, as long as we do notproperly attend to the sense in whi ch we had already spokenof speaking and what is spoken.

To be sure, speaking is vocalization. Also, it can be con­sidered a human activity. Both are correct views of languageas speaking. Both will now be ignored, though we should notforget how long the vocal aspect of language has already beenwai ti ng for a fitting defini t ion: for the phonetic-acoustic­physiological explanation of the sound of language does not

122 ON THE WAY TO LANGUAGE

know the experience of their origin in ringing stilln , andknow even I how sound i given voice and is defin d bythat stillness.

But then, in this short account of the nature of language,in what way are we thinking of speech and what is spo en?They reveal themselves even now as that by which and within

I which something is given voice and language, that is, ma esan appearance insojar as something is said. To say and topea are not identical. A man may speak, speak endlessly,

and all the time say nothing. Another man may remain silent,not peak at all and yet, without speaking, say a great deal.

But what does "say" mean? In order to find out, we musttay close to what our very language tells us to think when

w u e the word. "Say" means to show, to let appear, to letbe en and heard.

In pointing out what follows we shall be saying somethingthat is self-evident, and yet hardly a thought has been givento it and all its implications. To spea to one another means:to ay something, show omething to one another, and toentru t one another mutually to what is hown. To speawith one another means: to tell of something jointly, to showto one another what that which is claimed in the speakingsays in the speaking, and what it, of itself, brings to light.What is unspoken is not merely something that lacks voice,it is what remains unsaid, what is not yet shown, what has notyet reached its appearance. That which must remain whollyunspoken is held back in the unsaid, abides in concealment asunshowable, is mystery. That which is spoken to us speaks asdictum in the sense of something imparted, something whosespeaking does not even require to be sounded.

Speaking, qua saying something, belongs to the design of thebeing of language, the design which is pervaded by all themodes of saying and of what is said, in which everything pres­ent or absent announces, grants or refuses itself, shows itselfor withdraws, This multiform saying from many differentsources is the pervasive element in the design of the being oflanguage. With regard to the manifold ties of saying, we shall

THE WAY TO LANGUAGE

call the being of language in its totality "Saying't-sand confessthat even so we still have not caught sight of what unifiesthose ties.

We have a tendency today to use the word "Saying," Ii e somany other words in our language, mostly in a disparagingsense. Saying is accounted a mere say-so, a rumor unsupportedand hence untrustworthy. Here "Saying" is not understoodin this sense, nor in i natural, essential sense of Saga. Is itused perhaps in the sen e of Georg Trakl's line "the venerablesaying of the blue source"? In eeping with the most ancientusage of the word we understand saying in terms of showing,pointing out, signaling. Jean Paul called the phenomena ofnature "the spiritual pointer" or "spiritual index finger."·

The essential being of language is Saying as Showing. Itsshowing character is not ba ed on signs of any ind; rather,all signs arise from a showing within whose realm and forwhose purposes they can be signs.

In view of the tructure of Saying, however, we may notconsider showing as exclu ively, or even decisively, the prop-erty of human activity. If- howing appearance is the marof the presence and ab ence of everything that is present, ofevery kind and ran . Even when Showing is accomplished by .our human saying, even then thi showing, this pointer, is pre­ceded by an indication that it will let itself be shown.

Only when we give thought-to our human saying in this light,only then do we arrive at an adequate defirtition of what isessentially present in all peaking. Spea ing is known as thearticulated vocalization of thought by means of the organs ofspeech. But speaking i at the same time also listening. It isthe custom to put speaking and listening in opposition: oneman speaks, the other listens. But listening accompanies andsurrounds not only spea ing such as takes place in conversa­tion. The simultaneousness of speaking and listening has alarger meaning. Spea ing is of itself a listening. Speaking islistening to the language which we speak. Thus, it is a listening

I not while but before we are speaking. This listening to lan­• "Der geistige Zeigefinger.'t (Tr.)

124 ON THE WAY TO LANGUAGE

guage also comes before all other kinds of listening that weI know, in a most inconspicuous manner. We do not merelyspeak the language-ewe speak by way of it. We can do so

I solely because we always have already listened to the lan­\guage. What do we hear there? We hear language speaking.

But-does language itself speak? How is it supposed toperform such a feat when obviously it is not equipped withorgans of speech? Yet language speaks. Language first of alland inherently obeys the essential nature of speaking: it says.Language speaks by saying, this is, by showing. What it sayswells up from the formerly spoken and so far still unspokenSaying which pervades the design of language. Languagespea s in that it, as showing, reaching into all regions ofpresences, summons from them whatever is present to appearand to fade. We, accordingly, listen to language in this way,that we let it say its Saying to us. 0 matter in what way wemay listen besides, whenever we are listening to something weare letting something be said to us, and all perception andconception is already contained in that act. In our speaking,as a listening to language, we say again the Saying we haveheard. We let its soundless voice come to us, and then demand,reach out and call for the sound that is already kept in store forus. By now, perhaps, at least one trait in the design of languagemay manifest itself more clearly, allowing us to see how lan­guage as speaking comes into its own and thus speaks qualanguage.

If speaking, as the listening to language, lets Saying besaid to it, this letting can obtain only in so far-and so near­as our own nature has been admitted and entered into Saying.We hear Saying only because we belong within it. SayinggTants the hearing, and thus the speaking, of language solelyto those who belong within it. Such is the granting that abidesin Saying. It allows us to attain the ability to speak. Theessence of language is present in Saying as the source ofsuch grant.

And Saying itself? Is it separated from our speaking, some­thing to which we first must build a bridge? Or is Saying thestream of stillness which in forming them joins its own two

THE WAY TO LANGUAGE 125

banks-the Saying and our saying after it? Our customarynotions of language hardly reach as far as that. Saying ... inour attempt to think of the being of language in terms ofSaying, do we not run the risk of elevating language into afantastic, self-sustained being which cannot be encounteredanywhere so long as our reflection on language remains ober?For language, after all, remains unmistakably bound up withhuman speaking. Certainly. But what kind of bond is it? Onwhat grounds and in what way is it binding? Language needshuman speaking, and yet it is not merely of the making or atthe command of our speech activity. On what does the beingof language rest, that is, where is it grounded? Perhaps we aremissing the very nature of language when we ask for grounds?

Or could it even be that Saying is itself the abode of restwhich grants the quiet of mutual belonging to all that belongswithin the structure of the being of language?

Before thinking further in that direction, let us again attendto the way to language. By way of introduction it was pointedout that the more clearly language comes to light as languageitself, the more radically the way to it will change. So far, theway has had the character of a progression that leads ourreflection in the direction toward language within the curiousweb of our guiding formula. Taking our cue from Wilhelmvon Humboldt and starting with the speaking process, we triedfirst to form an idea of the nature of language, and then toget to the bottom of it. Thereafter it became necessary torecount all that belongs to the design of the being of language.This reflection brought us to language as Saying.

III

With the account and explication of the being of languageas Saying, our ,"'ay to language has reached language as such,and thus has reached its goal. Reflection has put the way tolanguage behind it. So it seems, and so indeed it is as long aswe take the way to language to be the progression of a thinkingwhich reflects on language. In truth, however, our reflectionfinds that it has come only within sight of the way to languageit is seeking; it is barely on its traces. For something has mean-

126 ON THE WAY TO LANGUAGE

while come to light in the being of language itself which says:within language as Saying there is present something like away or path.

What is a way? A way allows us to reach something. Saying,if we listen to it, is what allows us to reach the speaking oflanguage.

The way to speaking is present within language itself. Theway to language (in the sense of speaking) is language asSaying. The peculiarity of language, accordingly, conceals itselfin the way in which Saying allows those who listen to it toreach language. We can be those listeners only insofar as webelong within Saying. The way to speaking begins with thefact that we are allowed to listen and thus to belong to Saying.This belonging contains the actual presence of the way tolanguage. But in what manner is Saying present, that it canlet us listen and belong? If the essence of Saying is ever to makeitself manifest, then surely it will do so when we attend withgreater instancy to what the foregoing explications have offered.

Saying is showing. In everything that speaks to us, in every­thing that touches us by being spoken and spoken about, ineverything that gives itself to us in speaking, or waits for usunspo en, but also in the speaking that we do ourselves, thereprevails Showing which causes to appear what is present, andto fade from appearance what is absent. Saying is in no way thelinguistic expression added to the phenomena after they haveappeared-rather, all radiant appearance and all fading awayis grounded in the showing Saying. Saying sets all presentbeings free into their given presence, and brings what is ab entinto their absence. Saying pervades and structures the opennessof that clearing which every appearance must seek out and

\every disappearance Inust leave behind, and in which everyI present or absent being must show say, announce itself.

Saying is the gathering that joins all appearance of the initself manifold showing whi h evervwhere let all that is shown

;

abide within itself.Where does the showing spring from? The question asks too

much, and asks prematurely. I t is enough if we heed what it isthat stirs and quickens in the hewing and bears its quickness

THE WAY TO L GUAGE

out. Here we need not look far. All \\'C need is the plain, sudden,unforgettable and hence forever new look into somethingwhich we-even though it is familiar to us-do not even try toknow, let alone understand in a fitting manner. This unknown­familiar something, all thi pointing of Saying to what is quickand stirring within it, i to all present and absent beings as thatfirst break of dawn with which the changing cycle of day andnight first begins to be possible: it is the earliest and mostancient at once. We can do no more than name it, because itwill not be discussed, for it is the region of all places, of alltime-space-horizons. We shall name it with an ancient wordand say:

The moving force in Showing of Saying is Owning. It is whatI brings all present and absent beings each into their own, fromwhere they show themselve in what they are, and where theyabide according to their indo This owning which brings themthere, and which moves Saying as Showing in its showing wecall Appropriation. It yields the opening of the clearing inwhich present beings can persist and from which absent beingscan depart while keeping their per istence in the withdrawal.What Appropriation yields through Saying is never the effectof a cause, nor the consequence of an antecedent. The yieldingowning, the Appropriation, confers more than any effectuation,making, or founding. What is yielding is Appropriation itself­and nothing else.· That Appropriation, seen as it is shown bySaying, cannot be represented either as an occurrence or ahappening-it can only be experienced as the abiding giftyielded by Saying. There is nothing else from which the Appro­priation itself could be derived, even less in whose terms itcould be explained. The appropriating event is not the out­come (result) of omething else, but the giving yield whosegiving reach alone is what gives us such things as a "there is,"a "there is" of which even Being it elf stands in need to comeinto its own as presence.··

• Se my Identity and DiDererlC (t r. Joan Stambaugh; ew York: Harp r& Row, 1969), pp. ~7 ft. (M.H.)

•• See my Being and Time (tr. Macquarrie & Robinson; w York:Harper & Row, 1962), p. 255. (M. H.)

128 ON THE \VAY TO LANGUAGE

Appropriation assembles the design of Saying and unfoldsit into the structure of man ifold Showing. It is itself the most

" inconspicuous of inconspicuous phenomena, the simplest ofsimplicities, the nearest of the near, and the farthest of the farin which \ve mortals spend our lives.

We can give a name to the appropriation that prevails inSaying: it-Appropriation-appropriates or owns. When we saythis, we speak our own appropr.iate already spoken language.There are some verses by Goethe that use the word "own" in ameaning close to "showing itself" (though not with referenceto the nature of language) . Goethe says:

Ca ugh t soon and la te in su persti tion's snare,It ov...'ns, it shows itself, it says "beware."

Elsewhere we find a variation:

arne one thing or name a thousand,What 'we covet, what we fear-That life owns itself to thanking,Is alone what makes it dear."

Appropriation grants to mortals their abode within theirnature, so that they Illay be capable of being those who speak.If we understand "law" as the gathering that lays down thatwhich causes all beings to be present in their own, in what isappropriate for them, then Appropriation is the plainest andmost gentle of all laws, even more gentle than what AdalbertStifter saw as the "gentle law." Appropriation, though, is notlaw in the sense of a norm which hangs over our heads some­where, it is not an ordinance which orders and regulates acourse of events:

Appropriation is th e lav because it gathers mortals into the

·Von Aberglaubcn fruh und spat umgarnt:Es eignet sich, es zeigt sieh an, es warnt.

(Faust, Part II . Act V, ..~f idnigh t ")

Sei auch noeh so viel bezcichnct.\Vas man fuerchtet. was bcgchrt,N ur wei! es dern Dank sich e ign e t ,1st das Leben schatzenswcrt.

(To the Grand Duke Karl August for ew Year 1828)

THE WAY TO L GAGE 129

appropriateness of their nature and there holds them.Because showing of Saying is appropriating, therefore the

ability to listen to Saying-our belonging to it-also lies inAppropriation. In order to grasp this fact and all it implies, wewould need to think through the nature of mortals with suffi­cient completeness in all its respects and rapports, but first ofall to think through Appropriation as such.· Here, a suggestionmust suffice.

Appropriation, in beholding human nature, makes mortalsappropriate for that which avows itself from everywhere toman in Saying, which points toward the con cealed. fan's, thelistener's, being made appropriate for Saying, has this distin­guishing character, that it releases human nature into its own,but only in order that man as he who speaks, that is, he whosays, may encounter and answer Saying, in virtue of what ishis property. It is: the sounding of the word, The encounteringsaying of mortals is answering. Every spoken word is alreadyan answer: counter-saying, coming to the encounter, listeningSaying, When mortals are made appropriate for Saying, humannature is released into that needfulness out of which man isused for bringing soundless Saying to the sound of language.

Appropriation, needing and using man's appropriations, al­lows Saying to reach speech. The way to language belongs toSaying determined by Appropriation. Within this way, whichbelongs to the reality of language, the peculiar property oflanguage is concealed. The way is appropriating.

To clear a way, for in stance across a snow-covered field, is inthe Alernannic-Swabian dialect still called ioegen even today.

·Compare Vortriige und Aujsdtze (1954): "Das Ding" p. 163 ff.; "Bauen\Vohnen Denken" p. 145 ff.; "Die Frage nach der Technik" p. 13 ff.- Today,when so much thoughtless and half-thought matter i ru hed into print anywhich way, it may seem incredible to many of my readers that I have u dthe word "appropriation" (Ereignis) in my manuscripts for more thantwent y-five years to indicate what is here in my thoughts. The matt r,while simple in itself, still remains difficult to think, becau thinkingmust first overcome the habit of yielding to the view that we are thinkinghere of "Being" as appropriation. But appropriation i different in nature,because it is richer than any conceivable definition of Being. Being. how­ever , in respect of it essen t ial origin, can be thought of in terms of appro­priation. ( ~f. H.)

o THE 'YAY TO LA GUAGE

This verb, used transitively, means: to form a way and, formingit, to keep it ready. Wa -rnaking understood in this sense nolonger means to move something up or down a path that isalready there. It means to bring the ,vay ... forth first of all,and thus to be the wa y.

Appropriation appropriates man to its own usage. Showingas appropriating thus transpires and Appropriation is the way­making for Saying to come into language.

This way-making puts language (the essence of language) aslanguage (Saying) into language (into the sounded word). Whenwe speak of the \vay to language now, we no longer mean onlyor primarily the progression of our thinking as it reflects onlanguage. The \vay to language has become transformed alongthe ~vay. From human activity it has shifted to the appropri­ating nature of language. But it is only to us and only withregard to ourselves that the change of the way to languageappears as a shift which has taken place only now. In truth,the way to language has its unique region within the essenceof language itself. But this means also: the \vay to language aswe first had it in mind does not become invalid; it becomespossible and necessary only in virtue of the true way which isthe appropriating, needful way-making, For, since the beingof language, as aying that shows, rests on Appropriation whichmakes us humans over to the releasernent in which we canlisten freely, therefore the way-making of aying into speechfirst opens up for us the paths along which our thinking canpursue the authentic \vay to language.

The formula for the ,vay: to speak about speech qua speech,no longer merely contains a directive for us who are thinkingabout language, but °ay the [orma , the Gestalt , in which theessence of language that rest in Appropriation makes its way.

If we attend without further thought only to the words ofour formula, it expre .e a mesh of relations in which languagebecomes entangled. It looks as if any attempt to form a notionof language required dialectical tricks to escape from thistangle. Yet such a procedure, which the formula seems literallyto invite, loses the possibility of grasping the simplicity of theessence of Ian uage thoughtfully (that is, by entering idiomati-

THE WAY TO LANGUAGE

cally into the way-making movement), instead of trying to forma notion of language.

What looks like a confused tangle becomes untangled whenwe see it in the light of the way-making movement, and re­solves into the release brought about by the way-making move­ment disclosed in Saying. That movement delivers Saying tospeech. Saying keep the way open along which speaking, aslistening, catches from Saying what is to be said, and raiseswhat it thus has caught and received into the sounding word.The way-rna ing of Saying into spoken language is the deliver­ing bond that binds by appropriating.

Language, thus deliv red into its own freedom, can be con­cerned solely with itself. This ounds as if we were talking of aselfish solipsism. But language does not insist upon itselfalone in the en e of a purely self-seeking, all-oblivious self­admiration. As Saying, the nature of language is the appro­priating showing which di regards precisely itself, in order tofree that which i hown, to its authentic appearance.

Language, which pea by saying, is concerned that ourspeaking, in listening to th unspoken, corresponds to what issaid. Thus silence, too, which is often regarded as thesource of speaking, is i elf already a corresponding. e Silencecorresponds to the soundl tolling of the stillness of appro­priating-showing Saying. As Showing, Saying, which consists inAppropriation, is the most proper mode of Appropriating.Appropriation is by way of saying. Accordingly, languagealways speaks according to the mode in which the Appropria­tion as such reveals itself or withdraws. For a thinking thatpursues the Appropriation can still only surmise it, and yetcan experience it even now in the nature of modern technology,which we call by the still strange-sounding name of Framing(Ge-Stell e e ). Because Framing challenges man, that is, pro­vokes him to order and set up all that is present being astechnical inventory, Framing persists after the manner ofAppropriation, .specifically by simultaneously obstructing

• See Being and Time, pp. 205·11. (M. H.)•• See Idmtity and DiDerence, pp. 140. (M. H.)

ON THE \VAY TO LANGUAGE

Appropriation, in that all ordering finds itself channeled intocalculative thinking and therefore speaks the language ofFraming. Speaking is challenged to correspond in every respectto Framing in which all present beings can be commandeered.

Within Framing, speaking turns into information.· Itinforms itself about itself in order to safeguard its own proce­dures by information theories. Framing-the nature of modemtechnology holding- sway in all directions-commandeers for itspurposes a formalized language, the kind of communicationwhich "informs" man uniformly, that is, gives him the form inwhich he is fitted in to the technological-calculative universe,and gradually abandons "natural language." Even when infor­mation theory has to admit that formalized language must inthe end always refer back to "natural language," in order toput into speech the Saying of the technological inventory bymeans of nonforrnal ized language, even this situation signifiesonly a preliminary stage in the current self-interpretation ofinformation theory. For the "natural language" of which onemust talk in this con text is posited in advance as a not-yet­formalized language that is being set up to be framedin formalization. Formalization, the calculated availability ofSaying, is the goal and the norm. The "natural" aspect oflanguage, which the will to formalization still seems forced toconcede for the time being, is not experienced and understoodin the light of the originary nature of language. That nature ispJzysis, which in its turn is based on the appropriation fromwhich Saying arises to move. Information theory conceives ofthe natural aspect of language as a lack of formalization.

But even if a long \\'ay could lead to the insight that thenature of language can never be dissolved in formalism tobecome a part of its calculations, so that we accordingly mustsay that "natural languag ," is language which cannot beIormalized-seven then "natural language" is still being definedonly negatively, that is, set ofT against the I ossibi lity or impossi­b iii t Y 0 f for Ina liza t ion,

But what if "natural languagc~·· which in the eyes of infor­Illation theory is no more than a troublesome residue, were

• Sec Hebel der Hausjrrun d (195i ). pp. 3·1 fl. ( ~f. H .)

THE WAY TO LANGUAGE

drawing its nature, that is, the persistent nature of the beingof language, from Saying? What if Saying, instead of merelyimpeding the destructiveness of information-language, hadalready overtaken it in virtue of the fact that Appropriationcannot be commandeered? What if A.ppropriation-no oneknows when or how-were to become an insight whose illumi­nating lightening flash enters into what is and what is taken tobe? What if Appropriation, by its entry, were to remove every­thing that is in present being from its subjection to a com­mandeering order and bring it back into its own?

All human language is appropriated in Saying and as suchis in the strict sense of the word true language-though itsnearness to Appropriation may vary by various standards. Alltrue language, because assigned, sent, destined to man by theway-making movement of Saying, is in the nature of destiny. '/..

There is no such thing as a natural language that would bethe language of a human nature occurring of itself, without adestiny. All language is historical, even where man does notknow history in the modern European sense. Even languageas information is not language per se, but historical in the senseand the limits of the present era, an era that begins nothingnew but only carries the old, already outlined aspects of themodern age to their extreme.

The origin of the word-that is, of human speaking in termsof Saying-its origin which is in the nature of Appropriation, iswhat constitutes the peculiar character of language.

We recall at the end, as we did in the beginning, the wordsof Novalis: "The peculiar property of language, namely thatlanguage is concerned exclusi vely '" ith itse If-precise Iy that isknown to no one." Novalis understands that peculiarity in themeaning of the particularity which distinguishes language. Inthe experience of the nature of language, whose showing residesin Appropriation, the peculiar propert» comes close to owningand appropriating. Here the peculiar property of languagereceives the original charter of its destined determination,something we cannot pursue here.

The peculiar property of language, which is determined byAppropriation, is even less knowable than the particularity of

o THE WAY TO LA GUAGE

language, if to know means to have seen something in thewholeness of its nature, seen it in the round. We are notcapable of seeing the nature of language in the round becausewe, who can only say something by saying it after Saying,

"belong ourselves within Saying. The monologue character ofthe nature of language finds its structure in the disclosingdesign of Saying. That design does not and cannot coincidewith the monologue of which Novalis is thinking, becauseNovalis understands language dialectically, in terms of sub­jectivity, that is, within the horizon of absolute idealism.

But language is monologue. This now says two things: it islanguage alone which speaks authentically; and, languagespea s lonesomely, Yet only he can be lonesome who is notalone, if "not alone" means not apart, singular, without anyrapports. But it is precisely the absence in the lonesome ofomething in common which persists as the most binding bondwith it. The "some" in lonesome is the Gothic sama, the Greekhama, and the English same. "Lonesome" means: the same inwhat unites that which belongs together. Saying that showsrna es the way for language to reach human speaking. Sayingi in need of being voiced in the word. But man is capable ofspea ing only insofar as he, belonging to Saying, listens toSaying, so that in resaying it he may be able to say a word. Thatneeded usage and this resaying lie in that absence of somethingin common which is neither a mere defect nor indeed anythingnegative at all.

In order to be who we are, we human beings remain com­mitted to and within the being of language, and can never stepout of it and look at it from somewhere else. Thus we alwayssee the nature of language only to the extent to which languageitself has us in view, has appropriated us to itself. That wecannot know the nature of language-know it according to thetraditional concept of knowledge defined in terms of cognitionas representation-i not a defect, however, but rather anad antage by which we are favored with a special realm, thatrealm where we, who are needed and used to speak language,dwell as mortals.

Saying will not let itself be captured in any statement. It

THE WAY TO LANGUAGE 135

demands of us that we achieve by silence the appropriating,initiating movement within the being of language-and do sowithout talking about silence.

Saying, which resides in Appropriation, is qua showing themost appropriate mode of appropriating. This sounds like astatement. If we hear only this statement, it does not say to uswhat is to be thought out. Saying is the mode in which Appro­priation speaks: mode not so much in the sense of modus orfashion, but as the melodic mode, the song which says some­thing in its singing. For appropriating Saying brings to lightall present beings in terms of their properties-it lauds, that is,allows them into their own, their nature. Holderlin sings thesewords in the beginning of the eighth stanza of "Celebrationof Peace":

Much, from the morning onwards, "' .Since we have been a . and have heard from one anotherHas human kind learnt; but oon we shall be song.·

Language has been called "the house of Being."·· It is thekeeper of being present, in that its coming to light remainsentrusted to the appropriating how of Saying. Language is thehouse of Being because language, as Saying, is the mode ofAppropriation.

In order to pursue in thought the being of language and to I

say of it what is its own, a transformation of language is neededwhich we can neither compel nor invent. This transformation 'does not result from the procurement of newly formed words I

and phrases. It touches on our relation to language, which is ·determined by destiny: whether and in what way the nature oflanguage, as the arch-tidings of Appropriation, will retain usin Appropriation. For that appropriating, holding, self­retaining is the relation of all relations. Thus our saying­always an answering-remains forever relational. Relation isthought of here always in terms of the appropriation, and nolonger conceived in the form of a mere reference. Our relation

-Friedrich Holderlin, Poems and Fragments (Michael Hamburger:Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Pr . 1967). p. 438. (Tr.)

·-In Heidegger, Letter on Humanism, 1947. (Tr.)

ONTHE\VAYTOLAi'G GE

to language defines itself in terms of the mode in which we,who are needed in the u age of language, belong to the Appro-. .prlatlOn.

\Ve might perhaps prepare a little for the hange in ourrelation to languag . Perhaps this experien e might awaken:All reflective thinking is poetic, and all poetry in turn is a kindof thinking. The two belong together by virtue of that Sayingwhich has already bespok en itself to what is unspoken becauseit is a thought as a thank.

We know that th possibility of an innate transformation oflanguage entered \-\ ilhelm von Humboldt's sphere of thought,from a passage in hi s treatise on "The Diversity of the Struc­ture of Human Language." As his brother tells us in the fore­word, Humboldt worked on this treatise "lonesome, near agrav " until his death.

Wilhelm von Humboldt, whose deep dark insights into thenature of language we must never cease to admire, says:

The application o f an already available phonetic form to theinternal purposes of language ... may be deemed possible inthe middle periods of language development. A people could,by inner illumination and favorable external circumstances,impart 0 different a form to the language handed down tothem that it would thereby turn into a wholly other, wholly newlanguage.

I n a la ter passage we read:

Without alter in: th · language as regard it ounds and evenless its form and laws, tiTTl e-by a gro\ving development ofideas, increased ca pac ity for su rained thinking, and a morepenetrating ensibility-will often introduce into language whatit did not po sess before. Then the old shell is filled with

a new meaning. til old co in age co n vey some th ing different,the old laws of syn ta x an: used to hint at a differently gradu­ated seq uenc e of id eas. :\ 11 thi is a lasting fruit of a people'slit erature, and within literature e. peciallv of poetry and phi­

losophy. •

• The two pa 'sage will he found on pp. 55 and 65 of the Buck & Raventranslation. The rendering given here follows somewha t more cIo elv the- ,

text cited In' Heideggcr, (T'r. )

WORDS

WORDS

From where we are now, let us for a moment thinkabout what Holderlin asks in his elegy "Bread and Wine"(stanza vi):

\Vhy are they silent, too, the theatres ancient and hallowed?\Vhy not now does the dance celebrate, consecrate joy?-·

The word is withheld from the former place of the gods'appearance, the word as it was once word. How was it then?The approach of the god took place in Saying itself. Saying wasin itself the allowing to appear of that which the saying onessaw because it had already looked at them. That look broughtthe saying and the hearing ones into the un-finite intimacy ofthe strife between men and gods. However, That which is yetabove the gods and men prevailed through this strife-asAntigone says!

ou gar ti moi Zeus en , ho keruxas lade ,

(1. 450)• Translation by Joan Stambaugh .•• Friedrich Holdcrlin. POeTTlS and Fra gm ents ( t r. Michael Hamburger;

Ann Arbor: niversity of Michigan Press. 1967) . p. 249.

139

o THE\VAYTOLA GAGE

"It was not Zeus who .ent me the message" (but somethingother, that directing need).

ou ga r t i n u n / e kach t hes , all' aei poteze t auta . kou deis oiden ex hotou' phone,

(11. 456/7)

.. ot only today and tomorrow, but ever and ever it" thonomos, the directing need) "arises and no one has looked uponthat place from which it carne into radiance."

The poetic word of this kind remains an enigma. Its sayinghas long since returned to silence. lay we dare to think aboutthis enigma? We are already doing enough if we allow our­selves to be told the enigma of the word by poetry itself-in apoem wi th the ti tle:

WORDSWonder or dream from distant landI carried to Iny country's strand

And waited till the twilit nornHad found the name within her bourn-

Then I could grasp it close and strongIt blooms and shines now the front along ...

Once I returned from happy ail.I had a prize . 0 rich and frail.

She sought for long and tidings told:.. 0 like of this these depth enfold. It

And straight it vanished from Illy hand,The treasure never graced my la nd ...

So I renounced and adly see:Where word break off no thing may be.·

The poenl was first published in the i i th and rzth series of"Blatter [iir die Kunst" in 1919. Later (1928) Stefan Georgeincluded it in the la t volume of poems published in his life­ti me, called Das N e ue R eich.

The poenl is structured in seven stanzas of two lines each.The final stanza not only concludes the poem, it opens it up

· ·rr. Peter Hertz. U.S.)

WORDS

at the same time. This is already evident in the fact that onlythe final stanza explicitly says what is in the title: Words. Thefinal stanza reads:

Where word breaks off no thing Ina )' be.

One is tempted to turn the final line into a statement withthe content: 0 thing is where the word breaks off. Wheresomething breaks off, there is a break, a breaking off. To doharm to something means to take something away from it, tolet something be lacking. "It is lacking" means "it is missing."Where the word is missing, there is no thing.

It is only the word at our disposal which endows the thingwith Bei ng.

What are words, that they have such power?What are things, that they need words in order to be?What does Being mean here, that it appears like an endow­

ment which is dedicated to the thing from the word?Questions upon questions. These questions do not immedi­

ately arouse our contemplation in the first hearing and readingof the poem. We are much more likely to be enchanted by thefirst six stanzas, for they tell of the poet's strangely veiledex periences. The final stanza, however, speaks in a more op­pressing way. It forces us to the unrest of thought. Only thisfinal stanza makes us hear what, according to the title, is thepoetic intent of the whole poem: Words.

Is anything more exciting and more dangerous for the poetthan his relation to words? Hardly. Is this relation first createdby the poet, or does the word of itself and for itself need poe­try, so that only through this need does the poet become whohe can be? All of this and much else besides gives food forthought and makes us thoughtful. Still, we hesitate to enterupon such reflection. For it is now su pported only by a singleverse of the whole poem. What is more, we have changed thisfinal verse into a statement. Of course, this act of change didnot come about through sheer wil lfulness, Rather, we are al­most forced to make the change, as soon as we notice that thefirst line of the final stanza ends with a colon. The colon

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arouse the expectation that it will be followed by a statement.This i the case in the fifth stanza, too. At the end of the firstline of that stanza there i also a colon:

She sought for long and tidings told:"No like of this the e depths enfold."

The colon opens something up. What follows spea s, seengrammatically, in the indicative:" 0 like of this ..." Further­more, what the twilit norn says is placed between quotationmar .

The ca e is different in the final stanza. Here, too, there is acolon at the end of the first line. But what follows the colonneither spea s in the indicative, nor are there quotation mar saround what is said. What is the difference between the fifthand the seventh stanza? In the fifth stanza, the twilit nornannounces something. The announcement is a kind of state­ment, a revelation. In contrast, the tone of the final stanza isconcentrated in the word "renounce."

Renouncing is not stating, but perhaps after all a Saying.R nouncing belongs to the verb to forgive. Accusing, chargingis th same word as showing, Greek deiknumi, Latin dicere. Toaccus , to show means: to allow to be seen, to bring to appear­ance. This, however, showing and allowing to be seen, is themeaning of the old German word sagan, to say. To accuse, tocharge someone means: to tell him something straight to hiface. Accordingly, Saying dominates in forgiving, in renounc­ing. How so? Renouncing means: to give up the claim to some­thing, to deny oneself something. Because renouncing is a man­ner of Saying, it can be introduced in writing by a colon. Yetwhat follows the colon does not need to be a statement. Thecolon following the word "renounce" does not disclose some­thing in the ense of a statement or an assertion. Rather, thecolon discloses renunciation as aying of that with which it isinvolved. With what is it involved? Presumably with thatwhich renunciation renounces.

So I renounced and adly see:Where word breaks off no thing may be.

WORDS

But how? Does the poet renounce the fact that no thing maybe where the word breaks off? By no means. The poet is so farfrom renouncing this that he actually assents to what is said.Thus the direction in which the colon discloses renunciationcannot tell of that which the poet renounces. It must rathertell of that with which the poet is involved. But renouncingindisputably means: to deny oneself something. Accordingly,the final verse must, after all, tell of what the poet denies him­self. Yes and no.

How are we to thin this? The final verse makes us more andmore thoughtful and requires us to hear it more clearly as awhole, but to hear th whole as that stanza which at the sametime discloses the poem through its conclusion.

So I renounced and sadly see:Where word brea off no thing may be.

The poet has learned renunciation. To learn means: tobecome knowing. In Latin, nowing is qui vidit, one who hasseen, has caught sight of omething, and who never again losessight of what he has caught ight of. To learn means: to attainto such seeing. To thi belongs our reaching it; namely on theway, on a journey. To put one elf on a journey, to experience,means to learn.

On what journeys does the poet attain to his renunciation?Through what land do his journeys lead the traveler? How hasthe poet experienced renunciation? The final stanza gives thedirective.

So I renounced and sadly see:

How? Just as the preceding six stanzas tell of it. Here thepoet is speaking of his land. There he is speaking of his jour­neys. The fourth stanza begins:

Once I returned from happy sail

"Once" is used here in the old meaning which signifies "onetime." In this meaning, it tells of a distinctive time, a uniqueexperience. The tellin of the experience, therefore, does notjust begin abruptly with the "once." It demarcates itself sharply

144 ON THE w A Y TO LA . 'G AGE

at the same time from all his other journeys, for the last verseof the immediately preceding third stanza terminates in threedots. The same is true of the last verse of the sixth stanza.Accordingly, the ix t anza: which prepare for the seventh, thefinal stanza, are divid d by clear signs into two groups of threestanzas, t\VO triads.

The poet's journeys of which the first triad tells are of adifferen t kind from the sole and unique journey to which thewhole second triad i: dedicated. In order to be able to con­template the poet's journeys, particularly the unique one whichallows him to experience renunciation , we must first considerthe landscape to which the poet's experiencing belongs.

Twice-in the second verse of the first stanza and in thee ond verse o f the . ix th stanza, that is, at the beginning and at

the end of th e two triad - th e poet says "my land." The land ishis a the assured area of his poetry. l\ hat his poetry requiresare names, ~ .ames for what?

The first verse of the poenl gives the answer:

\-, onder or dream from distant land

ames for what is borne to the poet from the distance assomething full of wonder or for what vi its him in dreams. Forthe poet, both of the e mean in all assurance what truly con­cerns him, that which is. Yet he does not want to keep thatwhich i to him elf, but to portray it. In order to do this, namesare necessary. 1 hev arc words by which what alreadv is and is

' " I

believed to be is made so concrete and full of being that ithen eforth shines and bloom and thus reigns as the beautifuleverywhere in the land. The name are words that portray.They present what already is to repre entational thinking. Bytheir power of portrayal the names hear witness to their decisiverule over things. Th \ po t him elf conl po es in virtue of theclaim to the names, I n orde r to rea h them, he must first in hisjourneys attain to that place where his claim finds the requiredIulfil lment. This happen. at hi s .o u n try's trand. 1 he strandbounds, it arrests, limits and ircum cribe the poet's secure

\\'ORDS 145

sojourn. The bourne, the well fr oIn which the twilit norn, the

ancient goddess of fate, draws tip the names is at the edge ofthe poet's land-or is the edge itself the well? With these namesshe gives the poet those words whi ch he . con fi d en tly and sureof himself, awaits as the portrayal of what he believes to bethat which is. The poet's claim to the rule of his Saying isfulfilled. The flourishing and shining of his poetry becomepresence. The poet is sure of his word, and just as fully incommand of it. The last stanza of the first triad begins with thedecisi ve "then."

l~hen I could grasp it full and st ro ng-

It blooms and hines n ow (h e front a lo ng ...

Let us pay keen attention to the shift in the ten es of theverbs in the second verse of this stanza as compared with thefirst. The verbs now speak in the presen t tense. The rule ofpoetry is COOl pleted, I t has reached its goa I and i perfected.No lack, no doubt disturb the poet's self-assuran e.

Until a wholly different experience strike him. I t is told inthe second triad which is formed in exact orrespondence to thefirst. The characteristics of this correspondence are these: thelast stanzas of both triads each begins with temporal indica­tions-uThen," "And straight." A dash at the end of the secondverse precedes the "Then." A sign also precedes the "Andstraight"-the quotation mark in the fifth stan za.

From his unique journey the poet no longer bring. "wonderor dream from distan t land" to his CO U ll trv's st ra n d . After a

I

good journey he arrives with a trea . ure at the so u r e of thenorn. The treasure's origin rerna in : obscure. T he poet sim p lvholds it in his hand, What lie in hi s h and is n either a dreamnor some th ing fetch ed Irorn a eli .tan re. But the stra nge preciousjewel is both urich and frail." H ence the god dess of fate mustsear h long for the jewel's nam e and mu st finall y take leave ofthe poet with the IlIC sage:

";\0 like of thi s t hes« d epths e n fo ld ."

The names held in the depths of the well are taken as .orne-

o THE w Y TO LA GUAGE

thing slumbering which only needs to be awakened in order tobe used for the portrayal of things. The names and words arelike a staple supply coordinated with the things and retro­actively given them for the portrayal. But this source fromwhich until now poetic Saying took its words-words which asnames portrayed that which is-this source no longer bestowsanything.

What experience befalls the poet? Only this, that the namenever comes for the treasure lying in his hand? Only this, thatnow the treasure must do without its name, but may otherwiseremain in the poet's hand? o. Something else, somethingdisturbing happens. However, neither the absence of the namenor the slipping away of the treasure is what is disturbing.What is disturbing is the fact that with the absence of the word,the treasure disappears. Thus, it is the word which first holdsthe treasure in its presence, indeed first fetches and brings itthere and preserves it. Suddenly the word shows a different, ahigher rule. It is no longer just a name-giving grasp reachingfor what is present and already portrayed, it is not only a meansof portraying what lies before us. On the contrary, the wordfirst bestows presence, that is, Being in which things appear asbeings.

This different rule of the word glances abruptly at the poet.At the same time, however, the word which thus rules remainsabsent. Hence the treasure slips away. But it by no meansdisintegrates into nothingness. It remain a treasure, althoughthe poet may never keep it in his land.

And straight it vanished (rom Iny hand,The trea. ure never graced my land ...

ay we go so far as to think that the poet's journeys to thenom's source have now come to an end? Presumably we may.For by this new experience the poet has caught sight of adifferent rule of the word, although in a veiled manner. Wheredoes this experience take the poet and hi previous poetry?The poet must relinqui h the claim to the assurance that hewill on demand be upplied with the name for that which he

WORDS

has posited as what truly is. Thi po iting and that claim hemust now deny himself. The poet must renounce having wordsunder his control as the portraying names for what is posited.As self-denial, renunciation is a Saying which says to itself:

Where word break off no thing 111a)' be.

Whi Ie we were discussing the fir t six tanzas and consideringwhat journey allowed the poet to experien ce hi renunciation,the renunciation itself has also become omewhat clearer tous. Only somewhat; for mu h still remain ob cure in thispoem, above all the treasure for whi h the name i denied.This i also the reason hy the poet cannot ay what thistreasure is. We have even Ie right to conje ture about it thanhe, unles the poem itself ere to ive u a hint. It does so. Weperceive it if we listen thou htfully enou h. To do so it isenough that we ponder something which must now make usmost thoughtful of all.

The insight into the poet' exp ri nc with the word, that is,the insight into the renunciation he has learned , 01111 el u toask the que tion: why could the poet n t renoun e Sa ing,once he had learned renun iation? h doe he tell I re i elyof renunciation? Why doe he 0 so far as to nlpo e a poelllwith the title "Words"? An wer: Because thi renun iation i agenuine renunciation, not ju t a rejection of aying, n t a merelapse into silence. s self-denial, renun iation r Blain aying.It thus preserve the relation to the word. But becau theword i hown in a different, hi her rule, th e rel ation to theword must also undergo a tran formation. aying attains to adifferent articulation, a different m elos, a different tone. 1 hepoem it elf, which tells of renun iation, bears witne s to thefact that the poet' renunciation is ex per i need in this sensc­by singing of r nuneiation. For this poelll i a song. It bel nto the last part of the la t volume of po ms published by StefanGeorge himself, This last part bears th e title "Song," andbegin. with the prolo ue:

hat I still pond r a nd wh at I . till fra m I

" hat I till 10ve - t h ir f at II re. arc the a IIIe.

ON THE WAY TO LANGUAGE

Pondering, framing, loving is Saying: a quiet, exuberantbow, a jubilant homage, a eulogy, a praise: laudare. Laudes isthe Latin name for songs. To recite song is: to sing. Singing isthe gathering of Saying in song. If we fail to understand thelofty meaning of song as Saying, it becomes the retroactivesetting to music of what is spoken and written.

With Song, with the last poems collected under this title, thepoet definitively leaves the sphere that earlier was his own.Where does he go? To renunciation, which he has learned.This learning was a sudden experience which he had in thatinstant when the wholly different rule of the word looked athim and disturbed the self-assurance of his earlier Saying.Something undreamed of, something terrifying stared him inthe face-that only the word lets a thing be as thing.

From that moment on, the poet must answer to this mysteryof the word-the mystery of which he has barely an inkling, andwhich he can only surmise in his pondering. He can succeedonly when the poetic word resounds in the tone of the song.We can hear this tone with particular clarity in one of thesongs which, without a title, is published for the first time inthe last part of the last book of poems (Dos Neue Reich, p. 137).

In the stillest peace

of a musing daySuddenly breaks a sight which

\\' i th undreamed terror

Troubles the secure soul

As when on the heightsThe solid stem"r o wers motionless in pride

And then late a storm

Bends it to the ground:

As when the sea\Vith hrill scream\Vith wild crash

Once again thrustsInto the long-abandoned hell.

'VORDS 149

The rhythm of this song is as marvelous as it is clear. I t isenough to suggest it with a short remark. Rhythm, rhusmos,does not mean flux and flowing, but rather form. Rhythm iswhat is at rest, what forms the movement of dance and song,and thus lets it rest within itself. Rhythm bestows rest. In thesong we just heard, the structure shows itself if we pay heed tothe one fugue which sings to us, in three forms, in the threestanzas: secure soul and sudden sigh t, stem and storm, seaand shell.

But the strange thing about this song is a mark which thepoet sets down, the only mark besides the final period. Evenstranger is the place where he has put the mark-sthe colon atthe end of the last line of the middle stanza. This mark, in thisplace, is all the more astonishing because both stanzas, themiddle and the last one, begin alike with an as that refers backto the first stanza:

As when on the heights

The solid stem

and:As when the sea

With shrill scream

Both stanzas appear to be arranged in the same \vay \vithregard to their sequence. But they are not. The colon at theend of the middle stanza makes the next and final tan za referback explicitl y to the first tanza, by including the secondstanza with the first in its reference. 'The first stanza speaks ofthe poet di t urbed in his security. But yet the "undreamedterror" does not destrov him. But it does bend h im to the

I

ground as the storm bends the tr ee, so th at he Illay becomeopen for that of which the third .tan za in g after the openingco lon . Once again the sea thrusts it. unfathomable voi ce intothe poet's ears which are alled the "l ong-abandoned shell";for until now the poet remained without the purel y bestowedprevalence of the word. Instead, the names required by thenorn nourished the self-a urance of hi s Ina terful proclamation.

So I renounced and adly see:Where word breaks off no thing may be.

ON THE WAY TO LANGUAGE

The renunciation thus learned is no mere refusal of a claim,but rather the transformation of Saying into the echo of aninexpressible Saying whose sound is barely perceptible andsonglike. ow we should be in a better position to ponder thelast stanza so that it may itself speak in such a way that thewhole poem is gathered up in it. If we were to succeed in thiseven to a small degree, ,..'e might, at favorable moments, hearmore clearly the title of the poem Words, and understand howthe final stanza not only concludes the poem, not only revealsit, but how it at the same time conceals the mystery of theword.

The final stanza speaks of the word in the manner of re­nunciation. Renunciation is in itself a Saying: self-denial ...namely denying to oneself the claim to something. Understoodin this way, renunciation retains a negative character: "nothing," that i , not a thing; "the word breaks off," that is, it isnot available. According to the rule, double negation producesan affirmation. Renunciation says: a thing may be only wherethe word is granted. Renunciation speaks affirmatively. Themere refusal not only doe not exhaust the essence of renunci­ation, it does not even contain it. Renunciation does have anegative side, but it has a positive side as well. But to talkabout sides here i misleading, In so doing we equate whatdenies and what affirms and thus obscure what truly rules inSaying. This ,..'e must think about above all else. Still more.We need to consider what kind of renunciation the final stanzameans. It is unique in its kind, because it isn't related to justany possession of ju t an I thing. s self-denial, that is, as Saying,renunciation concern the word itself. Renunciation gets therelation to the word u nderwav toward that which concernsevery Saying as Saying. l\ e uspect that in this self-denial therelation to the word gain a nearly "excessive intimacy." Theenigmatic quality of the final stanza grows beyond us. orwould we want to olve it, that enigmatic quality, but only toread, to gather our thought. about it.

WORDS

At fir t we thin renunciation as denying-one If-something.Grammatically, "on elf' is in the dative case and refers to thepoet. What the poet denies himself is in the accusative case. Itis the claim to the representational rule of th word. Mean­while. another characteristic of this renunciation ha come tolight. Renunciation commits itself to the higher rule of theword which first Ie a thing be as thing. The word makes thething into a thing-it "bethings" the thing. We should like tocall this rule of the word "bethinging" (die Bedingnis). Thiold word has di appeared from linguistic usage. Goethe tillknew it. In this cont xt, however, bethinging says somethingdifferent from tal iog about a condition, which was tillGoethe's understanding of bethinging. A condition is theexistent ground for om thing that is. The condition givesreasons, and it grounds. It ati fies the principle of sufficientreason. But the word does not give reasons for the thing. Theword allows the thing to presence as thing. We shall call thiallowing bethinging. The poet doe not explain what thisbethinging is. But the poet commit himself, that is, his Sayingto this mystery of the word. In uch commitment, he whorenounces denies him If to the claim which he formerly willed.The meaning of self-denial ha been transformed. The .. elf'is no longer in the dative but the accusative ca e, and the claimis no longer in the accu ative but the dative ca . The poet'sown transformation is concealed in the transformation of thegrammatical meaning of th phrase "to deny the claim to one­self" into "to deny one elf to the claim." He has allowedhimself-that is, such Saying as will still be possible for him inthe future-to be brought face to face with the word's mystery,the be-thinging of the thing in the word.

However, even in this transformed self-denial, the negativecharacter of renunciation still maintains the upper hand. Yet itbecame clearer and clearer that the poet's renunciation is in noway a negation, but rather an affirmation. Self-denial-whichappears to be only refusal and self-withdrawal-is in truthnondenial of self: to the mystery of the word. This nondenialof self can speak in this way only, that it says: "may there be."

ON THE \V Y TO LANGUAGE

From now on may the word be: the bethinging of the thing.This "may there be" lets be the relation of word and thing,what and how it really is. Without the word, no thing is. In the"may there be," renunciation commits itself to the "is." Henceno retroactive transformation of the final verse into a state­ment is needed in order to make the "is" appear. "May therebe" extends to us the "is" in a veiled and therefore purerfashion.

Where word breaks off no thing may be.

In this nondenial of self, renunciation says itself as that kindof Saying which owes itself wholly to the mystery of the word.In nondenial of self, renunciation is an owing of self. Here isthe abode of renunciation. Renunciation owes thanks-it is athanking. I t is not mere refusal, still less a loss.

But why, then, is the poet sad?

So I renounced and sadly see:

Is it renunciation that makes him sad? Or did sadness comeover him only when he learned renunciation? In the lattercase, the sadness which recently burdened his spirit could havedisappeared again as soon as he had embraced renunciation asa thanks; for owing oneself as thanking is attuned to joy. Thetone of joy is heard in another song. That poenl, too, is withouta title. But it bears such a strangely unique mark that we arecompelled to listen to it in virtue of its inner kinship to thesong J'Fords (Das l\ eue R eich, p. 125). It reads:

What bold-easy step

Walks through th e innermost realm

Of grandame' fa irvtale garden ?

What rou ing ca ll does the bugler's

Silver horn cast in the tangle

Of the Saying's d eep slu m ber?

WORDS

What secret breathOf melancholy just fl ed

estles into the soul?

Stefan George is in the habit of writing all words with smallinitials" except those at the beginning of the lines. But in thispoem there is a single capitalized word, almost at the center ofthe poem at the end of the middle stanza. The word is: Saying.The poet could have chosen this word for the poem's title, withthe hidden allusion that Saying, as the tal e of the fairy talegarden, tells of the origin of the word.

The first stanza sings of the step as the journey through therealm of Saying. The second stanza sings of the call thatawakens Saying. The third stanza sings of the breath thatnestles into the soul. Step (that is, way) and call and breathhover around the rule of the word, Its mystery has not onlydisturbed the soul that formerly was secure. I t has also takena\vay the soul's melancholy which threatened to drag it down.Thus, sadness has vanished from the poet's relation to theword, This sadness concerned only his learning of renunci­ation. All this would be true if sadness were the mere oppositeto joy, if melancholy and sadness were identical.

But the more joyful the joy, the more pure the sadnessslu m ber ing within it. The deeper the sadness, the more stun­moning the joy resting within it. Sadness and joy play intoeach other. The play itself which attunes the two by lettingthe remote be near and the near be remote is pain. This is whyboth, hi ghest joy and deepe t sad nes , are painful each in its\vay. But pain so touches the spirit of mortal s that the spiritreceives its gravity from pain. That gravity keeps mortals witha 11 thei r wa veri ng a t rest in thei r bei ng. T he spi ri t whichanswers to pain, the spirit attuned by pain and to pain, ismelancholy, It can depress the sp ir it, but it can also lose itsburdensomeness and let its" erret breath" nestle into the soul,bestow upon it the jewel which array ' it in the precious rela­tion to the word, and with thi s raimcnr .he lters it.

This , presumably, is what the third stanza of our last poem

• In sta nd a rd German. all nouns a rt' ca p ita lized . (T' r.)

154 ON THE WAY TO LANGUAGE

has in mind. With the secret breath of melancholy just fled,sadness permeates renunciation itself; for sadness belongs torenunciation if we think renunciation in its innermost gravity.That gravity is the nondenial of self to the mystery of theword, to the fact that the word is the bethinging of the thing.

As mystery, the word remains remote. As a mystery that isexperienced, the remoteness is near. The perdurance of thisremoteness of such nearness is the nondenial of self to theword's mystery. There is no word for this mystery, that is, noSaying which could bring the being of language to language.

The treasure which never graced the poet's land is theword for the being of language. The word's rule and sojourn,abruptly caught sight of, its presencing, would like to enter itsown word. But the word for the being of the word is notgranted.

What if this, the word for the presencing of language, werealone the treasure which, close to the poet since it lies in hishand, still vanishes and yet, having vanished, never havingbeen captured, still remains what is most remote in the nearestnearness? In this nearness, the treasure is mysteriously familiarto the poet, otherwise he could not sing of it as "rich andfrail. "

Rich means: capable of bestowing, capable of offering, ofallot ing to attain and reach. But this is the word's essentialrichne s that in aying, that is, in showing, it brings the thingas thing to radiance.

Frail means according to the old verb zarton the same as:familiar, giving joy, saving. Saving is an offering and a releas­ing, but without will and force, without addiction anddominance.

The treasure rich and frail is the word's hidden essence(verbal) which, invisibly in its Saying and even already in whatis unsaid, extends to us the thing as thing.

His renunciation having pledged itself to the word's mystery,the poet retains the treasure in remembrance by renunciation.In this way, the treasure becomes that which the poet-he whosays-prefers above all el e and reveres above everything else.

WORDS 155

The treasure becomes what is truly worthy of the poet'sthought. For what could be more worthy of thought for thesaying one than the word's being veiling itself, than the fadingword for the word?

If we listen to the poem as a song in harmony with indredsongs, we then let the poet tell us, and let ourselves be toldtogether with him, what is worthy of the thinking of poeticbeing.

To let ourselve be told what is worthy of thinking means­to think.

While listening to the poem, we are pondering poetry. Thisis how making poetry and thinking are.

What at first 100 like the title of a thesis-making poetryand thinking-turns out to be the inscription in which ourdestined human existence has ever been inscribed. The inscrip­tion records that poetry and thin ing belong together. Theircoming together has come about long ago. As we think back tothat origin, we come face to face with what is primevallyworthy of thought, and which we can never ponder sufficiently.It is the same element worthy of thought that glanced abruptlyat the poet and to which he did not deny himself when he said:

Where word br a off no thing may be.

The word's rule springs to light as that which makes thething be a thing. The word begins to shine as the gatheringwhich first brings what presences to its presence.

" The oldest word for the rule of the word thus thought, forSaying, is logos: Saying which, in showing, lets beings appearin their "it is."

The same word, however, the word for Saying, is also theword for Being, that is, for the presen ing of beings. Saying andBeing, word and thing, belong to each other in a veiled way,a way which has hardly been thought and is not to be thoughtout to the end. '

•

II essential Saying hearkens ba k to this veiled mutualbelonging of Saying and Being, word and thing. Both poetry

ON THE \VAY TO LANGUAGE

and thinking are distinctive Saying in that they remain deliv­ered over to the mystery of the word as that which is mostworthy of their thinking, and thus ever structured in theirkinship.

In order that we may in our thinking fittingly follow andlead this element worthy of thought as it gives itself to poetry,we abandon everything which we have now said to oblivion.We listen to the poem. We grow still more thoughtful nowregarding the possibility that the more simply the poem singsin the mode of song, the more readily our hearing may err.

LANGUAGE IN THE POEMA Discussion on Georg Trakl's Poetic Work

LA GUAGE I THE POEMA Discussion on Georg Trakl's Poetic Wor

We use the word "discuss" here to mean. first. topoint out the proper place or site of something, to situate it,and second, to heed that place or site. The placing and theheeding are both preliminaries of discussion. And yet it willrequire all our daring to ta e no more than these preliminarysteps in what follows. Our di cussion, as befits a thinking way,ends in a question. That question asks for the location of the.site.

Our discussion speaks of Georg Trakl only in that it thinksabout the site of his poetic work. To an age whose historical,biographical, psychoanalytical, and sociological interest isfocused on bare expression, such a procedure must seempatently one-sided, if not wayward. Discu sian gives thoughtto the site.

Originally the word "site" sugge ts a place in which every­thing comes together, is concentrated. The site gathers untoitself, supremely and in the extreme. Its gathering power pene­trates and pervades everything. The site, the gathering power,

159

160 ON THE WAY TO LA GUAGE

gathers in and preserves all it has gathered, not like an encap­sulating shell but rather by penetrating with its light all it hasgathered, and only thus releasing it into its own nature.

Our task now is to discuss the site that gathers Georg Trakl'spoetic Saying into his poetic work-to situate the site ofTrakl's work.

Every great poet creates his poetry out of one single poeticstatement only. The measure of his greatness is the extent towhich he becomes so committed to that singleness that he isable to keep his poetic Saying wholly within it.

The poet's statement remains unspoken. None of his indi­vidual poelns, nor their totality, says it all. Nonetheless, everypoem speaks from the whole of the one single statement, andin each instance says that statement. From the site of the state­ment there rises the wave that in each instance moves hisSaying as poetic saying. But that wave, far from leaving thesite behind, in its rise causes all the movement of Saying toflow back to its ever more hidden source. The site of the poeticstatement, source of the movement-giving wave, holds withinit the hidden nature of what, from a metaphysical-aestheticpoint of view, may at first appear to be rhythm.

Since the poet's sole statement always remains in the realmof the unspoken, we can discuss its site only by trying to pointto it by means of what the individual poems speak. But to doso, each poem will itself be in need of clarification. Clarificationis what brings to its first appearance that purity whichshimmers in everything aid poetically.

It is easy to see that any right clarification itself alreadypresupposes discussion. The individual poenls derive theirlight and sound only from the poetic site. Conversely, thediscussion of the poetic statement must first pass through theprccursory clarification of individual poems.

All thinking dialogue with a poet's poetic statement stayswithin this reciprocity between discussion and clarification.

Only a poetic dialogue with a poet's poetic statement is atrue dialogue-the poetic conversation between poets. But itis also possible, and at times indeed necessary, that there be adialogue between thinking and poetry, for this reason: because

L G GE IN THE POE~f

a distinctive, though in each case different, relation to languageis proper to them both.

The dialogue of thinking with poetry aims to call forth thenature of language, so that mortals may learn again to livewithin language.

The dialogue of thinking with poetry is long. It has barelybegun. With respect to Trakl's poetic statement, the dialoguerequires particular reserve. A thinking dialogue with poetrycan serve the poetic statement only indirectly. Thus it is alwaysin danger of interfering with the saying of the statement,instead of allowing it to sing from within its own inner peace.

The discussion of the poetic statement is a thinking dialoguewith poetry. It neither expounds a poet's outlook on the world,nor does it take inventory of his workshop. Above all, thediscussion of the poetic statement can never be a substitute foror even guide to our listening to the poenl. Thinking discussioncan at best make our listening thought-provoking and, underthe most favorable circumstances, more reflective.

With these reservations in mind, we shall try first to pointto the site of the unspoken statement. To do so we must startwith the spoken poems. The question still is: with whichpoems? The fact that everyone of Trakl's poems points, withequal steadiness though not uniformly, to the statement's onesite, is evidence of the unique harmony of all his poems in thesingle key of his statement.

But the attempt we shall now make to point out the site ofhis statement must make do with just a few selected stanzas,lines, and phrases. Our selection will inevitably SeeITI arbitrary.However, it is prompted by our purpose to bring our con­sideration at once to the site of the statement, almost as if bv a

I

sudden leap of insight.I

One of Trakl's poenls says:

Something trange is the soul on the earth.

Before we know what we are doing, we find ourselvesthrough this sentence involved in a common notion. That

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notion presents the earth to us as earthly in the sense oftransitory. The soul, by contrast, is regarded as imperishable,supraterrestrial. Beginning with Plato's doctrine, the soul ispart of the suprasensuous. If it appears within the sensibleworld, it does so only a a castaway, Here on earth the soulis miscast. It does not belong on earth. Here, the soul is some­thing strange. The body is the soul's prison, if nothing worse.The soul, then, apparently has nothing else to look forwardto except to leave as soon as possible the sensuous realm which,seen in Platonic terms, has no true being and is merely decay.

And yet-how remarkable: the sentence

Something strange is the soul on the earth.

speaks from within a poem entitled "Springtime of the Soul"(142) .• And there is in that poem not one word about a supra­terrestrial home of the immortal soul. The matter gives us foodfor thought; we will do well to pay heed to the poet's language.The soul: "something strange." Tra I frequently uses the sameconstruction in other poems: "something mortal" (51), "some­thing dark" (72, 164, 170, 187), "something solitary" (72),"something spent" (95), "something sick" (1 07, 165), "some­thing human" (108), "something pale" (132), "something dead"(165)' "something silent" (188). Apart from its varying content,this construction does not always carry the same sense. Some­thing "solitary," "something strange" could mean a singularsomething that in the given case is "solitary," or by chance isin a special and limited sense "strange." "Something strange"of that sort can be classified as belonging to the order of thestrange in general, and can thus be disposed of. So understood,the soul would be merely one instance of strangeness amongmany.

But what does "strange" mean? By strange we usually under­stand something that is not familiar, does not appeal to us-

• Th numbers in parenthc es are th pag numbers in the volume GeorgTrakl, Die Dichtungen, publi h d by Otto fUll r Verlag, Salzburg, tw lfthedition (no dar ). They differ from tho e cited in Heidegger' publi hedtext, which ref rs to an arlier edition. (Tr.)

LANGUAGE IN THE POEM

something that is rather a burden and an unease. But theword we are using-the Gennan "[remd," the Old High Ger­man ufram"-really means: forward to somewhere else, under­way toward ..., onward to the encounter with what is ept instore for it. The strange goes forth, ahead. But it does not roamaimlessly, without any kind of determination. The strangeelement goes in its search toward the site where it may stay inits wandering. Almost unknown to itself, the "strange" isalready following the call that calls it on the way into its own.

The poet calls the oul "something strange on the earth."The earth is that very place which the soul's wandering couldnot reach so far. The soul only seeks the earth; it does notflee from it. This fulfill the soul's being: in her wanderingto seek the earth so that she may poetically build and dwellupon it, and thus may be able to save the earth as earth. Thesoul, then, is not by any means first of all soul, and then,besides and for whatever reason, also a stranger who does notbelong on earth.

011 the contrary, the entence:

Something trang i the soul on the earth

gives a name to the ntial being of what is called soul.The sentence does not predicate omething about the soulwhose nature is already nown, as though the point weremerely to make the supplementary statement that the soulhad suffered the unfitting and thus strange accident of findingneither refuge nor response on earth. The soul, on the con­trary, qua soul is fundamentally, by its nature, "somethingstrange on the earth." Thus it is always underway, and in itswandering follows where its nature draws it. We, meanwhile,are pressed by this question: whither has this "somethingstrange," in the sense just made clear, been called to turn itssteps? A stanza from the third part of the poem "Sebastianin Dream" (99) gives the answer:

o how still is a walk down the blue river's bank.To ponder forgotten thing, when in leafy boughsThe thrush called to a strange thing to go under.

164 ON THE WAY TO LANGUAGE

The soul is called to go under. Then it is so after all: thesoul is to end its earthly journey and leave the earth behind!Nothing of the sort is said in the verses just quoted. Andyet they speak of "going under." Certainly. But the goingunder of which these verses speak is neither a catastrophe,nor is it a mere withering away in decay. Whatever goes under,going down the blue river,

Goes down in peace and silence.(T'ransfigured Autumn, 30)

Into what peace does it go? The peace of the dead? But ofwhich dead? And into what silence?

Something strange is the soul on the earth.

The stanza in which this sentence belongs continues:

... Ghostly the twilight duskBluing above the mishewn forest ...

Earlier, the sun is mentioned. The stranger's footfall goesa\vay into the dusk. "Dusk" means, first, darkness falling."Dusk bluing." Is the sunny day's blueness darkening? Doesit fade in the evening to give way to night? But dusk is nota mere sinking of the day, the dissolution of its brightnessin the gloom of night. Dusk, any\\'ay, does not necessarilymean the twilight of the end. The morning, too, has itstwilight, The day rises in twilight, Twilight, then, is alsoa rising. Twilight dusk blues over the "mishewn," tangled,withered forest. The night's blueness rises, in the evening.

The twilight dusk blues "ghostly." This "ghostliness" iswhat marks the dusk. We must give thought to what thisoft-named "ghostliness" means. The twilight dusk is the sun'sdescending course. That implies: twilight dusk is the declineboth of the day and of the year. The last stanza of a poemcalled "Summer's End" (163) sing:

So quiet has the green summer grownAnd through the silvery night there ringsThe footfall of the stranger.Would that the blue wild Kame were to recall his paths,

LANGUAGE IN THE POE~{

The music of his ghostly years!

These words, "so quiet," recur in Trakl's poetry again andagain. One might think that "quiet" means at most a barelyaudible sound. So understood, what was said refers to ourperception. However, "quiet" means slow, slowly fadingaway. Quiet is what slips a\\'ay. Summer slips a\\'ay intoautumn, the evening of the year.

. . , through the silvery night there ringsthe footfall of the stranger.

Who is this stranger? Whose paths are they that a "bluewild game" is to recall? To recall means to "ponder forgottenthings,"

... when in leafy boughsThe thrush called to a strange thing to go under.

In what sense is the "blue wild game" (cf. 73, 139) to recallwhat is going under? Does the wild game receive its blue fromthe "blueness" of the "ghostly twilight dusk" which rises asnight? The night is dark, to be sure. But darkness is notnecessarily gloom. In another poem (133) night is apostro­phized with these words:

o gentle corn flower sheaf of night.

Night is a cornflower sheaf, a gentle sheaf. So, too, theblue game is called "shy ganle" (98), the "gentle animal" (9 J).The sheaf of blueness gathers the depth of th e holy in thedepths of its bond. The holy hines out of th e blueness, evenwhile veiling itself in the dark of that blueness. The holywithholds in withdrawing. The holy be. l O\\'S its arrival byreserving itself in its withholding withdrawal. Clarity shelteredin the dark is blueness. "Clear" originall y means clear sound,the sound that calls out of the shelter of stillness, and sobecomes clear. Blueness resounds in its clarity, ringing. In itsresounding clarity shines the blue' s darkness.

The stranger's footfalls sou nd through the silvery gleanland ringing of night. Another pOeITI (98) says:

166 o THE WAY TO LA GUAGE

And in holy blueness shining footfalls ring forth.

Elsewhere it is aid of blueness (104):

... the holiness of blue flowers ... moves the beholder.

Another poem says (79):

... Animal faceFreezes with blueness, with its holiness.

Blue is not an image to indicate the sense of the holy. Blue­ness itself is the holy, in virtue of its gathering depth whichshines forth only as it veils itself. Face to face with blueness,brought up short by sheer blueness, the animal face freezes andtransforms itself into the countenance of the wild game.

The frozen rigor of the animal face is not the rigor of thedead. As it freezes, the startled animal face contracts. Itsgaze gathers so that, checking its course, it may look towardthe holy, into the "mirror of truth" (79). To look meanshere to enter into silence.

Mighty the power of silence in the ro k

runs the next line. The rock is the mountain shelteringpain. The stones gather within their stony shelter the sooth­ing power, pain stilling us toward essential being. Pain is still"with blueness." Face to face with blueness, the wild game'sface retracts into gentleness. Gentleness transmutes discordby absorbing the wounding and searing wildness into ap­peased pain.

Who is this blue wild game to whom the poet calls out thatit recall the stranger? Is it an animal? 0 doubt. Is it just ananimal? o. For it is called on to recall, to think. Its face isto look our for ..., and to look on the stranger. The bluegame is an animal whose animality presumably does not con­sist in its animal nature, but in that thoughtfully recallinglook for which the poet calls. This animality is still far away,and barely to be seen. The animality of the animal hereintended thus vacillate in the indefinite. It has not yet beengathered up into its essential being. This animal-s-the think-

LANGUAGE IN THE POEM

ing animal, animal rationale, man-is, as ietzsche said, notyet determined,

This statement does not mean at all that man has not yetbeen "confirmed" as a factum. On the contrary, he is all toofirmly confirmed as a factum. The word means: this animal'sanimality has not yet been gathered up onto firm ground,that is to say, has not been gathered "home," into its own,the home of its veiled being. This definition is what Western­European metaphy ics has been struggling to achieve eversince Plato. It may truggling in vain. It may be that itsway into the "underway" is still blo ked. This animal notyet determined in its nature i modern man.

By the poetic name "blue wild game" Tra 1 evo es thathuman nature who countenance, whose countering glance,is sighted by the night's blueness, as it is thinking of thestranger's footfall and thus is illumined by the holy. Thename "blue game" names mortals who would think of thestranger and wander with him to the native home of humanbeing.

Who are they that begin such a journey? Presumably theyare few, and un nown, inc what is of the essence comes topass in quiet, and uddenly, and rarely. The poet speaks ofsuch wanderers in the cond stanza of his poem "WinterEvening" (120) which begins:

Many a man in hi wand ringsComes to the gate by dark orne paths.

The blue game, where and when it is in being, has left theprevious form of man's nature behind. Previous man decaysin that he 10 es his being, which is to say, decays.

Trakl calls one of his poems "Seven-Song of Death." Sevenis the holy number. The song sings of the holiness of death.Death is not understood here vaguely, broadly, as the conclu­sion of earthly life. "Death" here means poetically the "goingdown" to which "something strange" i being called. This iswhy the" omething strange" that is being called is also referredto as "something dead" (1~4). Its death is not decay, but that

168 O~TH \VAYTOLA 'G AGE

it leaves behind the form of man which has decayed. Accord­ingly, the second stanza Irorn the end of "Seven-Song of Death"

(134) says:

o man's d -rornposcd Iorrn: joined of co ld metals,

ight and terror o f . unkcn forest ,

And the animal' sea r ing wildness:

Windle s lull of the soul.

'fan 's decornpo ed form is abandoned to searing torture andpricking thorns. Blueness does not irradiate its wildness. Thesoul of this human form is not fanned by the wind of the holy.And so, it has no course. The wind itself, God's wind, thusremains solitary. v poenl speaking of blue wild game-which,howe er, can a yet barely extricate themselves from the"thi ket of thorn . " - closes with the lines (93):

There always ings

I pon black wall : God's solitarv wind.

"Always" m eans: as long as the year and its solar courseremain in the g}OOlll of winter and no one thinks of the pathon whi h the stranger with "ringing footfalls" walks throughthe night. The night is it self only the sheltering veiling of thesun's course. "Walk," ienai , is th e Indogerrnanic ier, the year.

\\ auld that t h blue wild ga Ille were to recall his p ath ',

The mu ic of hi s ghostl y years!

The year's ghostliness is defined by the ghostly twilight ofthe night.

o how ea r nes t t lu : hv .ui n th i ne fa ce of the twilight.

(H ayfaring, 96)

The ghostly t wi ligh t i ~ of so .ssen t ial a nature that the poetgave to one of his poenl s th .pecifi c title "Ghostly Twilight"(13 1). I n that poeIII , t oo, wild galne i met , but this game isdark. Its wildness, moreover. is dra wing toward total darkness,and inclining toward the sil ent blue. Iean while. the poet him-

LANG AGE IN THE POE. f 169

self, on "black cloud," travels over "the nighting pond, thestarry sky."

The poem goes:Ghostly'rwilight

Still at the forest's edge meetsDark wild game:On the hill, evening breeze softly expires,

Blackbird's plai nt fall silen t.

And the gentle flutes of autumnHush in the rushes.

On black cloud, youDrunk with poppy travelThe nighting pond,

The starry sky.Alway the sister's lunar voiceSounds through the ghostly night.

The starry sky is portrayed in the poetic image of the night­ing pond. Such would be our usual notion. But the night sky,in the truth of its nature, is this pond. By contrast, what weotherwise call night remains rather a mere image, the paleand eInpty counterfeit of night's nature. The pond and thepond's mirror recur often in the poet's work. The waters,which are sometime black and sometimes blue, show to manhis own countenance, his countering glance. But in the nightingpond of the starry sky there appears the twilight blue of theghostly night. I ts glance is cool.

The cool light issues from the shining of Dame oontselann as . All around her radiance, as the ancient Greekverses tell us, the stars turn pale and even cool. All thingsbecome "lunar." The stranger going through the night is called"the lunar one" (128). The sister's lunar voice forever ringingthrough the night is heard by the brother who, in hi boat thatis still "black" and barely i llurn ined by the stranger's goldenradiance, tries to follow the stranger's nocturnal course uponthe pond.

When mortals follow after the "something strange," that is

ON THE \\fAY TO LANGUAGE

to say, after the stranger who is called to go under, they them­selves enter strangene s, they themselves become strangers andsolitary.

Only through it course on the night's tarry pond-which isthe sky above the earth-does the soul experience the earth inits "cool sap" (120). The soul slips a,"'ay into the evening blueof the ghostly year. It becomes the "autumnal soul" and as suchthe "blue soul."

The few stanzas and lines noted here point into the ghostlytwilight, lead on to the stranger's path, and indicate the kindand the course of those who, recalling him, follow him to gounder. At the time of "Summer's Decline," the strangenessin his wandering becomes autumnal and dark.

One of Trakl's poelns which he entitled "Autumnal Soul"sings in the second stanza from the end (1 18) :

Fi h and game soon ~lide away.Soon blue soul and long dark journeyParted us from loved ones, other .Evening- changes image, sense.

The wanderers who follow the stranger soon find themselvesparted "from loved ones" who to them are "others." The others-that is the cast of the decomposed Iorrn of man,

A human cast, cast in one mold and cast a,vay into this cast,is called a kin, of a kind, a generation. The word refers to man­kind as a whole as ,..'ell as to kinship in the sense of race, tribe,family-all of the e in turn cast in the duality of the sexes. Thecast of man's "decompo ed form" is what the poet calls the"decomposing" kind ( 129) . It i the generation that has beenremoved from its kind of es ential being, and this is why it isthe "unsettled" kind ( 156) .

What curse has struck thi humankind? The curse of thedecomposing kind is that the old human kinship has beenstruck apart by discord aIl10ng exe, tribes and race. Eachstrives to escape from that eli 'cord into the unlea hed turmoilof the always isolated and . hecr wildne: of the wild game. otduality as such, the di cord i the curse. Out of the turmoil of

LANGUAGE IN THE POE~f

blind wildness it carries each kind into an irreconcilable split,and so casts it into unbridled isolation. The "fragmented kind,"so cleft in two, can on its own no longer find its proper cast.Its proper cast is only with that kind whose duality leavesdiscord behind and leads the way, as "something strange," intothe gentleness of simple twofoldness following in the stranger'sfootsteps.

With respect to that stranger, all the progeny of the decom­posing kind remain the others. Even so, love and reverenceare attached to them. But the dark journey in the stranger'strain brings them into the blue of his night. The wanderingsoul becomes the "blue soul."

But at the same time the soul is also set apart. Where to? Towhere the stranger walks, who at times is poetically called only"he yonder." "He yonder," the stranger, is the other one to theothers, to the decomposing kind. He is the one who has beencalled away from others. The stranger is he who is apart.

Whither is such a being directed which itself assumes thenature of the strange, that it must wander ahead? In whatdirection is a strange thing called? It is called to go under-tolose itself in the ghostly twilight of the blue, to incline with thedecline toward the ghostly year. While this decline must passthrough the destructiveness of approaching winter, through

overnber, to lose itself yet does not mean that it crumblesinto a shambles and is annihilated. On the contrary, to loseoneself means literally to loosen one's bonds and slowly slipaway. He who loses himself does of course disappear in the

ovember destruction, but he does not slip into it. He slipsthrough it, away into the blue's ghostly twilight "at vespers,"toward evening.

At vc pers the st ra nger lose ' him e lf inblack !o ve ln ber d estruction,

nder rott ing bra nches, a long- the lcprou wa lls.

Where the hol y brother had gone before ,

Lo t in the oft I\'Te music of hi s madness.,

(H elian , 81 )

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Evening is the decline of the days of the ghostly year.

Evening consummates a change. Evening which inclines to theghostly gives us other things to contemplate and to ponder.

The luminous appearances of whose aspects (images) thepoets have their say appear differently in the light of thisevening. The essential reality that thinkers try to grasp in

thought speaks other words with the onset of this evening.From another sense and another image, evening transmutes

all saying of poetry and thinking, and their dialogue. Butevening can do so only because it, too, changes. Day goesthrough evening into a decline that is not an end, but simplyan inclination to make ready that descent by which thestranger goes under into the beginning of his wandering.

Evening changes its own image and its own sense. This changeconceals a departure from the traditional order of days andseasons.

But whither does evening acconlpany the blue soul's dark

wandering? To the place where everything has come togetherin another " 'a y, where everything is sheltered and preservedfor an other ascen t.

The stanzas and lines quoted so far bring us to a gathering,that is to ay, they bring us to a site. Of what kind is thissite? What sha ll we name it? Surel y the name must fit thepoet's language. .All that Georg Trak l' s poetry says remainsgathered and focused on the wandering stranger. He is, and

is called, "he who is apart" (170)' Through him and aroundhim Trakl's poetic saying is tuned to one unique song. Andsin ce this poet's poerTIS are ga th ered into the song of him who

is apart, we shall ca ll the site of Trakl's poetic work apartness.And now, by a second ' tep , o u r di ussion must try to gain a

clea re r view of thi si te whi ch ' 0 far has only been pointed out.

II

Is it possible to bring apart ness itself before our mind'seye, to co n te rn pIa te it as the poem's ite? If at all, it can bedone o n ly if we now Iol low the stranger's path with clearereyes, and ask: Who is the departed one? \-\ hat is the land­sca pe of hi s paths?

LANGUAGE IN THE POEM

His paths run through the blue of night. The light thatgives his steps their radiance is cool. The closing words of apoem devoted specifically to the "departed one" speak of "thelunar paths of the departed" (171). To us, departed also meansdeceased. But into what kind of death has the stranger died?In his poem "Psalm" (57), Trakl says:

The madman has died

The next stanza says:

They bury the stranger.

In the "Seven-Song of Death" he is called the "white stranger."The last stanza of "Psalm" ends with this line:

In his grave the white magician plays with his snakes.

The dead one lives in his grave. He lives in his chamber, soquietly and lost in thought that he plays with his snakes. Theycannot harm him. They have not been strangled, but theirmalice has been transformed. In the poem "The Accursed"(I 13), on the other hand, we find:

A nest of scarlet-colored snakes rears upLazily in her churned-up lap.

(Compare 155 and 157)

The dead one is the madman. Does the word mean some­one who is mentally ill? Madness here does not mean a mindfilled with senseless delusions. The madman's mind senses­senses in fact as no one else does. Even so, he does not havethe sense of the others. He is of another mind. The departedone is a man apart, a madman, because he has taken his way inanother direction. From that other direction, his madnessInay be called "gentle," for his mind pursues a greater still­ness. A poem that refers to the stranger simply as "he yonder,"the other one, sings:

But the other descended the stone steps of th eMonchsberg,

A blue smile on his face and strangely ensheathedIn his quieter childhood and died.

This poem is called "To One who Died Young" (129). The

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departed died a,va y ea rly. That is why he is "the tendercor pse" (99, 139, etc.), sh rouded in that childhood which pre­serves in greater tilln ess all the burning and searing of thewilderness, H e who di ed ear ly thus appears as the "dark shapeof coolness." T h is sha pe also appear: in the poem entitled"On the l\-fon ch sb crg" ( 1° 7):

The d ark shape o f coolness eve r follows the

wandererOver the foo tbr idge o f bone, and th e hoy" h yacinth

VOi c e ,

Softl y reciting the forest's forgotten legend, ..

The "dark hape of coolness" does not follow behind thewa nderer . I t wa lks before him, because the boy's blue voicere tri ve ornet h ing forgo t ten and fore-tells it.

\ ho is thi hoy that died a\,,~ay early? Who is this boy towhom it i sa id

.. . so ft ly yo ur forehead bleed:\ ncicn t legendsAnd d ark aug-u r), of the flight o f bird? (9 1)

Who is he wh o has .ros ed over the bridge of bone? The poetca ll to hi m with the words:

o Eli , how long you ha \ 'C been d ead.

Elis i the stranger ca lled to go under. H e is in no \~'ay afigure by whi ch T rak l means to repre. ent himself. Elis is asessen t ia lly different from th e poe t T' ra kl as Zarathustra' figureis from the thinker . Ti tzsch e. But both fi gures are alike inthat their nature and the ir jou r ney begins with a descent.Elis goes d own into th e pr imeval earliness that is older thanthe aged, decom posing kind of ma n, o lde r because it is moremindful . more m i nd lu l beca use it is more till, more st illbecause it has it s If a gr at -o r power to till.

.. he boyi. hn e. s in the fIg ure o f the boy Elis does not co nsistin the opposite of gir lish ness . l is boyi hness i the ap peara nceo f hi ' tiller ch ildhood. "lh.u ch ild hood helters and storeswithin it the ge n tle two-fold of .cx , the you th and the "goldenfi gure of the maiden" ( t72).

LANGUAGE I THE POEM

Elis is not a dead who decays and ceases to be in the late­ne s of a spent life. Elis is the dead whose being moves awayinto earliness. This stranger unfolds human nature forwardinto the beginning of what is yet to be borne. This unbornelement in the nature of mortals, which is quieter and hencemore stilling, is what the poet calls the unborn.

The stranger who has died a\vay into earliness is the unbornone. The terms "something unborn" and "something strange"say the same, In the poem "Bright Spring" (21) there is thisline:

And the unborn tends to its own peace.

It guards and watches over the stiller childhood for the comingawakening of mankind. Thus at rest, the early dead lives. Thedeparted one is not dead in the sense of being spent. On thecontrary. The departed looks forward into the blue of theghostly night. The white eyelids that protect his vision gleamwith the bridal adornment (133) that promises the gentlertwo-fold of humankind.

Silent the myrtle blooms over his dead white eyelid,

This line belongs in the same poem that says:

Something strange is the soul on the earth,

The two sentences stand close to each other. The "dead" is thedeparted, the stranger, the unborn.

But still the "path of the unborn" leads "past gloomy towns,past lonely summers" ("Song of the Hours," 95). His way leadspast those things that will not receive him as a guest, past butalready no longer through them. The departed one's journeyis lonelv, too, of course-but that comes from the loneliness,of "the nighting pond, the starry sky." The madman crossesthe pond not on a "black cloud" but in a golden boat. Whatabout the gold? The poenl ((C..orner by the Fore t" (29) replies

wi th the li ne:

Gentle madne al 0 often sees the golden. the true.

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The stranger's path leads through the "ghostly years" whosedays are everywhere turned toward the beginning and areruled, set right, From there. The year of his soul is gatheredinto rightness.

o how righteous, Elis, are all your days

sings the poenl "Elis" (92). This call is merely the echo ofthe other call, heard before:

o Elis, how long you have been dead.

The earliness in to which the stranger has expired sheltersthe essential rightness of the unborn. This earliness is a timeof its own kind, the time of the "ghostly years." To one of hispoems, Trakl gave the plain title "Year" (164). It begins:"Dark stillness of childhood." The counterpart to that darkstillness is the brighter earliness-brighter because it is an evenstiller and therefore other childhood-into which the departedhas gone under. The last line of the same poem calls this stillerchildhood the beginning:

Golden eye of the beginning. dark patience of the end.

Here, the end is not the sequel and fading echo of the begin­ning. The end-being the end of the decaying kind-precedesthe beginning of the unborn kind. But the beginning, theearlier earliness, has already overtaken the end.

That earliness preserves the original nature-a nature so farstill veiled-of time. This nature will go on being impenetrableto the dominant mode of thinking as long as the Aristotelianconcept of time, still standard everywhere, retains its currency.According to this concept, tinlc-\\'hether conceived mechani­cally or dvnam ica lly or in terms of atomic decay-is the dirnen­sion of the quantitative or qualitative calculation of duration asa sequential progression.

True rime, however, is the arrival of that which has been.'Th is is not what is past, but rather the gathering of essentialbeing, which precedes all arrival in gathering itself into the

LANGUAGE IN THE POE1\f 177

shelter of what it was earlier, before the given moment. Theend and accomplishment has its analogue in "dark patience."Patience bears hidden things toward their truth. Its forbear­ance bears everything toward its descent down into the blueof the ghostly night. The beginning, on the other hand, corre­sponds to a seeing and minding which glealns golden because itis illuminated by "the golden, the true." This gold and trueis reflected in the starry pond of night when Elis on his journeyopens his heart to the night (92 ) :

A golden boatSways, Elis, your heart against a lonely sky.

The stranger's boat tosses, playful rather than "timorously"(192), like the boat of those descendants of earliness who still

merely follow the stranger. Their boat does not yet reach thelevel of the pond's surface. It sinks. But where? Does it go underin decay? o. And into what does it sink? Into elnpty nothing­ness? Far from it. One of Trakl's last poelns, "I... arnent" (192),ends with the lines:

Sister of stormy sadnes ,Look, a timorous boat goes downU nder stars,

The si len t face of the nigh t.

What does this nocturnal silence hold that looks down out ofthe starlight? Where does this silence itself with its night be­long? To apartness, This apartness is more than merely thestate in \\ hich the boy Elis lives, the state of being dead.

The earliness of stiller childhood, the blue night, thestranger's nighting paths, the soul's nocturnal wing-beat, eventhe twilight as the ga teway to descen t: a II these belong toapartness.

All these are gathered up into apartness, not afterward butsuch that apartness unfold wit h in their already c tabli .hed

gathering.Twilight, night, the stranger's years, hi s path, all are called

"ghostly" by the poet. The apartness i "ghostly." This \\'ord­what does it mean? Its meaning and its use are very old.

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"Ghostly" means what is by way of the spirit, stems from itand follows its nature. "Ghostly" means spiritual, but not inthe narrow sense that ties the word to "spirituality," the priestlyorders or their church. To a superficial reader, even Traklseems to use the word in this narrow sense, at least in the poem"In Hellbrunn" (183), where it says:

... Thus the oaks tum spiritually green,Above the dead's forgotten paths.

Earlier, the poet mentions "the shades of princes of the church,of noble women," "the shades of those long dead" which seemto hover above the "pond of spring." But the poet, who is hereagain singing "the blue lament of evening," does not think ofthe clergy when he says "the oaks turn spiritually green." Heis thinking of that earliness of the long since dead whichpromises the "springtime of the soul." The poem "Song of theSpirit" (16) , composed earlier, strikes the same theme, thoughin an even more veiled and searching manner. The spiritreferred to in this strangely ambiguous "Song of the Spirit"finds clearer expression in the last stanza:

Beggar there by ancient stoneSeems expired in a prayer.Shepherd gently leaves the hill.In the grove an angel sings.Sings a song.Sings the children to their sleep.

But, even though the word "spiritual" has no ecclesiasticalovertones for the poet himself, he surely could have resortedto the phrase "of the spirit" to refer to what he has in mind,and speak of twilight of the spirit and night of the spirit. Whydoes he not do so? Because "of the spirit" means the oppositeof material. This opposition posits a differentiation of twoseparate realms and, in Platonic-Western terms, states the gulfbetween the suprasensuous noeton and the sensuous aistheton,

LANGU GE I THE POF.~{ 1"'9I ,

"Of the spirit" so understood-it meanwhile has come to

mean rational, intellectual, ideological -together with its oppo­

sites belongs to the world view of the decaying kind of man.

But the "dark journey" of the "blue soul" parts company withthis kind. The twilight leading tov..'ard the night in which the

strangeness goes under deserves as littl e to be called "of the

spirit, intellectual" as does the stranger's path. Apartness is

spiritual, determined by the spirit, and ghostly, but it is not

"of the spirit" in the sense of the language of metaphysics.

What, then, is the spirit? In his last poenl, "Grodek" (193)'Trakl speaks of the "hot flame of the spiri t. t ' The spirit is flam­

ing, and only in this sense perhaps is it 50111 thing flickering in

the air. Trakl sees spirit not primarily a ' pneum a, something

ethereal, but as a flame that inflames, startles, horrifies, and

shatters us. Flame is glowing lum inat ion. \ . hat flame is the

ek-stasis which lightens and calls forth radiance, but which may

also go on consuming and reduce all to white ashes.

"Flame is the palest pallor's brother" runs a line in the poenl

"Transformation of Evil" (123). Trakl sees spirit in terms of

that being which is indicated in the original 111 aning of the

word "ghost"-a being terrified, beside himself, eli -static.Spiri t or ghost understood in this \vay has its bei ng in the

possibility of both gentlene and destructiveness. Gentleness

in no \..'ay darn pens the c. tasy of the inflarnmatorv, but holds

it gathered in the peace of friendship. Destruct ivenes comes

£roI11 unbrid led license, which consumes itse If in its own revolt

and thus is a tive evil. Evil is always the evil of a ghostly spirit.

Evil and its malice is not of a sensuous, material nature. or

i it purely "of the spirit." Evil is ghostl y in that it is the revoltof a terror blazing away in blind delusion, which ca st s allthings in to unholy Iragrnen t a t ion and threa tell s to t urn the

ca lm , collected blossoming of gentl m ess to ashes,But where doe the gathering pc)\\'cr of g ntl n ess rc ide?

How i it bridled? \ ,\ hat spirit holds it s r 'in s? l n what \,'aY ishuman nature ghostly, and how does it become so?

I nasmu h as the nat u re of sPi r i leonsi .ts in a burstingin to

Harne, it strikes a new course, lights it, and sets man on the

180 ON THE WAY TO LANGUAGE

way. Being flame, the spirit is the storm that "storms theheavens" and "hunts down God" (180). The spirit chases,drives the soul to get underway to where it leads the way. Thespirit carries it over into strangeness. "Something strange is thesoul on the earth." The soul is the gift of the spirit-the spiritanimates. But the soul in turn guards the spirit, so essentiallythat without the soul the spirit can presumably never be spirit.The soul "feeds" the spirit. How? How else than by investingthe spirit with the flame that is in the soul's very nature? Thisflame is the glow of melancholy, "the patience of the lonelysoul" (51).

Solitude does not separate in the kind of dispersion to whichall mere forsaken ness is exposed. Solitude carries the soultoward the One and only, gathers it into the One, and so startsits being out on its journey. Solitary, the soul is a wanderer.The ardor of its core is charged to carryon its journey theburden of fate-and so to carry the soul toward the spirit.

Lend your flame to the spirit, ardent and heavy heart;

so begins the poem "To Lucifer," in other words, the poem tothe light-bearer who casts the shadow of evil (posthumousvolume, Salzburg edition, p. 14).

The soul's heavy heart glows only when the wandering soulenters into the farthest reaches of its essential being-its wander­ing nature. That happens when the soul looks toward the faceof the blue and beholds its radiance. In that seeing it is "thegreat soul."

o pain, thou flaming visionOf the great soul!

(Thunderstorm, 175)

The sours greatness takes its measure from its capacity toachieve the flaming vision by which the soul becomes at homein pain. The nature of pain is in itself converse.

"Flaming" pain tears away. Pain's rending, sweeping forceconsigns the wandering soul into that conjunction of stormand hunt which would storm heaven and hunt down God.

LA GU GE I THE POEM

Thus it seems as though the stormy s'\\'eep were to overwhelmits goal, instead of letting it prevail within its veiling radiance.

Yet this latter is within the po,..'er of the beholding "vision."That vision does not quench the flaming s,veep, but rejoins itto the fitting submission of seeing acceptance. I t is that back­ward sweep in pain by which pain achieves its mildness, itspower to disclose and convey.

Spirit is flame. I t glows and shines. I t shining takes place inthe beholding look. To such a vision is given the advent of allthat shines, where all that is, is present. This flaming vision ispain. Its nature remains impenetrable to any mind that under­stands pain in terms of sensitivity. Flaming vision determinesthe soul's greatness.

The spirit which bears the gift of the "great soul" is pain;pain is the animator. And the soul so gifted i the giver of life.This is why everything that is alive in the sense in which thesoul is alive, is imbued with pain, the fundamental trait ofthe soul's nature. Everything that is alive, is painful.

Only a being that lives soulfully can fulfill the destiny ofits nature. By virtue of this power it is fit to join in that har­mony of mutual bearing by which all living things belongtogether. In keeping with this relation of fitness, everythingthat lives is fit, that is to say, good. But the go d is goodpainfully.

Corresponding to the great soul's fundamental trait, every­thing that has soul is not merely good painfully, but al 0 itcan be truthful only in that way; for, in virtue of the fact thatpain is converse, the living can give sheltering concealment totheir present Iellowbeings and thus reveal them in their givennature, let them truly be what they are.

The last stanza of one poenl begins (22) :

So painful good, so truthful is what live:

One might think that this line merely louche on wh at i pa in­ful. In truth it introduces the saying of the en tire stanza ,which remains tuned to the silen t onq uest of pain. To hearit, we must not overlook the carefully placed punctuation,

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much less alter it. The stanza goes on:

And softl y touches you an ancient stone:

Again this "softly" is sounded, which always leads us softly tothe essential relations. Again the "stone" appears which, ifcalculation were permitted here, could be counted in morethan thirty places in Trakl's poetry. Pain conceals itself in thestone, the petrifying pain that delivers itself into the keepingof the impenetrable rock in whose appearance there shinesforth its ancient origin out of the silent glow of the first dawn­the earliest da\4/11 which, as the prior beginning, is comingtoward everything that is becoming, and brings to it the ad­vent, never to be overtaken, of its essential being.

The old stones are pain itself, for pain looks earthily uponmortals. The colon after the word "stone" signifies that nowth e stone is speaking. Pain itself has the word. Silent since longago, it now says to the wanderers who follow the strangernothing less than its own power and endurance:

Trul y! I shall forever be with yo u .

The wanderers who listen toward the leafy branches for theearly dead, reply to these words of pain with the words of thenext line:

o mouth ! th at trembles through the silve r v willow.

The whole stanza here corresponds to the close of anotherpoem's second stanza, addressed "To One Who Died Young"

( 129) :

And the silve r fa ce of hi ' fri end .t a vcd behind in the garden,

Li tening in th e leaves or the a nc ie n t stones.

The stanza whi ch begins

So painful good, so truthful i what lives;

also resolve the chord struck in the first line of the samepoem's third section:

How sick seem: all that i: becoming :

LANGUAGE IN THE POEM

The troubled, hampered, di mal, and disea ed, all the distressof disintegrating, is in truth nothing else than the singlesemblance in which truth-truly- onceals itself: the all-pervad­ing, everlasting pain. Pain is thus neither repugnant nor prof­itable. Pain is the benignity in the nature of all essential being.The onefold simplicity of its conver e nature determines allbecoming out of concealed primal earliness, and attunes it tothe bright serenity of the great soul.

So painful good, 0 truthful is what lives.And softly touches you an ancient tone:Truly! I shall forever be "lith you .o mouth! that trembles through the ilvery willow.

The stanza is the pure song of pain, llng to complete thethree-part poem called "Bright Spring" (21). The primalearly brightness of all dawning being trembles out of thestillness of concealed pain.

To our customary way of thinking, the onverse nature ofpain-that its s\\'eep carries us truly onward only as it sweepsus back-may easily seem self-contradictory. But beneath thissemblance is concealed the essential onefold simplicity ofpain. Flaming, it carries farthest when it hold to itself mostintimately in contemplating vision.

Thus pain, the great soul's fundamental trait , remains pureharmony with the holiness of the blue. For the blue shinesupon the soul's face by withdrawing into its own depth.Whenever it is present, the holy endures only by keepingwithin this withdrawal, and by turning vision toward thefitting.

The nature of pain, its concealed relation to the blue, isput into words in the last stanza of a poenl ca lled "Trans­figurat ion" (13i ):

Blue fl ower ,

'That o ft lv sou nd ' in withered tone.

The "blue flower" is the "gentle cornflower sheaf" of theghost ly night. The words sing of the wellspring from whi h

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Trakl's poetry wells up. ~rhey conclude, and also carry, the"tranfiguration." The ong is lyric, tragedy, and epic all inone. This poenl is unique anlong them all, because in it thebreadth of vision, the depth of thought, and the simplicity ofsaying shine inti Ina te and everlasting, ineffably.

Pain is truly pain only when it serves the flame of the spirit.Trakl's last poeIn i called "Crodek." It has been much praisedas a war poeIll. But it is infinitely more, because it is somethingother. Its final lines (193) are:

'Today a great pain feeds the hot Harne of the spirit,

The grandson yet unborn.

These "grandsons" are not the unbegotten sons of the sonskilled in battle, the progeny of the decaying generation. Ifthat were all, merely an end to the procreation of earliergeneration, our poet \\ ould have to rejoice over such an end.But he grieve , though with a "prouder grief" that Haminglycontemplates the peace of the unborn.

The unborn are called grandsons because they cannot besons, that i , they cannot be the immediate descendants ofthe generation that has gone to ruin. Another generation livesbetween these two, I t is other, for it is of another kind in keep­ing with its diff Ten t e sential origin in the earliness of whatis still unborn. The "mighty pain" is the beholding visionwhose flames envelop everything, and which looks ahead intothe st i ll-wi thdrawing earliness of yonder dead one towardwhom the "ghosts" of earl y victims have died.

But who guards thi mighty pain, that it Illay feed the hotflame of the pi rit? \\ hatever is akin to this spirit is of thekind that starts rna 11 on the way. Whatever is aki n to thisspirit is called "gh o. tl y.' : And thus the poet must call "ghostl "the twilight, the night, and th e years-these above all andthese alone. The twilight Blakes the blue of night to rise,inflames it. l ' igh t flam es as the shining mirror of the starrypond. The year inflam s by tarting the sun's course on its\\~ay, its risings and it et t ings.

What spirit is it Irom whi ch this "ghostlines " awakens and

LANG AGE I THE POE~f

which it follows? It is the spirit which in the poem "To One

\Vho Died Young" (129) is specifically called "the spirit of anearly dead." It is the spirit which abandons that "beggar" of

the "Spiritual Song" (16) to hi apart ness, so that he, as the

poem "In the Village" (75) says, rema in s "the poor one,"o"\\'hodied lonesome in spirit."

..Apartness is active as pure spirit. It is the radiance of the

blue reposing in the spirit's depth and flaming in greaterstillness, the blue that kindles a stiller childhood into the gold

of the first beginning. This is the earliness toward which Elis'golden countenance is turned. In its countering glance, it keeps

alive the nocturnal flame of the spirit of apartness.

Apartness, then, is neither merely the state of him who died

young, nor the indeterminate realm of hi abode. In the \\fay

in which it flames, apartness itself is the spirit and thus thegathering power. That po\ver carries mortal nature back to its

stiller childhood, and shelters that hildhood a the kind, not

yet borne to term, whose stamp marks future generations. The

gathering po\ver of apartness holds the unborn generation

beyond all that is spent, and saves it for a coming rebirth of

mankind out of earliness. The gathering pO\\'er, spirit ofgentlenes, stills also the spirit of evil. That pirit's revolt

rises to its utrno t rnalice when it breaks out even from the

di ord of the sexe , and invades the realm of brother and

SIster.

Bu t in the stiller onefold si 111 plicity of hildhood is hidden

aI 0 the kindred twofoldness of mankind. In apartness, the

sp ir it of evil is neither destroyed and denied, nor et free andaffirmed. Evil i transforrned. To endure uch a "transforrna­tion," the soul Blust turn to the greatness of its nature. The

.p ir i t of apartness determine how gr at thi greatne s i .Apartne is the gathering through which human nature isheltered once again in its tiller childhood, and that child­

hood in turn i sheltered in the car line s of another begin­

n ing..~ a gat her ing, a par tile is inthe nat u reof a ite.But in what way, now, is apartne. th site of a poetic work,

specifi ca ll y that poetic t atement to which Trak l' poetry give.

186 ON THE WAY TO LANGUAGE

voice? Is apartness at all and intrinsically related to poetry?Even if such a relation exists, how is apartness to gatherpoetic saying to itself, to become its site, and to determine itfrom there?

Is apartness not one single silence of stillness? How can itstart a saying and a singing on its way? Yet apartness is notthe desolation of the departed dead. In apartness, the strangermeasures off the parting from mankind hitherto. He is under­way on a path. What sort of a path is it? The poet says itplainly enough, by pointedly setting apart the closing line ofthe poem "Summer's Decline";

Would that the blue game were to recall his paths,

The music of his ghostly years!

The stranger's path is the "music of his ghostly years."Elis' footfall rings. The ringing footfall radiates throughthe night. Does its music die away into a void? He who diedinto earliness-is he departed in the sense of being cut off, orhas he been set apart because he is one of the select-gatheredup into an assembly ' that gathers more gently and calls morequietly?

The second and third stanzas of the poem "To One WhoDied Young" (129) hint at an answer:

But he yonder descended the stone steps of the Monchsberg,A blue smile on his face, and strangely ensheathedIn his stiller childhood, and died:And the silver face of his friend stayed behind in the garden,Listening in the leaves or the ancient stones.

Soul sang of death, the green decay of the flesh.And it was the murmur of the forest,The fervid lament of the animals.Always from twilight tower rang the blue evening bells.

A friend listens after the stranger. In listening, he followsthe departed and thus becomes himself a wanderer, a stranger.The friend's soul listens after the dead. The friend's face has

LANGUAGE IN THE POEM

"died away" (136). It listens by singing of death. This is whythe singing voice is "the birdvoice of the deathlike" (TheWanderer, 136). It corresponds to the stranger's death, hisgoing under to the blue of night. But as he sings the deathof the departed, he also sings the "green decay" of that gen­eration from which his dark journey has "parted" him.

To sing means to praise and to guard the object of praisein song. The listening friend is one of the "praising shep­herds" (136). Yet the friend's soul, which "likes to listento the white magician's fairy tales," can give echo to thesong of the departed only when that apartness rings outtoward him who follows, when the music of apartness re­sounds, "when," as it says in "Evensong" (77), "dark musichaunts the soul."

If all this comes to pass, the spirit of the early dead appearsin the glow of earliness. The ghostly years of earliness arethe true time of the stranger and his friend. In their glowthe formerly black cloud turns golden. ow it is like that"golden boat" which, Elis' heart, rocks in the solitary sky.

The last stanza of "To One Who Died Young" (130) sings;

Golden cloud and time. In a lonely roomYou often ask the dead to visit you,And walk in trusted converse under elms by the

green stream.

The friend's invitation to conversation reflects the hauntingmusic of the stranger's steps. The friend's saying is the singingjourney down by the stream, following down into the blue ofthe night that is animated by the spirit of the early dead. Insuch conversation the singing friend gazes upon the departed.By his gaze, in the converse look, he becomes brother to thetranger. Journeying with the stranger, the brother reaches

the stiller abode in earliness. In the "Song of th e Departed"(170), he can call out:

o to dwell in th e animate blue of night.

Listening after the departed, the friend sings his song and

188 o THE WAY TO LANGUAGE

thus becomes his brother; only now, as the stranger's brother,does he also become the brother of the stranger's sisterwhose "lunar voice rings through the ghostly night," as thelast lines of "Ghostly ~I wilight" (131) say it.

Apartness is the poem's site because the music of thestranger's ringing-radiant footfall inflames his followers' darkwandering into Ii telling song. The dark wandering, dark be­cause it merely follows after, nevertheless clears their soulstoward the blue. Then the whole being of the singing soulis one single concentrated gaze ahead into the blue of nightwhich holds that stiller earliness.

Soul then is purely a blue moment

is what the poelll "Childhood" (98) says about it.Thus the nature of apartness is perfected. It is the perfect

site of the poetic work only when, being both the gathering ofthe stiller childhood and the stranger's grave, it gathers toitself also those who follow him who died early, by listeningafter him and arrying the music of his path over into thesounds of spoken language, so that they become men apart.Their song is poetry. How so? What is the poet's work?

The poet's work means: to say after-to say again themusic of the spirit of apartness that has been spoken to thepoet. For the longest t ime-sbefore it comes to be said, that is,spoken-the poet's work is only a listening. Apartness firstgathers the li tening into its music, a that thi music may ringthrough the spoken saying in which it will resound. The lunarcoolness of the ghostly night's holy blue rings and shines

through all uch gazing and aying. Its language becomes asaying-after, it becomes: poetry. Poetry's spoken words shelter

the poetic statement a that which by its essential natureremains unspoken. In thi s manner, the saying-after, thuscalled upon to listen, become "more pious," that is to say,more pliable to the promptings of the path on which thestranger walks ahead, out of the dark of childhood into thetiller, brighter earlines. The poet li tening after him can

th us say to h imsel I:

LANGUAGE IN THE POEM 189

fore pious now, you know the dark. years' meaning,Autumn and cool in solitary room;And in holier blue radiant footfalls ring.

(Childhood, 98)

The soul that sings of autumn and the year's decline isnot sinking in decay. Its piety is kindled by the flame of thespirit of earliness, and therefore is fiery:

o the soul that softly sang the song of thewithered reed; flaming piety.

says the poem "Dream and Shroud of ight" (151). Thisshroud of night is not a mere darkening of the mind, no morethan madness is dementedness. The night that shrouds thestranger's singing brother remains the "ghostly night" of thatdeath by which the departed died into the "golden tremor"of earliness. Gazing after him, the listening friend looks outinto the coolness of childhood's greater stillness. But suchgazing remains a parting from that cast of man, long sinceborn, which has forgot the stiller childhood as the beginningthat is still in store, and has never carried the unborn to fullterm. The poem "Anif" (128), named after a moated castlenear Salzburg, says:

Great i the guilt of the born. Woe, you golden tremorOf death,When the soul dreams cooler blossom .

But that "woe" of pain embraces not only the parting fromthe old kinship. This parting is in a hidden and fated wayset apart, set to take the departure called for by apartness.The wandering in the night of apartness is "infinite tor­ment." This does not mean unending agony. The infiniteis devoid of all finite restriction and stunted ness. The "in­finite torment" is consummate, perfect pain, pain that comesto the fullness of its nature. The sim ple oneness of pain'sconverse character comes into pure play only during thejourney through the ghostly night, a journey that alwaystakes its parting from the unghostly night. The spirit's gentle-

190 ON THE WAY TO LANGUAGE

ness is called to hunt down God, its shy reserve called tostorm heaven.

In the poem "The ight" (180), it say:

Infini te torment,

That you hunted down CodGentle spirit,

Sigh ing in the cataract,I n the wavi ng fir trees.

The flaming rapture of this storm and hunt does not tear"the steep-walled fortress" down: it does not lay the quarrylow, but lets it arise to behold the sights of heaven whosepure coolness veils the Divine. The singing reflection of suchwandering belongs to the brow of a head marked by con­summate pain. The poem "The Tight" therefore closes withthe lines:

A petrified headStorms heaven.

Correspondingly, the end of the poem "The Heart" (172) runs:

The steep-walled fortress.o heart

Shimmering away into snowy coolness.

In fact, the triadic harmony of the three late poenls "TheHeart," "The Storm,' and "The 1 ight" is so subtly tunedto One and the Same singing of apartness that the discussionof the poetic work here attempted is further promptedsimply to leave those three poems to resound in their songwithout intruding an elucidation.

Wandering in apartness, beholding the sights of the in­visible, and con urnrnate pain-they belong together. Thepatient one submits to pain's s\\'eep. He alone is able tofollow the return into the primal earliness of the generationwhose fate is preserved in an old album in which the poetinscribes the following stanza called "In an Old Album" (51):

Humbly the p ati ent o ne b O\At'S to the p ainR i nging w it h music and wi th .() It m ad n ess.Look ! the twilight appear.

LA GUAGE I THE POEM

In such soft and sweet-sounding saying the poet brings toradiance the luminous sights in which God conceals himselffrom the mad hunt. It is thus only IIWhi pered into the After­noon" when, in a poem (50) by that title, the poet sings:

God's own colors dreams my brow,Feels the gentle wing of madness,

The poet becomes poet only as he follows that "madman"who died away into the early dawn and who now from hisapartness, by the music of his footfall, calls to the brother whofollows him. Thus the friend's face looks into the face ofthe stranger. The radiance of the glancing moment moves thelistener's saying. In the moving radiance that shines from thesite of the poem surges the billow which starts the poeticvision on its way to language.

Of what sort, then, is the language of Trakl's poetic work?It speaks by answering to that journey upon which thestranger is leading on ahead. The path he has taken leadsa,vay from the old degenerate generation. It escorts him to gounder in the earliness of the unborn generation that is keptin store, The language of the poetry whose site is in apart­ness answers to the home-coming of unborn mankind intothe quiet beginning of its stiller nature.

The language that this poetry speaks sterns from this tran­sition. I ts path leads from the downfall of all that decaysover to the descent into the twi lit blu of the hol y. The lan­guage that the work speaks stern fr om the passage acrossand through the ghostly night' nocturnal pond. T h i lan­guage sing the song of the horne- om ing in apartness, thehome-coming which from the lateness of d ecomposition com esto re t in the earlines of the till er , a nd still impending,beginning. In this language there p eak the journey whosehining ca u es the radiant, ringinR music of the departed

stranger' ghostly year to o rne for th . According to the wordsof the poenl "Revelation and De re n t" ( 186), the "Song of theDeparted" sings of lithe beauty of a h orn e oming generation."

Recall e the language of thi poetry speaks from the journey

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of apartness, it will always speak also of what it leaves behindin parting, and of that to which the departure submits, Thislanguage is essentially ambiguous, in its own fashion. We shallhear nothing of what the poem says so long as we bring toit only this or that dull sense of unambiguous meaning.

Twilight and night, descent and death, madness and wildgame, pond and tone, bird's flight and boat, stranger andbrother, ghost and God, and also the words of color-blue andgreen, white and black, red and silver, gold and dark-all sayever and again manifold things.

"Green" is decay and bloom, "white" pale and pure, "black"is enclosing in gloom and darkly sheltering, "red" fleshy purpleand en tIe rose. "Silver" is the pallor of death and the sparkleof the stars. "Gold" is the glow of truth as well as "grislylaughter of go ld " (127). These examples of multiple meaningsare so far onl y two-sided, But their ambiguousness, taken as awhole, becomes but one side of a greater issue, whose otheride is determined by the poetry's innermost site.

The poetic work speaks out of an ambiguous ambiguousness.Yet this multiple ambiguousness of the poetic saying does notscatter in vague equivocations. The ambiguous tone of Trakl'spoetry arises out of a gathering, that is, out of a unison which,meant for itself alone, always remains unsayable. The ambi­guity of this poetic saying is not lax imprecision, but rather therigor of him who leaves what is as it is, who has entered intothe "righteous vision" and now SUUIllilS to it.

It is often hard for us to draw a clea r line between theambiguous saying characteristi c of Trak l's poems-swhich inhis work shows complete assurance-and the language of otherpoets whose equivocations stern from the vagueness of gropingpoetic uncertainty, because their language la cks authenticpoetry and its site. The pe .r less rigor of Trakl's es entiallyambiguous language i: in a higher sense so unequivocal thatit remains infinitely superior even to all the technical precisionof con cep ts that are m erel y scientifically univocal.

This same ambiguity of language that is determined by thesite of Trakl's poetic work al so inspire his frequent use of

LANG AGE IN THE POE!\f 193

words from the world of biblical and ecclesiastical ideas. Thepassage from the old to the unborn generation leads throughthis region and its language. Whether Trakl's poems speak ina Christian fashion, to what extent and in what sense, in what\\1ay Trakl was a "Christian," what is Incant here, and indeedgenerally, by "Chri tian," "Christianity," "Christendom" and"Christlike": all this involves essential questions. But their dis­cussion hangs in a void so long as the site of hi poetic work isnot thoughtfully established. Besides, their discussion calls fora kind of thorough thinking to which nei ther the concept of ametaphysical nor those of a church-based theology are adequate.

To judge the Christianity of Trakl's poetic work, one wouldhave to give thought above all to his last t\VO poenls, "Lament"and "Grodek." One would have to ask: If indeed this poet isso resolute a Christian, why does he not, here in the extremeagony of his last saying, call out to God and Christ? \\Thy doeshe instead name the "sister's swaying shadow" and call her"the greeting one"? Why does the song end with the name ofthe "unborn grandsons" and not with the confident hope ofChristian redemption? Why does the sister appear also in theother late poenl, "Lament" (192)? Why is eternity called there"the icy wave"? Is this Christian thinking? I t is not evenChristian despair.

But what does this "Lament" sing of? In these words, "Sister... Look ... ," does not an in tirnate arden t sim plici ty ringout, the simplicity of those who remain on the journey towardthe "golden face of man," despite the danger of the utter with­drawal of all wholeness?

The rigorous unison of the many-voiced language in whichT'rak l's poetry speak '- and this mean also: i silent-corre­

ponds to apartness a the ire of his work. Merely to keep thissite rightly in mind makes demands on our thinking. Wehardly dare in closing to ask for the location of this site.

III

When we took the first step in our di cussion of Trakl's poeticwork, the poenl "Autumn Soul" (118), in its second-te-la t

ON THE \V Y TO LA GUAGE

stanza, gave us the final indication that apartness is the site ofhis poetry. That stanza speaks of those wanderers who followthe stranger's path through the ghostly night in order that theymay "dwell in its animate blue."

Fish and game soon glide away.Soon blue soul and long dark journeyParted us from loved ones, others.

An open region that holds the promise of a dwelling, andprovides a dwel ling, is what we call a "land." The passage intothe stranger's land leads through ghostly twilight, in the eve­ning. This is why the last stanze runs:

Evening changes image, ense.

The land into which the early dead goes down is the land ofthis evening. The location of the si te that gathers Trakl's workinto itself is the concealed nature of apartness, and is called"Evening Land," the Occident. This land is older, which is tosay, earlier and therefore 1110re promising than the Platonic­Christian land, or indeed than a land conceived in terms ofthe European West. For apartness is the "first beginning" of amounting wor ld-year, not the abyss of decay.

The evening land concealed in apartness is not going down:it stays and, as the land of descent into the ghostly night,awaits those who will dwell in it. he land of descent is thetransition into the beginning of the dawn concealed within it.

If we keep these thoughts in mind, we surely cannot thendismiss as mere coincidence the fa t that t\VO of Trakl's poemsspeak explicitly of the land of evening. One bears the title"Evening Land" or "Occident" (165) the other is called "Occi­dental Song" (133): it sings the same a does the "Song of theDeparted," and begin with a call that inclines in wonder:

o the nocturnal wing-beat of the oul:

The line ends with a olon that includes everything that fol­lows, even to the transition from descent into ascent. At thatpoint in the poenl, just before the la t two lines, there is a

LANG AGEl THE POEM 195

1 he oul keep. the blue pring in ilence.

second colon. Then follows the simple phrase "One genera­tion." The word "One" is stressed. As far as I can see it is theonly word so tressed in Trakl's work. This emphatic "onegeneration" contains the key note in which Trakl's poeticwork silently sounds the mystery. The unity of the one kinshiparises from the race which, along lithe lunar paths of thedeparted," gathers together and enfolds the discord of thegenerations into the gentler two-fold-which does so in virtueof its apartness, the stiller stillness reigning within it, in virtueof its "forest sagas," its "measure and law."

The "one" in "one generation" does not mean one as opposedto two. Tor does it mean the monotony of dull equality. "Onegeneration" here does not refer to a biological fact at all, to a"single" or "identical" gender. In the emphatic "one genera­tion" there is hidden that unifying force which unifies in virtueof the ghostly night's gathering blue. The word speaks from thesong which sings of evening. Accordingly, the word "genera­tion" here retains the full manifold meaning mentioned earlier.For one thing, it names the historical generation of man, man­kind as distinct from all other living being (plants andanimals) . ext, the word "generation" names the races, tribes,clans, and families of mankind. At the same time, the wordalways refers to the twofoldness of the exes.

The force which marks the tribes of mankind as the simpleoneness of "one generation," and thus restores them and man­kind itself to the stiller childhood, acts by prompting the soulto set out toward the "blue spring." The soul sings of the bluespring by keeping it silent. The poeln "In the Dark" (144)begins:

"Keep sil nt" is here used tran itively. Trakl's poeln sings ofthe land of evening. It is one single call that the right race maycome to be, and to speak the Harne of the .pir it into gentleness.In the "Kaspar Hauser Song" (1°9) \\.. read how God ad­dressed Kaspar Hauser:

God poke a gentle flame to his heart:Oman.

196 O~ THE 'VAY TO LA GAGE

The "spoke," too, is used transitively here, just as "keeps" wasabove, or a "bleeds" in "To the Boy Elis' (91), or "murmurs"in the last line of "On the . Ionchsberg" (107).

God's speaking is the peaking which assigns to man a stillernature, and so calls on him to give that response by which manrises from what is authentic ruin up into earliness. The "eve­ning land" holds the rising of the dawn of the "one generation."

How shallow is our thinking if we regard the singer of the"Occidental Song" as the poet of decay. How incomplete andcrude is our understanding if we insist on approaching Trakl'sother poenl, "Even ing Land" (165), always only in terms ofits final third section, while stubbornly ignoring the centerpiece of the triptych together with its preparation in the firstsection. In "Evening Land" the Elis figure appears once again,whereas "Helian" and "Sebastian in Dream" are no longermentioned in the last poenls. The stranger's footfalls resound.They resound in harmony with the "softly sounding spirit" ofthe ancient forest legend. The final section-where the "mightycities / stone on stone raised up / in the plain!" are mentioned­is already overcome, absorbed into the middle section of thiswork. The citie already have their destiny. It is a destiny otherthan that whi ch i spoken "beside the greening hill" where the" pring storm sings," the hill which has its "just mea ure"(128) and is al 0 aIled the "evening hill" (143). It has been

said that Trakl's work is "profoundly unhistorical." In thisjudgment, what is meant by history? If the word means nomore than "chronicle ,' the rehearsal of past events, then Traklis indeed unhistorical. His poetry has no need of historical"objects." \Vhy not? 13 ause hi poetic work is historical in thehighest sense. Hi , poetry sings of the destiny which casts man­kind in its still withheld nature-that is to say, saves mankind.

Trakl's work 'ing th e song of the soul, "something strangeon the earth," whi ch i onl y ju t about to gain the earth by itswandering, th e ear th rha t i: the stiller horne of the homecom­ing generation.

Is thi dream romant i .ism , at the fringe of the technically­economically oriented world of modern 1l1aSS existence? Or-is

LANGUAGE IN THE POEM

it the clear knowledge of the "madman" who sees and sensesother things than the reporters of the latest news who spendthemselves chronicling the current happening, whose future isnever more than a prolongation of today's events, a futurethat is forever without the advent of a destiny which concernsman for once at the source of his being?

The poet sees the soul, "something strange," destined tofollow a path that leads not to decay, but on the contrary to agoing under. This going under yields and submits to the mightydeath in which he who died early leads the way. The brother,singing, follows him in death. Following the stranger, thedying friend passes through the ghostly night of the years ofapartness. His singing is the "Song of a Captured Blackbird,"a poem dedicated to L. v. Ficker. The blackbird is the birdthat called Elis to go under. It is the birdvoice of the deathlikeone. The bird is captured in the solitude of the golden foot­falls that correspond to the ride of the golden boat on whichElis' heart crosses the blue night's starry pond, and thus showsto the soul the course of its essential being.

Something strange is the soul on the earth .

The soul journeys toward the land of evening, which is per­vaded by the spirit of apartness and is, in keeping with thatspirit, "ghostly."

All formulas are dangerous. They force whatever is aid intothe superficiality of instant opinion and are apt to corrupt ourthinking. But they may also be of help, at lea t as a promptingand a starting point for sustained reflection. Wi th these reserva­tions, we may venture this formulation:

A discussion of the site of Georg T'rak l's poetic work showshim to be the poet of the yet con cealed even ing land.

Something strange is the ou l on the ear th .

The sentence occurs in the poenl "Springtime of th e Soul"(142 L). 'The verse that leads over into that final stanza wherethe sentence belongs, run :

figh t Ydying and th e inging fiaIne inthe heart.

ON TIlE WAY TO LANGUAGE

There follows the rising of the song into the pure echo of themusic of the ghostly years, through which the stranger wanders,the years which the brother follows who begins dwelling inthe land of evening:

Darker the waters flowed round the lovely game ofthe fishes.

Hour of mourning and silent ight of the un;Something trange is the soul on the earth. Ghostly

the twilightBluing over the mishewn forest, and a dar bellLong tolls in the village; they lead him to re t,

Silent the myrtle blooms over his dead white eyelids.

Softly murmur the waters in the declining afternoon,On the bank the green wilderness darkens, joy in the

rosy wind;The gen tie song of the brother by the evening hill.

REFERENCES

[The German volume Unteruiegs ZUT Sprache here translatedalso contains an essay entitled Die Sprache (Language) whichhas here been omitted by arrangement with the author, andwill be found in translation elsewhere in artin Heidegger,Poetry, Language, Thought (Harper & Row, 1971).]

A DIALOGUE 0 LA GUAGE

The heretofore unpubli hed text originated in 1953 /541 onthe occasion of a visit by Professor Tezuka of the Imperial

niversity, To yo.To counter widely circulated allegations, let it be stated

here explicitly that the dedication of Being and Time men­tioned on page 16 of the Dialogue remained in Being andTime until its fourth edition of 1935· In J 94 J, when mypublishers felt that the fifth edition might be endangeredand that, indeed, the book might be suppressed, it was finallyagreed, on the suggestion and at the desire of iemeyer, thatthe dedication be omitted from the edition, on the conditionimposed by me that the note to page 38 be retained-a notewhich in fact states the reason for that dedication, and whichruns: "If the following investigation has taken any stepsforward in disclosing the 'things themselves', the author mustfirst of all thank E. Husserl, who, by providing his ox... nincisive per ona1 guidance and by freely turning over hi

199

200 o THE W Y TO L °G l AG E

unpublished investigations, Iarniliarized the author with thrna t diver .e area of phenomenological re earch during hi

. student years in Freiburg" (Being and 'Time, Harper & Row,

1962, P: 489).Concerning the "two-fold" mentioned in the Dialogue, com-

pare What Is Called Thinking? (Harper & Row, 1968) andIdentity and Difference (Harper & Row, 1969).

THE i\ TURE OF LANGUAGEThe three lectures were delivered in the studium generate

of the University of Freiburg i. Br. on the 4th and the i Sth ofDecember, 1957, and on February j, 1958.

THE \t\ AY TO LA G l\ G EThis lecture is part of a lecture series on the subject "Lan­

guage" which was arranged, in January 1959, by the BavarianAcademy of the Fine Arts and the Academy of the Arts inBerlin.

The text has been revised for publication and, in a fewplaces, enlarged. I t first appeared in print in the F~rthSeries of Gestalt und Gedanke, 1959 (ed. Clemens GrafPodewils).

\-\ ORDSThe text in its present version was first delivered as a lecture,

during a matinee celebration, at the Burgtheater in Vienna,under the title Dich ten und Denkcn, Zu Stefan Georges

G edicht Das \r\ art.

L.-\ G .~GE I THE POEivfThis essay first appeared in Merkur, 1953, o. 61, .p p .

226-258, under the title: George Trakl. Eine Eriirterung seines

G edichtes.