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WORDS

has posited as what truly is. This positing and that claim he must now deny himself. The poet must renounce having words under his control as the portraying names for what is posited. As self-denial, renunciation is a Saying which says to itself:


Where word breaks off no thing may be.


While we were discussing the first six stanzas and considering what journey allowed the poet to experience his renunciation, the renunciation itself has also become somewhat clearer to us. Only somewhat; for much still remains obscure in this poem, above all the treasure for which the name is denied. This is also the reason why the poet cannot say what this treasure is. We have even less right to conjecture about it than he, unless the poem itself were to give us a hint. It does so. We perceive it if we listen thoughtfully enough. To do so it is enough that we ponder something which must now make us most thoughtful of all.

The insight into the poet's experience with the word, that is, the insight into the renunciation he has learned, compels us to ask the question: why could the poet not renounce Saying, once he had learned renunciation? Why does he tell precisely of renunciation? Why does he go .so far as to compose a poem with the title "Words"? Answer: Because this renunciation is a genuine renunciation, not just a rejection of Saying, not a mere lapse into silence. As self-denial, renunciation remains Saying. It thus preserves the relation to the word. But because the word is shown in a different, higher rule, the relation to the word must also undergo a transformation. Saying attains to a different articulation, a different melos, a different tone. The poem itself, which tells of renunciation. bears witness to the fact that the poet's renunciation is experienced in this sense—by singing of renunciation. For this poem is a song. It belongs to the last part of the last volume of poems published by Stefan George himself. This last part bears the title "Song," and begins with the prologue:


What I still ponder and what I still frame.
What I still love — their features are the same.


Martin Heidegger (GA 12) On the Way to Language