In these three lectures on language in the studium generale at the University of Freiburg of Winter Semester 1957–58, Heidegger brings us face-to-face with an experience of language. To undergo such an experience means to let ourselves be properly concerned by the claim of language. We must enter into and submit to language. This experience with language is something other than gathering information about language as a tool of communication. In an experience with language, language itself brings itself to language or speech. In everyday language, it holds itself back and so enables us to speak a language.
To undergo an experience with language, Heidegger gives an interpretation of Stefan George’s poem “Words.” In this poem, we experience the word as that which gives things their being. Because the being of entities dwell in the word, language is the house of being. The nature, ownmost character, and “sway” of language is a way that moves everything. This movement of language is the saying of the fourfold that takes place in the stillness of the play of time-space. Saying means the lightening-concealing-releasing gift of world. As the being of language, saying swings back into the presencing of nearness. Saying moves the regions of the world’s fourfold into their nearness. This soundless gathering call is the ringing of stillness.