defeat, blessing and curse, mastery and slavery. The dawning world brings out what is as yet undecided and measureless, and thus discloses the hidden necessity of measure and decisiveness.
Yet as a world opens itself the earth comes to tower. It stands forth as that which bears all, as that which is sheltered in its own law {GA 5: 51} and always wrapped in itself. World demands its decisiveness and its measure and lets beings attain to the open region of their paths. Earth, bearing and jutting, endeavors to keep itself closed and to entrust everything to its law. Strife is not a rift [Riss], as a mere cleft is ripped open; rather, it is the intimacy with which opponents belong to each other. This rift carries, the opponents into the provenance of their unity by virtue of their common ground. It is a basic design, an outline sketch, that draws the basic features of the upsurgence of the clearing of beings. This rift does not let the opponents break apart; it brings what opposes measure and boundary into its common outline.*
Truth establishes itself as strife within a being that is to be brought forth only in such a way that the strife opens up in this being; that is, this being is itself brought into the rift. The rift is the drawing together, into a unity, of sketch and basic design, breach and outline. Truth establishes itself in a being in such a way, indeed, that this being itself takes possession of the open region of truth. This occupying, however, can happen only if what is to be brought forth, the rift, entrusts itself to the self-secluding element that juts into the open region. The rift must set itself back into the gravity of stone, the mute hardness of wood, the dark glow of colors. As the earth takes the rift back into itself, the rift is first set
* In German der Riss is a crack, tear, laceration, cleft, or rift; but it is also a plan or design in drawing. The verb reissen from which it derives is cognate with the English word writing. Der Riss is incised or inscribed as a rune or letter. Heidegger here employs a series of words (Abriss, Aufriss, Umriss, and especially Grundriss) to suggest that the rift of world and earth releases a sketch, outline, profile, blueprint, or ground plan. The rift is writ.—En.