sense. A saying is taken to be sheer hearsay, as someone's say-so, which may or may not hold water and which therefore leaves us incredulous. That is not the way we are thinking die Sage here. Nor are we referring to the admittedly essential sense that is intended when one invokes the "sagas of gods and heroes." But perhaps we are thinking it as Georg Trakl's "venerable saying of the blue font" ["die ehrwurdige Sage des blauen Quells"]. In accord with the word's oldest usage, we understand the saying in terms of "to say" in the sense of "to show." In order to name the saying on which the essence of language depends, we shall use an old, well-testified, but archaic word: die Zeige [the pointing]. What Latin grammar calls the "demonstrative pronoun" is often translated as "the little indicator" ["Zeigewortlin"]. Jean Paul calls the phenomena of nature "the spiritual index finger" ["den geistigen Zeigefinger"].
What unfolds essentially in language is saying as pointing. Its showing does not culminate in a system of signs. Rather, all signs arise from a showing in whose realm and for whose purposes they can be signs.
However, in view of the well-joined structure of the saying, we dare not attribute showing either exclusively or definitively to human doing. Self-showing as appearing characterizes the coming to presence or withdrawal to absence of every manner and degree of thing present. Even when showing is accomplished by means of our saying, such showing or referring is preceded by a thing's letting itself be shown.
Only when we ponder our saying in this regard do we arrive at an adequate determination of what essentially unfolds in all speech. We know speech to be the articulate vocalization of thought by means of the instruments of speech. However, speech is simultaneously hearing. Speaking and hearing are customarily set in opposition to one another: one person speaks, the other hears. Yet hearing does not merely accompany and encompass speaking, such as we find it in conversation. That speaking and hearing occur simultaneously