worlding world ringingly releases [entringt] the united four into their own pliancy, the nimbleness of their essence [das Ringe ihres Wesens]. From out of the mirror-play of the circling of the nimble [des Gerings des Ringen] there takes place the thinging of the thing.

The thing lets the fourfold abide. The thing things the world. Every thing lets the fourfold abide in something that each time abides from the single fold of the world.

When we let the thing in its thinging essence from out of the worlding world, then we commemorate the thing as thing. Thoughtfully remembering in this way, we allow the worlding essence of the thing to concernfully approach us. Thinking in this way we are met by the thing as thing. We are, in the strict sense of the word, conditioned [Be-Dingten]. We have left the arrogance of everything unconditional behind us.

When we think the thing as thing, then we protect the essence of the thing in the region from where it essences. Thinging is the nearing of world. Nearing is the essence of nearness. Insofar as we protect the thing as thing, we dwell in nearness. The nearing of nearness is the authentic and sole dimension of the mirror-play of the world.

The exclusion of nearness despite all abolition of distances has brought the distanceless to dominance. In the exclusion of nearness, the thing as thing in the stated sense remains annihilated. But when and how are things as things? Thus we inquire amidst the dominance of the distanceless.

When and how do the things come as things? They do not come through the machinations of humans. But they also do not come without the vigilance of the mortals. The first step to such vigilance is the step back from merely representational, i.e., explanatory thinking into commemorative thinking.

The step back from one thinking into the other is admittedly no mere change of attitude. Indeed, it can never be something like that because all attitudes, along with the manner of their changing, remain stuck in the region of representational thinking. The step back, on the contrary, departs altogether from the domain of merely personal attitudes. Addressed by the world’s essence from within it, the step back takes up its residence in a correspondence that answers this. For the arrival of the thing as thing, a mere change of attitude does nothing, just as all of what