nature, in itself, of the openness that surrounds us. If we now say this is the region, and say it with the meaning we just gave it, then the word must name something else. {GA 13: 47}
Scientist: Moreover, the coming to meet us is not at all a basic characteristic of region, let alone the basic characteristic. What does this word imply?
Scholar: In its older form it is "Gegnet" and means open expanse. Can anything be learned from this about the nature of what we now call the region?
Teacher: The region gathers, just as if nothing were happening, each to each and each to all into an abiding, while resting in itself. Regioning is a gathering and re-sheltering for an expanded resting in an abiding.
Scholar: So the region itself is at once an expanse and an abiding. It abides into the expanse of resting. It expands into the abiding of what has freely turned toward itself. In view of this usage of the word, we may also say "that-which-regions" in place of the familiar "region."
Teacher: That-which-regions is an abiding expanse which, gathering all, opens itself, so that in it openness is halted and held, letting everything merge in its own resting.
Scientist: I believe I see that-which-regions as withdrawing rather than coming to meet us . . .
1. The German word for region is Gegend. What is in question here, however, is not region in general, but as Heidegger says, "the region of all regions" ("die Gegend aller Gegenden") or the region. Heidegger uses an old variant of Gegend as the word for the region: die Gegnet— a word that still occurs in spoken German although only in South German dialects. Since an analogous variant is not available for the English counterpart, die Gegnet has been rendered in the text by the phrase that-which-regions. That-which-regions reflects a movement attributed by Heidegger to die Gegnet and further emphasized by his use of the verb gegnen (to region). (Tr.)