“The man is from Swabia”: i.e., he comes from there. “The cup is of silver”: i.e., it consists of … .” The peasant is in the fields”: i.e., he has moved to the fields, he is staying there. “The book is mine”: i.e., it belongs to me. “He is dead”: i.e., he has succumbed to death. “Red is the port side”: i.e., it stands for. “The dog is in the garden”: i.e., it is running around there. “Over all the peaks / is peace”: i.e.—??? Does the “is” in the verses mean that peace comes about, that is present at hand, that it takes place, that it stays there? None of that will do here. And yet it is the same simple “is.” Or does the verse mean: over all the peaks peace prevails, as in a classroom peace prevails? No, not that either! Or maybe: over all the peaks lies peace, or peace holds sway? That’s closer, but this paraphrase is not right either.
“Over all the peaks / is peace”: the “is” simply cannot be paraphrased, and yet it is merely this “is,” as it was said in passing in those few verses that Goethe wrote in pencil on the window frame of a hut on the Kickelhahn near Ilmenau (see the letter to Zelter of September 4, 1831).7 Strange how we waver here with our paraphrase, hesitate, and finally just let it go, not because this is too complicated and hard to understand, but because the verse is said so simply, even more simply and uniquely than any other, ordinary “is” that mixes itself inconspicuously and constantly into everyday saying and talking.
However we may interpret the individual examples, this saying of the “is” shows us one thing clearly: in the “is,” Being opens up to us in a manifold way. The assertion, at first so facile, that Being is an empty word, proves once again, and still more strikingly, to be untrue.
7. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Goethe: Leben und Welt in Briefen (Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1978), 792.