with language. The first lecture gives ear to a poetic experience with the word, and traces it in thought. Simply by doing so it moves within the neighborhood of poetry and thinking. There it goes back and forth.

The second lecture reflects on the way of this movement. To the modern mind, whose ideas about everything are punched out in the die presses of technical-scientific calculation, the object of knowledge is part of the method. And method follows what is in fact the utmost corruption and degeneration of a way.

For reflective thinking, on the contrary, the way belongs in what we here call the country or region. Speaking allusively, the country, that which counters, is the clearing that gives free rein, where all that is cleared and freed, and all that conceals itself, together attain the open freedom. The freeing and sheltering character of this region lies in this way-making movement, which yields those ways that belong to the region.

To a thinking so inclined that reaches out sufficiently, the way is that by which we reach—which lets us reach what reaches out for us by touching us, by being our concern.* The way is such, it lets us reach what concerns and summons us. Now it would seem that by thinking in this fashion of what summons us, we manipulate language willfully. Indeed it is willful to gauge the sense in which we here speak of "summoning" by the usual understanding of the word. But the reflective use of language cannot be guided by the common, usual understanding of meanings; rather, it must be guided by the hidden riches that language holds in store for us, so that these riches may summon us for the saying of language.

* The following passage, a gloss on the German verb belangen (to concern, to summon) and its German cognates, has here been omitted in the translated text: "Wir verstehen freilich das Zeitwort 'belangen' nur in einem gewöhnlichen Sinne, der meint: sich jemanden vornehmen zur Vernehmung, zum Verhör. Wir können aber auch das Be·langen in einem hohen Sinne denken: be-langen, be-rufen, be-hüten, be-halten. Der Be-lang: das, was, nach unserem Wesen auslangend, es verlangt und so gelangen lässt in das, wohin es gehört." (Tr.)