To begin, we shall listen to some words of Novalis. They occur in a text which he entitled Monologue. That title points to the mystery of language: language speaks solely with itself alone. One sentence in Novalis' text runs: "The peculiar property of language, namely that language is concerned exclusively with itself—precisely that is known to no one."
If we understand all that we shall now attempt to say as a sequence of statements about language, it will remain a chain of unverified and scientifically unverifiable propositions. But if, on the contrary, we experience the way to language in the light of what happens with the way itself as we go on, then an intimation may come to us in virtue of which language will henceforth strike us at stranger.
The way to language: that sounds as if language were far away from us, some place to which we still have to find our way. But is a way to language really needed? According to an ancient understanding, we ourselves are after all those beings who have the ability to speak and therefore already possess