demands of us that we achieve by silence the appropriating, initiating movement within the being of language—and do so without talking about silence.

Saying, which resides in Appropriation, is qua showing the most appropriate mode of appropriating. This sounds like a statement. If we hear only this statement, it docs not say to us what is to be thought out. Saying is the mode in which Appropriation speaks: mode not so much in the sense of modus or fashion, but as the melodic mode, the song which says something in its singing. For appropriating Saying brings to light all present beings in terms of their properties—it lauds, that is, allows them into their own, their nature. Hölderlin sings these words in the beginning of the eighth stanza of "Celebration of Peace":

Much, from the morning onwards,

Since we have been a discourse and have heard from one another

Has human kind learnt; but soon we shall be song.*

Language has been called "the house of Being."** It is the keeper of being present, in that its coming to light remains entrusted to the appropriating show of Saying. Language is the house of Being because language, as Saying, is the mode of Appropriation.

In order to pursue in thought the being of language and to say of it what is its own, a transformation of language is needed which we can neither compel nor invent. This transformation does not result from the procurement of newly formed words and phrases. It touches on our relation to language, which is determined by destiny: whether and in what way the nature of language, as the arch-tidings of Appropriation, will retain us in Appropriation. For that appropriating, holding, self-retaining is the relation of aU relations. Thus our saying—always an answering—remains forever relational. Relation is thought of here always in terms of the appropriation, and no longer conceived in the form of a mere reference. Our relation

* Friedrich Hölderlin, Poems and Fragments (Michael Hamburgers'; Ann Arbor: University or Michigan Press, 1967), p. 438. (Tr.)

** In Heidegger, Letter on Humanism, 1947. (Tr.)