O holy heart of the people, O fatherland!
Patiently accepting everything like the silent mother earth
And altogether unappreciated, even if already the others
Obtain from your depths what is best in them
They harvest the thoughts and the spirit from you,
They love to pick the grapes, and yet they blame
You, unshaped wine-stalk! that you
Err around on the soil wildly and wavering
For the Greeks the word as μῦθος, ἔπος, ῥῆμα, and λόγος is that by which Being assigns itself to man, so that he might preserve it, in his own essence, as what is assigned to him and might, for his part, find and retain his essence as man by means of such preservation. Therefore the destiny, "to have the word," λόγον ἔχειν, is the essential characteristic of the humanity that became historical as Greek humanity.
Because legend, as the disclosing word, harbors the primordial relation of Being to man, and thereby also the relation of man to beings, legend and legendary dictum are, as beings, more than every other being that man in some way creates and sets up. The ῥῆμα, the dictum that speaks and is spoken, surpasses all ἔργματα, according to Pindar (Nem IV, 8). Nevertheless, not just any word is superior to every other "work," but only that dictum standing in the favor of χάρις, so that in the word the bestowal of the grace of emergent Being appears. We of today, and in general modern "culture," can now hardly obtain even a vague idea of how for the Greeks the word and legend initiate, sustain, and fulfill the essential relation of Being to man. In particular, the ordinary and most accessible "picture" of ancient Greece would prevent us from duly reflecting on the all-sustaining relation between Being and word. For we are told that the works of architecture and sculpture of the Greeks, their temples and statues, their vases and paintings, are no less an "expression" of Greek lived experience than their thought and poetry. Accordingly, the emphasis we placed on the relation between Being and word, if not exactly "false," would in any case be one-sided. Our meditation on the essence of ἀλήθεια will return to this objection at the appropriate place.
Only where a humanity is entrusted with the essence, to have the word, λόγον ἔχειν, only there does it remain assigned to the preservation of the unconcealedness of beings. Only where this assignment holds sway and where unconcealedness appears in advance as Being itself, only there does concealment also prevail in a way that can never be the mere contrary and crude opposite to disclosure, i.e., in the modes of dissemblance, distortion, misguidance, deception, and falsification.
Because there is still a more original mode of concealment to be distinguished