Originarily [ursprünglich] and inceptively [anfänglich] speech 'gathers' (collects) the unconcealed as such by disclosing it. That is why gathering as saying becomes the distinctive legein—why from early on, as gathering, legein also means saying. Originarily [ursprünglich]—as well as beginningly [be-ginnlich]—thinking and poetizing are, although in fundamentally different ways, the same: being bringing itself forth into speech, gathering itself into speech.
Heraklit1
Anfang and UrsprungTo say Anfang or Ursprung instead of archē or principium is to abolish the patterns of command and rule that accompany the Classical Greek and Latin representations of origin.
Heidegger's writings may be read in their entirety as a quest for the origin. They can never be read, however, as a quest for a fons et origo, a mythical source of all things. The word Ursprung (literal]y "primal leap") recurs at each stage of his itinerary. Toward the end it comes to designate the pertinent trait of the 'event': not an occurrence or an incident, nor a feat (Ereignis never connotes the se), but coming about, coming to presence, 'presencing'. Since this is the phenomenon that Heidegger seeks to grasp as 'being qua being', it will be no surprise that in this matter his vocabulary is somewhat complex. I start therefore by trying to clarify the contours of meaning between the different words for 'origin' used in the lines quoted above.
In plain language, what Heidegger seems to say in those lines is that there exists a pre-linguistic sense of legein and a more narrowly linguistic one. In the pre-linguistic sense, speech does not differ essentially from other activities in which man "gathers" something up (for example, twigs to start a fire or arms and armors after battle). Gathering, then, is the originary sense of speech. And here is the first apparent slippage : gathering is
1. GA 55 370.
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