OFF THE BEATEN TRACK
what the god looks like. It is, rather, a work which allows the god himself to presence and is, therefore, the god himself. The same is true of the linguistic work. In the tragedy, nothing is staged or displayed theatrically. Rather, the battle of the new gods against the old is being fought. In that the linguistic work arises from the speech of the people, it does not talk about this battle. Rather, it transforms that speech so that now every essential word fights the battle and puts up for decision what is holy and what unholy, what is great and what small, what is brave and what cowardly, what is noble and what fugitive, what is master and what slave (cf. Heraclitus, Fragment 53 in Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker3).
In what, then, does the work-being of the work consist? Keeping in steady view what has just been - roughly enough - outlined, two essential features of the work may have become immediately clearer. \Vith these we depart from the long-familiar foreground of the work's work-being, its thingliness, which underpins our usual relationship to the work.
When a work is brought into a collection or placed in an exhibition, we also say that it is "set up," but this setting up is essentially different from the construction of a building, the raising of a statue, the presentation of a tragedy in the holy festival. The setting up we refer to is an erecting in the sense of dedication and praise. Here, "setting up" no longer means merely putting in place. To dedicate means to consecrate [heiligen], in the sense that, in the workly construction, the holy [Heilige] is opened up as the holy and the god is called forth into the openness of its presence. Praise belongs to dedication as doing honor to the dignity and splendor of the god. Dignity and splendor are not properties beside and behind which there stands, additionally, the god. Rather, it is in the dignity, in the splendor, that the god comes to presence. In the reflected glory of this splendor there glows, i.e., illuminates itself, what we called "world." To erect [Er-richten] means: to open up the right in the sense of the measure which guides us along, in which form that which is essential gives its guidance. Why, however, is the setting up of the work an erecting that consecrates and praises? Because, in its work-being, the work demands it. How does the work come to demand such a setting up? Because it itself, in its own work-being, is something that sets up. What is it that the work, as work, sets up? Rising-up-within-itself the work opens up a world and keeps it abidingly in force.
To be a work means: to set up a world. But what is this item, a world? We gave some intimation of an answer in talking about the temple. On the path we must here follow, the nature of world can only be indicated. Even
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