III. Speech as a Formed Gesture

GA 282/1924-09-07/p034 ·1924-09-07 · English MediumMedium alignmentSome paragraph re-numbering between this translation and the German original — the locus may slip by a paragraph or two.
Record: unknown. How this text was taken down (shorthand transcript, listeners' notes or manuscript) is not on record here. Unknown is not an assurance of a stenogram: check the edition's own notes before resting an argument on one word.

There you have the exact opposite of the hexameter. Although the words have the form of a communication, we cannot speak them in the way of making a communication. For the speaker is not prompted by a desire to tell what he says; the other knows it already—he has himself done the ‘presenting’. The content of the verse shows us at once that we have here to do with an expression of feeling, that is then brought to rest. If you have something to communicate—well, that is something stable and settled; the feeling, where you tend to come into mobility, into unstable equilibrium, follows after. So you have:

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Cite: GA 282/1924-09-07/p034 · edition English