... a scale is the most simple converter, the purest, the figure itself of any risk-taking. Heidegger says so himself in relation to Rilke in one of his most beautiful texts: Why poets? To posit an alternative is first and foremost to take a risk... However, to risk oneself, to be in danger, is to be undecided [c’est être en balance, in der Wage.] ‘In the Middle Ages, the word Wage [balance] still meant something almost like danger [Gefahr]. To be in the balance means to be in a situation that can turn out in one way or the other. That is why the instrument that moves [bewegt] like this, by dipping one way or the other is called the balance [die Wage]. It liberates; it plays about the beam and plays itself out. The word Wage [balance] in the sense of danger and as the name of the instrument is derived from wägen, wegen: to make a way [Weg], that is, to go, to be going. Be-wägen means get something under way, to get it going: wiegen [to sway or weigh].’1