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Fragments (Penguin)

Page 2

by Heraclitus


  Despite good reasons to distrust the thinking of others, and to disapprove their actions, Heraclitus argues movingly for truths that any thinking person can understand:Since mindfulness, of all things,

  is the ground of being,

  to speak one’s true mind,

  and to keep things known

  in common, serves all being,

  just as laws made clear

  uphold the city . . .

  At this task of speaking his true mind, ancient and modern readers agree, Heraclitus is among the greatest writers of his language, comparable for the shapeliness and power of his style even to the finest writer of his lifetime, the first of the great playwrights, Aeschylus. This liveliness of style is all the more engaging because the life of Heraclitus is also remarkable. An early and abiding influence on Christian thought is famously transparent in the Heraclitean language that opens the Gospel According to John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The scientific purport of Heraclitus has remained startling and valuable for twenty-five hundred years, his social satire has kept its edge, and his contributions to philosophy, formative in his time, have been enduring.

  Ironically, the great writer keeps insisting upon the limits of his art as a way toward wisdom. He says, “To a god the wisdom of the wisest man sounds apish. Beauty in a human face looks apish too. In everything we have attained the excellence of apes.”

  This is funny, first of all, and very dark as its persuasiveness sinks in, but finally it reveals itself to be the lucid darkness of a truth that speakers of English at the present millennium are still privileged to consider. “To be evenminded is the greatest virtue,” Heraclitus still persuades us. “Wisdom is to speak the truth and act in keeping with its nature.”

  A Note on the Translation

  Naturally, I had read translations of Heraclitus in English before I did my own. The first was the excellent version Philip Wheelwright did in the 1950s. Later, Guy Davenport published another fine translation in the 1970s. As I worked, I referred to several versions, most closely to the Loeb Classical Library text, edited and translated by H. W. S. Jones, whose literal translation guided me through the Greek. Jones in his work followed the nineteenth-century text assembled by Ingram Bywater, using the subsequent scholarship of Jacob Bernays, Hermann Diels, and others. Scholarship on Heraclitus that has shaped my thinking includes work by Charles Burnet, G. S. Kirk, and Charles H. Kahn.

  The existing fragments of Heraclitus are divided into three types: supposedly direct quotations, reputed paraphrases, and commentaries. Since the accuracy of these sources can never be established, I have tried to make the most of what we have by tailoring paraphrase and commentary to fit stylistically with quotes. I chose this procedure for the sake of a reader’s sustained connection with my English version, confident that those misled by my approach can easily turn to the excellent scholarship available. My translation uses free verse to suggest the poetic ring of the original prose, which deserves to be called poetry as much as the metrical writings of thinkers like Empedocles and Parmenides.

  Aside from this general procedure, I have stayed close to literal paraphrase, wherever this seemed adequate, and where I have deviated, I have tried to explain my thinking in the notes at the end of this volume.

  FRAGMENTS

  The Collected Wisdom of HERACLITUS

  1

  The Word proves

  those first hearing it

  as numb to understanding

  as the ones who have not heard.

  Yet all things follow from the Word.

  Some, blundering

  with what I set before you,

  try in vain with empty talk

  to separate the essences of things

  and say how each thing truly is.

  And all the rest make no attempt.

  They no more see

  how they behave broad waking

  than remember clearly

  what they did asleep.

  2

  For wisdom, listen

  not to me but to the Word,

  and know that all is one.

  3

  Those unmindful when they hear,

  for all they make of their intelligence,

  may be regarded as the walking dead.

  4

  People dull their wits with gibberish,

  and cannot use their ears and eyes.

  5

  Many fail to grasp what they have seen,

  and cannot judge what they have learned,

  although they tell themselves they know.

  6

  Yet they lack the skill

  to listen or to speak.

  7

  Whoever cannot seek

  the unforeseen sees nothing,

  for the known way

  is an impasse.

  8

  Men dig tons of earth

  to find an ounce of gold.

  9

  See note.

  10

  Things keep their secrets.

  11

  Yet without obscurity

  or needless explanation

  the true prophet signifies.

  12

  The prophet’s voice possessed of god

  requires no ornament, no sweetening of tone,

  but carries over a thousand years.

  13

  The eye, the ear,

  the mind in action,

  these I value.

  14

  Now that we can travel anywhere,

  we need no longer take the poets

  and myth-makers for sure witnesses

  about disputed facts.

  15

  What eyes witness,

  ears believe on hearsay.

  16

  If learning were a path of wisdom,

  those most learned about myth

  would not believe, with Hesiod,

  that Pallas in her wisdom gloats

  over the noise of battle.

  17

  Pythagoras may well have been

  the deepest in his learning of all men.

  And still he claimed to recollect

  details of former lives,

  being in one a cucumber

  and one time a sardine.

  18

  Of all the words yet spoken,

  none comes quite as far as wisdom,

  which is the action of the mind

  beyond all things that may be said.

  19

  Wisdom is the oneness

  of mind that guides

  and permeates all things.

  20

  That which always was,

  and is, and will be everliving fire,

  the same for all, the cosmos,

  made neither by god nor man,

  replenishes in measure

  as it burns away.

  21

  Fire in its ways of changing

  is a sea transfigured

  between forks of lightning

  and the solid earth.

  22

  As all things change to fire,

  and fire exhausted

  falls back into things,

  the crops are sold

  for money spent on food.

  23

  The earth is melted

  into the sea

  by that same reckoning

  whereby the sea

  sinks into the earth.

  24

  Hunger, even

  in the elements,

  and insolence.

  25

  Air dies giving birth

  to fire. Fire dies

  giving birth to air. Water,

  thus, is born of dying

  earth, and earth of water.

  26

  Fire of all things

  is the judge and ravisher.

  27

  How, from a fire

  that never sinks

  or sets,

>   would you escape?

  28

  One thunderbolt strikes

  root through everything.

  29

  No being, not the sun

  itself, exceeds due measure,

  but contending powers

  set things right.

  30

  Dawn turns to dusk

  around the pivot

  of the North.

  Southward lies

  the zone

  of greater light.

  31

  Without the sun,

  what day? What night?

  32

  The sun is new

  again, all day.

  33

  The mind of Thales

  saw in forethought—

  clearly as in heaven—

  the eclipse.

  34

  The sun, timekeeper

  of the day and season,

  oversees all things.

  35

  Many who have learned

  from Hesiod the countless names

  of gods and monsters

  never understand

  that night and day are one.

  36

  By cosmic rule,

  as day yields night,

  so winter summer,

  war peace, plenty famine.

  All things change.

  Fire penetrates the lump

  of myrrh, until the joining

  bodies die and rise again

  in smoke called incense.

  37

  If everything

  were turned to smoke,

  the nose would

  be the seat of judgment.

  38

  Thus in the abysmal dark

  the soul is known by scent.

  39

  What was cold soon warms,

  and warmth soon cools.

  So moisture dries,

  and dry things drown.

  40

  What was scattered

  gathers.

  What was gathered

  blows apart.

  41

  The river

  where you set

  your foot just now

  is gone—

  those waters

  giving way to this,

  now this.

  42

  Omitted, see note.

  43

  The poet was a fool

  who wanted no conflict

  among us, gods

  or people.

  Harmony needs

  low and high,

  as progeny needs

  man and woman.

  44

  War, as father

  of all things, and king,

  names few

  to serve as gods,

  and of the rest makes

  these men slaves,

  those free.

  45

  The mind, to think of the accord

  that strains against itself,

  needs strength, as does the arm

  to string the bow or lyre.

  46

  From the strain

  of binding opposites

  comes harmony.

  47

  The harmony past knowing sounds

  more deeply than the known.

  48

  Yet let’s not make

  rash guesses

  our most lucid thoughts.

  49

  Seekers of wisdom first

  need sound intelligence.

  50

  Under the comb

  the tangle and the straight path

  are the same.

  51

  An ass prefers a bed of litter

  to a golden throne.

  53

  Sues coeno, cohortales aves pulvere (vel

  cinere) lavari.

  54

  Omitted as repetition of 53.

  52

  The sea is both pure

  and tainted, healthy

  and good haven to the fish,

  to men impotable and deadly.

  53

  Poultry bathe

  in dust and ashes,

  swine in filth.

  55

  Hungry livestock,

  though in sight of pasture,

  need the prod.

  56

  The cosmos works

  by harmony of tensions,

  like the lyre and bow.

  57

  Therefore, good

  and ill are one.

  58

  Good and ill to the physician

  surely must be one,

  since he derives his fee

  from torturing the sick.

  59

  Two made one are never one.

  Arguing the same we disagree.

  Singing together we compete.

  We choose each other

  to be one, and from the one

  both soon diverge.

  60

  Without injustices,

  the name of justice

  would mean what?

  61

  While cosmic wisdom

  understands all things

  are good and just,

  intelligence may find

  injustice here, and justice

  somewhere else.

  62

  Justice in our minds is strife.

  We cannot help but see

  war makes us as we are.

  63

  Thus are things decreed by fate.

  64

  Though what the waking see is deadly,

  what the sleeping see is death.

  65

  The oneness of all wisdom

  may be found, or not,

  under the name of God.

  66

  The living, when the dead

  wood of the bow

  springs back to life, must die.

  67

  Gods live past our meager death.

  We die past their ceaseless living.

  68

  As souls change into water

  on their way through death,

  so water changes into earth.

  And as water springs from earth,

  so from water does the soul.

  69

  The way up is the way back.

  70

  The beginning is the end.

  71

  The soul is undiscovered,

  though explored forever

  to a depth beyond report.

  72

  Moisture makes the soul

  succumb to joy.

  73

 

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