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.
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