Poem LXII: For the President: my notes on Heinrich Blücher's Heraclitus lecture

"Today I wish to speak of Heraclitus of Ephesus and I am trembling."

 Heinrich Blücher

His fellow Greeks, his fellow citizens of Ephesus

did not merely put him to death--

they killed him thus:

drove him into the temple of Diana.

    No one could murder him in that district

    but neither could anyone bring him food

so he starved

in the perfect knowledge

that Homer was wrong about everything.

 MYTHOS    > LOGOS

a cold-blooded logos 

 ironclad law of necessity--the philosopher

must regard the world without belief

That is, let fire persuade you
or not,

 it will burn you

and everything is made of fire.

One can't pray to this logos: that would be nonsense

one can only follow it

 straight

to the temple

 of Diana

"He created, like the philosophers that preceded him, a view of the cosmos as a well ordered universe, but in such a way that there was not a bit of consistency in it,

and his fellow Greeks just hated that view."

What then?


Logic makes only sense; logic has no meaning.



Therefore we must play.

taken at the lecture
Heraclitus and the Metaphysical Tradition
delivered May 10, 1967
Bard College