Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Sharing a world



A bit of incontrovertible wisdom from Herakleitos, in Guy Davenport's rendering: "We share a world when we are awake; each sleeper is in a world of his own."

Couldn't we equally well say, though, that the opposite is (also) true, that in sleep we return to what is common to all, but that in the light of day we must, each of us, live out our own solitude?

1 comment:

Michael Leddy said...

Herakleitos could probably see it both ways.

I have (or had) a book somewhere, or my wife does (or did), Contradictory Quotations . Wish I could find it now.