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    Burnt Norton · The whole quartet

    Burnt Norton opens under two fragments of the Greek philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus (fl. c. 500 BCE), printed in Greek from Hermann Diels’s standard edition. In our own rough English:

    • Though the logos is common to all, most people live as though they had a wisdom of their own. (fragment 2)
    • The way up and the way down are one and the same. (fragment 60)

    The first sets a public, shared order against private understanding; the second states a unity of opposites that the whole sequence will act out — descent into darkness as the path upward, the end in the beginning. Heraclitus is also the philosopher of flux (everything flows), which gives the sequence its tension between the turning world and the still point.

    Established Ascent & descent Word & silence

    Sources Heraclitus of Ephesus Diels 1903, 22 B2, B60

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