1. Echo

    Burnt Norton III · Line 32 · This is the one way

    The poem insists that the way of descent and the other way are the same, recalling the second Heraclitus epigraph: the way up and the way down are one and the same. Here the principle has become spiritual: detachment from the world is not a separate path from the world but the same road travelled with a different intention.

    Interpretive Ascent & descent

    Sources Heraclitus of Ephesus

    See also The two fragments of Heraclitus Descend lower: the dark night

Read in context

Sample text