ARTUR PRZYBYSLAWSKI THE BOW OF HERACLITUS: A REFLECTION ON THE LANGUAGES OF BECOMING a Declination of the Greek name ‘Hermes’ combines feminine and masculine endings. It seems not accidental since Hermes was a hermaphrodite. The grammar is the embodiment of mythology, or even the god himself. The only thing necessary to understand the name of Hermes is its declination. Hence the reference to mythology, the reference to Hermes himself, is not needed here. Can we say that Greek Jogos was mere language of description of reality? It was not a set of labels attachable to things. Logos was rather self-sufficient, it had its own wisdom --wisdom present in its texture. The status of language becomes even more enigmatic when we enter the world of Heraclitus. Heraclitean Becoming disrupts the traditional referentiality of language. Becoming remains unnameable because the name always requires something that exists, a stable correlate and nothing like that is to be found in the Heraclitean cos- mos. It is worth noticing that the word ‘Becoming’ does not appear in Heraclitean fragments. It is the invention of commentators. It is impossible to speak about Becoming because in fact there is nothing to speak about. Becoming neither is nor is not. Yet Heraclitus speaks. To give justice to his experience of Becoming, he should be silent, or he must conscious of the paradox of his situation, perfectly aware of the contradictions he is telling, and turn the paradox into subtle strategy. As it is impossible to overlook contradictions in the discourse of Heraclitus, the real Heraclitean riddle is the status of his discourse, the status of Jogos. To call something by its name seems very simple. You can keep it in your hand to be sure that its name is valid. Taking the bow, Greek would say ‘foxon.’ There is no contradiction in the bow. Bow exists and its name can be supported by the thing that is self-identical. But according to Heraclitus, this is half-truth only. He says: ‘They do not comprehend how a thing agrees at variance with itself; it is an attunement turning back on itself, like that of bow (‘oxon) and the lyre. (DK $1) Hence the bow not only agrees with itself, but it is at variance with itself. And as different from itself it lacks identity, so we cannot say that it exists. To name the bow is to affirm the fact that it agrees with itself; it is to confirm its existence, to give it life: ‘The name of the bow is life.... (DK 48) ie A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), The Passions of the Soul in the Metamorphosis of Becoming, 155-60. © 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers, Printed in the Netherlands.156 ARTUR PRZYBYSLAWSKI One has to remember that because of Becoming, despite the affirmation expressed by the name, the bow does not exist, indeed. Such a discovery is to be made by every archer stretching the bow. This is the moment when the bow is at variance with itself It stops agreeing with itself because the bow that is stretched and the one that is not, Heraclitus would certainly say so, no longer remain the same bow. There are two different bows at variance with each other. All the more, when you use the bow (affirming its existence), its destruction is at stake because the string can be broken. The existence of the bow, its identity, requires its usage. But that usage changes the bow into something different and that usage contains the possibility of its damage, its destruction The name ofthe bow isi; is work is death. (DK 48) The functioning of the bow falsifies its self'same identity, and yet at the same ‘moment the bow establishes itself in shooting. The work of the bow is death, but that death is its own death. The bow is sef-contradiction, is an attunement turning back on itself, like thet in fragment DK 51 AAs Gilles Deleuze puts it: “Heraclitus expresses two thoughts, which are like ciphers: the first, that there is no being, everything becomes; the second, that being is being of Becoming as such."! He expresses them atthe same moment. And that is wy there are no traditional names in Heraclitus, because traditional names affirm. only one side of reality, being, and ignore that it is the being of becoming, which in fact destroys that same being. Traditional names show only the less important side of reality, which is forced by naming, Traditional names cover becoming, attempting ls the referentiality of language into question, ‘making the claim th dubious because there is no stable object to be expressed in words. When the referentility is disrupted, one must be silent, despite the will to speak about reality. This silence now speaks to the inability of language to express reality. Language can give up extralinguistic claims, and concentrate on itself. It stays within itself So the Jogos of fragment DK 48 announces the death ofthe traditional name. The work of the name in Heraclitus is death, its own death, Language does not speak about reality. Itis silent. As Heraclitus says: “I is wise, listening not to me but to the Jogos, to agree that all things are one” (DK 50). Because there is no difference between language and reality, there is nothing to refer to. There is only Jogos, one alone in the face of Becoming, that celebrates its nonexistence within the cextralinguistic field. Only a small difference of accent, not written in the time of Heraclitus decided that the word “bias” was understood either as bow or as life. That word is ambiguous not by mereichenoc, At\fwstisiett. the) arsbicuity i miter ‘stanecieest eee combines opposite meanings. But ‘bias’ means life, that is particular, conerete, individual existence, ic life that is finite, in which death is implied, So bios is not the exact opposition of death. That opposition is dzoe, the infinite life of Greek IE BOW OF HERACLITUS, THE LANGUAGE OF BECOMING 157 gods.’ So it is obvious that “bias’ as finite life has to be ambiguous in that way. There is no bios without death, Once again we see the mythological logic of the Greek language. And the only thing Heraclitus does isto point at it; he makes it manifest. It is as ifhe says: Look, the word ‘bios’ is ambiguous. From that moment on, the only speaker is language itself, language that is the embodiment of Greek experience. Heraclitus i silent, /ogos speaks, Hence we can say that Heraclitus does not want to be the author of the fragment “listening not to me but to the logos..” (DK 50). The only author now is oges itselt? Fragment DK 48 isthe shortest treatise on philosophy of language derived from the assumption of universal Becoming. It is because of the ambiguity of the word “bios" that we can see the ambiguous status of the name in general, the name tha, supposing referentialty, is not able, so to speak, to hit its corelate, the name that slides into the emptiness-nonexistence-death symbolized by the bow. The name postulates existence-life ofthe named, bat it can not be reassured by Becoming that negates all permanence, by Becoming that is like death, The name ofthe bow is ie its work is death (DK 48) ‘The ontological status of the bow is put in question, so the only thing that can be ‘expressed now is the doubt concerning the validity of its name. The only thing fragment DK 48 can speak about is naming and its impossibility. As Paul de Man says: “All language is language about denomination, that is, a conceptual, figural, ‘metaphorical metalanguage.” Since language does not speak about reality, it can speak only about itself, because there is nothing except it. And itis not Heraclitus ‘who speaks about language. It is the metalinguistic feature of language that ‘manifests itself in the word “bios.” ‘There is no correspondence between name and the named. The order of names and the order of the named are in fact divergent, since the name expresses something completely opposite to the named. Death is called life. Becoming is tumed into being, So fragment DK 48 speaks about naming and its failure, ‘The fragment, however, seems to maintain the validity of naming at the same time. Moreover, it mentions the name that is to denote the bow in a proper way. The name of the bow is ‘bios.’ But itis not the name in the traditional sense because, as it is clear now, it does not point beyond itself. And it does not need to do that ‘because the contradiction known to the archer is placed in the very word ‘bios.” The ambiguous word “bios,” maintaining life and death at the same time, presents or ‘embodies that attunement turning back on itself that is found in the bow existing in so far as it negates its own existence. ‘Bios’ is the name of the bow, but not because it refers to it perfectly. It is the name of the bow because it has the structure of the bow, because it is the very bow, and that is why it does not need extralinguistic referent. There is no difference between bow and its name, Heraclitean Jogos is language and reality at the same time (cf. DK 50). The interplay of death and life in ‘the word ‘bios’ isthe same interplay of variance and agreement in the bow. There is no need to search for something behind the language, to pass the words through. ‘And as the bow establishes itself in the usage that is the negation of itself, so ‘bios’ confirms itself as a word entailing self contradiction,158 ARTUR PRZYBYSLAWSKI Hence logos does not speak about reality and does not need to. Isn't that silence more striking than traditional referential language? Language as it's own meta. juage is silent very loud way Die grcehische Space, and si alli, ist logos. Wir werden in unseren Gespricen davon Engen hae sin Far en Bein gene der Hie, da in gcse Space da Sir'Gesngis aa ine ageseicge Wee nglesh das was ds Gesagte neon. Wenn wit ‘cchishe Wor pace hore, am gn mi seine eer sie anita Dales, Wg Gaon ot das Vniegende Wir sind uch is gach gehrte Wort unmitbar be der yo iegendon Sache selbst nicht anaes bei ce ben Worbedeung mL Bios from DK 48 is a harmony of opposites. It is grasping “convergent divergent” (DK 10). Bios is the very grasping of life and death, and itis also the mark of the split, the difference between them. It isthe point of coincidence of the opposites that are united in it. Bios explodes with opposites to gather them in one, to unite them at the same time. Bios is the blind point ofthe fragment in question, the point deprived of meaning (since that meaning is contradictory), the point that makes that fragment possible and at the same time the point that is noticeable because of the contes Bios shows the direction for understanding the possibility of an attunement turning. back on itself. And the most important is how it is possible, It is possible when the word “bias” is silent from behind the opposite meanings. The word *bios’ is the manifestation of the unnameable Becoming. ‘Bias’ does not express Becoming, does not refer to it. Rather, bios is the very Becoming in language. Bios is the birth and death of Becoming, the difference between them that unites them. If we treat “bios’ as the name of Becoming, we have to remember that such a name could appear only on the condition that Heraclitus had abandoned the position of describing reality, since it is Becoming. Bios does not represent, does not refer to something beyond itself. Bios remains within the Jogos, and marks the split, the contradiction of becoming, Derrida says in “L’aphorisme contretemps” that aphorism is @ name, that aphorism divides, marks the separation. Fragment DK 48 is such an aphorism, such ‘a name. That name is ‘bios.’ It is not only an explanation of that name, This aphorism speaks about naming in general, and ‘bias’ in Heraclitus is the paradigm of the name. The fragment in question shows the mechanism of naming, the only naming that is possible, if only we accept Becoming, naming, that does not need the named, ie, naming satisfied with itself. Aphorism is a name indeed, but here that name is the name of name. Vv. “the tension between grammar and rhetoric. Paul de Man, Allegories of Reading If we read DK 48 in the original we can notice the lack of the word ‘is.’ But this word is present in our reading, We add it, presuppose it, though Heraclitus omits ‘THE BOW OF HERACLITUS, THE LANGUAGE OF BECOMING 159 that word. The grammar lets us think about it as an implied supplement to be provided by the reader: ‘The mame of the bow ie its work - death (DK 48). Can we really make that small addition and read The mame ofthe bow isi; its work is death (DK 48)? (On the one hand, we can agree that the best name forthe bow is “bios,” since itis ambiguous or even contradictory, and does not need an extemal correlate. The language appropriates becoming, and only in that way can it do justice to universal flux. But since reality always becomes, how can we speak about names at all? There is no reality, so there are no names, there is only logos. Nothing can be named, 50 bios is not the name. There is no difference between logos and reality. Hence the lack of the word *is' does not compel us to think about it as an obvious and! imy supplement. Conversely, we have even to say thatthe name of the bow is not “bis.” However we can not stop here, ‘The grammar of that sentence allows us to omit the word ‘is’ as something self- evident. But because of rhetoric that fragment can be interpreted in the way exactly ‘opposite to the grammatical intention shown above. Grammar supposes that the reader will add the missing word. But rhetoric does not allow us to treat that lack in such a simple way. That omission of the word means that its addition is probably forbidden, The omission means that the word could not appear in that place. So maybe it is better to add the negation of the word implied by the grammar? As Paul de Man says, “It’s possible, within a text, to frame a question or to undo assertions ‘made in the text by means of elements which are in the text, which frequently would be precisely structures that play off rhetorical against grammatical elements." But to add ‘is not,’ instead of “is,” is equally dubious. Because again we can say that if the words ‘is not’ are missing, we are not allowed to add it. The point is that these two interpretations have equal rights, and can be justified within the text of the Heracltean fragments. This equality is the evidence of ireducible tension between ‘grammar and rhetoric, which is more apparent when we call the referential model into question. Fragment DK 48 allows for contradictory readings and does not offer any definite interpretation. It is suspended between ‘is’ and ‘is not,” senseless words in the world of Becoming (maybe that is why they are missing), And within that 1ce of the /ogos we can try to hear the sound of the river that does not exist. Nore T Gilles Deleuze, Nietache ela philsophe, Pais: Presses Universities de France, 1962p. 43 2 CE, Kerenyi, Diomsas. Urbid des unzersirbaren Lebens, Suga: Klet-Cott, 1994, “Intro: duction.” NB, the names of Dionysos and Zeus drive fiom doe” Site status of los, Charles Hi. Kaho, The art and thought of Heraclitus, Cambridge UK; Cambridge University Press 1979, chapter "On reading Heraci.” paul de Man, dllegores of Reading, Figural language in Rousseau, Netache, Rilke, and Prout, New Haven: Yale Univesity Press 1979, pp 1523.160 ARTUR PRZYBYSLAWSKI ee eee 5 Martin Heidegger, Was ist das die Philosophie?, Pfullingen: Neske 1986, p. 18. ‘ Robert Moynihan, “Interview with Paul de Man,” The Yale Review 73:4 (Summer 1984), P. 599. bias Se aa iro