Three fragments · four languages
Ἡράκλειτος
A short anthology from Heraclitus of Ephesus (fl. c. 500 BCE), set in parallel — the original Greek, an English translation, and a Chinese version. Greek sits upright in GFS Didot; English leans in Cormorant Garamond italic; Chinese stands in Noto Serif SC.
B 49a · on the river
Greek · GFS Didot
Ποταμοῖσι τοῖσιν αὐτοῖσιν ἐμβαίνομέν τε καὶ οὐκ ἐμβαίνομεν· εἰμέν τε καὶ οὐκ εἰμέν.
Diels-Kranz B49aEnglish · Cormorant
Into the same rivers we step and do not step; we are and are not.
trans. Kahn · adapted中文 · Noto Serif SC
我们踏进又不踏进同一条河流；我们存在，又不存在。
译 · 罗宾逊本The grammar is stranger in Greek than translation can quite carry. ἐμβαίνομεν is the plural "we step into," and οὐκ ἐμβαίνομεν follows as flatly as if the river were the only thing changing — but the second clause, εἰμέν τε καὶ οὐκ εἰμέν, is already about us. The subject of the fragment is not the river; it is what we have in common with the river.
B 41 · on the one wisdom
Greek · GFS Didot
Ἓν τὸ σοφόν· ἐπίστασθαι γνώμην ὁτέη ἐκυβέρνησε πάντα διὰ πάντων.
Diels-Kranz B41English · Cormorant
Wisdom is one thing: to know the thought by which all things are steered through all things.
trans. after Kirk中文 · Noto Serif SC
智者唯一：识得那引万物穿行万物的思想。
译 · 作者The phrase διὰ πάντων — "through all things" — is the hinge. It says the governing thought is not above the world or outside it; it is the intelligibility of things passing into other things. A cosmology, at one line's length.
B 30 · on the cosmos
Greek · GFS Didot
Κόσμον τόνδε, τὸν αὐτὸν ἁπάντων, οὔτε τις θεῶν οὔτε ἀνθρώπων ἐποίησεν, ἀλλ' ἦν ἀεὶ καὶ ἔστιν καὶ ἔσται πῦρ ἀείζωον, ἁπτόμενον μέτρα καὶ ἀποσβεννύμενον μέτρα.
Diels-Kranz B30English · Cormorant
This world-order, the same for all, was made neither by a god nor by a mortal — it has always been and is and will be: an ever-living fire, kindling by measure, going out by measure.
trans. adapted · Kahn & Robinson中文 · Noto Serif SC
这世界的秩序，对一切而言同一，既非神所造，亦非人所立；它一直在，如今在，将来在——一团常活之火，按其节度燃起，按其节度熄灭。
译 · 作者The refrain μέτρα — "by measure" — appears twice in a line. It is the earliest surviving use of the word in this technical sense: the cosmos is not chaos with a pattern over it, but a pattern as activity. Measure is what doing-the-cosmos looks like. Typography, for what it is worth, inherits the word.