ŷ������

Obviously 5 stars for Heraclitus's fragments, but this translation is complete garbage and should not be read by anyone. Haxton is a terrible poet and a terrible translator; he adds lines that do not exist in Heraclitus, apparently does not own a Greek-English lexicon, etc.

Fragment 80, Ἐδιζησαόμη�� εμεωυτοόν, would be translated by any sane person as "I have sought myself," "I explored myself," "I sought to know myself," "I have inquired of myself," etc., which obviously refers to the Oracle at Delphi, an important bit of context for Heraclitus's life.

Haxton translates fragment 80 as "Applicants for wisdom / do what I have done: / inquire within." Yes, that's right, he just makes up a terrible short poem, including a cliché ('inquire within') -- it's always a great idea to include clichés in poetry, I've found -- and refers to it as a translation of Heraclitus. Apparently Heraclitus is a third-rate twentieth-century beat poet?

Or take fragment 89, again quite straightforward: "Ex homine in tricennio potest avus haberi." This could not be less complicated to translate: "A man could be a grandfather in thirty years." That's it. But no, Haxton comes up with: "Look: the baby born / under the new moon / under the old moon holds / her grandchild in her arms." THIS IS NOT WHAT HERACLITUS WROTE, FFS

Probably the most annoying translation choice, to me, is fragment 10, Φύσις κρύπτεσθαι φιλε��, which is one of the foundational ideas of Western philosophy ("nature loves to hide") and has been written about many, many times by many intelligent commentators. Now, to be fair, Haxton at least avoids literally making up lines that don't exist in the Greek text, which is a step forward, but he translates this as "things keep their secrets."

Holy moly, Φύσις IS NOT "things." Phusis is nature; I don't even hate "Nature keeps its secrets," which is trite and awkward but at least technically correct; but "things"? Things would be a reasonably good translation of πράγματα, I guess? But Heraclitus most emphatically did not write πράγματα. The chair that I'm sitting on does not keep its secrets; it is an artifact! (I strongly doubt that Haxton is aware of this, but you can argue that Ionian philosophers used phusis to refer to "all natural things," and possibly, if you're going way out on a limb, "all things," but even there, phusis was opposed to nomos, and I just don't see how you can justify "things" as a translation in this particular case.)

In short, stick with Kirk and Raven.