In the story of Amina and Elvino in Bellini’s La Sonnambula, the sleepwalker reveals her true affection for jealous Elvino as she crosses a dangerous bridge. Ah! Trust and truth. Both seem to be difficult acquisitions for some. Elvino thinks Amina has betrayed him until he witnesses her sleepwalking profession of love as she crosses that bridge. Asleep, she reveals the truth of her love and gains his trust.
Apparent, but false guilt v. obscure, but true innocence: That is the juxtaposition of opposites in Bellini’s opera. The sleepwalking transforms one into the other. It “speaks,” “reveals,” even “creates” the truth out of that which is hidden.
If you read Heraclitus’ Fragments, you know that for that ancient philosopher the principle that underlies all existence is the Eternal Fire (Pyr Aeizoon), as he calls it. That “fire” is not just a fundamental physical element, as in one of the “Four Fundamental Elements” (Earth, Air, Fire, and Water), but an active process. And it, as in Bellini’s work, is Logos, the Word, speaking to us from a world we cannot consciously know.
In Heraclitus’ view, existence undergoes transformations just as you see transformations in and by flames. Eternal Fire asleep is the transformation into this world, and it returns to wakefulness in a realm beyond our senses. His famous analog is, ironically, not flames but flowing water. You can’t put your foot in the same river twice. Existence is in flux as the Eternal Fire cycles in transformations. Think of a big wheel rotating between knowing sleep and unknowing wakefulness, yin-yang-like, opposites not really opposing, but complementing. It’s a cycle that keeps the world going. Apparently, for Heraclitus, daily living and appearances prohibit us, as they prohibit Elvino in Bellini’s opera, from a full wakeful consciousness of truth in underlying reality.
In Fragment 50, the ancient philosopher writes, “all things are one.” Yes, right now, you are the Eternal Fire asleep, a Heraclitean transformation. You are a sleepwalker who like Amina reveals in your existence the deepest tie to transformation in and of the “Eternal Fire.”
If Logos operates through transformations, it is not an idea expressed by Heraclitus alone. There’s another work in which we can read of the transformation: John’s Gospel begins, “In the beginning was the Word…and the Word was God, and nothing was made that was not made through the Word.” Logos, transformation, and a juxtaposition of knowing and not knowing the truth: Will we, like Amina, reveal the truth only by crossing a dangerous bridge while we sleepwalk? Is every life a trip across a dangerous bridge?
What do you think? Are you a transformation of the “Eternal Fire”? As a sleepwalker ostensibly awake in this life do you reveal the essence of what you are at the most fundamental level, a being tied to the eternal cycle? Are you, as Heraclitus might phrase it, the God Asleep? Does Logos speak its truth through you, the current somnambulist of the transformation? Are you our connection to the truth of the Eternal Fire? Like Elvino I await on the other side of the bridge, listening to what you say in your sleepwalking.
Apparent, but false guilt v. obscure, but true innocence: That is the juxtaposition of opposites in Bellini’s opera. The sleepwalking transforms one into the other. It “speaks,” “reveals,” even “creates” the truth out of that which is hidden.
If you read Heraclitus’ Fragments, you know that for that ancient philosopher the principle that underlies all existence is the Eternal Fire (Pyr Aeizoon), as he calls it. That “fire” is not just a fundamental physical element, as in one of the “Four Fundamental Elements” (Earth, Air, Fire, and Water), but an active process. And it, as in Bellini’s work, is Logos, the Word, speaking to us from a world we cannot consciously know.
In Heraclitus’ view, existence undergoes transformations just as you see transformations in and by flames. Eternal Fire asleep is the transformation into this world, and it returns to wakefulness in a realm beyond our senses. His famous analog is, ironically, not flames but flowing water. You can’t put your foot in the same river twice. Existence is in flux as the Eternal Fire cycles in transformations. Think of a big wheel rotating between knowing sleep and unknowing wakefulness, yin-yang-like, opposites not really opposing, but complementing. It’s a cycle that keeps the world going. Apparently, for Heraclitus, daily living and appearances prohibit us, as they prohibit Elvino in Bellini’s opera, from a full wakeful consciousness of truth in underlying reality.
In Fragment 50, the ancient philosopher writes, “all things are one.” Yes, right now, you are the Eternal Fire asleep, a Heraclitean transformation. You are a sleepwalker who like Amina reveals in your existence the deepest tie to transformation in and of the “Eternal Fire.”
If Logos operates through transformations, it is not an idea expressed by Heraclitus alone. There’s another work in which we can read of the transformation: John’s Gospel begins, “In the beginning was the Word…and the Word was God, and nothing was made that was not made through the Word.” Logos, transformation, and a juxtaposition of knowing and not knowing the truth: Will we, like Amina, reveal the truth only by crossing a dangerous bridge while we sleepwalk? Is every life a trip across a dangerous bridge?
What do you think? Are you a transformation of the “Eternal Fire”? As a sleepwalker ostensibly awake in this life do you reveal the essence of what you are at the most fundamental level, a being tied to the eternal cycle? Are you, as Heraclitus might phrase it, the God Asleep? Does Logos speak its truth through you, the current somnambulist of the transformation? Are you our connection to the truth of the Eternal Fire? Like Elvino I await on the other side of the bridge, listening to what you say in your sleepwalking.
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