Eminescu and the Heraclitean Cycle

Eminescu’s Re-Masculization of Becoming in “La Steau”

Since the age of Goethe, with its cabalistic influences stemming back to the Italian Renaissance, Western philosophy, literature, and science have mistaken the Heraclitean primacy of becoming — rather than being, in the Platonic sense — as some kind of chthonic worldview. Usually the concept of becoming and has-become is portrayed as organic. In the 20th century, Oswald Spengler summarized this Goethean orientation, while Julius Evola attacked it, but neither challenged the assumption itself.

Heraclitus was actually the most radically celestial of all the Classics. His concept of fire-as-logos refers to astral fire, and not, as has been assumed time and time again, to earth-bound fire. Evidently his aim was to restore the primeval Indo-European fire-worship, which he believed had been lost in Greek literature and philosophy.

In the Heraclitean cycle, fire is the primordial first element.  The death of fire is air, which indicates that Heraclitus had celestial fire in mind.  The death of fire is water, and the death of water is earth.  The earth will die by fire, which will usher in a new cosmic cycle. 

“La steaua” is one of Eminescu’s most concise and original poems.  It reorients the entire Heraclitean vision of European Romanticism back to a celestial, rather than chthonic, view of life.  The idea of becoming is re-masculinized—that is, reoriented toward the heavens.

Rather than the clichéd feminine and organic symbol of most Romantic poetry, life is pictured in “La Steaua” as the death of celestial fire.  The original intent of Heraclitus is restored.  Quite an achievement, for only four short stanzas.

UNTO THE STAR

Translated by Adrian G. Sahlean

'Tis such a long way to the star

Rising above our shore

It took its light to come so far

Thousands of years and more.

It may have long died on its way

Into the distant blue

And only now appears its ray

To shine for us as true.

We see its icon slowly rise

And climb the canopy;

It lived when still unknown to eyes,

We see what ceased to be.

And so it is when yearning love

Dies into depth of night:

Extinct its flame, still glows above

And haunts us with its light.

TO THE STAR

Translated by Corneliu M. Popescu

So far it is athwart the blue

To where yon star appears,

That for its light to reach our view

Has needed thousand years.

Maybe that ages gone it shed

Its glow, then languished in the skies,

Yet only now its rays have sped

Their journey to our eyes.

The icon of the star that died

Slowly the vault ascended;

Time was ere it could first be spied,

We see now what is ended.

So is it when our love's aspire

Is hid beneath night's bowl,

The gleam of its extinguished fire

Enkindles yet our soul.

TO THE STAR

(Uncredited Translation)

The radiance from that new-born star

Will take many thousands of years

To travel a path that comes so far

To finally reach our eyes.

Perhaps it died while on its way

Through infinite blue space,

Yet only now does its light stray

To shine upon your face.

Slowly climbing the dark skies

Is the dead star's icon:

Invisible when it did exist,

Today, we see an illusion.

And so it is when passion's fled

Lost in the depths of night,

The light of our love, now dead,

Still haunts us in its flight.

TO THE STAR

(Another Uncredited Translation)

Look, that star that's shining

up there, so far away;

Her light has traveled eons

to meet our eye today.

Perhaps she even perished

a long, long time ago;

only her light but now

did cross the way we go.

The icon of this now dead star

slow in the sky it rises.

She was, while we could not her see.

Now that we see, she's vanished.

So, just alike, when feelings faded,

prey to the grinding wheels of time,

the spectre of our weathered love

is doomed to haunt us for a while.