An Anthology of Czechoslovak Literature/Pythagoras

Pythagoras

O YOUTH from Syracuse, tired of the world,
But yet unsated, yearnest to join our circle,—
What, seekest thou wisdom? We possess it not.
Nor is there any mortal doth possess it.
We do but call ourselves the friends of it.
And truth thou yearnest for? There is none, boy.
Thyself appearest now to be another
Than thou wert once. Thou in another body,
Another age, another zone of earth,
Didst live, another mortal,—but from then
Faint inklings surely sometimes flash upon thee:
Thou seest a strange land thou hast trod of old;
Some thought that thou didst think in another life.

There only is one mighty harmony
Of spheres, fates, things. Which only for a flash
Appears to thee, or may be heard by thee,
But cannot lastingly be seized upon;
And then, boy, there is certainty of numbers.
And lines and shapes. This can be given thee.
And such a gift is no small thing in life:
A firm point whereon a man may lean,
When thoughts and systems crumble into naught,
And a safe anchorage for thine own soul. . . .

Number’s the soul of things, for it doth live
As tree and stone, air and the river’s tide.

Into this world we’ll lead thee. But thou must
In the old world leave your old self. The path
Towards us is burdensome. Thou needs must oft
Be silent, worth of speech to learn; thou must
Renounce life’s joys, that joys thou canst attain;
All things must thou reject which have been thine,
That thou mayst value what things are vouchsafed thee.

And to thee is vouchsafed but certainty,
The soul of numbers, harmony of shapes,
No name, no glory.
Once there dwelt with us
Hippasos, a stripling of thy build and years,
With thirsting spirit. Hippasos discovered
One new tone ‘mid the harmony of things,
Known as the twelve-fold. He, drunken with pride,
Proclaimed his find, giving it his own name.
And then it was I flung him from the crag
Into the sea. For the new life he betrayed
And the soul’s thirst would have assuaged with glory. . .

Consider all, O youth from Syracuse.
And if there tremble weakness in your soul,
Withdraw betimes. When the snake sheds its slough
’Tis dazed with pangs and sufferings, the which
As touching harmony of fates, O youth,
Shall befall thee. Depart from Kroton city
Homeward, and from the maids of Syracuse
Take to thyself a wife, get children, live
As lives the human herd.
Or else remain―
And living, thou shalt vanish from among
Memory of the living, and shalt be
Only a tone amid the harmony
Which sounds and wanes that it may sound anew. . . .
In the Gleam of Hellenic Sun (1906)

This work is a translation and has a separate copyright status to the applicable copyright protections of the original content.

Original:

This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1930.

The longest-living author of this work died in 1942, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 82 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.

Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse

Translation:

This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1930.

The longest-living author of this work died in 1970, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 54 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.

Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse