PART THREE
The “didactic poem” of Parmenides of Elea,
6th–5th century1
“For present things are dear to humans.”
Hölderlin, “The Peregrination”2
§1. Introduction
a) On the text and the translation
First of all, brief comments on the “externals” of the text before us. The mimeograph is so arranged that the translation can be entered beside the text. The work has not been handed down in its entirety; the greater part, however, is indeed contained in the fragments. Whence do these derive? Various disparate sources. Nowhere a comprehensive overall plan transmitted; thus to be established out of the fragmentary material, initially found scattered and loose. The ordering of the fragments depends on the understanding of their content. The order on the mimeo is that of Hermann Diels; cf. the separate printing of 18973 and then included in Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, several editions since 1903.4 The number assigned to the various fragments is in each case placed above: D 1, D 2, etc. [D = Diels]. My arrangement is partially different; in each case it is to be inserted beside the Diels number.
The respective source is indicated beneath the numbering of the fragment.5 The fragments are precisely quotations, drawn from later authors: e.g., D 7 from Plato’s Sophist and Aristotle’s Metaphysics, D 3 from Proclus, Platonis Parmenides, D 6 from Simplicius, Aristotelis Physicorum, etc. For the larger fragments, every fifth line is numbered in the left margin.
I will first provide a translation. Then an initial commentary on the main concepts and propositions and accordingly a first understanding of the content; predelineation of the inner structure and glance at the development of the guiding questions.
1. The interpretation is insufficient, even if much is grasped essentially. {Trscpt2}
2. {Friedrich Hölderlin, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 4, Gedichte, compiled by N. von Hellingrath, 2nd. ed. Berlin: Propyläen, 1923, 170.}
3. {Parmenides Lehrgedicht. Griechisch und Deutsch von Hermann Diels. Mit einem Anhang über griechische Thüren und Schlösser. Berlin: Reimer, 1897.}
4. {1903; 1906; 1912; 1922.}
5. [These references to sources are not given.—Trans.]