stays caught in an insidious ambiguity against which the individual is helpless.
"χρὴ τὸ λέγειν τε νοεῖν τ’ἐὸν ἔμμεναι"
We speak and hear the saying paratactically, but still in the usual translation:
"Needful: the saying also thinking too: being: to be."
But we certainly do not take para tactic to mean not-yet syntactic. Nor do we rank it as primitive. We keep it clear of any comparison with the speech of children and of primitive peoples. We also leave the question open whether, when a child says nothing but "moon" at the sight of the moon, or responds to the sight of the moon with a word he has made up himself—whether there is not at work here, for a short moment, a speech far more primary than in the most exquisitely wrought sentence of the man of letters. Is this a reason to elevate the speech and art of children to the principle of a new form of speech, and a new art form? No. Such propositions stem from abstract considerations, and are the exact counterpart of the fabrications of the age of technology, which are something else again than the essence of technology.
We call the word order of the saying paratactic in the widest sense simply because we do not know what else to do. For the saying speaks where there are no words? in the field between the words which the colons indicate.
Parmenides' language is the language of a thinking; it is that thinking itself. Therefore, it also speaks differently from the still older poetry of Homer.
We shall now follow Parmenides' saying word for word, without taking the view that it is merely a sequence of words.
χρή comes from the verb χράω, χρῆσθαι. The word derives from ἡ χείρ, the hand; χράω, χράομαι means: I handle