Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

"Empedocles' Physics" by Jane Hirshfield engages with the fundamental tension between unity and diversity, love and hate, chaos and order. The poem begins with an epigraph from Dante's "Inferno," a moment that suggests the universe itself could feel love and that this love can lead to chaos. The inclusion of Dante's lines immediately imbues the poem with gravitas, grounding Hirshfield's exploration of Empedocles' ancient philosophy within a literary tradition concerned with the balance of forces that create and destroy.

Empedocles, an ancient Greek philosopher, posited that love and hate are the two primal forces shaping the world. Love unifies, while hate diversifies. The poem further solidifies this theoretical grounding by making a parallel to a Vedic teaching, "Aversion carves the self," thereby universalizing the tension between unity and division as a fundamental aspect of human existence.

Hirshfield illustrates this tension through the anecdote of enemy soldiers in World War I who, upon sharing Christmas carols across the battlefields, found themselves unable to return to their roles as enemies. Love-or at least shared humanity-had disarmed them, turning the world "to chaos." This vignette acts as a microcosm for the universal forces of love and hate. The soldiers' caroling is a fissure in the ordered hate of warfare, a momentary chaos that throws the system out of balance. The impossibility of returning to their former places suggests that, once chaos is introduced, it is irretrievable and transformative.

The poem then shifts to consider the implications of living in a divided world. It questions the division of life into categorically separate entities-like worms and birds, the sea-lion's fat and fox's blood. The images here are visceral, almost discomfiting, illustrating the brutal separateness that defines earthly existence.

In its final stanzas, the poem presents a dilemma: to choose unity and love, which risks the "sheered disorder" and loss of self, or to choose division and hate, which keeps us "faceted" in our individual complexities. Here, Hirshfield presents the tension as irresolvable but also beautiful. She suggests that our divided, chaotic world is a place of "blossoming strife," where cells divide into new life, and the "too-bright stream" of existence flows unceasingly.

Overall, "Empedocles' Physics" is a layered, philosophically dense poem that navigates the complex relationship between unity and division, love and hate. Hirshfield's skillful weaving of philosophical thought, historical example, and lyrical language makes this poem a profound exploration of what it means to exist within the tension of conflicting universal forces.

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