AZIONE POETICA N.6
The Greeks used several terms to define time.
Chronos to indicate the passing of the years, chronological, sequential time.
Eniautos was used to indicate a year, that is, a fixed, defined time.
Aiòn instead indicated eternal time, transcendent, absolute time.
Kairos ultimately meant “the right moment,” “opportune,” or “supreme moment.”
In Greek mythology, Chronos was a Titan and was depicted as a giant who devoured his own children. He was overthrown by one of them: Zeus.
Kairos, on the other hand, who was Zeus' youngest son, was represented as a young man with wings on his feet, a bald nape and a long tuft of hair on his forehead.
«In Physics Aristotle makes a distinction between Time and the individual moments which he describes as the present. The individual moments are like Aristotle's atoms, indivisible, indestructible units. But Time is the straight line that connects them.»
As Osmar Pamuk writes in The Museum of Innocence, “My life has taught me that remembering Time, that line connecting all the instants that Aristotle called the present, is painful for most of us.”
This timeline that causes us so much anxiety is taught in the early years of school, as I recently rediscovered while attending it as a teacher.
This is why we often read in meditation books, “learn from children who are always in the present.”
It's easy for them, they don't know any other time.
Physicists also take time very seriously, but they are more intrigued by it than worried about it.
Studying physics, one discovers that the difference between the past and the future is due to entropy, that is, the irreversible movement of heat in one direction only, from an ordered state in which the molecules are still to a disordered one in which they start to agitate and collide with each other.
But “entropy exists because we describe the world in a fuzzy way,” writes physicist Carlo Rovelli in The Order of Time.
"The blurriness is due to the fact that we are ignorant of the microscopic details of the world. The time of physics, in the final analysis," Rovelli writes, "is the expression of our ignorance of the world. Time is ignorance."
Philosophers, too, have long reflected on time, as part of the mystery in which being is hidden.
Among them there are those who even contest the concept of becoming, that is, the changing of things. According to the philosopher Emanuele Severino, "appearing [what we commonly call reality] attests to nothing other than a succession of events. Each event is followed by another, in the sense that a second event begins to appear when the first no longer appears. But that what no longer appears, no longer exists, this is not revealed by appearing."
The example given to illustrate this thought is that of a film: the frames advance while we watch a film, giving us the illusion of movement, but they do not disappear from the film.
The philosopher invites us to return to Parmenides, prior to Aristotle, for whom being is, and it is not possible that it is not, and non-being is not, and it is necessary that it is not. And if what is is not possible that it is not, then the philosopher says in a low voice, what is is forever.
I believe that there is a mythical dimension, that is, a timeless place where things are only imagined.
In this mythical place two numbers, four and three, are burning for each other when the giant Chronos arrives and addresses them with these words: “The time has come.”
The number of foundations, of stability, of seasons, of cardinal points, turns towards the number of the trinity that connects opposites, which is their mixture, their mediation.
“Chronos, the three still wants to stay with me,” says the four.
“Einautos” adds the three.
“Aion,” replies the four.
“That is not possible,” replies Chronos, “because everything is destined to change.”
“What if we changed positions?” asks the four, “Chronos, isn’t that a change?”
“Yes, but I can’t allow that,” Chronos replies. “It’s not serious.”
At that moment a young man with wings on his feet falls from the sky.
“Kairos, and what are you doing here?” asks Chronos.
“I bring a message from Calliope, muse of poetry,” replies Kairos.
“And what does your sister say?”
“Who approves the change with my breath.”
sef, 2024