March 22, 2010

when the inner fire meets the outer fire (dışı seni, içi beni yakar)

I take this as a description of dream-formation, i.e. as meeting of fires

For the eyelids --whose structure the Gods devised as a safeguard for the vision,--when they are shut close, curb the power of the inner fire; which power dissipates and allays the inward motions, and upon their allaying quiet ensues; and when this quiet has become intense there falls upon us a sleep that is well-nigh dreamless; but when some greater motions are still left behind, according to their nature and the positions they occupy such and so great are the images they produce, which images are copied within and are remembered by the sleepers when they awake out of the dream. And it is no longer difficult to perceive the truth about the formation of images in mirrors and in bright and smooth surfaces of every kind. It is from the combination with each other of the inner and the outer fires, every time that they unite on the smooth surface and are variously deflected, that all such reflections necessarily result, owing to the fire of the reflected face coalescing with the fire of the vision on the smooth and bright surface.
Plato, (Timaeus, 45d-46b)

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