Archive: November 2006

My eldest son was born just three hours before my own birthday. That was 12 years ago. Every time our birthdays roll around, he always becomes a bit contrite and kind of half-apologizes for screwing up my own big day. He thinks I might think that my birthday has become somewhat anti-climactic since he arrived on the scene just the day before. He’s right, of course. I’m much more excited about his birthday nowadays than my own, and certainly feel his birthday is something to celebrate, while mine is something to be, well, more or less endured. But I also always tell him that he was the best birthday present I ever got. And it’s true. Though the pair of Arcopedico slippers I got this year are pretty nice, too…

Birthdays are strange days. They were very important to me as a kid; in some ways, even more exciting than Christmas. Then for a time I didn’t take much interest in them. I was too young to regard them as important milestones and too old to get too worked up about them as events in themselves. It was not until I had kids myself that my interest in birthdays revived. It’s fun to arrange parties for your kids, and even more fun to see how much fun they have. This renewed engagement with birthdays happens to coincide with my entering that phase of middle age when the first signs that I am starting to get ‘old’ are appearing. One recent sign, both amusing and faintly perplexing, occured when my 12-year-old son (the same one who gatecrashed my birthday) called me on Saturday afternoon after his drama class to say that he would be home late because he was hanging out with a bunch of his friends. Wow, I thought, now I’m the father of a child who’s old enough to call me to say he’ll be late. What a concept.

This is a strange feeling because I don’t feel like I’ve aged enough to be the father of a 12-year-old. Gertrude Stein said it best when she wrote:

We are always the same age inside.

It’s true. No matter how much my hair grays and thins, no matter how many of my own birthdays roll around,
I don’t feel like I’ve grown any older inside. Wiser, yes. (Well, at least, I hope so.) More mature, certainly. Jaded, no, but definitely cynical. Yet not a day older than 24 or so, inside. I can see my kids transforming before my very eyes—growing from toddlers into little boys and girls and now pre-pubescents who telephone me to say they will be late. Despite all the evidence of change around me, though, I seem to observe it all from a steady interior age.

Why is that? Is it some sort of denial? I’m really getting old and decrepit and just don’t want to face it. Or is it some kind of illusion? The chronological equivalent of sitting in a moving train and feeling like it’s the landscape that’s flying past, not you. Or is that trite old saying true? You’re as young as you feel. I know what I’d like for my next birthday… More of the same.

It sounds like the latest self-help manual, but this is actually the title of an essay by the 19th century German author Ludwig Borne. Among his many claims to fame, these two are perhaps the most unexpected: He was an important influence on Sigmund Freud, and the town of Boerne, Texas (pop. 6,019) is named after him. The former accomplishment has to do with the literary essay ‘The Art of Becoming an Original Writer in Three Days,’ in which he advised: ‘Take a few sheets of paper and for three days on end write down, without fabrication or hypocrisy, everything that comes into your head. Write down what you think of yourself, of your wife, of the Turkish War, of Goethe … and when three days have passed you will be quite out of your senses with astonishment at the new and unheard-of thoughts you have had. This is the art of becoming an original writer in three days.” This essay helped Freud develop his ideas about free association. The latter honor is due to the fact that Boerne, Texas was founded by German immigrants who admired Börne’s liberal political views.

Born in Frankfurt as Lob Baruch, the son of a successful Jewish banker, Börne changed his name in 1818 when he became a Lutheran. He briefly had a job as a civil servant, but after the fall of Napoleon Jews were no longer permitted to hold public appointments. So Börne became a journalist, editing a series of newspapers, including Die Wage, which was known for its lively, satirical political columns. The paper was perhaps a little too lively for the local authorities; the police shut it down in 1821. Börne went to live in Paris, where he wrote Briefe aus Paris, which criticized German despotism and espoused the rights of the individual.

Börne’s aphorisms are deeply sarcastic and satirical. He’s particularly scathing about politicians:

Ministers fall like buttered slices of bread: usually on their good side.

But he has some equally dark musings on human nature in general:

History teaches us virtue, but nature never ceases to teach us vice.

I can never decide whether to take Börne’s advice in ‘The Art of Becoming an Original Writer in Three Days’ seriously. Did he really mean it? Or was he simply poking fun at writers who thought they could produce great works with little effort? Freud clearly took the essay seriously, and incorporated free association as a key feature of psychoanalysis. But still I wonder if Börne wasn’t just up to his old satiric tricks.

In some ways, bloggers have taken Börne’s advice. Some of the most original blogs are simply the unrestrained streams of consciousness of people who have the time and determination to write down everything that occurs to them about themselves, their spouses, the Iraq war, Jessica Simpson, etc… And you certainly could become quite out of your senses reading all that stuff. The trick is, I think, to stick with it for three days. If you can really persist in writing every thought that pops into your head for that long, you might really get somewhere. By the time three days have passed, you will have flushed out all the flotsam and jetsam in your mind—and then you will either dry up or little flakes of gold will start glistening in the riverbed. I saw a program on television once about a mentally ill man who kept a diary of every minute of every day. He did nothing else but write every waking moment of his life. There were no events to record, since all he did was scribble away in his journal all day. What a torrent he must have had cascading through his skull. Seems a little too much for me, though. But three days, I think I could manage that—one long lost weekend of non-stop, utterly original writing. But the big question is: Are the effects permanent?

It sounds like the latest self-help manual, but this is actually the title of an essay by the 19th century German author Ludwig Borne. Among his many claims to fame, these two are perhaps the most unexpected: He was an important influence on Sigmund Freud, and the town of Boerne, Texas (pop. 6,019) is named after him. The former accomplishment has to do with the literary essay‘The Art of Becoming an Original Writer in Three Days,’ in which he advised: ‘Take a few sheets of paper and for three days on end write down, without fabrication or hypocrisy, everything that comes into your head. Write down what you think of yourself, of your wife, of the Turkish War, of Goethe … and when three days have passed you will be quite out of your senses with astonishment at the new and unheard-of thoughts you have had. This is the art of becoming an original writer in three days.” This essay helped Freud develop his ideas about free association. The latter honor is due to the fact that Boerne, Texas was founded by German immigrants who admired Börne’s liberal political views.

Born in Frankfurt as Lob Baruch, the son of a successful Jewish banker, Börne changed his name in 1818 when he became a Lutheran. He briefly had a job as a civil servant, but after the fall of Napoleon Jews were no longer permitted to hold public appointments. So Börne became a journalist, editing a series of newspapers, including Die Wage, which was known for its lively, satirical political columns. The paper was perhaps a little too lively for the local authorities; the police shut it down in 1821. Börne went to live in Paris, where he wrote Briefe aus Paris, which criticized German despotism and espoused the rights of the individual.

Börne’s aphorisms are deeply sarcastic and satirical. He’s particularly scathing about politicians:

Ministers fall like buttered slices of bread: usually on their good side.

But he has some equally dark musings on human nature in general:

History teaches us virtue, but nature never ceases to teach us vice.

I can never decide whether to take Börne’s advice in ‘The Art of Becoming an Original Writer in Three Days’ seriously. Did he really mean it? Or was he simply poking fun at writers who thought they could produce great works with little effort? Freud clearly took the essay seriously, and incorporated free association as a key feature of psychoanalysis. But still I wonder if Börne wasn’t just up to his old satiric tricks.

In some ways, bloggers have taken Börne’s advice. Some of the most original blogs are simply the unrestrained streams of consciousness of people who have the time and determination to write down everything that occurs to them about themselves, their spouses, the Iraq war, Jessica Simpson, etc… And you certainly could become quite out of your senses reading all that stuff. The trick is, I think, to stick with it for three days. If you can really persist in writing every thought that pops into your head for that long, you might really get somewhere. By the time three days have passed, you will have flushed out all the flotsam and jetsam in your mind—and then you will either dry up or little flakes of gold will start glistening in the riverbed. I saw a program on television once about a mentally ill man who kept a diary of every minute of every day. He did nothing else but write every waking moment of his life. There were no events to record, since all he did was scribble away in his journal all day. What a torrent he must have had cascading through his skull. Seems a little too much for me, though. But three days, I think I could manage that—one long lost weekend of non-stop, utterly original writing. But the big question is: Are the effects permanent?

Alfonso Sicilia Sobrino, a Spanish artist, recently gave us one of his prints, a thank-you gift for putting him up in our spare room for a couple of nights. (You can see some of Alfonso’s work by going to the Esfera del Arte website and clicking on his name in the ‘Our Artists’ section.) It was a very generous gesture, and one that we gratefully accepted. My wife and I both really liked the vivacity and cheerfulness of the piece, which we hung in the living room in a spot that used to be occupied by a clutch of black-and-white drawings. The print brightened up that whole corner of the room. But even as our recent acquisition cast the living room in an entirely new light, it occasioned other, somewhat darker thoughts.

The black outlines of dust on the wall where the old frames hung were now clearly visible, like the chalk lines around the body at a murder scene. We’d have to paint those, I thought. And that section of wall near the corner where the water damage was, we’d have to do something about that, too. It looked too much like that part of the room had some kind of strange skin disease. And that gash in the ceiling where the plaster fell down years ago; why the hell haven’t we fixed that yet? And I’m sick and tired of constantly stumbling over the lip of the stair where the carpet is worn away. It’s beyond carpet cleaning. Let’s get new carpets for the whole stairway while we’re at it. Yes, before my enthusiasm for the print had even cooled, I had succumbed to the dreaded Diderot effect.

The Diderot effect is named after the 18th–century French writer Denis Diderot, who spent 25 years editing the massive Encyclopédie, one of the founding documents of the Enlightenment. Diderot is also the author of a charming essay called Regrets on Parting with My Old Dressing Gown, in which he describes how the gift of a beautiful scarlet dressing gown plunges him into debt and turns his life upside down. Initially pleased with the unexpected gift, Diderot describes how he soon came to rue his new garment. Compared to his elegant dressing gown, the rest of his possessions began to seem tawdry. His old straw chair, for example, just wouldn’t do. So he replaced it with an armchair covered in Moroccan leather. And the rickety old desk that groaned under his papers; that was out, too, and in came an expensive new writing table. Even the beloved prints that hung on his walls had to make way for newer, more costly prints. “I was absolute master of my old dressing gown,” Diderot writes, “but I have become a slave to my new one … Beware of the contamination of sudden wealth. The poor man may take his ease without thinking of appearances, but the rich man is always under a strain.”

Consumer researchers call this kind of trading up “the Diderot effect.” But Diderot was also a marvellous aphorist and it is he who is responsible for coining that classic French phrase l’esprit de l’escalier: ‘the spirit of the staircase,’ that moment of belated inspiration when you think of the perfect comeback for a difficult encounter only when you’re walking down the stairs after the conversation is over. That’s another Diderot effect I observe too often in myself.

Diderot, though, didn’t suffer much from l’esprit de l’escalier. He was famed as a brilliant conversationalist, and seems to have devised his bon mots while coming up the stairs rather than going down them. During the 25 years or so he spent editing the 28 volumes of his Encyclopédie, he also wrote hundreds of entries on a bewildering array of topics in agriculture, industry and science. His aphorisms all promoted freedom of thought, religious tolerance and the importance of scientific inquiry:

From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.

The first step towards philosophy is incredulity.

In order to shake a hypothesis, it is sometimes not necessary to do anything more than push it as far as it will go.

Diderot is a classic Enlightenment figure: the optimistic skeptic. He doubted pretty much all the received wisdom of his own time but, like Mr. Micawber in David Copperfield, he was sure that something better would turn up thanks to human inventiveness and ingenuity. Mr. Micawber was also seemingly immune to l’esprit de l’escalier and like Diderot had some insightful things to say about economics. Mr. Micawber’s equation for financial happiness, for example, really can’t be rivalled:

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.

It’s frustrating, if not exactly misery-inducing, not to be able to afford the home improvements our new print seems to deserve. And I’ve been trying to come up with reasons why the Diderot effect should not apply to me, but so far without success. I’m sure I’ll think of something while I’m walking down the stairs…

The Finns have their own Aphorism Association as well as a National Aphorism Day (May 23) and annual award for the country’s best aphorist, the Samuli Paronen Prize. The Russians have the Moscow Aphoristic Circle, an organization that meets every Thursday in Moscow’s Central House of Arts Workers, where it holds competitions for composing the best aphorisms on specific topics. The Serbs have the Belgrade Aphoristic Circle, a group of aphorists whose day jobs range from postman to orthodontist to winemaker to air force pilot. Boris Mitic, a Serbian documentary filmmaker, is making a movie about them. And now I’ve learned, thanks to the German translator who has been translating aphorisms for my encyclopedia, that yesterday the Germans launched their second German Aphorism Convention. (This is a link to a news item, in German, on the WDR website . Be sure to listen to the audio clip as well, which contains amusing attempts of men and women on the street to define an aphorism.) I used to doubt whether aphorisms were still a mainstream interest; but after hearing about all these remarkable organizations, I’m not so sure.

The German Aphorism Convention is being held in Hattingen, a town about an hour outside Düsseldorf. There German-speaking aphorists are meeting to discuss scintillating subjects such as “pun and revelation,” exchange new aphorisms and inaugurate something called the German Aphorism Archive. WDR’s website invites users to contribute their own aphorisms, one of which reads:

My conscience is clean—I never use it.

I am, naturally, fascinated by initiatives like this and urge anyone who knows of similar organizations or events anywhere else in the world to please, please drop me a line via the Contacts page or the Aphorism Alert form on my homepage. I will then endeavour to compile this information and add it to the links page as a resource for wandering aphorism aficionados who might want to hook up with their fellows on foreign shores. Meanwhile, to celebrate the second German Aphorism Convention, I offer below some of my favorite aphorisms from German aphorists…

Marie von Ebner–Eschenbach (actually, an Austrian, but still German-speaking):

Think once before you give, twice before you accept, and a thousand times before you ask.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:

You never go further than when you no longer know where you are going.

Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmerman:

Let the captious know that the best way to get rid of a quarrel is not always the quickest way of getting out of it.

Ludwig Börne:

History teaches us virtue, but nature never ceases to teach us vice.