Aphorisms

Thomas Farber returns with a new collection of epigrams, Hesitation Marks, from Andrea Young Arts. Farber also returns in excellent aphoristic form, with more mordant and amusing musings on sex, death, and … well, that just about covers it, sex and death being two inexhaustible subjects about which to commit “epigrammatics,” as Farber describes his excursions into the short form. And he also delivers a thoughtful epilogue to the book, in which he responds to readers who ask the inevitable, Why epigrams? “Well … occasionally, they ensue from hearing a word or phrase as if for the first time, awakening to sound, layered meaning,” Farber writes. “Revealing or explicating latent or forgotten life in language … Sometimes, however, the impulse is a hunger to get at what’s going on in our behavior, conviction it must be got at.”

He also includes a nice citation from William Matthews: “The best epigrams, like the endings of great poems, shimmer and twist. Little is ended. There’s much to think and feel. The rhetorical pleasure of an epigram may be its conclusiveness and concision, but the soul of its brevity is a long thoughtfulness.”

But, of course, every aphorist will recognize and agree with Farber’s formulation of the true and real motivation for our obsession with the form. “Finally,” he writes, “there’s thrill in working so unmarketable a form. Think of, say, how skateboarding used to be, endless repetitions to achieve proficiency lacking dollar value in a culture that’s all about dollars.”

Here are selections from Farber’s unmarketable but remarkable Hesitation Marks:

Jealousy’s geometry: no right triangles.

Tango, envy: it takes two to.

Not just fat: full of himself.

Constipation. Sit-down strike.

The young: surprised when the body doesn’t work.

The old: surprised when it does.

Middle v. old age: out living v. outlived.

This question was prompted by a reader who recently raged at the absence of women in The World in a Phrase. There are 40-odd aphorists in that book and only four of them are women. (In my own defense, may I say that there are many more women, and many more aphorists in general, about 350, as I recall, in Geary’s Guide…) This reader wondered whether there was some prerequisite that female aphorists had not managed to fulfill and so were disqualified from inclusion in my book. She vented on the phone with a female friend who, without skipping a beat, replied:

When a woman is an aphorist, they call her a mother.

This reader urged me to “write a book showing that women who are aphorists have a much more practical view of the world than men. Most of the succinct instructions on how to live must, of necessity, come from women.”

There are several possible explanations for the comparative scarcity of female aphorists—and, in fact, having a more practical view of the world than men might just be one of them.

In researching my books, I was acutely aware of the preponderance of male aphorists. But I couldn’t come up with a satisfactory explanation for it. The obvious explanation is: For centuries women were discouraged from pursuing literary careers, or any careers at all, so that’s why there are fewer female aphorists.

Then a philosopher friend of mine suggested that evolutionary biology might offer another explanation. Aphorisms are displays of linguistic opulence, she said, a showing off of a person’s wit and verbal dexterity, like a male peacock’s plumage. In the animal kingdom, males typically use ostentatious displays like this to attract mates, so male aphorists might be doing the same with their witty sayings. Females don’t feel the need to do this, she argued, hence the dearth of female aphorists.

Then while researching my book on metaphor, I Is an Other, which includes a chapter on metaphor, proverbs, and parables (and, by extension, aphorisms), I came across a fascinating study. Psychologist Daniel Stalder asked university students to read stories in which they took part in behavior—engaging in unsafe sex, wasting hundreds of gallons of water during a drought, or joyriding in a stolen car—that contradicted their personal values. After reading the story, some participants then read a short list of irrelevant proverbs (e.g., An apple a day keeps the doctor away), some read relevant proverbs (e.g., Everybody makes mistakes), some read a mix of relevant and irrelevant proverbs, and the rest didn’t read any proverbs at all. Those who had read relevant proverbs expressed fewer feelings of regret and guilt than those who had read only irrelevant proverbs or no proverbs at all.

But, Stalder found, this effect was evident only in men. He concluded that men were quicker to use proverbs to excuse their behavior because the sayings placed their actions in the context of a social norm—After all, everybody makes mistakes now and then. What’s the big deal? Women, in contrast, did not accept that the proverbial social norm, however reassuring, offered justification for their actions.

So, could the explanation for the preponderance of male aphorists lie in the fact that men are more eager to find excuses for their bad behavior and therefore are more active in inventing the very sayings that they can later rely on for justification?

I don’t know. But I do know that there are plenty of great female aphorists and if/when I write a revised and expanded edition of The World in a Phrase the following females and their succinct instructions on how to live will be prominently featured in it:

Baldness is the gradual transformation of the head into an ass; first in shape, then in content. —Faina Ranevskaya

It takes less courage to be the only one to find fault than to be the only one to find favor. —Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

Wit lies in recognizing the resemblance among things that differ and the difference between things that are alike. —Baroness de Stael-Holstein

When women go wrong, men go right after them. —Mae West

“Ben Franklin Is a Big Fat Idiot” is an entertaining re-appreciation of America’s founding aphorist by Joe Queenan. Queenan rightly points out that Big Fat Ben often purloined his sayings from sages past, and not all of the Great Man’s maxims are equally great. I don’t think this should in any way diminish Franklin’s reputation as one of the aphoristic titans, however. If you read any of the master aphorists, it is always a minority of their sayings that are truly phenomenal. Phenomenal aphorisms are very hard to write, so it shouldn’t surprise us that the truly great sayings are but a subset of the entire aphoristic oeuvre. And in regard to charges of plagiarism, we must remember Anatole’s Axiom, first laid down by French novelist Anatole France:

When a thing has been said, and said well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it.

Franklin did just that, but in copying what had already been said well he added distinctive flourishes and twists that make the recycled sayings truly his own. My favorite Franklinism, and one of my all-time favorite aphorisms, remains:

It is hard for an empty sack to stand upright.

xkcd is a “webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language” and has one of the funniest, and most accurate, takes on the difference between similes and metaphors I’ve ever read. It’s also not too shabby on puns, either. xkcd is “a CNU graduate with a degree in physics. Before starting xkcd, I worked on robots at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia. As of June 2007 I live in Massachusetts. In my spare time I climb things, open strange doors, and go to goth clubs dressed as a frat guy so I can stand around and look terribly uncomfortable. At frat parties I do the same thing, but the other way around.” xkcd’s favorite astronomical entity is the Pleiades. Click on the comic to make it larger.

Jim Finnegan, proprietor of the ursprache blog, read The Zürau Aphorisms of Franz Kafka (Schocken Books, 2006), translated by Michael Hofmann, on a plane recently and sent these thoughts: “The original aphorisms, though known of and posthumously published but only partly, were discovered in a folder in an archive in the new Bodleian Library at Oxford University. It was evident from the care in which they were composed (carefully hand written, numerated and ordered on thin strips of paper) that they were meant to be read as a whole series. In the introduction and the concluding essay to the volume, the Kafka scholar Roberto Calasso gives context to these aphorisms and the period of their undertaking. They were composed by Kafka in 1917-18 during a convalescence and a time of relative ease (except for the torment of household mice), while he was living with his sister in the town Zürau.  As the introduction states, the aphorisms, though few in number (just over a hundred), are a varied lot. Some are short and pithy, as we expect of the aphorism. But quite few run to paragraph length. And some, but not the best of them, delve into theological issues based on Biblical themes. Others are sophisticated philosophical musings. A few are lovely collapsed parables, like this one:

The dogs are still playing in the yard, but the quarry will not escape them, never mind how fast it is running through the forest already.

Strangely, almost none of these aphorisms speak directly about fiction, literature or the practice of writing. This one comes closest:

‘And then he went back to his job, as though nothing had happened.’ A sentence that strikes one as familiar from any number of stories—though it might not have appeared in any of them.

And since that one comes very close to the end of the collection, it might serve as an apt summation for these fleeting illuminations written while Kafka himself was relieved for a time from the obligations and stresses of work; and fitting, too, because the aphorism, as genre, was a type of literary work he never returned to.”

Kafka is featured on pp. 372–374 of Geary’s Guide, but here are some Zürau aphorisms not in my book:

You can withdraw from the sufferings of the world—that possibility is open to you and accords with your nature—but perhaps that withdrawal is the only suffering you might be able to avoid.

Theoretically, there is one consummate possibility of felicity: to believe in the indestructible in oneself, and then not to go looking for it.

He runs after the facts like someone learning to skate, who furthermore practices where it is dangerous and has been forbidden.

In the struggle between yourself and the world, hold the world’s coat.

Leopards break into the temple and drink all the sacrificial vessels dry; it keeps happening; in the end, it can be calculated in advance and is incorporated into the ritual.

There is a destination but no way there; what we refer to as way is hesitation.

Thomas Fitzgerald has cooked up an original mix of aphorisms (what he calls “the stuff of life”) and bread recipes (what has long been known as the staff of life). Daily Bread consists of 705 original aphorisms and a clutch of recipes from some of America’s foremost bread makers. “We might look upon aphorisms and epigrams … much as we look upon bread,” Fitzgerald writes, “as an essential substance that nourishes us on a most fundamental level, while leaving us with a warm and enduring sense of satisfaction. Indeed, what aphorism or epigram is not a sort of manna wrought from the grist of life itself, smeared over with a most-pleasing confection?” Which only serves to prove what I’ve always argued: Aphorisms are all you really knead.

Every liar must possess in memory what he lacks in conscience.

Anger acknowledged is information; anger acted upon, error.

Humility is the last lesson learned, the first forgot.

A single rose is an expression of love; a dozen, an admission of guilt.

Maturity is wasted on the mature.

He who laughs last laughs alone.

Eric Nelson, whom you may recall from this 2009 post, is back with some more of his haiku-like aphorisms. Some of these sayings have unmistakeable Zen overtones, such as the aphorism below about the green mountain. Yet others, like the one about chickens and hawks, are much more in the proverbial tradition. An interesting combination, since Zen-like aphorisms tend towards the paradoxical while proverbs are much more matter-of-fact, a mix that gives these poems/haikus/koans/aphorisms a tinge of Eastern mysticism along with a dollop of Mid-Western (or maybe Southern?) plainspeaking.

In the gray brain nothing
Is black or white.

The dead know nothing,
The only thing
You can’t imagine.

A thousand shades of green
Make the mountain
A singular green.

Whether you see them or not
Stars are always there,
Always falling.

If you’ll have chickens
Expect hawks.