Aphorisms

Olivia Dresher alerts me to yet another wonderful aphorist from the pages of her excellent FragLit journal. Eric Nelson is a poet and professor of Writing and Linguistics at Georgia Southern University, where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in creative writing. His publications include The Interpretation of Waking Life (University of Arkansas Press, 1991) and Terrestrials (Texas Review Press, 2004). I’m not sure whether to describe Nelson’s work as aphoristic poems or poetic aphorisms. He writes in verse form, in any case; i.e. short lines arranged on the page as a poem, with the first letter of each new line capitalized. But many of the poems are not more than a sentence in length. They sketch haiku-like scenes in the mind—of melting snowmen, a butterfly resting on a turd—but also mix an aphoristic bluntness with a more traditionally ‘poetic’ poignancy. The selection in FragLit is called “The Devil’s Almanac”; an allusion to the decidedly unpoetic Ambrose Bierce, perhaps? Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what you call the sayings, of course. The important thing is to read them. You can do that below, and you can read more of Nelson’s aphorisms/poems here.

Only someone who still has it
Can say
Hope is a curse.

Happy memories
Are the saddest.

It’s not the going home
That’s hard.
It’s the wanting to.

It’s solitude if you like it.
Loneliness if you don’t.

Why oppose opposites?
A hammer pulls as well as drives.
Only what is buried grows.

A while back, Sherry Dalton pointed out some mis-attributions and typos in Geary’s Guide (which are duly noted on this site’s Corrections & Clarifications page) and sent along a copy of The Answerer, which she describes as “your personal adviser for the 21st century.” The Answerer is a kind of online oracle, a database of Dalton’s collection of some 26,000 quotations cross-referenced by author, subject, and keywords. It works sort of like the I Ching: Type in your question and The Answerer comes back with what it thinks is a relevant reply. Hopefully, Dalton has included some of her own aphorisms, wry and rueful reflections on some of the big questions to which we never seem to get the definitive answer…

The root of all evil is fear; its stem is abuse of power.

Nothing more fundamentally naive than cynicism.

In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is interned.

They say it’s the cream that rises to the top. It’s the cream, alright; and the dead goldfish.

It doesn’t quite make sense. Why is repetition so interesting? Variety delights even as it disperses, but the thrill of the familiar persists. It’s like rehearsing a play; an actor gives depth and freshness to a role only by reciting the same lines over and over again, day after day after day. In the same way, practicing the piano is intensely boring—until you practice long enough. Repeating things makes them easy, and inclines them to give up their secrets. Perhaps that’s it. Maybe we’re just not paying attention. But it still doesn’t quite make sense. Why is repetition so interesting?

A version of this abbreviated essay appears in the April issue of Ode

Michael Theune describes himself as “a huge fan of aphorisms, probably bred into me by my upbringing in the church (I’m a preacher’s kid), which involved much exposure to proverbs and seductive gnomic utterances. I’ve been reading and thinking of them as an art form for more than fifteen years.” Theune is a self-confessed recovering E.M. Cioran addict. His own aphorisms are much more mischievous than Cioran’s (“so often humor is undervalued in discussions of the arts,” he says), though some rather immense and dark abysses can be glimpsed behind Theune’s puns and witticisms. Theune is also adept at glosses, clever spins on other people’s aphorisms. This is in the grand and ancient tradition of aphoristic sparring in which all lovers of the form delight. My favorite is his deflection of Walt Whitman from Leaves of Grass: ” Do I contradict myself? Fine, then I contradict myself. I am large. I contain platitudes.” Theune’s aphorisms are collectively called “Orthoparadoxy”. Here is a selection:

Flux is victorious but cannot accept the award.

Vision has become a version.

Second thoughts are tinder for the flames of Hell.

Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must scream, laugh, grunt, cry.

History consigned to the dustbin of information.

The rain that gives the roofers work sends the roofers home.

Nothing gives off more dust than stars.

All around the world, the mighty ocean musters all its strength to cry pssst! and shhh . . .

The hiss at the end of metaphysics—

I know there is something greater than me, but without me it wouldn’t matter quite so much.

Sometimes you have to spit on the world to make it shine.

So many are alive only for the sake of their salvation.

Attention founders between seeking and looking after.

Each country’s national traits show through in many different ways: in the food, the customs, popular entertainments, even the sense of humor. A nation reveals its character through its aphorisms, too. The French are usually witty and sophisticated; the Americans homespun and slapstick; the Finnish deadly serious and dour; the Russians dark and and bitterly funny. The Turks, judging from this brief selection of Turkish aphoristic delights, are courtly, philosophical and somewhat bemused, noting life’s follies and foibles with a kind of aloof shrewdness.

My thanks to Cihan Ozcan for tracking down and translating these aphorisms from the Turkish.

No revolutionary is any good at restoration, but they destroy perfectly.
—Abdulhamid

First we must know the truth. If we know the truth, we can know the false. But if the false is known first, it doesn’t take you to the truth.
—Farabi

The economy is like a river; it finds its course gradually.
—Turgut Ozal

Don’t be in the struggle of love but in the love of struggle.
—Peyami Safa

He who doesn’t live according to his thoughts starts to think according to his life.
—Silahtaroglu

Sadi

The thing that makes the mind confused is passion.

A lie is like a sword stroke; the scar remains even though the wound heals.

Mevlana

No matter how much you know, how much you say is exactly how much the listener understands.

A beautiful face falls in love with the mirror.

Both the question and the answer are born from wisdom.

Be as quiet as a book when with an ignorant person.

Cenap Sahabettin

Only those who are kind perceive kindness, but everybody perceives meanness.

The person who selfishly seeks a friend actually seeks a servant.

The more in the wrong we are ourselves, the more we look for other people’s mistakes.

Don’t bridle a dog; it might think it’s a horse.

He who loves himself a lot is loved by others that much less.

When the heart starts to talk, the brain becomes deaf.

Life is like a river. It splashes over small obstacles but passes quietly by the big ones.

The motto of the spontaneous aphorist (i.e. those who practice the ‘spontaneous combustion’ type of composition, in which aphorisms appear unedited and fully formed) might be, ‘First thought, best thought.’ That was the case for Alex Stein, whose collection of aphorisms, Weird Emptiness, was published by Wings Press in 2007. Stein sent an entirely different manuscript to Roberto Bonazzi, then an editor at Wings Press, who pointed out three pieces he thought were worthwhile. “Curiously,” says Stein, “the three pieces he pointed out were each (and even more tellingly, the only) pieces I had culled, unedited, from the notebooks that have unceasingly attended my efforts at fiction and poetry. Notebooks in which, with utter self-absorption and a transparently deluded sense of my own importance in the larger context of Literature, I had been commenting on my process, aesthetics, mentorship, artistry, and creative life.” These pieces, along with more like them, became Weird Emptiness, from which I spontaneously append a selection below:

Bridge or a Wall. If you write in order to develop a relationship with your fellow human beings and your writing becomes the sole constitution of that relationship, is your writing, then, a bridge or a wall?

The Holy Bible. Perhaps The Holy Bible was written in “the final days” of its world. A memorial, of sorts, as opposed to a visionary work. The only inspired aspect of it being that revolutionary style which makes it such a compelling read. Would it really be so strange to live in a world for which a Bible had not yet been written? Or, rather, say we have no need of prophecy in this age, having at hand so much of history for reference.

The Mystic. When the mystic stares into the eternal, he becomes the eternal. This is neither an act of will, nor a voyage of self-discovery. It is an acknowledgement of the inwardness of outwardness, which is to say it is an acknowledgement of the fact that no division exists.

Conscience. Everything I write is completely personal, as well as utterly disengaged. The issues of form, for me, always supersede the specificities of content. I draw entirely from my own life because I do not believe it is polite to speculate upon the inner world of anyone but myself. One would have to be both clairvoyant and magnanimous to do otherwise with anything like a clear conscience.

Poetry is a surprising sport. One often flushes the jester from the meadow when one is chasing butterflies.

A poem should be no longer than the person who writes it.

A fascinating congruence of aphorisms described in this New York Times piece about the aphorism by Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s chief of staff, “Never let a crisis go to waste” appearing on the signboard outside the Judson Memorial Church in Manhattan. I blogged about this aphorism in November (Aphorisms in Emergencies) and now, to see it featured in a church signboard, recalls an even earlier series of blogs about this very public display of affection for the aphoristic form (More of God’s Aphorisms, Make Your Own God’s Aphorisms). The original post in this series, God’s Aphorisms, seems to have gone missing in last year’s catastrophic crash of this site, so I’m still waiting for God’s Aphorisms to rise again… Anyway, I thought the appearance of Emanuel’s aphorism in this context is a neat demonstration of the way aphorisms cross church-state boundaries, and how sayings evolve, change, and gain unrelated accretions as they become introduced more widely. Interestingly, the name Immanuel means, “God with us.”

This just in: God’s Aphorisms have risen again, here. Sadly, all the comments are well and truly gone…

Marty Rubin explains the point of his aphorisms (as well as the point of aphorisms in general) very well, so I hereby quote him at length: “Since childhood I’ve been intrigued by the question: What is happiness? And also: What is death? The answer to these two questions sent me down the road of philosophy. That road I’ve found, at least for me, is not a serious but a whimsical one, full of ironies, jokes, contradictions, fragmentary thoughts, clever, perverse, mystifying, exasperating, irreverent and playful reflections. Writing aphorisms I am able to participate in this delightful game, pursuing freedom and wisdom down all the blind alleys of language and thought toward that inevitable dead end.” If we are indeed headed inevitably down a dead end at the dizzying speed of thought, then we might as well enjoy the ride. So here are some of Marty Rubin’s clever, perverse, mystifying, exasperating, irreverent and playful reflections:

Language—a mirror in front of a window.

Blessed are they who expect nothing, for they’ll be pleasantly surprised.

If there’s war in heaven and peace in hell, then hell’s the place to be.

If you need a second to think, it’s too late.

Loud applause is enough to make any speaker doubt himself.

Rain is the picnic when it rains.

Aphorists are everywhere, at work in every language, in every culture. But they often labor on the fringes, since aphorisms are still largely an unheralded literary genre—despite the fact that everybody uses aphorisms every day. It’s especially difficult to get hold of aphorisms written in other languages. Yes, La Rochefoucauld has been translated into zillions of foreign tongues. But what about contemporary practitioners who can’t find foreign publishers for their latest aphoristic blockbuster? It’s always a pleasure to present aphorists working in languages other than English. So without further ado, here are two contemporary Russian aphorists for your delectation. All aphorisms translated from the Russian by Aron Vigushin.

By Gregory Gash

Work—the only bad habit people want to get rid of.

Stupidity is like an umbrella; touch it and it opens.

By Aron Vigushin

Truth—a provisional agreement between opposing sides.

Resume—a lie that lands you a real job.

Advertising—bragging for which the buyer pays.

History—a science that describes past events from the present point of view.

J.L. Burckhardt was a Swiss traveller and Arabic scholar with a passion for proverbs. He travelled extensively in the Middle East in the early part of the 19th century, a time when doing so meant disguising himself as a Muslim merchant so that he wouldn’t be spotted as European. He visited the holy cities of Mecca and Medina in the guise of a pilgrim. When travelling, he was known as “Shaikh Ibrahim”. He began collecting proverbs during his journeys; he was particularly fond of common expressions used in everyday language and used to jot these down whenever he heard them. He added his own acquisitions to a collection made nearly a century earlier by Sharaf ad-Din ibn Asad to produce Arabic Proverbs, or The Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians. Omitted from this wise, insightful compendium were those sayings that, Burckhardt confessed, were “so grossly indelicate that he could not venture to lay them before the public, although it must be acknowledged that they excelled in wit.” Below are a few of the sayings Burckhardt felt could safely be laid before the public…

My thanks to Nadeem El Issa of Joppa Books for alerting me to Burckhardt, sending me a copy of Arabic Proverbs, and translating many of the same.

The hasty and the tardy must meet at the ferry.

Cat’s dreams are full of mice.

There are no fans in hell.

Whatever is in the cauldron must come out with the ladle.

These sayings are from A Thousand and One Arabic Proverbs, by Dalal Khalil Safadi:

Stretch your feet to the edge of your rug.

He who is ahead of you one step will be ahead of you all the way.

Today’s news costs money; tomorrow it will be free.

A knife’s wound will heal; a tongue’s wound won’t.

And these sayings are among Nadeem El Issa’s favorites:

The eye will never rise above the eyebrow.

If you beat someone, make them hurt; if you feed someone, make them full.

Farts don’t fry eggs.