To my mind, the maximum length of an aphorism is whatever can be written in one sitting. Written, not read—for many aphorisms may be taken in at once. An aphorism can be revised, of course, before it is released into the world. It may be improved, simplified polished; but if it is complicated, if another train of thought is added, even one fully consequential to the first… then it is an essay, no matter how short. The reason is, so to speak, phenomenological. Deriving from one glance to the horizon, an aphorism can only contain as much as the eye can take in in a moment. This is more for some than for others, but not very much more. If its essence is not set down in one sitting, usually immediately, then it is lost.
That’s how I’ve approached most of my writing here. I’d always thought of my posts as a species of dwarf essay, but maybe I’ve actually been producing plump aphorisms instead.
There is such a thing as a religious temperament. It involves the will to believe in order to assuage an ache. It rejects, it recoils from, the sense that contingency is everywhere and everything, that there is nothing beyond it. As Alfred North Whitehead wrote, “Religion is the vision of something which stands beyond, behind and within the passing flux of immediate things.” There is, however, a conservative sensibility that finds flux exhilarating, that is delighted rather than depressed by the idea that there is no beyond and that everything is contingent. A secular conservative sensibility, even a secular conservative aesthetic, finds beauty in the Darwinian view of the world, a beauty that is a close analogue to the conservative vision of a just society respectful of, and dependent on, spontaneous order.
I was pleasantly surprised to come across Will’s description of himself as an “amiable atheist” in this section of the book; I hadn’t known that about him. The world of online atheism was, ironically enough, one of the first places where the Great Awokening took hold. They, and almost all other progressive blogs and websites, quickly became unreadable as the fanaticism grew, and as a result, most of the pop culture/current events sites I visit these days are conservative. I had just resigned myself to the background hum of axiomatic assumptions that without a belief in monotheism, life is meaningless and Western civilization is doomed. Most of all, I like the emphasis of that last sentence: if the fragile miracles of society and commerce can emerge spontaneously and organically, and be all the more beautiful and worthy of grateful devotion for that reason, I don’t see why the miracle of life itself should be any different.
Doctor Johnson, being rowed down the Thames by a sculler, was assailed from the shore (as custom then was) by a foulmouthed fellow with a very generous flow of invective. Having endured as much as a man decently could, he turned on the scurrilist and said loudly and deliberately, “Sir, your mother, under pretext of keeping a bawdy house, was a receiver of stolen goods.” The subordinate clause provides at once the balance and the dynamic of this insult. “Under pretext of” gives evidence of judicious discrimination between appearance and reality; yet it implies that the man’s mother, casting about for the most decent front she could find for her fencing operations, could imagine nothing better than running a bawdy house. There is no way to make pretext or pretense of running a bawdy house except by running one, so that implication stands too. It is an extraordinarily opulent sentence; yet balanced, objective, and perfectly simple. One would like to think the recipient took it home and thought about it for several weeks.
In the course of my two minutes of Googling rigorous research, I learned that it was apparently considered good sport for boaters on the Thames to insult each other as they passed, but Adams suggests here that bystanders on the bank also took part. I find it much more amusing to imagine that some random weirdo just decided to verbally assault Johnson, whether he recognized him or not, just like I find it amusing to imagine a time-travelling Johnson taking part in a modern “Yo mama” fight. “Sir, it is a fact that your mother is so corpulent…”
What he needed was to work in the shadows while another wielded power, he himself holding aloof from responsibility, reading noteworthy books within the four walls of a quiet room, writing works of his own invention, to no man subservient, beholden to none—and such was Erasmus’s notion of an ideal existence.
There should be a particular word for that unexpected and poignant sense of kinship across centuries, where despite all the temporal, linguistic, and cultural differences, you feel like you’ve shared a knowing glance and a smile.
Assuming the colors of the environment. Why are likes and dislikes so contagious that one can scarcely live in proximity to a person of strong sensibilities without being filled like a vessel with his pros and cons? First, it is very hard to withhold judgment entirely, and sometimes it is virtually intolerable for our vanity. It can look like poverty of thought and feeling, fearfulness, unmanliness; and so we are persuaded at least to take a side, perhaps against the direction of our environment if our pride likes this posture better. Usually, however (this is the second point), we are not even aware of the transition from indifference to liking or disliking, but gradually grow used to the sentiments of our environment; and because sympathetic agreement and mutual understanding are so pleasant, we soon wear all its insignias and party colors.
There’s no such thing as an objective view from nowhere, of course. There are no opinions uncontaminated by affections, affiliations and aspirations. But we can choose to spend less time struggling to hear and be heard in crowded, noisy pubs and more time walking with trusted companions on quiet forest paths where ideas formerly lurking hesitant and unseen out in the undergrowth might finally muster up the courage to approach you.
It will be very long before political subjects will be reduced to geometric certitude. At present the reasoning on them is a kind of arithmetic of infinity, when the best information, the coolest head, and clearest mind can only approach the truth. A cautious man should therefore give only sibylline predictions, if, indeed, he should hazard any. But I am not a cautious man. I therefore give it as my opinion that they will issue the paper currency, and substitute thereby depreciation in the place of bankruptcy, or, rather, suspension. Apropos of this currency, this papier terré, now mort et enterré, the Assembly have committed many blunders which are not to be wondered at. They have taken genius instead of reason for their guide, adopted experiment instead of experience, and wander in the dark because they prefer lightning to light.
Oh, that concluding sentence! Those old-time poet-statesmen make me swoon like a teenage girl. They weren’t just lawyers and they weren’t MBA’s: they had literary educations that included a knowledge of Greek and Latin. They knew poetry not as gut-spilling splotches of formless free verse but as a craft with a prosody that included rhyme and meter. They were taught to read it and write it, in English and the Classical languages. They didn’t have TV and the Internet so they had nothing to do with their spare time but read Shakespeare, Gibbon and Thucydides. Three cheers for progress! We have cable news and Twitter.
The born aristocrats of the spirit are not overeager; their creations blossom and fall from the trees on a quiet autumn evening, being neither rashly desired, not hastened on, nor supplanted by new things. The wish to create incessantly is vulgar, betraying jealousy, envy, and ambition. If one is something, one does not actually need to do anything—and nevertheless does a great deal. There is a type higher than the “productive” man.
— Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human
Ironically, I re-encountered this aphorism while flipping through books, looking for inspiration to spark some writing after what seems like an endless string of days filled with work and the usual dispiriting effluvia of pop culture and current events. A reminder of wu wei by way of 19th-century Germany. Speaking of Taoism, Po Chu-i famously tweaked Lao-tzu for telling us that “those who speak know nothing; those who know are silent,” before proceeding to elaborate with five thousand more words. Likewise, how dare a man who published eleven books in one decade suggest I’m vulgar and ambitious for wanting to scribble a few times a week? I suppose I’m just a born bourgeois of the spirit.
I would think it obvious that it is essential to human equilibrium and a true engagement with reality to acknowledge that tragedy is the defining part of human life and to accept the limits (and opportunities) this imposes, both individual and political. The effort to deny tragedy was among the fundamental factors responsible for what happened in the twentieth century. Utopianism defies tragedy—and fails.
Two of the individuals most important to my discussion, T. E. Lawrence and Vladimir Peniakoff, found a kind of serenity in resolute acceptance of and engagement with the violence in our nature, deriving from it what I would call the only true solution, the classical one, identified by Aristotle as the pursuit of virtue, the only proper pursuit for a human being.
Such is an uncomfortable route toward a solution since it demands individual self-examination and renounces the consoling ideologies and utopian illusions of a collective resolution of the human problem. Virtue is an all but totally ignored conception today, when narcissism and the (futile) pursuit of self-esteem are the prevailing counterfeits of individual worth and achievement, with death denied in the search for the therapy of immortality.
Pfaff identifies the First World War as the cataclysmic event in which the old certainties were shattered. Since then, we’ve been frantically pawing through the shards, trying to piece them back together, creating various grotesqueries in the process. He also notes the role simple boredom, a frivolous longing for “something interesting,” played in the destruction. A century later, in the midst of unprecedented affluence, other bored people, needing something stronger than video games, prefer to live-action-role-play as Nazis and Communists to make their lives seem significant. As George Santayana said, that is what romantic philosophy would condemn us to: strutting and roaring. The alternative, humility, is more painful than battle.
During this time, he also developed a love of pseudonyms. Franklin penned at least one hundred items under fake names throughout his life: Ephraira Censorius, Patience, the Casuist, the Anti-Casuist, Anthony Afterwit, Margaret Aftercast, and Silence Dogood, to name but a few. Pseudonyms were not uncommon for many eighteenth-century writers, in part because they reduced one’s chances of being prosecuted for sedition and because the writing could be evaluated on its own merits, instead of being subjected to personal attacks.
On the pre-social media web of message boards and blogs, fifteen to twenty years ago, pseudonymity was still common. I loved thinking up a different nym for each blog I commented on. Now, of course, we’ve “progressed” to the Orwellian panopticon of SocMed, where most travelers have their Facebook or Google barcode tattooed on their foreheads for easy identification. This trend has dovetailed with the emergence of the new identitarianism, according to which there is no rational argument, only predictable expressions of racial/gender/class identity. The web has gotten no less vicious with the elimination of pseudonymity; if anything, the fanatical conviction that “error has no rights” has encouraged even more brazen assaults on reputations and livelihoods. Naïve reformers (and would-be totalitarians) insist that transparency is equivalent to honesty; in reality, a world in which everyone is exposed is a world in which everyone is suspicious and reticent. There is no honesty without the freedom to fib. Ask me no invasive questions and I’ll tell you no serious lies.
To follow that upward ascent and turn his words into lively vessels of spiritual growth, Plato chose to present his philosophical ideas through dialogues. The choice was dictated by the belief that the forward mental motion produced by dialogue was the only way to enliven the verbal message, above the tomb-like rigidity of the dead written word — the sema, or tomb of the word, which we’ve discussed before.
It’s funny how you only notice some obvious things belatedly, once you’re ready for them. I’ve long known of Plato’s famous antipathy to the written word, but the perfunctory reminder here was accompanied by the surprising realization that somewhere along the way, I’ve come to largely agree with him. No, I don’t mean that I’ve KonMari’d all my books or anything. If books are the tombs of thoughts, I’m still quite gothic insofar as I prefer to spend my time brooding in graveyards, playing with bones. But I read mostly nonfiction, and I can’t help but think that for the earnest truthseeker, many contentious topics in that genre would be better illuminated by verbal dialogue than the laborious process of reading the book, searching out critical responses, waiting for the potential rebuttal, etc. It’s like trying to reassemble a vibrant conversation out of dusty fragments. Watching Terry Eagleton and Roger Scruton in dialogue, for example, is subtly but powerfully different than reading either in isolation. So many other topics would flourish more as conversations than monographs.
It is good to go to bed early in Winter, and tonight as we sleep our dreams take punctuation from the thudding of snowploughs as they roll and bluster up and down Route 4, shaking the house yet comforting our sleep: Someone takes care, the solitary captains in their great snowships breasting through vast whiteness, cleaving it sideways into gutter drifts. If we stir as they thump past, we watch revolving yellow lights flash through our windows and reflect on the ceiling. We roll over and fall back into protected sleep.
We don’t get quite enough snow in Virginia to justify it, but I still enjoy the fantasy of having a four-wheel-drive vehicle to drive in the snow (or better yet, an all-wheel-drive Subaru — I love those little tanks). It’s a lingering urge from the days when my family owned a newspaper distributorship and we were often the first ones out breaking trails through a snowstorm. I remember the satisfying feeling of security and preparedness in a vehicle designed for snow, the pleasure of being alert and focused on overcoming the danger of slick roads. Alone in a vast sea of white, I never thought of myself as the captain of a snowship, but that’s a great image, as is that of snowplows as patrolling guardians making the roads safe for the rest of us as we sleep.
The rest of the book was covered in graffiti like a boxcar parked too long outside the train yard: scribbles, circles, underlines, arrows, and rambling marginalia, all against a backdrop of pink highlighter swipes.
I’ve never understood why people do this to their books. I mean, strictly from a pragmatic point of view, wouldn’t it be easier and better to keep a notebook (or blog) for recording your thoughts as you make your way through a book, where you can annotate to your heart’s content? It’s the clutter that bothers me — the garish colors and illegible scrawls. It’s like trying to think after walking into a small, loud room. How can I profitably absorb anything with some Pink Highlighter Notation-bro braying at me the whole time? And how much space is there in the margins to record anything of substance anyway? It’s like having a Twitter feed scrolling alongside your reading. I’ve only ever used a red pen to make small brackets around a line or paragraph for future reference. My Darwinist attitude is, if I can’t remember why I bracketed this section, I probably didn’t have anything worthwhile to say about it anyway. And now that I’ve bought myself a Scanmarker for Christmas, I don’t even need to do that anymore. (It goes without saying, but people who dog-ear pages should be put in thumbscrews.)
Copcot was making his way through Shotover forest, to the east of the city, on his way to mass at Horspath church on Christmas Day 1376, amusing himself by reading Aristotle as he went, as undergraduates do, when suddenly he was confronted by a wild boar. Scholar and beast eyed each other. Then, according to an account printed in 1876, “as quick as speech the taberdar thrust the volume, vellum, brass and all, into the animal’s throat, and then finished the business with the spear, whilst his opponent was digesting his classics.” An 1823 account gives the “touching climax” to the story: “‘Swallow that, if you can’ (cried the unarmed student thrusting his Aristotle down the boar’s throat). ‘Graecum est’, cried the boar, and expired, foaming at the mouth; for he found Aristotle (as many other throats had done and will do) too hard for him.”
We’ve seen quite a few bears on our hikes, including a mom with her cubs. This convinces me that I should start carrying some Zizek and Habermas in my pack for protection.
As it happened, publishers and booksellers were the shock troops in exploiting — and developing — a Christmas trade. And books were on the cutting edge of a commercial Christmas, making up more than half of the earliest items advertised as Christmas gifts…In fact, even before books were actually labeled as Christmas presents in the newspapers, they were being marketed for that purpose.
That tone of strongly-implied disapproval runs throughout the book, a tedious Marxish archeological dig below the foundations of the holiday to unearth the telltale potsherds of paternalism, classism, nativism, and, worst of all, rapacious commercialism and inauthentic consumerism. What the materialist cynics never understand is that even amid humble, degraded origins, something noble and timeless can still shine through. Here, as with the ancient Icelandic tradition of jólabókaflóð, is a reminder of the sort of old-fashioned Christmas values we would all do well to resurrect.
Cosima had committed herself to marriage with von Bülow when she was still in her teens and had been swept away by a concert in Berlin conducted by him. The concert program had included the first Berlin performance of Wagner’s Venusberg music from Tannhaüser. Von Bülow had proposed to her on the same night. Both of them were in love with Wagner and completely transported by his glorious music; one wonders who he was wooing and who she was accepting.
In Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, Albertine’s professed undying love for the Narrator and his intellect is explained as a result of those mornings when he had just shaved; it was his smooth skin she really loved, though she instinctively rationalized it as something more profound. How many times do these mischievous ghosts hover over our shoulders, redirecting our thoughts, diverting our feelings? How often do we focus on the figure rather than the background as the source of our happiness, only to feel disappointed or betrayed when that surrounding context changes? And yet, how many great things are nonetheless born of those humble parents Inattention and Error?
I do not know if this is an emotion universally felt, but I have discovered that I am not alone in feeling what I have come to think of as “Sunday night triste,” a feeling of the blues that comes upon me dependably each Sunday, roughly at dusk. What does this tinge of sadness signify? Expectations disappointed? A yearning for a time now gone and not ever to be recaptured? Regret for the winding down of another week, during the course of which one achieved (yet again!) less than one had hoped? Sorrowful anticipation of still another week ahead? Or is it — simply and more persuasively — sadness at the passing of Sunday itself, one of life’s minor pleasures that is now once again no less than a full six days off?
Alone with our thoughts on a day of rest, it sometimes feels as if we’ve paused amid the eternal Heraclitean flow, watching the swirls and eddies rush past without acknowledging us, knowing it’s futile and foolish, but still halfheartedly wishing we could stand athwart the flux and plead, “stop.” Alternatively, perhaps it’s a variation of what John Koenig named “kenopsia.“