Cioran on Aphorism and Aphorists

At the back of the monumental Oeuvres of E. M. Cioran (Gallimard, 1995) is a ‘Glossaire’ which gathers snippets from letters and interviews alphabetically by topic. Here follows a rough translation of some fragments on aphorism and aphorists.

Aphorisms (p. 1,736)

Aphorisms are instantaneous generalities.

I can only express results. My aphorisms aren’t really aphorisms. Each of them is the conclusion of a whole page, the end of a little bout of epilepsy.

I let everything else go and I give only the conclusion, like in a courtroom where, in the end, there’s only the verdict: condemned to death. Without thought’s unfolding: just its result. That’s my way of doing things, my formula.

Arnold Lunn contra Nietzsche (1919)

In a letter to The New Age, 26.4 (27 November 1919), p. 63, Arnold Lunn fires off some aphoristic reflections on human nature in Nietzsche’s direction. I present the text with some light proofreading, including those emendations Lunn himself suggests in a letter to the same paper, 26.5 (4 December 1919), p. 83.

 

Dr. Levy, I see, appeals to The New Age for a re-opening of the Nietzsche controversy. If I jot down some random thoughts that have been circulating in my head the last few days, some disciple of Nietzsche may, perhaps, rise up and inaugurate the controversy over my corpse.

Joseph Joubert on the Arts

The Beautiful! ’Tis but beauty seen through the eyes of the soul.

Common or plainly genuine truths cannot be the object of art. Illusion upon a true foundation: that is the secret of the fine arts.

There are many beauties which would not be natural were it not for the efforts of art.

The object of art is to unite matter with forms, which are the truest, fairest and purest things in nature.

Beautiful lines are the foundation of all beauty. There are arts in which they must be visible, such as architecture, which is happy to flaunt them. There are others, such as sculpture, in which one ought to disguise them with care. In painting, they are always sufficiently veiled by colour. Nature hides them, buries and covers them, in living beings. The latter, if they are to be beautiful, must show their lines but little: for the skeleton is in the line and life in the contour.

An English Moralist: “Tom Brown of Facetious Memory”

Tom Brown (1662–1704) is interesting for all sorts of reasons. “T*m Br*wn of facetious memory,” as Addison called him in The Spectator, 567 (14 July 1717), is almost exclusively remembered for his imitation of Martial, 1.13; but I like to remember him for his maxims (or “Laconics,” as he called them).

Is he the earliest conscious English imitator of La Rochefoucauld? He has certainly left us an extensive and interesting body of “short amusements” and “maxims of state and conversation,” which, though, of course, of a lower quality than La Rochefoucauld’s, are by no means of low quality. And yet they have hardly been noticed.

Here follows a list gathering what I have found of his maxims so far, and which I will augment if I find more.

Rivarol on the Nobility and the People

On the Nobility

The nobility is an instrument polished by time.

The nobility, in the eyes of the people, is a sort of religion of which gentlemen are the priests and towards which, among the bourgeois, more are impious than are unbelieving.

The nobles are more or less ancient coins which time has turned into medals.

 

On the People

Sovereigns ought never to forget that, the people being a permanent child, the government must always be a father.

Some Maxims and Missiles of Rivarol

A few “maxims and missiles,” or “pensées et paradoxes,” by the Comte de Rivarol, translated from Rivarol: avec une notice et une portrait (Paris: Mercure de France, 1906), pp. 351–9. For something similar, see “Selections from Vauvenargues” (this blog, 17 September 2020) and “Steps upon the Sand,” Azure Bell (20 October 2020).

Men are not as wicked as you say. Twenty years it took you to write a bad book; and but a moment it took them to forget it.

“You spoke a lot with some rather annoying men.” “I spoke for fear of listening.”

Selections from Vauvenargues

Clarity beautifies deep thoughts.

There are no errors that, rendered clearly, would not erase themselves.

That a thought is too feeble to bear simple expression is the sign to reject it.

Courage is better armed against disgrace than reason.

Reason and liberty are incompatible with weakness.

War is not as onerous as servitude.