The irony of the writer is that of a private person in a public profession.
Aphorisms, those simple expressions of general truth, are as old as literature, and not only literature of the written word. They have a long and rather distinguished pedigree – Hippocrates, Pythagoras, Hesiod, Erasmus, Pascal, Voltaire, Benjamin Franklin, Oscar Wilde, Gustave Flaubert, George Bernard Shaw, Dorothy Parker, and countless others were known for their pithy, witting one-liners that expressed a great truth. And aphorisms have long been collected as a group and published, as the proverbs of the Old Testament Bible, the Islamic hadiths, and the Hindu Sutra testify.
Fables endure, but truths are revised.
The fact is, we love our sharp, pointed one-liners that often encapsulate whole philosophies and beliefs. And aphorisms are also something else as well – an integral part of the world’s wisdom literature, folk wisdom, and what poet Yahia Lababidi calls “the poetry of the streets.”
To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.
No comments:
Post a Comment