Essays in Idleness

Except that we can’t do aphorisms, this might be considered an age of aphorisms, rather than an age of narratives, of histories, of theories, or of literature in any other genre. It abjectly fails as any sort of scientific age, some century or so having passed since the last hint of originality in science or maths, although here, at least, there have been some aphoristic moments, generally incomprehensible to the outside world. Part of the definition of modernity, if it is not the whole definition, is our lost ability to put anything together, and grow it. Our narratives are like the snippets on YouTube … a lot of quick gunplay and violence, then two more commercial spots. When you have watched a succession of hundreds of these, your chance of retaining anything at all has evaporated.

We used to get this at a slower pace from newspapers. The invention of the “yellow press” at the end of the century before last was the announcement of the end, more formidably than Gutenberg. Soon, even our wars would cease to make sense. Yet for a few more decades, one could still subscribe to The Times of London or Figaro, or even read a “beuk.” I can still remember my papa reading, and how impossible it was to get his attention, unless one inserted oneself between is eyes and the page. Now the paperless environment has finally arrived.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–99) was in some ways the master aphorist, signalling this progression from the “age of enlightenment.” He was, of course, very entertaining. A brilliant scientific mind, and perhaps a pioneer of experimental physics, nothing he achieved came to much, except his aphorisms, … none of which could be formally proved. Direct apprehension was what was left to him and to us.

Somewhere he comments on the organization of the universe. “It is certainly much easier to explain than that of a plant.”

“And there is so much goodness and ingenuity in a drop of rain that you couldn’t buy it in an apothecary’s under half a sovereign.”