¨What drew me to aphorisms was my reading of a new compilation of Kafka’s Zürau Aphorisms, translated by Michael Hofmann. This collection contracts and expands the notion of what an aphorism can be. Some are merely observations: “Like a path in autumn: no sooner is it cleared than it is once again littered with fallen leaves.” Others strike me as snapshots—fragments—of the personal: “To let one’s hate-and disgust-filled head slump onto one’s chest.” And of course, some grapple with such large concepts as Evil, God, Humility, Babel: “Once we have taken evil into ourselves, it no longer insists that we believe in it.” Finally, there are the aphorisms that, rather than delimiting something small, seem capable of offering a Weltanschauung, a world view, as in the justly famous aphorism that ends the Kafka collection:
It isn’t necessary that you leave home. Sit at your
desk and listen.
Don’t even listen, just wait. Don’t wait, be still and
alone.
The whole world will offer itself to you to be
unmasked, it can
do no other, it will writhe before you in ecstasy.
This aphorism verges on being a parable: a small story that teaches. It strikes me that this is a self-portrait of the artist as a receptacle of, versus creator of, reality. Or, as the Moody Blues sang aphoristically many years ago, “Thinking is the best way to travel.”
How my heart speaks 