It must be short, compressed, a give and take between musicality and meaning, and exhibit the polish of being composed in the mind.
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It’s been said enough: the logic of the heart is never clear, the mind never pure. To tell you what I think is as much to say that I’m prone to certain refrains.
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When writing a poem, the words must draw together; when writing: the ideas. When composing an aphorism, it must be both.
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Nietzsche once said that one must have inner chaos in order to give birth to a dancing star. No wonder he wrote in aphorisms. This is because for a dancing star, every step must follow the non sequitar of having no step follow another. It can only be one point among others in a vast rhizomatic network. It must defy Time itself.
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The aphorism, then, is the product of that divided mind that can’t choose between being a philosopher or a poet.
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It just brings the two together.