by Umberto Eco
What an advantage nobility is: already at eighteen years of age it places a man in an elevated position, and makes him known and respected, in a way that another could manage to deserve only in fifty years. This is an advantage of thirty years gained without effort.
(Pascal, Pensées, Brunschwicg ed., 322)
No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style.
(Wilde, Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray)
Alex Falzon, in editing Wilde's Aphorisms (Milan: Mondadori, 1986), defines an aphorism as a maxim where what counts is not only the brevity of its form but also the wit of its content. In doing so, he follows a widespread tendency to privilege the grace or brilliance of the aphorism over the acceptability of what is said in terms of truth. Naturally, as far as maxims and aphorisms are concerned, the concept of truth is relative to the intentions of its author: saying that an aphorism expresses a truth means saying that it is meant to express what the author intends as a truth and which he wants to convince his readers of. However, in general, maxims or aphorisms do not necessarily aim to be witty. Nor do they always mean to offend current opinion. Rather, they aim to go more profoundly into a matter on which current opinion seems superficial, and has to be corrected.
Here now is one of Chamfort's maxims: "He who is frugal is the richest of men; he who is miserly, the poorest" (Maxims and Thoughts, I, 145). The witticism lies in the fact that public opinion tends to consider a person frugal when he does not waste the few resources he has in order to meet his needs sparingly, while the miser is someone who amasses resources beyond his needs. The maxim would appear to go against public opinion, unless we agree that while "richest" is understood to refer to resources, "poorest" is meant to refer not just to its moral sense, but also to the satisfaction of daily needs. Once the rhetorical game has been cleared up, this maxim no longer goes against public opinion but corroborates it.
When, on the other hand, an aphorism goes violently against public opinion, so much so that at first it appears false and unacceptable, and only after a judicious deflation of its hyperbolic form seems to bring some crumb of truth, which is just barely acceptable, then we have a paradox.
Etymologically, paradoxos is what goes park ten doxan, beyond current opinion. Thus originally the term denoted a statement that was far from everyone's beliefs, strange, bizarre, unexpected, and in this sense we find it also in Isidore of Seville. That this unexpected statement might yet be a harbinger of truth seems to me to be an idea that makes only slow progress. In Shakespeare a paradox is false at a certain point, but with the passing of time becomes true. See Hamlet III.1.110 ff.:
OPHELIA. What means your lordship?
HAMLET. That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty.
OPHELIA. Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?
HAMLET. Ay, truly, for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness. This was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof.
Logical paradoxes are a separate category; these are self-contradictory statements whose truth or falsehood cannot be proved—like, for instance, the paradox of the Cretan liar. But gradually the para-rhetorical sense comes in, for which I refer to the Italian Battaglia dictionary definition:
Thesis, concept, statement, conclusion, witticism, mostly formulated during an ethical or doctrinal discourse, which contrasts with widespread or universally held opinion, with common sense and experience, with the belief system to which it refers or with principles or elements of knowledge that are taken as given (and often does not possess the power of truth, being merely reduced to a sophism, dreamed up through love of eccentricity or to display dialectical skill; but it can also contain, beneath an apparently illogical and disconcerting shape, a grain of objective validity, which will in the end establish itself in opposition to the ignorance and simplistic approach of those who uncritically follow majority beliefs).
Thus the aphorism seems to be a maxim that is meant to be recognized as true, though it deliberately appears witty, whereas the paradox presents itself as a maxim which is prima facie false but which, on mature reflection, apparently aims at expressing what the author considers to be true. Because of the gap that exists between the expectation of public opinion and the provocative form it assumes, the paradox appears witty.
The history of literature is rich in aphorisms and not quite so rich in paradoxes. The art of aphorism is easy (and proverbs are also aphorisms: you've only one mother; a dog's bark is worse than his bite), whereas the art of paradox is difficult.
Some time ago I dealt with an author who was a master of aphorisms, Pitigrilli.* Below are several of his most brilliant maxims; while some of them are undoubtedly quite witty, they aim to state a truth that does not go against commonly held opinions:
Gourmet: a cook who has been to high school.
Grammar: a complicated instrument that teaches you languages but prevents you from ever speaking.
Fragments: a fortunate excuse for writers who cannot put a whole book together.
Dipsomania: a scientific word that is so nice it makes you want to start drinking.
Others, rather than express a presumed truth, affirm an ethical decision, a rule of action:
I can understand kissing a leper but not shaking hands with a cretin.
Be indulgent with the person who has done you wrong, because you never know what others have in store for you.
However, in the very collection, entitled Dizionario antiballistico (Milan: Sonzogno, 1962), in which he collected his own and others' maxims, sayings, and aphorisms, Pitigrilli, who always wanted above all to be taken for a cynic, even if it meant confessing his own escapades openly, warned how insidious aphorisms can be:
In this spirit of confidentiality, I acknowledge that I have abetted the reader's hooliganism. Let me explain: in the street, when a fight breaks out or there is a traffic accident, there suddenly emerges from the bowels of the earth an individual who tries to poke one of the two disputants with his umbrella, usually the driver. The unknown hooligan has thus projected his latent anger. The same happens in books:
when the reader who has no ideas, or only ideas in an amorphous state, finds a picturesque, brilliant or explosive phrase, he falls in love with it, adopts it, comments on it with exclamations like "Excellent!," "Quite right!," as though he had always seen things that way, and as if that phrase were the quintessence of his way of thinking, of his philosophical system. He "takes a stance," as II Duce used to say. I offer the reader a chance to take a stance without having to go deep into the jungle of various literatures.
In this sense an aphorism expresses a commonplace in a brilliant way. To call a harmonium "a piano that got fed up with life and turned to religion" merely reformulates with a powerful image what we already knew and believed, namely, that a harmonium is a church instrument. To call alcohol "a liquid that kills the living and preserves the dead" adds nothing to what we knew about the risks of intemperance or about what happens in anatomy museums.
When Pitigrilli makes his protagonist in Esperimento di Pott (Milan: Sonzogno, 1929) say that "intelligence in women is an anomaly one occasionally comes across, like albinos, left-handed people, hermaphrodites and those born with more than ten fingers or toes" (p. 132), he was saying exactly what the male reader (and probably also the female reader) in 1929 wanted to hear.
But in criticizing his vis aphoristica, Pitigrilli also tells us that many brilliant aphorisms can be reversed without losing their force. Let us look at some examples of reversal that Pitigrilli gives us in his Dizionario (op. cit., [>] ff.):
Many despise riches but few know how to be liberal with them.
Many know how to be liberal with riches, but few despise them.
We make promises according to our fears and keep them according to our hopes.
We make promises according to our hopes and keep them according to our fears.
History is nothing but one of liberty's adventures.
Liberty is nothing but one of history's adventures.
Happiness resides in things, not in our tastes.
Happiness resides in our tastes, not in things.
In addition he drew up lists of maxims by different authors, which certainly contradict each other, and yet seemed always to express an established truth:
One only deceives oneself out of optimism (Hervieu).
One is more often deceived by diffidence than by confidence (Rivarol).
People would be happier if kings were philosophers and philosophers were kings (Plutarch).
The day I want to punish a province I will have it ruled by a philosopher (Frederick II).
I propose the term "transposable aphorism" for these reversible aphorisms. A transposable aphorism is a malaise of the urge to be witty, or in other words, a maxim that is untroubled by the fact that the opposite of what it says is equally true so long as it appears to be funny. But the paradox is a genuine reversal of a commonly held viewpoint, and it presents an unacceptable world, provoking resistance and rejection. And yet if we make the effort to understand it, it produces knowledge; in the end it seems funny because we have to admit it is true. The transposable aphorism contains a very partial truth, and often after it has been reversed, it reveals to us that neither of its two propositions is true: it seemed true only because it was witty.
The paradox is not a variation of the classical topos of "the world upside down." The latter is mechanical, it foresees a universe where animals talk and humans make animal noises, fish fly and birds swim, monkeys celebrate mass and bishops swing through the trees. It proceeds through accumulation of adynata or impossibilia without any logic. It is a carnival game.
In order for it to become a paradox the reversal has to follow a logic and be circumscribed to a portion of the universe. A Persian arrives in Paris and describes France the way a Parisian would describe Persia. The effect is paradoxical because it forces one to see everyday things not according to established opinion.
One of the proofs for distinguishing a paradox from a transposable aphorism consists of trying to reverse the paradox. Pitigrilli quotes a definition of Zionism from Tristan Bernard, which was clearly valid before the establishment of the state of Israel: "One Jew asking another Jew for money to send a third Jew to Palestine." The fact that this paradox can't be reversed is a true sign that its original form genuinely contained a truth, or at least what Bernard wanted us to accept as truth.
Now let us consider a series of Karl Kraus's famous paradoxes.* I will not attempt to reverse them because, if you think about them a little, it is not possible. They contain an unconventional truth that goes against the grain of common opinion. They cannot be twisted to express the opposite truth.
The scandal starts when the police put an end to it.
To be perfect all she needed was just one defect.
The ideal of virginity is the ideal of those who want to deflower.
Sexual relations with animals are forbidden, but slaughtering animals is allowed. But has nobody reflected on the fact that that might be a sexual crime?
Punishment serves to frighten those who do not want to commit sins.
There is an obscure corner of the earth that sends explorers out into the world.
Children play at being soldiers. But why do soldiers play at being children?
Mad people are definitively recognized as such by psychiatrists because after being interned they exhibit agitated behavior.
Of course, Kraus too falls into the sin of transposable aphorisms. Here are some of his sayings that can be contradicted easily, and therefore reversed (the reversals are, obviously, my own):
Nothing is more unfathomable than the superficiality of a woman.
Nothing is more superficial than the unfathomability of a woman.
Easier to forgive an ugly foot than ugly socks!
Easier to forgive ugly socks than an ugly foot!
There are women who are not beautiful but have an air of beauty.
There are women who are beautiful but do not have an air of beauty.
Superman is a premature ideal that presupposes man.
Man is a premature ideal that presupposes superman.
The true woman deceives for pleasure. The others seek pleasure to deceive.
The true woman seeks pleasure to deceive. The others deceive for pleasure.
The only paradoxes that almost never seem to be transposable are those by Stanislaw J. Lec. Here is a short list from his Mysli nieuczesane ( Uncombed Thoughts):
If one could only pay the death penalty by sleeping through it in installments!
I dreamed of reality: what a relief to wake up!
Open Sesame: I want to get out!
Who knows what Columbus might have discovered had America not blocked his way!
Horrible is the gag smeared with honey.
The prawn goes red after death: what exemplary refinement in a victim!
If you knock down monuments, spare the pedestals: they can always be used again.
He possessed knowledge, but was unable to make her pregnant.
In his modesty he considered himself an incurable scribbler. But he was actually just an informer.
Burning pyres don't light up the darkness.
You can die on Saint Helena without being Napoléon.
They embraced each other so tightly there was no room left for feelings.
He covered his head in ashes: those of his victims.
I dreamed of Freud. What does that mean?
Cavorting with dwarves ruins your backbone.
He had a clean conscience: he had never used it.
Even in his silence there were grammatical mistakes.
I admit I have a weakness for Lec, but until now I have found only one of his aphorisms to be transposable:
Reflect before thinking.
Think before reflecting.
Now we come to Oscar Wilde. When we consider the countless aphorisms scattered throughout his works, we have to admit that this is a fatuous author, a dandy who does not distinguish between aphorisms, reversible aphorisms, and paradoxes, so long as he manages to épater le bourgeois. What is more, he has the nerve to present as aphorisms witty statements that, aside from the wit, turn out to be wretched commonplaces—or at least commonplaces for the Victorian middle classes and aristocracy.
Nevertheless, this kind of experiment can help us see whether and to what extent an author who made provocative aphorisms the true essence of his novels, plays, and essays was a real author of penetrating paradoxes or a sophisticated collector of bons mots. My experiment is purely exploratory of course, and aims to encourage (and why not?) someone to do a thesis that will take the research to a systematic conclusion.
I will herewith provide a series of genuine paradoxes, and challenge you to try to reverse them (excluding the production of nonsense or of a maxim that is false for people with common sense):
Life is simply a mauvais quart d'heure made up of exquisite moments.
Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live; it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.
The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat.
A sensitive person is one who, because he has corns himself, always treads on other people's toes.
Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken up teaching.
When people agree with me I always feel that I must be in the wrong.
A man who is much talked about is always very attractive. One feels there must be something to him, after all.
Every great man has his disciples, and it is always Judas who writes the biography.
I can resist everything except temptation.
Falsehoo
ds [are] the truth of other people.
The only duty we owe to History is to rewrite it.
A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven't the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest inkling of when to die.
However, there are countless Wildean aphorisms that seem to be easily reversible (the reversals are obviously my own):
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
To exist is the rarest thing in the world. Most people live, that is all.
Those who see any difference between soul and body have neither.
Those who see no difference between soul and body have neither.
Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it.
Life is too unimportant to joke about.
The world is divided into two classes; those who believe the incredible, like everyone else, and those who do the improbable, like me.
The world is divided into two classes; those who believe the improbable, like everyone else, and those who do the incredible, like me.