by Umberto Eco
Kissing a leper I can understand, but not shaking hands with a cretin.
Be indulgent with those who have done you a wrong, because you don’t know what the others have in store for you.
However, in the anthology titled Dizionario antiballistico (1962) in which he collected some of his own maxims, sayings, and aphorisms as well as those of others, Pitigrilli, who always wanted to pass for a cynic, even at the cost of candidly confessing his iniquities, realized how insidious playing with aphorisms could be:
Since we are being confidential, I admit that I have encouraged the hooliganism of the reader. Let me explain: when a fight breaks out in the street or a traffic accident occurs, there suddenly emerges from the bowels of the earth an individual who tries to thump one of the two parties with his umbrella, usually the motorist. The unknown thug has vented his latent rancor. It’s the same in books: when the reader who has no ideas, or has them in an amorphous state, comes across a picturesque, phosphorescent or explosive expression, he falls in love with it, makes it his own, comments on it with an exclamation mark, with a “good!,” a “right!,” as if he had always thought so, and that the expression in question was the quintessential extract of his way of thinking, his philosophical system. He “takes a stance,” as il Duce used to say. I offer him the way to take a stance without descending into the jungle of the various literatures.
In this sense the aphorism is a brilliant (and new) expression of a commonplace.
To say that the harmonium is “a piano that, disgusted with life, has taken refuge in religion” merely reformulates icastically what we already knew and believed: that the harmonium is a church instrument. To say that alcohol is “a liquid that kills the living and preserves the dead” adds nothing to what we knew about the risks of intemperance and the goings on in schools of anatomy.
When Pitigrilli (L’esperimento di Pott, 1929) has his main character say that “intelligence in women is an anomaly encountered exceptionally, like albinism, left-handedness, hermaphroditism or polydactylism” he says exactly, albeit in a witty manner, what the male reader (and probably the female reader, too) of 1929 wanted to hear.
But, in criticizing his vis aphoristica, Pitigrilli tells us something more, namely that many brilliant aphorisms can be reversed without losing their power. Let’s take a look at examples of such reversal suggested by Pitigrilli himself in his Dizionario antiballistico:
Lots of people hold wealth in contempt but few are generous with it.
Lots of people are generous with wealth, but few hold it in contempt.
We make promises in accordance with our fears and keep them in accordance with our hopes.
We make promises in accordance with our hopes and keep them in accordance with our fears.
History is no more than a love affair with liberty.
Liberty is no more than a love affair with history.
Happiness lies in things and not in our tastes.
Happiness lies in our tastes and not in things.
Pittigrilli also collected maxims by various authors, which although certainly mutually contradictory nonetheless always seemed to express an established truth:
One only deceives oneself out of optimism. (Hervieu)
One is more often deceived by mistrust than by trust. (Rivarol)
People would be happy if kings were philosophers and philosophers kings. (Plutarch)
The day I wish to castigate a province I’ll have it governed by a philosopher. (Frederick II)
I would use the term “interchangeable” for these reversible aphorisms. The interchangeable aphorism is a disorder of the inclination to be amusing—in other words, a maxim that, as long as it appears witty, is indifferent to the fact that its opposite is equally true. A paradox is a true reversal of the common point of view which presents an unacceptable world, one that elicits resistance and rejection, and yet which, if we make an effort to understand it, leads to knowledge; eventually it seems to be witty because it has to be admitted that this is true. The interchangeable aphorism contains a highly partial truth and, often, after it has been reversed, it becomes clear that neither of the two standpoints it illustrates is true: it seemed true only because it was witty.
Paradox is not a variation on the classical topos of the “topsy-turvy world,” which is mechanical. In that universe, animals talk and humans make animal sounds, fish fly and birds swim, monkeys celebrate Mass and bishops swing from tree to tree. It proceeds by adynata or impossibilia without any logic. It is a game in the spirit of carnival.
To move on to paradox, this reversal must follow a logic and be restricted to one 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 obliges us to see everyday things from a standpoint outside established opinion.
One of the ways to distinguish paradox from interchangeable aphorism consists in trying to turn the paradox on its head.
An author who always moved with cynicism and insouciance between paradox and aphorism was Oscar Wilde. Reflecting on the countless aphorisms that he scattered throughout his works, we sense that we are dealing with a flippant author, a dandy who, provided he was able to shock the bourgeoisie, made no distinction between aphorisms, interchangeable aphorisms, and paradoxes. On the contrary, however, he had the cheek to pass off as aphorisms some witty statements that, beneath the wit, are seen to be woeful clichés—or at least clichés as far as the Victorian bourgeoisie and aristocracy were concerned.
An experiment, however, may allow us to see if and to what extent Wilde, an author who made provocative aphorisms the very quintessence of his novels, comedies, and essays, was a true author of dazzling paradoxes or merely a refined collector of witticisms.
Here follows a series of real paradoxes, which I defy you to reverse (without obtaining little more than nonsense or what any sensible person would consider a false maxim):
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.
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 to teaching.
And of course a man who is much talked about is always very attractive. One feels there must be something in him, after all.
One can resist everything but temptation.
Falsehoods are the truth of other people.
The one 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 got the remotest knowledge of how to live nor the smallest instinct about when to die.
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
But Wilde also produced countless aphorisms that seem easily interchangeable.
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist.
To exist is the rarest thing in the world. Most people live.
Those who see any difference between soul and body have neither one nor the other.
Those who see no difference between soul and body have neither one nor the other.
Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it.
Life is not important enough ever to joke about it.
The world is divided into two classes: those who believe the incredible, and those who do the improbable, like me.
The world is divided into two classes: those who believe the improbable, and those who do the incredible, like me.
The world is divided into two classes: those who do the improbable, and those who believe in the incredible, like me.
There is a fatality about all good resolutions. They are invariably made too soon.
There is a fatality about all good resolutions. They are invariably made too late.
To
be premature is to be perfect.
To be mature is to be imperfect.
To be perfect is to be premature.
To be imperfect is to be mature.
Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit: touch it, and the blossom is gone.
Knowledge is like a delicate exotic fruit: touch it, and the blossom is gone.
The more we study art, the less we care for nature.
The more we study nature, the less we care for art.
Sunsets are quite old-fashioned. They belong to the time when Turner was the last note in art. To admire them is a distinct sign of provincialism of temperament.
Sunsets are in fashion, because they belong to the time when Turner was the last note in art. To admire them today is a distinct sign of modernity.
Beauty reveals everything, because it expresses nothing.
Beauty reveals nothing, because it expresses everything.
No married man is ever attractive, except to his wife. And even then, I’ve been told, not even to her.
All married men are attractive, except to their wives. And even then, I’ve been told, even to them.
Dandyism, in its own way, is an attempt to assert the absolute modernity of beauty.
Dandyism, in its own way, is an attempt to assert how absolutely dated beauty is.
Conversation should touch on everything, but should concentrate itself on nothing.
Conversation should touch on nothing, but should concentrate itself on everything.
I love to talk about nothing, it’s the only thing I know anything about.
I love to talk about everything, it’s the only thing I know nothing about.
Only the great masters of style ever succeed in being obscure.
Only the great masters of style ever succeed in being clear.
Anyone can make history, only a great man can write it.
Anyone can write history, only a great man can make it.
The English have everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language.
The English have nothing in common with America nowadays except, of course, language.
It is only the modern that ever becomes old-fashioned.
It is only the old-fashioned that ever becomes modern.
If we were to stop here, our judgment of Wilde would be fairly severe. The very embodiment of the dandy, but one who came later than Beau Brummel and even his beloved Des Esseintes, he does not trouble to make a distinction between paradoxes, vehicles of outrageous truths, aphorisms, vehicles of acceptable truths, and interchangeable aphorisms, which are merely witty games unconcerned with the truth. And, on the other hand, Wilde’s ideas on art would seem to sanction his behavior, since no aphorism ought to be concerned with either utility or truth or morality, but only with beauty and stylistic elegance.
But, if we follow his principles, he should have been sent to jail not for having loved Lord Alfred Douglas but for sending him letters such as: “It is a marvel that those red rose-leaf lips of yours should be made no less for the madness of music and song than for the madness of kissing”—and not only this, but for having maintained during the trial that the letter was an exercise in style and a sort of sonnet in prose.
But can an aphorism that an author puts in the mouth of an inane character be judged inane? Is it an aphorism when Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Ernest (1895) says: “To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; but to lose both looks like carelessness”? Hence the legitimate suspicion that Wilde did not believe in some of the aphorisms he uttered or even in the best of his paradoxes; the only thing that interested him was portraying a society capable of appreciating them.
Besides, he says as much himself. Take a look at these lines from The Importance of Being Earnest:
ALGERNON. All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.
JACK. Is that clever?
ALGERNON. It is perfectly phrased! and quite as true as any observation in civilized life should be.
And so Wilde should not be seen as an immoral aphorist but as a satirical author and social critic. The fact that the society in question suited him down to the ground is another matter, and that was his tragedy.
Now let’s turn to The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). With a few exceptions, the most memorable aphorisms are put in the mouth of a fatuous character, namely Lord Wotton. Wilde does not offer them to us as maxims for life that he himself stands behind.
Lord Wotton utters, albeit wittily, an intolerable series of commonplaces of the society of his day (and this is precisely why Wilde’s readers enjoyed his false paradoxes):
A bishop keeps on saying at the age of eighty what he was told to say when he was a boy of eighteen.
The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it.
The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.
Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions.
Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot.
I don’t want money. It is only people who pay their bills who want that, Uncle George, and I never pay mine.
I don’t desire to change anything in England except the weather.
To get back one’s youth, one has merely to repeat one’s follies.
Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious.
Women are wonderfully practical, much more practical than we are. In situations of that kind we often forget to say anything about marriage, and they always remind us.
When we are happy, we are always good, but when we are good, we are not always happy.
I should fancy that the real tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but self-denial. [I wonder if Wotton had read the Communist Manifesto and had learned that workers have nothing to lose but their chains?]
Every effect that one produces gives one an enemy. To be popular, one must be a mediocrity.
Anybody can be good in the country.
Married life is merely a habit.
Crime belongs exclusively to the lower orders. I don’t blame them in the smallest degree. I should fancy that crime was to them what art is to us, simply a method of procuring extraordinary sensations.
Murder is always a mistake. One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.
Alongside this series of commonplaces, which become amusing only because they are fired off in volleys—as in the technique of the list, where the tritest of expressions become admirable for the incongruous relationship they establish with other equally banal expressions—Lord Wotton reveals a particular genius in taking clichés unworthy even of fortune cookies, and making them humorous by reversing them:
Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know.
I adore simple pleasures, they are the last refuge of the complex.
What I want is information: not useful information, of course; useless information.
I assure you there is no nonsense about the Americans. How dreadful!
I can sympathize with everything except suffering.
My dear boy, the people who love only once in their lives are really the shallow people.
There is always something infinitely mean about other people’s tragedies.
Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives. [But this one is interchangeable: When a man does a thoroughly noble thing, it is always from the stupidest motives.]
A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.
I think that it is better to be beautiful than to be good. But … it is better to be good than to be ugly. [This is as common a commonplace as you can get, of the type popularized on television: It’s better to be beautiful, rich, and healthy than ugly, poor, and ill].
It is only shallow people that do not judge by appearances.
It is perfec
tly monstrous, the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind one’s back that are absolutely and entirely true.
The only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.
But it cannot be denied that Lord Wotton comes up with some effective paradoxes, such as:
I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects.
American girls are as clever at concealing their parents, as English women are at concealing their past.
Philanthropic people lose all sense of humanity. It is their distinguishing characteristic.
I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable.
I like Wagner’s music better than anybody’s. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without other people hearing what one says.
A grande passion is the privilege of people who have nothing to do.
Women inspire us with the desire to do masterpieces and always prevent us from carrying them out.
The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one.
But Lord Wotton’s paradoxes are more often interchangeable aphorisms:
Sin is the only real color-element left in modern life.
Virtue is the only real color-element left in modern life.
The truth is that Dorian Gray reveals Lord Wotton’s fatuousness, but criticizes it at the same time. People say of him: “Don’t mind him, my dear. He never means anything that he says.”
Lord Henry played with the idea and grew willful; tossed it into the air and transformed it; let it escape and recaptured it; made it iridescent with fancy and winged it with paradox.… He felt that the eyes of Dorian Gray were fixed on him, and the consciousness that amongst his audience there was one whose temperament he wished to fascinate seemed to give his wit keenness and to lend color to his imagination.
Some of Wilde’s best paradoxes appear in Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young, which he published as maxims for life in an Oxford student magazine: