Kindness to those with less power is condescension. Kindness to those with more power is ingratiation. So true kindness can only exist between equals? Or is that just rivalry and jockeying-for-position?
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There is a kind of wound that cannot be confessed, because the public knowledge of the wound, how much it hurts, would be much worse than the wound itself. To be thought petty and confused...
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I was trying to parody someone--a cross between Nick Piombino and LaRochefoucauld.
What Bob are you, Bob?
I thought it might be you, but wasn't sure. I don't think you could parody LaRochefoucauld intelligently. I'm willing to do it rather dumbly in the meantime. I have never forgetten when he said "We all have the strength to withstand the misfortunes of other people."
For me there remains a geat deal of wisdom in La R despite his cynicism and I wonder whether there is more wit and humor in the French than in English and whether some of both has curdled in over 425 years. Speaking of condescension, maybe it was possible for La R to offer tons of "helpful" advice this way without appearing to patronize, but rather amuse or even to schmooze at little bit philosophically.
My latest spate of aphorisms emerged in the light of a recent reading of La R as Jonathan seems have suspected. This does not forgive an occasional lapse into dissonance on my part- but I would hope that an aphorist can receive a least a little poetic license rather than always being held to the standards of literal philosophizing?
Also, isn't there a type of parody that encompasses more than ridicule? I think of Flarf, in this regard. Parady, in seems to me offers an indirect path towards dialogue at the same time encompassing critique and reference without the pedanticism.
Anyway, perhaps La R's irony and cynicism helps mask some of the blatant and unavoidable, annoying didacticism.
I'm sure you know Barthes' essay on LaR. I seemed to have known who LaR was even in high-school, I'm not sure why. Weird kid. The French original is a little more elegant--that symmetry between phrases is crucial to the wit and sometimes gets lost in translation.
One way to parody would be to use that same finely balanced structure and fill the blanks with absurdities.
Do you know the greguerías of Ramón Gómez de la Serna?
I checked on line and there is a book of translation.
I want to read these! Who is your favorite translator?
I don't know who's translated these. I haven't read them in translation ever.
The toad's song is atrocious because it is addressed to the stars.
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