Complete Fragments

The aphoristic genre has fallen into oblivion. There are neither many readers of aphoristic books today nor writers of aphorisms (or else their aphorisms do not come to the public arena). Nor do we see works of aphorisms being published frequently. This may be a sign of our times, that our age has become too shallow to have a taste for the aphoristic depths and explosions. Or, on the optimistic side of things, the aphoristic wisdom, the wisdom of expressing insights and thoughts in concise forms, expresses itself in a variety of media (including those that are non-linguistic) that are available to contemporary thinkers. Or, poetry has taken over the aphoristic genre, and in the new era the distinction between verse and prose has been blurred, and aphorism has fallen into the void of this blurry making. I, for one thing, do not oppose hybrid forms of expression as long as each genre is too cultivated and perfected in itself. Just as in the idea of the total artwork (at least, in my reading of it), each art form is unique and needs to be cultivated in itself, and yet all arts come together to create a joint effect, which is necessary for an integral presentation of arts to the integral spectator. One can say something similar for literary genres as well. As a result, I do not have a response as to why the aphoristic genre has declined in the recent past (I do have all languages in mind, but especially French and German which produced some of the best aphorists of the modern literature).