Small Map of Experience : Reflections & Aphorisms

To entail, scan and embrace more knowledge of "what is" and "what ought to be done" in fewer words -- to make a statement as short, concise, terse and pithy as possible while rendering the sights it opens as vast as possible -- is the principal intention of the practitioners of the difficult art of the aphorism.

Many writers have tried it, few have succeeded. A successful aphorism, true to its mission, allows a small step to go a long, perhaps an infinitely long, way.

But as knowledge needed to find ones way in our increasingly crowded and complex world grows at a mind-boggling pace, so do the difficulties on the road to success.

In our liquid-modern times horizons tend to break up or dissolve as soon as they are drawn.

It is this unprecedented quality of our condition that Leonidas Donskis attempts to grasp and convey by resurrecting the badly missed and badly needed art of the aphorism, injecting into it a new impetus, a perfect match to the vertiginous pace of our life, and bringing that art up to the gravity and grandiosity of the challenge we confront.

We should all be grateful to him for this exquisitely harrowing task he has performed.