THE APHORISTIC ESSAY
THE APHORISTIC ESSAY
> An aphorism is an essay, an essay in its smallest possible form.
> Francis Bacon was the first one to write proper essays in English. Though he was inspired by the French writer Michel de Montaigne, his essays are more objective and impersonal than those of the French Master.
> Bacon's essays are written in an aphoristic style. They contain mostly short, crisp sentences with didactic bent. Bacon called his essays 'counsels civil and moral' and 'dispersed meditations'.
> Aphoristic essays are known for their precision of style and balancing structure.
> No superfluous words are used and sentences flow rapidly.
> They seem abrupt and rugged but express the ideas directly and clearly.
> As a critic says, the sentences in an aphoristic essay are in a state of 'literary undress'.
> The style of Bacon remains for the main part aphoristic, with the result that he is one of the most quotable of writers. There is a terseness of expression, and an epigrammatic brevity, in the essays of Bacon.
> His sentences are brief and rapid, but they are also forceful. “They come down like the strokes of a hammer’, says Dean Church.
> The essays of Bacon in fact have to be read slowly because of the compact and condensed thought.
> There are a number of sentences which are read like proverbs that easily jump to one’s mind:
1. A lie faces God and Shrinks from man. (Of Truth)
2. Suspicions among thoughts are like bats among birds.
(Of Suspicion)
3. The ways to enrich are many, and most of them foul.
(Of Riches)
4. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. (Of Truth)
5. It is a strange desire to seek power and lose liberty: or to seek power over others and lose power over a man’s self. (Of Great Place)
6. The rising unto place is laborious, and by pains men come to greater pains. (Of Great Place)
> There is not one essay which does not contain such capsules of common wisdom.
> The sentences are pregnant with meaning. They are often curt, telegraphic or stenographic in nature.
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