'My Gift Depended on the Flash'

On the same day I happened on a memorable aperçu I saw the word itself used in sentences that are aperçu-like in their concision. In his first book, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (1951), Eric Hoffer writes: “We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand.” 

I discovered Hoffer as a teenager and he became among the first of my writing heroes. The unschooled longshoreman educated himself in the old-fashioned, Lincolnesque manner – with books, pondered in solitude. Hoffer escaped most of failings that corrupt the thinking of autodidacts. He never attended a university and as a result was not beholden to theory or fashion. He taught himself to think and to weigh what he learned against experience. His other teacher was Montaigne. Hoffer first read the Frenchman while living as a homeless migrant worker during the Great Depression.

 

That line from The True Believer, a book I read again every few years, has new meaning. We often believe things because we want to believe them, not because they supply us with an accurate understanding of reality. In an abstract way, in part thanks to William James, I knew that a long time ago,  but I was weak. I was sentimental. Some thoughts are precious not because they are true but because they resemble cerebral security blankets. Though supposedly I knew better, I clung to ersatz “wisdom.” Perhaps growing up means shedding nonsensical beliefs.

 

What is an aperçu? The OED defines it as “a summary exposition, a conspectus. Also, a revealing glimpse; an insight,” from the French apercevoir, “to perceive.” As a literary form I think of it as first cousin to aphorisms, maxims, epigrams and apothegms – all characterized by concision of manner and density of matter. A well-crafted aphorism by Paul Valéry, Karl Kraus or Nicolás Gómez Dávila is a mere handful of words containing more thought-matter than most novels. I choose “matter” purposely. A good aphorism seems to confirm Einstein’s notion that matter is energy in another form. I think of aphorisms lying on the page, coiled to strike when released by the reader.

 

In A Poet’s Prose: Selected Writings of Louise Bogan (2005) I noticed the poet was fond of aperçu. In a passage from the journal she was keeping in 1937, Bogan writes:

 

“Put me down as one to whom delicate aperçus, Swift’s sentence structure, and Mozart’s music, meant as much as the starry firmament and the moral law, and stood for proofs of life’s inner cleanliness, tenderness, and order.”

 

And this, from her journal in 1961:

 

“My gift depended on the flash—on the aperçu. The fake reason, the surface detail, language only—these give no joy.”

 

[I’ve written often about Hoffer, notably here and here.]