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I need to find out more about aphorisms which, to be honest, I hadn't given much thought to up until now. Clearly they have their place in any writer's treasure chest. And, the book within a book... I'd like to chew on that a bit more. Thank you for sharing your thoughts here on Substack. The time you give to your posts is much appreciated.

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Intriguing stuff. Love the way you extend the use of tension from fictional form to the essay. After this post I happened to see, in John d'Agata's The Lost Origins of the Essay, an entry on Francis Bacon's aphorisms: "Coming from the Greek roots for 'from'--apo--and 'boundary'--horismos--the word literally means to mark off, to demarcate, to define" (175). Thus in contrast (tension again) to your note on Spirit: "I do not know exactly what I am." Is this tension not also the essence of irony?

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