A TIME OF APHORISMS
Advice is a form of nostalgia, and as we wave off a year of reflection Yin Lutang’s words of wisdom are just as relevant as they were a century ago, says Alexander McCall Smith
Alexander McCall Smith reflects on Yin Lutang's old words of wisdom
The main attraction of an aphorism is that it’s short enough for us, the weaker brethren, to remember. There are any number of feats of rhetoric it would be nice to be able to recite – the Declaration of Arbroath and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address both contain passages that are utterly memorable, except that most of us find it rather hard to remember the precise wording.
There are of course those few who seem to be able to commit long screeds of prose or poetry to memory – we all know at least one person who is able to recite Tam O’Shanter – but our own memory of these things inevitably falters after a few lines. That is where the aphorism comes into its own and restores our selfrespect. Aphorisms are by definition brief, and can be quoted accurately by even the most sieve-like. And even if they get one or two words wrong, the general gist will still be there.
Lin Yutang (1895-1976) was a Chinese essayist and inventor of the Chinese typewriter. He was also a prolific coiner of aphorisms, which appeared regularly in the pages of his delightful, light-hearted essays. He wrote on a wide range of subjects, but there was a central message in many of his essays: don’t let modern life make a machine of you.
He celebrated the free and quirky side of traditional Chinese culture – its slightly mischievous tendencies, its ability to stand back and dream. He made it his business to explain this culture to the west, where he had studied for many years at German and American universities. His writing eschews the businesslike register of modern literature: it dances and sings, playfully invites us to participate in whimsy.
His aphorisms pack a profound message within the compass of a few words. This is usually to do with how we should live our life or how one should react to events about us. In a time of reflection – which is what this past year has been for most of us – this sort of aphorism is likely to fall on receptive soil.
Here’s Lin Yutang on our essential humanity in spite of everything: ‘A man may own a thousand acres and yet he still sleeps upon a bed of five feet.’ That says just about everything that needs to be said about the emptiness of grandeur and wealth, and about aspects of large-scale land ownership. Such things may appear to inflate the person, but are nothing really. At the end of the day our human mortality claims us. Whatever the trappings of our lives, we are still bounded by the limitations that all of us share. That knowledge is a great antidote to envy and should encourage us to be content with what we have. Equally, it suggests modesty in the enjoyment of possessions.
Contemplating public affairs, Lin Yutang’s works are replete with aphorisms that seem to resonate with our own times. ‘Besides the noble art of getting things done,’ he wrote, ‘there is the noble art of leaving things undone.’ On one reading, that is an invitation to indolence that is hardly attractive. But a moment’s thought leads one to its real meaning, which is that one should not be too keen to interfere in areas of life where interference is neither required nor welcome. This might be an aphorism to be carved in stone above the entrance to any parliament: change what needs to be changed, but don’t look around for ways to intrude on people’s private lives.
He had a resounding thing to say about patriotism. This is one of his most frequently-quoted aphorisms, and it as striking as it is misguided. ‘What is patriotism,’ he asks, ‘but the love of the good things one ate as a child?’ There is a kernel of truth in that: the love of country is clearly the love of all that the country means to one, and that obviously includes fond memories of the past.
But patriotism is far more than that, and involves love of what is here and now – of the people who constitute one’s community. We love those who share our world. That is an important promoter of social cohesion. Patriotism springs from loyalty, which is a virtue. Nothing to be ashamed of, even if loyalty must at times yield to weightier moral considerations.
Every so often, one trips over an aphorism that is so profoundly true that it takes one’s breath away. ‘Our task,’ Lin Yutang pronounced, ‘is not so much discovery as rediscovery.’ Even the ranks of Tuscany can scarce forebear to cheer over that. Rediscover is exactly what we need to be doing. Rediscover solitude. Rediscover value in our lives. Rediscover silence and the joy of spending time looking at the world about us – not just glancing, but looking.
That sort of aphorism can change the way we look at life. That’s the work done by a line of Auden in his poem The More Loving One. ‘If equal affection cannot be, Let the more loving one be me.’ Those two lines are about unreciprocated love. The Greeks believed that alongside Eros there was Anteros, a figure who represented the reciprocation of love. He does not visit everybody, but if he does not visit us, then that does not mean that we should not rise above our disappointment, and redouble our love for others and the world.
I’m sure that’s what Auden meant, and even if he did not, his aphorism says it rather well.
“A man may own a thousand acres and yet he still sleeps upon a bed of five feet