New Aphorisms by Ramon Gomez de la Serna

Posted on December 23, 2009
Filed Under Aphorisms | 9 Comments

Along with Malcolm de Chazal, Ramon Gomez de la Serna is one of the weirdest and most wonderful (and most woefully neglected) aphorists in the entire history of the form. Gomez de la Serna (see pages 370-371 of Geary’s Guide) died in the early 1960s, having written dozens of books and hundreds of so-called “greguerias“—his own peculiar form of the aphorism. A while back, Laurie-Anne Laget, a professor at France’s Sorbonne, discovered a cache of unpublished greguerias in some boxes deposited at the University of Pittsburgh by the writer’s widow in 1970. This article from the Latin American Herald Tribune tells the story, though sadly it does not name the book in which the new aphorisms appear: 400 Unpublished Gomez de la Serna Aphorisms Come to Light. (If anyone can track the title down, please leave a comment on this post!) Here are a few of Gomez de la Serna’s long-lost sayings… Once again, I thank the ever aphoristically alert Jim Finnegan (check out his blog, ursprache) for bringing this find to my attention.

Words are the skeleton of things and for that reason last longer than things do.

The water lily is a flower that escaped from the trees to navigate the waters.

Capitalist: a gymnast with many telephones.

An ironing board wears a striped undershirt.

Octopi are the gloves of the sea.

What does the moon do in a pond? It washes its face.

Comments

9 Responses to “New Aphorisms by Ramon Gomez de la Serna”

  1. Paddy Foyle on December 23rd, 2009 12:11 pm

    What do you always do when you want to find something? Go and look for something somewhere?

  2. Candadai Tirumalai on December 23rd, 2009 1:50 pm

    The Administration disappeared into Patronage.

  3. marty rubin on December 26th, 2009 6:45 pm

    Words are like the waves produced by underwater explosions.

    The branch’s reflection in the water is the eternal chink in reality.

    Open your eyes. Now tell me: where is the mystery?

  4. Allan Brown on December 29th, 2009 4:24 pm

    Venture Capitalist: a misguided gynaecologist in search of a healthy baby to bring into a cruel world.

  5. Jim Finnegan on December 31st, 2009 7:09 pm

    The book appears to be only in Spanish, published by…
    LA FABRICA
    http://www.lafabrica.com/

    NUEVAS GREGUERIAS
    of GOMEZ DE LA SERNA, RAMON
    2009

  6. marty rubin on January 3rd, 2010 9:45 pm

    Is the sun a symbol? I thought it was an object that lit up the world.

  7. New Aphorisms by Daniel Liebert > All Aphorisms, All the Time on January 5th, 2010 3:09 pm

    [...] aphorisms. But not just any aphorisms; these are his own take on Ramon Gomez de la Serna’s greguerias. “As far as I’ve been able to ascertain,” Dan writes, “I am the world’s only [...]

  8. Lori ellison on May 14th, 2010 9:55 pm

    What a pleasure to read more of his aphorisms, thank you for posting James.

  9. Aphorisms and Metaphors by Francis Ponge > All Aphorisms, All the Time on August 7th, 2010 9:29 am

    [...] rather than surrealistic. This is a quality they both share with another oddball aphorist, Ramon Gomez de la Serna. Gomez de la Serna had an acute eye for the slightly absurd aspects of nature: The giraffe is a [...]

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