Aphorism and/or (Auto)Poetic Discomforts of Fragmentary Writing

Abstract

Bearing in mind the origin and genesis of the aphorism genre, its transhistorical, transcultural and inherently interdisciplinary nature, this paper tackles the literary-theoretical and philosophical understanding of the aphoristic practice in the literature of modernism dynamics. Caught up in the project of the German romantics from Jena, as well as Maurice Blanchot’s philosophical thought, the term “aphorism” is replaced by the rival term “fragment”. Such a literary-theoretical and terminological shift was based on the crisis of meaning, the modernist literature fragmentary demand, and the problematic relationship between speech and truth in aphoristic discourse. This will be discussed in particular regarding the writings of J. Derrida, R. Barthes, and Antoine Compagnon, but also Ivo Andrić within (auto)poetics attitudes in Signs by the Roadside [Znakovi pored puta] through which, with references to the contemporary theory of aphorism and fragmentary writing (B. Grant, F, Moret, F. Susini-Anastopoulos), subversive metatextual fragmentation processes of traditional aphoristic form in the direction of the poetics of overcoming, the emergence of meaning within the concept of the open, formless (informé) space of the writing are highlighted.