What matters the most about an article in a bureaucratic world is where it is published, its location in a particular book or journal, and its length (at least, its relative length). The content is usually of least consequence. There are, naturally, many ways of fighting this bureaucratic idiocy. Formally, I choose as a weapon the short essay and short note. A ray of sharp light on an aspect of a problem, and nothing else. No attempt to finish up every thought, to quote every authority, to seriously consider every angle, every possible extension, every possible implication… That tends to deaden an occasional critical spark that may be buried somewhere. I will let my short pieces live their own lives, let them spur the unexpected thoughts I had not even considered, but which were hidden in my careless sentences, let them excite that which I thought could not be excited, hoping I was wrong… I will let my short pieces be short indeed. That way, I am sure, I will secure for them the worst place, the worst position in a hierarchy (or, is it the hierarchy?), since it seems that length and content are to some extent related. The content does seem to matter after all, quite the contrary to my original assumption.

Addendum I (May 16, 1977)

Is not an intelligent reader bound to ask, after reading these notes, whether the most appropriate title of this note was not: Aquila non captat muscas? What would I answer, seeing his or her ironical smile?

Addendum II (March 8, 2013)

So many years if not centuries later, I am still fighting the bureaucratic idiocy, which persists unabated. Actually, it spreads with growing abandon. And I am still sticking to a few sharp words without undue embellishments. Aquila non captat muscas, indeed. And never will. As for hypothetical intelligent readers, let them smile or even giggle as ironically as they wish. Still, I will let my short pieces short, and ever shorter. Sooner or later, I will call them sutras. Patanjali is my ultimate guide, after all. Where are those smiles and giggles now?

Addendum III (January 19, 2019)

Having stumbled upon this piece entirely by chance, I was delighted to find Patanjali mentioned in the previous addendum. As far as the length of my writings is concerned, sutras remain the ideal. And this is precisely what I have done with my, as it were, rewriting of Patanjali’s yoga sutras (“Ten Principles of Bon Yoga,” November 13, 2012). As it turns out, my rendering of yoga instructions is no more than fourteen percent of Patanjali’s in terms of the wordcount (“Patanjali and I,” June 10, 2013). Stripped of the Sankhya baggage, my sutras are as terse as terse can be. Joking aside, I look forward to ever-shorter pieces of writing. The shorter, the better. Luckily, I have all the time I need to hone everything down to the bare essentials. Three cheers for retirement!

Addendum IV (February 17, 2025)

Oh, I love the Latin phrase in the title of this piece of writing! “For the bright,” that is, “few words suffice.” Over the years, brevity has been my forte (“On Brevity,” January 23, 2019). Most pieces of writing in my Residua do not beat around the bush; they go straight for the heart of things. Not surprisingly, the same phrase can be found in yet another title of my writings (“Intelligenti pauca, iterum,” February 26, 2019). But there is a twist in this story, and a troubling one—over fifty years, my writing project has mushroomed to nearly four-million words. No matter how brief my writings might be, there are close to nineteen-thousands of them extended by some five-thousand addenda, and they add up to a giant of literature by now (“A Giant of Literature,” January 31, 2025). I have written a lot about my writing urge, which has been under control the last decade or so, but fifty years are hardly a joke when it comes to writing. In retrospect, all this was unimaginable to me when this particular piece was written. As ever, few words suffice for the bright. The others can go fly a kite.