The nothingness of personality
Ramón Gómez de la Serna (1888-1963) was a Spanish writer who later in his life immigrated to Buenos Aires and remained there until his death in 1960s. He is best known for the development of the greguería , a peculiar form of aforisms with a humorous twist in the beginning of the 20th century. In his rather complex 1922 essay on the impossibility of describing personality, or the whole self, de la Serna is a reference Borges rapid fires between Picasso and Schopenhauer to highlight the importance of crystalline and concise expression as a symbol of "the present moment". In Borges's logic the self, or a concsciousness boils down to an experiencer or an observer of the present moment, reminiscing on the past and anticipating the future ones. He goes on to claim that as such, narratives tied to a certain chronology or an order of events are doomed to fail as descriptions of a personal self but are still the best way to understand how the world and the reality work. In t...