obscurity

is dark, ample, and free... it lets the mind take its way unimpeded.

While fame impedes and constricts, obscurity wraps about a man like a mist... obscurity is dark, ample, and free... obscurity lets the mind take its way unimpeded. Over the obscure man is poured the merciful suffusion of darkness. None knows where he goes or comes. He may seek the truth and speak it... he alone is free... he alone is truthful, he alone is at peace.

is best when it is somehow clear. One ought to be obscure clearly and wild of tongue in a way readers can understand.

Be obscure clearly! Be wild of tongue in a way we can understand.

is a kind of writing demanding that we do the heavy lifting. The reader toils at the obscure text and ascribes to its author the pleasure he has in fact gained from his own zeal.

Twofold misjudgement. The misfortune suffered by clear-minded and easily understood writers is that they are taken for shallow and thus little effort is expended on reading them: and the good fortune that attends the obscure is that the reader toils at them and ascribes to them the pleasure he has in fact gained from his own zeal. (nietzsche 'human all too ' 92)

is no sign of profundity. No significant idea which cannot be explained to an intelligent twelve year old boy in fifteen minutes.

There is no significant idea which cannot be explained to an intelligent twelve year old boy in fifteen minutes. Leo Tolstoy

is always regarded as more important than explained, clear matters.

Unexplained, obscure matters are regarded as more important than explained, clear ones. Friedrich Nietzsche

is forever, while glory is always fleeting.

Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.

is timidly unwillingly to go into the water.

so timid and goes so unwillingly into the water.

is a method that forecloses traditional reading practices. Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators.

Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators.

obscurity, n.All

obscurity