Silicon Valley guru and space explorer Elon Musk (Pretoria, South Africa, 51 years old) recommended this week a book of aphorisms by a 17th-century Aragonese philosopher. The richest man in the world was cryptically explicit when he tweeted: “Baltasar Gracián, Oracle manual and art of prudence”. The most striking thing of all is that he wasn’t even being original. The work of Gracián, a baroque intellectual from the Spanish Golden Age, has had several lives over the centuries. And in the last one he has been reincarnated in a self-help book for entrepreneurs.
Baltasar Gracián, Manual Oracle and Art of Prudence
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 19, 2022
In fact, in the description of the book Penguin, its publisher in the US, ventures that “it may be the first self-help book in history.” It makes sense, concedes Luis Sánchez Laílla, professor of Literature at the University of Zaragoza and editor of the complete works of Baltasar Gracián. “The title itself says that it is a manual, that is, designed to accompany the reader and open it for advice at any time,” he explains. The book contains aphorisms that have survived to this day. Phrases like “what is good, if brief, are twice as good” or “where desire ends fear begins” are ingenious and easy to remember, but they contain a certain depth. The scholar marks distances with the pejorative meaning that self-help has earned hard in recent years and even more so that dedicated to entrepreneurs. This is not a testosterone manual on how to hold, invest in the stock market and be your own boss. “We will not find in its pages simple formulas and simple answers for the general public,” says Sánchez Laílla. Gracián was writing for a select minority, the minority he could read in the seventeenth century; which he can understand baroque aphorisms today. But thanks to a language update and a marketing campaign, that encompasses many, many people.
The art of prudence It was published in 1647, but it was in 1992 that it achieved fame in the US. It was promoted by the writer Gail Godwin. In an interview with New York Times, to the question of what book he would recommend to the two candidates to preside over the White House, (who at that time were George Bush Sr. and Bill Clinton) replied that with the work of Gracián, whose thought he defined as “Machiavellian, but with scruples”. Soon other newspapers began commenting on the book, and it found its way onto the best-seller lists and into leather briefcases on Wall Street. The yuppies they showed the book to their colleagues, causing the same mixture of envy and admiration that the first mobile phones did then. The baroque compendium even reached the White House, as the publisher took note of Godwin’s recommendation and sent copies to both candidates. That year, Clinton became president and Gracián sold more than 100,000 copies in the US.
In his second reincarnation, The art of prudence changed its skin and was renamed Why do executives play golf? It was 2007 and the book was selling like sushi in Japan. 140,000 copies were dispatched, reaching the third position of cheap book sales in the country. Actually, surprise, the Jesuit never cared about the swing of the brokers Japanese. The name change responded to a marketing strategy to attract the attention of these, explained the editor of Goma Books, Satoshi Kawakami, to The world in a interview of the time. “Most of the people who play golf in Japan are businessmen,” he acknowledged. “The word golf inspires a certain social status.”
A similar criterion must have been followed in 2013 by the publishing house Áltera, which compiled his best aphorisms under the title Gracián: the Jesuit who taught how to succeed. But despite the opportune rebranding and to enjoy in Spain the diffuse popularity that comes from being studied in any middle school, Gracián has never been a prophet in his land. “It is one of the classics that is continually reissued in Spain,” says Antonio María Ávila, executive director of the Federation of Publishers’ Guilds of Spain. “That said, it has been more widely read abroad than in Spain. He is not the only one: in US universities one of the compulsory readings is Antoniana Margaret of Gomez Pereira.
Luis Rafael Hernández agrees. He is a university professor, writer and director of the Verbum and Perelló publishing houses, which have published the most important works of the philosopher. In an exchange of emails, Hernández explains that Gracián’s work has more repercussions in the US than in Spain. This is part of the literary trend of conceptism. “It is characterized by a brief, concentrated and polysemous style, in which ingenious associations are established between the words and the ideas that are transmitted”, he explains. Something like an ironic tweet, but in the Baroque. This style may explain its success in today’s society, where big ideas need to be encapsulated in a few characters that grab the reader’s attention.
Gracián also found an echo in other movements and trends. He is considered a “precursor of existentialism and postmodernity,” says Professor Hernández. His influence crystallizes not only in movements, but in specific authors “such as Schopenhauer or Nietzsche”. His importance has been galvanized in recent years, something that the scholar explains from the context. “In these times,” he reflects, “with wars, pandemics and other calamities, an author like Gracián helps us understand our existence much better.”
It helps us all, but especially Silicon Valley gurus. But why has the work of a Jesuit monk from Aragon found so much prestige among entrepreneurs, aspirants, brokers Y cryptobros of all the world? “Gracián is a classic author. The classics have the power to continue to interest readers over time and they can legitimately interpret them according to their own interests and mental frameworks”, says Sánchez Laílla. That entrepreneurs make it their own is striking, because the Manual oracle and art of prudence draws a human ideal that transcends ages, jobs and borders. “The fundamental thing is to understand one thing: if we forget the ethical and humanistic principles that animated Gracián, we will be able to cite the Oraclebut we will not be understanding anything”.
The new reincarnation of The art of prudence could be about to arrive. Elon Musk’s message mentioning the book exceeded 32,000 likes. The fact that Musk was in full public confrontation with the Twitter platform, whose frustrated purchase has pitted the tycoon against the company, added interest to him. Many thought they saw a hint, although it is difficult to point out which one: there are 300 Gracián aphorisms to choose from. In any case, the impact can be enormous on the sales and fame of the book. Or not. Musk is used to gargantuan virality. To put it in context: the day before recommending the Spanish philosopher he had tweeted a meme with a false quote: “Uhmm, reasonably well”. Mediocrates”. Reached 250,000 likes. A few days earlier, she tweeted a popcorn emoji. It exceeded 50,000. For this reason, no one believes that the popcorn emoticon or the non-existent book of Mediocrates will become fashionable. Or maybe yes.
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