For Don Paterson, the aphorism is not the mania for speaking profoundly about trivial matters, that confusion of grandiosity with bombast or rhetorical elegance sometimes found in kinder, less witty authors than the Scottish aphorist. And although in The Eye and the Shadows we also find the cutting wit common to the aphoristic genre, he frequently speaks of himself, and therefore the invective falls far short of the mere rude or arrogant accusation of someone directing his anger or resentment at otherness...