ABSTRACT
"L'aphorisme a contretemps" came into being in 1986 when Jacques Derrida was invited to write a piece on Romeo and Juliet for a production of the play in Paris by Daniel Mesguich, and its specificity is signaled by the irreducibly personal note with which it ends. An aphorism is a name but every name can take on the figure of aphorism. Aphoristically, one must say that Romeo and Juliet will have lived, and lived on, through aphorism. TN "Aphorism Countertime" contains—or carries—a certain play on the verb porter, corresponding in some ways to the English verb "to bear". "Aphorism Countertime" follows William Shakespeare's text in focusing on the possibility that a letter can always not reach its destination. The bad aphorism, the bad of aphorism is sententious, but every aphorism cuts and delimits by virtue of its sententious character: it says the truth in the form of the last judgment, and this truth carries death.
