Balthasar Gracian
Spanish Jesuit whose book The Art of Worldly Wisdom turned every phrase into a puzzle Show bio
Bio
Baltasar Gracián won fame as a Jesuit preacher, once reading aloud a letter "sent from Hell." He drew his superiors' disapproval, and he would defy them again and again.
Gracián championed conceptism, a style that packs the most meaning into the fewest words. He took it furthest in The Art of Worldly Wisdom, three hundred maxims with commentary. Gracián published El Criticón, a long allegorical novel, without his order's permission in 1651.
He ignored their reprimands, published more of it, and was punished with exile in 1658. Gracián asked to join another religious order, was refused, and died that December.