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The Making of an Evergreen Writer
Arthur Schopenhauer on what makes a writer immortal
The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) was most known for his philosophical beliefs in metaphysics which built upon Immanuel Kant’s epistemological investigations.
In Essays and Aphorisms, a collection of Schopenhauer’s work, he describes what it means to be an evergreen writer.
In today's world, an evergreen writer is defined as someone who can write content that is continually relevant. Evergreen writing is not news articles or reports on the latest findings as these things will eventually lose relevancy or new reports will supersede previous ones.
An evergreen writer is one who writes about subjects and in a way that is relevant at any time — in fact, their works transcend time. Examples may be the writings of Seneca the Younger, Cicero, or even the Bible.
Schopenhauer defined three categories of writers and he used the metaphor of space to showcase each:
“Writers can be divided into meteors, planets and fixed stars.”
The separation in categories is derived from the subject matter and wisdom behind the works in which the writer creates.
