Maistre attached the highest importance to the ‘philosophy of style,’ and averred that he who knew not how to write was incapable of metaphysics. The violence that pervades his thought and rhetoric is a response to the primal experience of the ‘terrible truth of evil,’ while his style incarnates his sense of the mystery of history. By conveying his thought in what Baudelaire called ‘rockets,’ Maistre provoked his readers into a state of fascination and shock.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Maistre attached the highest importance to the ‘philosophy of style,’ and averred that he who knew not how to write was incapable of metaphysics. The violence that pervades his thought and rhetoric is a response to the primal experience of the ‘terrible truth of evil,’ while his style incarnates his sense of the mystery of history. By conveying his thought in what Baudelaire called ‘rockets,’ Maistre provoked his readers into a state of fascination and shock." in the context of "Carolina Armenteros, "Epilogue: the forced inhabitant of history" in The New Enfant du Siècle: Joseph de Maistre as a Writer (2010), p. 101–102" to mean that wisdom is timeless.