The Temptation to Exist

Author: E. M. Cioran
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1628724951
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 204

Book Description
This collection of eleven essays originally appeared in France thirty years ago and created a literary whirlwind on the Left Bank. Cioran writes incisively about Western civilizations, the writer, the novel, mystics, apostles, and philosophers. The Temptation to Exist first introduced this brilliant European thinker twenty years ago to American readers, in a superb translation by Richard Howard. This literary mystique around Cioran continues to grow, and The Temptation to Exist has become an underground classic. In this work Cioran writes about Western civilizations, the writer, the novel, about mystics, apostles, philosophers. For those to whom the very word philosophy brings visions of arduous reading, be assured: Cioran is crystal-clear, his style quotable and aphoristic. “A sort of final philosopher of the Western world. His statements have the compression of poetry and the audacity of cosmic clowning”—The Washington Post

The Fall Into Time

Author: Emile M. Cioran
Publisher: Quadrangle/The New York Times Book Company
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 200

Book Description

All Gall is Divided

Author: Emile M. Cioran
Publisher: Arcade Publishing
ISBN: 9781559704717
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 180

Book Description
Romanian-born E.M. Cioran moved to Paris at the age of 26, remaining there nearly six decades until his death in 1995. He was called "a sort of final philosopher of the Western world" and "the last worthy disciple of Nietzsche"; the bleak aphorisms of All Gall Is Divided make a strong case for either appellation. "With every idea born in us," he declares early on, "something in us rots." Throughout the book, he addresses the futile attempts of man to impose meaning on a meaningless existence--"That there should be a reality hidden by appearances is, after all, quite possible; that language might render such a thing would be an absurd hope"--and nurses an ongoing fascination with the possibilities death holds for release from life's madness. (When the Dead Kennedys sang, "I look forward to death / This world brings me down," they might as well have been taking notes from Cioran.) Grim stuff, but presented in brilliant, crystalline form--particularly in the translation by Richard Howard, which retains Cioran's cold, detached viewpoint.

Drawn and Quartered

Author: E. M. Cioran
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing Inc.
ISBN: 1611456967
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 201

Book Description
"A brilliant and original exponent of a rare genre, the philosophical essay. Once read, Cioran cannot fail to provoke reaction. New York Times Book...

A Short History of Decay

Author: E. M. Cioran
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1628724943
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 209

Book Description
E. M. Cioran confronts the place of today's world in the context of human history—focusing on such major issues of the twentieth century as human progress, fanaticism, and science—in this nihilistic and witty collection of aphoristic essays concerning the nature of civilization in mid-twentieth-century Europe. Touching upon Man's need to worship, the feebleness of God, the downfall of the Ancient Greeks and the melancholy baseness of all existence, Cioran's pieces are pessimistic in the extreme, but also display a beautiful certainty that renders them delicate, vivid, and memorable. Illuminating and brutally honest, A Short History of Decay dissects Man's decadence in a remarkable series of moving and beautiful pieces.

Searching for Cioran

Author: Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnston
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253003458
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 313

Book Description
Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnston's critical biography of the Romanian-born French philosopher E. M. Cioran focuses on his crucial formative years as a mystical revolutionary attracted to right-wing nationalist politics in interwar Romania, his writings of this period, and his self-imposed exile to France in 1937. This move led to his transformation into one of the most famous French moralists of the 20th century. As an enthusiast of the anti-rationalist philosophies widely popular in Europe during the first decades of the 20th century, Cioran became an advocate of the fascistic Iron Guard. In her quest to understand how Cioran and other brilliant young intellectuals could have been attracted to such passionate national revival movements, Zarifopol-Johnston, herself a Romanian emigrÃ©, sought out the aging philosopher in Paris in the early 1990s and retraced his steps from his home village of Rasinari and youthful years in Sibiu, through his student years in Bucharest and Berlin, to his early residence in France. Her portrait of Cioran is complemented by an engaging autobiographical account of her rediscovery of her own Romanian past.

Tears and Saints

Author: E. M. Cioran
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226106748
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 155

Book Description
"(Cioran's) statements have the compression of poetry and the audacity of cosmic clowning".--WASHINGTON POST. In TEARS AND SAINTS, Cioran touches on nearly all the themes that would preoccupy the writer over the course of his career. Self-consciously perverse, this collection will fascinate anyone interested in saints, mysticism, philosophy, the history of Christianity, or the ultimate strangeness of the sacred.

History and Utopia

Author: E. M. Cioran
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1628724668
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 120

Book Description
“Only a monster can allow himself the luxury of seeing things as they are,” writes E. M. Cioran, the Romanian-born philosopher who has rightly been compared to Samuel Beckett. In History and Utopia, Cioran the monster writes of politics in its broadest sense, of history, and of the utopian dream. His views are, to say the least, provocative. In one essay he casts a scathing look at democracy, that “festival of mediocrity”; in another he turns his uncompromising gaze on Russia, its history, its evolution, and what he calls “the virtues of liberty.” In the dark shadow of Stalin and Hitler, he writes of tyrants and tyranny with rare lucidity and convincing logic. In “Odyssey of Rancor,” he examines the deep-rooted dream in all of us to “hate our neighbors,” to take immediate and irremediable revenge. And, in the final essay, he analyzes the notion of the “golden age,” the biblical Eden, the utopia of so many poets and thinkers.

On the Heights of Despair

Author: E. M. Cioran
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226106717
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 154

Book Description
"Born of a terrible insomnia wchich E. M. Cioran called "a dizzying lucidity which would turn even paradise into hell," this book presents the youthful Cioran, a self-described "Nietzsche still complete with his Zarathustra, his poses, his mystical clown's tricks, a whole circus of the heights." On the Heights of Despair shows Cioran's first grappling with themes he would return to in his mature works: despair and decay, absurdity and alienation, futility and the irrationality of existence. It also presents Cioran as a connoisseur of apocalypse, a theoretician of despair, for whom writing and philosophy both share the "lyrical virtues" that alone lead to metaphysical revelations. An exorcism of despair, this book offers insights into the ironic anguish of Cioran's philosophic mind while providing fascinating information on his early development as a writer and thinker."

The Temptation

Author: Nikki Sloane
Publisher: Shady Creek Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 448

Book Description
Vance Hale has everything. A ridiculous amount of money, an Ivy-league education, and a 1,000-watt smile that can charm the designer dress right off a girl. He’s also going to have a future that includes me—whether he wants it or not. I don’t care that he’s trying to reform his playboy ways, or that he made a bet to go 90 days without the touch of a woman. I’ve spent the last decade planning my revenge and I need a partner in crime. This gorgeous, cunning man should do fine. So, we strike a deal. I’ll help get him across the finish line and he’ll bring me into his world among the Cape Hill elite. Our relationship may be fake, but our chemistry is shockingly real. One innocent kiss and I’m struggling to hold up my end of the bargain. Wanting him wasn’t part of the plan when everything else I desire is within my grasp. The only problem? Neither of us is any good at resisting temptation.