>Si le dégoût du monde conférait à lui seul la sainteté, je ne vois pas comment je pourrais éviter la canonisation.I never thought I'd ever find a kindred soul in my entire life but here he is, Emil CioranWhich books of his are worth reading?How difficult are they to understand? I mostly avoid philosophy as a rule
It's just misanthropic nihilist drivel for the most part.>Have ideas? Congrats! You are now Hitler.Literally says something like this in A Short History of Decay. He does have a couple interesting ideas but nothing difficult to grasp. I found his style of writing a bit annoying to get through though.
If you were to read anything of his, though, it would be A Short History of Decay, as mentioned.
>>24109582Cioran (along with Sartre and other existentialists) is nothing but a boring, feminine coward.>"Salvation? Whatever diminishes the kingdom of consciousness and compromises its supremacy".Then kill yourself.They see consciousness as an evil, but instead of curing themselves and sparing us of their presence, they continue to pester decent society with their stink, and poison the minds of the youth with a natural disposition towards transcendence, even though they do not lack the intelligence to understand that they are a miserable bug, and that the rest of the world and existence itself will continue to unfold despite their pathetic protest.In moments of rare candidness, or more likely Freudian slips, these types expose themselves. Such as when Ligottti said on an interview:>"Personally, I'm afraid of suffering and afraid of dying. I'm also afraid of witnessing the suffering and death of those who are close to me. And no doubt I project these fears on those around me and those to come, which makes it impossible for me to understand why everyone isn't an antinatalist, just as I have to assume pronatalists can't understand why everyone isn't like them."
>>24110663I don't see how that exposes ligotti at all
>>24110666It exposes the true origin of these "world-weary, life-deniers", cowardice. And cowardice is the very reason why they do not make a swift departure from this world, despite all of the noise that they make.
>>24110703We are all cowards
>>24110703That doesn't logically follow at all.
>Il vaut mieux être animal qu’homme, insecte qu’animal, plante qu’insecte, et ainsi de suite. Le salut ? Tout ce qui amoindrit le règne de la conscience et en compromet la suprématie.>Ce n’est pas la peine de se tuer, puisqu’on se tue toujours trop tard.This guy is just too funny
Anyone know why the Pléiade edition only has his French works included?Are his Romanian writings not significant enough or is it just a lazy cash grab?
>>24111063The big "problem" in Cioran's Romanian Period is the quasi-fascist Transfiguration of Romania, which is available in obscure editions and Romanian (and even French too I think), but the others really are exceedingly obscure or otherwise unfinished. On the Heights of Despair and Tears and Saints both received welcome English renderings thanks to Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnston before her early death, and she might have continued in this task were it not for the aforementioned reason. I've read most of Cioran's stuff (in translation, anyway) and even I couldn't tell you the names of the other three books, I think one translates as "The Book of Delusions" or similar. He abandoned one of the three (other Romanian books) in his pivot from Romania to France (and, more importantly, from Romanian to French). He also felt free to repeat himself a lot, and the move to central Paris and the already-mentioned extreme obscurity of the Romanian stuff gives him the freedom to do so. He directly repeats or slightly augments stuff from his Romanian period for his broader French audience.
>>24111967Which of his works are most important to you? Are there any that you keep on coming back to?Are there any that you find particularly difficult to understand?
>>24111968I generally get most of what he's laying down, not that any of it is very deep. It's enough that much of it is true. As I've said, he repeats himself a lot. Right from the very start, in the very first Romanian book (Heights of Despair), he explicitly rejected (academic, formal) philosophy itself. Plato, Hegel, people like that. While at the same time being aware of them, and their "systems". When he was an old man, he still was explicit that he was not a philosopher, he was just a guy who wrote down his thoughts. But there really isn't any other way to classify him apart from "writer" or "aphorist", but these are too vague.I think that his best book probably is a Short History of Decay. I only read it once in my project of reading chronologically, but it stood out, and it's the main one I want to re-read eventually. It was his first French book, it was well received, and he revised it a good three or four times before publishing it. It was the one that he poured his little black heart into, because he had something to prove. He made sure that it was absolutely perfect, and then it got a nice prize which even he, who normally declined literary prizes, accepted. The point in doing so was to become a known quantity in French literature, which he attached value to, in spite of himself.A personal favorite essay is "Odyssey of Rancor", which appears in History and Utopia. I was so impressed with it that I re-read it, specifically, almost immediately. It's just this nasty, withering screed-essay about how hatred and the impulse to get back at your enemy is a far stronger impulse than love, or magnaminity. This explains why he took pains to get Short History of Decay just right. He showed a draft to Camus, and Camus sneered at it. Then it was published, was successful, and even Cioran smiled and was reported to laugh and say "I won! I did it!" He was actually happy. Because in his own mind, he had BESTED Camus, and that's what counts. In Odyssey of Rancor, he also notes: "we produce and perform better out of hatred, out of the impulse to beat another" (my paraphrase of idea).
