/lit/ - Literature

>>22715717

Why yes, yes I have (in English translation). Not shown: Fall into Time, the two major English biographies.

He repeats himself a lot, but I suppose we all do to some extent. But it's much more noticeable when you confine yourself to short lines and smaller works. A personal favorite is the essay "Odyssey of Rancor", appearing in History and Utopia. It's this sustained, withering screed on the superiority of negative emotions to positive ones. When we take action, we are primarily motivated by hatred, by the desire to win and get one over on the other guy, to beat him. We are only secondarily motivated by love. You can guess what he thinks of the idea of magnaminity. The ideas aren't terribly deep in themselves, but I was so impressed with his all-important "style" (in English translation) that I re-read it almost straight away and took notes specific to that one essay, in addition to the general notes.

Interestingly, he doesn't seem to settle down (on the page at least) as he gets older and loses t. In later books like The New Gods and here and there in the last couple, he openly states how he'd like to kill people, smash their heads into the wall etc with somewhat greater frequency than when he was younger.

I think probably the best overall one is Short History of Decay. That's the one he really worked hard on, really poured his little black heart and soul into, made sure it was absolutely perfect before getting it published. When it was acclaimed in the press and he got his prize (which he actually accepted!), he had won. He got one over on the other guy, who in this case was Camus. Camus had read a draft of it and sort of sneered at him, saying that he had yet to "enter the circulation of great ideas". Just the simple fact of putting out a well-regarded, prize-winning book that the Parisian literati ate up was enough. In his own mind, he had "beaten" Camus. And that's what counts.

He really was a winner, in his own way. Never wagecucks, never gets cucked in warfare on behalf of any country, never gets suckered into marrying or having children or going into debt on some house. Has regular sex with a woman who genuinely loves him (very strange relationship). Maintains full head of hair until his death. Writes out his nasty little thoughts and gets praised and remembered for it. HATES his home country of Romania, loves Western Europe and wants to get as far west as possible. Lands in the center of Western civilization and becomes a "respected" writer there.

>>22585476

I've read the entirety of pic related and I paid pretty good attention, but I can't place this quote. Help appreciated (if genuine). It does sound like him but this sort of thing is easily generated by a prompt at the moment.

The general sentiments expressed are both genuine Cioran (preference for the personal "passionate" subjective, inner life over cold "philosophy", science, objective study etc), but also a clear support for NEET-dom (Cioran personally lives this), but if it's generated it might be inflected by online discourses on NEET-dom and posts deriving from this very board. There's also a very vague connection to Marxist alienation of labor in the given text.

>>22121099

I just completed pic related. The last piece I read was Cioran's lengthy essay on de Maistre, collected in the bottom volume but originally written in 1957.

In the piece, Cioran is unconventionally conventional in his assessment of de Maistre. Despite his personal admiration for de Maistre's rages and pitiless analysis (Cioran's favorite thing in any work is real passion, lyricism, no matter what its subject matter), he almost writes like a respectable mid-century liberal type, also pointing out de Maistre's internal contradictions in an even-handed way. Cioran is fascinated by the man, and actually wants to communicate him to a wider audience despite rejecting some aspects of his worldview, but nevertheless enjoying his style.

The other thing that comes across is how de Maistre absolutely "failed". The "progress" took place and there was absolutely nothing that he could do about it. Protestantism spread. Monarchies either fell or were reduced in their hard power. "Reason" took hold. Etc. A modern woman could possibly read de Maistre with delight at the total failure of de Maistre's wishes for the world, as some bad old dead (white) man who abjectly lost the game of history, and even Cioran finds something pathological and deeply cynical in his vain repairs to mystery (read: bullshit) in defense of the Ancien Regime, whether temporal of ecclesiastical. Cioran himself says it, and here I will paraphrase, without misrepresenting, his meaning: what makes "conservatives" so much more fun to read than leftists is that conservatives are constantly and forever losing cultural battles. Therefore, they have a lot to seethe about and to be unhappy about (Mein Kampf is the extreme example). It gives them style, and it gives savor to their hatreds, real flavor to their imprecations, execrations, insults. Meanwhile leftists trudge blithely along, eventually winning all the while and knowing that they will, thereby experiencing what Hardt and Negri called "the lightness and joy of being communist" which, although a depraved sort of inner peace, nonetheless bankrupts its victims as possessors of literary merit.

It is also perfectly clear to me now that the ideas in the essay immediatley informed History and Utopia, as the two were written closely together: Ancients/conservatives identify Utopia in the past, moderns/leftists place Utopia in the future.

>>22090863

No, he's paying attention, it's a tenable interpretation although not one I really agree with. The Later Cioran is constantly going on about Buddhism, he doesn't exactly praise it but he's clearly interested in it in that typical grass-is-always-greener/"so true!" attitude with which Westerners frequently engage Eastern philosophical systems in general.

Amusingly, one of the first pieces in Temptation to Exist can be read as critical of Westerners who take interest in Buddhism for precisely the reason I just stated. I think this is just him bristling at something that he's starting to learn about seriously for the first time, giving an early hot take (which is now a commonplace) on same. Cioran never worries much about contradicting himself, he just wrote how he felt or what he was thinking at any given moment and tries to phrase it with style. At any rate Cioran's interest in Buddhism clearly dates from the mid-1950s and continued for as long as he still had his mind, up until around 1991 or so.

-t. currently wrapping up a chronological read-through of pic related, only thing left is 30 pages or so of the essay on de Maistre (the longest one) in the bottom book. He repeats himself a lot btw, moreso once he becomes an old man. On to the main two (English) critical texts after this.

>>21921759
>>21921761

Why not just put them all neatly in a single spot? (Yes, I have subsequently got Fall into Time and the two major English secondary works).

It's strange to think that someone else is slowly and systematically reading through Cioran at the same slow pace I am. A few months from now it'll be posts about the little-discussed Drawn and Quartered, or Anathemas and Admirations. Whether it's me doing it, or the other guy/bot.

>>20748004

This is effectively a complete set (of English translation). The one addition I would suggest is Marta Petreu, An Infamous Past: E. M. Cioran and the Rise of Fascism in Romania.

I don't have a copy of Fall into Time but I've read and handled a physical copy that the library has/had, I think it might have gotten stolen once someone realized its market value. Not that any of it matters, of course. Also I was out in suburban Barnes and Noble land and they had Trouble with Being Born PROMINENTLY FACED with front cover facing out, this board is making him cool and it's a catastrophe on par with creation itself.

>>19608591

When in doubt, go chronological (top down), or don't. None of this matters and it'll all be over in a few years anyway.

>>19470196

Huh, I didn't even know this was a thing. A more obscure item from when I sourced all the main work. To be sure, all of it can be got in French, but still.

Translator Richard Howard completed his basic task of bringing all Cioran's major French work into English in a single translator's voice in 1999, when he finally got round to completing All Gall is Divided, originally dropped in 1952, a 47 year interval (the longest of any of those translated). In his note, he wrote the following regarding the Notebooks, or Cahiers:

"With this early volume of aphorisms, all of Cioran's French works are now translated into English; there remain the Cahiers, that grand treasury and infernal machine of fifteen years' maceration, which Arcade projects for that future Cioran viewed so darkly. If we have world enough and time, Cioran's Notebooks, 1957-1972, will yet assume an English dress no so different, it is hoped, from their French device. -Richard Howard (c. 1999)

The TO BE DESTROYED across the standard Arcade product image is enticing, like a remaindered, unloved book that even the publisher regrets having spent time on. What is to be destroyed? The product listing? The individual volume itself? Both? Does it even exist as a physical copy or is it a hoax?

The few internet links associated with the image suggest that it's a truncated version of the complete Notebooks, with Howard curating the juicy bits.

>>18873430

It honestly all runs together. His chosen forms of expression are the aphorism and the brief essay. You can dip in pretty much anywhere, but Anathemas and Admirations (really two books mashed into the single English volume) is more focused on his lit crit so you should be more familiar with the Frog moralists before that one. He has at least some remarks on aesthetics in most of the books.

>>18767016

The Romanian is a much taller order for us English writers, which is why that one cute lady only did the two books. She had exactly the right bilingual background and academic interest to bring those two to print. She didn't do the fascist book, but THAT one has been given a French rendering per L'Herne, which can be got. But then you're two degrees removed and you have to be very careful. The French collection of Cioran's major works omits the fashy book, of course, which adds to its mystique.

If people wanted it bad enough, translating something like this from the French would be a straightforward project, likewise the Mainlander book in the German. You can dead-ass order a copy of the Cahiers from the publisher, get some French instructional material, and make a project of it for yourself, however naive. Once you have some content going you can crowdsource it and get native Frogs to give stinging criticisms, which can only help.

>>18659950
>>18659975

These, just do the popular ones, it's all the same.

>>17972853

Honestly, it's all the same so you're not making a "mistake" by picking one over another, and they're all short too. He doesn't have a system, you don't have to do anything in order, it's just a bloo bloo bloo with nice turns of phrase, which is much of the appeal. The chronological answer would be heights of despair, when he was younger and feeling a little edgier. trouble with being born is the best known late work, just keep in mind he's older at that point. One of those two is best.

>>17573671

I read All Gall is Divided a few years ago (and also the Fall into Time) and liked it once /lit/ put me onto his "dead-end", but it's a comfy one. Eventually I'll read all the stuff in English- I don't care to learn other languages, so nobody bother mentioning that. These were actually hard to come by and simply getting them required me to work up a basic understanding of the bibliography.

When Cioran was younger, he was a fascist sympathizer and praised Codreanu et al., his Romanian work "The Transfiguration of Romania" is the major record of this, which he later disowned-not because he became a good boy and saw the light, or anything like that, but rather because he concluded that life is pointless and arbitrary, so all political affiliations are equally absurd. It isn't likely that this infamous text will see light in an English rendering any time soon, but it HAS received a French translation (L'Herne IIRC). It was the one major work suppressed from the French omnibus, adding to its mystique.

The one (and possibly only, outside of a scholarly article or two) major English text on this period of Cioran's life and work is Marta Petreu, "An Infamous Past: E.M. Cioran and the Rise of Fascism in Romania.", which I've since acquired.

>>17564657
pic rel
>Somnophilia
>Clothing
>Love and Affection

>>17549218

Which have you actually read?

>>17053715

Do all these in order and then don't bother killing yourself or do, it doesn't make any difference because it's far too late to avert catastrophe and nature anyway.

read two, gotta get back on it desu. Other stuff to read tho.

>>16272504

>>16160991

H-haha, yeah, j-just imagine

I'm not reading it seriously yet, but I flipped through my new pile just to look for interesting stuff. I found this passage on the jews in the middle of Temptation to Exist:

"No creatures less anonymous. Without them who could breathe in our cities? They maintain a state of fever, without which any agglomeration becomes a province: a dead city is a city without jews. Effective as a ferment and a virus, they inspire a double sense of fascination and discomfort. Our reaction to them is almost always murky: by what precise behavior are we to adjust to them, when they locate themselves both above and beneath us, on a level which is never our own? Whence a tragic, inevitable misunderstanding for which no one takes responsibility. What madness on their part to have attached themselves to a special God, and what remorse they must feel when they turn their eyes toward our insignificance! No one will ever disentangle the web in which we are caught, each inextricably laced to the other. Should we rush to their aid? We have nothing to offer them. And what they bring us-is beyond us. Whence do they come? Who are they? We approach them with a maximum of perplexity: he who takes a clear-cut attitude toward them misunderstands them, simplifies them, and becomes unworthy of their extremities.

A remarkable thing: only the unsuccessful jew resembles us, is "one of us": it is as if he had retreated toward ourselves, toward our conventional and ephemeral humanity. Must we thereby deduce that man is a jew /who has not gone all the way?/"

Now:

Habermas, Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere
Tiqqun, This is Not a Program (re-read, taking notes)

Future:

pic related, gonna go slow and take notes.

>>15958530

It's all much the same. I've only read two but I'm going for the lot soon.

Buckling up for a life-affirming next few months.