/lit/ - Literature

Ecstacy replaces sexuality. The mediocrity of the human race is the only plausible explanation for sexuality. As the only mode of coming out of ourselves, sexuality is a temporary salvation from animality. For every being, intercourse surpasses its biological function. It is a triumph over animality. Sexuality is the only gate to heaven. The saints are not a-sexual but trans-sexual. They no longer need the revelations of sexuality. To be a saint means to be always outside yourself. What else would sexuality /add/ to this? Sexual orgasm pales beside the saints' ecstatic trance. -Cioran, Tears and Saints, as translated by Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnston (19)

Commentary: This remark occurs early on in Cioran's early discourse on saints. Contextually, the first sentence refers to saints' rejection of earthly pleasures in favor of metaphysical ecstasies. The next sentence ought to be understood in this forum as a reasonable and general denigration of sexuality itself. Things become confusing in the following sentences.

The next few (translated) sentences seem to say that sexuality is a triumph over our animal nature, which runs contrary to contemporary understandings of sexuality. It is worth noting that in On the Heights of Despair, Cioran gives certain materialist worldviews and also gives primacy to sexual love, indicative of the fact that it was a young man writing at the time. It might be that the "triumph" alluded to is the possibility for two subjects to come together in spite of the ugliness of intercourse itself, thus achieving conventional romantic love. But even this is confused if one takes a materialistic view, as gratifying couplings are an interplay between base carnal acts and "deeper" psychological connections.

The chosen translation involving "a-sexual" and "trans-sexual" is amusing given the current political climate (hence my choice to write this remark), but the senses of the words clearly have little to do with the corresponding political terms. Cioran means only that they (the saints) exchange one pleasure (sex) for another (god), thus transcending the former.

>>19609520

>praises my sloth when I admit to going to work
At least I live in a shitty tiny apartment in the city, just like my boy.

Once a young whoremonger, suffused with meaning, heiling Hitler with his bros.... where did it all go so wrong?