/lit/ - Literature

>>23304707
>The worst readers are those who behave like plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and confound the remainder, and revile the whole. -H2H

>>23304707

More broadly, his form is frequently referred to as "the fragment". I have identified four types. At one extreme are the one-sentence aphorisms and other brief remarks, but he will also write paragraphs on one topic to make a single point, longer than aphorisms but not even running to the length of a full page. These might be termed the "long aphorisms", or some similar phrase. Then come the reflections, which are short essays exploring a few facets of some particular (almost always negative) subject, and generally running from 2-5 pages. Finally, there are the proper essays, usually running perhaps from 10-30 pages. One of his longest single pieces is his essay on De Maistre, which runs for about 60 pages.

He hopped back and forth between these four species whenever he pleased, and in no particular order. Both The New Gods (Evil Demurge) and Drawn and Quartered are each half-and-half essays, then a second half of brief aphorisms. In All Gall is Divided and The Trouble with Being Born, he confined himself entirely to the aphorisms, with "long aphorism" sprinkled throughout. History and Utopia consists entirely of essays. His first work, On the Heights of Despair, is given over to the reflection, with the longest piece running (IIRC) seven pages, and most occupying from one to three. But possibly his best work, A Short History of Decay, is a dense concatenation of these reflections, and a few essays as well. The first "chapter" or part, occupying half the book, is given over to 78 of these reflections.

>>23304835
you write like Patrick Bateman talking about Heuy Lewis and the News

>>23304835
In more occult circles with aphorists, the aphorisms negate each other in ways that suggest something beneath all of them. I didn't find Cioran different in that regard.

>>23304707
He also wrote:
>My books, my work: the grotesquerie of such possessives. Everything was spoiled once literature stopped being anonymous. Decadence dates from the first author.

>>23304857
>And so, the aphorism is scorned by 'serious' people, professors look down upon it. When they read a book of aphorisms, they say, 'Oh, look what this guy said ten pages back, now he's saying the contrary. He's not serious.' I can put two aphorisms that are contradictory right next to each other. It's not at all gratuitous.

>>23304863
thats why all of my literary inclinations only exists as shitposts on /lit/

>>23304857
>>23304866

The point is that some times you feel one way, other times you feel the exact opposite. It doesn't matter that the two attitudes contradict each other, are formally opposed to each other. What counts is that they are both phenomena which occur, and in the same person.

>>23304863

He scorns the novel in one of his essays in Temptation to Exist. In real (classical) poetry, even poetry whose author is known, the characters move of their own accord and have their own energy. In the (modern bourgeois) novel, the reader is painfully aware that the author is simply manipulating the characters, having them do his bidding. "Oh, that was a fun chapter. I wonder what he will have them do in the next one."

>>23304933
amen brotha

CIORAN ES UN HISPANO HONORARIO.

>>23304707
>A nation which no longer rapes is in its decadence; the number of rapes reveals its instincts, and its future. Find out in which war it has stopped practicing, on a large scale, this variety of crime: you will have found the first symbol of its decline; find out at what moment love has become for a nation a ceremonial, and the bed a condition of orgasm, and you will identify the beginning of its deficiencies and the end of its barbaric inheritance.
Is he right?

>>23305363
CIORAN ES UN CERVESTA CRISTAL

>>23305748


?

APRENDE ESPAÑOL.

>>23304835
I've only read his (short) aphorisms (except 'Tears and Saints') and the best book seemed to be 'The Trouble With Being Born'. That seemed to be the apex of his concise style. I've still have to check out his essays.

Always felt like Chamfort/Joubert/La Bruyère worship to me, but i still love him.