E.M. Cioran

[quasimodo1]

Stephen Mitchelmore explains why the writing of E.M. Cioran refuses explanation


“Nothing is more irritating than those works which ‘co-ordinate’ the luxuriant products of a mind that has focused on just about everything except a system.”

Has anyone had any experience with this writer? link= http://www.spikemagazine.com/1197cior.php

[stlukesguild]

Not recently. I did read a good part of Cioran's The Trouble with Being Born (translated Richard Howard) some years back. A collection of aphorisms that avoid any obvious system of organization... but repeat a rather bleak nihilism/existentialism... a dismissiveness (not without humor... and irony) of life. I took a quick perusal through the introduction to this volume and found, not surprisingly, that Cioran was close with Paul Celan, Beckett, and Henri Michaux.

[quasimodo1]

To Stlukesguild: For many, Cioren does impress as depressing but the ironic truths in his writing ask you to look beyond, get by the negativity to other aspects of those "truths". Intrigueing writer to be sure. Just as interesting is how other readers evaluate him. q1

[quasimodo1]

Spelling of this author...E.M. Cioran.

[quasimodo1]

"Does our ferocity not derive from the fact that our instincts are all too interested in other people? If we attended more to ourselves and became the center, the object of our murderous inclinations, the sum of our intolerances would diminish." E.M. Cioran

[quasimodo1]

Anyone can escape into sleep, we are all geniuses when we dream, the butcher's the poet's equal there.
Emile M. Cioran

[Babak Movahed]

I read Cioran's A Short History of Decay and I have to say it was quite an irritating read. It's like just a bunch of convoluted maxims with no explanation for an alternative method to all his qualms about the world.
His thoughts on how adjectives shape how we perceive one another was interesting but again no explanation on an alternative.