In this collection of essays and epigrams, E.M. Cioran gives us portraits and evaluations—which he calls "admirations"—of Samuel Beckett, Jorge Luis Borges, F. Scott Fitzgerald, the poet Paul Valery, and Mircea Eliade, among others. In alternating sections of aphorisms—his "anathemas"—he delivers insights on such topics as solitude, flattery, vanity, friendship, insomnia, music, mortality, God, and the lure of disillusion.
Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
Cioran's absolute, dark pessimism is, paradoxically, invigorating, even inspirational. Readers who have yet to encounter the Romanian-born thinker (author of The Trouble with Being Born , etc.), who lives in France, will find in these aphorisms and essays one of the century's most fertile, profound minds. Decision-maker in an existential void, master of the stunning bleak aphorism (e.g., ``To have accomplished nothing and to die overworked''), Cioran meditates ruefully on modern cities, insomnia, music as an illusion, friendship, neighbors, the ``age-old slavery'' of women and the possible disappearance of our species. Clusters of fragmentary thoughts and impressions alternate with terse essays on such figures as Mircea Eliade, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Joseph de Maistre, Henri Michaux, Paul Valery and Borges. Like his friend and fellow exile Beckett, Cioran ``lives not in time but parallel to it,'' a detachment transformed into wisdom in this meditative maelstrom. (May)
Library Journal
This miscellany from Cioran's past 40 years will be useful not because he wrote it but because he has insights on better-known figures like Valery, Borges, and Beckett. Romanian born (in 1911), and Paris based since 1937, Cioran has observed and survived Europe since his twenties and has outlived many members of his generation. If the unpleasant persona created here is accurate, it could explain some of his popular neglect. He makes himself out to be a snorting curmudgeon most people would prefer to avoid. Yet when his attention is elicited, usually his affection is also. The result can be a series of touching and insightful recollections of Beckett or Michaux or Eliade. He is able to enter the Other's subjectivity and assess sympathetically both the public personality and the real person. He uses French, which he claims is a restricting but beloved straitjacket, with a taut correctness that Howard's English impressively transcribes.-- Marilyn Gaddis Rose, SUNY at Binghamton
Get Free eBook Sample
