Romanian-born E.M. Cioran moved to Paris at the age of 26, remaining there nearly six decades until his death in 1995. He was called "a sort of final philosopher of the Western world" and "the last worthy disciple of Nietzsche"; the bleak aphorisms of All Gall Is Divided make a strong case for either appellation. "With every idea born in us," he declares early on, "something in us rots." Throughout the book, he addresses the futile attempts of man to impose meaning on a meaningless existence--"That there should be a reality hidden by appearances is, after all, quite possible; that language might render such a thing would be an absurd hope"--and nurses an ongoing fascination with the possibilities death holds for release from life's madness. (When the Dead Kennedys sang, "I look forward to death / This world brings me down," they might as well have been taking notes from Cioran.) Grim stuff, but presented in brilliant, crystalline form--particularly in the translation by Richard Howard, which retains Cioran's cold, detached viewpoint.
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Romanian-born E.M. Cioran moved to Paris at the age of 26, remaining there nearly six decades until his death in 1995. He was called "a sort of final philosopher of the Western world" and "the last worthy disciple of Nietzsche"; the bleak aphorisms of All Gall Is Divided make a strong case for either appellation. "With every idea born in us," he declares early on, "something in us rots." Throughout the book, he addresses the futile attempts of man to impose meaning on a meaningless existence--"That there should be a reality hidden by appearances is, after all, quite possible; that language might render such a thing would be an absurd hope"--and nurses an ongoing fascination with the possibilities death holds for release from life's madness. (When the Dead Kennedys sang, "I look forward to death / This world brings me down," they might as well have been taking notes from Cioran.) Grim stuff, but presented in brilliant, crystalline form--particularly in the translation by Richard Howard, which retains Cioran's cold, detached viewpoint.
From Publishers Weekly
Ambrose Bierce produced a small book of mordant paradoxes he called The Devil's Dictionary (1911). This is Cioran's existentialist equivalent. Often aridly clever, it can quickly elicit indigestion, but on occasion its bleak terseness strikes a chord or hints at an autobiography. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born) was born in Romania, emigrated to France in the 1930s and died in Paris in 1995. "Inside every citizen nowadays," he writes, "lies a future alien." An outspoken non-believer, he opines, "For two thousand years, Jesus has revenged himself on us for not having died on a sofa." A passionate pessimist after decades of exile, occupation and war, he insists, "To hope is to contradict the future," and "Had Noah possessed the gift of foreseeing the future, there is not a doubt in the world he would have scuttled the ark." As laconic and intense as his aphorisms appear to be, it seems obvious that his heralded translator, in playing his own word games, has often stretched the irony, sometimes vitiating it. At their sardonic bestA"Shakespeare: the rose and the ax have a rendezvous"ACioran's lines have a staying power. This is especially so when he expresses his thirst for doubt and his despairing delight in the world's contradictions. Ideas, he believes, are undermined by exhaustive analysis. Pithy cynicism is the antidote he offers. (July)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The most thoroughgoing nihilism,
This review is from: All Gall is Divided: Aphorisms (Hardcover)
E.M. Cioran, the Romanian decadent writer and anti-philosopher, stands firmly alongside the great aphorists, La Rouchefoucald, Lichtenberg, Nietzsche, with this compilation of stiletto epigrams. Paradoxical and iconoclastic, he treats of subjects as varied as language, death, music, despair, philosophy, religion and love. He represents one of the most unrelenting currents in nihilist thought, as he directs the solvent of his scepticism against everything -- (even scepticism itself) -- all with the most polished prose and a hard, gem-like brilliance. "The history of ideas is the history of the spite of certain solitaries." -- "Leukemia is the garden where God blooms." -- "The Creation was the first act of sabotage." -- "For two thousand years, Jesus has revenged himself on us for not having died on a sofa." -- "Events -- tumours of Time." Of such a quality are Cioran's rapier-sharp aphorisms. However, the beauty of his style draws our attention to another, more deep-lying paradox. That in his distrust of humanity, his yearning for extinction and hatred of life, Cioran, with his tremendous stylistic gifts, actually succeeds in finding a route towards affirming life all the more happily and courageously. Even the strength of a certain drive to nothingness, this quanta of the hatred of life, converts itself, in spite of itself, as an ever more potent stimulant to life.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I'll never forgive Richard Howard for the dumb-pun title,
By Gooch McCracken (c/o your haunted slab of Velveeta) - See all my reviews
This review is from: All Gall is Divided: Aphorisms (Hardcover)
From MY 1980S by Wayne Koestenbaum: "On a train I read ROLAND BARTHES by Roland Barthes (translated by Richard Howard): I looked out dirty windows onto dirty New Jersey fields. I began to take autobiography seriously as a historical practice with intellectual integrity. On an airplane I read Michel Leiris's MANHOOD (translated by Richard Howard) and grooved to Leiris's mention of a 'bitten buttock'; I decided to become, like Leiris, a self-ethnographer. I read Gide's THE IMMORALIST (translated by Richard Howard) in Hollywood, Florida, while lying on a pool deck. I read many books translated by Richard Howard."Good thing, too. I'd be lost without Richard Howard because I don't know French. But he should've given the title a direct translation. Which would be: SYLLOGISMS OF BITTERNESS.
19 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
What a cheerful fellow....,
By A Customer
This review is from: All Gall is Divided: Aphorisms (Hardcover)
Certainly a brilliant exposition of nihilistic thought. Yet, by his skills of expression...and the artful conception of his notions...Mr. Cioran actually, inadvertently, provides strong evidence contradicting his bleak interpetation of life and the human spirit.The wonder is that he never seems to realize it. And so it seems to go with others of this persuasion: aetheists, anarchists, and those who cling purely to the scientific view of things. Their art, their emotion, their intellects, and their passion stand in ironic contrast to their points of view. Go figure.
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