Anathemas and Admirations (Paperback)

~ E M Cioran (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers 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.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From 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
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 264 pages
• Publisher: Arcade Publishing (September 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1559704616
• ISBN-13: 978-1559704618
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #733,070 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A desillusioned, but brave look at the meaninlgessness, September 17, 1998

By A Customer

Although Ciorans general views on human existance are, typically enough, dark and desilussioned, his ideas and his voice are tremendously funny.Which should warn most of the readers, I suppose: this is not a book for energetic, life-craving people. But this Roumanian, who lived a lonely life in Paris, makes excellent reading in spite of what one might call an overall negative - and highly selfcritical- atitude to human existance. For Cioran, human weaknesses are not only prevailing human grandour, they also carry more "weight", as they are simply more truly human than the later. And how funny he is! I Can`t quote, unfortunatelly, as I don`t have the book with me, but Anathemas` short and poignant passages will make you laugh - that is if your attitude to life lets you pass through the books` initial (and apparent) gloominess. Give it a chance, and you might confirm some of your anxieties or soothe your apathy, only this time in company of great intellectual force, and with a scornfull, yet benevolent smile for the feeling of desilussionment.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Old Man Warms Up, January 10, 2000

By	"rgelling" - See all my reviews

Compared to his early, tortured writing this collection of later pieces is warm and funny. Not to say that Cioran has dropped his nihilistic stance, but a laconic, slightly more personal and witty voice predominates. My favourite book from Cioran.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars relaxed and slyly cynical aphorisms ..., August 22, 2005

By	FrizzText "frizz" (Wuppertal) - See all my reviews

"The principal defect of philosophy lies in the fact that academic philosophy is too bearable..." wrote Cioran (too bitterly for the general main stream); born 1911 in Romania, died 1995 in Paris: these two basic data of the CIORAN-curriculum vitae already are marking the subtle personal traumata: being divided by two very different cultural identities. Still loving Romania but emigrated and living safely in France, however not willing to integrate with French society he remained stateless not accepting any national identity. Obstinate he refused to receive the highest literary awards of his host country. Lost in exile - this was the everlasting frame of his mind. In an enthusiastic manner in his early years he engaged himself politically defending his Romania. Later on he was ashamed of such affectations and classified such poses as delirium, "kitsch", scrupulousness. High-skeptically he wrote, referring to the possibility of finding the real truth: "After all I know, that all these ideas and dogmatic thoughts are wrong and absurd. At last only human beings remain. And they are what they are. I am cured of the illness, to follow any ideology." Cioran liked characters as Nietzsche, Beethoven, Luther, Rousseau: He adored their individual strength to resist against the surrounding societies - he loved the stubbornness of these famous thinkers - though sometimes obstinacy seemed to be a subject for psychiatrists. During all his life in exile the backbone of his Romanian identity was broken and Cioran did not allow himself to use Romanian language any more (remember Elias Canetti and his metaphor of the "robbed tongue" and the phenomenon of hating fragments of the own identity and history). Cioran was attracted by the chronic despair of Soeren Kierkegaard and the nihilism of Friedrich Nietzsche. His university diploma he wrote about the thesis of the "Elan Vital" in the writings of the French existence-philosopher Henri Bergson. "Elan Vital" for Cioran indeed did not mean cheerfulness - but alike an Arthur Schopenhauer or an Ambrose Bierce, filled with a badly mixture of too much brain and bile, he enjoyed to produce cool, relaxed and slyly cynical aphorisms ...