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On the Heights of Despair

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This exhilarating and euforic book is one of the masterpieces written by Emil Cioran. "On the heights of despair" is for us postmoderns what St. Augustine's Confessions must have signified for the medieval reader. This work is truly an account of the fragmented and disordered European consciouss of between wars: not an abstract one, but a particular and individual conscious that faces the glory of absurdity. Although many people have reviewed this book as Nietzschean, I would say it is rather Schopenhauerian, since its pessimism hadrly leaves any room for Zarathustra's dancing and joyful way of being. Anyways, I think anyone intrested in thinkers such as Camus, Sartre, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Feuerbach, Stiner, Nietzsche, should read this book.

This is Emile Cioran's first book, written in his native Romanian language and published when he was but 23 years old. Much of what he would later express so masterfully in his adopted French language is on display here, not in embryonic form, but in the most incendiary and extreme form of nihilistic regard for human existence in this world. This is the kind of book that one would have expected Nietzsche to have written if he had really been a nihilist, but Nietzsche was only ever content to talk about the abyss, whereas Cioran in his first book is already reporting to us from the abyss.

The literary technique that he employs is a darkly expressive one, dependent upon what I found to be an absolutely explosive vocabulary, and by means of them he describes one extreme state of mind after another and careens through wildly speculative ruminations on life, creativity, and human fate. His outlook is so searingly negative at times that a kind of reverse light appears to emanate from it, and one has the impression that he only writes with the wish to destroy what is of value in order that he might thereby find what is of some lesser and thus higher value...and only for the short span of our mortal admiration.

Cioran is one of the most interesting nihlist philosophers of the twentieth century. As well, On the Heights of Despair is no disappointment. While his pessimism is sometimes disheartening, the grace of his words lends heavily to his credit. Whether one agrees or disagrees with his thoughts, no one can disparage the dynamics of his books. What is even more impressive is, in an almost Conrad-esque fashion, he so eloquently composes in a language that is not even his own. Though he is quoted as saying "I have no nationality", it is still impressive that a boy from a small village in the Carpathians, schooled in the cloying presence of a Orthodox priest, could so beautifully write in a foreign language. On the Heights of Despair is not a book you want to miss.

You know the kinds of people who have the posters with the fluffy little kitten hanging from the rope with the caption "Hang in there!" on it tacked to their cubicle corkboard? Those kind of people probably wouldn't appreciate this book. Now if the poster showed the little skeleton of the same kitty all covered with red ants with the slogan "You can let go now!" on it...now that's the sort who'd understand the appeal of someone like EM Cioran.

You need to have spent some time up there on the "heights of despair" yourself to have achieved a certain panoramic view of life. Most people go no further up than the "foothills of perturbation" or the "plateau of really ticked off." Who can blame them? No one likes to suffer, not even a masochist, whose safe word delineates the border where he stops taking pleasure in his "pain."

Okay, let me put it like this. I'm pretty happy where I'm at in life right now. No major complaints. Health good. Full head of hair. I enjoy a good pumpkin muffin, a crisp clear morning, and a new box of colored pencils as much as any man, woman, or child. But when my birthday comes around, I'd no more think of celebrating it with balloons and hats and noisemakers, with cake and candles and making of wishes than I would think of celebrating the Holocaust. (Sorry, mom.)

Being born is a disaster, an atrocity that lasts, on average, about 75 years. We aren't born into the world, but onto the heights of despair--with nowhere to go but down. If we turn our back to the abyss, so much the better in the short run, but it's still there waiting, and the steady, implacable march of the years, represented by the massive combined weight of the new generations being born every day, push you steadily backwards towards the precipice, as the ground, along with your body, crumbles beneath you...

If you're laughing now, then you might enjoy "On the Heights of Despair" because there's something funny about a train wreck yet I can't really say what.

I have to disagree with the previous reviewer who suggests new readers try another one of Cioran's works...This is an excellent introduction to his works, and as I believe it is his first written work, I think it's a good place to start...His writing is hauntingly beautiful and the concepts he addresses more pertinent than ever to the world we currently live in...Anyways, to oversimplify, if you like Nietzche, you should definitely enjoy Cioran, and this work is as good a place as any to start...

This was Emil Cioran's first book, published in Romania in 1934, when he was in his early 20s. Its short essays, none more than few pages long, sound many of the themes to come. Cioran's melancholy and bleakness are on full display, although reader's searching for a more well-worked-out and thorougly committed statement of his nihilism might instead turn to the mature works "The Temptation to Exist" and "The Trouble with Being Born."

Cioran is one of the great nay-sayers in the history of philosophy. I find it particularly useful to read him in comparison with Aristotle. While Aristotle systematically develops an "ethics of flourishing," based on the goodness of life and the possibility and comprehensibility of human efforts to live well in this world, Cioran unsystematically explores the alternative: the senselessness of existence; the way our efforts to reform ourselves, our societies, or the world, fall apart; the narrative disunity of individual lives; etc.

Compare Aristotle, on the unity of the virtues, with Cioran, in a passage from his book "The New Gods": "Our virtues, far from reinforcing each other, actually envy and exclude each other. When we grow conscious of their warfare, we begin to denounce them one by one, only too pleased not to have to take any further trouble for any of them."

Cioran displayed great genius in developing his philosophy in the decades after this book was published. Thanks are due to Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnston, for making this early work accessible to English-speakers in such a graceful and intelligent translation. I believe she also has a recent biography out on Cioran's early years, which should be well worth reading.

This book is intense. Its intensity will put you under a spell for a while, but it will expire eventually. Your mind will change. The freedom of believeing you are more trapped than before will start to seize your thoughts, then life's gonna burst in your face like a hurricane of wind ending in the landing of a reflective butterfly in the palm of your hand. Sometimes the act of living its just that simple. The uncounsciousness explored, tamed, madness can stay inside.

illuminating snippets of illusion-crushing philosophies from an author who culled stinging insights from the depths of insomnia. I thought of the character in The Machinist with a precocious mind and a burning desire to tell it like it is.

This work fits well with the chilling and edifying works of Nietzsche and Dr. Christopher Hyatt.

This is not light reading. This stuff majorly spices up your palette in case you have been lulled to sleep by the "Nicholas Sparks and Oprah" dumbing down milieu and its effects on you. This is the turbo anti-dote to all the fluffy new age lite stuff floating through the air. This man, like Burroughs and others, managed to live a long and fruitful life despite raging against the machine of existence for so many years.

What an accomplishment.

i woke up one day while listining to the radio. they were talking about soul-mates through suffering. i went to the used book store and picked up "on the heights of despair" without knowing anything.
wow the best book I read since, dostoyevksy, kierkegaard, and nietzsche.
One sometimes live in this clutched disposition. one has a problem but can not name it. one might say: God tricked me in this mental prison. Things are twisted here. I stick my tongue out to the cold concrete wall. Want to go downtown to the muesuem and slash those big canvus. Jackson POllack is nothing. visual art is nothing. The words have power. The words can become twisted to the max. And cioran is to the max. We are not living for riches, or fame. We are underground. We are dedicated to the exploation.

If you are only reading one Cioran book. Make it this one. This one is the only book Cioran wrote in his native tongue. Romanian. (others he wrote in French. I find less powerful.)

Let your finger nail sink into this one!

This is an amazing, ingenious depiction of pessimistic, Nietzsche driven thoughts of philosophy. The works are, by all means, negative in dialect, however, extremely satisfying to read. Anyone who is interested in thought provoking ideas and modern philosophy as a whole will enjoy this book by Cioran, and find at least one essay you can relate and aspire to so closely it's scary!