Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: The Temptation to Exist by E. M. Cioran, Richard Howard, Susan Sontag ISBN: 0-226-10675-6 Publisher: University of Chicago Press (Trd) Pub. Date: May, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.60 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.67 (3 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: evil incarnate
Comment: Mola RAM Vola Ram
Rating: 5
Summary: Obliged by Dissolution
Comment: Contorted at the end of a struggle, like a slovenly cat no longer able to fight her revolutions, it is an indication of Cioran's aspiration to diffuse sound upon silence, that a philosophy where existence disgruntles consciousness into submission is its most prevailing feature. What must be done? Cioran, that final seer unable to dislodge his lucidity: knowing indeed that lucidity is a gift available to those whose lives have already ended, and like Diogenes in his tub, he winces at the absent sky above him. Desertion, the epigram of self-consciousness and the incipient dawn that is reason: Cioran is symptomatic of a resignation in regard to reason's vacuity - a distant light in the façade of reasonable progress. What must be done? Furrowing the fortunes for ruin, we owe him our spirits. But apocalypse that is breathing, perhaps we have not done enough to oblige Cioran's task - is there not a sediment of reason still left in your goblet human! Exile, the fortune of the vagabond, for him reason is trace of nostalgia. No, it is all together too clear: it will be the task of our present generation to dissolve gradually until the sediment of spurious aspirations has been exhausted. We are no longer engaged in a struggle with reason, for such ends are absent. To regard reason as an anathema, to scorn it as an obsolete tradition adhered to by either servile conservatives or pious harlequins, and to embrace decline as an antidote to such retrospective tendencies - that will be our progression. Decline and its organic counterpart decay are virtues into which we ought to submit. Nietzsche is right about the ruinous: like an orchestra at the edge of a precipice, we need to finally be pushed into the void. But you wince, unable to sacrifice yourself for a future generation founded in the hallucinogenics of the nocturnal reverie. Very well! But know in advance that existence, the trace of sulphur in an otherwise familiar metropolis, is a tincture only available to those who have gargled on their own negation - had Cioran tasted it? Unable to answer this question, we perform an exegesis on the text, hoping the hermeneutics of hopelessness will exhume gold, hoping the allusions written in sand will reveal a hidden hieroglyphic. But such elusive ideals, such pewter-encased goblets, are only to be found in dissolution and to that we must revere before timidity beckons.
Rating: 4
Summary: funniest and deepest pessimist since schopenhauer
Comment: in this book of short essays, cioran uses irony and paradox to achieve an absolute black humor. life is described as mind looking at itself and finding no significant content. death, the final exit, is a betrayer in that contemplating it leads one to wish to affirm life once more, yet without knowledge of what in life can be affirmed. many key words in the book begin with "a": abulia, aporia, askesis, ataraxia, and acedia define cioran's mood. perhaps the most brilliant essay, "beyond the novel," informs us that the novel is either dead or dying, in any case in agony, since both "character" and "meaning" no longer signify anything. here art mirrors life, where certitudes are merely functioning lies and the only goal is a futility achieved by severing oneself from those lies. the curious thing is that humor shines through all this, and while i don't find this book as funny as others of cioran's, particulary his books of very short aphorisms, there were still some laughs: "...at any price we must keep those who have too clear a conscience from living and dying in peace," for example.
 |
Title: The Trouble With Being Born by E.M. Cioran ISBN: 1559704624 Publisher: Arcade Books Pub. Date: 15 September, 1998 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
 |
Title: A Short History of Decay by E.M. Cioran ISBN: 1559704640 Publisher: Arcade Books Pub. Date: 15 September, 1998 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
 |
Title: On the Heights of Despair by E. M. Cioran, Ilinca Zarifopal-Johnston, Ilinca Zaripofol-Johnston ISBN: 0226106713 Publisher: University of Chicago Press (Trd) Pub. Date: August, 1996 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
 |
Title: Drawn and Quartered by E.M. Cioran ISBN: 1559704632 Publisher: Arcade Books Pub. Date: 15 September, 1998 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
 |
Title: Anathemas and Admirations by E.M. Cioran ISBN: 1559704616 Publisher: Arcade Books Pub. Date: 15 September, 1998 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
