Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #132426 in Books
• Published on: 1998-09-15
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French

Customer Reviews

My first Cioran -- wow!
This is my first Cioran -- a friend recommended him 16 years ago (!) and I finally got around to it -- well worth the wait. Like any great literature, it "says things we've been thinking" but just haven't been able to enunciate. I *am* very glad that I have thoroughly perused Plato, the Presocratics, Epicureans/Stoics/Cynics before reading this book -- that really added the depth I needed to fully appreciate "A Short History of Decay." For me, this is a book for a "mature" person, it would have gone over my head as a teen/college student (but maybe not for all).

a tonic and disturbing lucidity
For some, this is their favorite collection of Cioran's writings; it certainly is the most intense of his earlier writings (see my review of his later writings like "Anathemas and Admirations"). These short essays/aphorisms by a master of metaphor (a metaphorician?) contain poetic pyrotechnics that leave permanent afterimages on the psyche.

It may be necessary to do the reading around the nihilistic skepticisms (non-being, futility, annihilation, melancholy, insomnia) and access this amazing imagination that is a metaphor generator second to none. These aphorisms are some of the most intense in the history of the aphorism; a tonic and disturbing lucidity emerges in the reading.

This writing is not quite literary criticism, not quite philosophy (anti-philosophy Cioran would have it). Cioran is a big fan of Taoism and Diogenes the Cynic (the essays "Disintoxication" and "The Celestial Dog"); there is also some dabbling with the religious subject of The Saints and their "perversities" (not sure what that infatuation is about!).

Anyway, here are some quotes to prime the pump:

"Life is possible only by the deficencies of our imagination and our memory"

"Taoism surpasses all the mind has conceived by way of attachment"

"Profundity is independent of knowledge"

"The authenticity of an existence consists in its own ruin"

"Internal wealth results from conflicts sustained within oneself"

"It is because we are all imposters that we endure each other"

All in all, a good place to start with EM Cioran if you're thinking of giving him a shot. His command of language will certainly amaze.

Extracts: A Field Guide for Iconoclasts

Cioran's Most Famous Book
Cioran became a famous young writer in Romania, but left Romania for France in 1937 and made Paris his home. This was the first book he published in French, under the title PRECIS DE DECOMPOSITION. It won the Prix de Rivarol for the best French book by a non-French author, and for decades it was the book that overshadowed everything else he published. If a reader wants to know Cioran, this book cannot be ignored. It introduces almost all of the themes he would make his own--suicide, insomnia, solitude, the importance of sickness, repugnance for professional philosophy--and it is the longest book he ever published in French. Richard Howard, the notable translator of many great French authors, has devoted his talents to translating all of Cioran's French books, and has done his typically splendid job. The translation is complete, utterly reliable, and catches all the sneer and boil of Cioran's own style.

Despite its title, this not a history. It is a series of very short essays, a few paragraphs each, on associated topics, most of which deal with his deep skepticism about God and man. Cioran spent years writing and rewriting the book and in later years complained that it was overwritten. I think the elder Cioran was correct in his assessment of the younger Cioran. It remains a book worth careful reading because the young Cioran pushed himself so hard, both in his thinking and in his attention to style.