| Title | : | A Short History of Decay |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1559704640 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781559704649 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 186 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1949 |
| Awards | : | PEN Translation Prize Richard Howard (1976) |
E.M. Cioran confronts the place of today's world in the context of human history. He focuses on such major issues of the twentieth century as human progress, fanaticism, and science.
A Short History of Decay Reviews
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A series of epigrammatic reflections on how things fall apart. This is a bleak, atheistic book, but it is strangely comforting and even humorous in its unembarrassed nihilism.
Characteristic Cioran quotes:
"Anyone who speaks in the name of others is always an imposter."
"By all evidence we are in the world to do nothing."
"Chaos is rejecting all you have learned, Chaos is being yourself." -
The Poetry of Death
A Short History of Decay is a compendium of pessimistic aphorism, a sort of cosmopolitan collection of Gnostic scripture through the ages. It is entertaining, observationally acute, and compelling - all descriptions that the author would object to strenuously. I think he would accept ‘poetry of death’ much more readily, however. There is little except for death about which Cioran has anything good to say.
Cioran begins as a sort of secular Qoholeth from the Old Testament: All is vanity. And Cioran means everything, especially those conceits of faith by religionists who have lost the capacity to doubt: “What is the Fall but the pursuit of a truth and the assurance you have found it, the passion for a dogma, domicile within a dogma?” Cioran’s hero is the doubting Hamlet, he who hesitates, who doubts, who questions what he knows incessantly. “The devil pales beside the man who owns a truth, his truth”
But it is not religion per se that is the source of evil, it is human self-assurance: “Even when he turns from religion, man remains subject to it... His power to adore is responsible for all his crimes: a man who loves a god unduly forces other men to love his god, eager to exterminate them if they refuse... We kill only in the name of a god or of his counterfeits.” One can almost hear Nietzsche clapping with approval in the distance.
So the fundamental problem is idealism. People who have a plan for making things better are the carriers of a deadly mental virus. These small-time peddlers of happiness scam a willing audience into believing that it is possible to reduce the net amount of misery in the world. Thus “Society is an inferno of saviors!” What human beings don’t or won’t recognise is that existence is misery. Schopenhauer has now joined Nietzsche in approbation.
The only cure for miserable existence is the termination of existence, suicide. This is the only aspect of existence we can control. Contrary to the dictum of St. Paul that our lives are not our own, Cioran makes the rather more obvious point that they are. It is the only thing we can call entirely our own: “We change ideas like neckties; for every idea, every criterion comes from outside, from the configurations and accidents of time... death is the true criterion, the only one contained within us.” Writing seven years after Camus’s Sisyphus, he managed to radicalise even that paean to control 0ver one’s existence.
Philosophy, actually thought in general, is not helpful in the situation. “The abundance of solutions to the aspects of existence is equaled only by their futility.” Philosophies are at best consoling fictions, and at worst reasons to persecute other human beings. “All of life’s evils come from a ‘conception of life’,” Cioran thinks. In this he is not far from Kierkegaard’s distrust of philosophy: “Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.”
In fact Cioran’s real issue is with language itself, with words pretending to be more than grunts and scratches. He thinks “Man is the chatterbox of the universe.” We throw words around as if they had substance. But as Wittgenstein has demonstrated, words refer only to other words. Consequently, Cioran concludes “We die in proportion to the words which we fling around us.” Ludwig would likely agree.
The only acceptable use of words, indeed the only ‘reasonable’ activity for a human being is poetry. At least poetry doesn’t pretend to be more than it is. In fact it doesn’t pretend to be anything at all. Poetry is a personal act of construction. “Only the poet takes responsibility for ‘I,’ he alone speaks in his own name, he alone is entitled to do so.” T. S. Eliot’s The Wasteland seems a model for just this view.
Ultimately it is the ancient Gnostic appreciation of the world - shared certainly by the relatively optimistic(!) Thomas Ligotti - which drives Cioran: “Injustice governs the universe. Everything which is done and undone there bears the stamp of a filthy fragility, as if matter were the fruit of a scandal at the core of nothingness.” This seems to me outstanding poetry, as does his summary of his own life “In Time’s sentence men take their place like commas, while, in order to end it, you have immobilized yourself into a period.” -
A Short History of Decay is an unbridled celebration of nihilism. Cioran writes with an almost theatrical degree of cynicism: his commitment to persistently wrenching the most pessimistic conclusion from any proposition is often hilarious in its melodramatic absurdity. His philosophy is one of absolute futility, in which suicide is the most noble act, and any motion towards civilisation, culture or the pursuit of knowledge is entirely misguided.
While I enjoyed his acerbic commentaries on Christianity, on the whole I cannot follow Cioran into the depths of such profound nihilism. Most of his ideas are too esoteric or crippled by his slanted perspective to be credible except in a poetic sense. And yet, reading A Short History of Decay is still a worthwhile endeavour. While the writing style is dense and abstruse (often bordering on incomprehensible), it does possess a poetic beauty and is eminently quotable. One can find ideas that stand out as incisive and penetrating, though usually these need to be extricated from the surrounding negativity and histrionics. -
The hermeneutics of the void via prose poetry. Declared anathema: faith, love, action, dogma, suicide, living, hope. Deemed exemplary: laughter, cynicism, poetry, inertia, acceptance of death and the futility of existence, doubt. Cioran is a diagnostician of decay, the type to carouse with madmen, crooks, layabouts, and roués—to hold that Jesus ruined the tragedy of his crucifixion by appending it with his resurrection, thus imbuing his followers with the dream of eternal life, an abhorrent and abominable demand upon infinity that is perhaps the most appalling of the countless sins committed by the lunatic ape man.
This is gorgeous gall, beautiful bile, ethereal effluence, translated with a sublime flair. Designed, of course, for provoking the Three D's: Dismay, Despair, and Denouncement; but such caustic, gnostic poetophilosophy is so rife with profound truth immanent within the blasphemy that even the most repulsed reader can mine it for nuggets of wisdom (being careful to rinse off the acid). Even at his darkest and most mordant, Cioran's dancing charcoal humor shimmers throughout the grim stream of nihilistic vituperation, such that the harsh friction of the smegma of existence called life being vigorously scrubbed with bristles of anguish and apostasy is periodically overlain by the unexpected, leavening sound of whistling. Amazing. -
If you think you hate life, or maybe just the world around you this book will make you kick yourself repeatedly for being just too much of a goddamn optimist. This is one bleak and beautiful book. How Cioran could live with thoughts like these and not end his own life is beyond me, but like a character out of Beckett he continues going on. This is the second book of his that I've read and it's even darker than his more youthful and lighthearted Tears and Saints which was really not the kind of book the average person would call uplifting.
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Bütün kitap bir alıntı...
"Ölüm fazla kesindir; bütün sebepler onun tarafında bulunur. İçgüdülerimize esrarengiz gelir; düşünüşümüzün önünde, berrak ve itibarsız bir halde, bilinmeyenin sahte cazibesi olmaksızın belirir."
"Bütün hakikatler bize karşıdır. Ama yaşamaya devam ederiz çünkü onları oldukları gibi kabulleniriz, çünkü onlardan sonuç çıkarmayı reddederiz."
"İnsanlar, tarihi ve tarihin yüz buruşturmalarını doğurmak için tıka basa alyuvarlarla doldurulmuş kuklalardır."
☀️ -
“Monoloğun sınırına, yalnızlığın ucuna varıldığında, -başka muhatap olmadığından- en yüksek diyalog bahanesi, Tanrı, icat edilir. O’nun adını andığımız sürece cinnetinizin kılık değiştirmiş olduğu anlaşılmaz ve… her şey size mubah olur. Hakikî mümini deliden ayırt etmek güçtür; fakat onun deliliği yasaldır, kabul görür; sapıtmaları her nevi imandan arınmış olsaydı, sonu tımarhane olurdu. Fakat bu sapıtmalar Tanrı’nın güvencesi ve meşruiyeti altındadır. Yaratıcı’ya hitap eden bir sofunun çalımı yanında, bir fatihin gururu bile soluk kalır… Nasıl buna cüret edebilir? Sonsuz’u elinin altında zanneden tiridi çıkmış bir yaşlı kadın şimdiye kadar hiçbir tiranın kalkışamadığı bir cüret düzeyine yükselirken, tevazu nasıl bir tapınak meziyeti olabilir?”(s.97)
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Cioran was a really amazing human being. Cioran knew what`s going on and while reading this book not only that you find yourself in the same posture but also you can find out the answers at his own questions; reading him was just like getting to know my own thoughts at night. When getting to the part in which he wrote that he wanted to believe, he was just so prepared to trust someone or something (almost at the end of the book) I was already conscious of 'why he couldn`t make it until the end'. It is just amazing how at the last pages you can just see the streams and his pain within them. That`s why all the book he related why we are just... farts in the Universe so as to be able at the end of it to speak his heart out properly. That part made me cry. I had read this book at the library, well... most of it and people just stared at me while I couldn`t kept laughing at the parts in which I couldn`t help myself but think: 'Nailed it!'. The reason for which I cried though was that he reminded me of what some people that I cared of said to me. They were are like: 'What shall we live for? This is just a piece of s**t, it gave nothing to me and I know that only after death may I find another place much better than this where I won`t feel any of the aches of being alive.' At that moment I thought that they were cowards .really, because when you care about someone if he/she wants to hurt himself/herself you can`t help yourself but defense them as they were you. But now coming to think of it through and experiencing more of what life is I start to notice that seeing life as an opportunity is f***ing hard. First of all you can never find the harmony. You just want something and then something else and then never have enough of that other thing, after after that you just think that it could have been better without a heart beating inside your chest and without all these s****y feelings and so on. You really have to be mad to love it. You have to be powerful and to love yourself, hate giving up, thinking that you can have memorable moments like you already had and always remember that if you can do that, that doesn`t mean everyone can. I won`t judge the ones that decide to kill themselves I had some moments when I wanted to do the same, but among the trouble that life offers you there is something devastatingly beautiful about it. To survive life you have to turn yourself into a specimen, to observe yourself. To survive life you have to get over the bad stuff, because who wants to get over the good stuff?! For that you just have to laugh right in its face. If nothing here matters because everything here has an end then why shouldn`t we act like it? It`s possible to enjoy life, that`s why sometimes we forget we are in such a mess and fail to bring to mind the question why we are here, we`re just busy having fun. That`s due to the fact that we remember such things when we are not in ourselves but trying to release our souls from our bodies. It made me laugh for the fact that he is just so... strangely pure. He says what most of us know in what it seems to me like a scheme sometimes. Despite the fact that this is kind of a contradiction I think that if we read and try to make an analogy it again sounds like a joke. It is funny how a joke about people in general can make you laugh. Just like:'Did I actually think that?'. Before finishing this review, which is actually just a small piece of my own opinion (like the book itself) I want to say that while washing the strawberries some days ago I felt like all of our questions regarding why we are here and how, does not make sense... none of them pretty much. Without thinking scientifically and more like a kid, do this thing: imagine a void, just... nothing... imagine nothing, right? and then imagine something out of nothing because of that something which actually came from...? Yeah. Well... nothing makes much sense, but we still have feelings, we have ourselves, I don`t know why but we are here and Cioran would have just enjoyed everything that`s happening right now if he hadn`t been a nothing right now. We have this book and I THANK YOU CIORAN for being so... flawlessly straightforward in your own vulgarity of making us read what we already tried to get away from. But... we have to live somehow Cioran and what I want to do after reading this book is make it just the opposite of what you said. No judgement, I can`t agree with all that you had written, I do agree with most but I can`t practice it. To follow your 'description' I am more like a mixed type: yeah I am a subhuman I am a superior one, I deserve to rotten, but also to grow and it is deliciously funny. Short love thoughts: you are a nullity in your eyes and... probably this is what everything that had happened to you made you feel like, but you will be in my mind... the mind of a nullity, if of course we ignore the fact that I still don`t consider myself one. For me nullity is an enlarged perspective on life that we stir from the dead when we want to give an argument for what`s happening here, but I am my own argument and I want to be here... when I`ll get there to you, I won`t come back here, but I won`t be able to regret it because I will be... nothing. So just, let`s be please! All of us. Amen!
P.S: I forgot to write why I can`t practice it: because I feast on the happy moments and I want a lot of them, I`m sorry to tell you but I choose to be thrilled and have my heart skipping a beat rather than 'be not'. It may seem to you like something a 'wise human being' would never do, but what`s like to be wise when you are... nowhere Cioran? Can you see the amusing circle that`s around us? :)) Oh, the irony I feast on! -
Whenever I come across nihilism and its miserable epigone (existentialism) I can't help but cringe and roll my eyes, and that's putting it mildly. All those ramblings about the meaninglessness of human life, achievements, dreams and hopes, lost as we are in the cosmic emptiness of a universe going nowhere etc... well, every time I read such bullshit, usually peddled by some pretentious wealthy dickhead with too much spare time, I'd love to ask the author:
"Okay, so why don't you just kill yourself? Be consistent with what you say and jump off a roof. Shoo. Fuck off, you jinx. And hey, before you do it - think of all those poor devils who really have to struggle every single second of their lives. Wash your shitty mouth out and see what a bunch of crap you've been preaching. Because YOUR life is useless, YOUR existence is useless, not everybody else's."
However, Cioran was the exception to the rule. For the very simple reason that his nihilism is so desperately charged with hope that he ends up destroying his own system from within. Besides, his writing is divine. From the very first lines I found myself too engrossed in it to even care about the actual contents, and that's quite something given my prejudice against the subject matter. And please note that he wasn't even writing in his first language. In fact Cioran was Romanian, not French; and yet this book, the first he wrote in his acquired language, eanred him a place in the pantheon of French literature as soon as it was published (by Gallimard in 1949).
Nhilism is the most genuine product of European culture after its long, exhausted history of spiritual havoc. After the rise and fall of so many Thousand-Year Reichs, what's left for man to believe in? What's left for anybody to teach or learn, approve or despise since no system has ever been able to survive itself? There seems to be no alternative to radical, absolute denial.
While nihilism as we've come to know (and, in my case, loathe) it can't go any farther than that, thus ending up in a stalemate, Cioran's vision radically differs: his thought is the completion and overcoming of the existentialists' cosmic pessimism. It's the crack in the system that - paradoxically - allows it to work and make sense. It's the solution to a problem no other existentialist/nihilist has ever been able to solve: why they won't take their own lives, thus setting a good example for their admirers to follow.
Because they were too full of themselves to believe in their own crap, that's why.
At first Cioran draws the same conclusion: self-denial is the only way out of the delusions we live in. But that's just the first step for mankind to take, the beginning of a journey leading to the Unknown rather than to the Meaningless. When when no superstition prevents us to see the void; when there's no noise interfering with the silence, self-denial ceases to be a renunciation leading nowhere. On the contrary, it becomes openness to the outside, to a world free from the superstructures of the ego. It's the ability to see reality as it is: a space of unlimited potential, untarnished and unscathed, beyond the boundaries of feeling and thought.
No doubt the intensity of Cioran's prose puts his musings on human history and religion on a level with the most visionary writings of the Scriptures. The way he deals with his own contradictions is amazing, with an uncanny sense of the clash between earthly boundaries and transcendental desires. Cioran is a modern Qohelet who desperately embraces religion the moment he starts destroying it. In a world deprived of all meaning, the only way out leads to what is by definition out of our reach. Faith - in God, mankind, art, poetry, beauty - is the ultimate reason for man to carry on.
That's what really surprised me: Cioran's intellectual honesty, especially in drawing conclusions that would lead him so far away from his premises, whereas most of his contemporaries were not exactly keen on taking stock of the flaws in their systems (perhaps because they were almost invariably drawn to join in the political/ideological controversies of their time, and therefore debased themselves and their work). Cioran refused to take part in any struggle or commitment: when asked to take a clear (leftist) stand by Albert Camus, he told him to go fuck himself and stop bothering him with his bullshit. Verbatim.
Well said, Emil. -
I did not read this cover to cover. It contains a certain amount of belaboring the point, which when you’re treading Cioran’s thematic territory can easily become smothering. It actually feels worlds away from
The Trouble With Being Born, which was written when Cioran was much older (and arguably wiser) and had honed his style to succinct aphoristic perfection delivered with a subtle levity that offsets the heavy subject matter. It’s much more tolerable to consume Cioran’s writing in these small bits, as opposed to unwieldy chunks that may clog your head and ultimately direct you to lie down in a dark room for several hours.
Reading Cioran reminds me a lot of reading Thomas Bernhard. Both writers project an uncompromising insight into the futility of life, but in their realization and acceptance of this awareness they raise it to high art, continuously boring in on their few and related themes with laser focus and elegant rhetoric. At the same time, both of these writers also saw suicide as a logical solution to the dilemma of living, and while looking with some reverence upon those who take their own lives, they simultaneously perceived a degree of weakness in themselves for not being able to take that decisive step. Hence, their steady determination to forge an alternative path for themselves and their undivided devotion to traveling it.
Basically, this path consists of writing at a distance around their own inability to commit suicide, resulting in tightly controlled concentric circles of exacting prose that illustrates what it is like to live with this inability while also being conscious of all thought that drove them to consider suicide in the first place. It is a conundrum of massive proportions, which is what makes reading these writers’ work so fascinating (at least until one reads too much of it, and then it just becomes exhausting). Thematic crossover is common between the two; Bernhard, though, chose to chiefly channel his creative energy into fiction and drama, while Cioran employed aphorisms for the most part. One could argue that without the artifice of fiction, Cioran’s naked observations are thus that much more brutal to take in. -
Felsefik bir söz seremonisinin en üst düzeyinden doğaçlama sancısı.
Okuyucuya karşı acımasız, pervazsız.
Gerçekliğin acı duruşu ve istemdışı kabullenişin kaçınılmazlığı. -
Cioran'ı çok seveceğimi düşünerek başlamıştım bu kitaba. Birçok düşüncesini desteklesem de sanırım sevmeyeceğim tek bir düşüncesiyle dahi karşılacağımı aklıma getirmediğim için karşılaştıkça şaşırdım, uzaklaştım, anca bitti kitap. Onu okumadan önce sadece katıldığım fikirlerine rastlamışım demek ki sağda solda. Algıda seçiciliğin de bir nebze etkisi var tabii. Tutarlılığı ve açıklayışı çok hoşuma gitti ama. Zaten ayrıldığımız noktalar da birleştiğimiz noktalara kıyasla çok az. Yani tabii ki Cioran'ı okumaya devam edeceğim ama, en sevdiklerim rafıma giremeyecekmiş meğer. Pozitif önyargılı davranmışım okumadan.
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İnanılmaz bir boyutta karamsarlık var kitapta, ancak esas acı olan şu ki yazarın çok az tezine karşı antitez üretebildim.
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ما كل هذا التشاؤم والبؤس يا سيوران
كيف يمكن لإنسان أن يكون كاره لحياته وكل من حوله بهذا الشكل ? -
"Anyone who speaks in the name of others is always an imposter."
"By all evidence we are in the world to do nothing."
Reading E. M. Cioran's aphoristic musings on the decay of modern society is not easy on the soul, but is made bearable by his beautiful turns of phrase and concise explanations (despite the fact that he uses more ellipses than a teenager on facebook chat). Cioran's essays on human life basically rest on proving its innate absurdity. God is a failure (until he created Bach), enthusiasm for your ideas - any ideas on any subject - leads to nothing but bloody slaughter or despotism and existence is defined solely by the suffering you endure. Yet despite it all, this book was great - beautifully written, darkly amusing in places and interesting - I didn't agree with all, or most, that Cioran said, but I did get immersed in his world and perceptions.
One for fans of existentialism, absurdism, and anything by Samuel Beckett. -
This book is BEYOND pessimism and nihilism! I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone that thinks positively about their future or anyone that is part of a national movement. E.M. Cioran makes no lie that he has given up on existence (aside from writing of course!).
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It is a very rare thing that a philosopher can write well stylistically. Even if I disagreed with everything said here it would have gotten 5 stars for its prose alone.
Of course, I did still agree with at least half of it, so that helps. -
Binnenkort bespreking op De Reactor, nu op Knack.be:
http://www.knack.be/nieuws/boeken/de-...
De filosofie van Emil Cioran: haaks op het gedachtegoed van de gevestigde filosofen
De Roemeens-Franse filosoof Emil Cioran (1911-1995) schreef een indrukwekkend oeuvre van ruim twee dozijn boeken bij elkaar. Voor velen blijft 'Précis de décomposition' (1949) - het eerste boek dat hij in het Frans schreef - een absolute uitschieter. Toen 'Précis de décomposition' uitkwam bij Gallimard beroerde het meteen de gemoederen, al bleef Ciorans publiek in het begin beperkt tot een select groepje intellectuelen, kunstenaars en andere doemdenkers. De Historische Uitgeverij brengt nu in haar reeks 'Beschouwelijk werk' een trefzekere vertaling van deze klassieker, met als verrassende titel 'Een kleine filosofie van verval'.
Vertaalslag
'Précis de décomposition' neemt een belangrijke plaats in binnen het oeuvre van Cioran. Niet zozeer omdat deze 'litanie van de verslagenheid' een keerpunt in Ciorans denken zou markeren - nagenoeg al zijn kernideeën zitten er in een oervorm al in verwerkt en die zouden in later werk niet drastisch evolueren. Belangrijker is, zo stelt vertaler Pieter Appels in de verantwoording achterin het boek, dat hij vanaf dan in het Frans schrijft en niet langer in zijn moedertaal, het Roemeens. Zoals Cioran aangeeft in de essaybundel 'Exercices d'admiration' (1986), waar hij in het laatste hoofdstukje 'En relisant...' terugblikt op zijn boek uit 1949, gaat het over vormelijke, muzikale en stilistische elementen:
Mijn kijk op de dingen is niet fundamenteel veranderd; wat zeker veranderd is, is de toon. Het gebeurt zelden dat de kern van iemands denken verandert; wat daarentegen een metamorfose ondergaat, is de frasering, de uiterlijke schijn, het ritme.
Een frustrerende vertaaloefening gaf voor Cioran de doorslag om 'Précis de décomposition' in het Frans te schrijven. Een moedige poging om Stéphane Mallarmé naar het Roemeens te vertalen had verstrekkende gevolgen, zoals te lezen staat in de Cahiers:
Wandeling in Offranville. Het was hier, tijdens de zomer van 1947, dat ik besloot om te breken met het Roemeens. Ik herinner me dat ik er Mallarmé vertaalde; op een bepaald moment realiseerde ik me de absurditeit en de complete nutteloosheid van mijn onderneming. Mijn vaderland bestond niet meer, mijn moedertaal ook niet... Waarom blijven schrijven in een idioom dat enkel toegankelijk is voor een miniem aantal landgenoten, eigenlijk maar een stuk of twintig? Op dat moment besloot ik ermee te stoppen, en me te wijden aan het Frans. Twee jaar later was 'Een kleine filosofie van verval' af, niet zonder aanzienlijke moeite.
In diezelfde periode waagde Cioran zich ook aan vertalingen van Benjamin Constant, Chamfort, Engelse romantische dichters en enkele Franse brievenschrijfsters uit de achttiende eeuw. Maar het is vooral Paul Valéry die een grote stilistische invloed op zijn schrijven zou hebben. Hij beschreef zijn vertaalwerk als 'het eindpunt van een epilepsieaanval' en de Franse taal vergeleek hij met een dwangbuis. 'Précis de décomposition' zou hij tot vier keer toe herschrijven. Hoewel Frans niet zijn moedertaal was, zien velen hem vandaag als een van de grootste stilisten in die taal.
Homme de fragment
Naar Cioran-normen is 'Een kleine filosofie van verval' met zijn tweehonderdzeventig pagina's een vrij lijvig boek. Het bestaat uit zes grote delen, die op hun beurt ingedeeld zijn in meer dan honderdveertig korte, vignetachtige hoofdstukken. Door de beknoptheid van de hoofdstukken - ze gaan van een halve pagina tot maximaal drie, vier pagina's - en de veelheid aan thema's (religie, de afwezige God, de dood, het menselijk lijden, zelfmoord, de vrijheid, het auteurschap, verveling, de tijd, etc.) is dit een nogal fragmentarisch, weinig gestructureerd boek.
Maar dat is nergens storend, integendeel: je kan op elke bladzijde inpikken en je laten meevoeren door Ciorans steeds verrassende en eigenzinnige gedachtestroom. Hij noemde zichzelf ooit veelbetekenend 'un homme de fragment'. De gebalde of in aforismen gefragmenteerde gedachte werd niet voor niets zijn handelsmerk. Het fragmentarische uit zich ook in de interpunctie: de tekst staat bol van gedachtestrepen en puntkomma's, maar het is vooral het beletselteken dat gretig wordt ingezet als instrument om het onafgewerkte te suggereren.
Ciorans stijl is wispelturig, niet-systematisch, idiosyncratisch. Zijn aforistische stijl heeft de verhoogde sensibiliteit die eigen is aan de verheven poëzie van mystici, waardoor zijn taalgebruik bij momenten ook wat verouderd of gezwollen is:
De geest ontdekt de Identiteit; de ziel de Verveling; het lichaam de Luiheid. Het is eenzelfde principe van onveranderlijkheid, verschillend uitgedrukt in de drie vormen van de universele geeuw.
'Een kleine filosofie van verval' is net als het gros van Ciorans teksten extreem citeerbaar. Bijna elke zin kan probleemloos uit zijn context worden gelicht, zonder aan betekenis of waarde te hoeven inboeten. Cioran verwerkte ook zelf graag citaten in zijn teksten. Aan de hand van talrijke quotes en verwijzingen spint hij een strak web van intertekstualiteit, zonder dat hierdoor de leesbaarheid in het gedrang komt.
Cioran citeert niet enkel uit de canon van de wereldliteratuur (van William Shakespeare en Marcel Proust over Dante en John Keats tot Hugo von Hofmannsthal en Theresia van Avila). Ook veel filosofen komen aan bod. Cioran geeft commentaar, verwerkt gedachten, bekritiseert en dient collega-denkers van antwoord. Friedrich Nietzsche en Diogenes zijn favorieten en komen veelvuldig voor. Maar er zijn ook verschillende subtiele knipoogjes, in het bijzonder naar Plato (in 'De architect van de grotten'), naar Jean-Paul Sartre (in 'Over een handelaar in ideeën') en naar Seneca (in het allerlaatste hoofdstuk 'Quousque eadem?').
Cioran wordt wel eens weggezet als 'moralist' of 'onheilige mysticus'. Maar doordat hij met allerhande filosofen in discussie gaat, neemt hij expliciet een positie in binnen een wijsgerige traditie. Vertaler Pieter Appels heeft die filosofische grondslag duidelijk willen maken met de vertaling van de titel als 'Een kleine filosofie van verval'. Het Franse substantief 'précis' kan 'handleiding', 'samenvatting' of 'korte geschiedenis' betekenen, zoals mag blijken uit de Engelse titel A Short History of Decay. Dat Cioran veel meer is dan een gelegenheidsdenker die zich uitdrukt in aforismen, wordt mooi duidelijk gemaakt door het woord 'filosofie', ook al wordt het dan voorafgegaan door 'kleine'.
Filosoof in stijl
Ciorans denken verzaakt aan elke vorm van systematiek en staat haaks op het gedachtegoed van de 'gevestigde' filosofen. In het hoofdstuk 'Afscheid van de filosofie' klinkt het radicaal uitgedrukt zo:
Ik heb me van de filosofie afgekeerd op het moment dat het me niet meer lukte bij Kant een menselijke zwakheid, een waarachtig teken van droefheid te ontdekken; bij Kant niet en bij geen enkele filosoof. Vergeleken met muziek, mystiek of poëzie, ontstaat de filosofie uit een verminderde levenskracht en een verdachte diepgang, die aanzien hebben bij verlegen en lauwe mensen. [...] Nagenoeg alle filosofen zijn goed geëindigd: dat is het ultieme argument tegen de filosofie. Zelfs het einde van Socrates heeft niets tragisch: het is een misverstand, het einde van een pedagoog - en als Nietzsche is weggekwijnd, dan is dat als dichter en visionair: hij heeft geboet voor zijn extases en niet voor zijn redeneringen.
Cioran is de uitgelezen 'antifilosoof' (zie het hoofdstuk 'De gelegenheidsdenker'), met een voorkeur voor het mystieke, het goddelijke en het poëtische. Zijn denkbewegingen over het betreurenswaardige lot van de mens ('de ziekte van het zijn') komen steeds uit bij heiligen, engelen, martelaren en een immer afwezige God. Ciorans melancholie is religieus van aard, maar nooit zoekt hij aansluiting bij een doordeweekse godsdienstige strekking:
De geschiedenis is een optocht van valse Absoluutheden, een opeenvolging van tempels opgericht omwille van voorwendsels, een vernedering van de geest tegenover het Onwaarschijnlijke. Zelfs wanneer hij zich verwijdert van de religie, blijft de mens eraan onderworpen; zich uitputtend in het bedenken van schijngoden, maakt hij ze zich koortsachtig tot de zijne: zijn behoefte aan fictie, aan mythologie triomfeert over het vanzelfsprekende en het belachelijke.
Onze drang naar verafgoding, in combinatie met een onvolmaakte God, werpt ons in een afgrond. In zijn nihilistische aforismen probeert Cioran de aard van onze beschaving te doorgronden. In die zin is zijn filosofie gnostisch te noemen: ze probeert te onderkennen, te graven, te bepalen. 'Een kleine filosofie van verval' is een afrekening met het menselijk bestaan, gemarkeerd door een virulente drang om alles te ontleden, te ontbinden en te ontwrichten. Eerder dan een coherente filosofie stelt Cioran in dit boek het individuele lijden voorop, met het zichzelf vernietigende 'ik' als enige kennisprincipe. Het is, zo lijkt het wel, een geschrift met maar één vijand, zijn eigen auteur:
Vroeger had ik een 'ik'; nu ben ik niet meer dan een object... Ik prop me vol met alle verdovende middelen van de eenzaamheid; die van de wereld waren te zwak om me mezelf te doen vergeten. Nu ik de profeet in mijzelf heb gedood, hoe zou ik nog een plaats onder de mensen kunnen hebben? -
Ovaj anti-filozof je potpuni pesimista po ubeđenju (jedini lek za spas naših mizernih života je njihov prekid, tj. samoubistvo, ili nešto u tom stilu), ali te brzo zavede sa količinom strasti sa kojom piše. Ateista, koji ne podnosi ni druga ubeđenja - svaki idealizam je izvor ljudske nesreće...
"Čim neko povisi glas, svejedno da li u ime neba, javnosti, ili pod kakvim drugim izgovorom, bežite od takvoga: satir vaše samoće, on vam ne oprašta to što živite sa ove strane njegovih istina i njegovih žestina; hteo bi da podelite njegovu histeriju, njegovo dobro; hoće da vam ih nametne, da vas unakazi."
Sjajno, ovo nije filozofija, ovo je poezija. Kao kad brani korupciju u javnom životu: "Neopterećeni doktrinom, oni idu jedino za ćefom i za interesom, za prilagodljivim porocima, hiljadu puta snošljivijim od pokora koji pričinjava despotizam za načelima; jer sva zla života dolaze od 'koncepcije života'. Savršen političar bi trebalo da se oda temeljnom izučavanju starih sofista ili da uzima časove pevanja: - i korupcije."
I o svom (ne)religijskom stavu piše jako simpatično, mnogo bolje od Hičensa u
God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything:"Pravi vernik se vrlo malo razlikuje od ludaka; ali njegovo ludilo je legalno, prihvaćeno; da njegove zablude nisu obojene verom, oterali bi ga u ludu kuću. Njegova zastranjena pokriva Bog, on ih opravdava. Oholost osvajača nije ništa u poređenju sa neumerenošću bogomoljca koji se obraća Tvorcu...
... Ali. Kako to da je Bog tako bezbojan, tako nemoćan, tako premalo slikovit? Kako to da mu fali zanimljivost, silina, aktuelnost, i da tako malo liči na nas? Ni manje čovekolike, ni sumanito udaljenije prikaze. Kako smo mogli da u nj projektujemo tako bledo svetlucanje i tako neuverljivu snagu? Kud se to rasuše naše sile, kud odoše naše želje? Ko to potroši višak naše životne drskosti?"
Hvali dosadu, o besposličarstvu piše kao o vrlini: "Besposličari shvataju veći broj stvari i dublji su od prezaposlenih: vidik im ne ograničava nikakav posao; rođeni u večnoj nedelji, oni posmatraju - i posmatraju sebe dok posmatraju. Od besposličenja ničeg slađeg nema: i kad bi smak sveta počeo, ne bih izašao iz kreveta pre vremena."
Uprkos nihilizmu, često nasmeje. Retko koristi anekdote, ali ovu treba citirati:"Desilo se to u čekaonici bolnice: jedna starica mi je pričala o svojim tegobama... Sporovi među ljudima, oluje istorije, - behu sitnice u njenim očima: u prostoru i trajanju samo je njezina bolest vladala. 'Ne mogu da jedem, ne mogu da spavam, plašim se, izgleda da se tu gnoji,' vavoljila je opipavajući svoju vilicu tako važno kao da sudbina sveta zavisi od nje. Ta prekomerna pažnja što ju je jedna oronula torokuša pokazivala prema sebi izazva u meni nešto između straha i gađenja; potom, ne sačekavši svoj red za pregled, napustih bolnicu, rešen da se zauvek odreknem mojih bolova..."
Ipak, koliko god ovi primeri oduševljavali, Sioran te ubija, polako ali sigurno. Previše je tu crnine i stalnog negodovanja da bi potpuno oduševilo nekog ko ceni nadu: "Društvo nije veliko zlo, ono je pravi pravcati poraz: kakvo glupo čudo da je u njemu moguće živeti! Kada ga čovek, našav se između besa i ravnodušnosti, posmatra, biva mu neobjašnjivo da niko do sada nije razorio to zdanje, da se, sve dosad, ne nađe očajnih i valjanih ljudi, ljudi dobra, da to zdanje poruše do temelja i da mu zatru svaki trag."
Osim neslaganja sa pogledom autora na svet (i na filozofiju - koju prezire), imam problem i sa strukturom Pregleda raspadanja. Sastavljena je od stotinjak kratkih razmišljanja, esejčića, ne dužih od 1-2 strane. Čitajući je u kontinuitetu, doživeo sam je kao skup citata, koji se zaboravljaju nakon zatvorene poslednje stranice. Trebalo bi ga čitati drugačije. Možda u trenucima kad osetiš da ti se u životu pojavljuju radost i nada? -
Umutsuzluk, mutsuzluk, inançsızlık ve elbette ki çürümüş insanlık kadar doğal bir şey yok diyor Cioran. İnsanların Tanrı ihtiyacına, "başkaları" ihtiyacına yaptığı göndermeler, çeşitli başlıklar altında toplayarak dile getirilmiş. Bu başlıklar kitabı daha okunur kılıyor. Hislerin bütünü, insan ihtiyaçlarının bütünü ve ihtiyaçlarının kölesi insan..
Çok sert bir dille bireyci merkezden irdeliyor insanı Cioran. Okunması gereken ve attığı tokatları hissettiren gerçekçi bir kitap. -
not seeing the appeal. overt fascist muses on decadence. how many motherfuckers died to extinguish this kind of self-obsessed bullshit?
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A brilliant masterpiece. Says so much with such artistry. Think - Samuel Beckett and Eugene Ionesco but flavored with full-blown nihilistic humor. Cioran has me convinced by about the first paragraph that life is absurd, God wasted was a complete failure until he created Bach and totally redeemed himself, people who live in monasteries are egotistical because they care more about their own souls than living with the rest of us... only the skeptics and the decadent roman emperors had living figured out because 'all other lives have been chained to the monotony of a vocation' - he says what I am thinking - but with pinpoint precision.
Bleak, yet I cannot help but laugh. His insights pull no punches and he makes absurdism humourous -which is I think redeems the futility of living from the onslaught of suicidal thoughts that barrage the reader on every page. "I am an accident. So what's the point to be serious about life?" -
Nihilism as a creative act! One of the great books to have by your bedside, just to remind you what kind of world we live in. Superb!
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Kitap hakkındaki izlenimimi yazmıştım diye düşünüyordum ki yazmamış olduğumu fark ettim. Metis Yayıncılık'a yazmış olduğum-cevaplanmayan- maili *birkaç düzeltme ile paylaşıyorum.
Çürümenin Kitabı Hakkında
Bengisu CAYGUR
19.4.2017 (Çar) 20:21
Kime: [email protected];
İyi akşamlar, bir kitabın çevirisi hakkında düşüncelerimi paylaşmak için yazıyorum-yayınlarınızı beğenerek takip etmekte olduğumu da belirtmek isterim-
Yayınlamış olduğunuz, Emil Michel Cioran'ın Var Olma Eğilimi ve Doğmuş Olmanın Sakıncası Üstüne adlı kitaplarını okudum ardından-büyük bir hevesle- Çürümenin Kitabı'na başladım fakat benim için tam bir hayal kırıklığı oldu çünkü ben bu çevirinin "Türkçe" olduğunu düşünmüyorum. Yayın haklarını 1996 yılında aldığınızı ve ilk basımını 2000 yılında yaptığınızı göz önünde bulundurarak, çevirinin bu süre zarfında yapıldığını düşünerek, bu çeviriyi kabullenemiyorum. Dönemin "Türkçesi" bu değil! Çeviriyi ağdalamak neden?
Elimizdeki metnin felsefi bir metin olduğunu ele aldığımızda; okurun düşünmek, anlamak, anlamlandırmak için belli bir efor sarf etmesi, üzerine zaman harcaması gerekirken siz okurun üzerine metni -anlayabilmek adına- Türkçeleştirmeyi de yüklemişsiniz. Tutumunuz bu olsa, "Biz ağdalı bir dil kullanmayı tercih ediyoruz." deseniz anlayacağım. Fakat olmadığını biliyorum yoksa yukarıda belirttiğim, yine Emil Michel Cioran'a ait olan, çevirilerini Kenan Sarıalioğlu'nun yapmış olduğu kitapların; gayet "Türkçe" ve tamamen anlaşılır olan bu çevirilerini kabul etmezdiniz-kaldı ki kitaplığıma baktığım zaman en çok tercih ettiğim yayınevi olduğunuzu görüyorum- diye düşünüyorum. Okumak adına çabalamama rağmen sadece 12. sayfaya kadar direnebildim ve daha sonra okumak üzere kitaplığıma geri kaldırmak zorumda kaldım.
Meleke, vecd, mütereddit, selâmet, tahayyül, veçhe, fiiliyat, münhal, ihsas ve daha birçoğu neden? Birkaçı için sözlüğe bakmak zorunda kalmış olmam neden? Bu tutum neden? Yabancılaşmış olmam neden?
İyi çalışmalar. -
One of the best books I have read recently, written with such grotesque honesty and unforgiving nihilism, to which there is no need to subscribe, in order to appreciate the lyrical value of the text.
Cioran is pretty much Nietzsche on steroids, and off anti-depressants.
"In Time's sentence men take their place like commas, while, in order to end it, you have immobilized yourself into a period." -
Oh, Dark Prince of Entropy, Lord of Doom and Despair, your words speak from the annals of Creation into the ears of delirious mortals, lost in the abstractions of life, in the madness of activity, thought and faith, slaves to their glands and to their own ideas or those of others, to God, to State, to love...We bow before your dark banner of Nihil !
Well, it's easy to get the wrong idea about Cioran, his writing is littered with repetitions of the uselessness of life, of your exerting oneself in life, the folly of existence and the courage of the one who is willing to take their own life to end the mad carousel. However, aside from the nihilistic touch which one would want to swat away as just ''depressive'', Cioran simply shines a dirty mirror on the essence of human existence and our perception of reality and comes back with the barest, most stripped down version of it, what we see, we might not like, yet in the end he does speak the truth. We are all just a bunch of evolved apes on spinning speck of earth, tortured by our consciousness of our being human, brought into an indifferent world, assaulted by so many ills, natural or man-made, material or immaterial.
His beautiful poetic writing is a reminder of the simple, dirty truths of life not with the intent of despair, on the contrary to find solace in our ability to see and to endure the absurdity of existence, the crush and alienation that we feel in daily life. Think of it in the way one listens to sad music during a breakup, it's not the goal to amplify it but to distill the feeling, the mirror and echo it back to see it for what it is, to help endure and remove the anguish in your core. Cioran is more hopeful and inspiring in his writing than most self-help, motivation writers, fuck positivity and manufactured HAPPINESS..if you want to be free of your weights, free to be, to live, to endure, to be better, accept the horror of the emptiness that lies at the core, muster your strength in knowing you can endure it and then quit your job, stop following the news, go write some poetry, listen to music, deny the slavery of manufactured abstraction and mine the richness of your inner world.
That being said, he slips into bouts of defeatism and indifference, a disregard for the community of man, in a way that Camus feels far more on point in defining the nature of our being. Cioran's nihilism is individualistic and self-aggrandizing at times, he also has slight outbursts of misogyny and nationalistic essentialism (''the spirit of a Frenchman'' lol) I can defo see edgy teens going for him or edgy internet trolls justifying their ''damn it all to hell attitude'' but also falling into dangerous traps in doing so. -
Read again: July 19 - September 9
6. The abundance of solutions to the aspects of existence is equaled only by their futility.
10. By dint of accumulating non-mysteries and monopolizing non-meanings, life inspires more dread than death: it is life which is the Great Unknown.
38. In this slaughterhouse, to fold one's arms or to draw one's sword are equally vain gestures.
44. Man starts over again every day, in spite of everything he knows, against everything he knows.
54. Before an absolute tribunal, only the angels would be acquitted.
72. Men mingle in a uniform fare as futile as, for the indifferent eye, as the stars - or the crosses of a military cemetary.
77. In this world, where sufferings are merged and blurred, only the Formula prevails.
84. A dust infatuated with ghosts - such is man; his absolute image, ideally lifelike, would be incarnated in a Don Quixote seen by Aeschylus.
102. "I never made anyone suffer!" - an exclamation alien to a creature of flesh and blood.
119. We are the great invalids, overwhelmed by old dreams, forever incapable of utopia, technicians of lassitude, gravediggers of the future, horrified by the avatars of the Old Adam.
172. Look at your body in the mirror; you will realize that you are mortal; run your fingers over your ribs as though across a guitar, and you will see how close you are to the grave. -
This I bought and started reading in Romania itself, albeit in translation. I balked pretty hard, like an alpha-male chicken, when I saw immediately, right on the back cover, that the author flew into Romania after fascists took power, to congratulate them.
He does read like someone who went to Paris for inspiration, stayed fo the nightlife, only to regress to cynicism when certainty suits him. I'd have liked to read further for the comedy factor, since he follows long nihilistic digressions with bizarre, wholly uncharacteristic praise for frivolity. He sounds like another Hitler-era artist who wants order on his own strange, selfish terms, but I imagine the frivolity would be literally in reading this whole book. -
I love Cioran's writing but confess that he makes me laugh out loud, much in the same way that de Sade's attempts to shock raise a chuckle and the Handsome Family's modern American Gothic appeal to my Irish/English sense of the ridiculous. I simply cannot take him seriously, and for the reader, such an attitude becomes liberating: you can simply revel in the use of language and the daring with which he expresses the most life-negating ideas. They become hilarious, a joy to read. A delight.
