Cioran thread

[Anonymous No.10521896]

"In every man sleeps a prophet, and when he wakes there is a little more evil in the world. . . .

The compulsion to preach is so rooted in us that it emerges from depths unknown to the instinct for self-preservation. Each of us awaits his moment in order to propose something—anything. He has a voice: that is enough. It costs us dear to be neither deaf nor dumb. . . .

From snobs to scavengers, all expend their criminal generosity, all hand out formulas for happiness, all try to give directions: life in common thereby becomes intolerable, and life with oneself still more so; if you fail to meddle in other people’s business you are so uneasy about your, own that you convert your “self” into a religion, or, apostle in reverse, you deny it altogether; we are victims of the universal game. . . .

The abundance of solutions to the aspects of existence is equaled only by their futility. History: a factory of ideals . . . lunatic mythology, frenzy of hordes and of solitaries . . . refusal to look reality in the face, mortal thirst for fictions. . . .

The source of our actions resides in an unconscious propensity to regard ourselves as the center, the cause, and the conclusion of time. Our reflexes and our pride transform into a planet the parcel of flesh and consciousness we are. If we had the right sense of our position in the world, if to compare were inseparable from to live, the revelation of our infinitesimal presence would crush us. But to live is to blind ourselves to our own dimensions. . . .

And if all our actions—from breathing to the founding of empires or metaphysical systems—derive from an illusion as to our importance, the same is true a fortiori of the prophetic instinct. Who, with the exact vision of his nullity, would try to be effective and to turn himself into a savior?

[Anonymous No.10521901]

>>10521896
Nostalgia for a world without “ideals,” for an agony without doctrine, for an eternity without life . . . Paradise. . . . But we could not exist one second without deceiving ourselves: the prophet in each of us is just the seed of madness which makes us flourish in our void.

The ideally lucid, hence ideally normal, man should have no recourse beyond the nothing that is in him. . . . I can imagine him saying: “Torn from the goal, from all goals, I retain, of my desires and my displeasures, only their formulas. Having resisted the temptation to conclude, I have overcome the mind, as I have overcome life itself by the horror of looking for an answer to it. The spectacle of man—what an emetic! Love—a duel of salivas. .. . All the feelings milk their absolute from the misery of the glands. Nobility is only in the negation of existence, in a smile that surveys annihilated landscapes. Once I had a 'self; now I am no more than an object .. . I gorge myself on all the drugs of solitude; those of the world were too weak to make me forget it. Having killed the prophet in me, how could I still have a place among men?”

[Anonymous No.10522084]

Haven't read any Cioran. Where should I start anon?

[Anonymous No.10522105]

>>10521901
This quote depicts a lonely man tossing in bed trying to get some sleep, pondering at the void within, trying to lull it, but to no avail. I should really read more of his works, I have read the Dusk of Thoughts in its original language, it made me both dispirited and proud of my insignificant country.

[Anonymous No.10522118]

>>10522105
Romania is already based for giving birth to Cioran.

[Anonymous No.10522119]

>>10522084
You technically shouldn't since its pretty much what the despair code is the Cole's Notes to

[Anonymous No.10522121]

>>10522084
Start with a young Cioran, On the Heights of Despair.

[Anonymous No.10522129]

>>10522118
It's true, we have had a few good writers, Eliade and Codreanu too are nice, and among the poets I would recommend Bacovia, but we aren't leading any cultural movement nowadays, when only Scandinavia and Germany are leading culturally. Modern literature is shit anyway, lately they have even stooped to write comic-novels like Persepolis or Maus only to slyly push forward their agenda, but I'm talking about music.

[Anonymous No.10522141]

>>10521896
>>10521901
Does he propose anything? There is a void inside telling you that nothing matters, you do not matter, gnawing at you, wearing you down. On the other hand there is an urge to do something meaningful, to fill that void, which also feels like a terrible delusion at times. These two forces threaten to ruin you in their eternal struggle. And I can relate, I can feel it too. But did he try to think of a solution? Or did he simply capture the feeling without doing anything about it?

[Anonymous No.10522154]

>>10522141
He, the anti-prophet, accepted it as it is and refrain from proposing or preaching.

[Anonymous No.10522322]

"But there is a great advantage in the loneliness of suffering. What would happen if a man's face could adequately express his suffering, if his entire inner agony were objectified in his facial expression? Could we still communicate? Wouldn't we then cover our faces with our hands while talking? Life would really be impossible if the infinitude of feelings we harbor within ourselves were fully expressed in the lines of our faces.

Nobody would dare look at himself in the mirror, because a grotesque, tragic image would mix in the contours of his face with stains and traces of blood, wounds which cannot be healed, and unstoppable streams of tears. I would experience a kind of voluptuous awe if I could see a volcano of blood, eruptions as red as fire and as burning as despair, burst into the midst of the comfortable and superficial harmony of everyday life, or if I could see all our hidden wounds open, making of us a bloody eruption forever. Only then would we truly understand and appreciate the advantage of loneliness, which silences our suffering and makes it inaccessible. The venom drawn out from suffering would be enough to poison the whole world in a bloody eruption, bursting out of the volcano of our being. There is so much venom, so much poison, in suffering!"

[Anonymous No.10522428]

>>10521896
>>10521901
One of my favorite essays of his.