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A Short History of Decay (Penguin Modern Classics)

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My mother used to read a lot of books when I was a child and I saw how much enjoyment these books would bring her. In his views, he was influenced by Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Chestov, Rozanov, Dostoyevsky, and poet Mihai Eminescu.

No human beings more dangerous than those who have suffered for a belief: the great persecutors are recruited among the martyrs not quite beheaded. Far from diminishing the appetite for power, suffering exasperates it; hence the mind feels more comfortable in the society of a braggart than in that of a martyr; and nothing is more repugnant to it than the spectacle of dying for an idea. And I have tried to be faithful to my knowledge, to force my instincts to yield, and realized that it is no use wielding the weapons of nothingness if you cannot turn them against yourself. Health preserves life as such, in a sterile identity; while disease is an activity, the most intense a man can indulge in, a frenetic and . Cioran, in short, mercilessly strips away our most cherished illusions and confronts us with the stark truth of our predicament, a truth that is far from pleasant.A Short History of Decay was awarded the Rivarol Prize, a French literary prize; the prize committee included André Gide. I also appreciate the biography you included since knowing one’s background can help explain their thinking. I don't believe that the intention is to alienate the reader; rather it is more like Cioran is revelling in language.

With the exception of the Greek skeptics and the Roman emperors of the Decadence, all minds seem enslaved by a municipal vocation. Howard’s translation is exemplary (he won a Pen Translation Prize for it), especially his wonderfully mordant rendering of the title—A Short History of Decay. Because, if reason disavows the appetite for life, the nothing which extends our acts is nonetheless of a power superior to all absolutes; it explains the tacit coalition of mortals against death; it is not only the symbol of existence, but existence itself; it is everything. He wrote five books while living in Romania, some are collections of brief essays, others are collections of aphorisms. We say of space, of time, and of suffering that they are infinite; but infinite has no more bearing than beautiful, sublime, harmonious, ugly.The truly solitary being is not the man who is abandoned by men, but the man who suffers in their midst.

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