naokamiya's review
4.0
A stomach-churningly raw and introspective work of philosophy and a profoundly empathetic book. More of my weak words are not needed; the text conveys potently about the tragedy of existence what I could never.
emelir's review
4.0
‘’Everything is possible, and yet nothing is. All is permitted, and yet again, nothing. No matter which way we go, it is no better than any other. It is all the same whether you achieve something or not, have faith or not, just as it is all the same whether you cry or remain silent. There is an explanation for everything, and yet there is none. Everything is both real and unreal, normal and absurd, splendid and insipid. There is nothing worth more than anything else, nor any idea better than any other. Why grow sad from one’s sadness and delight in one’s joy? What does it matter whether our tears come from pleasure or pain? Love your unhappiness and hate your happiness, mix everything up, scramble it all! Be a snowflake dancing in the air, a flower floating downstream! Have courage when you don’t need to, and be a coward when you must be brave! Who knows? You may still be a winner! And if you lose, does it really matter? Is there anything to win in this world? All gain is loss, and all loss is gain. Why always expect a definite stance, clear ideas, meaningful words? I feel as if I should spout fire in response to all the questions which were ever put, or not put, to me.’’
Nihilistiskt och existentialistiskt. Boken består av en mängd essäer som alla utgör noggranna utläggningar kring hur människan rör sig i en meningslös tillvaro av fullkomlig irrationalitet. Allt är absurt och alienerat. Människan har prick noll mening på jorden; vi föds och vi dör. Allt som står utanför mänsklighetens händer kommer att existera oavsett om jaget finns där eller inte. Eller så kanske det inte alls existerar. Men oavsett vad så spelar det ändå ingen roll. Cioran är ju inte jättehappi i sin syn på existensen.. meen på något vis finns det ändå någonting som är så sjukt betryggande i hans ord. Han kanske inte riktigt menar att det ska vara så, men jag har i alla fall bestämt att jag känner så. För när han dissekerar prick allt som har sagts om livet, döden och mänskligheten – då hamnar man tillslut på en slags neutral mark. Det är varken det ena eller det andra, allt bara är. Och härifrån, om man lämnar Cioran för en stund, så tillåts man bygga upp sin egen syn på alltet. Typ i alla fall. Ingenting betyder någonting, och på något vis är det fint. Kanske mest för att man bestämmer sig för det, men ändå. Man blir liksom fri i det där tomrummet. Fri till att göra, säga och känna precis vad man vill – för det spelar ändå ingen roll.
Nihilistiskt och existentialistiskt. Boken består av en mängd essäer som alla utgör noggranna utläggningar kring hur människan rör sig i en meningslös tillvaro av fullkomlig irrationalitet. Allt är absurt och alienerat. Människan har prick noll mening på jorden; vi föds och vi dör. Allt som står utanför mänsklighetens händer kommer att existera oavsett om jaget finns där eller inte. Eller så kanske det inte alls existerar. Men oavsett vad så spelar det ändå ingen roll. Cioran är ju inte jättehappi i sin syn på existensen.. meen på något vis finns det ändå någonting som är så sjukt betryggande i hans ord. Han kanske inte riktigt menar att det ska vara så, men jag har i alla fall bestämt att jag känner så. För när han dissekerar prick allt som har sagts om livet, döden och mänskligheten – då hamnar man tillslut på en slags neutral mark. Det är varken det ena eller det andra, allt bara är. Och härifrån, om man lämnar Cioran för en stund, så tillåts man bygga upp sin egen syn på alltet. Typ i alla fall. Ingenting betyder någonting, och på något vis är det fint. Kanske mest för att man bestämmer sig för det, men ändå. Man blir liksom fri i det där tomrummet. Fri till att göra, säga och känna precis vad man vill – för det spelar ändå ingen roll.
likecymbeline's review
3.0
I really loved reading [b:A Short History of Decay|2855|A Short History of Decay|Emil M. Cioran|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1387750751s/2855.jpg|14509643], and in much the same way I loved the experience of reading this book. It's more poetry than philosophy, essays in existential self-reflection. He's younger as he writes this and you can tell, even with the translator's note saying that Cioran agreed on cutting back the most repetitious parts. Cioran is just so, so Extra™ that I wanted to laugh as I read it on the bus back to London. Take, for example:
It's beautiful! It's not untrue! It's also so hyperbolic and self-centred and melancholy and oh my god me at fifteen would've loved it. And that's what I love about Cioran now as well, because it's simply so indulgent. It's navel-gazing at it's most beautiful. And he talks about madness and insomnia and melancholy and death-consciousness and I whole-heartedly love reading it. Yet I think I'm too joyful, now, to be inclined to agree with the face-value of the text. It's the beauty of the words that take me, and it's the part of me that still fondly cherishes this melancholic foolishness. My own existentialism, nihilism even, is too full of joy. It's not a black-and-white Parisian existentialism, living off of cigarettes and black coffee, sitting in a cafe with my Breton stripes and straight fringe. I no longer adore those images except as symbols of an idea, a character, a gesture, a ageing photograph of an archetype that has its place in the past.
This book is a 3.5 for bringing me so much joy, but being too indulgent to take the messages seriously. Individual passages, though, they are all 7/5 and beyond. Here I leave you:
Although I feel that my tragedy is the greatest in history—greater than the fall of empires—I am nevertheless aware of my total insignificance. I am absolutely persuaded that I am nothing in this universe; yet I feel that mine is the only real existence.
It's beautiful! It's not untrue! It's also so hyperbolic and self-centred and melancholy and oh my god me at fifteen would've loved it. And that's what I love about Cioran now as well, because it's simply so indulgent. It's navel-gazing at it's most beautiful. And he talks about madness and insomnia and melancholy and death-consciousness and I whole-heartedly love reading it. Yet I think I'm too joyful, now, to be inclined to agree with the face-value of the text. It's the beauty of the words that take me, and it's the part of me that still fondly cherishes this melancholic foolishness. My own existentialism, nihilism even, is too full of joy. It's not a black-and-white Parisian existentialism, living off of cigarettes and black coffee, sitting in a cafe with my Breton stripes and straight fringe. I no longer adore those images except as symbols of an idea, a character, a gesture, a ageing photograph of an archetype that has its place in the past.
This book is a 3.5 for bringing me so much joy, but being too indulgent to take the messages seriously. Individual passages, though, they are all 7/5 and beyond. Here I leave you:
Is it possible that I carry within me all that I've seen in my life? It is frightening to think that all those landscapes, books, horrors, and sublimities could be amassed in one single brain. I feel as if they have been transferred into me as realities and that they weigh heavily upon me. Sometimes I am overcome and I would prefer to forget all. Interiorization leads to inner collapse, because the world penetrates you and crushes you with its overbearing weight. Is it surprising, then, that some would have recourse to anything—from vulgarity to art—in order to forget?
rationes_seminales's review
3.0
(3/5) muchas cosas que dice ya las he pensado, sin embargo el valor reside en su forma de expresión bastante buena. Por otro lado, no creo que tenga un gran fundamento "lógico", pero sí uno muy especial subjetivo, y siento que hace falta que se hable más de la filosofía desde este punto de vista de los sentimientos. Porque es verdad que es un aspecto muy ignorado y sin embargo demasiado importante.
Me agrado aunque en algunas partes me parecía algo enredada la lectura.
Me agrado aunque en algunas partes me parecía algo enredada la lectura.
maya_irl's review
3.0
"I feel that I am dying of solitude, of love, of despair, of hatred, of all that this world offers me."
"To live on the heights means to live near the abyss."
"To live on the heights means to live near the abyss."
softlights's review
5.0
Incredibly pessimistic, but also incredibly beautiful. I found it comforting in a strange, melancholic way. A thought-provoking book on death, insomnia, existence, loneliness, sadness, suffering, suicide and the likes. I thoroughly enjoyed Cioran's musings on the paradoxes of human existence, the distinction between melancholy and sadness, and the disparity between the infinite world and the finite individual.
ottomobile99's review
3.0
Cioran's philosophy is simple - no, it's not simple.
Pessimism and Nihilism: mix them together and add a bit of ecstasy to it. The work here at hand can be soothing to read on a gloomy or riddle day but don't expect it to cheer you up or act as a 'self-help' book. Much like a ton of other continental hazards, this doesn't present any solutions to modern man's issues; if you'll say, this is more of a treatise ( if you can even call it that) of humanity's most desperate thoughts and questions. It's like adding more bullets to the incumbent questions we've yet to solve - which is to be expected of , regardless.
Surely, I enjoyed this read but it can get repetitively tedious at times: if you picked up this book thinking that it'll enchant you or perhaps clarify your questions with any certain school of thought, you might as put it back where it was shelved. It's understandable that Cioran wrote this book when he was 22 years of age but the experience that drives the contents of this book are the struggles that numerous thinkers from his time faced. Be it Jean-Paul Sartre, Michel Foucalt, Albert Camus, Theodore Adorno, Jacques Derrida or so to speak. Unlike his contemporaries, he doesn't get too serious with philosophy( I don't mean to derange continental by any means, I do like the branch but as someone who astoundingly prefers analytic, it can be an eyesore) but rather plays around with his writing as if it were a playbook.
If you're looking for a sequel to Schopenhauer's "The Pessimist's Handbook" or Nietzsche but with oil and water, you can grab this book and finish it with a day's excursion at your local park.
Pessimism and Nihilism: mix them together and add a bit of ecstasy to it. The work here at hand can be soothing to read on a gloomy or riddle day but don't expect it to cheer you up or act as a 'self-help' book. Much like a ton of other continental hazards, this doesn't present any solutions to modern man's issues; if you'll say, this is more of a treatise ( if you can even call it that) of humanity's most desperate thoughts and questions. It's like adding more bullets to the incumbent questions we've yet to solve - which is to be expected of , regardless.
Surely, I enjoyed this read but it can get repetitively tedious at times: if you picked up this book thinking that it'll enchant you or perhaps clarify your questions with any certain school of thought, you might as put it back where it was shelved. It's understandable that Cioran wrote this book when he was 22 years of age but the experience that drives the contents of this book are the struggles that numerous thinkers from his time faced. Be it Jean-Paul Sartre, Michel Foucalt, Albert Camus, Theodore Adorno, Jacques Derrida or so to speak. Unlike his contemporaries, he doesn't get too serious with philosophy( I don't mean to derange continental by any means, I do like the branch but as someone who astoundingly prefers analytic, it can be an eyesore) but rather plays around with his writing as if it were a playbook.
If you're looking for a sequel to Schopenhauer's "The Pessimist's Handbook" or Nietzsche but with oil and water, you can grab this book and finish it with a day's excursion at your local park.
melisaesra13's review against another edition
4.0
Emil Cioran se ia de mână cu Zorba Grecul, formând un duo perfect de mari misogini.
Exceptând acest detaliu, cred că nihiliștii nu pot citi nihiliști.
Prea mult nimic!
Prea frumos exprimat.
Exceptând acest detaliu, cred că nihiliștii nu pot citi nihiliști.
Prea mult nimic!
Prea frumos exprimat.
ghosthardware's review
4.0
"The importance of insomnia is so colossal that I am tempted to define man as the animal who cannot sleep. Why call him a rational animal when other animals are equally reasonable? But there is not another animal in the entire creation that wants to sleep yet cannot."
nalz's review
1.0
Written in flowery prose, but this book makes no real arguments, just stews in the authors personal depression and extrapolates that into a mostly unfounded worldview. That being said this could have just been his aim here, it just comes across as philosophical whining.
People draw an analogue between this book and Walt Whitman and I just cant see it at all. From what I understand his work gets more sophisticated after this.
People draw an analogue between this book and Walt Whitman and I just cant see it at all. From what I understand his work gets more sophisticated after this.