A Short History of Decay (Penguin Modern Classics)

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For any intense suffering produces a simulacrum of plenitude and proposes a terrible reality to consciousness, which it cannot elude; while suffering without substance in that temporal mourning of ennui affords consciousness nothing that forces it to fruitful action. A little too repetitive for my liking, which gives rise to the feeling Cioran might have been too fond of the sound of his own voice, and of the verbal pyrotechnics for which he was to become famous. Only these two groups are emancipated, the former by doubt, the latter by dementia, from the insipid obsession of being useful.

The idle, empty mind—which joins the world only by the grace of sleep—can practice only by extending the name of things, by emptying diem and substituting formulas for them.What worm has burrowed into his repose, what primal agent of knowledge has forced him to the backwardness of actions, the arrested development of desires? According to Cioran, such periods of decline are better than eras of social stability because they erode old certainties, making it possible for people to wonder and doubt again. Without the allurement of the ancestral spasm, we should require a thousand eyes for hidden tears, or else nails to bite, mile-long nails. Whereas the fanatic is incorruptible: if he kills for an idea, he can just as well get himself killed for one; in either case, tyrant or martyr, he is a monster. Each of us is born with a share of purity, predestined to be corrupted by our commerce with mankind, by that sin against solitude.

In 1937, Cioran left his native country of Romania for Paris, where he remained for the rest of his life. In French, one often gives the title Précis to textbook summaries—for example, a Précis de littérature française or a Précis de mathématiques. I also appreciate the biography you included since knowing one’s background can help explain their thinking. We change ideas like neckties; for every idea, every criterion comes from outside, from the configurations and accidents of time. For a positive science of the meaning of life would depopulate the earth in a day, and not even a madman could succeed in reviving the fruitful improbability of Desire.We preserve that vertical pride which strengthens its courage; that horror of gestures which saves us from spectacle; and the succor of eyelids to veil an absurdly ineffable gaze.