Cioran, Emile

An Infamous Past: E.M. Cioran and the Rise of Fascism in Romania

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The Best Book on Cioran in English
Brilliance and Evil often go together

An Infamous Past: E.M. Cioran and the Rise of Fascism in Romania
Marta Petreu
Manufacturer: Ivan R. Dee, Publisher
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Notebooks
On the Heights of Despair
History and Utopia
Tears and Saints
My Second University: Memories from Romanian Communist Prisons

ASIN: 1566636078

Book Description

More than any other study of Cioran, Marta Petreu's intensive investigation of his life and work confronts the central problem of his biography: his relationship with political extremism. The scene of Cioran's excesses is Romania and Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, a time of xenophobia, anti-Semitism, racism, Nazism, and Stalinism. Norman Manea's Foreword reminds us of Cioran's stature in Western intellectual circles and explains the critical importance of An Infamous Past.

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The Best Book on Cioran in English.......2006-11-15

The Chicago publisher Ivan R. Dee has already published one major Romanian book in English translation, Mihail Sebastian's JOURNAL 1933-1945. Petreu's book is something different--a clear, serious, and straightforward scholarly study, a type of book seldom undertaken by an American commercial publisher. It is well chosen, though its future depends entirely on the reputation of Cioran, and it will do little to enhance that reputation.
Petreu is intimately familar with Cioran's writings, and quotes from them liberally. That alone would make this book an important source for readers of Cioran who cannot read Romanian. She has also troubled to read his 1930s journalism and his correspondence (some of which she has collected and published in Cluj), texts unavailable in English. There is some repetitiveness, but with good reason.
Petreu also is a student of history and is able to place Cioran's "lyrical philosophy" and praise of fascism (and of Hitler) in the context of Romanian politics. This by no means excuses Cioran. Rather, Petreu shows how and why fascism appealed to him in his twenties, when his literary ambitions, his dismay at European contempt for Romania, and his faith in destiny converged in opportunistic rant. Later in life, Cioran bitterly regretted these years. Petreu provides the ugly details, showing how much he had to regret.
Finally, her discussion of the Iron Guard, the blackshirts of Romania, who murdered and marauded in the name of pure Christianity, is a frightening reminder of what militant Christian politics can do.
Petreu writes that Cioran's "fundamental nature--decadent, amoral, aesthetic" (p. 182) was a fertile ground for his commitment to Romanian fascism. Cioran's current fame as a writer and a philosopher rests on the books he published in Paris after World War II. Petreu's book provides vital background for his Parisian career, showing how his fascist years continued to affect his later work, sometimes with hints, often with suppression, and always with fear and revulsion.

Brilliance and Evil often go together .......2006-01-31

Wagner is the Western Archetype of the Evil, ugly person who creates what is in the opinion of many great Art. Cioran is another example. Carlin Romano in a concise and powerful review of this book which appears in the 'Daily Chronicle of Higher Education' traces Petreu's uncovering of Cioran's Nazi past. She exposes his identification with murderous barbarity even against his own Romanian people.
Cioran's Nazi past was covered up in the Post- War years when his aesthetic flamboyance made him an intellectual star. But even in the stardom there were common elements with the old Nazi sympathizer. Misanthropy, a hatred of anything which seemed to not share his own distorted view of things.
This book exposes a certain double-sidedness in Cioran , on the one hand an admiration for Jewish creative powers, and on the other a vicious anti -Semitic fear of alleged Jewish spoiling of ' pure national cultures'.
Cioran according to Romano spend most of his life in Paris leeching off friends , and diatribing against among others fellow Romanians. He seems to have been a singular unpleasant character , and one who like Nietzsche profited in literary terms, from the human love of spiteful things said against other human beings.
Without knowing anything about his Nazi past I tried very hard years ago to read his work, and found myself running up against a tremendous amount of strongly declarative unproved utterance, aphorisms at their worse.
This book gives us a Cioran of mostly warts. The rest would advisedly be silence.

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La tentation d'exister
Emile Michel Cioran
Manufacturer: Gallimard
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

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ASIN: 2070704513

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unveiling realms of awareness
Me review Cioran? Let him turn in his petit grave, le salop!
evil incarnate
funniest and deepest pessimist since schopenhauer

The Temptation to Exist
Emile M., Cioran
Manufacturer: Times Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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A Short History of Decay
The Trouble With Being Born
On the Heights of Despair
History and Utopia
Anathemas and Admirations

ASIN: 0812961242

Customer Reviews:

unveiling realms of awareness.......2005-08-03

a stunning exposition of the wondrous caverns of the human heart, soul and mind. Somehow, through unearthing the darkest regions of consciousness, this author managed to enrich and edify us. By tearing down constructs, and destroying myths, he freed us to experience the full range of awareness; and thereby attain higher degrees of joy.

This one serves as a great accompaniment to such mind bending works as: The Supreme Identity, by Alan Watts; Rebels and Devils, edited by Christopher S. Hyatt Ph.D.; and anything by Nietzsche.

Me review Cioran? Let him turn in his petit grave, le salop!.......2004-05-25

If you don't know who Cioran is... the only thing I could do is try to seduce you to be introduced to him through this book.. through Temptation. If you know who he is and are wondering which book of his to buy.. go no further! If you have read that awful, premature tome, "Heights of Despair".. toss it, forget it, and replace it with Temptation to Exist! If you have the slightest disciple of Zarathustra somewhere inside you, then I believe we understand each other.

This book is a powerhouse of essays. The only thing I can disagree with are Cioran's opinions, and even then I am merely naive. I have little right to criticize him otherwise: to give these ... singular essays, these pages fertile with cerebral energy, this relentless gnawing at obstructing myth... to give it a spit in the face with my insignificant Amazon.com review? Well it would be unfathomable insolence! If, on the other hand, I seem hopelessly reverent toward Cioran... well, ya got me.

This book isn't for casual reading while on the can or in the dentist's office waiting to get drilled. The Cartesian reference, cogito ergo sum, is here pressed in a book and displayed in bad taste with the "seductions of thinking"... but that's just a crumb of what you'll find.

evil incarnate.......2003-10-19

Mola RAM Vola Ram

funniest and deepest pessimist since schopenhauer.......1999-05-24

in this book of short essays, cioran uses irony and paradox to achieve an absolute black humor. life is described as mind looking at itself and finding no significant content. death, the final exit, is a betrayer in that contemplating it leads one to wish to affirm life once more, yet without knowledge of what in life can be affirmed. many key words in the book begin with "a": abulia, aporia, askesis, ataraxia, and acedia define cioran's mood. perhaps the most brilliant essay, "beyond the novel," informs us that the novel is either dead or dying, in any case in agony, since both "character" and "meaning" no longer signify anything. here art mirrors life, where certitudes are merely functioning lies and the only goal is a futility achieved by severing oneself from those lies. the curious thing is that humor shines through all this, and while i don't find this book as funny as others of cioran's, particulary his books of very short aphorisms, there were still some laughs: "...at any price we must keep those who have too clear a conscience from living and dying in peace," for example.

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Dasein als Versuchung.
Emile M. Cioran
Manufacturer: Klett-Cotta
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: 3608951776

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Lehre vom Zerfall.
Emile M. Cioran
Manufacturer: Klett-Cotta
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: 3608933026

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Sur les cimes du désespoir
Emile Michel Cioran
Manufacturer: L'Herne
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: 2851972073

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Leidenschaftlicher Leitfaden.
Emile M. Cioran , and Ferdinand Leopold
Manufacturer: Suhrkamp
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: 3518222732

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Ecartèlement
Emile Michel Cioran
Manufacturer: Gallimard
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 2070720225

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Entretiens
Emile Michel Cioran , and François Bondy
Manufacturer: Gallimard
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

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ASIN: 2070733947

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Vom Nachteil, geboren zu sein.
Emile M. Cioran
Manufacturer: Suhrkamp
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 3518370499

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