Review forthcoming, there's a lot to unpack in this.

A Short History of Decay is an unbridled celebration of nihilism. Cioran writes with an almost theatrical degree of cynicism: his commitment to persistently wrenching the most pessimistic conclusion from any proposition is often hilarious in its melodramatic absurdity. His philosophy is one of absolute futility, in which suicide is the most noble act, and any motion towards civilisation, culture or the pursuit of knowledge is entirely misguided.

While I enjoyed his acerbic commentaries on Christianity, on the whole I cannot follow Cioran into the depths of such profound nihilism. Most of his ideas are too esoteric or crippled by his slanted perspective to be credible except in a poetic sense. And yet, reading A Short History of Decay is still a worthwhile endeavour. While the writing style is dense and abstruse (often bordering on incomprehensible), it does possess a poetic beauty and is eminently quotable. One can find ideas that stand out as incisive and penetrating, though usually these need to be extricated from the surrounding negativity and histrionics.

The Poetry of Death

A Short History of Decay is a compendium of pessimistic aphorism, a sort of cosmopolitan collection of Gnostic scripture through the ages. It is entertaining, observationally acute, and compelling - all descriptions that the author would object to strenuously. I think he would accept ‘poetry of death’ much more readily, however. There is little except for death about which Cioran has anything good to say.

Cioran begins as a sort of secular Qoholeth from the Old Testament: All is vanity. And Cioran means everything, especially those conceits of faith by religionists who have lost the capacity to doubt: “What is the Fall but the pursuit of a truth and the assurance you have found it, the passion for a dogma, domicile within a dogma?” Cioran’s hero is the doubting Hamlet, he who hesitates, who doubts, who questions what he knows incessantly. “The devil pales beside the man who owns a truth, his truth”

But it is not religion per se that is the source of evil, it is human self-assurance: “Even when he turns from religion, man remains subject to it... His power to adore is responsible for all his crimes: a man who loves a god unduly forces other men to love his god, eager to exterminate them if they refuse... We kill only in the name of a god or of his counterfeits.” One can almost hear Nietzsche clapping with approval in the distance.

So the fundamental problem is idealism. People who have a plan for making things better are the carriers of a deadly mental virus. These small-time peddlers of happiness scam a willing audience into believing that it is possible to reduce the net amount of misery in the world. Thus “Society is an inferno of saviors!” What human beings don’t or won’t recognise is that existence is misery. Schopenhauer has now joined Nietzsche in approbation.

The only cure for miserable existence is the termination of existence, suicide. This is the only aspect of existence we can control. Contrary to the dictum of St. Paul that our lives are not our own, Cioran makes the rather more obvious point that they are. It is the only thing we can call entirely our own: “We change ideas like neckties; for every idea, every criterion comes from outside, from the configurations and accidents of time... death is the true criterion, the only one contained within us.” Writing seven years after Camus’s Sisyphus, he managed to radicalise even that paean to control 0ver one’s existence.

Philosophy, actually thought in general, is not helpful in the situation. “The abundance of solutions to the aspects of existence is equaled only by their futility.” Philosophies are at best consoling fictions, and at worst reasons to persecute other human beings. “All of life’s evils come from a ‘conception of life’,” Cioran thinks. In this he is not far from Kierkegaard’s distrust of philosophy: “Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.”

In fact Cioran’s real issue is with language itself, with words pretending to be more than grunts and scratches. He thinks “Man is the chatterbox of the universe.” We throw words around as if they had substance. But as Wittgenstein has demonstrated, words refer only to other words. Consequently, Cioran concludes “We die in proportion to the words which we fling around us.” Ludwig would likely agree.

The only acceptable use of words, indeed the only ‘reasonable’ activity for a human being is poetry. At least poetry doesn’t pretend to be more than it is. In fact it doesn’t pretend to be anything at all. Poetry is a personal act of construction. “Only the poet takes responsibility for ‘I,’ he alone speaks in his own name, he alone is entitled to do so.” T. S. Eliot’s The Wasteland seems a model for just this view.

Ultimately it is the ancient Gnostic appreciation of the world - shared certainly by the relatively optimistic(!) Thomas Ligotti - which drives Cioran: “Injustice governs the universe. Everything which is done and undone there bears the stamp of a filthy fragility, as if matter were the fruit of a scandal at the core of nothingness.” This seems to me outstanding poetry, as does his summary of his own life “In Time’s sentence men take their place like commas, while, in order to end it, you have immobilized yourself into a period.”

Felsefik bir söz seremonisinin en üst düzeyinden doğaçlama sancısı.
Okuyucuya karşı acımasız, pervazsız.
Gerçekliğin acı duruşu ve istemdışı kabullenişin kaçınılmazlığı.

A dangerously ravishing book.

Net zoals bij The Trouble with Being Born was ik het aan 2/3 wel beu, maar ik ben nu eenmaal geen nihilist. Of minstens geen aanhanger van het ‘pessimistisch nihilisme’.

Wat we wel gemeenschappelijk hebben, is onze haat voor zondagnamiddagen, zo blijkt.

“Love’s one function is to help us endure those cruel and incommensurable Sunday afternoons which torment us for the rest of the week - and for eternity.”

“What gift is more mysterious than being able to do what we will with ourselves, and refuse to do it? The world can take everything from us, can forbid us everything, but no one has the power to keep us from wiping ourselves out.”

“I accept life out of politeness, perpetual rebellion is in bad taste. (….) At twenty we rage against the heavens and the filth they hide; then we grow tired of it.”

As brilliant a thinker and writer as Cioran was, it became evident to me why I was not very familiar with his work, as I made my way through this collection of essays. To put it succinctly, he is dark as fuck. I honestly would not recommend reading this to anyone suffering from a serious form of depression. On the other hand, I don’t think most people who are not depressed would typically enjoy delving this deep into the ruminations of such a bleak worldview. Cioran takes his nihilism all the way, even further than Nietzsche, widely considered the radical rebel of popular philosophy. This leaves Cioran on the fringe of the fringe. Not exactly a location suitable for a wide audience.

After Nietzsche finishes philosophizing with his hammer, tearing down all of our illusions, he provides us with the tools to begin building anew. We can see the glimmer of progress and even hope if we squint hard enough. Meanwhile Cioran offers no such conveniences, instead grasping our hand only to drag us deeper into the void. There he wallows, waiting for his absurdly self-aware existence to run its futile course, all the while laughing at, not only us, but at himself as well.

"Yeisle birleşeceğim ruhuma karşı
Ve düşmanı olacağım kendimin."
III.Richard

Çürümeden ziyade insanın kendini aramasındaki evrelerin kitabı. Çoğu zaman umutsuz, ölüme meyilli ama aramaktan vazgeçmeyen.

"Bir tanrıyı yakışıksızca seven kişi, başkalarını da onu sevmeye zorlar."

"Düşüş, bir doğrunun peşine takılma ve onu bulmuş olmaktan emin olma değilse; bir dogma için duyulan tutku, bir dogmanın içine yerleşme değilse nedir?"

"En büyük zalimler kafası kesilmemiş mazlumların arasından çıkar."

"İçimizdeki peygamber, bizi kendi bosluğumuzda ihya eden deli tarafımızdır."

"Sıkıntı, kendi kendine yarılam zamanın içimizdeki yankısıdır."

"Tek olmaktan duyduğu gurur, insanı kendi derdine aşık olmaya ve tahammul etmeye teşvik eder."

"Mutsuzluktaki özgünlük, onu kendine ve hisler bütünü içinde tecrit eden sözel niteliğe bağlıdır."

"Hayat ancak muhayyilemizin ve hafızamızın zayıflıklarıyla mumkündür."

"Cehennemin avukatları hakikat üzerinde gökyüzünün avukatlarından az hak sahibi değildir."

لا يوجد إنسان لم يتمنّ- لا شعورياً على الأقل - موت إنسان آخر, كلّ واحد يجرّ وراءهُ مقبرةُ أصدقاء وأعداء, وليس من المهم كثيراً ان تكون تلك المقبرة قد أحيلت إلى مهاوي القلب أو أسقطت على سطح الرغبات.


أول كتاب لسيوران, بعنوان موجز التفكيك, نسختهُ العربية نادرة جداً ولم تنشر, كان حظّي كبيراً حين أتى اليّ :)

A series of epigrammatic reflections on how things fall apart. This is a bleak, atheistic book, but it is strangely comforting and even humorous in its unembarrassed nihilism.

Characteristic Cioran quotes:

"Anyone who speaks in the name of others is always an imposter."

"By all evidence we are in the world to do nothing."

"Chaos is rejecting all you have learned, Chaos is being yourself."

Umutsuzluk, mutsuzluk, inançsızlık ve elbette ki çürümüş insanlık kadar doğal bir şey yok diyor Cioran. İnsanların Tanrı ihtiyacına, "başkaları" ihtiyacına yaptığı göndermeler, çeşitli başlıklar altında toplayarak dile getirilmiş. Bu başlıklar kitabı daha okunur kılıyor. Hislerin bütünü, insan ihtiyaçlarının bütünü ve ihtiyaçlarının kölesi insan..
Çok sert bir dille bireyci merkezden irdeliyor insanı Cioran. Okunması gereken ve attığı tokatları hissettiren gerçekçi bir kitap.

Vieni is saziningiausiu tekstu! Galima sutikti ar nesutikti.....vienok, pacituosiu:

"Purvini snobai, visi svaistosi savo nusikalstamu dosnumu, visi dalija laimes receptus, visi nori kur nors kreipti kitu zingsnius: bendras gyvenimas tampa neapkenciamas, o gyvenimas su savimi - dar labiau: kai nesikisi i kitu reikalus, buni toks neramus del savuju, kad savo "as" paverti religija, arba, atvirkscias apastalas, ji neigi: esame visuotinio zaidimo aukos..."