Quartet Encounters S.

3 total works

Anathemas and Admirations

by E. M. Cioran

Published 1 December 1991

In this collection of essays and epigrams, E.M. Cioran gives us portraits and evaluations--which he calls "admirations"--of Samuel Beckett, Jorge Luis Borges, F. Scott Fitzgerald, the poet Paul Valery, and Mircea Eliade, among others. In alternating sections of aphorisms--his "anathemas"--he delivers insights on such topics as solitude, flattery, vanity, friendship, insomnia, music, mortality, God, and the lure of disillusion.

On the Heights of Despair

by E. M. Cioran

Published 15 June 1992

Born of a terrible insomnia--"a dizzying lucidity which would turn even paradise into hell"--this book presents the youthful Cioran, a self- described "Nietzsche still complete with his Zarathustra, his poses, his mystical clown's tricks, a whole circus of the heights." On the Heights of Despair shows Cioran's first grappling with themes he would return to in his mature works: despair and decay, absurdity and alienation, futility and the irrationality of existence. It also presents Cioran as a connoisseur of apocalypse, a theoretician of despair, for whom writing and philosophy both share the "lyrical virtues" that alone lead to a metaphysical revelation. "No modern writer twists the knife with Cioran's dexterity...His writing ...is informed with the bitterness of genuine compassion."--Bill Marx, Boston Phoenix "The dark, existential despair of Romanian philosopher Cioran's short meditations is paradoxically bracing and life-affirming...Puts him in the company of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard."--Publishers Weekly, starred review "This is self-pity as epigram, the sort of dyspeptic pronouncement that gets most people kicked out of bed but that has kept Mr.
Cioran going for the rest of his life."--Judith Shulevitz, New York Times Book Review Emil M. Cioran (1911-1995) is the author of numerous works, including The Fall into Time, A Short History of Decay, and Tears and Saints..

The Trouble with Being Born

by E. M. Cioran and Cioran

Published 1 November 1986

"A love of Cioran creates an urge to press his writing into someone's hand, and is followed by an equal urge to pull it away as poison."--The New Yorker

In this volume, which reaffirms the uncompromising brilliance of his mind, Cioran strips the human condition down to its most basic components, birth and death, suggesting that disaster lies not in the prospect of death but in the fact of birth, that laughable accident. In the lucid, aphoristic style that characterizes his work, Cioran writes of time and death, God and religion, suicide and suffering, and the temptation to silence. Through sharp observation and patient contemplation, Cioran cuts to the heart of the human experience.

"In the company of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard.--Publishers Weekly

No modern writer twists the knife with Cioran's dexterity. . . . His writing . . . is informed with the bitterness of genuine compassion.--Boston Phoenix