On the Heights of Despair - Hardcover

Cioran, E. M.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0226106705 ISBN 13: 9780226106700

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1992

Synopsis

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

About this title

About the Author

E. M. Cioran (1911-1995) was born and educated in Romania and lived in Paris from 1937 until his death. He is the author of numerous works, including On the Heights of Despair, also available from the University of Chicago Press.

Reviews

The dark, existential despair of Romanian philosopher Cioran's short meditations is paradoxically bracing and life-affirming. Written in 1934, when he was 22 and desperately insomniac, this feverishly lyrical, at times slyly humorous confessional outpouring reveals Cioran as an angry young man in morally decaying Europe--a far cry from the elegant, curt stylist of his later books. Here Cioran rails at life's irrationality and absurdities; embraces solitude, melancholy and the awareness of death; and breathes organic vitality into the great philosophical themes of truth, eternity, beauty, suffering and good and evil. After one separates mature wheat from adolescent chaff, Cioran's early philosophical prose, like his later works, puts him in the company of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. In the enriching introduction, Zarifopol-Johnston, who met the thinker in his modest Paris flat, described this book as "a substitute for suicide and . . . its cure."
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Born in 1911, the author (who now lives in Paris) belongs to the group of 20th-century Romanian intellectuals that includes Mircea Eliade and Eugene Ionesco. This slim and elegantly translated volume, his first publication, originally appeared in 1934 and won him a national award for young authors. Its dark title should be taken as a whole: Cioran does indeed address death and despair, but from a healthy psychological perspective. While clearly a young man's work, this epigrammatic book is neither callow nor dated. For all Western philosophy collections and readers.
- Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley P.L., Cal.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0226106705
• ISBN 13: 9780226106700
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 150