Allright, budding writers... Defend yourself against THIS! Cioran tells it straight - don't be a writer.
"In this amazing and unrelenting epistolary essay, the Romanian philosopher EM Cioran urges a young, aspiring author to give up his ambition to write so that he may protect his sicknesses and sins from the healing power of the word. To write is to destroy the grace bestowed upon us by misery and disease and failure. And to become a literary man is to join the age of the epigone – the copycat."
Illness so weak as to die with a gust of breath is illness not worth protecting, and failure that can be redeemed is not real failure; as for being not yourself, what else could you be?
Andrew Foster
Everyone else is his competition. Duh.
Charles Brown
The important part, when attempting to fail, is to be not too successful.
Nathan Reyes
is cioran a romanian name? don't they end in U
Thomas Bailey
I dont know who he is but I doubt he wrote anything noteworthy with that attitude
Tyler Flores
it is, and not necessarily
Lucas Rivera
Then read him, and see if your opinion changes
James Perry
Yep, and it is an archaic word meaning thief. It's pronounced Cho-Rhan, but the French tend to pronounce it Sioren or something like that.
Landon Green
I know there are people like in this in academia and they are mostly all the most insufferable cunts in their fields
Jordan Cook
cioran, that guy who went on and on about how much life sucks and then lived till the ripe old age of 84
talk about living your philosophy amirite?
Ian Stewart
If you had actually read him, you would see that he lived his philosophy.
Cooper Foster
i've read him
Joshua Watson
You make a very good point which I've spent time thinking about. But OTOH, I personally like the mental image of the guy who lived in a hovel all that time, knowing all the while that he had suicide in his back pocket if it got too unpleasant.
The guy was never a high-powered academic or businessman, etc, so although you are right to sniff some bullshit about his conceit, he at least has going for him that he was simply an edgy writer and little more. Cioran wasn't competing for much, although he did have a gf and a place in Paris, and declined various literary awards.
Jordan Anderson
>But OTOH, I personally like the mental image of the guy who lived in a hovel all that time, knowing all the while that he had suicide in his back pocket if it got too unpleasant.
the image is charming to be sure, but he doesn't see anything positive about life, it is all negative and all a horrible mistake, so his books always just struck me as boring posturing
Kevin Rivera
you haven't read him. He leaves very positive reviews of such activities as complaining, spitting bile, wallowing in total failure, or listening to music
Adrian Edwards
Sounds like he'd be into bug chasing nowadays.
Bentley Perry
This is a tenable view, but FWIW Cioran insisted that the point of writing books for him was not to "win an argument", or to "build a system", but instead simply as a form of therapy. It seems to have helped him somehow.
I reject this DO IT FAGGOT mentality that some people have when nihilists don't take their bit to its logical conclusion. It /will/ be taken to its logical conclusion in any event, whether at age 84, or sooner. Also, it's clear that Cioran took pleasure out of a few things in life - he was a normie, ffs. He had a gf.
Zachary Robinson
The whole fetish does speak to Cioran's half-hearted death wish, but in the west, where it truly is a gay disease, Cioran would need to have had some homosexual inclination, which he did not. Indeed, the whole end of his life was exactly that 15-year period ( ~1980~1995) when AIDS exploded, and remained effectively a death sentence. He lived in Paris. Cioran could have gotten himself pozzed up anytime he wanted, had he been so inclined. Could have opened his wrists at any moment, found just the right overhang at any time...
Zachary Lee
fanboy detected.
Josiah Jackson
>reading an author's book instead of the wikipedia article >fanboy well it's the 21st century, you must be right