A Short History of Decay (Penguin Modern Classics)

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When we carry germs of disappointments and a kind of thirst to see them develop, the desire that the world should undermine our hopes at each step multiplies the voluptuous verification of the disease. It is more than likely that crime would become the sole diversion, that debauchery would seem candor, shouting melody and jeers tenderness. In the 1940s, against the backdrop of world war, Cioran began a project originally entitled Exercices négatifs (Negative Exercises), then Penseur d’occasion (Second-Hand Thinker), before finally becoming Précis de decomposition, or A Short History of Decay, in the present translation.

I can imagine him saying: “Torn from the goal, from all goals, I retain, of my desires and my displeasures, only their formulas. Even when he turns from religion, man remains subject to it; depleting himself to create fake gods, he then feverishly adopts them: his need for fiction, for mythology triumphs over evidence and absurdity alike.A master of the aphoristic style, his style probably isn't everybody's cup of tea, but I definitely enjoyed it. Shelly’s “generous” aspect cripples most of his work; Shakespeare, by a stroke of luck, never “served” anything. And when we dream of seas changed into holy water, it is too late to dive into them, and our advanced state of corruption keeps us from drowning there: the world has infested our solitude; upon us the traces of others become indelible. Indeed they are, but only for us, for the limits of our own heart; and if the latter had the dimensions of space itself, our ills would be more spacious still, since every pain replaces the world, and for each unhappiness we require another universe.

Having resisted the temptation to conclude, I have overcome the mind, as I have overcome life itself by the horror of looking for an answer to it. In hearts imbued with poetry would appear a blasé cannibalism and a hyena’s melancholy; butchers and executioners would die out—of lethargy; churches and brothels would split with sighs. I feel safer with a Pyrrho than with a Saint Paul, for a jesting wisdom is gentler than an unbridled sanctity. And if we meet others, it is to degrade ourselves together in a race to the void, whether in the exchange of ideas, schemes, or confessions.This passage is a revision of a piece included in the earlier book Tears and Saints; [11] the characteristic phrase "If God were a cyclops, Spain would be His eye" is found in both works. The truly solitary being is not the man who is abandoned by men, but the man who suffers in their midst. According to Cioran, although both countries have a long Christian tradition, irreligious populations in both countries act as foils to the idea of God, preservering its vitality and cultural relevance—which would be diminished in a more uniformly Christian population. It stars Bryan Greenberg, Linda Lavin, Harris Yulin, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Benjamin King and Kathleen Rose Perkins.